But as a "review" of the book edited by Kirwan and Menerd? That seems a bit of a stretch. You have set the scene for how and why the Thomists needed to respond to the Nouvelle Théologie, but I guess we will need to read the book to discover much about the Thomistic response.
I haven't read the book yet, as I only heard about it just now. But can I mention that in terms of a Catholic sense of the faith, anything that insists upon joining "nouvelle" with "theology" must be looked at with a great deal of skeptical suspicion. St. Paul tells us "Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle ". This imposes a procedural and epistemic presumption in favor of the traditional teaching. I have been hearing the canard from De Lubac:
De Lubac urged ressourcement, or a return to the sources of Catholic theology, especially the Church Fathers
all of my adult life, and find it wholly empty of validity. Aquinas, more than any other theologian I know, explicitly sourced his own presentation in the Bible and the Fathers. I don't know if De Lubac was actually lying about the issue or what, but in practical terms the canard is more like "the big lie" than a real difficulty in Thomism. If one reads Thomas's "The Golden Chain" (which consists wholly of piecing together the Fathers commenting on the Gospels), and then his Summa, one comes away with the Summa being merely a theology derived straight from The Golden Chain - i.e. it couldn't be any more rooted in the sources of Catholic theology without BEING the sources of Catholic theology.
Note that de Lubac was also engaged in the recovery of Aquinas himself (although whether his conclusions here were correct is deeply controverted). Bear in mind further that Aquinas did not have many ancient texts and also often did not have whole texts, and that he had many texts attributed to incorrect authors.
As I understand it, Ressourcement was more concerned with breaking out of the mold of a certain Neo-Scholasticism that was in fact not deeply in touch with the text (or at least the context) of the Bible and the Fathers. And even Aquinas, insofar as he was, lacked the historical perspective and critical apparatus available to de Lubac, who also had a clearer sense of how the specifically Latin medieval tradition had evolved from the other branches of Christian thought.
Like Anonymous, I thought that de Lubac and company were trying to get back beyond what some (Cardinal Suenens?) called "manual theology" and drink more deeply from the well of patristic thought.
Whenever I have tried to learn from the Nouvelle people, I have found their works to be either wholly incomprehensible, tending (sometimes closely) toward modernism, or developing poorly and with immense difficulty toward truths that would have been easier to develop straight out of scholastic modes of theology. That is: either wrong, or (where right) less help than the scholastic model they intended to supplant.
Could be just me, of course. But it's hard to dispute with the evidence, which is that the De Lubac-celebrating part of the Church's theologians are constantly straining to fly off into some Neverland that is recognizably not Catholic (or even Christian), while the Thomist-favoring part of the Church's theologians are trying to learn to avoid sin and love God in the same sense all the saints of the past loved God. (The Rahner / Kung / Schillebeeckx strain is already flown off into the wild blue yonder, - and should have been declared heretical - while de Lubac seemingly attempted to split the difference between them and orthodoxy, an interesting notion in its own right.)
Admittedly, there were theologians who were attempting to be Thomists but were running off the rails, here or there, probably because they were taught to respect the results of Thomas without also being taught to drink deeply of the methods of Thomas, i.e. not being trained in the liberal arts properly and not being developed in critical thinking from the ground up. So, there was work to do there, but it has been done by better Thomists. As far as I can tell, it remains true that nothing the Communio school of Nouvelle has "discovered" theologically is not also accessible with Thomism updated and extended with modern history and science.
From Wikipedia "The nouveaux théologiens sought "a spiritual and intellectual communion with Christianity in its most vital moments as transmitted to us in its classic texts, a communion which would nourish, invigorate, and rejuvenate twentieth-century Catholicism".[3] Many of the theologians associated with the movement advocated for a far broader "return to the sources" of the Christian faith: namely, Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. "
Scripture. Commands of Jesus. Sell all you have and give to the poor. Matthew 6:5-6. No public praying. Pray strictly in private. Acts 4:32-36. God commands communism. See also Acts 2:42-45.
And there you have it. WCB has with a reference or two shown us that the early Christians were disciples of Marx. What a guy.
Every time you post WCB, I understand why you don't attach your real name to what you write. It might cause you to blush when you get out in public.
But then again that is really not a problem for you as it is clear from what you write that you don't get out much. Those that admire thinkers who seduce teenage girls are much more likely to be stuck in mom and dad's basement. Am I right? Sic et sic.
Very true. I think you let de Lubac and von Balthasar off very lightly indeed. They were essential to the modernist genealogy that led to the the sea of slip-ups in Vatican II texts and all the consequences of its ensuing "spirit".
How interesting it is to note that the "conciliarist" "traditionalists" trying to change the constitution of the Church, and accuse Pope Francis of being an anti-Pope, combine their heterodoxy with praise for de Lubac (One Peter Five, The Remnant, the occultist "trads" at The European Conservative, etc.). One Peter Five's star columnist, Thadeus Kozinski (a specialist on the demonology of the current successor of Peter), declared in The European Conservative (13/10/23): "the will of God... known through the Logos, the Tao[!], the Natural Law". Its getting clearer and clearer. The agenda of conciliarist, conservative "trads" is not doctrinal purity but changing the constitution of the Church. They are a smells and bells version of the German synodal way.
Like the Nouvelle Theologie, and Luther and every boring old heresy, such stars of nouveau conciliarism declare themselves the direct heirs of the Fathers and the early Church. Why should anyone believe them?
I can only turn the mirror towards you and repeat the old adage Medice, cura te etc. De Lubac was an essential part of the movement that led to the problems of Vatican II. If you can't see this in his writings and influence, your views probably need attention.
De Lubac experienced long censure under Pius XII with good reason. His misuse of patristic resources, biblical exegesis, and his confusion of natural and supernatural orders was the standard approach by the Modernism that had come before him. It's also no secret that Modernism comes in degrees. De Lubac was somewhere to be found among that team.
Of course not. It is to be compared Constance and its aftermath, during the period (quite a number of years) before the Church clarified how it should be interpreted. So simple, except for those who happen to live in such periods... How anyone could possibly take Vatican II as it stands as definitive when almost nobody, beginning with the post-conciliar Popes, can clearly articulate how it is to be interpreted, is beyond me. What traditional Catholics must do is remain faithful to the perennial teaching of the Church before the confusion started, waiting for Rome to recover its nerve, as it always does, not picking and choosing. The picking and choosing option adopted by confused conservative Conciliarists (in the sense of neo-Gallicanism and the un-canonical Constance) has ended up with them adopting even heretical notions on the constitution of the Church, in order to find a human solution to the mess. The papacy remains the principle of unity. The clearsighted vision of Society of St. Pius X is truly coming into its own only now!
I think the pressure on One Peter Five from level-headed Catholics is intense. It has now published a rebuttal of Dr. Peter Kwasniewski's theories: https://onepeterfive.com/good-bishop-unjust-deposition-by-pope/
Interesting to bring up the Society of Saint Pius X. Their French site has just included a masterly critique of the Synod and its connection, not just to Vatican II, but to the old Conciliarist error of the fifteenth century: https://laportelatine.org/formation/crise-eglise/collegialite/de-vatican-ii-a-leglise-synodale-2
Sad to say, One Peter Five and The Remnant are unrepentant about peddling authors and ideas that are dangerous to the Faith. Kozinski (the great confessor of The Tao)is back in the former publication, while the latter has again published Kmita, the believer in Guenon, the well-known occultist. Conciliarist traditionalism is in good hands.
Indeed, Robert Kmita’s latest article at The Remnant (20/10/23) is nothing if not heretical. For him, the essence of religious life is the paranatural, not the spiritual, properly speaking: “The most important thing that people lost as a result of original sin is… the ability to speak to God at any time…”, “Humanity before the Fall was characterized by its most important attribute: immortality”. Shocking. Gets worse : “this vision was not the “beatific vision” – accessible only to those who attain perfection. Adam and Eve still had to do spiritual things (like contemplating and discovering the divine reasons of the creatures) to reach perfection”. So the “beatific vision” is something that could be obtained purely by a dose of New Age-style Enlightenment? Kmita’s “Heaven” is just a new earthly Garden of Eden: “After baptism, “In concrete terms, we are ready to RE-ENTER Paradise”. Kmita’s theory of “grace” is merely a secular, superman existence (says Adam and Eve were transparent).
Needless to say, like all capital T Traditionalists in the tradition of Guenon, Kmita can be relied upon to blurt out names like Trent and St. Thomas non-stop. In two long Kmita articles on Baptism, The Remnant could not spit out the basic expression of traditional Catholic doctrine every child learns in the penny catechism. Shame on them for toying with this Guenonist at a time when the Church needs sound doctrine!
Cervantes is quite on target with criticism of some conservative Catholic journals. Nouvelle Theologie seems to have been taken up without apologies by at least two of them. One Peter Five has now also taken up the praise of the clearly heterodox Robert Kmita, in its article by de Malleray. But another article, by Antonio Frances, takes the cake, with its unreserved defense Congar and his ideas on Church organisation. How can these these journals claim the mantle of Catholic tradition when they defend the very modernists and their theology of the Church that have wreaked such havoc in the Church since Vatican II?!
Unfortunately, this stuff has penetrated many sectors claiming to oppose modernism. Cardinal Muller’s account of the Church (First Things 27/10/23) oscillates between the primitive Church and Vatican II year zero. He’s angry about the Synod, but just offers more of the same: “It is my prayer that the Synod on Synodality will be guided by the authentic faith formulated by the Fathers of Vatican II” then quotes Lumen Gentium on the people of God, emphasising a distinction between the priesthood and laity based on the power of orders and sacraments, ignoring jurisdiction, which is inseparable from the “papal centralism” he abhors: “The incarnate Son of God, the good shepherd who lays down his life for the flock of God, is the all-supporting head of the whole Church. He guides and governs through the shepherds and teachers authorized by himself. This is not done, as in politics, by men exercising power over men, but by preaching the Word and providing the sacraments that Christ entrusted to his apostles and their successors to administer”. Muller links the episcopal power of orders links “shepherds” directly to Christ, making the Church essentially democratic and synodal in practice – exactly as the title of Muller’s article in First Things claims to oppose! But getting rid of that Catholic bottleneck of jurisdictional Romanitas consigns the Church to the Conciliarist, Gallicanist, modernist project..
The Pope become a president: “Competence in matters of doctrine and Church constitution” is “reserved for the plenary assembly of an ecumenical council or a particular synod whose decisions are recognized by the pope as a valid expression of the truth of Revelation”, effectively making the Pope like the rubber stamp of the English constitutional monarchy, with a sovereignty shared with parliament. But the Church is not a human institution, and the Pope’s vicarious jurisdiction is not shared. Muller is not a pure English constitutionalist, however, but a federalist: “Papal centralism and episcopal particularism are equally contrary to the truth of the one Church of God, which is found in the communion of the many episcopally-led local churches that recognize… the Bishop of Rome”. However, the body of Christ is not a federation.
In the end, the Cardinal nails up his conciliarist colours: “millions of Catholics” will stop the Church from being turned into an NGO, because, citing Vatican II, “the whole of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in ‘matters of belief’”. Millions of Catholics might indeed smack down such efforts, but which millions of Catholics represent the Holy Ghost? Today, a majority percentage of Catholic laity hold false ideas concerning faith and morals, at least in the West. If one could transport a mob from Equatorial Guinea to St Peter’s square, perhaps a defenestration of Bishop Fernandez might be feasible. One should never discount a good mob at the right time. Nevertheless, Vatican I specified just what bit of the Church was the unfailing guide till the end of time, the See of Rome. Getting decisions out of millions of the “People of God” is as imprecise and tricky as getting one out of any democratic body. Indeed, the Church is not a human society; no other human has the personal guarantee of faith that the successors of Peter have. Muller discounts reason in his account of the Church, invented by de Lubac and Congar, calling the Church a sacrament, and separating laity and clergy merely on account of the power of order. This entirely ignores the most Catholic doctrine of the power of jurisdiction, something wholly rational, understandable, and centralistic. On questions concerning the constitution of the Church, Pope Francis is much more solid than Muller. As with the times of the Renaissance, angry men quoted scripture and morality at Renaissance Popes, but fell out of the Church themselves by mentally playing with the Church's constitution.
Have you seen this, from One Peter Five's lay theologian, Antonio Frances? "These heretics [fail] to state in the Relatio synodalis that the jurisdiction in the Church has its root in the episcopate". It's a hopeless battle trying to win over these people. They have entirely taken up the collegial jurisdiction idea, alien as it is to Catholic tradition. This is Conciliarism in all its glory. We're going back to Renaissance chaos.
It's a bit rich. It took the conservative approach on display in these publications to label as heretics the traditionalists who merely continue to believe the Church's teaching expressed by St Thomas Aquinas, in Vatican I and Mystici Corporis, that the Pope's jurisdiction is the fullness of all jurisdiction in the Church. It is not a development of, participation in, or counterbalance to, any episcopal, collegial, let alone synodal, jurisdiction. The conservative, Gallicanist, conciliarist "remedy" is far worse than the confusion of Vatican II, which has so obviously spawned these tendencies, as they mostly acknowledge!
"Gosh, Wikipedia! Well, that certainly puts Dr Feser in his place." - Mary Therese
Did the short exerpt I posted have any big errors? The Wikipedia article gives cites to various authorities. Now back to the Bible. And commands of Jesus. What are we to do with these commands? Follow them to the letter? Ignore the commands we don't like?
I have always been fascinated how so many Christians have no intention of following all these commands. "Well, Jesus didn't mean me!"
Ah WCB, but all these commands and sayings of Jesus need interpreting and explaining to us by the RCC, which he established and gave such authority to, and you can bet your bottom dollar that he did not mean quite what he said!
Bit like when he stated clearly and unambiguously that he would return before the then current generation had all passed away!
"I have always been fascinated how so many Christians have no intention ..."
I have never been especially fascinated by the fact that those meat sacks of cosmically meaningless appetite, as materialists have self-defined, squawk about the behavior of Christians with regard to the Scriptures.
If the organisms of the left are in fact, what their own philosophy reduces them to, why should Christians care in the least what these meaningless, soulless, wholly determined loci of appetite "think"? Or what becomes of them, once the Christians have determined that these metaphysically alien and temporary congeries of appetites denominated as materialist progressives, have exhausted whatever marginal utility they might once have had, or which has now been deemed superfluous?
What are they bitching about?
To quote The Bard for the umpteenth time here: " Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek ..." The Devil? So apparently, can a meat computer.
Let's also take a look at the basic assumptions of the Apostles when it came to giving. "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God"
What then are the class of soulless, cosmically meaningless, congeries of transitory "appetite" lacking even free will, doing when like parrots, they emit noises "quoting" Scripture?
"Oh, the humanity !!!"
Well, if you take seriously and turn the sense of the noises which they make back on themselves at least, then ... not really.
DNW, "I have never been especially fascinated by the fact that those meat sacks of cosmically meaningless appetite, as materialists have self-defined, squawk about the behavior of Christians with regard to the Scriptures." I am not surprised to find out your lack interest in learning some basics, but just in case...
If you value self consistency then the self-contradiction of claiming to adhere to a set of admonitions supposedly coming from no less than the incarnation of god, yet not actually paying much attention to the details, well, that is a rather disrespectable self-contradiction.
On the other hand, if you don't care about self-contradictions then I suppose that will not bother you.
"why should Christians care in the least what these meaningless, soulless, wholly determined loci of appetite "think"? " Up to you if you care about contradicting yourself or not.
"What are they bitching about?" You're ilk, more specifically, the demonstrable illogic presented by your ilk while claiming, falsely, to be self-consistent.
What are we to do with these commands? Follow them to the letter? Ignore the commands we don't like?
As usual, WBC's comments cannot be taken as serious, as he picks and chooses single short quotes and ignores other passages that would indicate the exact opposite. He refuses to allow that a complex work like the Bible will need to be worked on to be made a harmonious whole, which requires nuancing various passages so they fit together. He seems to do this merely to make problems for Christians, as he does not appear to believe in the Bible as the inspired word of God.
Jesus ate with wealthy men, and did not tell them to sell all they had. He approved of Zecchaeus who made restitution to those he had cheated but only gave HALF what he had to the poor, not all. Jesus constantly relied upon the help of people who retained their homes and certain other wealth, and he literally rebuked a disciple who objected to the woman lavishing him with an expensive oil instead of giving the money to the poor. Neither during Jesus's visible presence in the world, nor immediately after, did any of them say or hold that all wealth must be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Notably, there is no instance recorded where Jesus gave his money to the poor, nor directed his apostles to do so.
Except that's literally true. For example, among the many chastisements he gives to the Corinthian church, Paul criticizes their practice of gathering together to eat the Lord's supper, and points out they have homes to do that in. He didn't criticize them for having homes.
He also tells Timothy to charge those who are rich to not be highminded or to trust in those riches. And throughout his writings, such as Romans and 1 Corinthians, he speaks of gathering their offerings to take to the poor saints at Jerusalem - those who sold everything during Jesus' ministry and early Acts.
Verses out of context aren't very good for making points.
When did Paul outrank Jesus? Does Paul actually negate direct commands of Jesus? Or the word of God as given by the Holy Ghost?
All across America, politicians want the ten commandments posted in every class room. Because Jesus commanded following them. But these same politicians don't want all of the ten commandments as Jesus commanded this. Sell all you have and give to the poor. Most odd when one thinks about that a bit. And a lot of people want prayer in scholl. Matthew 6:5-6. Jesus condemns public praying, praying is to be done in public. I find this sort of behavior odd to say the least.
"WCB", if you say "But these same politicians don't want all of the ten commandments as Jesus commanded this. Sell all you have and give to the poor.", does it mean that you have already sold all you had and given to the poor?
Would you like to explain what you are using to post here in that case?
When did Paul outrank Jesus? Does Paul actually negate direct commands of Jesus? Or the word of God as given by the Holy Ghost?
Jesus appeared to Paul and chose him to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul says he was not taught of men but received his words through direct revelation by the Spirit.
Paul is following the commands of Christ, not overriding them. If there's a "contradiction", then it pays to compare the two and see who is being spoken to, when they are being spoken to, and why they are being spoken to. The most obvious example being, Christians aren't commanded to shed the blood of animals to cover sins, even though that commandment was from the Lord.
My friends over at STRANGE NOTIONS and Dr. Bonnette all explained to WCB that private interpretation of Holy Writ is not a thing but he dinnae listen. Who are we kidding? Of course he listened. He just doesn't care and wants to make up his who nonsense too troll.
I weep because I think deep down he is smart. He just doesn't want to use his intellect to make better arguments. I think he just likes the attention.
Hey Son of Ya'Kov, I enjoyed my years of participation over at Strange Notions. Although I disagreed with you, Dr. Bonnette, and others on many points, I learned a lot, and I thought that the communal attempt to understand was to the good. Now that site is moribund. A pity.
Why should I trust the Vatican's interpretation of things? Why should I take their word for it when they ay Bible verses describing hell as imposed externally by God don't actually mean that?
"Sell all you have and give to the poor.", does it mean that you have already sold all you had and given to the poor?" -MP
Since I am an atheist, no. Though with my medical bills, I end up giving much of my money to Big Pharma.
The Nouvelle Theologie proponents seem to be placing emphasis on going back to the Bible. I don't know what the exact argument by some Nouvelle Theologians means in regard to going back to the Bible really means.
But the question then seems to be, what do the gospels say in regards to commands of Jesus and what is Christianity's obligation as to following the commands of Jesus. And of course, these commands are not confined to Catholics.
So, why is your interpretation of the Bible you keep repeating here relevant in this case?
You say "Since I am an atheist, no.", so, it does not matter to you personally.
And you say " I don't know what the exact argument by some Nouvelle Theologians means in regard to going back to the Bible really means.", so, your interpretation has nothing to do with Nouvelle theologie either, and, in fact, you at least have a reason to suspect that yourself.
Nor do you show understanding how those parts of the Bible are usually understood by people who take the Bible more seriously. In fact, you do not even show much willingness to find that out.
So, what's the point of repeating the same irrelevant thing as a broken record here?
Is that based on the reasoning described in one meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1185058-counter-signal-memes): "So yeah, this argument wouldn't work on me, but maybe if I use it on you, you'll do what I want"?
In that case, I suspect that we have a sufficient sample to conclude that your approach is not working (and it probably won't work if you try it another hundred times either). You should probably try something else.
MP, ""So yeah, this argument wouldn't work on me, but maybe if I use it on you, you'll do what I want"? More like *You claim to value self consistency, follow both logic and a particular doctrine, yet logically, you are not following that doctrine, so you are not being self consistent.*
"In that case, I suspect that we have a sufficient sample to conclude that your approach is not working (and it probably won't work if you try it another hundred times either). You should probably try something else." You are demonstrably wrong, it is working.
The Nones keep growing. Young people in particular are leaving religion, so the trend is that it is working, "it" meaning the pointing out of the myriad ways religions makes no sense.
Of course you, an individual, are not going to do a personal 180 in your life because some guy posts something on a blog someplace. People are not like that.
But "it" demonstrably is working.
Most people value self consistency, and want to have opinions that make sense generally. Over time, in the aggregate, engaging with the religious on the facts of how nonsensical their assertions are does have a positive effect, the positive effect of a general trend of people leaving religion.
"Always lurking in the background of the debate was the specter of modernism, a heresy that spread throughout the late nineteenth century and became a target of concerted papal attack at the start of the twentieth—most famously in the encyclicals and governance of Pius X. Modernism rejects attempts to found theology in philosophical arguments and the evidence of miracles. It looks instead to sentiment and religious experience. Since these change with the times, modernism takes dogma to be mutable rather than fixed. By the same token, it rejects the view that Scripture is free from error, and takes the Church’s traditional scriptural interpretations to be open to revision. Its assimilation of revelation to experience collapses the natural and the supernatural."
That subjectivity and chasing of "feelinz" is probably where the rubber meets the road when it comes to: the more general and parallel dissolution of the formerly realist predicates of our present associative orders; to these still persisting associative arrangements' increasing untenability; and to the irrational futility of trying to justify their further maintenance ( at least in a broadly distributive fashion) in the face of wasted costs.
Western secular civilization is currently deep in this parallel phase to religion; wherein affiliation is hollowed out by a complete lack not only of natural affinity, but of any shared intellectual presuppositions. The more jarringly apparent this becomes, the louder the screeching about " inclusion" and "solidarity".
Yet, the thought of joining in a hollow religious pantomime officiated over by straw grasping cynics seeking to preserve the ecological niches which they have found a way to infiltrate and inhabit and commandeer, is almost as ridiculous as pretending that "empathy" for antipathetic organisms - which on the basis of their own axioms must be radically other - can serve as the continuing basis for a political "community " or even toleration and interpersonal forbearance.
Their sales pitch falls on understandably deaf ears.
For normal people, who have no interest in participating in the mindless "community" charades and mutual ass sniffing exercises so beloved of progressives of both religious and secular stripes, the problem, is obvious: If they are what they say they are, they just aren't worth either the price they demand, or your trouble.
Prof. Feser's article was about Nouvelle Theologie. The first three posts were on point about the article. The rest were just "noise. " Read Lubac's books "The Splendor of the Church" and "The Discovery of God. "
"God commands communism" says the atheist. "... when Jesus had finished ... he departed from Galilee ... And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.
The Pharisees also came ... testing him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? ...he answered and said ... he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, ...For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife ... What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say ... Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith ..., Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say ... Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given ...
Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence.
And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandment He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
Sometimes actual quotes are helpful.
"- he which made them at the beginning made them male and female - For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery"
One came and said unto to him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? [Jesus said] "- if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandment ... - Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
[Not satisfied, that young man still pressed, saying he had done all these things; and challenging Jesus as to what he, the rich young man, still might lack. He was told...]
- "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. "
Apparently the young man decided that to "enter into life" was more attainable than Jesus' counter challenge to him to acheive perfection as an Apostle.
So, in light of this, what kind of lunatic would state that God commands communism?
Acts 4 31 And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness. 32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. 33 And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. 34 Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, ....
See also Acts 2:42-5.
Now, The Council Of Trentb-Fourth session and Verbum Dei - 1965 assure us the bible was authored by God himself.
Part of what makes this relevant is today's GOP candidates trying to cur Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid et al. The GOP in the 30's claimed FDR's Social Security was "Communism!" And cries of "Communism!" are still coming from today's more radical GOP politicians. Who are also the ones proclaiming we need more religion and Bible in our schools and politics. Apparently these Christian Nationalists have never read Acts 4 and 2 carefully.
These are things I notice, and think about. If Nouvelle Theologie and Neo-Thomism are having some debates of the Bible's standing in theology, in my mind, Acts 4 and Acts 2 and "Sell all you have and give to the poor" loom large. Is the New Testament commands of Jesus and holy ghost obligatory?
Acts 4 31 And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness. 32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul ..."
That was, Christians gathered together.
You are not only not a Christian, or a Samaritan, or a Roman soldier or an invincibly ignorant victim of his educational limitations, but an active apostate atheist.
They spoke the Word of God as believers and with boldness. You speak it to the same purpose with which the characters Ananias and Sapphira made their deceptive contribution to the work of the Spirit among the community of believers: i.e., in order to, and as as someone seeking to, access and game the faithful for his advantage.
So, you are not only an atheist and apostate (shrug), but a rather pathetic case of someone trying to use the supernatural convictions of Christians and their scriptures, against them. In a sense - and this can be taken in a secular yet nonetheless metaphysically freighted way - you are an exemplar of the resentment driven diabolical as portrayed in The Vision of Fursey; one of the swarm of resentful accusers seeking to subvert and manipulate or punish others by means of their own code for your perceived advantage.
Whether it is to get them to pay for your meds as compliant and passive and selfless human termites immersed in your preferred system, or some other purpose, is best known to you.
The question is, why should anyone care? If you are right, you are ultimately a cosmically meaningless annoyance toward which no one has any objective duties or obligations. If the Christians are right, you are not only not one of them, but a member of that special category of apostates and enemies not only of the faithful, but of God Himself.
You are one of those relative few with which the Christian is enjoined to have nothing to do socially.
Kind of interesting that you are so obsessively drawn to this.
I had already provided sufficient to deal with the matter.
Funny too, now that you have quoted someone else other than "God", to watch you attempt to CYA after having previously challenged another commenter on his use of a Pauline source.
So, you try to shield yourself from the blowback of your own earlier comment by writing,
"The Council Of Trentb-Fourth session and Verbum Dei - 1965 assure us the bible was authored by God himself."
You leveled an attack earlier, and now catch the ricochet right back in your own teeth.
That's the risk you take in your haste to fling whatever it is that comes to hand. The bounce-back can prove fatal.
If the communism you envision is one that eliminates poverty, according to the teaching of Christ the one who strives for perfections renounces earthly goods for the heavenly goods, becoming and remaining poor by choice out of love for the Lord. As St. John Chrysostom beautifully commented in his Homily 63 on Matthew "It is not then enough to despise wealth, but we must also maintain poor men, and above all things follow Christ; that is, do all the things that are ordered by Him, be ready for slaughter and daily death. For if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. [Matthew 16:24] So that to cast away one's money is a much less thing than this last commandment, to shed even one's very blood; yet not a little does our being freed from wealth contribute towards this."
Among the influences on the new movement was philosopher Maurice Blondel, who argued for replacing the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of truth as the conformity of intellect to reality with the notion that truth is the conformity of intellect to life.
This is an insane theory: based on this idea, there isn't (can't be) any way of distinguishing between conforming to a good, upright, wholesome life, and conforming to a bent, distorted, evil, destructive life. Both of them count as "conforming to life".
The attempt to "baptize" the utterly atheistic (and wholly anti-Christian) modernism with a thin veil of pretense toward Christian concepts should have been rejected wholesale, as Pius X told us. The foolish choices to ignore that sound advice and try to bring modernism into Church teaching anyway has had demonstrably horrific effects within the Church.
The crackdown on these trends during Pius X’s pontificate was vigorous and, arguably, in some quarters taken too far.
Maybe, possibly, one can argue there was some theologian slapped down a little harder than absolutely necessary. However, it is unarguably manifest that many, many Catholic philosophers, theologians and teachers SHOULD have been stopped cold and dismissed from their positions, who weren't. So, on balance, the effort was far too weak, not too vigorous. (It should also have been attended by a vigorous effort to properly train up philosophers and theologians in the traditional model of training whereby they could learn how to think, how to understand right philosophy, and how to discern all of the damaged philosophies spun off of the Endarkenment's rejection of Catholic philosophy. That project too (explicitly requested by Leo and Pius X) was refused outright, to our great loss.
Pope St. John Paul ll spoke well about Maurice Blondel. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2000/oct-dec/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20001118_blondel.html
Reading some of the comments here provokes the thought in me - and I suppose it is already obvious to most - that for quite a swath of humanity, reIigion fills a hole left by some kind of emotion driven neediness. It might be almost any system of collective identification. It could be the religion of communism and dialectical materialism, it might be Hart's eastern mystical pseudo Christian monist universalism crap, or it might be new agey or theosophical nonsense. Or modernism.
But they all seem less focused on what objectively is or can rationally be demonstrated as supposition worthy, than on scratching some emotional or communitarian itch for affirmation by the other, and feelings of inclusion and acceptance.
C.S. Lewis in some remark I cannot quote directly, pointed out that traditional Christianity purported to say something critical about the nature of reality. That constituted its value.The apostle Paul, made an at least swiping reference to the same point in Corinthians.
But it is clear that that is not what so many of those interested in involvement in these various systems of social binding, are after.
We talk about the trends toward emphasizing inclusion, affirmation, and so forth.
Those are not features of the religions of the marxist, the modernist soccer mom, the inclusion and redistribution freaks and pimps ... it is the very essence of their systems. You could pour almost any content into them, as the specific information plays second fiddle to the main theme of an all encompassing system of social inclusion.
Traditional Catholicism, and modernism, are not only not versions of the same system of belief, they are not even in the same business.
C.S. Lewis was simply mistaken. Christianity is not the type of religion that makes a statement about the nature of reality. Christianity is a religion about your relationship with God the Son (Jesus Christ). It touches on aspects of objective reality (the resurrection, mind-body dualism, the young creation of the universe, etc...) but it's not about the nature of reality nor is the Holy Bible a textbook about the nature of reality.
C.S. Lewis was simply mistaken. Christianity is not the type of religion that makes a statement about the nature of reality. Christianity is a religion about your relationship with God the Son (Jesus Christ). It touches on aspects of objective reality (the resurrection, mind-body dualism, the young creation of the universe, etc...) but it's not about the nature of reality nor is the Holy Bible a textbook about the nature of reality.
I think it might be helpful for you to reread what I actually wrote.
I wrote: "C.S. Lewis in some remark I cannot quote directly, pointed out that traditional Christianity purported to say something critical about the nature of reality. That constituted its value.The apostle Paul, made an at least swiping reference to the same point in Corinthians."
Addressing only your referrence to, " ...your relationship with God the Son ..." it becomes immediately evident that in that phrase alone are at least three or more implied, or deducible through immediate inference, premisses concerning the reality in which man "finds himself". That there is a God. That there is a divine person denominated as the 'Son". That you as an individual are to have a direct relationship with Him. And in addition, for those who have some slightly larger familiarity with the context that my truncated quote of your statement presents, that: there is a supernatural reality, that God transcends our experienced material reality, that good and evil exist, that the individual is in need of salvation, and that this state of affairs matters and has consequences for an individual with an eternal life and fate.
So Christianity does purport to say a great number of distinct things about the nature and ground of reality both proximate and ultimate as experienced by men and pertaining to their personal and eternal destinies, which other systems or collections of beliefs carrying a name, either do not, or do deny.
Regarding fundamental reality statements or characterizations in general: In the case of Christianity, or of a Christian influenced historical context, we have the curious situation in which contrary to a widespread flippancy, the term "metaphysics" is not merely a euphemistic term for veiled "religion", as hostile critics might suggest; but instead, a situation wherein the religion itself contains within it a virtual metaphysical system.
Now some may respond, 'post hoc propter hoc', or, that that is merely an impression resulting from whether your perspective starts from the front end or the back end.
But on the contrary, since metaphysical propositions or speculative inferences need not have anything to do with supernaturalism, the mere fact that a metaphysical system is supernaturalistic does not serve to demonstrate a closeted identity.
It shows that mirroring reality to expose the highest order or fundamental nature of being possible, is not in fact necessarily synonymous with religion, veiled or otherwise.
[Whether or to what extent the implicit or explicit metaphysics in Christianity is the result of the context of its historical origins and is a melded or hybrid system, is I think, another question entirely.]
In making a statement about your relationship with God, it assumes and is implying a number of things about the nature of reality. It couldn't make ANY statement about your relationship with God without a number of prior things which explain the meaning of the terms used, and which assume that reality is a certain way.
In the context of a debate in which modernism disputes those assumed propositions, Christianity asserts those prior positions as well as asserting something about your relationship with God. This is one reason why, in addition to the definitive, infallible de fide teachings of the Church made from Revelation, there are also definitive, infallible teachings to be held on matters philosophic and matters historical that are so closely associated with the dogmas taught de fide that it is necessary to assent to them also.
Just my humble opinion (ha ha): I think it would be great if all stopped appealing/referring to or citing C.S. Lewis in discussions of philosophy of religion.
"Just my humble opinion (ha ha): I think it would be great if all stopped appealing/referring to or citing C.S. Lewis in discussions of philosophy of religion."
Why? He was mentioned as making an observation. His writings have become the common coin of popular Christian social and apologetic commentary. So what?
I dont think anyone has elevated him to the throne of Peter. Though considering the current occupant ...
“C.S. Lewis in some remark I cannot quote directly, pointed out that traditional Christianity purported to say something critical about the nature of reality.“
"Miguel Cervantes October 20, 2023 at 6:00 AM Well said. So true. Since when did he become a Doctor of the Church?"
Never of course. He wrote as an Anglican layman addressing the issues of secularization, relativism, and apostasy, seen in the established church and culture of his nation and era.
Over time his observations resonated across the Atlantic.
Shakespeare is not a doctor of the Church either, but one of his characters had an acute observation regarding the strategy of the diabolically minded in their deployment of Scripture. Prefiguring somewhat you might say, Saul Alinsky's rule for radicals number four, and his Rules for Radicals nod to Lucifer.
Perhaps Shakespeare should not be referenced to make or illustrate a point either.
As far as Lewis goes, many ordinary people have found his clear and unemotional style to be a welcome contrast to the turgid outpourings of the soft-handed, infantilized male, professional God talking sorts found infesting the Catholic Church and feeding off of sinecures.
Now, Chrysostom apparently never quite said that the floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops. Nonetheless, we in our current era can attest that the secular pathway there is no doubt adorned with the rotting carcasses of duplicitous modernist theologians like Gregory Baum, and of pervert bishops like Rembert Weakland, and Bernardin.
Compared to them, Lewis deserves to be elevated to an honorary doctorate of religious letters, at the least.
Well said. So true. Since when did he become a Doctor of the Church?
Each of the doctors of the Church were quoted and employed for centuries before they were declared doctors. It is fine to employ other commentators than those already declared doctors.
C.S. Lewis is well known for having spoken of a core of common teachings of Christianity. Even though he was in error regarding specifically Catholic teachings that Catholics hold in differentiation from Protestants, he was not in error with regard to everything, and in particular not in error regarding those core teachings that even Protestants hold in common with Catholics, e.g. on the necessity of grace for salvation.
Both Origen and Tertullian are Church Fathers, even though it is understood that they both held and taught some errors that have been declared wrong. (For that matter, Thomas Aquinas also taught some errors that (since then) have been shown up.)
And if the Lewis comment is in error, it is more valuable to show its error, rather than to refer to his lack of being a Catholic Doctor.
Unfortunately, Lewis was wrong on core issues as well as those separating the Church from Protestantism in general. He has been snuck in as a pseudo-Father, quoted ad nauseum by persons with other agendas. Because Lewis is a popular writer, and one who rejected much of the lefty mouvance, he has acquired a halo of orthodoxy which nevertheless cannot be entertained by serious Catholics.
Traditional Catholicism, and modernism, are not only not versions of the same system of belief, they are not even in the same business.
Very interesting and helpful observation. I wonder whether, though, modernism would reply by claiming that Catholicism is a belief system and modernism is not. I suspect that the truth is more complex than that, e.g. that Catholicism is one of the belief systems that has faith in truth, and modernism is a belief system based on a loss of faith in truth, so it now puts its faith in feelings.
"... suspect that the truth is more complex than that, e.g. that Catholicism is one of the belief systems that has faith in truth, "
Sure. I agree. As soon as you jettison the concept of truth, one is reduced to blindly feeling around rather than seeing.
Since you cannot ex hypothesi see outside yourself, all that is left is feeling rather than understanding. You have no way of referencing the external world with certainty.
Now, I think that that assumed image tacitly embraced by the subjectivist probably sells short the reality accessing capacities of even the blind. But ...
You know, tell a purported subjective idealist to close his eyes and step out into rush hour traffic to test how serious he is about his belief. Or strike him from behind with a brick and see if he feels it despite his not perceiving it on its way. And if he holds to his belief yet complains, point out that he is the one responsible and to blame anyway.
A frivolous and shallow response to the "subjectivist treanding to idealist"? Maybe. But one that I think is deserved.
No garage mechanic could convince himself of the nonsense some people believe.
@Tony: surely the doctrines of the Catholic Church form what we can call a "system." But how is modernism properly a "belief system"? I would think off the top of my head that modernism is more a loosely tossed-together bunch of methodological assumptions w/ their effects. But maybe I am too ill-informed about historic modernism (Loisy et al?).
DNW, "the concept of truth" That might be interesting, except you do not have a coherent method to determine extramental truth.
"You have no way of referencing the external world with certainty." I suppose you are under the delusion that you do have a method to reference the external world with certainty. Care to share your sage methodology with the rest of us?
"You know, tell a purported subjective idealist to close his eyes and step out into rush hour traffic to test how serious he is about his belief." You clearly have no idea what a subjectivist believes. You simplistically and incoherently equate uncertainty with belief in unreality. More philosophy 101 for you to learn.
"Or strike him from behind with a brick and see if he feels it despite his not perceiving it on its way." Now you are equating individual human non-perception with non-reality. Do you think these sorts of idea through at all?
"A frivolous and shallow response to the "subjectivist treanding to idealist"?" Ya think?
"DNW, "the concept of truth" That might be interesting, except you ..."
You were dealt with back on September 6th. In the days following your problematical, confused, and inconsistent application of the terms "objective", "subjective", and "moral", were addressed by many others as well and at length.
You had plenty of opportunity to describe the conditions necessary in order to demonstrate that the definitional requirements [operative or otherwise] of the term "objective" had been satisfied. But instead all we got were repetitious slogans and declarations.
Apparently in your hallucinated reality, there are no intersubjectively testable criteria to establish the concept of "objective"; decades of historically attested and clear academic usage notwithstanding.
And now your time is up.
You have ceased to be relevant much in the same way that a head banging autistic's perseverating blather is irrelevant to much outside of its own head.
You should try pursuing some of your other interests as a diversion. Don't you have a pro Ham-ass rally to attend somewhere?
@Tony: surely the doctrines of the Catholic Church form what we can call a "system."
@ ficinio4ml: Sure, I grant that, readily. It is, further, a "system" of beliefs that have, as an underpinning, a premise regarding truth, i.e. that it exists and (at least potentially) can be apprehended by us.
But how is modernism properly a "belief system"?
My point is that it isn't so much a "belief system" as such, precisely because it requires an underlying premise regarding truth, i.e. that either it does not exist, or it cannot be apprehended by us. And that it therefore devolves from a "belief system" into something more fluid, respecting feelings rather than apprehension.
that modernism is more a loosely tossed-together bunch of methodological assumptions w/ their effects.
Right: given the premise that either truth does not exist or it cannot be apprehended, their methodology resorts to other activity than apprehension for "validity", e.g. feelings. When they say "that makes me feel bad", that (under their method) constitutes validity: what they seem to ignore is why someone else should care, if it doesn't make them feel bad.
But it still RESTS on a premise about truth. They can pretend that employing the premise doesn't represent that it is "a truth" or "apprehending a truth" but that's just bloviating: its use carries with it all the baggage of a truth apprehended.
As usual you seem not fully in control of yourself. A very angry and damaged man I would say.
Why on earth would you imagine that StarDusty would be inclined to attend a pro-Hamas rally, and what is this antipathy you seem to have towards autistics?
You have ceased to be relevant much in the same way that a head banging autistic's perseverating blather is irrelevant to much outside of its own head.
Anonymous writes, "Why on earth would you imagine that StarDusty would be inclined to attend a pro-Hamas rally,"
Try to calm yourself, because your indignation is misplaced. It's apparent you have a very sensitive nature; one which seems to make it unbearable for you to even take the trouble to adopt a combox identifier.
Still, you really ought expend enough effort to do a little due diligence before you start exclaiming.
"Why on earth?" you say?
Let Stardusty explain his views to you himself. This is why:
"One is likely to be labeled an anti-semite if one identifies Likud controlled Israel as an apartheid state, a party with the written goal of taking control of all land from the sea to the Jordan river, a state that began its modern existence with widespread ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, forcing hundreds of thousands of innocent indigenous people to flee for their lives, the Nakba.
A party and a people that justify, indeed revel in, any and all tactics of conquest, tactics of land theft, up to and including genocide, because they have a book in which it is written that they are god's chosen people and god gave them instructions to murder all inhabitants of the land now called Palestine so that the Jews could steal the land for themselves to the total exclusion of the indigenous inhabitants of the land they covet. ...
... the operators of that apartheid state enjoy vast freedom and wealth on their stolen land.
Is it anti-sematic to assert that a people so grossly conquered and imprisoned have the right to resist, have the right to fight back with whatever weapons they can manage to get their hands on, and have the right to inflict pain on the conquerors to put a price on their theft?"
DNW, "confused, and inconsistent application of the terms "objective", "subjective", and "moral", were addressed by many others" Why are you revisiting your confusion about objective morality?
You confused an objective standard with objective morality. You confused an objective observation of an expression of a subjective moral sentence with objective morality.
Objective morality is logically impossible and I proved it multiple times, yet you are returning to the subject, why?
"Apparently in your hallucinated reality, there are no intersubjectively testable criteria to establish the concept of "objective";: An objective standard of morality is like the rules of a card game. One can objectively determine if a play does or does not conform to the convention, but the convention itself is subjective at base. More philosophy 101. This is super basic material, yet you manifestly just do not grasp the distinction between an objective standard and objective morality.
All of which leaves my assertion unrefuted by you. You are under the delusion that you have a methodology to determine with certainty extramental truth.
Yet you will not share that methodology with the rest of us. Almost like you really can't.
But by all means, do tell us, how do you determine with certainty extramental truth?
Anonymous October 20, 2023 at 2:18 PM DNW ... Why on earth "
"Kevin October 20, 2023 at 3:03 PM What on Earth ..."
Yeah ... what on earth.
Apparently a couple of you [if you are two individuals ... or more ] have issues with my analogizing Stardusty's persistent annoyances and declamatory repetitions with the kind of behavior seen in instances of autism.
If you are paying as close attention to what I write as you seem to be, you may have noticed that I have been ignoring Stardusty for the most part, though he follows me around like a yipping poodle.
My most recent reply was in response to another of his shelf stale direct approaches. And in response, I explained, in unvarnished terms, why he is not worthy of any further attention.
If you find this upsetting and cannot help but read what I write, try turning down your personal gain settings; or better, just ignore what I write. In fact, I not only give you permission, but encourage you to do just that. You and "Kevin" are probably grown-ups, more or less; and if so, you can probably manage it, more or less.
We will both benefit. You will not suffer further attacks of the vapors, and I won't further encounter your carping. indignant demands for attention.
Isn't it interesting that, on one hand, Stardusty writes "That might be interesting, except you do not have a coherent method to determine extramental truth." and "I suppose you are under the delusion that you do have a method to reference the external world with certainty." as if he can't know truth, and yet, it that would be the case, then how can he know others can't either? Unless, of course, other people are but figments of his imagination.
Also, if he can't know anything about anything not in his mind, why is he talking as if others should care what he says? But what would be a reason to care? It can't be the truth of things being said, for Stardusty says he can't know it.
Tony, "Right: given the premise that either truth does not exist or it cannot be apprehended," There is truth, the true nature of reality, what really exists in the cosmos, whatever that turns out to be.
The only truth we can apprehend with certainty is derived from our personal experiences, and is of a very general and rather superficial sort. It is certainly true that I exist and that I am experiencing my experiences.
Nobody on offer has ever expressed a coherent method to determine extramental truth with certainty because the attempt is intrinsically logically invalid, requiring circular reasoning, begging the question.
"what they seem to ignore is why someone else should care, if it doesn't make them feel bad." Ignore? How did you get that misapprehension in your thoughts?
"Should" is a personal sensibility, an emotion, a personal moral intuition. There can be no objective "should", even in principle, because objective morality is logically impossible.
On such a reality one would reasonably expect to observe a world where callousness, selfishness, and greed are commonplace. Hmm...have you read the news today?
"But it still RESTS on a premise about truth." The premise about truth that modern materialism rest upon is that the basic reliability of the human senses is a provisional postulate.
The resting surface, as it were, for modern materialism is the provisional acceptance of axioms of intelligibility, that the extramental reality we perceive seems very real.
So, yes, very clearly, nobody can prove with absolute certainty that ones senses are basically reliable, but it very much seems that they are, so we modern materialists are very keenly aware that the foundation of our beliefs is itself a provisional postulate.
If you are not aware that you are in the very same boat then the difference between us is that you are kidding yourself and I am not.
So, in response to my query as to why StarDusty might want to attend a pro-Hamas rally, you trot off a list of reasons he has previously listed for why the Palestinians might feel legitmately embittered and aggrieved at their treatment by Israel, though ones that if you mention them might well get you labelled as being antisemitic in some quarters.
With the above in mind, I'll try again. Why do you conclude that StatDusty might have a pro-Hamas rally to attend? You are clearly imagining yourself to be clever and witty, tarring StarDusty with the brush of being a supporter of terrorism, but with no evidence or logic to back it up. You have stooped to a new low, if such was possible.
Stardusty can be insulting, but at least he doesn't constantly trash people with autism and call them "it" instead of "he" or "she". So I guess to that extent, I would say Stardusty is a better person than DNW. Given his reaction to being called out, that doesn't appear to be a high bar to clear though.
At least this is the end of the matter and I won't get any carping, indignant demands for attention in return.
Me: "But it still RESTS on a premise about truth."
Stardusty: The premise about truth that modern materialism rest upon
This is why I normally don't answer Stardusty.
He seems to have swallowed my comments on modernism as if they belong to his cohort of materialists. There is no good reason to have done so, and probably no other reason than his passionate defensiveness about his materialism that is often under attack because he inserts his jejune theories so inappropriately where they doesn't belong.
Star-baby: modernism isn't materialism.
There is, sadly, a certain overlap, in that there are modernist materialists. But many modernists - and, for the purposes of this discussion about modernism inside the Church, a high percentage of them - who believe in God and the immortal soul. My attacks on modernism was against those who attempted to remain within the Church (and fooled themselves and others that they were not heretical), who were confident in belief in God and the soul, but chose to run off into the modernist train-wreck.
Does he even know what modernism is? Did he bother to read the Feser article? How about the Pius X encyclical condemning it, Pascendi?
Please don't take this as an invitation to answer: I don't wish to engage.
MP, "if he can't know truth, and yet, it that would be the case, then how can he know others can't either?" Because such a determination, the assertion of certainty regarding the extramental reality, is logically impossible.
What tools does one have to learn anything about the extramental reality? Well, the human senses. Fine, what are you using to determine the accuracy of what you are sensing? Unfortunately, your senses.
So, inevitably, if one wishes to assert certainty about the extramental reality then one must use the senses to prove the senses, but it is the accuracy of the senses one is seeking to affirm in the first place. Thus, an assertion of certainty of the extramental reality requires begging the question, which is logically invalid.
"Also, if he can't know anything about anything not in his mind," Not precisely my claim. Nobody can be coherently certain of anything outside of ones own personal experience, and it is only the experience itself one can coherently be certain of, not the apparent external target of that experience.
If one defines knowledge as justified true belief then we may or may not have knowledge depending on whether our beliefs do or do not turn out to be true of the real ontological state of affairs of the cosmos. On that definition of knowledge one cannot be coherently certain that one has knowledge of the extramental reality, but that does not rule out the one might very well have knowledge (in the case that ones beliefs really are true with respect to the real ontological state of affairs of the cosmos).
As for New Theology or Old Theology, the accusations of incoherence toward materialism always vanish when one takes the time to accurately state the claims of modern materialism.
It is theology, both new and old, that makes a whole host of incoherent claims. Materialism, well described, is entirely free of incoherent claims.
Your assertions of inconsistencies in my claims are just a matter of you not using sufficiently clear language.
"why is he talking as if others should care what he says?" That is your implication, for which I am not responsible. I never said you "should" care. "Should" is a personal emotion, up to you.
"But what would be a reason to care?" If you value logic then you can evaluate for yourself the logic of claims made. If you do not value logic then there is no logical argument I can make that you will value.
Anonymous writes, "So, in response to my query as to why StarDusty might want to attend a pro-Hamas rally, you trot off a list of reasons he has previously listed for why the Palestinians might feel legitmately embittered and aggrieved at their treatment by Israel, though ones that if you mention them might well get you labelled as being antisemitic in some quarters."
The list "trotted off" was Stardusty's, posted October 13 almost a week after the slaughter in Israel.
His litany of ideologically developed PLO or Hamas style assertions, was presented in the superficial form of a rhetorical question composed of serial indictments challenging both the legitimate existence of Israel, and ultimately by insinuation any moral condemnation of the homicidal methods of Hamas style massacre operations.
It is interesting to note that although it had been a week since the slaughter raids Hamas perpetrated against Israel, the quasi technical discussions here - perhaps thankfully - had not featured any diversion into that or any allied matter.
But, apparently it was percolating just beneath the surface of some who had been champing at the bit to open an avenue wherein they could discuss the ostensibly oppressive influence of Israel or of the Jews.
This opportunity for an introduction was taken by someone posting like yourself as Anonymous.
In the original posting on the topic of "A Little Logic ...", Ed addresses the concept of the ad hominem argument. In his initial set-up from which he will then go on to point out that some character directed argunents do not represent fallacious reasoning, he first states, " ...instead of addressing the merits of some argument the person has given, you simply call him names – “racist,” “fascist,” “commie,” or whatever.
Next day, our aforementioned Anonymous slips in a short comment asserting without any obvious reason that when Ed wrote merely "whatever", Anonymous thought it should be read as "anti semite", thus, "whatever == anti-semite".
Now this use of the Python operator code, essentially, a == b, # True, by "Anonymous" is mildly interesting in itself. How many commenters here have adverted to their regular use of code, I'll leave to your estimation.
In any event, two days later Stardusty takes the opportunity to leverage off of "Anonymous' " broaching of the subject of a putatively unjustifiable or fallacious employment of the charge of antisemitism, in order to provide his litany of Hamas talking points.
A litany which culminates in his perverted emotional climax, " Is it anti-sematic to assert that a people so grossly conquered and imprisoned have the right to resist, have the right to fight back with whatever weapons they can manage to get their hands on, and have the right to inflict pain on the conquerors to put a price on their theft?"
Stardusty is not asking. Stardusty is telling.
And his doing so, is telling. Or telling enough to provoke the question posed.
Ok, you have been humored enough.
Now, if you have read this far, here is a new rule for you. If you are so triggered by what I write that you cannot stop obsessing about it or just bugger off, then muster the energy or personal courage or whatever it takes for you to pick a commenter ID. Otherwise your superciliously affected hall monitor act will just be ignored. And it might be anyways.
Tony, "Star-baby: modernism isn't materialism." It is if you value making sense.
New theology is like adding some refinements to your epicycles to make the geocentric model fit the data a little better.
"modernism inside the Church" Oxymoron, if you value sound analysis.
"My attacks on modernism was against those who attempted to remain within the Church (and fooled themselves and others that they were not heretical), who were confident in belief in God and the soul, but chose to run off into the modernist train-wreck." Right, dabbling in modern rationality while clinging to ancient superstitions like god and the soul only creates a house divided against itself.
"Does he even know what modernism is?" Do you? It seems not.
I mean, having a pope who changes his mind and then goes back to being infallible again, modernizing the church, introducing some new theology, is a least some small step in the direction of rationality and sound argument.
But yes, agreed, modernizing within the church is ultimately a path toward self contradiction. Clearly the rational alternative is to leave the church so you are no longer fettered by all that ancient nonsense.
DNW, "Otherwise your superciliously affected hall monitor act will just be ignored." How will you know? Well, I suppose you could just ignore all anons. Or, possibly ignore posts that seem to be written by that anon, based on content and/or writing style.
"superciliously" Indeed, your posts project not a whiff of such.
"Hamas talking points." Are you Jerry Coyne by any chance? Just wondering, he has a habit of associating any critic of Likud controlled Israel with Hamas.
Are the Jews in Israel and outside of Israel who say the same things I have said also presumed by you as likely Hamas supporters? Are they anti-Semites?
Perhaps you might support additional shipments of ammunition and weapons systems to Israel, as well as deploying aircraft carriers and other American military forces to the region in military support of Israel.
If so, does that make you a proponent of Democratic talking points? You do realize that the president of the United States has taken those actions, and he is a leader in the Democratic party, right?
I have noticed a pattern in your responses indicating a lack of depth of thought, generally, over a broad spectrum of questions.
In modern times popes have apologized for past Catholic mistreatment of Jews, so maybe you think New Theology isn't so bad after all?
I doubt very much that you will ignore my critical posts about you, anymore than you will those of StarDusty, who 'follows you about like a puppy dog' apparently, as it is just about the only interaction you get on here. You seem quite oblivious to the fact that because of your tone, content and very poor writing, you are likely ignored and passed over yourself by most of the readers here, who no doubt also pity you. You need desperately to write novellas in response as a form of self-validation.
I see that Stardusty has offered more. Let's have a look.
"What tools does one have to learn anything about the extramental reality? Well, the human senses." - unfortunately for you, that proposition itself is about extramental reality. Thus, you can't know that.
That's the very problem - you can't know that you can't know anything about "extramental reality".
"If one defines knowledge as" - ah, yes. You end up having to change definition of "knowledge" whenever you find that convenient. Usually (although not this time) with hope that no one will notice?
Which brings us to "Materialism, well described, is entirely free of incoherent claims.". But, you see, in this case you haven't been accused mainly of making claims that contradict each other.
No, you have been accused of not living as if your philosophy was true.
After all, if your philosophy was true, you would know that you know nothing interesting, and would have to shut up (as Wittgenstein has said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.").
And, as we see, you do not do that.
So, it is time to get back to the topic and point to that same "truth is the conformity of intellect to life" (by representatives of Nouvelle Theologie).
For, while it is not a good definition, it is not such a bad guideline. If you can't even make a serious attempt to live in accordance with your philosophy, it follows that it is false.
And then we have to find out what has to be true if (as we know by now via this reductio ad absurdum) humans can know that "extramental reality".
We have to find out what is the philosophy one can at least attempt to live by.
Tony: "Star-baby: modernism isn't materialism." Star: It is if you value making sense.
Tony: "modernism inside the Church" Star: Oxymoron, if you value sound analysis.
Tony: "My attacks on modernism was ..." Star: Right, dabbling in modern rationality while clinging to ancient superstitions ...
Tony: "Does he even know what modernism is?" Star: Do you? It seems not. ...having a pope who ... modernizing the church, ... modernizing within the church
Faceplant. Here we have someone who manifestly didn't even bother to look up "modernism" (or, more particularly, Catholic modernism), to see if it was what he thought it was.
It isn't merely "modern" theory or philosophy. It isn't the adjective "modern" made into an "ism" so that it (constantly) reflects the most up-to-date theory or philosophy. Making a church reflect "modernism" would not mean "modernizing" the church to get with the new thinking of the 2020s. It is a specific philosophic / methodological view that was characteristic of a certain trend of the 1860s to 1930s in certain circles, a view that by no means swept the realms of non-theists completely and by no means is the CURRENT view of most non-religious philosophers of today. And it certainly is not the dominant methodological approach of most materialist philosophers today. It doesn't mean "current" at all. Modern rationality isn't "modernism". Modernizing isn't "to make conformed to modernism".
But by all means, continue to make yourself ridiculous.
You seem quite oblivious to the fact that because of your tone, content and very poor writing, you are likely ignored and passed over yourself by most of the readers here, who no doubt also pity you.
Actually, DNW is a very good writer, and I enjoy his posts.
MP, "That's the very problem - you can't know that you can't know anything about "extramental reality". You seem to be conflating "know" with "be certain of".
If knowledge is justified true belief then we have knowledge when our beliefs are in fact accurate with respect to the real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos.
We can't be certain we have knowledge of extramental reality. We might have knowledge or we might not have knowledge, depending upon whether or not our beliefs are true, that is, depending up whether our beliefs comport with the true ontological state of affairs in the cosmos.
"You end up having to change definition of "knowledge" whenever you find that convenient." Now you are making up a falsehood out of whole cloth. A common and widely employed definition of knowledge is "justified true belief". That is the definition I typically work from in discussion, and when I am framing an epistemological argument I state that as my working definition.
So, your claim that I am somehow equivocating on the definition of knowledge is certainly false and potentially dishonest.
"After all, if your philosophy was true, you would know that you know nothing interesting" Interesting to who? Perhaps not to Wittgenstein, then tough luck for Wittgenstein.
My thoughts are interesting to me, and manifestly to many I interact with.
"And, as we see, you do not do that." Wittgenstein can state whatever he wanted, I am under no obligation to obey Wittgenstein.
"truth is the conformity of intellect to life" If "life" is a surrogate word for "real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos", and "truth" in that context is a shortened version of "true belief", then ok, fair enough.
So, to clarify, "True belief is the conformity of the intellect to the real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos". Yes, that works.
"If you can't even make a serious attempt to live in accordance with your philosophy, it follows that it is false." What "it" is false? A philosophy is false if the proponent does not live by it? No, that is the tu quoque fallacy.
"humans can know that "extramental reality"." There you go again with your imprecise language. Humans cannot be certain of the extramental reality. We may or may not have knowledge of the extramental reality depending on whether or not our beliefs comport with the real ontological state of affairs of the cosmos.
Again, given that knowledge is "justified true belief". If you have a different definition of knowledge, fine, but it would be helpful to state it because I am using the common definition for the sake of discussion.
MP, "Did Stardusty really state Thomistic definition of truth in his own words" No. I changed the words provided so they would make sense.
I provided a rewording of the common definition of knowledge, not truth.
Knowledge is commonly defined as "justified true belief". If you prefer a different definition, fine, by all means write it here.
Truth is the real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos. Some of those words are not strictly required. A simpler way to say it is that truth is the ontological state of affairs in the cosmos, or simply that truth is the state of affairs.
A true belief, then, is a belief that comports with truth. Since a belief is an aspect of the intellect, then a true belief is when the intellect comports with truth. Thus a true belief is a condition of the intellect that is in accordance with the real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos.
Thomism has nothing to do with any of the above, except perhaps by coincidence or by independent reasoning.
To assert that these basic definitions are somehow Thomistic is to confuse correlation as causation.
We can further distinguish between the sense knowledge (as shared by other animals) of sensible objects, and the intellectual knowledge proper to rational beings, which involves correct *judgment* related to intelligible objects.
JTB adds nothing but confusion to the definition above as your comment below well illustrates: You seem to be conflating "know" with "be certain of".
Zoe, "Knowledge is an awareness of how things are." How is that not synonymous with True Belief?
To be aware is to hold a belief.
I am aware that water is in the distance. I believe that water is in the distance.
But is it true that water is in the distance? What if my awareness, my belief, is false?
Well, if I have a false awareness, a false belief, then my awareness/belief is not "how things are".
But it is the truth, or untruth, of my beliefs I am seeking to determine in the first place. Hence the circularity of using my sense awareness to determine the truth or untruth of what I am sensing.
"JTB adds nothing but confusion to the definition above" Your definition adds no clarity to JTB. All you did was reword JTB True belief = awareness of how things are
Or, if you still don't see it due to the reversed phrasing structure: Belief that is true = awareness of how things are.
You have omitted "justified". How can you be certain your awareness is true? By using your senses? How can you be certain that your senses are providing truth? By using your senses? Surely you see the circularity in that approach.
Sorry Zoe, but you cannot be coherently certain of your perceived extramental reality, just like the rest of us. All you can do is be personally convinced that you have justified your beliefs such that in your opinion what you are aware of seems to be how things are.
Or, perhaps you are god and the rest of us are just figments of your divine imagination. You are the totality of all that exists. You are the cosmos. You are the One.
I mean, as long as one is making up fanciful invisible beings that exist outside time and space it might just as well be you. The speculation that you are god is no less likely than any other speculation of god.
I did not "reword JTB". I gave you the definition of knowledge under the Perennial Tradition which I prefer, as you asked.
Indeed, Plato already gave good reason for rejecting JTB, and you insisting that our senses are uncertain doesn't exempt you from recognizing the circularity of your own approach: how does one justify anything without knowledge?
Like it or not, but your justification cannot be anything but a belief once you rule out an ability to be aware of how things are.
Rather than simply asserting "To be aware is to hold a belief" please deal with the fact that 'to be aware' is actually 'to *perceive* or *experience*' a particular thing (which may be how things are).
You might prefer imprisoning yourself in your beliefs, but every scientist must affirm *with certainty* the power of the intellect to know truth (the first condition) along with the first fact (his own existence) and the first principle (the principle of contradiction).
And there is no alternative between admitting those truths and admitting the self-contradiction of universal scepticism.
Zoe, "I gave you the definition of knowledge under the Perennial Tradition which I prefer, as you asked." Which is the same as "True Belief" as I clearly showed above.
"insisting that our senses are uncertain doesn't exempt you from recognizing the circularity of your own approach:, how does one justify anything without knowledge?" With certainty, one cannot. That is my point. Not only is your definition another way to word "True Belief", you and I are stuck in the same boat of uncertainty of what is knowledge and uncertainty of our justifications or the extramental reality.
It is hubris and folly to claim otherwise.
"Like it or not, but your justification cannot be anything but a belief once you rule out an ability to be aware of how things are." The core belief being the basic reliability of the human senses, which is a postulate none of us can be coherently certain of.
" "To be aware is to hold a belief" please deal with the fact that 'to be aware' is actually 'to *perceive* or *experience*' a particular thing (which may be how things are)." You are asserting distinctions that do not constitute a difference.
Your perceptions "may be" how things are. That is just another way of saying you are uncertain that your perceptions are true representations of extramental reality.
"you might prefer imprisoning yourself in your beliefs," My preferences are irrelevant. The limitations of certainty are part of the human condition whether any of us prefers it or not.
"but every scientist must affirm *with certainty* the power of the intellect to know truth " No, you misunderstand science. Science does not do proof. Science is founded on the provisional postulates of the basic reliability of the human senses and the truth of the axioms of logic. Certainty is irrelevant.
"along with the first fact (his own existence)" Now you are conflating the extramental reality with the personal reality of self awareness, which is the basis for the few absolute truths we have available.
"the first principle (the principle of contradiction)." Which is an axiom of logic accepted as if were true.
"And there is no alternative between admitting those truths and admitting the self-contradiction of universal scepticism" There is no self contradiction in skepticism, none whatsoever.
OBTW, there is no contradiction in materialism or reductionism either.
With certainty, one cannot. That is my point. Not only is your definition another way to word "True Belief", you and I are stuck in the same boat of uncertainty of what is knowledge and uncertainty of our justifications or the extramental reality.
No, no, no. I asked how do you justify anything without knowledge, not certainty. Just as MP said (and you denied) you hop between meanings as convenient.
The justification in JTB just is something we *know* about the TB that makes it *knowledge* rather than a flukey delusion. In other words your definition of knowledge is "true belief that we know is knowledge" which even you can see is circular.
You are asserting distinctions that do not constitute a difference.
There is in fact a very great difference between holding a belief about a particular thing and experiencing that thing. Strange that the materialist pretends to know otherwise.
Do you distinguish between opinion and fact?
If so, why don't you realize that 'justified true belief' is concerned not with knowledge but with right opinion?
OBTW, we don't admit the principle of contradiction "as if were true. [sic]" but because it is *self-evident*. If you doubt this then you owe us a rational rejection of it that doesn't first assume it.
Zoe, "Just as MP said (and you denied) you hop between meanings as convenient." It seems that way to you because you do not understand the meanings of what you are saying.
You defined knowledge as true awareness, which is the same as true belief. That is what an awareness is, a belief. That is what a belief is, an awareness.
Truth is how things are.
I am not switching meanings. You just don't yet understand the meanings of the terms you are using.
"how do you justify anything without knowledge" Justification is personal feeling, a person threshold of what one finds convincing. If you want to omit justification from the definition of knowledge that is fine, then knowledge is simply a true belief, as opposed to a justified true belief.
Justice is a matter of convention. What is justified in one person's sensibilities is not justified in another persons sensibilities. Justification is a matter of personal sensibility and personal credulity, what seems reasonable and credible and convincing to you.
Justification is a matter of convincing evidence.
Extramental knowledge is necessarily uncertain. You might be personally convinced of X, you might believe X, still X might or might not be true. Since knowledge, in your definition, is true belief, to be coherently certain of holding knowledge then you must be certain of determining the truth or falsehood of your belief that X.
But it is your belief that X you are attempting to ascertain the truth or falsehood of in the first place. All human beings are faced with this uncertainty, that is, no human being can be coherently certain of the truth of the extramental reality.
You may hold a belief that X. You may be convinced that X. But you can never be coherently certain of that extramental X. Therefore you can never be coherently certain that your belief that X constitutes knowledge.
"There is in fact a very great difference between holding a belief about a particular thing and experiencing that thing." You can believe that your experience is mistaken. Ok, fine, but that just goes to my point about uncertainty.
"That is what an awareness is, a belief. That is what a belief is, an awareness."
You are a good demonstration that there is a very great difference between belief and awareness. For you are full of self-belief but utterly lacking in self-awareness:
If you had the smallest amount of self-awareness, you would read yourself stating categorically that all things must be doubted and blush; see yourself disputing the self-contradiction of universal scepticism ("There is [...] none whatsoever" [my emphasis]) in no uncertain terms and swallow your tongue; and on and on.
But you have so much self-belief that you can even express doubt in the principle of rational thought. If materialism means undermining knowledge and reason, you're welcome to it.
you would read yourself stating categorically that all things must be doubted and blush; see yourself disputing the self-contradiction of universal scepticism ("There is [...] none whatsoever" [my emphasis]) in no uncertain terms
You forgot a key word he uses when describing uncertainty, because you're thinking like a normal rational person, while the New Atheist mentality is an exercise in self-worship of one's own reasoning prowess.
He says "extramental reality", or that which exists outside his own mind. Of that, the New Atheist can express uncertainty when it's convenient to be skeptical. But when it comes to his own beliefs, derived from his own reasoning, that's iron-clad fact that has no possibility of flaw, none whatsoever. The first point of evidence you are wrong is disagreeing with such an individual, who has no chance of being wrong. None whatsoever.
Zoe, "you would read yourself stating categorically that all things must be doubted" I never said that. It would be helpful if you avoided such strawmen.
What I said is that we cannot be coherently certain of the extramental reality, and yes, of that I am certain, and no, that is not a self contradiction. If you think it is then you just have not thought it through carefully enough.
A common line of discussion is that an immaterialist will criticize a materialist for being certain of the extramental reality because the materialist, by his own assertion, has only his senses of observe the extramental reality.
Thus, the immaterialist will point out, such a materialist is engaging in a logically invalid mode of thinking, circular reasoning, by using the senses to affirm the certainty of the accuracy of the senses.
I do not have the position of certainty of the extramental reality so I do not suffer from that sort of circular reasoning.
I am certain of that uncertainty. And no, that is not circular, because I have an internal certainty about the uncertainty of the extramental.
Note also that I did not say I was certain I am wrong about the extramental, only that I am certain I am uncertain about the extramental. Being uncertain allows for both possibilities, being correct or being incorrect, I might be either, I simply cannot be certain which, of that I am certain.
"If materialism means undermining knowledge and reason," That depends on your definition of knowledge. At the time Rumsfeld was commonly scoffed at, I thought he raised some very interesting philosophical distinctions. The known knowns The known unknowns The unknown unknowns
Rumsfeld did not state publicly The unknown knowns
If this all seems too convoluted or contrived to you then I invite you to consider that philosophers broadly disagree on the definitions of basic words like "truth" and "knowledge".
Can one justify a belief? How does one determine the truth of a belief? Can one be certain of all beliefs, some beliefs, or no beliefs?
Formulating a coherent set of definitions and methodologies to answer such questions is no simple task. If you think you have such a set available, by all means, post it here.
Could it be that they were trying to write poetically without actually being good at poetry?
I suppose that would fit them claiming that Thomists were writing in a dry way - so, presumably they would be trying to write poetically. And when one tries to write poetically and fails, the result is often "verbose and unclear".
Even "truth is the conformity of intellect to life" sounds like a try to say "truth is the conformity of intellect to reality", but poetically (without actually being good at poetry).
"So, why is your interpretation of the Bible you keep repeating here relevant in this case?"
Long ago I thought that if I was a Christian, I would read the gospels and Acts and would follow the commands of Jesus to the letter. And long ago, out of curiosity, I read the gospels very carefully taking careful note of the explicit commands, the dos and don'ts of Jesus.
Jesus claimed that the Kingdom Of God was to come very soon. Within the lifetimes of many of his followers. His commands made no sense for long term life on Earth. But that was not what this was all about. It was making sure that when the Kingdom Of God came, his followers would live in the new Utopia coming, soon, soon, soon. The path to being one of the sheep, not one of the goats.
Selling all you have and giving to the poor was a necessity to be a citizen in good standing in this coming Kingdom Of God. Which did not come as promised.
Today, large numbers of American Christians self identify in surveys as believing Jesus will return in their lifetimes. If so, these commands to make sure you are not rich and will be saved still are mandated.
This exercise made me think about what the message of Jesus in the gospels was at its most basic foundation.
OP "The revival of Thomism and of scholasticism more generally was the intellectual heart of the pre–Vatican II popes’ approach to articulating and defending Catholic teaching in the face of the theological, philosophical, scientific, and political revolutions that defined modernity." Thomism in the face of scientific revolutions?
Modern science and modern logic prove that the arguments of Aquinas are logically invalid as well as containing multiple false premises.
"They argued that, rightly understood, this worldview was perfectly compatible with modern science." So is the assertion that a googleplex Plank scale angels nudge every particle along.
Every fanciful speculation about spirits and gods and invisible hobgoblins is "compatible" with modern science. You can make up as much fanciful nonsense as you want, just claim it is all invisible, and crow about how "compatible" your absurd speculations are with modern science.
"Compatibility" just won't do for the Arguments of Aquinas.
Aquinas argued for NECESSITY, not compatibility.
Aquinas is made unsound because compatibility of your speculation is insufficient to establish NECESSITY.
The Nouvelle Theologie has established itself among those who appose the papacy from the Gallicanist angle. Theses which were banished from the Church before Vatican II, and unheard of in that of the Council of Trent, are now paraded as "Tradition".
The Remnant’s resident theologian, Robert Kmita, avowed defender of Guenon, has continued to push that publication further down into the mire of heresy. It declares that all the articles in our Creeds come from “the Bible”. This is false. Pope Francis, like Saint Pius V, could have told The Remnant that.
Next he quotes Saint Thomas Aquinas, getting him wrong (Kmita subscribes to the esoterist ideology of de Maistre, for whom the symbols of faith were more “formulas of submission” than the real faith, “mysteries” which could only be “understood” by “initiates”): “the act of the believer does not terminate in a proposition, but in a thing”= “formulas” bad, mushy “spirit”, good. But the text cited (ST II-II, Q. I, Art. ii, obj ii, ad ii) concludes that, while the object of belief is simple in itself, but secondly, “on the part of the believer, and in this respect the object of faith is something complex by way of a proposition”. The faith and the constitution of the Church are being dismantled systematically by writers like Kmita and Kwasnewsky. There was a raving script by the editor of One Peter Five a couple of days ago, alluding to the “glorious times” in which we live, when Popes are heretics and deposable “again” (claims Justinian “appointed” and “deposed” Popes – a “history” better taught by the Prods who invented it). Under the guise of opposing the Pope, such publications are slipping the venom of Gallicanist, Conciliarist and esoteric ideology into the minds of the gullible.
Cervantes’ struggle to talk sense into these wayward publications is a bit like shutting barn after the proverbial horse has bolted. Robert Lazu Kmita in the Remnant? He’s all over the place, from One Peter Five to Una Voce’s “Gregorius Magnus”, where he was preaching the same falsehoods decried above. He does roundly reject basic Catholic dogmas: our first parents could have attained a “beatific vision” (Lazu Kmita’s quotation marks) just by persevering in their “meditation” towards a higher knowledge, and without dying. Original sin was in seeking to attain this “knowledge” before being “ready”. This knowledge, which he calls “heaven”, is a return to Eden, which he says will recur, on earth.
In these two articles in Una Voce International’s official journal this year, he claims the world has become “devoid of sanctifying grace”, the “fall” caused man to become “material” and animals ceased to be “immortal”. That Lazu Kmita really does mean that Eden was and will “again” be “heaven” is evident in his claim that the Cherubim in Genesis were preventing access to heaven, not Eden as Catholics understand it. Lazu Kmita defines original sin strictly as the loss of Adam’s preternatural gifts, which he labels “grace”. "One Peter Five" published him again just now, praising Vladimir Solovev to the heavens, whereas the Russian was a cabbalist and occultist who believed “Sophia” was the spirit of a deceased woman of his acquaintance. If several banner publications of conservative traditionalism, plus the influential member of the Saint Peter Fraternity, Fr. De Mallerais, have been under the spell of Lazu Kimita for years, it seems a waste of time trying to alert them.
Awful. The Remnant has just published yet another article by Robert Kmita rejecting the account given by Fatima of a physical chastisement of the world leading to a new Marian age, in favour of the Protestant, End Times Apocalyptic account. For Kmita (now furiously promoted by the so-called traditionalist Remnant), the world is already under a symbolic reign of Antichrist, but only intiates in his occultist symbolism can perceive this, however. Not so sure about this - Luther thought he could perceive it pretty well.
It's clear enough that, under the guidance of the new Doctors of the Church, Kmita-Kwasnewsky, and the leadership of Vigano/Siffi, Conciliarist Gallicanism and esoteric "traditionalism" will darken the minds on unwary traditional Catholics. In all this, there is but one certainty about the future, Archbishop Vigano will never appear outside cyberspace because he is INCAPABLE of discussing all the verbiage he has manifestly NOT written.
@Miguel Cervantes One should not be so doctrinaire and harsh with Mr Kmita. Like the nouvelle theologie, he has found ways of bridging the gap between modern philosophy and the ancient world, between which strict Thomism was an obstacle. Mr. Kmita should be understood within our Romanian tradition of thought. He is not firstly a disciple of Guenon but of the Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade, about whom he has written much and run conferences and symposiums. It's true that Mr Kmita predicts a return to Eden, as an intimate connection with a timeless spiritual world of the divine, something which modern man cannot do. Eliade explained how tradition man can transcend the veil of the materialism. In his Techniques of Shamanism”, Eliade wrote, “The shaman is the great specialist in the human soul; he alone "sees” it, for he knows its and its destiny”. In another work, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Eliade says “Christianity incontestably proves to be the religion of “fallen man": and this to the extent to which modern man is irremediably identified with history and progress, and to which history and progress are a fall, both implying the final abandonment of the paradise of archetypes and repetition”. Before the Judaeo-Christian invention of faith, Eliade says, man could safely rely on the repetition of symbolic rituals, myths and the intervention of shaman-mystics. This was the means of acting outside history. Kmita and Eliade argue that history is the fall, original sin itself. But faith will allow men to change the universe, even ontologically, re-establishing the link with creation that existed in traditional religions.
Mr Kmita, following Ernst Renan, has a mystical symbolic vision of Christ and his miracles. This is interpretation he applied to Christianity in general. If one is too dogmatic or repeats the formulas of the Thomist revival, it is hard to understand the discussion of the Romanian school, which also puts itself in the patristic tradition.
Constantin, people have their views. The problem here is Kmita’s representation of his ideas as Catholicism. Incredibly, these dangerous beliefs are broadcast by a number of publications, especially the two listed above, which spew bile about our “diabolical” Pope.
One Peter Five has just published a long defence of the occultist Russian, Vladimir Solovev, pushing his work, “Russia and the Universal Church”, where Solovev argues for the Papacy as head of the universal Church, discrediting Russian Orthodoxy.
But it ends there. Solovev reinvents Christianity in the light of occultism and gnosticism. Consult the work (London 1948). Solovev’s only dogma is dualism: “In India the soul of mankind, manifesting itself first through the intuitions of the saints and sages of orthodox Brahmanism… finally through the new religion of Buddha Sakyamum, recognised and loved the Absolute primarily in its negative form as the opposite of existence outside the Godhead, or the nature of the world” (p. 187).
Chaos co-exists with the divine from all eternity, and “creation” is God’s “reaction” to chaos (pp. 157, 167). The world is a passive, chaotic creation, accomplished before [!] the angelic rebellion, “for the Divine Will had al-ready called forth from the void the world-soul, in awakening in it the chaotic desire, the basis and material of all Creation. This world-soul is an indefinite and indeterminate principle” (169. Without divine intervention, the world would have reverted to the chaos “in which it was before the Creation” (181). “The soul of this world is in itself an undefined duality… the work of creation… can only advance in a slow and gradual manner… it is not the direct work of God… Nothing could bear less resemblance [than creation] to an entirely perfect work issuing directly from a single divine artificer. Our cosmic history… [consists of] shocks and violent convulsions, blind gropings, unfinished sketches of unsuccessful creations, monstrous births and abortions [dinosaurs are given bad press here]”. (171). Evil predates original sin and angelic rebellion; it is part of the cosmos from eternity: “At the root of all human evil, all sins and crimes both individual and social, lies a weakness, a radical infirmity… It is the chaotic principle, the primordial basis of all created being” (211).
Enough. Christianity has always praised creation as undividedly good. God did not have to co-exist with, or sup-press or react to anything, let alone “chaos”, from all eternity, as Solovev informs us. His heresy is the oldest, and very evil. How could One Peter Five’s editor not have seen this, repeated ad nauseam in the book he touts? And where did Solovev get his ideas from? Read Kristi Groberg’s “The Feminine Occult Sophia in the Russian Religious Renaissance” (Canadian-American Slavic Studies.): In 1875 Solovev went to the British Museum to “immerse himself” in sophiological literature of Hellenic Judaism, Gnosticism, and the Kabala. “’He read almost exclusively the esoteric occult literature on Sophia’; ‘mysterious forces’ told him what to read about Her”. At this time, he visited the spiritualists Charles Williams and A. R. Wallace and attended seances. Seeking a deeper connection, “he prayed to Sophia… Soul of the World… to appear in visible form. A beautiful woman appeared, instructing him to go to Egypt to await further revelations… he literally caught the first available train for Cairo” Once in Egypt, he heard a voice “I am in the desert” etc., etc. This nonsense went on for the rest of his life, and his lectures on religion would be a compendium of errors. Solovev was one of those celebrated Russians, like Chaadaev, who flirted with the Catholic Church, but refused to accept her in any other form but that of the German philosophy that was their true religion. They had a use for the Church, but traditional Catholics have absolutely no use for these crazy ideas, which are immeasurably worse than anything taught in the name of Vatican II. This is not a new approach to theology connecting us with the primitive Church; it's the nightmare of the primitive Church
Dr Robert Kmita has just endorsed "Hermetic magic" as the solution to the Church's problems (in an article in the European Conservative). The plot thickens.
A “job” is being done on conservative trads as we speak. The European Conservative’s article by occultist, Gue-nonist Kmita (26/11/23) did indeed praise Morello for advocating "magic" “mysticism”. To “save” the Church, Morello advocates occultists Ficino and della Mirandola (among the many architects of modernity’s faithlessness) alleging Aquinas was their spiritual father. Yet he also attacks Thomism: Catholic seminaries have been “bewitched… with the assumptions of rationalism” for “centuries”. Must be that nasty Council of Trent. Indeed, Morello claims that, since the ”early Church”, the Church has just been making “truth claims”. How ungnostic of it. The Remnant and One Peter Five really ought to publish Morello. He’ll quicken their forced march out of the Church, leaving behind Pope Francis and all of us traditional and not-so-traditional Catholics (but Catholics we will be!).
Kmita says the same thing, attacking the Thomist revival of Leo XIII, praising the nouvelle theologie, and excusing occultism as “mysticism”, rather than the “empty formulas” of rational things like creeds and catechisms. Mysticism must exist, but, since the end of public revelation, such experiences have certitude only for the person experiencing them. Modern Gnostics mix up the natural with the supernatural, voiding both of them in the process – this very modern “path” guarantees scepticism. If all rationalism is a “spell” (words of the occultist Tarot fanatic, Tomberg, cited by Morello), the only alternative to reason is scepticism. This has been the only dogma of Martinists, conservative ideologues and romanticists. It is the death of Christianity.
For Kmita, the rationalism, not only of liberalism, but of the Thomist revival, is the darkness of the Apocalypse. The forbidden fruit in Eden was really reason, and original sin, according to Kmita was merely the “omission” (The Remnant 25/11/23) of neglecting the path of Gnosticism. Wrong, the forbidden fruit was precisely the pursuit of the kind of “knowledge” promoted by Kmita and Morello which, according to Kmita’s master, Jean Borella (in his Remnant article, he is in rapture about Borella, another disciple of Guenon), makes men realise they are really “God”.
Any Catholic may freely permit himself to use the H word here. Borella’s writings are heretical: "original sin" could be repaired merely by returning to human cognition its “operative virtue” and “salvific efficacity”; human intelligence supersedes the order of nature, and is of itself ordered to the supernatural – it is, in fact, an “uncreated” aspect of humanity, an “emanation of God” etc., etc (Charity Profained, Borella, 1979). Other Gnostic falsehoods flow from this confusion of natural with supernatural, of creation with creator. Kmita’s obsession with the “fall” being a failure of cognition rather than an act of the will, is his inheritance of a lifetime of reading the fuming lies of Gnosticism instead of the “truth claims” of the Church. The Remnant should be thoroughly ashamed for endangering their readership. It’s impossible to believe they are this ignorant of the Catholic Faith. The appeal of these Gnostics to Catholic traditionalists carefully omits half the history of the errors causing grief in the Church: they issue as much from irrational, so-called mysticism claiming origin in the early Church and the Fathers, as from liberal rationalism. Modernism happily accommodates both Kmita and Kung.
It might save time if you read Observations on the Influence of the Occult in Traditional Catholic Discourse. https://justacatholic.medium.com/observations-on-the-influence-of-the-occult-in-traditional-catholic-discourse-2d798e5ba51c It's all there. The connections between Angelico Press and Tomberg and Borella and Kwasniewski. Charles Coulombe in Tarot sessions with his Theosophist friends.
This is significant. The author of this piece appears interested in sedevacantists but what he had to say about the occult in sectors of American traditionalism is verifiable in detail. I've checked. Their talk of Platonism and the Fathers of the Church as a cloak for heterodoxy and magic is not hard to see through.
It seems old-style witches don’t like Vatican II, the Novus Ordo or Pope Francis. Those listed in McFadden’s article are motivated as much by what the Church since the Council got right as what it got wrong. Are we troubled by the rise of “rationalist” liberals in the Church? No need to worry. A host of kabbalists, warlocks and sacrificers to the arcane are waiting in the wings to fix things. Why, they love old rituals even more than we do: Wolfgang Smith, a star of Angelico Diabolico Press, even wishes [in Science and Myth] for a Dark Side alternative history of the modern Church: “One can only, in retrospect, lament that the Catholic authorities did not pay heed to… Guenon… writing and lecturing in their midst… instead… [becoming] enamored with Jacques Maritain’s Integral Humanism. How different the subsequent history of the Church might have been if its intellectual leaders had listened to Rene Guenon! But they did not; and… have presented us, sad to say, with the likes of Caudium et Spes”.
For Wolfgang Smith, “Bell’s theorem… tantamount to a recognition of the intermediary or what occultists term the astral domain—the bhuvar of the Vedic Tribhuvan”. He approvingly quotes Guenon: “quantity itself... is no more than the ‘residue’ of an existence emptied of everything that constituted its essence .” The material becomes something evil, “original sin” itself, rather than God’s creation. Could someone change their old Gnostic, dualist record?
The number of authors with similar ideas published by this company is large. Occultism’s religious androgyny is its time honoured method of setting up camp within the Church. And the old methods of dealing with it are the only ones that work. The dissension within the Fraternity of Saint Peter concerning its close association with “Angelico” Press, and Fr. de Mallerais’ promotion of the occultist, Dr. Kmita, ought to come to an end with a clear statement concerning these occultist ideas.
A very fine article, Ed.
ReplyDeleteBut as a "review" of the book edited by Kirwan and Menerd? That seems a bit of a stretch. You have set the scene for how and why the Thomists needed to respond to the Nouvelle Théologie, but I guess we will need to read the book to discover much about the Thomistic response.
I haven't read the book yet, as I only heard about it just now. But can I mention that in terms of a Catholic sense of the faith, anything that insists upon joining "nouvelle" with "theology" must be looked at with a great deal of skeptical suspicion. St. Paul tells us "Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle ". This imposes a procedural and epistemic presumption in favor of the traditional teaching. I have been hearing the canard from De Lubac:
De Lubac urged ressourcement, or a return to the sources of Catholic theology, especially the Church Fathers
all of my adult life, and find it wholly empty of validity. Aquinas, more than any other theologian I know, explicitly sourced his own presentation in the Bible and the Fathers. I don't know if De Lubac was actually lying about the issue or what, but in practical terms the canard is more like "the big lie" than a real difficulty in Thomism. If one reads Thomas's "The Golden Chain" (which consists wholly of piecing together the Fathers commenting on the Gospels), and then his Summa, one comes away with the Summa being merely a theology derived straight from The Golden Chain - i.e. it couldn't be any more rooted in the sources of Catholic theology without BEING the sources of Catholic theology.
Note that de Lubac was also engaged in the recovery of Aquinas himself (although whether his conclusions here were correct is deeply controverted). Bear in mind further that Aquinas did not have many ancient texts and also often did not have whole texts, and that he had many texts attributed to incorrect authors.
DeleteAs I understand it, Ressourcement was more concerned with breaking out of the mold of a certain Neo-Scholasticism that was in fact not deeply in touch with the text (or at least the context) of the Bible and the Fathers. And even Aquinas, insofar as he was, lacked the historical perspective and critical apparatus available to de Lubac, who also had a clearer sense of how the specifically Latin medieval tradition had evolved from the other branches of Christian thought.
Like Anonymous, I thought that de Lubac and company were trying to get back beyond what some (Cardinal Suenens?) called "manual theology" and drink more deeply from the well of patristic thought.
DeleteWhenever I have tried to learn from the Nouvelle people, I have found their works to be either wholly incomprehensible, tending (sometimes closely) toward modernism, or developing poorly and with immense difficulty toward truths that would have been easier to develop straight out of scholastic modes of theology. That is: either wrong, or (where right) less help than the scholastic model they intended to supplant.
DeleteCould be just me, of course. But it's hard to dispute with the evidence, which is that the De Lubac-celebrating part of the Church's theologians are constantly straining to fly off into some Neverland that is recognizably not Catholic (or even Christian), while the Thomist-favoring part of the Church's theologians are trying to learn to avoid sin and love God in the same sense all the saints of the past loved God. (The Rahner / Kung / Schillebeeckx strain is already flown off into the wild blue yonder, - and should have been declared heretical - while de Lubac seemingly attempted to split the difference between them and orthodoxy, an interesting notion in its own right.)
Admittedly, there were theologians who were attempting to be Thomists but were running off the rails, here or there, probably because they were taught to respect the results of Thomas without also being taught to drink deeply of the methods of Thomas, i.e. not being trained in the liberal arts properly and not being developed in critical thinking from the ground up. So, there was work to do there, but it has been done by better Thomists. As far as I can tell, it remains true that nothing the Communio school of Nouvelle has "discovered" theologically is not also accessible with Thomism updated and extended with modern history and science.
WCB
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikipedia
"The nouveaux théologiens sought "a spiritual and intellectual communion with Christianity in its most vital moments as transmitted to us in its classic texts, a communion which would nourish, invigorate, and rejuvenate twentieth-century Catholicism".[3] Many of the theologians associated with the movement advocated for a far broader "return to the sources" of the Christian faith: namely, Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. "
Scripture. Commands of Jesus. Sell all you have and give to the poor. Matthew 6:5-6. No public praying. Pray strictly in private. Acts 4:32-36. God commands communism. See also Acts 2:42-45.
Peter Abelard. "Sic Et Non".
WCB
Gosh, Wikipedia! Well, that certainly puts Dr Feser in his place...
DeleteAnd there you have it. WCB has with a reference or two shown us that the early Christians were disciples of Marx. What a guy.
DeleteEvery time you post WCB, I understand why you don't attach your real name to what you write. It might cause you to blush when you get out in public.
But then again that is really not a problem for you as it is clear from what you write that you don't get out much. Those that admire thinkers who seduce teenage girls are much more likely to be stuck in mom and dad's basement. Am I right? Sic et sic.
DeleteY'all be nice to WCB. It probably took him hours to come up with that Wikipedia entry.
WCB
DeleteCheck out Acts 4:32-36 and Act 2:42-45. What do these verses say? And sell all you have and give to the poor.
Mark 10, Luke 12, 14, 18, Matthew 19.
Plus other verses. It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than enter the kingdom of God. One cannot serve God and Mammon. Etc.
Marx cribbed directly of indirectly from Acts as did many "heretical" sects throughout Christian history.
William of Ockham got into serious trouble with the papacy over the issue of opulent living of the papal courts for example.
WCB
Very true. I think you let de Lubac and von Balthasar off very lightly indeed. They were essential to the modernist genealogy that led to the the sea of slip-ups in Vatican II texts and all the consequences of its ensuing "spirit".
ReplyDeleteHow interesting it is to note that the "conciliarist" "traditionalists" trying to change the constitution of the Church, and accuse Pope Francis of being an anti-Pope, combine their heterodoxy with praise for de Lubac (One Peter Five, The Remnant, the occultist "trads" at The European Conservative, etc.). One Peter Five's star columnist, Thadeus Kozinski (a specialist on the demonology of the current successor of Peter), declared in The European Conservative (13/10/23): "the will of God... known through the Logos, the Tao[!], the Natural Law". Its getting clearer and clearer. The agenda of conciliarist, conservative "trads" is not doctrinal purity but changing the constitution of the Church. They are a smells and bells version of the German synodal way.
Like the Nouvelle Theologie, and Luther and every boring old heresy, such stars of nouveau conciliarism declare themselves the direct heirs of the Fathers and the early Church. Why should anyone believe them?
Read more de Lubac before you make this sort of judgment. Be careful of slander.
DeleteI can only turn the mirror towards you and repeat the old adage Medice, cura te etc. De Lubac was an essential part of the movement that led to the problems of Vatican II. If you can't see this in his writings and influence, your views probably need attention.
DeleteDe Lubac experienced long censure under Pius XII with good reason. His misuse of patristic resources, biblical exegesis, and his confusion of natural and supernatural orders was the standard approach by the Modernism that had come before him. It's also no secret that Modernism comes in degrees. De Lubac was somewhere to be found among that team.
Delete"...movement that led to the problems of Vatican II." Not sure where you're going with this. Are you denying the authority of an ecumenical council?
DeleteOf course not. It is to be compared Constance and its aftermath, during the period (quite a number of years) before the Church clarified how it should be interpreted. So simple, except for those who happen to live in such periods...
DeleteHow anyone could possibly take Vatican II as it stands as definitive when almost nobody, beginning with the post-conciliar Popes, can clearly articulate how it is to be interpreted, is beyond me. What traditional Catholics must do is remain faithful to the perennial teaching of the Church before the confusion started, waiting for Rome to recover its nerve, as it always does, not picking and choosing. The picking and choosing option adopted by confused conservative Conciliarists (in the sense of neo-Gallicanism and the un-canonical Constance) has ended up with them adopting even heretical notions on the constitution of the Church, in order to find a human solution to the mess. The papacy remains the principle of unity. The clearsighted vision of Society of St. Pius X is truly coming into its own only now!
I think the pressure on One Peter Five from level-headed Catholics is intense. It has now published a rebuttal of Dr. Peter Kwasniewski's theories: https://onepeterfive.com/good-bishop-unjust-deposition-by-pope/
DeleteInteresting to bring up the Society of Saint Pius X. Their French site has just included a masterly critique of the Synod and its connection, not just to Vatican II, but to the old Conciliarist error of the fifteenth century: https://laportelatine.org/formation/crise-eglise/collegialite/de-vatican-ii-a-leglise-synodale-2
Sad to say, One Peter Five and The Remnant are unrepentant about peddling authors and ideas that are dangerous to the Faith. Kozinski (the great confessor of The Tao)is back in the former publication, while the latter has again published Kmita, the believer in Guenon, the well-known occultist. Conciliarist traditionalism is in good hands.
DeleteIndeed, Robert Kmita’s latest article at The Remnant (20/10/23) is nothing if not heretical. For him, the essence of religious life is the paranatural, not the spiritual, properly speaking: “The most important thing that people lost as a result of original sin is… the ability to speak to God at any time…”, “Humanity before the Fall was characterized by its most important attribute: immortality”. Shocking. Gets worse : “this vision was not the “beatific vision” – accessible only to those who attain perfection. Adam and Eve still had to do spiritual things (like contemplating and discovering the divine reasons of the creatures) to reach perfection”. So the “beatific vision” is something that could be obtained purely by a dose of New Age-style Enlightenment? Kmita’s “Heaven” is just a new earthly Garden of Eden: “After baptism, “In concrete terms, we are ready to RE-ENTER Paradise”. Kmita’s theory of “grace” is merely a secular, superman existence (says Adam and Eve were transparent).
DeleteNeedless to say, like all capital T Traditionalists in the tradition of Guenon, Kmita can be relied upon to blurt out names like Trent and St. Thomas non-stop. In two long Kmita articles on Baptism, The Remnant could not spit out the basic expression of traditional Catholic doctrine every child learns in the penny catechism. Shame on them for toying with this Guenonist at a time when the Church needs sound doctrine!
Cervantes is quite on target with criticism of some conservative Catholic journals. Nouvelle Theologie seems to have been taken up without apologies by at least two of them. One Peter Five has now also taken up the praise of the clearly heterodox Robert Kmita, in its article by de Malleray. But another article, by Antonio Frances, takes the cake, with its unreserved defense Congar and his ideas on Church organisation. How can these these journals claim the mantle of Catholic tradition when they defend the very modernists and their theology of the Church that have wreaked such havoc in the Church since Vatican II?!
DeleteUnfortunately, this stuff has penetrated many sectors claiming to oppose modernism. Cardinal Muller’s account of the Church (First Things 27/10/23) oscillates between the primitive Church and Vatican II year zero. He’s angry about the Synod, but just offers more of the same: “It is my prayer that the Synod on Synodality will be guided by the authentic faith formulated by the Fathers of Vatican II” then quotes Lumen Gentium on the people of God, emphasising a distinction between the priesthood and laity based on the power of orders and sacraments, ignoring jurisdiction, which is inseparable from the “papal centralism” he abhors: “The incarnate Son of God, the good shepherd who lays down his life for the flock of God, is the all-supporting head of the whole Church. He guides and governs through the shepherds and teachers authorized by himself. This is not done, as in politics, by men exercising power over men, but by preaching the Word and providing the sacraments that Christ entrusted to his apostles and their successors to administer”. Muller links the episcopal power of orders links “shepherds” directly to Christ, making the Church essentially democratic and synodal in practice – exactly as the title of Muller’s article in First Things claims to oppose! But getting rid of that Catholic bottleneck of jurisdictional Romanitas consigns the Church to the Conciliarist, Gallicanist, modernist project..
DeleteThe Pope become a president: “Competence in matters of doctrine and Church constitution” is “reserved for the plenary assembly of an ecumenical council or a particular synod whose decisions are recognized by the pope as a valid expression of the truth of Revelation”, effectively making the Pope like the rubber stamp of the English constitutional monarchy, with a sovereignty shared with parliament. But the Church is not a human institution, and the Pope’s vicarious jurisdiction is not shared. Muller is not a pure English constitutionalist, however, but a federalist: “Papal centralism and episcopal particularism are equally contrary to the truth of the one Church of God, which is found in the communion of the many episcopally-led local churches that recognize… the Bishop of Rome”. However, the body of Christ is not a federation.
In the end, the Cardinal nails up his conciliarist colours: “millions of Catholics” will stop the Church from being turned into an NGO, because, citing Vatican II, “the whole of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in ‘matters of belief’”. Millions of Catholics might indeed smack down such efforts, but which millions of Catholics represent the Holy Ghost? Today, a majority percentage of Catholic laity hold false ideas concerning faith and morals, at least in the West. If one could transport a mob from Equatorial Guinea to St Peter’s square, perhaps a defenestration of Bishop Fernandez might be feasible. One should never discount a good mob at the right time. Nevertheless, Vatican I specified just what bit of the Church was the unfailing guide till the end of time, the See of Rome. Getting decisions out of millions of the “People of God” is as imprecise and tricky as getting one out of any democratic body. Indeed, the Church is not a human society; no other human has the personal guarantee of faith that the successors of Peter have. Muller discounts reason in his account of the Church, invented by de Lubac and Congar, calling the Church a sacrament, and separating laity and clergy merely on account of the power of order. This entirely ignores the most Catholic doctrine of the power of jurisdiction, something wholly rational, understandable, and centralistic. On questions concerning the constitution of the Church, Pope Francis is much more solid than Muller. As with the times of the Renaissance, angry men quoted scripture and morality at Renaissance Popes, but fell out of the Church themselves by mentally playing with the Church's constitution.
Have you seen this, from One Peter Five's lay theologian, Antonio Frances? "These heretics [fail] to state in the Relatio synodalis that the jurisdiction in the Church has its root in the episcopate". It's a hopeless battle trying to win over these people. They have entirely taken up the collegial jurisdiction idea, alien as it is to Catholic tradition. This is Conciliarism in all its glory. We're going back to Renaissance chaos.
DeleteIt's a bit rich. It took the conservative approach on display in these publications to label as heretics the traditionalists who merely continue to believe the Church's teaching expressed by St Thomas Aquinas, in Vatican I and Mystici Corporis, that the Pope's jurisdiction is the fullness of all jurisdiction in the Church. It is not a development of, participation in, or counterbalance to, any episcopal, collegial, let alone synodal, jurisdiction. The conservative, Gallicanist, conciliarist "remedy" is far worse than the confusion of Vatican II, which has so obviously spawned these tendencies, as they mostly acknowledge!
DeleteWCB
ReplyDelete"Gosh, Wikipedia! Well, that certainly puts Dr Feser in his place."
- Mary Therese
Did the short exerpt I posted have any big errors? The Wikipedia article gives cites to various authorities. Now back to the Bible. And commands of Jesus. What are we to do with these commands? Follow them to the letter? Ignore the commands we don't like?
I have always been fascinated how so many Christians have no intention of following all these commands. "Well, Jesus didn't mean me!"
WCB
Ah WCB, but all these commands and sayings of Jesus need interpreting and explaining to us by the RCC, which he established and gave such authority to, and you can bet your bottom dollar that he did not mean quite what he said!
DeleteBit like when he stated clearly and unambiguously that he would return before the then current generation had all passed away!
"I have always been fascinated how so many Christians have no intention ..."
DeleteI have never been especially fascinated by the fact that those meat sacks of cosmically meaningless appetite, as materialists have self-defined, squawk about the behavior of Christians with regard to the Scriptures.
If the organisms of the left are in fact, what their own philosophy reduces them to, why should Christians care in the least what these meaningless, soulless, wholly determined loci of appetite "think"? Or what becomes of them, once the Christians have determined that these metaphysically alien and temporary congeries of appetites denominated as materialist progressives, have exhausted whatever marginal utility they might once have had, or which has now been deemed superfluous?
What are they bitching about?
To quote The Bard for the umpteenth time here: " Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek ..."
The Devil? So apparently, can a meat computer.
Let's also take a look at the basic assumptions of the Apostles when it came to giving.
"Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God"
What then are the class of soulless, cosmically meaningless, congeries of transitory "appetite" lacking even free will, doing when like parrots, they emit noises "quoting" Scripture?
"Oh, the humanity !!!"
Well, if you take seriously and turn the sense of the noises which they make back on themselves at least, then ... not really.
DNW,
Delete"I have never been especially fascinated by the fact that those meat sacks of cosmically meaningless appetite, as materialists have self-defined, squawk about the behavior of Christians with regard to the Scriptures."
I am not surprised to find out your lack interest in learning some basics, but just in case...
If you value self consistency then the self-contradiction of claiming to adhere to a set of admonitions supposedly coming from no less than the incarnation of god, yet not actually paying much attention to the details, well, that is a rather disrespectable self-contradiction.
On the other hand, if you don't care about self-contradictions then I suppose that will not bother you.
"why should Christians care in the least what these meaningless, soulless, wholly determined loci of appetite "think"? "
Up to you if you care about contradicting yourself or not.
"What are they bitching about?"
You're ilk, more specifically, the demonstrable illogic presented by your ilk while claiming, falsely, to be self-consistent.
Sell all you have and give to the poor.
DeleteWhat are we to do with these commands? Follow them to the letter? Ignore the commands we don't like?
As usual, WBC's comments cannot be taken as serious, as he picks and chooses single short quotes and ignores other passages that would indicate the exact opposite. He refuses to allow that a complex work like the Bible will need to be worked on to be made a harmonious whole, which requires nuancing various passages so they fit together. He seems to do this merely to make problems for Christians, as he does not appear to believe in the Bible as the inspired word of God.
Jesus ate with wealthy men, and did not tell them to sell all they had. He approved of Zecchaeus who made restitution to those he had cheated but only gave HALF what he had to the poor, not all. Jesus constantly relied upon the help of people who retained their homes and certain other wealth, and he literally rebuked a disciple who objected to the woman lavishing him with an expensive oil instead of giving the money to the poor. Neither during Jesus's visible presence in the world, nor immediately after, did any of them say or hold that all wealth must be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Notably, there is no instance recorded where Jesus gave his money to the poor, nor directed his apostles to do so.
"Well, Jesus didn't mean me!"
ReplyDeleteExcept that's literally true. For example, among the many chastisements he gives to the Corinthian church, Paul criticizes their practice of gathering together to eat the Lord's supper, and points out they have homes to do that in. He didn't criticize them for having homes.
He also tells Timothy to charge those who are rich to not be highminded or to trust in those riches. And throughout his writings, such as Romans and 1 Corinthians, he speaks of gathering their offerings to take to the poor saints at Jerusalem - those who sold everything during Jesus' ministry and early Acts.
Verses out of context aren't very good for making points.
WCB
DeleteWhen did Paul outrank Jesus? Does Paul actually negate direct commands of Jesus? Or the word of God as given by the Holy Ghost?
All across America, politicians want the ten commandments posted in every class room. Because Jesus commanded following them. But these same politicians don't want all of the ten commandments as Jesus commanded this. Sell all you have and give to the poor. Most odd when one thinks about that a bit. And a lot of people want prayer in scholl. Matthew 6:5-6. Jesus condemns public praying, praying is to be done in public. I find this sort of behavior odd to say the least.
WCB
"WCB", if you say "But these same politicians don't want all of the ten commandments as Jesus commanded this. Sell all you have and give to the poor.", does it mean that you have already sold all you had and given to the poor?
DeleteWould you like to explain what you are using to post here in that case?
When did Paul outrank Jesus? Does Paul actually negate direct commands of Jesus? Or the word of God as given by the Holy Ghost?
DeleteJesus appeared to Paul and chose him to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul says he was not taught of men but received his words through direct revelation by the Spirit.
Paul is following the commands of Christ, not overriding them. If there's a "contradiction", then it pays to compare the two and see who is being spoken to, when they are being spoken to, and why they are being spoken to. The most obvious example being, Christians aren't commanded to shed the blood of animals to cover sins, even though that commandment was from the Lord.
Far as the public prayer, I have no disagreement.
My friends over at STRANGE NOTIONS and Dr. Bonnette all explained to WCB that private interpretation of Holy Writ is not a thing but he dinnae listen.
DeleteWho are we kidding? Of course he listened. He just doesn't care and wants to make up his who nonsense too troll.
I weep because I think deep down he is smart. He just doesn't want to use his intellect to make better arguments.
I think he just likes the attention.
Shame really.
Hey Son of Ya'Kov, I enjoyed my years of participation over at Strange Notions. Although I disagreed with you, Dr. Bonnette, and others on many points, I learned a lot, and I thought that the communal attempt to understand was to the good. Now that site is moribund. A pity.
DeleteStrange Notions hasn't been updated in a year it seems.
DeleteWhy should I trust the Vatican's interpretation of things? Why should I take their word for it when they ay Bible verses describing hell as imposed externally by God don't actually mean that?
DeleteExcept for the first two posts, everything else here has been "noise."
ReplyDeleteYours being the prime example. Did you really feel the need to post that?
DeleteAnd you continue the tradition.
DeleteWCB
ReplyDelete"Sell all you have and give to the poor.", does it mean that you have already sold all you had and given to the poor?"
-MP
Since I am an atheist, no. Though with my medical bills, I end up giving much of my money to Big Pharma.
The Nouvelle Theologie proponents seem to be placing emphasis on going back to the Bible. I don't know what the exact argument by some Nouvelle Theologians means in regard to going back to the Bible really means.
But the question then seems to be, what do the gospels say in regards to commands of Jesus and what is Christianity's obligation as to following the commands of Jesus. And of course, these commands are not confined to Catholics.
WCB
So, why is your interpretation of the Bible you keep repeating here relevant in this case?
DeleteYou say "Since I am an atheist, no.", so, it does not matter to you personally.
And you say " I don't know what the exact argument by some Nouvelle Theologians means in regard to going back to the Bible really means.", so, your interpretation has nothing to do with Nouvelle theologie either, and, in fact, you at least have a reason to suspect that yourself.
Nor do you show understanding how those parts of the Bible are usually understood by people who take the Bible more seriously. In fact, you do not even show much willingness to find that out.
So, what's the point of repeating the same irrelevant thing as a broken record here?
Is that based on the reasoning described in one meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1185058-counter-signal-memes): "So yeah, this argument wouldn't work on me, but maybe if I use it on you, you'll do what I want"?
In that case, I suspect that we have a sufficient sample to conclude that your approach is not working (and it probably won't work if you try it another hundred times either). You should probably try something else.
MP,
Delete""So yeah, this argument wouldn't work on me, but maybe if I use it on you, you'll do what I want"?
More like *You claim to value self consistency, follow both logic and a particular doctrine, yet logically, you are not following that doctrine, so you are not being self consistent.*
"In that case, I suspect that we have a sufficient sample to conclude that your approach is not working (and it probably won't work if you try it another hundred times either). You should probably try something else."
You are demonstrably wrong, it is working.
The Nones keep growing. Young people in particular are leaving religion, so the trend is that it is working, "it" meaning the pointing out of the myriad ways religions makes no sense.
Of course you, an individual, are not going to do a personal 180 in your life because some guy posts something on a blog someplace. People are not like that.
But "it" demonstrably is working.
Most people value self consistency, and want to have opinions that make sense generally. Over time, in the aggregate, engaging with the religious on the facts of how nonsensical their assertions are does have a positive effect, the positive effect of a general trend of people leaving religion.
"Always lurking in the background of the debate was the specter of modernism, a heresy that spread throughout the late nineteenth century and became a target of concerted papal attack at the start of the twentieth—most famously in the encyclicals and governance of Pius X. Modernism rejects attempts to found theology in philosophical arguments and the evidence of miracles. It looks instead to sentiment and religious experience. Since these change with the times, modernism takes dogma to be mutable rather than fixed. By the same token, it rejects the view that Scripture is free from error, and takes the Church’s traditional scriptural interpretations to be open to revision. Its assimilation of revelation to experience collapses the natural and the supernatural."
ReplyDeleteThat subjectivity and chasing of "feelinz" is probably where the rubber meets the road when it comes to: the more general and parallel dissolution of the formerly realist predicates of our present associative orders; to these still persisting associative arrangements' increasing untenability; and to the irrational futility of trying to justify their further maintenance ( at least in a broadly distributive fashion) in the face of wasted costs.
Western secular civilization is currently deep in this parallel phase to religion; wherein affiliation is hollowed out by a complete lack not only of natural affinity, but of any shared intellectual presuppositions. The more jarringly apparent this becomes, the louder the screeching about " inclusion" and "solidarity".
Yet, the thought of joining in a hollow religious pantomime officiated over by straw grasping cynics seeking to preserve the ecological niches which they have found a way to infiltrate and inhabit and commandeer, is almost as ridiculous as pretending that "empathy" for antipathetic organisms - which on the basis of their own axioms must be radically other - can serve as the continuing basis for a political "community " or even toleration and interpersonal forbearance.
Their sales pitch falls on understandably deaf ears.
For normal people, who have no interest in participating in the mindless "community" charades and mutual ass sniffing exercises so beloved of progressives of both religious and secular stripes, the problem, is obvious: If they are what they say they are, they just aren't worth either the price they demand, or your trouble.
Prof. Feser's article was about Nouvelle Theologie. The first three posts were on point about the article. The rest were just "noise. "
ReplyDeleteRead Lubac's books "The Splendor of the Church" and "The Discovery of God. "
ReplyDelete"God commands communism" says the atheist.
"... when Jesus had finished ... he departed from Galilee ... And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.
The Pharisees also came ... testing him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? ...he answered and said ... he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, ...For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife ... What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say ... Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith ..., Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say ... Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given ...
Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence.
And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but
if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandment
He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
Sometimes actual quotes are helpful.
"- he which made them at the beginning made them male and female
- For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife
I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery"
One came and said unto to him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
[Jesus said]
"- if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandment ...
- Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
[Not satisfied, that young man still pressed, saying he had done all these things; and challenging Jesus as to what he, the rich young man, still might lack. He was told...]
- "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. "
Apparently the young man decided that to "enter into life" was more attainable than Jesus' counter challenge to him to acheive perfection as an Apostle.
So, in light of this, what kind of lunatic would state that God commands communism?
WCB
ReplyDeleteSo you want direct quotes?
Acts 4
31 And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
33 And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.
34 Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
....
See also Acts 2:42-5.
Now, The Council Of Trentb-Fourth session and Verbum Dei - 1965 assure us the bible was authored by God himself.
Part of what makes this relevant is today's GOP candidates trying to cur Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid et al. The GOP in the 30's claimed FDR's Social Security was "Communism!" And cries of "Communism!" are still coming from today's more radical GOP politicians. Who are also the ones proclaiming we need more religion and Bible in our schools and politics. Apparently these Christian Nationalists have never read Acts 4 and 2 carefully.
These are things I notice, and think about. If Nouvelle Theologie and Neo-Thomism are having some debates of the Bible's standing in theology, in my mind, Acts 4 and Acts 2 and "Sell all you have and give to the poor" loom large. Is the New Testament commands of Jesus and holy ghost obligatory?
WCB
WCB writes,
Delete"So you want direct quotes?
Acts 4
31 And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul ..."
That was, Christians gathered together.
You are not only not a Christian, or a Samaritan, or a Roman soldier or an invincibly ignorant victim of his educational limitations, but an active apostate atheist.
They spoke the Word of God as believers and with boldness. You speak it to the same purpose with which the characters Ananias and Sapphira made their deceptive contribution to the work of the Spirit among the community of believers: i.e., in order to, and as as someone seeking to, access and game the faithful for his advantage.
So, you are not only an atheist and apostate (shrug), but a rather pathetic case of someone trying to use the supernatural convictions of Christians and their scriptures, against them. In a sense - and this can be taken in a secular yet nonetheless metaphysically freighted way - you are an exemplar of the resentment driven diabolical as portrayed in The Vision of Fursey; one of the swarm of resentful accusers seeking to subvert and manipulate or punish others by means of their own code for your perceived advantage.
Whether it is to get them to pay for your meds as compliant and passive and selfless human termites immersed in your preferred system, or some other purpose, is best known to you.
The question is, why should anyone care? If you are right, you are ultimately a cosmically meaningless annoyance toward which no one has any objective duties or obligations. If the Christians are right, you are not only not one of them, but a member of that special category of apostates and enemies not only of the faithful, but of God Himself.
You are one of those relative few with which the Christian is enjoined to have nothing to do socially.
Kind of interesting that you are so obsessively drawn to this.
WCB says,
DeleteSo you want direct quotes?
I had already provided sufficient to deal with the matter.
Funny too, now that you have quoted someone else other than "God", to watch you attempt to CYA after having previously challenged another commenter on his use of a Pauline source.
So, you try to shield yourself from the blowback of your own earlier comment by writing,
"The Council Of Trentb-Fourth session and Verbum Dei - 1965 assure us the bible was authored by God himself."
You leveled an attack earlier, and now catch the ricochet right back in your own teeth.
That's the risk you take in your haste to fling whatever it is that comes to hand. The bounce-back can prove fatal.
You should have learned by now.
The kind of lunatic who thinks we should at least try to be as good as possible, IOW we should strive for perfection?
ReplyDeleteIf the communism you envision is one that eliminates poverty, according to the teaching of Christ the one who strives for perfections renounces earthly goods for the heavenly goods, becoming and remaining poor by choice out of love for the Lord. As St. John Chrysostom beautifully commented in his Homily 63 on Matthew "It is not then enough to despise wealth, but we must also maintain poor men, and above all things follow Christ; that is, do all the things that are ordered by Him, be ready for slaughter and daily death. For if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. [Matthew 16:24] So that to cast away one's money is a much less thing than this last commandment, to shed even one's very blood; yet not a little does our being freed from wealth contribute towards this."
DeleteWCB
DeleteMatthew 5:48
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
WCB
Among the influences on the new movement was philosopher Maurice Blondel, who argued for replacing the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of truth as the conformity of intellect to reality with the notion that truth is the conformity of intellect to life.
ReplyDeleteThis is an insane theory: based on this idea, there isn't (can't be) any way of distinguishing between conforming to a good, upright, wholesome life, and conforming to a bent, distorted, evil, destructive life. Both of them count as "conforming to life".
The attempt to "baptize" the utterly atheistic (and wholly anti-Christian) modernism with a thin veil of pretense toward Christian concepts should have been rejected wholesale, as Pius X told us. The foolish choices to ignore that sound advice and try to bring modernism into Church teaching anyway has had demonstrably horrific effects within the Church.
The crackdown on these trends during Pius X’s pontificate was vigorous and, arguably, in some quarters taken too far.
Maybe, possibly, one can argue there was some theologian slapped down a little harder than absolutely necessary. However, it is unarguably manifest that many, many Catholic philosophers, theologians and teachers SHOULD have been stopped cold and dismissed from their positions, who weren't. So, on balance, the effort was far too weak, not too vigorous. (It should also have been attended by a vigorous effort to properly train up philosophers and theologians in the traditional model of training whereby they could learn how to think, how to understand right philosophy, and how to discern all of the damaged philosophies spun off of the Endarkenment's rejection of Catholic philosophy. That project too (explicitly requested by Leo and Pius X) was refused outright, to our great loss.
Pope St. John Paul ll spoke well about Maurice Blondel.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2000/oct-dec/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20001118_blondel.html
Reading some of the comments here provokes the thought in me - and I suppose it is already obvious to most - that for quite a swath of humanity, reIigion fills a hole left by some kind of emotion driven neediness. It might be almost any system of collective identification. It could be the religion of communism and dialectical materialism, it might be Hart's eastern mystical pseudo Christian monist universalism crap, or it might be new agey or theosophical nonsense. Or modernism.
ReplyDeleteBut they all seem less focused on what objectively is or can rationally be demonstrated as supposition worthy, than on scratching some emotional or communitarian itch for affirmation by the other, and feelings of inclusion and acceptance.
C.S. Lewis in some remark I cannot quote directly, pointed out that traditional Christianity purported to say something critical about the nature of reality. That constituted its value.The apostle Paul, made an at least swiping reference to the same point in Corinthians.
But it is clear that that is not what so many of those interested in involvement in these various systems of social binding, are after.
We talk about the trends toward emphasizing inclusion, affirmation, and so forth.
Those are not features of the religions of the marxist, the modernist soccer mom, the inclusion and redistribution freaks and pimps ... it is the very essence of their systems. You could pour almost any content into them, as the specific information plays second fiddle to the main theme of an all encompassing system of social inclusion.
Traditional Catholicism, and modernism, are not only not versions of the same system of belief, they are not even in the same business.
@DNW
DeleteC.S. Lewis was simply mistaken. Christianity is not the type of religion that makes a statement about the nature of reality. Christianity is a religion about your relationship with God the Son (Jesus Christ). It touches on aspects of objective reality (the resurrection, mind-body dualism, the young creation of the universe, etc...) but it's not about the nature of reality nor is the Holy Bible a textbook about the nature of reality.
"@DNW
DeleteC.S. Lewis was simply mistaken. Christianity is not the type of religion that makes a statement about the nature of reality. Christianity is a religion about your relationship with God the Son (Jesus Christ). It touches on aspects of objective reality (the resurrection, mind-body dualism, the young creation of the universe, etc...) but it's not about the nature of reality nor is the Holy Bible a textbook about the nature of reality.
I think it might be helpful for you to reread what I actually wrote.
I wrote: "C.S. Lewis in some remark I cannot quote directly, pointed out that traditional Christianity purported to say something critical about the nature of reality. That constituted its value.The apostle Paul, made an at least swiping reference to the same point in Corinthians."
Addressing only your referrence to, " ...your relationship with God the Son ..." it becomes immediately evident that in that phrase alone are at least three or more implied, or deducible through immediate inference, premisses concerning the reality in which man "finds himself". That there is a God. That there is a divine person denominated as the 'Son". That you as an individual are to have a direct relationship with Him. And in addition, for those who have some slightly larger familiarity with the context that my truncated quote of your statement presents, that: there is a supernatural reality, that God transcends our experienced material reality, that good and evil exist, that the individual is in need of salvation, and that this state of affairs matters and has consequences for an individual with an eternal life and fate.
So Christianity does purport to say a great number of distinct things about the nature and ground of reality both proximate and ultimate as experienced by men and pertaining to their personal and eternal destinies, which other systems or collections of beliefs carrying a name, either do not, or do deny.
Regarding fundamental reality statements or characterizations in general:
In the case of Christianity, or of a Christian influenced historical context, we have the curious situation in which contrary to a widespread flippancy, the term "metaphysics" is not merely a euphemistic term for veiled "religion", as hostile critics might suggest; but instead, a situation wherein the religion itself contains within it a virtual metaphysical system.
Now some may respond, 'post hoc propter hoc', or, that that is merely an impression resulting from whether your perspective starts from the front end or the back end.
But on the contrary, since metaphysical propositions or speculative inferences need not have anything to do with supernaturalism, the mere fact that a metaphysical system is supernaturalistic does not serve to demonstrate a closeted identity.
It shows that mirroring reality to expose the highest order or fundamental nature of being possible, is not in fact necessarily synonymous with religion, veiled or otherwise.
[Whether or to what extent the implicit or explicit metaphysics in Christianity is the result of the context of its historical origins and is a melded or hybrid system, is I think, another question entirely.]
In making a statement about your relationship with God, it assumes and is implying a number of things about the nature of reality. It couldn't make ANY statement about your relationship with God without a number of prior things which explain the meaning of the terms used, and which assume that reality is a certain way.
DeleteIn the context of a debate in which modernism disputes those assumed propositions, Christianity asserts those prior positions as well as asserting something about your relationship with God. This is one reason why, in addition to the definitive, infallible de fide teachings of the Church made from Revelation, there are also definitive, infallible teachings to be held on matters philosophic and matters historical that are so closely associated with the dogmas taught de fide that it is necessary to assent to them also.
Just my humble opinion (ha ha): I think it would be great if all stopped appealing/referring to or citing C.S. Lewis in discussions of philosophy of religion.
Delete"Just my humble opinion (ha ha): I think it would be great if all stopped appealing/referring to or citing C.S. Lewis in discussions of philosophy of religion."
DeleteWhy? He was mentioned as making an observation. His writings have become the common coin of popular Christian social and apologetic commentary. So what?
I dont think anyone has elevated him to the throne of Peter. Though considering the current occupant ...
Well said. So true. Since when did he become a Doctor of the Church?
Delete“C.S. Lewis in some remark I cannot quote directly, pointed out that traditional Christianity purported to say something critical about the nature of reality.“
Delete“Is Theology Poetry”?
@ficino4ml What do you find wrong with C.S. Lewis?
Delete"Miguel Cervantes October 20, 2023 at 6:00 AM
DeleteWell said. So true. Since when did he become a Doctor of the Church?"
Never of course. He wrote as an Anglican layman addressing the issues of secularization, relativism, and apostasy, seen in the established church and culture of his nation and era.
Over time his observations resonated across the Atlantic.
Shakespeare is not a doctor of the Church either, but one of his characters had an acute observation regarding the strategy of the diabolically minded in their deployment of Scripture. Prefiguring somewhat you might say, Saul Alinsky's rule for radicals number four, and his Rules for Radicals nod to Lucifer.
Perhaps Shakespeare should not be referenced to make or illustrate a point either.
As far as Lewis goes, many ordinary people have found his clear and unemotional style to be a welcome contrast to the turgid outpourings of the soft-handed, infantilized male, professional God talking sorts found infesting the Catholic Church and feeding off of sinecures.
Now, Chrysostom apparently never quite said that the floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops. Nonetheless, we in our current era can attest that the secular pathway there is no doubt adorned with the rotting carcasses of duplicitous modernist theologians like Gregory Baum, and of pervert bishops like Rembert Weakland, and Bernardin.
Compared to them, Lewis deserves to be elevated to an honorary doctorate of religious letters, at the least.
Well said. So true. Since when did he become a Doctor of the Church?
DeleteEach of the doctors of the Church were quoted and employed for centuries before they were declared doctors. It is fine to employ other commentators than those already declared doctors.
C.S. Lewis is well known for having spoken of a core of common teachings of Christianity. Even though he was in error regarding specifically Catholic teachings that Catholics hold in differentiation from Protestants, he was not in error with regard to everything, and in particular not in error regarding those core teachings that even Protestants hold in common with Catholics, e.g. on the necessity of grace for salvation.
Both Origen and Tertullian are Church Fathers, even though it is understood that they both held and taught some errors that have been declared wrong. (For that matter, Thomas Aquinas also taught some errors that (since then) have been shown up.)
And if the Lewis comment is in error, it is more valuable to show its error, rather than to refer to his lack of being a Catholic Doctor.
Unfortunately, Lewis was wrong on core issues as well as those separating the Church from Protestantism in general. He has been snuck in as a pseudo-Father, quoted ad nauseum by persons with other agendas. Because Lewis is a popular writer, and one who rejected much of the lefty mouvance, he has acquired a halo of orthodoxy which nevertheless cannot be entertained by serious Catholics.
DeleteYeah, but was THIS comment in error?
DeleteTraditional Catholicism, and modernism, are not only not versions of the same system of belief, they are not even in the same business.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting and helpful observation. I wonder whether, though, modernism would reply by claiming that Catholicism is a belief system and modernism is not. I suspect that the truth is more complex than that, e.g. that Catholicism is one of the belief systems that has faith in truth, and modernism is a belief system based on a loss of faith in truth, so it now puts its faith in feelings.
"... suspect that the truth is more complex than that, e.g. that Catholicism is one of the belief systems that has faith in truth, "
DeleteSure. I agree. As soon as you jettison the concept of truth, one is reduced to blindly feeling around rather than seeing.
Since you cannot ex hypothesi see outside yourself, all that is left is feeling rather than understanding. You have no way of referencing the external world with certainty.
Now, I think that that assumed image tacitly embraced by the subjectivist probably sells short the reality accessing capacities of even the blind. But ...
You know, tell a purported subjective idealist to close his eyes and step out into rush hour traffic to test how serious he is about his belief. Or strike him from behind with a brick and see if he feels it despite his not perceiving it on its way. And if he holds to his belief yet complains, point out that he is the one responsible and to blame anyway.
A frivolous and shallow response to the "subjectivist treanding to idealist"? Maybe. But one that I think is deserved.
No garage mechanic could convince himself of the nonsense some people believe.
@Tony: surely the doctrines of the Catholic Church form what we can call a "system." But how is modernism properly a "belief system"? I would think off the top of my head that modernism is more a loosely tossed-together bunch of methodological assumptions w/ their effects. But maybe I am too ill-informed about historic modernism (Loisy et al?).
DeleteDNW,
Delete"the concept of truth"
That might be interesting, except you do not have a coherent method to determine extramental truth.
"You have no way of referencing the external world with certainty."
I suppose you are under the delusion that you do have a method to reference the external world with certainty. Care to share your sage methodology with the rest of us?
"You know, tell a purported subjective idealist to close his eyes and step out into rush hour traffic to test how serious he is about his belief."
You clearly have no idea what a subjectivist believes. You simplistically and incoherently equate uncertainty with belief in unreality. More philosophy 101 for you to learn.
"Or strike him from behind with a brick and see if he feels it despite his not perceiving it on its way."
Now you are equating individual human non-perception with non-reality. Do you think these sorts of idea through at all?
"A frivolous and shallow response to the "subjectivist treanding to idealist"?"
Ya think?
"DNW,
Delete"the concept of truth"
That might be interesting, except you ..."
You were dealt with back on September 6th. In the days following your problematical, confused, and inconsistent application of the terms "objective", "subjective", and "moral", were addressed by many others as well and at length.
You had plenty of opportunity to describe the conditions necessary in order to demonstrate that the definitional requirements [operative or otherwise] of the term "objective" had been satisfied. But instead all we got were repetitious slogans and declarations.
Apparently in your hallucinated reality, there are no intersubjectively testable criteria to establish the concept of "objective"; decades of historically attested and clear academic usage notwithstanding.
And now your time is up.
You have ceased to be relevant much in the same way that a head banging autistic's perseverating blather is irrelevant to much outside of its own head.
You should try pursuing some of your other interests as a diversion. Don't you have a pro Ham-ass rally to attend somewhere?
@Tony: surely the doctrines of the Catholic Church form what we can call a "system."
Delete@ ficinio4ml: Sure, I grant that, readily. It is, further, a "system" of beliefs that have, as an underpinning, a premise regarding truth, i.e. that it exists and (at least potentially) can be apprehended by us.
But how is modernism properly a "belief system"?
My point is that it isn't so much a "belief system" as such, precisely because it requires an underlying premise regarding truth, i.e. that either it does not exist, or it cannot be apprehended by us. And that it therefore devolves from a "belief system" into something more fluid, respecting feelings rather than apprehension.
that modernism is more a loosely tossed-together bunch of methodological assumptions w/ their effects.
Right: given the premise that either truth does not exist or it cannot be apprehended, their methodology resorts to other activity than apprehension for "validity", e.g. feelings. When they say "that makes me feel bad", that (under their method) constitutes validity: what they seem to ignore is why someone else should care, if it doesn't make them feel bad.
But it still RESTS on a premise about truth. They can pretend that employing the premise doesn't represent that it is "a truth" or "apprehending a truth" but that's just bloviating: its use carries with it all the baggage of a truth apprehended.
DNW
DeleteAs usual you seem not fully in control of yourself. A very angry and damaged man I would say.
Why on earth would you imagine that StarDusty would be inclined to attend a pro-Hamas rally, and what is this antipathy you seem to have towards autistics?
You have ceased to be relevant much in the same way that a head banging autistic's perseverating blather is irrelevant to much outside of its own head.
DeleteWhat on Earth is wrong with you?
Why on earth would you imagine that StarDusty would be inclined to attend a pro-Hamas rally
DeleteI'm assuming because he dared to criticize Israel in the Logic thread.
what is this antipathy you seem to have towards autistics?
I guess we are subhuman "its".
Anonymous writes,
Delete"Why on earth would you imagine that StarDusty would be inclined to attend a pro-Hamas rally,"
Try to calm yourself, because your indignation is misplaced.
It's apparent you have a very sensitive nature; one which seems to make it unbearable for you to even take the trouble to adopt a combox identifier.
Still, you really ought expend enough effort to do a little due diligence before you start exclaiming.
"Why on earth?" you say?
Let Stardusty explain his views to you himself. This is why:
"One is likely to be labeled an anti-semite if one identifies Likud controlled Israel as an apartheid state, a party with the written goal of taking control of all land from the sea to the Jordan river, a state that began its modern existence with widespread ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, forcing hundreds of thousands of innocent indigenous people to flee for their lives, the Nakba.
A party and a people that justify, indeed revel in, any and all tactics of conquest, tactics of land theft, up to and including genocide, because they have a book in which it is written that they are god's chosen people and god gave them instructions to murder all inhabitants of the land now called Palestine so that the Jews could steal the land for themselves to the total exclusion of the indigenous inhabitants of the land they covet. ...
... the operators of that apartheid state enjoy vast freedom and wealth on their stolen land.
Is it anti-sematic to assert that a people so grossly conquered and imprisoned have the right to resist, have the right to fight back with whatever weapons they can manage to get their hands on, and have the right to inflict pain on the conquerors to put a price on their theft?"
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2023/10/a-little-logic-is-dangerous-thing.html?showComment=1697231351620#c9041602983474727742
DNW,
Delete"confused, and inconsistent application of the terms "objective", "subjective", and "moral", were addressed by many others"
Why are you revisiting your confusion about objective morality?
You confused an objective standard with objective morality.
You confused an objective observation of an expression of a subjective moral sentence with objective morality.
Objective morality is logically impossible and I proved it multiple times, yet you are returning to the subject, why?
"Apparently in your hallucinated reality, there are no intersubjectively testable criteria to establish the concept of "objective";:
An objective standard of morality is like the rules of a card game. One can objectively determine if a play does or does not conform to the convention, but the convention itself is subjective at base. More philosophy 101. This is super basic material, yet you manifestly just do not grasp the distinction between an objective standard and objective morality.
All of which leaves my assertion unrefuted by you. You are under the delusion that you have a methodology to determine with certainty extramental truth.
Yet you will not share that methodology with the rest of us. Almost like you really can't.
But by all means, do tell us, how do you determine with certainty extramental truth?
Anonymous
DeleteOctober 20, 2023 at 2:18 PM
DNW
... Why on earth "
"Kevin
October 20, 2023 at 3:03 PM
What on Earth ..."
Yeah ... what on earth.
Apparently a couple of you [if you are two individuals ... or more ] have issues with my analogizing Stardusty's persistent annoyances and declamatory repetitions with the kind of behavior seen in instances of autism.
If you are paying as close attention to what I write as you seem to be, you may have noticed that I have been ignoring Stardusty for the most part, though he follows me around like a yipping poodle.
My most recent reply was in response to another of his shelf stale direct approaches. And in response, I explained, in unvarnished terms, why he is not worthy of any further attention.
If you find this upsetting and cannot help but read what I write, try turning down your personal gain settings; or better, just ignore what I write. In fact, I not only give you permission, but encourage you to do just that. You and "Kevin" are probably grown-ups, more or less; and if so, you can probably manage it, more or less.
We will both benefit. You will not suffer further attacks of the vapors, and I won't further encounter your carping. indignant demands for attention.
Isn't it interesting that, on one hand, Stardusty writes "That might be interesting, except you do not have a coherent method to determine extramental truth." and "I suppose you are under the delusion that you do have a method to reference the external world with certainty." as if he can't know truth, and yet, it that would be the case, then how can he know others can't either? Unless, of course, other people are but figments of his imagination.
DeleteAlso, if he can't know anything about anything not in his mind, why is he talking as if others should care what he says? But what would be a reason to care? It can't be the truth of things being said, for Stardusty says he can't know it.
Tony,
Delete"Right: given the premise that either truth does not exist or it cannot be apprehended,"
There is truth, the true nature of reality, what really exists in the cosmos, whatever that turns out to be.
The only truth we can apprehend with certainty is derived from our personal experiences, and is of a very general and rather superficial sort. It is certainly true that I exist and that I am experiencing my experiences.
Nobody on offer has ever expressed a coherent method to determine extramental truth with certainty because the attempt is intrinsically logically invalid, requiring circular reasoning, begging the question.
"what they seem to ignore is why someone else should care, if it doesn't make them feel bad."
Ignore? How did you get that misapprehension in your thoughts?
"Should" is a personal sensibility, an emotion, a personal moral intuition. There can be no objective "should", even in principle, because objective morality is logically impossible.
On such a reality one would reasonably expect to observe a world where callousness, selfishness, and greed are commonplace. Hmm...have you read the news today?
"But it still RESTS on a premise about truth."
The premise about truth that modern materialism rest upon is that the basic reliability of the human senses is a provisional postulate.
The resting surface, as it were, for modern materialism is the provisional acceptance of axioms of intelligibility, that the extramental reality we perceive seems very real.
So, yes, very clearly, nobody can prove with absolute certainty that ones senses are basically reliable, but it very much seems that they are, so we modern materialists are very keenly aware that the foundation of our beliefs is itself a provisional postulate.
If you are not aware that you are in the very same boat then the difference between us is that you are kidding yourself and I am not.
DNW 10.40PM
DeleteSo, in response to my query as to why StarDusty might want to attend a pro-Hamas rally, you trot off a list of reasons he has previously listed for why the Palestinians might feel legitmately embittered and aggrieved at their treatment by Israel, though ones that if you mention them might well get you labelled as being antisemitic in some quarters.
With the above in mind, I'll try again. Why do you conclude that StatDusty might have a pro-Hamas rally to attend? You are clearly imagining yourself to be clever and witty, tarring StarDusty with the brush of being a supporter of terrorism, but with no evidence or logic to back it up. You have stooped to a new low, if such was possible.
Stardusty can be insulting, but at least he doesn't constantly trash people with autism and call them "it" instead of "he" or "she". So I guess to that extent, I would say Stardusty is a better person than DNW. Given his reaction to being called out, that doesn't appear to be a high bar to clear though.
DeleteAt least this is the end of the matter and I won't get any carping, indignant demands for attention in return.
Me: "But it still RESTS on a premise about truth."
DeleteStardusty: The premise about truth that modern materialism rest upon
This is why I normally don't answer Stardusty.
He seems to have swallowed my comments on modernism as if they belong to his cohort of materialists. There is no good reason to have done so, and probably no other reason than his passionate defensiveness about his materialism that is often under attack because he inserts his jejune theories so inappropriately where they doesn't belong.
Star-baby: modernism isn't materialism.
There is, sadly, a certain overlap, in that there are modernist materialists. But many modernists - and, for the purposes of this discussion about modernism inside the Church, a high percentage of them - who believe in God and the immortal soul. My attacks on modernism was against those who attempted to remain within the Church (and fooled themselves and others that they were not heretical), who were confident in belief in God and the soul, but chose to run off into the modernist train-wreck.
Does he even know what modernism is? Did he bother to read the Feser article? How about the Pius X encyclical condemning it, Pascendi?
Please don't take this as an invitation to answer: I don't wish to engage.
MP,
Delete"if he can't know truth, and yet, it that would be the case, then how can he know others can't either?"
Because such a determination, the assertion of certainty regarding the extramental reality, is logically impossible.
What tools does one have to learn anything about the extramental reality? Well, the human senses. Fine, what are you using to determine the accuracy of what you are sensing? Unfortunately, your senses.
So, inevitably, if one wishes to assert certainty about the extramental reality then one must use the senses to prove the senses, but it is the accuracy of the senses one is seeking to affirm in the first place. Thus, an assertion of certainty of the extramental reality requires begging the question, which is logically invalid.
"Also, if he can't know anything about anything not in his mind,"
Not precisely my claim. Nobody can be coherently certain of anything outside of ones own personal experience, and it is only the experience itself one can coherently be certain of, not the apparent external target of that experience.
If one defines knowledge as justified true belief then we may or may not have knowledge depending on whether our beliefs do or do not turn out to be true of the real ontological state of affairs of the cosmos. On that definition of knowledge one cannot be coherently certain that one has knowledge of the extramental reality, but that does not rule out the one might very well have knowledge (in the case that ones beliefs really are true with respect to the real ontological state of affairs of the cosmos).
As for New Theology or Old Theology, the accusations of incoherence toward materialism always vanish when one takes the time to accurately state the claims of modern materialism.
It is theology, both new and old, that makes a whole host of incoherent claims. Materialism, well described, is entirely free of incoherent claims.
Your assertions of inconsistencies in my claims are just a matter of you not using sufficiently clear language.
"why is he talking as if others should care what he says?"
That is your implication, for which I am not responsible. I never said you "should" care. "Should" is a personal emotion, up to you.
"But what would be a reason to care?"
If you value logic then you can evaluate for yourself the logic of claims made. If you do not value logic then there is no logical argument I can make that you will value.
Anonymous writes,
Delete"So, in response to my query as to why StarDusty might want to attend a pro-Hamas rally, you trot off a list of reasons he has previously listed for why the Palestinians might feel legitmately embittered and aggrieved at their treatment by Israel, though ones that if you mention them might well get you labelled as being antisemitic in some quarters."
The list "trotted off" was Stardusty's, posted October 13 almost a week after the slaughter in Israel.
His litany of ideologically developed PLO or Hamas style assertions, was presented in the superficial form of a rhetorical question composed of serial indictments challenging both the legitimate existence of Israel, and ultimately by insinuation any moral condemnation of the homicidal methods of Hamas style massacre operations.
It is interesting to note that although it had been a week since the slaughter raids Hamas perpetrated against Israel, the quasi technical discussions here - perhaps thankfully - had not featured any diversion into that or any allied matter.
But, apparently it was percolating just beneath the surface of some who had been champing at the bit to open an avenue wherein they could discuss the ostensibly oppressive influence of Israel or of the Jews.
This opportunity for an introduction was taken by someone posting like yourself as Anonymous.
In the original posting on the topic of "A Little Logic ...", Ed addresses the concept of the ad hominem argument. In his initial set-up from which he will then go on to point out that some character directed argunents do not represent fallacious reasoning, he first states, " ...instead of addressing the merits of some argument the person has given, you simply call him names – “racist,” “fascist,” “commie,” or whatever.
Next day, our aforementioned Anonymous slips in a short comment asserting without any obvious reason that when Ed wrote merely "whatever", Anonymous thought it should be read as "anti semite", thus, "whatever == anti-semite".
Now this use of the Python operator code, essentially, a == b, # True, by "Anonymous" is mildly interesting in itself. How many commenters here have adverted to their regular use of code, I'll leave to your estimation.
In any event, two days later Stardusty takes the opportunity to leverage off of "Anonymous' " broaching of the subject of a putatively unjustifiable or fallacious employment of the charge of antisemitism, in order to provide his litany of Hamas talking points.
A litany which culminates in his perverted emotional climax,
" Is it anti-sematic to assert that a people so grossly conquered and imprisoned have the right to resist, have the right to fight back with whatever weapons they can manage to get their hands on, and have the right to inflict pain on the conquerors to put a price on their theft?"
Stardusty is not asking. Stardusty is telling.
And his doing so, is telling. Or telling enough to provoke the question posed.
Ok, you have been humored enough.
Now, if you have read this far, here is a new rule for you. If you are so triggered by what I write that you cannot stop obsessing about it or just bugger off, then muster the energy or personal courage or whatever it takes for you to pick a commenter ID. Otherwise your superciliously affected hall monitor act will just be ignored. And it might be anyways.
Tony,
Delete"Star-baby: modernism isn't materialism."
It is if you value making sense.
New theology is like adding some refinements to your epicycles to make the geocentric model fit the data a little better.
"modernism inside the Church"
Oxymoron, if you value sound analysis.
"My attacks on modernism was against those who attempted to remain within the Church (and fooled themselves and others that they were not heretical), who were confident in belief in God and the soul, but chose to run off into the modernist train-wreck."
Right, dabbling in modern rationality while clinging to ancient superstitions like god and the soul only creates a house divided against itself.
"Does he even know what modernism is?"
Do you? It seems not.
I mean, having a pope who changes his mind and then goes back to being infallible again, modernizing the church, introducing some new theology, is a least some small step in the direction of rationality and sound argument.
But yes, agreed, modernizing within the church is ultimately a path toward self contradiction. Clearly the rational alternative is to leave the church so you are no longer fettered by all that ancient nonsense.
DNW,
Delete"Otherwise your superciliously affected hall monitor act will just be ignored."
How will you know? Well, I suppose you could just ignore all anons. Or, possibly ignore posts that seem to be written by that anon, based on content and/or writing style.
"superciliously"
Indeed, your posts project not a whiff of such.
"Hamas talking points."
Are you Jerry Coyne by any chance? Just wondering, he has a habit of associating any critic of Likud controlled Israel with Hamas.
Are the Jews in Israel and outside of Israel who say the same things I have said also presumed by you as likely Hamas supporters? Are they anti-Semites?
Perhaps you might support additional shipments of ammunition and weapons systems to Israel, as well as deploying aircraft carriers and other American military forces to the region in military support of Israel.
If so, does that make you a proponent of Democratic talking points? You do realize that the president of the United States has taken those actions, and he is a leader in the Democratic party, right?
I have noticed a pattern in your responses indicating a lack of depth of thought, generally, over a broad spectrum of questions.
In modern times popes have apologized for past Catholic mistreatment of Jews, so maybe you think New Theology isn't so bad after all?
DNW 12.59PM
DeleteI doubt very much that you will ignore my critical posts about you, anymore than you will those of StarDusty, who 'follows you about like a puppy dog' apparently, as it is just about the only interaction you get on here. You seem quite oblivious to the fact that because of your tone, content and very poor writing, you are likely ignored and passed over yourself by most of the readers here, who no doubt also pity you. You need desperately to write novellas in response as a form of self-validation.
I see that Stardusty has offered more. Let's have a look.
Delete"What tools does one have to learn anything about the extramental reality? Well, the human senses." - unfortunately for you, that proposition itself is about extramental reality. Thus, you can't know that.
That's the very problem - you can't know that you can't know anything about "extramental reality".
"If one defines knowledge as" - ah, yes. You end up having to change definition of "knowledge" whenever you find that convenient. Usually (although not this time) with hope that no one will notice?
Which brings us to "Materialism, well described, is entirely free of incoherent claims.". But, you see, in this case you haven't been accused mainly of making claims that contradict each other.
No, you have been accused of not living as if your philosophy was true.
After all, if your philosophy was true, you would know that you know nothing interesting, and would have to shut up (as Wittgenstein has said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.").
And, as we see, you do not do that.
So, it is time to get back to the topic and point to that same "truth is the conformity of intellect to life" (by representatives of Nouvelle Theologie).
For, while it is not a good definition, it is not such a bad guideline. If you can't even make a serious attempt to live in accordance with your philosophy, it follows that it is false.
And then we have to find out what has to be true if (as we know by now via this reductio ad absurdum) humans can know that "extramental reality".
We have to find out what is the philosophy one can at least attempt to live by.
Tony: "Star-baby: modernism isn't materialism."
DeleteStar: It is if you value making sense.
Tony: "modernism inside the Church"
Star: Oxymoron, if you value sound analysis.
Tony: "My attacks on modernism was ..."
Star: Right, dabbling in modern rationality while clinging to ancient superstitions ...
Tony: "Does he even know what modernism is?"
Star: Do you? It seems not. ...having a pope who ... modernizing the church, ... modernizing within the church
Faceplant. Here we have someone who manifestly didn't even bother to look up "modernism" (or, more particularly, Catholic modernism), to see if it was what he thought it was.
It isn't merely "modern" theory or philosophy. It isn't the adjective "modern" made into an "ism" so that it (constantly) reflects the most up-to-date theory or philosophy. Making a church reflect "modernism" would not mean "modernizing" the church to get with the new thinking of the 2020s. It is a specific philosophic / methodological view that was characteristic of a certain trend of the 1860s to 1930s in certain circles, a view that by no means swept the realms of non-theists completely and by no means is the CURRENT view of most non-religious philosophers of today. And it certainly is not the dominant methodological approach of most materialist philosophers today. It doesn't mean "current" at all. Modern rationality isn't "modernism". Modernizing isn't "to make conformed to modernism".
But by all means, continue to make yourself ridiculous.
@Anonymous writes:
DeleteYou seem quite oblivious to the fact that because of your tone, content and very poor writing, you are likely ignored and passed over yourself by most of the readers here, who no doubt also pity you.
Actually, DNW is a very good writer, and I enjoy his posts.
MP,
Delete"That's the very problem - you can't know that you can't know anything about "extramental reality".
You seem to be conflating "know" with "be certain of".
If knowledge is justified true belief then we have knowledge when our beliefs are in fact accurate with respect to the real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos.
We can't be certain we have knowledge of extramental reality. We might have knowledge or we might not have knowledge, depending upon whether or not our beliefs are true, that is, depending up whether our beliefs comport with the true ontological state of affairs in the cosmos.
"You end up having to change definition of "knowledge" whenever you find that convenient."
Now you are making up a falsehood out of whole cloth. A common and widely employed definition of knowledge is "justified true belief". That is the definition I typically work from in discussion, and when I am framing an epistemological argument I state that as my working definition.
So, your claim that I am somehow equivocating on the definition of knowledge is certainly false and potentially dishonest.
"After all, if your philosophy was true, you would know that you know nothing interesting"
Interesting to who? Perhaps not to Wittgenstein, then tough luck for Wittgenstein.
My thoughts are interesting to me, and manifestly to many I interact with.
"And, as we see, you do not do that."
Wittgenstein can state whatever he wanted, I am under no obligation to obey Wittgenstein.
"truth is the conformity of intellect to life"
If "life" is a surrogate word for "real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos", and "truth" in that context is a shortened version of "true belief", then ok, fair enough.
So, to clarify, "True belief is the conformity of the intellect to the real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos". Yes, that works.
"If you can't even make a serious attempt to live in accordance with your philosophy, it follows that it is false."
What "it" is false? A philosophy is false if the proponent does not live by it? No, that is the tu quoque fallacy.
"humans can know that "extramental reality"."
There you go again with your imprecise language. Humans cannot be certain of the extramental reality. We may or may not have knowledge of the extramental reality depending on whether or not our beliefs comport with the real ontological state of affairs of the cosmos.
Again, given that knowledge is "justified true belief". If you have a different definition of knowledge, fine, but it would be helpful to state it because I am using the common definition for the sake of discussion.
"So, to clarify, "True belief is the conformity of the intellect to the real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos". Yes, that works."?
DeleteDid Stardusty really state Thomistic definition of truth in his own words, and express confidence in it?
It might be time to celebrate!
Can we make an actual Thomist of him yet?
MP,
Delete"Did Stardusty really state Thomistic definition of truth in his own words"
No. I changed the words provided so they would make sense.
I provided a rewording of the common definition of knowledge, not truth.
Knowledge is commonly defined as "justified true belief". If you prefer a different definition, fine, by all means write it here.
Truth is the real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos. Some of those words are not strictly required. A simpler way to say it is that truth is the ontological state of affairs in the cosmos, or simply that truth is the state of affairs.
A true belief, then, is a belief that comports with truth. Since a belief is an aspect of the intellect, then a true belief is when the intellect comports with truth. Thus a true belief is a condition of the intellect that is in accordance with the real ontological state of affairs in the cosmos.
Thomism has nothing to do with any of the above, except perhaps by coincidence or by independent reasoning.
To assert that these basic definitions are somehow Thomistic is to confuse correlation as causation.
Knowledge is an awareness of how things are.
DeleteWe can further distinguish between the sense knowledge (as shared by other animals) of sensible objects, and the intellectual knowledge proper to rational beings, which involves correct *judgment* related to intelligible objects.
JTB adds nothing but confusion to the definition above as your comment below well illustrates: You seem to be conflating "know" with "be certain of".
Zoe,
Delete"Knowledge is an awareness of how things are."
How is that not synonymous with True Belief?
To be aware is to hold a belief.
I am aware that water is in the distance.
I believe that water is in the distance.
But is it true that water is in the distance?
What if my awareness, my belief, is false?
Well, if I have a false awareness, a false belief, then my awareness/belief is not "how things are".
But it is the truth, or untruth, of my beliefs I am seeking to determine in the first place. Hence the circularity of using my sense awareness to determine the truth or untruth of what I am sensing.
"JTB adds nothing but confusion to the definition above"
Your definition adds no clarity to JTB. All you did was reword JTB
True belief = awareness of how things are
Or, if you still don't see it due to the reversed phrasing structure:
Belief that is true = awareness of how things are.
You have omitted "justified". How can you be certain your awareness is true? By using your senses? How can you be certain that your senses are providing truth? By using your senses? Surely you see the circularity in that approach.
Sorry Zoe, but you cannot be coherently certain of your perceived extramental reality, just like the rest of us. All you can do is be personally convinced that you have justified your beliefs such that in your opinion what you are aware of seems to be how things are.
Or, perhaps you are god and the rest of us are just figments of your divine imagination. You are the totality of all that exists. You are the cosmos. You are the One.
I mean, as long as one is making up fanciful invisible beings that exist outside time and space it might just as well be you. The speculation that you are god is no less likely than any other speculation of god.
I did not "reword JTB". I gave you the definition of knowledge under the Perennial Tradition which I prefer, as you asked.
DeleteIndeed, Plato already gave good reason for rejecting JTB, and you insisting that our senses are uncertain doesn't exempt you from recognizing the circularity of your own approach: how does one justify anything without knowledge?
Like it or not, but your justification cannot be anything but a belief once you rule out an ability to be aware of how things are.
Rather than simply asserting "To be aware is to hold a belief" please deal with the fact that 'to be aware' is actually 'to *perceive* or *experience*' a particular thing (which may be how things are).
You might prefer imprisoning yourself in your beliefs, but every scientist must affirm *with certainty* the power of the intellect to know truth (the first condition) along with the first fact (his own existence) and the first principle (the principle of contradiction).
And there is no alternative between admitting those truths and admitting the self-contradiction of universal scepticism.
Zoe,
Delete"I gave you the definition of knowledge under the Perennial Tradition which I prefer, as you asked."
Which is the same as "True Belief" as I clearly showed above.
"insisting that our senses are uncertain doesn't exempt you from recognizing the circularity of your own approach:, how does one justify anything without knowledge?"
With certainty, one cannot. That is my point. Not only is your definition another way to word "True Belief", you and I are stuck in the same boat of uncertainty of what is knowledge and uncertainty of our justifications or the extramental reality.
It is hubris and folly to claim otherwise.
"Like it or not, but your justification cannot be anything but a belief once you rule out an ability to be aware of how things are."
The core belief being the basic reliability of the human senses, which is a postulate none of us can be coherently certain of.
" "To be aware is to hold a belief" please deal with the fact that 'to be aware' is actually 'to *perceive* or *experience*' a particular thing (which may be how things are)."
You are asserting distinctions that do not constitute a difference.
Your perceptions "may be" how things are. That is just another way of saying you are uncertain that your perceptions are true representations of extramental reality.
"you might prefer imprisoning yourself in your beliefs,"
My preferences are irrelevant. The limitations of certainty are part of the human condition whether any of us prefers it or not.
"but every scientist must affirm *with certainty* the power of the intellect to know truth "
No, you misunderstand science. Science does not do proof. Science is founded on the provisional postulates of the basic reliability of the human senses and the truth of the axioms of logic. Certainty is irrelevant.
"along with the first fact (his own existence)"
Now you are conflating the extramental reality with the personal reality of self awareness, which is the basis for the few absolute truths we have available.
"the first principle (the principle of contradiction)."
Which is an axiom of logic accepted as if were true.
"And there is no alternative between admitting those truths and admitting the self-contradiction of universal scepticism"
There is no self contradiction in skepticism, none whatsoever.
OBTW, there is no contradiction in materialism or reductionism either.
With certainty, one cannot. That is my point. Not only is your definition another way to word "True Belief", you and I are stuck in the same boat of uncertainty of what is knowledge and uncertainty of our justifications or the extramental reality.
DeleteNo, no, no. I asked how do you justify anything without knowledge, not certainty. Just as MP said (and you denied) you hop between meanings as convenient.
The justification in JTB just is something we *know* about the TB that makes it *knowledge* rather than a flukey delusion. In other words your definition of knowledge is "true belief that we know is knowledge" which even you can see is circular.
You are asserting distinctions that do not constitute a difference.
There is in fact a very great difference between holding a belief about a particular thing and experiencing that thing. Strange that the materialist pretends to know otherwise.
Do you distinguish between opinion and fact?
If so, why don't you realize that 'justified true belief' is concerned not with knowledge but with right opinion?
OBTW, we don't admit the principle of contradiction "as if were true. [sic]" but because it is *self-evident*. If you doubt this then you owe us a rational rejection of it that doesn't first assume it.
Zoe,
Delete"Just as MP said (and you denied) you hop between meanings as convenient."
It seems that way to you because you do not understand the meanings of what you are saying.
You defined knowledge as true awareness, which is the same as true belief. That is what an awareness is, a belief. That is what a belief is, an awareness.
Truth is how things are.
I am not switching meanings. You just don't yet understand the meanings of the terms you are using.
"how do you justify anything without knowledge"
Justification is personal feeling, a person threshold of what one finds convincing. If you want to omit justification from the definition of knowledge that is fine, then knowledge is simply a true belief, as opposed to a justified true belief.
Justice is a matter of convention. What is justified in one person's sensibilities is not justified in another persons sensibilities. Justification is a matter of personal sensibility and personal credulity, what seems reasonable and credible and convincing to you.
Justification is a matter of convincing evidence.
Extramental knowledge is necessarily uncertain. You might be personally convinced of X, you might believe X, still X might or might not be true. Since knowledge, in your definition, is true belief, to be coherently certain of holding knowledge then you must be certain of determining the truth or falsehood of your belief that X.
But it is your belief that X you are attempting to ascertain the truth or falsehood of in the first place. All human beings are faced with this uncertainty, that is, no human being can be coherently certain of the truth of the extramental reality.
You may hold a belief that X.
You may be convinced that X.
But you can never be coherently certain of that extramental X.
Therefore you can never be coherently certain that your belief that X constitutes knowledge.
"There is in fact a very great difference between holding a belief about a particular thing and experiencing that thing."
You can believe that your experience is mistaken. Ok, fine, but that just goes to my point about uncertainty.
"That is what an awareness is, a belief. That is what a belief is, an awareness."
DeleteYou are a good demonstration that there is a very great difference between belief and awareness. For you are full of self-belief but utterly lacking in self-awareness:
If you had the smallest amount of self-awareness, you would read yourself stating categorically that all things must be doubted and blush; see yourself disputing the self-contradiction of universal scepticism ("There is [...] none whatsoever" [my emphasis]) in no uncertain terms and swallow your tongue; and on and on.
But you have so much self-belief that you can even express doubt in the principle of rational thought. If materialism means undermining knowledge and reason, you're welcome to it.
you would read yourself stating categorically that all things must be doubted and blush; see yourself disputing the self-contradiction of universal scepticism ("There is [...] none whatsoever" [my emphasis]) in no uncertain terms
DeleteYou forgot a key word he uses when describing uncertainty, because you're thinking like a normal rational person, while the New Atheist mentality is an exercise in self-worship of one's own reasoning prowess.
He says "extramental reality", or that which exists outside his own mind. Of that, the New Atheist can express uncertainty when it's convenient to be skeptical. But when it comes to his own beliefs, derived from his own reasoning, that's iron-clad fact that has no possibility of flaw, none whatsoever. The first point of evidence you are wrong is disagreeing with such an individual, who has no chance of being wrong. None whatsoever.
New Atheist Hubris 101.
Zoe,
Delete"you would read yourself stating categorically that all things must be doubted"
I never said that. It would be helpful if you avoided such strawmen.
What I said is that we cannot be coherently certain of the extramental reality, and yes, of that I am certain, and no, that is not a self contradiction. If you think it is then you just have not thought it through carefully enough.
A common line of discussion is that an immaterialist will criticize a materialist for being certain of the extramental reality because the materialist, by his own assertion, has only his senses of observe the extramental reality.
Thus, the immaterialist will point out, such a materialist is engaging in a logically invalid mode of thinking, circular reasoning, by using the senses to affirm the certainty of the accuracy of the senses.
I do not have the position of certainty of the extramental reality so I do not suffer from that sort of circular reasoning.
I am certain of that uncertainty. And no, that is not circular, because I have an internal certainty about the uncertainty of the extramental.
Note also that I did not say I was certain I am wrong about the extramental, only that I am certain I am uncertain about the extramental. Being uncertain allows for both possibilities, being correct or being incorrect, I might be either, I simply cannot be certain which, of that I am certain.
"If materialism means undermining knowledge and reason,"
That depends on your definition of knowledge. At the time Rumsfeld was commonly scoffed at, I thought he raised some very interesting philosophical distinctions.
The known knowns
The known unknowns
The unknown unknowns
Rumsfeld did not state publicly
The unknown knowns
If this all seems too convoluted or contrived to you then I invite you to consider that philosophers broadly disagree on the definitions of basic words like "truth" and "knowledge".
Can one justify a belief?
How does one determine the truth of a belief?
Can one be certain of all beliefs, some beliefs, or no beliefs?
Formulating a coherent set of definitions and methodologies to answer such questions is no simple task. If you think you have such a set available, by all means, post it here.
Whatever else might be said about the Nouvelle Theologie they are terrible writers. Verbose and unclear.
ReplyDeleteCould it be that they were trying to write poetically without actually being good at poetry?
DeleteI suppose that would fit them claiming that Thomists were writing in a dry way - so, presumably they would be trying to write poetically. And when one tries to write poetically and fails, the result is often "verbose and unclear".
Even "truth is the conformity of intellect to life" sounds like a try to say "truth is the conformity of intellect to reality", but poetically (without actually being good at poetry).
WCB
ReplyDelete@MP
"So, why is your interpretation of the Bible you keep repeating here relevant in this case?"
Long ago I thought that if I was a Christian, I would read the gospels and Acts and would follow the commands of Jesus to the letter. And long ago, out of curiosity, I read the gospels very carefully taking careful note of the explicit commands, the dos and don'ts of Jesus.
Jesus claimed that the Kingdom Of God was to come very soon. Within the lifetimes of many of his followers. His commands made no sense for long term life on Earth. But that was not what this was all about. It was making sure that when the Kingdom Of God came, his followers would live in the new Utopia coming, soon, soon, soon. The path to being one of the sheep, not one of the goats.
Selling all you have and giving to the poor was a necessity to be a citizen in good standing in this coming Kingdom Of God. Which did not come as promised.
Today, large numbers of American Christians self identify in surveys as believing Jesus will return in their lifetimes. If so, these commands to make sure you are not rich and will be saved still are mandated.
This exercise made me think about what the message of Jesus in the gospels was at its most basic foundation.
YMMV
WCB
I hope your book is coming along well, Ed, and that you will soon comment on another topic.
ReplyDeleteOP
ReplyDelete"The revival of Thomism and of scholasticism more generally was the intellectual heart of the pre–Vatican II popes’ approach to articulating and defending Catholic teaching in the face of the theological, philosophical, scientific, and political revolutions that defined modernity."
Thomism in the face of scientific revolutions?
Modern science and modern logic prove that the arguments of Aquinas are logically invalid as well as containing multiple false premises.
"They argued that, rightly understood, this worldview was perfectly compatible with modern science."
So is the assertion that a googleplex Plank scale angels nudge every particle along.
Every fanciful speculation about spirits and gods and invisible hobgoblins is "compatible" with modern science. You can make up as much fanciful nonsense as you want, just claim it is all invisible, and crow about how "compatible" your absurd speculations are with modern science.
"Compatibility" just won't do for the Arguments of Aquinas.
Aquinas argued for NECESSITY, not compatibility.
Aquinas is made unsound because compatibility of your speculation is insufficient to establish NECESSITY.
The best case scenario is that communio and neo-scholastic Catholics rally together against concilium currents.
ReplyDeleteThe Nouvelle Theologie has established itself among those who appose the papacy from the Gallicanist angle. Theses which were banished from the Church before Vatican II, and unheard of in that of the Council of Trent, are now paraded as "Tradition".
ReplyDeleteThe Remnant’s resident theologian, Robert Kmita, avowed defender of Guenon, has continued to push that publication further down into the mire of heresy. It declares that all the articles in our Creeds come from “the Bible”. This is false. Pope Francis, like Saint Pius V, could have told The Remnant that.
Next he quotes Saint Thomas Aquinas, getting him wrong (Kmita subscribes to the esoterist ideology of de Maistre, for whom the symbols of faith were more “formulas of submission” than the real faith, “mysteries” which could only be “understood” by “initiates”): “the act of the believer does not terminate in a proposition, but in a thing”= “formulas” bad, mushy “spirit”, good. But the text cited (ST II-II, Q. I, Art. ii, obj ii, ad ii) concludes that, while the object of belief is simple in itself, but secondly, “on the part of the believer, and in this respect the object of faith is something complex by way of a proposition”.
The faith and the constitution of the Church are being dismantled systematically by writers like Kmita and Kwasnewsky. There was a raving script by the editor of One Peter Five a couple of days ago, alluding to the “glorious times” in which we live, when Popes are heretics and deposable “again” (claims Justinian “appointed” and “deposed” Popes – a “history” better taught by the Prods who invented it). Under the guise of opposing the Pope, such publications are slipping the venom of Gallicanist, Conciliarist and esoteric ideology into the minds of the gullible.
Cervantes’ struggle to talk sense into these wayward publications is a bit like shutting barn after the proverbial horse has bolted. Robert Lazu Kmita in the Remnant? He’s all over the place, from One Peter Five to Una Voce’s “Gregorius Magnus”, where he was preaching the same falsehoods decried above. He does roundly reject basic Catholic dogmas: our first parents could have attained a “beatific vision” (Lazu Kmita’s quotation marks) just by persevering in their “meditation” towards a higher knowledge, and without dying. Original sin was in seeking to attain this “knowledge” before being “ready”. This knowledge, which he calls “heaven”, is a return to Eden, which he says will recur, on earth.
DeleteIn these two articles in Una Voce International’s official journal this year, he claims the world has become “devoid of sanctifying grace”, the “fall” caused man to become “material” and animals ceased to be “immortal”. That Lazu Kmita really does mean that Eden was and will “again” be “heaven” is evident in his claim that the Cherubim in Genesis were preventing access to heaven, not Eden as Catholics understand it. Lazu Kmita defines original sin strictly as the loss of Adam’s preternatural gifts, which he labels “grace”. "One Peter Five" published him again just now, praising Vladimir Solovev to the heavens, whereas the Russian was a cabbalist and occultist who believed “Sophia” was the spirit of a deceased woman of his acquaintance. If several banner publications of conservative traditionalism, plus the influential member of the Saint Peter Fraternity, Fr. De Mallerais, have been under the spell of Lazu Kimita for years, it seems a waste of time trying to alert them.
Awful. The Remnant has just published yet another article by Robert Kmita rejecting the account given by Fatima of a physical chastisement of the world leading to a new Marian age, in favour of the Protestant, End Times Apocalyptic account. For Kmita (now furiously promoted by the so-called traditionalist Remnant), the world is already under a symbolic reign of Antichrist, but only intiates in his occultist symbolism can perceive this, however. Not so sure about this - Luther thought he could perceive it pretty well.
DeleteIt's clear enough that, under the guidance of the new Doctors of the Church, Kmita-Kwasnewsky, and the leadership of Vigano/Siffi, Conciliarist Gallicanism and esoteric "traditionalism" will darken the minds on unwary traditional Catholics. In all this, there is but one certainty about the future, Archbishop Vigano will never appear outside cyberspace because he is INCAPABLE of discussing all the verbiage he has manifestly NOT written.
@Miguel Cervantes
DeleteOne should not be so doctrinaire and harsh with Mr Kmita. Like the nouvelle theologie, he has found ways of bridging the gap between modern philosophy and the ancient world, between which strict Thomism was an obstacle. Mr. Kmita should be understood within our Romanian tradition of thought. He is not firstly a disciple of Guenon but of the Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade, about whom he has written much and run conferences and symposiums.
It's true that Mr Kmita predicts a return to Eden, as an intimate connection with a timeless spiritual world of the divine, something which modern man cannot do. Eliade explained how tradition man can transcend the veil of the materialism. In his Techniques of Shamanism”, Eliade wrote, “The shaman is the great specialist in the human soul; he alone "sees” it, for he knows its and its destiny”. In another work, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Eliade says “Christianity incontestably proves to be the religion of “fallen man": and this to the extent to which modern man is irremediably identified with history and progress, and to which history and progress are a fall, both implying the final abandonment of the paradise of archetypes and repetition”. Before the Judaeo-Christian invention of faith, Eliade says, man could safely rely on the repetition of symbolic rituals, myths and the intervention of shaman-mystics. This was the means of acting outside history. Kmita and Eliade argue that history is the fall, original sin itself. But faith will allow men to change the universe, even ontologically, re-establishing the link with creation that existed in traditional religions.
Mr Kmita, following Ernst Renan, has a mystical symbolic vision of Christ and his miracles. This is interpretation he applied to Christianity in general. If one is too dogmatic or repeats the formulas of the Thomist revival, it is hard to understand the discussion of the Romanian school, which also puts itself in the patristic tradition.
Constantin, people have their views. The problem here is Kmita’s representation of his ideas as Catholicism. Incredibly, these dangerous beliefs are broadcast by a number of publications, especially the two listed above, which spew bile about our “diabolical” Pope.
DeleteOne Peter Five has just published a long defence of the occultist Russian, Vladimir Solovev, pushing his work, “Russia and the Universal Church”, where Solovev argues for the Papacy as head of the universal Church, discrediting Russian Orthodoxy.
But it ends there. Solovev reinvents Christianity in the light of occultism and gnosticism. Consult the work (London 1948). Solovev’s only dogma is dualism: “In India the soul of mankind, manifesting itself first through the intuitions of the saints and sages of orthodox Brahmanism… finally through the new religion of Buddha Sakyamum, recognised and loved the Absolute primarily in its negative form as the opposite of existence outside the Godhead, or the nature of the world” (p. 187).
Chaos co-exists with the divine from all eternity, and “creation” is God’s “reaction” to chaos (pp. 157, 167). The world is a passive, chaotic creation, accomplished before [!] the angelic rebellion, “for the Divine Will had al-ready called forth from the void the world-soul, in awakening in it the chaotic desire, the basis and material of all Creation. This world-soul is an indefinite and indeterminate principle” (169. Without divine intervention, the world would have reverted to the chaos “in which it was before the Creation” (181). “The soul of this world is in itself an undefined duality… the work of creation… can only advance in a slow and gradual manner… it is not the direct work of God… Nothing could bear less resemblance [than creation] to an entirely perfect work issuing directly from a single divine artificer. Our cosmic history… [consists of] shocks and violent convulsions, blind gropings, unfinished sketches of unsuccessful creations, monstrous births and abortions [dinosaurs are given bad press here]”. (171). Evil predates original sin and angelic rebellion; it is part of the cosmos from eternity: “At the root of all human evil, all sins and crimes both individual and social, lies a weakness, a radical infirmity… It is the chaotic principle, the primordial basis of all created being” (211).
Enough. Christianity has always praised creation as undividedly good. God did not have to co-exist with, or sup-press or react to anything, let alone “chaos”, from all eternity, as Solovev informs us. His heresy is the oldest, and very evil. How could One Peter Five’s editor not have seen this, repeated ad nauseam in the book he touts? And where did Solovev get his ideas from? Read Kristi Groberg’s “The Feminine Occult Sophia in the Russian Religious Renaissance” (Canadian-American Slavic Studies.): In 1875 Solovev went to the British Museum to “immerse himself” in sophiological literature of Hellenic Judaism, Gnosticism, and the Kabala. “’He read almost exclusively the esoteric occult literature on Sophia’; ‘mysterious forces’ told him what to read about Her”. At this time, he visited the spiritualists Charles Williams and A. R. Wallace and attended seances. Seeking a deeper connection, “he prayed to Sophia… Soul of the World… to appear in visible form. A beautiful woman appeared, instructing him to go to Egypt to await further revelations… he literally caught the first available train for Cairo” Once in Egypt, he heard a voice “I am in the desert” etc., etc. This nonsense went on for the rest of his life, and his lectures on religion would be a compendium of errors.
DeleteSolovev was one of those celebrated Russians, like Chaadaev, who flirted with the Catholic Church, but refused to accept her in any other form but that of the German philosophy that was their true religion. They had a use for the Church, but traditional Catholics have absolutely no use for these crazy ideas, which are immeasurably worse than anything taught in the name of Vatican II.
This is not a new approach to theology connecting us with the primitive Church; it's the nightmare of the primitive Church
Dr Robert Kmita has just endorsed "Hermetic magic" as the solution to the Church's problems (in an article in the European Conservative). The plot thickens.
DeleteA “job” is being done on conservative trads as we speak. The European Conservative’s article by occultist, Gue-nonist Kmita (26/11/23) did indeed praise Morello for advocating "magic" “mysticism”. To “save” the Church, Morello advocates occultists Ficino and della Mirandola (among the many architects of modernity’s faithlessness) alleging Aquinas was their spiritual father. Yet he also attacks Thomism: Catholic seminaries have been “bewitched… with the assumptions of rationalism” for “centuries”. Must be that nasty Council of Trent. Indeed, Morello claims that, since the ”early Church”, the Church has just been making “truth claims”. How ungnostic of it. The Remnant and One Peter Five really ought to publish Morello. He’ll quicken their forced march out of the Church, leaving behind Pope Francis and all of us traditional and not-so-traditional Catholics (but Catholics we will be!).
DeleteKmita says the same thing, attacking the Thomist revival of Leo XIII, praising the nouvelle theologie, and excusing occultism as “mysticism”, rather than the “empty formulas” of rational things like creeds and catechisms. Mysticism must exist, but, since the end of public revelation, such experiences have certitude only for the person experiencing them. Modern Gnostics mix up the natural with the supernatural, voiding both of them in the process – this very modern “path” guarantees scepticism. If all rationalism is a “spell” (words of the occultist Tarot fanatic, Tomberg, cited by Morello), the only alternative to reason is scepticism. This has been the only dogma of Martinists, conservative ideologues and romanticists. It is the death of Christianity.
For Kmita, the rationalism, not only of liberalism, but of the Thomist revival, is the darkness of the Apocalypse. The forbidden fruit in Eden was really reason, and original sin, according to Kmita was merely the “omission” (The Remnant 25/11/23) of neglecting the path of Gnosticism. Wrong, the forbidden fruit was precisely the pursuit of the kind of “knowledge” promoted by Kmita and Morello which, according to Kmita’s master, Jean Borella (in his Remnant article, he is in rapture about Borella, another disciple of Guenon), makes men realise they are really “God”.
Any Catholic may freely permit himself to use the H word here. Borella’s writings are heretical: "original sin" could be repaired merely by returning to human cognition its “operative virtue” and “salvific efficacity”; human intelligence supersedes the order of nature, and is of itself ordered to the supernatural – it is, in fact, an “uncreated” aspect of humanity, an “emanation of God” etc., etc (Charity Profained, Borella, 1979). Other Gnostic falsehoods flow from this confusion of natural with supernatural, of creation with creator. Kmita’s obsession with the “fall” being a failure of cognition rather than an act of the will, is his inheritance of a lifetime of reading the fuming lies of Gnosticism instead of the “truth claims” of the Church. The Remnant should be thoroughly ashamed for endangering their readership. It’s impossible to believe they are this ignorant of the Catholic Faith. The appeal of these Gnostics to Catholic traditionalists carefully omits half the history of the errors causing grief in the Church: they issue as much from irrational, so-called mysticism claiming origin in the early Church and the Fathers, as from liberal rationalism. Modernism happily accommodates both Kmita and Kung.
It might save time if you read Observations on the Influence of the Occult in Traditional Catholic Discourse.
Deletehttps://justacatholic.medium.com/observations-on-the-influence-of-the-occult-in-traditional-catholic-discourse-2d798e5ba51c
It's all there. The connections between Angelico Press and Tomberg and Borella and Kwasniewski. Charles Coulombe in Tarot sessions with his Theosophist friends.
This is significant. The author of this piece appears interested in sedevacantists but what he had to say about the occult in sectors of American traditionalism is verifiable in detail. I've checked. Their talk of Platonism and the Fathers of the Church as a cloak for heterodoxy and magic is not hard to see through.
DeleteIt seems old-style witches don’t like Vatican II, the Novus Ordo or Pope Francis. Those listed in McFadden’s article are motivated as much by what the Church since the Council got right as what it got wrong. Are we troubled by the rise of “rationalist” liberals in the Church? No need to worry. A host of kabbalists, warlocks and sacrificers to the arcane are waiting in the wings to fix things. Why, they love old rituals even more than we do: Wolfgang Smith, a star of Angelico Diabolico Press, even wishes [in Science and Myth] for a Dark Side alternative history of the modern Church: “One can only, in retrospect, lament that the Catholic authorities did not pay heed to… Guenon… writing and lecturing in their midst… instead… [becoming] enamored with Jacques Maritain’s Integral Humanism. How different the subsequent history of the Church might have been if its intellectual leaders had listened to Rene Guenon! But they did not; and… have presented us, sad to say, with the likes of Caudium et Spes”.
DeleteFor Wolfgang Smith, “Bell’s theorem… tantamount to a recognition of the intermediary or what occultists term the astral domain—the bhuvar of the Vedic Tribhuvan”. He approvingly quotes Guenon: “quantity itself... is no more than the ‘residue’ of an existence emptied of everything that constituted its essence .” The material becomes something evil, “original sin” itself, rather than God’s creation. Could someone change their old Gnostic, dualist record?
The number of authors with similar ideas published by this company is large. Occultism’s religious androgyny is its time honoured method of setting up camp within the Church. And the old methods of dealing with it are the only ones that work. The dissension within the Fraternity of Saint Peter concerning its close association with “Angelico” Press, and Fr. de Mallerais’ promotion of the occultist, Dr. Kmita, ought to come to an end with a clear statement concerning these occultist ideas.
Occultism is a disease of the mind. Don't expect confessions or apologies.
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