. . . [T]he theology of the Eastern Church distinguishes in God the three hypostases, the nature or essence, and the energies. The Son and the Holy Spirit are, so to say, personal processions, the energies natural processions. The energies are inseparable from the nature, and the nature is inseparable from the three Persons. These distinctions are of great importance for the Eastern Church's conception of mystical life:1. The doctrine of the energies, ineffably distinct from the essence, is the dogmatic basis of the real character of all mystical experience. God, who is inaccessible in His essence, is present in His energies 'as in a mirror,' remaining invisible in that which He is; 'in the same way we are able to see our faces, themselves invisible to us in a glass,' according to a saying of St. Gregory Palamas. [Sermon on the Presentation of the Holy Virgin in the Temple, edited by Sophocles, Athens, 1861, pp. 176-7.] Wholly unknowable in His essence, God wholly reveals Himself in His energies, which yet in no way divide His nature into two parts--knowable and unknowable--but signify two different modes of the divine existence, in the essence and outside of the essence.
2. This doctrine makes it possible to understand how the Trinity can remain incommunicable in essence and at the same time come and dwell within us, according to the promise of Christ (John xiv, 23). The presence is not a causal one, such as the divine omnipresence in creation; no more is it a presence according to the very essence--which is by defintion incommunicable; it is a mode according to which the Trnity dwells in us by means of that in itself which is communicable--that is to say, by the energies which are common to the three hypostases, or, in other words, by grace--for it is by this name that we know the deifying energies which the Holy Spirit communicates to us. He who has the Spirit, who confers the gift, has at the same time the Son, through whom every gift is transmitted to us; he also has the Father, from whom comes every perfect gift. In receiving the gift--the deifying energies--one receives at the same time the indwelling of the Holy Trinity--inseparable from its natural energies and present in them in a different manner but none the less truly from that in which it is present in its nature.
3. The distinction between the essences and the energies, which is fundamental for the Orthodox doctrine of grace, makes it possible to preserve the real meaning of St. Peter's words 'partakers of the divine nature.' The union to which we are called is neither hypostatic--as in the case of the human nature of Christ--nor substantial, as in that of the three divine Persons: it is union with God in His energies, or union by grace making us participate in the divine nature, without our essence becoming thereby the essence of God. In deification we are by grace (that is to say, in the divine energies) all that God is by nature, save only identity of nature . . ., according to the teaching of St. Maximus. ['De ambiguis,' P. G. XCI, 1308 B.] We remain creatures while becoming God by grace, as Christ remained God in becoming man by the Incarnation.
These distinctions in God which are made by the theology of the Eastern Church do not in any way contradict its apophatic attitude in regard to revealed truth. On the contrary, these antinomical distinctions are dictated by a concern for safeguarding the mystery, while yet expressing the data of revelation in dogma. Thus, as we have seen in the doctrine of the Trinity, the distinction between the persons and the nature revealed a tendency to represent God as a 'monad and triad in one', with the consequence that the domination of the unity of the nature over the trinity of the hypostases was avoided, as was the elimination or minimizing of the primordial mystery of the identity-diversity. In the same way, the distinction between the essence and the energies is due to the antinomy between the unknowable and the knowable, the incommunicable and the communicable, with which both religious thought and the experience of divine things are ultimately faced. These real distinctions introduce no 'composition' into the divine being; they signify the mystery of God, who is absolutely one according to His nature, absolutely three according to His persons, sovereign and inaccessible Trinity, dwelling in the profusion of glory which is His uncreated light, His eternal Kingdom which all must enter who inherit the deified state of the age to come.
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, pp. 85-88.
Apparently, my post from Wednesday didn't help one Rev. Dr. Technocosmic Mass, aka Matthew Fox. I mean there's apoplexy, and then there's raving-screaming-I'm-going-to-have-a-freakin'-aneurism-right-here lunacy. What else can you call it when "the most creative, the most comprehensive, surely the most challenging religious-spiritual teacher in America" utters such spittle-flecked paranoid schizophrenia as this?
Last night I was all hooked up to be on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" to be interviewed about the new pope when they suddenly cut the line and said they did not have time for me. I said: "This is a political act." The tv man hooking me up said it was the "first time in 8 years of working in television" that he had seen anything like that happen.
That's right, Dr. Goofball, Chris Matthews dumped you because you were going to ask hard questions about the "hardliner" Pope. Pssst. Hey. People really are out to get you. No foolin'.
And here's the first question from Mattie:
1. You come from Bavaria, that part of Germany that most admired Hitler and first voted for him. Did you ever denounce Hitler or fascism? If so, when? If not, why not?
Yes, Fox leads off the first four questions dwelling on Hitler and Nazism. Good show.
Foxy must've missed this little communique from the ADL:
New York, NY, April 19, 2005--The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today welcomed the election of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new Pope, Benedict XVI. Under his leadership in Germany and Rome, the Catholic Church made important strides in improving Catholic-Jewish relations and atoning for the sin of anti-Semitism. Cardinal Ratzinger has been a leader in this effort and has made important statements in the spirit of sensitivity and reconciliation with the Jewish people.
But Technocomsicmassmeister just gets more insane:
6. According to a serious study done on the death of Pope John Paul I, cardinals were part of the plot that killed him. Do you know which cardinals were involved in his murder and have they ever been brought to justice?
Fox has been cribbing his conspiracy theories from Godfather III. But wait, there are more conspiracies to come:
7. How much was the CIA involved in the rushed election of John Paul II? (A CIA agent told me he had been "their man in Poland" for many years.) . . .15. Are you aware that your destruction (with the help of the CIA) of liberation theology and base communities in Latin America has stripped Catholicism so bare that Pentecostals are taking over the continent? . . .
19. Are you the first Grand Inquisitor to be elected pope? What does that tell us about the state of the Roman Catholic Church at this time in history? How does that feel to be treading such fresh ground?
The CIA and Dostoyevsky in one mind. Whew. Unhinged, you say?
20. A Native American woman who is also a Roman Catholic went to Rome a few years ago for the beatification of Blessed Tekekwitha. It was her first visit to the Vatican and she was looking forward to it. However, she came back shaking her head saying, "there are evil spirits in that place." Was she correct? Have evil spirits taken over the Vatican at this time in history?
First the CIA and Dostoyevsky. Now evil spirits. This guy is about three sandwiches shy of a picnic.
But here's his piece de resistance:
18. Are you a Christian? (A canon lawyer who spent years in Rome told me that to understand you I had to first realize that you are not a Christian.) Can you prove it to us please.
How 'bout we receive documentation on your sanity first, Foxmeister?
I don't know what's in that peacepipe Fox has been smoking at them there technocosmic masses, but it must be worth it as he rounds out his diatribe with delusions of grandeur:
A New Reformation can happen swiftly. It is already underway. The Internet can help feed it. The myths that have kept the Roman Catholic Church afloat for 1800 years have been washed away. (The historical Jesus never said: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church." That came later.) Maybe the new version of Christianity need not be Peter based (Roman Catholicism) or Paul based (the Protestant option) but Mary Magdalene based. Any takers?
Uh . . . that would be no.
(Hat tip: MCJ)
Have you been listening to all the pundits talk about how the Pope will have to face this challenge and that? They're trying to set the Pope's agenda and all, 'cuz, well, they're just so dang smart, donchaknow.
But how smart can they be when they've just cribbed from one of the Pope's interviews from two years ago?
[Zenit] In the contestations against the Church, questions about sexuality and free moral choice come up quite frequently. Why is there this lack of understanding between the modern world and the Church?[Pope Benedict/then Cardinal Ratzinger] Here we arrive at an individualistic view of man. Our era glorifies the body and its pleasures, it exalts sexual freedom but considers that this pertains more to the sphere of biology than to psychology. A subtle separation is made between the biological, the bodily–factors that supposedly elude spiritual responsibility since they are part of the order of nature–and the human being as such. From the moment when sexuality is seen as a purely biological phenomenon, a sexual morality no longer has any meaning.
Contemporary culture is the culture of absolute freedom, according to which man must “fulfill himself.” Thus, there does not exist a human nature that defines good and evil. This view is opposed to the tradition of the Church, but also to all the conceptions which say that a certain line of behavior, the very meaning of our being, is inscribed in our nature.
The Church speaks of natural law, of natural morals. On the contrary, if all we are is products of evolution, we are free to define ourselves. There is then, as Sartre said, a freedom in the sense that “I am not defined”: in my situation, I must invent what man is. Whereas in the Christian view, man’s existence–man’s and woman’s–is the bearer of an idea of the Creator, a Creator who has a plan for the world, which expresses incarnate ideas in the reality of the world. And the relationship of fidelity between a man and a woman reveals a destination of one for the other, in a profound unity of body and spirit, to which the future generations are linked. The elevation of physical reactions to the level of realities lived in respect of the person is the difficult, but great and beautiful, path of Christian morality on sexuality. . . .
[Zenit] What will be the great tasks of the next pontificate?
[Pope Benedict/then Cardinal Ratzinger] It is not up to me to establish its program! And too, the world changes rapidly; what seemed imperative yesterday does not have the same importance today. It seems to me that the most urgent problems, for the Church, come from what we have just said. How do we deal with the situation created by a Western world that itself is full of doubt, that no longer acknowledges a rational foundation in a common faith; a world that is thus abandoned to subjectivism and relativism? And then there are Islam and also Buddhism, the two great challenges for the Western world. It is necessary to set up a dialogue with them, to find a way of understanding each other without losing sight of the great light that comes to us from the figure of Jesus Christ.
Well, it's no surprise, really. Media pundits rarely have any new ideas. Just warmed over fundamentalist liberalism. Yawn.
My money's on the pope.
In light of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, for the Hans Kung's and Matthew Fox's out there, I offer the consolation of Monty Python humor. Here is The Spanish Inquisition:
Man: Trouble at mill.Woman: Oh no - what kind of trouble?
Man: One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.
Woman: Pardon?
Man: One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.
Woman: I don't understand what you're saying.
Man: (slightly irritably and with exaggeratedly clear accent) One of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treddle.
Woman: Well what on earth does that mean?
Man: *I* don't know - Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
(JARRING CHORD - The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Biggles has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Fang is just Cardinal Fang)Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is suprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again. (Exit and exeunt)
Man: I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
(JARRING CHORD - The cardinals burst in)
Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms - Oh damn! (To Cardinal Biggles) I can't say it - you'll have to say it.
Biggles: What?
Ximinez: You'll have to say the bit about 'Our chief weapons are ...'
Biggles: (rather horrified) I couldn't do that...
(Ximinez bundles the cardinals outside again)
Man: I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
(JARRING CHORD - The cardinals enter)
Biggles: Er.... Nobody...um....
Ximinez: Expects...
Biggles: Expects... Nobody expects the...um...the Spanish...um...
Ximinez: Inquisition.
Biggles: I know, I know! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, those who do expect -
Ximinez: Our chief weapons are...
Biggles: Our chief weapons are...um...er...
Ximinez: Surprise...
Biggles: Surprise and --
Ximinez: Okay, stop. Stop. Stop there - stop there. Stop. Phew! Ah! ...our chief weapons are surprise...blah blah blah. Cardinal, read the charges.
Fang: You are hereby charged that you did on diverse dates commit heresy against the Holy Church. 'My old man said follow the--'
Biggles: That's enough. (To woman) Now, how do you plead?
Woman: We're innocent.
Ximinez: Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
(Superimposed caption: 'DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER')
Biggles: We'll soon change your mind about that!
and here:
Young Lady: Oh! I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.(Jarring chord The door flies open and Ximinez, Biggles and Fang enter.)
Ximinez: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
(Cut to film: moving over Brengel drawing of tortures; epic film music.)
Voice Over: (and caption on screen) 'IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, TO COMBAT THE RISING TIDE OF RELIGIOUS UNORTHODOXY, THE POPE GAVE CARDINAL XIMINEZ OF SPAIN LEAVE TO MOVE WITHOUT LET OR HINDRANCE THROUGHOUT THE LAND, IN A REIGN OF VIOLENCE, TERROR AND TORTURE THAT MAKES A SMASHING FILM. THIS WAS THE SPANISH INQUISITION . . .'
(Torchlit dungeon. We hear clanging footsteps. Shadows on the Grille. The footsteps stop and keys jangle. The great door creaks open and Ximinez walks in and looks round approvingly. Fang and Biggles enter behind pushing in the dear old lady. They chain her to the wall.)
Ximinez: Now, old woman! You are accused of heresy on three counts. Heresy by thought, heresy by word, heresy by deed, and heresy by action. Four counts. Do you confess?
Old Lady: I don't understand what I'm accused of.
Ximinez: Ha! Then we'll make you understand! Biggles! Fetch...THE CUSHIONS!
(JARRING CHORD - Biggles holds out two ordinary modern household cushions)
Biggles: Here they are, lord.
Ximinez: Now, old lady -- you have one last chance. Confess the heinous sin of heresy, reject the works of the ungodly -- *two* last chances. And you shall be free -- *three* last chances. You have three last chances, the nature of which I have divulged in my previous utterance.
Old Lady: I don't know what you're talking about.
Ximinez: Right! If that's the way you want it -- Cardinal! Poke her with the soft cushions!
(Biggles carries out this rather pathetic torture)
Ximinez: Confess! Confess! Confess!
Jonathon Last over at the Weekly Standard has done a great job of tracing out the pundits' Hard Line on Ratzinger.
Some of my favorites:
"Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a hard-line doctrinal watchdog, was elected by Roman Catholic cardinals in Vatican City today as the successor to the enormously popular John Paul II as pope for the world's one billion Catholics. . . . The Catholic Church is hugely divided and many of its members are seriously disaffected." --Daryl Strickland, Los Angeles Times
Run! Run for your lives! God's Rottweiler is loose! Did you get the implicit judgment? "Hard-line doctrinal watchdog" versus "enormously popular John Paul II." His Holiness has only been Pope less than 24 hours, and he's not yet "enormously popular."
"Hardline Catholics got their man Tuesday, when the College of Cardinals elected its dean, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as the 265th pope. . . . Ratzinger is generally considered to have been a driving force behind several of the Catholic Church's strictest and most social divisive moves in recent years. In particular, he has held the line on homosexuality, women's ordination, and the vein of progressive thinking known as liberation theology. Going into the secret conclave, many observers wondered whether the cardinals would seek a kind of compromise figure, but that was not to be." --Rema Rahman, Village Voice
Liberation theology is "progressive thinking"? Huh? Marxist political theories have been abject failures when worked out in the real world. To make a theology out of them and then call it "progressive" is the ultimate in wishful thinking.
"His experience under the Nazis--he was 18 when the war ended--was formative in his view of the function of the church, [John L. Allen Jr.] said. 'Having seen fascism in action, Ratzinger today believes that the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesiastical totalitarianism,' he wrote. 'In other words, he believes the Catholic Church serves the cause of human freedom by restricting freedom in its internal life, thereby remaining clear about what it teaches and believes.' Totalitarianism, indeed, critics might say." --Daniel J. Wakin, New York Times
"Ecclesiastical totalitarianism"? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Make him stop! Hee hee hee! Hoo ha ha! Cut it out, I'm beggin' ya!
Tripp wanted to know why I, an Orthodox wannabe, was so overjoyed at the election of His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI. Isn't this hypocritical, he wants to know? No. As I told Pastor Hudgins while in the li'l red theological short bus, my reasons for the satisfaction at the conclave's outcome are consistent with my beliefs.
1. Catholics are Christians, and the Pope is the leader of more than a billion of 'em. That their leader upholds the fundamental tenets of the Faith is an extremely good thing.
2. The more Catholic the Pope is, the closer he is doctrinally to Orthodoxy. And this pope is very Catholic. Praise God.
3. This pope, like his predessor, John Paul the Great, very much wants reunion with Orthodoxy. Note these words (cited from here, though I could not locate the full text at the referred URL):
Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on July 25, 1967, on the occasion of the Pope’s visit to Phanar, designated him as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one also presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium. Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had.
4. This Pope shares a devotion to my own patron saint: Benedict of Nursia.
5. I like his hair. I want silver-white hair like that when I get old . . . -er.
I've not commented on the media coverage of the election of the Pope for a couple of reasons. First, I just felt that joining in on the prognostication was little better than reducing this whole thing to the political arena, and that would nearly be blasphemy. For all that I am not Roman Catholic, nor ever intend to be, I am firmly convinced that God had a hand in the election of His Holiness Benedict XVI. I'm not judging others that speculated on the possible successors to John Paul the Great, but that was how I felt about it.
Secondly, and this may be more a matter of confession than anything else, I so wanted to enjoy the apoplexy of the media (witness Cokie Roberts' bitterness on Nightline last night) when then Cardinal Ratzinger would be elected to the see of St. Peter that to pre-gloat would only take the joy and force out of the post-election smirk I am currently wearing. What must the media think when their presidential candidate didn't get elected and their worst papal nightmare did? Are any of them questioning their own existence? Do they feel a sense of the utter vapidity of their status as cultural and moral arbiters?
What is clear about many in the media, as well as many Americans, is their cluelessness on two obvious fundamental facts:
1. The Pope is Catholic
The Pope is not conservative, progressive, liberal, or whatever other political label one wants to put on him. The Holy Father is Catholic. And whatever sort of legitimate reforms may need to happen in the Catholic Church, there can be no reform of Catholic dogma. This is not a matter of being conservative. It's a matter of being Catholic. No pope, however much a media darling he may be, can change Catholic dogma. Not even papal infallibility grants the charism to the holder of the see of St. Peter the power to change the Church's teaching. So there will be no change on the ordination of women to the priesthood or episcopacy. There will be no change on the teaching that same sex behavior is sin. There will be no change on the prohibition of lay celebration of the Mass. There will be no change on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, no change on euthanasia. These involve fundamental Catholic dogmas, not conservative ones, and are thus not subject to change.
2. The Church is not a political institution
But the media, utterly secular, doesn't get it. For these pundits and many Americans, all of life is political and therefore subject to the manipulation of power and influence. In their minds, the Church should be, too. But then it would cease to be the Church. Surely there is a sense in which politics happens in the Church. After all, politics, in its essence, is just the practical working together of people to be a community. Thus, I will be the first to say that, in this sense, the papal conclave involved politics.
Politics, however, is not the substance of the Church. The Church is not merely "andric" but "theandric." She is the Body of Christ, subject to the illumination and guidance of the Holy Spirit. As such she is conservative, liberal, progressive, traditional and none of these things as well. So to act as though the demonstrations, protests, and advocacies of various groups of Catholics--most in America you may well note--will somehow bring change to the Church is just simply a secularized understanding of the Church, and not a Christian one. The only lobbyists the Church has are the penitent and prayerful.
So, all this talk in America and post-Christian Europe about alienation and the Church and how the pope has to somehow bridge the gap between those who reject the Church's teachings and the Church itself, is empty blather. Catholics are not religious consumers, or swing voters, they are Catholics. If there is alienation, it is not on the part of the Church. The Catholic Church has stayed the same, her teachings have remained constant. Thus, for those who feel alienated, the only truly pastoral and loving remedy is for those who have rejected the Church's consistent and constant life and teachings to repent, confess, and return in loving submission to Christ Himself in His Body the Church.
Thankfully, the Catholic Church has a Pope who understands this.
Today, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger was elected Pope by his brother cardinals. Cardinal Ratzinger is now His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI.
He greeted the faithful with these words:
Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me - a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.
In the joy of the risen Lord, trusting in his permanent help, we go forward. The Lord will help us and Mary his very holy mother stands by us.'
The Holy Father has, for more than three decades, the last two as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, maintained that orthodoxy is the standard for Catholics. This was nowhere more evident than in the homily he gave as the electoral conclave began:
How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking... The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what St. Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 4:14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching," looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an "Adult" means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. We must become mature in this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - which creates unity and takes form in love. On this theme, St. Paul offers us some beautiful words - in contrast to the continual ups and downs of those were are like infants, tossed about by the waves: (he says) make truth in love, as the basic formula of Christian existence. In Christ, truth and love coincide. To the extent that we draw near to Christ, in our own life, truth and love merge. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like "a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal" (1 Corinthians 13:1).
I don't know much about the Holy Father, but that he and I share a devotion to St. Benedict and to the Catholic Faith of the Church, makes me already inclined to respect him as I respected John Paul the Great. I am extremely glad and happy that he was elected. The Lord's hand is at work here.
In an odd bit of present-day reality, the Holy Father's fan club website is down. Not a surprise, really.
One does not normally associate theoretical or intellectual rigor with Orthodoxy. By that I don't mean that Orthodoxy is incoherent, or doesn't stand up to rigorous philosophical inquiry. After all, among the most brilliant of thinkers in the history of the Church are the Cappadocians, St. Maximus, and St. Gregory Palamas (who, I hasten to say aren't Orthodoxy's unique property, but are nonetheless integral to Orthodoxy in the way St. Augustine is to the West). But Orthodoxy is not a tight, architectonic system like Calvinism, nor does it have the sort of Aristotelian philosophical grid that Roman Catholicism post-Aquinas has. Orthodoxy's greatest thinkers share no such system or grid.
No, in fact, Orthodoxy has, as Vladimir Lossky's book title puts it, a “mystical theology.” Which simply means that Orthodoxy thinks in terms of her experience of the revelation of God in Christ. Orthodoxy is quintessentially an experiential religion. She thinks with her mind, but with a mind that has descended into her heart.
This is why, when I have spoken about my reasons for attraction to the Orthodox Church in the past, those reasons derived from the experience of the Faith. In December 2003, I finished up a nine-part post on the reasons I was attracted to Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church honors the past, respects the present, has a consistent theology, has the fullness of the Christian faith, has both an existential and objective worship and askesis, makes claims that are historically and objectively verifiable and theologically valid, and unites the home and family in the Church. Six months later, I added an additional post on my relief that Orthodoxy not only tells me what salvation is, but shows me how to acquire it. Today, nearly a year after that last post, and more than a year and a half since the last post of the original series, I want to add yet one more post answering, “Why Orthodoxy?” And today I want to talk about Orthodoxy in terms of intellectual consistency.
Let me say it clearly and starkly: Orthodoxy has a purity of thought unmatched by the Roman Catholic Church and by all of Protestantism. I don't mean Orthodoxy has never had heretics. No, in fact, some of Orthodoxy's heretics were the most highly-placed of her hierarchy. Rather, I mean that if one conforms one's mind to Orthodoxy one will quite literally never go wrong.
Of course, this might seem tautological. After all, Orthodoxy is “right belief.” It also might seem to beg the question. After all, if one assumes Orthodoxy to be true, then of course anything that doesn't match up is false. But then: Is Orthodoxy true? That's the question being begged.
Although I won't offer an apologetic for the Orthodox Church here, let me say that such an apologetic is not hard to come by on the net, and there are a plethora of books one can consult. One will find that Orthodoxy's claims are historically verifiable and logically valid. Furthermore, experience will also bear out the claims of the Orthodox Church to be the Church.
But one can also think through some of Orthdoxy's claims and show their internal consistency and coherence, and also show how the opposing beliefs of other churches are internally inconsistent and/or logically invalid. A couple of examples should suffice.
Take the filioque of the Western churches' Creed. Applied to the essential nature of the Godhead, the filioque falls apart. If, for the Son to be of one essence with the Father, it is necessary that He share in the eternal procession of the Spirit, then the Spirit cannot be of the same essence of the Father and the Son. Nor does this work if one posits that the Spirit is the hypostatic love between Father and Son, for this also fails to establish “one essence” of the Holy Spirit with the Father. In other words, the filioque fails to properly establish the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit. In all configurations, the Holy Spirit must be of a composite nature of that of the Father and the Son, and different than that of both of Them. In short, the Holy Spirit becomes an attenuated appendage to the bi-unity of the Father and the Son.
Now don't misunderstand me. I do recognize that Western churches who have adopted the filioque explicitly reject these entailments. Indeed, they must do so if they would continue to claim the name of Christ. But it doesn't erase the fact that their adoption of the filioque places their theology in a fundamentally compromised light. Indeed, for the reasons noted above (as well as because the filioque was never accepted by the whole Church), the filioque itself is heresy. And if one admits heresy into one's theology, one will continually be shoring up that theology to keep the heresy from rotting things out from the inside. And one can't get any more “inside” Christianity's core beliefs than the Trinity.
The Orthodox Church avoids these problems by teaching that the unity of the Trinity is preserved in the monarche of the Father. In that the Father causes the Son and causes the Holy Spirit, both Son and Holy Spirit share in the nature of the Father and are of the same essence. Orthodoxy never had a Pentecostal or Charismatic movement as the West did, because for more than fifteen hundred years it had a robust theology of the Holy Spirit, having rejected the filioque.
But it's not just the filioque. The Western understanding of original sin brings the same heretical entailments. Orthodoxy, of course, believes in original sin--but not the sort that arose out of Augustinianism in the West. In the West, through the development of St. Augustine's teachings, original sin is not just understood in the corruptibility and mortality to which human nature was subjected via Adam's sin, but is understood as the moral guilt and sin which is inherited with that corruptibility and mortality through the concupiscence of the sexual act of procreation. This results in a view of human nature, willing and personhood which entails that all human willing must ultimately be sinful (since the very nature from which that will operates is itself sinful, and a will cannot become something that it's nature is not), and that necessitates an identification of person with nature. This results in a soft determinism (compatibilism) in which humans always choose their strongest inclination at the moment of willing, which for sinful humanity will always entail sin, since the strongest inclination of human natures is always sin. Even good acts--giving alms, prayer--are ultimately suffused with sin, since pride and the self are at the core of their intentions.
There are a host of problems with this. First and foremost, the Western understanding of original sin fails to account for how Adam, who was created with a sinless nature, but capable of sin, did, in fact, sin. For even if sin was possible to Adam, it was not necessary, and given Adam's uncorrupt nature at the moment of his willing to sin, his greatest inclination, according to his nature, should have been for God. But it wasn't. This soft determinism doesn't explain Adam's sin.
To explain that sin, under the Western rubric, free will can only be actualized in a choice involving opposition (good vs. evil). Adam, from a sinless nature, indeterminately chose sin (since there would have been no necessary cause in his nature that would have moved his will to sin), in which case, free will is predicated upon a relation of opposition thus making free will the necessary cause for evil. Indeed, it also requires that there necessarily not be free will in the eschaton, for if there were, then God, to make possible free will's actuality, will necessarily have to make possible a choice between good and evil, and this will ultimately result in an endless chain of potential Falls. So the only way to guard against sin in the eschaton is to take away any opportunity for the exercise in free will, which is the same thing as eliminating free will.
Compatibilists will argue that free will is compatible with natural determination of the will, that is to say, the will always freely wills in the direction of its strongest inclination; but this only strengthens the problems in Christology. For if Christ's human nature was free of original sin for Christ to be sinless (which it would have to be, according to the Western understanding of original sin), then for Christ's will to be truly free, he would have to be given the opportunity to choose between good and evil, else he could never have been tempted in all way such as we are. But since such free will must be indeterminate, then either we have the case that it will always remain possible for Christ's human will to sin (which means that Christ's human nature is not fixed in virtue), or Christ did not have human free will (in the libertarian sense that Adam had free will), or Christ's divine will subsumed his human will (in the compatibilist sense of human free will). The first option is a problem, because this calls into question the union of the human and divine natures in Christ's person. The second option is a problem because Christ could not have undone the consequences of Adam's Fall apart from free will. And the third option results in the heresy of monothelitism.
In fact, under the Western rubric of original sin, eternal destinies are decided by God alone in his inscrutable decrees. The logical entailment is as stark as it is intuitively horrifying: God creates some persons for heaven and some persons for hell.
Orthodoxy, however, avoids these problems altogether, by understanding that all that God creates is good, including human nature and free will. Though postlapsarian humans are born with original sin, this original sin is the capacity for corruption and mortality that is part of unredeemed human nature. Though human nature has been compromised by Adam's fall, that nature in no way necessitates that we sin. That humans do sin, then, is not directly a result of their fallen human nature, but is rather the direct result of the failure of their deliberative will. That is to say, as a result of deliberation humans take an apparent good for a real good, and mistakenly choose the apparent good. Free will, then, does not necessitate a relation of opposition, but only a deliberation among multiple goods. In a fallen world, apparent goods ultimately entail sin, since they are a rejection of the real good. But in the eschaton all goods will be real, and there will be no need for deliberation. So, in orthodoxy, free will is good, but the deliberative use of that will can be either good or evil--the use being completely up to the person so willing.
Christ, however, did not need the deliberative will. Like all humans, he had a human nature and a human will, and like all humans, his will was free to choose among different acts. The difference however, which results from his mode of existence as the incarnate God-man, is that Christ's human nature and will were deified in the union with his divine nature and will and he had no need to deliberate between apparent and real goods. His personal choice to act made use of his human will such that he always chose the real goods available to him. Unlike Adam and unlike humans prior to the eschaton, in his Person, Christ was fixed in virtue: all his thoughts and acts were good. His divine nature had deified his human nature. But like Christ, regenerated humans in the eschaton will be fixed in virtue, we will be deified through our hypostatic union with God in Christ. Thus all our willing will be according to our natures, which natures are divinized, and our wills will freely choose among multiple goods, about which there will be no need of deliberation.
In other words, in Orthodoxy, the deliberative will is the mode of willing peculiar to the un-deified mode of existence unique to humans prior to the eschaton. Such a deliberative mode of willing is not, in itself, evil, since it was the mode of willing given to Adam in the garden, and through which mode Adam, had he so chosen freely, would have been fixed in virtue and been deified in Christ. Indeed, it is precisely this use of the deliberative will prior to the eschaton which fixes either in virtue or in vice, the humans who make use of it. This explains both why it is possible to fall away from God after regeneration and why it is possible to reach a point in which repentance is no longer possible; i. e., why humans choose hell and remain fixed in that choice for all eternity.
Thus, in Orthodoxy, the cause of sin is properly placed not in God, for all his gifts are good, but in the creatures He has created who use that good gift to reject God, not for another objective evil but for another apparent good. It is also places the responsibility for our personal eternal destinies in our hands, for all our accumulated choices arising from our countless deliberative moments in this life, are ultimately our own authorship of our character and and fate.
These are only two examples--and though it may not seem like it, only the most summarized of examples at that--among many that could be noted. For instance, the consistency in the West on the insistence of the absolute simplicity of God, the doctrine of created grace, and the overemphasis on forensic justification necessitated by original sin.
This is not to say that Orthodoxy smooths out all intellectual difficulties. After all, theodicy is a recalcitrant matter which does not admit of easy resolution. But Orthodox theodicy is able to honestly admit the difficulties without implicating God in them. That, in itself, is a huge advance over the logical entailments of original sin. But it is to say that the difficulties one encounters in Orthodoxy are difficulties that result from the finiteness of human reason in its attempt to understand the divine and not from the arguments of human reason itself.
And this is one more reason why I am attracted to Orthodoxy.
There have been several updates to software products that I use regularly, and I thought I'd alert you all to some fantastic, free software that is cutting edge.
OpenOffice.org
First, there is the OpenOffice Suite 2.0 Beta. The list of the enhancements will give you a good idea of what to expect. (A full list of features is here. The screenshots are here.) OpenOffice Writer has interoperability with Windows Doc files as well as WordPerfect files. OpenOffice Calc interoperates with Excel, OpenOffice Database works with Access, and OpenOffice Impress can open Powerpoint, and so on. Of course, it will not be absolutely seamless. There may be formatting issues between Writer and Word, for example. But from my limited experience, those things are minor.
There are downloads for Mac, Linux, as well as us MS whores. Be warned, however, the download is huge--85 MB. Not for dialup. Even my DSL at home took a while.
e-Sword
e-Sword is by far the best Bible software I've ever encountered. Simply on the basis of language and translation comparisons, it would serve you well. But it also has the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon and Thayer's Greek lexicon, powerful searching, bookmarking, and listing capabilities. You can save your own study outlines and textual notes, and there is literally a seminary library available for you: all of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the complete works of Philo and Josephus, and other commentaries (e. g., Calvin's Institutes). If you have e-Sword, there's an update--link opens in your download manager--to download. If you don't have the program, you need to download the whole thing (17 MB). (Unfortunately, e-Sword is Windows only.)
Firefox
If you don't have Mozilla.org's Firefox--you need to get with the program! You can get more Firefox info here. The download is 5 MB. There's tabbed browsing--buh-bye IE! you ol' clunker-clutterer. There's a whole slough of extentsions, add-on software--so you can personalize your browser for what you need it to do for you. (I personally use FoxyTunes and Forecast Fox all the time.) There's a built-in search box that has Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Dictionary.com, and eBay built right in. And if you store your internet links in Yahoo, or use Yahoo mail, there's a Yahoo Companion toolbar and a Yahoo email notifier that you can add. There's also a Gmail notifier.
Firefox has Windows, Mac and Linux downloads. I also use Thunderbird, Mozilla.org's email program.
I'm tellin' ya, folks. Open source is where it's at.
I wanted to take the opportunity to offer another reflection on the "cash value" of the theological concepts on soteriology that have been discussed on this and other blogs over the last few weeks; namely, personhood, nature, will, choice and act.
Those who've followed the discussion will remember that my argument has been that it is persons who act, not natures, and that no matter what is one's strongest inclination at the moment of willing, it is fundamentally the person who decides and chooses what act to do. In other words, this is a fundamentally libertarian understanding of free will. I have built this case on Trinitarian and Christological dogmas concerning personhood, nature and will, and how those apply (theologically and philosophically) to human persons. If you want to see the theoretical framework of my argument you can go here first, where it is summarized. (See also Robert Kane, "Two Kinds of Incompatibilism" in Agents, Causes, and Events, and his The Significance of Free Will.)
In this post, I want to look at these concepts from the practical arena of moral development, especially in light of a pop cultural understanding that our behaviors are greatly, even completely, determined by our genetic and/or psychological makeup.
Pop culture understanding of human nature and willing is far from consistent, and, indeed, precisely because it is pop culture it is hardly theoretically rigorous. In fact, there is an internal inconsistency to popular understanding of human nature and willing: on the one hand, we think all our behaviors can be explained and/or justified in terms of nature (including subconsious forces), yet, on the other, we argue for libertarian freedom to choose to do whatever it is we choose to do, so long as no one gets hurt. The contradictions are obvious: if our actions are simply redescribable under naturalistic or psychological terms, then we hardly can argue for the exercise of a free will that is little more than particular manifestations of our strongest inclinations; yet if we truly believe that we should be free to choose to do those things we choose to do (for whatever reasons), then our actions are not simply natural or psychological forces at work.
But even if the popular form of compatibilist soft-determinism were true, it would not be freedom, but the worst sort of bondage. We would be constrained to follow the inclinations of our natures without any possibility or hope of moral development. Our natures would predetermine the range of options of our "choices," and our identities would be nothing more than the manifestations of those natures. We would not be persons, we would be masks, labels worn over inherent qualities which bind us to their own actualities.
But if these things are true, sin as a moral category ceases to have anything more than nominal force: it is simply what we are. Similarly, virtue is no longer anything praiseworthy, let alone a quality to be sought, since those who exhibit such behaviors are simply so constituted to act in those ways. It is not an exagerration to say: one simply cannot help it. None of us choose our natures, by definition, thus none of us have any power over who we are. Indeed, none of us, properly speaking, are a "who," we're simply an particularization of a "what."
And yet we have this intuitive sense that this is not right. We stubbornly believe that we are persons and not masks. We stubbornly believe that we really are, in a real, substantial sense, morally responsible for our actions. Responsible not simply because we choose to do them, but because we have the ability to author actions that are different from the ones we choose. And we recognize that pop culture understanding of human nature and willing are tied inextricably with an understanding of dignity that entails real freedom. Take away any real, meaty sense of freedom, and we intuitively sense that what remains are natures to be manipulated toward ever-changing socially accepted norms.
Part of the problem with this confused thinking is that it fails to take into adequate account that the "natures" we presently possess are not just the inherent qualities and experiences that we have no control over, but are, to a very great degree, the result of our self-consciously chosen actions, both for moral condemnation and for moral praise. We rightly condemn the actions of persons who murder and rape, even if we also recognize the pathologies of their natures. We condemn them because we rightly know that natures do not act, persons act. And even if their pathologies circumscribe and limit the range of their actions (e. g., they will not have meaningful real interpersonal relationships), we also recognize that they can do otherwise than their pathologies incline them to do. That is to say: they can refuse to act on their inclinations, they can refuse to sin. And by can, I mean not only the possibility, but the actuality.
But if we can do otherwise than our strongest inclinations, then we can also meaningfully author our moral development. We can become reponsible not only for not sinning, but we can also become responsible for becoming morally mature. That is to say, we are not held in bondage to natures that dictate our range of behaviors, but can, by virtue of the gift of our libertarian freedom, so mold and shape those natures so as to alter the limits of the possibilities of our choices and behaviors. Through deliberation and habituation we can alter our natures, to a limited degree, so that our inclinations similarly change. Old habits are replaced with new habits. This works in both directions, however, and we can also work to deform and devolve our moral development, becoming ever more vicious and lacking in virtue. Good habits are replaced with bad habits. In other words, not only are we responsible for individual acts, but for the sort of persons we become. This is a far more robust and liberating understanding of human action.
There are, of course, limits. We are finite, created creatures. Our natures are not ours to create out of nothing. We are given natures, as much as we are called to mold and shape them. Nor is this gift of libertarian freedom such that we can author our own salvation. We could never become so virtuous so as to not need Christ's redemptive work. God's grace precedes, fills and completes all our willing, choosing and acting. But we also really will, choose and act. And in so doing, we can freely act in accordance with the strongest inclination of our nature to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, in whose image we have been made, and from Whose being our own being receives light and life, which light and life we seek, like a moth to a flame.
I'm working on completing my heretofore incomplete Hegel paper, on Absolute Knowing, and came across G.W.F. Hegel works online, including the text of Phenomenology of Mind, with the German text, Phänomenologie des Geistes, and the Analysis of the Phenomenology of Spirit by J. N. Findlay.
There is also this Hegel glossary, the "definitions" of which are largely quotes from his works. There is also this glossary, which is a little less obviously dependent on Hegel's texts, but is nonetheless helpful. And here is yet another Hegel glossary.
Since blogging is one way to avoid actually writing the paper, I thought I would put this post up. Feels good.
. . . but now I still have to write the silly thing. *sigh*
From A. Mouravieff : Introduction of Christianity into Russia:
A certain philosopher, a monk named Constantine, after having exposed the insufficiency of other religions, eloquently set before the Prince those judgments of God which are in the world, the redemption of the human race by the blood of Christ, and the retribution of the life to come. His discourse powerfully affected the heathen monarch, who was burdened with the heavy sins of a tumultuous youth; and this was particularly the case when the monk pointed out to him on an icon, which represented the last judgment, the different lot of the just and of the wicked."Good to these on the right hand, but woe to those on the left!" exclaimed Vladimir, deeply affected. But sensual nature still struggled in him against heavenly truth. Having dismissed the missionary, or ambassador, with presents, he still hesitated to decide, and wished first to examine further concerning the faith, in concert with the elders of his council, that all Russia might have a share in his conversion. The council of the Prince decided to send chosen men to make their observations on each religion on the spot where it was professed; and this public agreement explains in some degree the sudden and general acceptance of Christianity which shortly after followed in Russia. It is probable that not only the chiefs, but the common people also, were expecting and ready for the change.
The Greek emperors did not fail to profit by this favorable opportunity, and the patriarch himself in person celebrated the divine liturgy in the Church of St. Sophia with the utmost possible magnificence before the astonished ambassadors of Vladimir. The sublimity and splendor of the service struck them; but we do not ascribe to the mere external impression that softening of the hearts of these heathens, on which depended the conversion of a whole nation. From the very earliest times of the Church, extraordinary signs of God's power have constantly gone hand-in-hand with that apparent weakness of man by which the Gospel was preached; and so also the Byzantine Chronicle relates of the Russian ambassadors, "That during the Divine liturgy, at the time of carrying the Holy Gifts in procession to the throne or altar and singing the cherubic hymn, the eyes of their spirits were opened, and they saw, as in an ecstasy, glittering youths who joined in singing the hymn of the 'Thrice Holy.'"
Being thus fully persuaded of the truth of the orthodox faith, they returned to their own country already Christians in heart, and without saying a word before the Prince in favor of the other religions, they declared thus concerning the Greek: "When we stood in the temple we did not know where we were, for there is nothing else like it upon earth: there in truth God has his dwelling with men; and we can never forget the beauty we saw there. No one who has once tasted sweets will afterward take that which is bitter; nor can we now any longer abide in heathenism."
Read it all at the link above.
Okay, I'm really not going to be able to deliver on the title of the post. But I do want to indicate in broad outline how it is that the recent posts on soteriology (human nature, person, will and freedom) with all their "high-falutin'" jargon actually matter in the here and now.
Take the thesis that I defended yesterday, namely that personhood precedes nature, existence precedes essence. This, to my mind, has profound implications for such social-moral matters as euthanasia, abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, etc. For if a human is a being by virtue of being a person, then Christians (who derive that belief from the Trinity) are obligated by virtue of their faith to reject euthanasia (the active human intervention to make death--and not just a death--happen), abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and so forth.
If one argues that it is being a human being that gives rise to being a person, then one can argue that a embryo is human, but not yet a person. It is merely a potential person. Therefore, since it is not yet a person, we are justified in our utilitarian manipulation of this human thing. We may create as many of these human things as we want, and so long as we are only dealing with potential and not actual persons, we may feel free to do with them as we want. They're mere property: we can will them to others, sell them, and patent the various genetic manipulations we are able to do on them.
But if embryos, by virtue of their conception are persons who are human, the whole ethical paradigm shifts. Now we are dealing with beings who are, from the start, persons, and entitled to all the protections, morally and legally, we as fellow persons are obligated to provide for them. We are morally prohibited from doing anything to them that is not intended to be for them. That is to say, they are not objects of research but subjects for care.
The implications for abortion are a no-brainer.
But what about severe incapacitation or so-called "end-of-life" issues? What about persons who everyone acknowledges are persons, but are incapacitated? What about persons whose bodies are dying? Indeed, what about the dead? Here the matter is even more clear. For if we are persons prior to any objectively measurable property by which we normally judge humans to be persons (for example, autonomy, which entails cognition, self-awareness) then we are persons posterior to any such measures as well. Thus, personhood is not a measure of cognitive abilities, self-awareness or other such canons. Personhood is the canon by which those properties themselves derive. Thus, those whose severe incapacitation renders them observably detached from their environment deserve as much attention and care as those who respond. The "detached" have no more ceased to be persons than have we who care for them.
Obviously, however, euthanasia advocates want to base personhood on nature, and thus, when persons lose the capacities inherent to human nature, they cease to be persons. From there the rest follows.
In other words, it is not human nature that guards personhood, as our current U. S. society makes all-too horrifyingly clear. Rather, it is personhood that guards what it means to be human. We are irreducably human because we are fundamentally persons.
And now I need to go help the little person trying to get my attention use the potty.
The abstract of On the Holy Spirit reads:
The only way for creation to be saved and deified is through communion with the uncreated. This communion is the work of the Holy Spirit, who is ‘life-giving’. Life and communion coincide only in the realm of the uncreated, since in creation death overcomes communion. The Spirit gives true life because he is uncreated and the communion he offers comes ‘from above’, from the uncreated God. The description of the Holy Spirit as ‘life-giver’ is another way of saying that he is God, this truth put in soteriological terms. On this description hangs the entire existential significance of the Pneumatology
Another good quote:
For the first time in the history of philosophy, particularly of Greek thought, we have an identification of an ontological category, such as hypostasis, with a notion, such as Person. In classical antiquity, both Greek and Roman, these terms always remained clearly separate and distinct. Hypostasis was identical with substance or ousia, and indicated that something is, and that it is itself, while prospon indicated, in a variety of nuances and forms, the way something relates the other beings. By calling the Person a ‘mode of being’ (tropos hyparxeos) the Cappadocians introduced a revolution into Greek ontology, since they said for the first time in history that a) prosopon, is not secondary to being, but is its hypostasis; and b) a hypostasis, ie an ontological category, is relational in its very nature, it is prosopon. The importance of this lies in the fact that Person is now the ultimate ontological category we can apply to God. Substance is not something ontological prior to Person (no classical Greek would say this), but its real existence is to be found in the Person.
Read the whole thing.
I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.
[Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire (1981)]
When does one's gift become an impediment? How does one not thrill at its increase and use, all the while giving thanks to God for it? Certainly one cannot run all the time. One will not always be able to run fast. And one day one will cease to run at all. Yet, what if one's purpose is to run fast? And how does one turn from the "feeling of His pleasure" to taking out the garbage, potty training one's child, and needing to make a livable income?
There is no occasion for violence and injury [i.e., the persecution, torture and killing of Christians], for religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows, that the will may be affected. Let them unsheath the weapon of their intellect; if their system is true, let it be asserted. We are prepared to hear, if they teach; while they are silent, we certainly pay no credit to them, as we do not yield to them even in their rage. Let them imitate us in setting forth the system of the whole matter: for we do not entice, as they say; but we teach, we prove, we show. And thus no one is detained by us against his will, for he is unserviceable to God who is destitute of faith and devotedness; and yet no one departs from us, since the truth itself detains him. Let them teach in this manner, if they have any confidence in the truth; let them speak, let them give utterance; let them venture, I say, to discuss with us something of this nature; and then assuredly their error and folly will be ridiculed by the old women, whom they despise, and by our boys.
--from Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, Bk V, Ch XX
Kevin reponds to my second post on the Trinity with his, Of Wills, Words, and the Monarche. I'm extremely grateful for his reply, most especially for his work in delineating a harmonization between St. Gregory of Nyssa (on the monarche of the Father) and St. Athanasios (on the not involuntary generation of the Son). As I hope to show, this harmonization actually bolsters my account of the monarche of the Father in precisely the way Kevin thinks it doesn't. I'm also grateful for his post since it gives me a chance to more explicitly point out the connection between what I am taking to be the heresy of monergism and its effects on an orthodox Trinitarianism. Since the connection between the Trinitarian theology which underlies my critique of monergism depends upon that Trinitarian theology, I will first deal with Kevin's second and longer part of his post. Then I will deal with the first and shorter part on the connection.
Trinitarian Theology and the Causal Priority of the Father
Although the longest part of Kevin's post deals with the explicit Trinitarian theology underlying my attack on monergism, my reply to this part of Kevin's post will be more direct and more brief. Once again, Kevin reiterates that persons are not their natures. I accept his assertion, though I do not think he can substantiate such a claim based on his argument, as I noted in my previous post in this diablog. As will become clear in my response to his second part, Kevin has a reason for limiting personhood to nature, for it plays a direct role in his doctrine of monergism. But if Kevin is going to limit human personhood to nature's boundaries, he rightly recognizes that he will have to apply this to the Godhead as well, or he will have to make a special case for human personhood that does not apply to the Trinity. This, of course, will be difficult to do, for human personhood is explicitly derived, ontologically and dogmatically, from a proper understanding of the Trinitarian persons. Of course, Christology bridges this Trinitarian personhood and human personhood, so it is inescapable that what we say of God will have bearing on what we say of Christ and what we say of human persons. Similarly, what we say of human persons will have bearing on our Christology and Trinitarian theology. This is why monergism is troublesome: Not because it intends to maintain the fundamental and necessary work of God central to human salvation, and to keep human work properly centered in the divine salvific activity, with which synergists are in real, substantive and complete agreement, but, as has been shown already, because monergism develops an anthropology which is ultimately at odds with Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity.
Kevin's main contention on the relationship between personhood and nature, as I understand it, is that persons need to act according to their natures. Or, as he states his premise: “For any action that can be predicated of a person, a corresponding property can be predicated of his nature.” For metaphysical purposes, Kevin seems to agree that persons exceed their natures, but only from the standpoint that persons are not their natures. To be clear, he says again: “But if the point is necessary actions of the will, then the action predicated of a person corresponds to a property predicated of his nature.”
Kevin hits on a fundamental point when he writes:
The property of exceeding nature cannot reside within the nature itself. And if we allow that properties corresponding to personal action can reside in the person, then this begs the question of why we would need to posit a nature at all. Just say that a person is such and such a way and be done with the whole nature bit. Of course, then there woud be no nature to exceed, returning us to the original problem- do people will in a libertarian fashion or according to the various properties within their person?
This is, indeed, about a libertarian understanding of willing. For if not even God can will in a libertarian manner, then humans cannot, and, at least on the point of human willing, monergism has a substantial premise on which to construct an argument. On the other hand, if God can will in a libertarian sense, then it is possible, though it must be properly argued, that humans can so will as well. And if this be true, then monergism must build its foundation on something else.
Unfortunately, it's at this point in his reply that Kevin heads away from the fundamental point toward which his instincts had pointed him. He goes on to leave the distinctions of person and nature, to founder again in the waters of nature and willing.
I had written: “If we predicate God's unity on his nature, or his essence, we tend toward modalistic conceptions of the Persons (i. e., we enhypostatize attributes, such as 'Love,' which enhypostatization logically fails to give rise to a third Person)...”--to which Kevin replies:
I'm going to take Clifton's objection to be against placing the cause of the Son and Spirit in the nature of the Father as opposed to the will of the Father . . .
Kevin understandably comes to this errant conclusion since I made note that the generation of the Son from the Father was a self-sacrificial act of love, and in that, it was a free act not necessitated by nature. So, in point of fact, my objection had nothing whatsoever to do with placing the cause of the Trinity in the nature or the will of the Father, for, I thought I had been clear about this, the cause of the Trinitarian Persons is the Person of the Father. That is to say, the monarche is located in the Person who is the Father, and not in the natural essence per se of the Godhead. So when Kevin writes:
Begetting and spiration are not personal actions and are not effected by the exercise of the will.
I have to most strongly disagree with him. Even despite his exegesis of St. Athanasios, and his attempt to harmonize St. Gregory and St. Athanasios' accounts of the generation of the Son, where I substantively and substantially, agree with him, he cannot make this claim in light of patristic teaching.
In short, Kevin goes wrong precisely because though he distinguishes person and nature, he prioritizes nature over person. Again and again, in his exegesis of the two Church Fathers, and in his own explication of monergism, nature is ontologically prior to person. A person, even a Trinitarian Person, is constrained by nature. I do not think it a misinterpretation of Kevin to say that in Kevin's view, personhood is subsumed under nature. Kevin thinks I am mistaken in drawing this conclusion from his argument, but aside from his bare assertions that this is not what he meant, it is surely what his argument entails. Note his conclusion to his post (and to the patristic exegesis he has undertaken):
Basically, I believe that Clifton has misconstrued Gregory's intent. Gregory does speak of the Father begetting the Son and Emitting the Spirit, but no orthodox trinitarian, which, as should be obvious by now, includes those who say that this was according to nature, would deny this. As to the generation of the Son not being involuntary, Gregory's understanding of the will is in the sense of pleasure in what is, and is not in the sense of the effectual personal operation of the faculty of willing. The latter would have to be the case in order for his Oration to support the argument that the Father must beget the Son as a personal act else his freedom is in jeopardy. More important, however, is the way in which Clifton's conception of the monarche of the Father sits with the views of Athanasius, who will not allow that the idea of God willing to beget the Son can be separated from the Arian idea that there was a time when the Son was not.
Here Kevin explicitly ties eternal begetting (and procession) to nature. Note also that Kevin has had to define my understanding of the monarche of the Father as “the idea of God willing to beget the Son” and so construe my own view (which I hope to be an accurate view of St. Gregory and the other Cappadocians, and more generally, of the Orthodox Church) within the nature/will debate, instead of where I placed it: in the Personal ekstasis of the Father.
In other words, to put it more simply--and here Kevin will have to revisit St. Gregory and the Cappadocians--God the Father's existence precedes the divine essence. Instead of person being constrained by nature, here nature in the Godhead is constrained by Person. In other words, to turn Kevin's long exposition around: God's begetting of the Son and spiration of the Spirit was Personally natural. In other words, it wasn't “what” begot the Son, but Who. In terms of ontological priority: The Son was not begotten of the Father's nature, but of the Father's Person. (I, of course, do not mean to assert that the Son was begotten apart from the Father's nature--which is pure nonsense--only that the ontological priority of the Son's generation arises from the ekstasis of the Father and not from some property of the divine nature.) In that the Son was begotten of the Father's Person, he then shares fully in the Father's nature. To say it perhaps a bit too crudely: The essence of the Godhead comes to the Son via the Person of the Father, and not the Person of the Son coming by way of the essence of the Father. The essence of the Son does not cause the Father, nor does the essence of the Spirit, for both Son and Spirit are, insofar as they are, from the ontological priority of the Father. God's existence causally precedes his essence.
With Kevin I agree that we simply have the fact of the Trinitarian Persons, so in a certain sense to speak of a necessity of generation and spiration as attached to the Godhead is probably superfluous. But if there is a necessity of sorts, it is predicated not on God's nature qua God, but on the Person of the Father, for Whom, to be Father is to beget. It is precisely because of this theological fact that there is no God but the Trinitarian God, and why construals of God that do not bespeak his Persons are not mistaken-though-partially-true construals of God, but construals of false gods altogether.
Indeed, it is here that St. Gregory and St. Athansios harmonize. The begetting happens from the Father (for which see that all of St. Athanasios' argument has to do with the Persons of the Father and the Logos/Son, and not an argument about divine nature per se; that is to say, the Son is divine precisely because he share's the Father's nature) and not from the natural essence of the Godhead. But if this is so, then Kevin's bringing forth, as an advocate, of the filioque, sharply illustrates the differences between us.
I have already alluded to this, but there is, finally, that schism inducing word- filioque. The Western church was hasty to add it, as it is certainly no heresy not to agree. Nevertheless, I believe that adherence to the doctrine taught thereby is both correct and is more in line with the Scriptural teaching that the Son is the image of the Father. Those personal attributes defining the relationship between the Father and the Son excepted (begetting and being begotten), if the Son does not possess the personal attribute of spiration along with the Father, then the image is defective. While of considerably less consequence than the Arian implications of his argument, Clifton's attempt to locate the unity of the Godhead within the monarche of the Father is not going to go over very well with a Western audience. It requires a rejection of the filioque; otherwise, the Spirit is explained not according to unity, but according to duality. On the other hand, Clifton is perfectly free to maintain his Eastern perspective of procession while rethinking the monarche.
Perhaps Kevin is correct, but I rather suppose that since the late Pope, and with him the Catholic Church, as well as other Western churches, are actually quite willing to forego the creedal filioque, it may well be that a Western audience would find my espousal of St. Gregory's monarchical Trinitarianism quite congenial to their own interests. It's not as though the West is not unfamiliar with the Trinitarian problems the filioque has wrought.
And what are those problems? Precisely the circumscription of Person by nature. For if the filioque depends for its force upon the need to assert of the Son, to be of the same essence as the Father, a co-procession of the Spirit with the Father, then we are left with the Holy Spirit as a sort of, in St. Photios' words, “goat-stag,”a theologically impossible synthesis of the Father's uncaused causality and the Son's caused causality, with a compositeness pertaining to neither the Father or the Son. Indeed, the logic further demands that if it is necessary for the Son to share in the hypostatic procession of the Spirit by the Father to be of the same nature of the Father, then similarly it is necessary for the Spirit to share in the procession of yet another hypostasis by the Father. And it would be hard to see how this shared procession of a fourth hypostasis could similarly share the divine nature with the Son, for the procession of the fourth hypostasis would be quantitatively and qualitatively different from the dual procession of the Son and the Father. But the Spirit does not so share in a dual procession with the Father, so the ontologic of the filioque entails that the Spirit does not share the same essence with the Father and the Son.
So the filioque, understood in essential theological terms (as opposed to a justified economic understanding), exactly illustrates the problem with Kevin's circumscribing of the divine Persons with the divine nature. I suppose if a rethinking needs to be done, then it is Kevin's advocacy of the essentialist filioque.
How Monarchical Trinitarian Theology Empties Monergism of Its Argument
Now, Kevin's reasons for making personhood “coextensive” with nature are quite simple. If personhood does not exceed nature, then persons are limited to acting within the constraints of nature. This allows him, through logical entailments, to suspend human libertarian free will prior to regeneration. This is illustrated in the first part of Kevin's reply.
As far as I can tell , both Clifton and I are in agreement that what is true of one person in this regard, must be true of all persons- human, angelic, and divine. Therefore, if I say that we will according to our natures, then I must also grant that this is the case with the persons in the Trinity. On the other hand, if Clifton can show that, for at least one person of the Trinity, it is the case that the person exceeds its nature such that his will is not according to that nature, then the same possibility must be admitted of all persons. The force of the compatibilist argument is lost since it maintains the impossibility of exercising the will in any other way than according to one's nature. To this end, Clifton posits a model for divine unity that is based, not on the God's nature or the divine essence, but upon, what he has termed, "the monarche of the Father."
This is, indeed, a fair grasp of the issues. And this is precisely the connection between a proper Trinitarian construal of Personhood, a proper Christology, and thus a proper anthropology.
Recall that Clifton's claim is that person exceeds nature. This must be in such a way that the actions of a person are in no way bound by his nature; otherwise, this particular claim of monergism is not invalidated.
Here Kevin creates a false dilemma. It is not necessary to assert that the actions of a person are in no way bound by his nature, but rather only to say that they are not causally necessitated by nature. I agree with Kevin that to speak of a nature-less person is to speak of no one, for all persons have natures. But it does not follow that since all persons have natures their persons are ontologically subsequent to their natures. Indeed, that is the force of the monarchical Trinity: the nature of the Godhead is ontologically subsequent to the Person of the Father. It is the Person of the Father that determines what the nature of the Godhead is. And if it is the Father's Person who so determines divine nature, then it is not the properties that inhere in God's nature that circumscribe his choices and acts. That God is love, is true, but that God is love proceeds causally from the Personal reality of the Father who loves and not from a property inherent to his nature. Natures do not love; persons do. Indeed, natures do not act; persons do. And since the Father's Person causes God's nature, God's acts are, if you will, circumscribed by the Persons of the Trinity and not by his nature. If the Father created, the Son redeemed and the Spirit sanctified from the causal necessity of the divine nature, then not only could there be no real distinctions among the Personal Trinitarian acts, such distinctions would not only not be real but could only be nominal. In fact, there could be no distinction among properties either: creation, redemption and sanctification would all be essentially identical. But this is not only modalism it is necessary universalism. This is why there is a real distinction among the actions of the Trinity, though such distinctions are not essential. The Father creates, the Son Redeems, the Spirit sanctifies. But the Son and the Spirit share in creation, the Father and the Spirit share in the Son's redemptive work cosmologically and anthropologically, and the Father and the Son share in the sanctifying work of the Spirit as the nature of God is thrice-holy.
But if this is true of God, then it is must also be true of the Person of the Logos. Indeed, because the Son has two natures, and two wills, the only way that the union of those natures and wills comes about is through the mode of his existence as Person. Christ could act as a Person in such a way that his human will, without sin and without natural opposition to his divine will, could, in the Garden of Gethsemane, be turned from the natural object of its strongest inclination (survival and life) toward the natural object of the divine will: the redemption ordained from the foundation of the world. That is to say, Christ's human will was not turned against its nature so as to act contrary to it--which would entail a logical and essential opposition between human and divine natures--but rather was turned from one good to another good, both equally participatory in the many goods proceeding from the Godhead.
But if this is true of the Persons of the Trinity, and true of the Person of the Logos, then it is possible for it to be true of human persons as well. What this means, however, is that human nature, as created by God is good, and that human nature as created by God naturally wills the good that God is. The will wills according to its nature. And even if human nature is fallen, it cannot be the case that humans have a completely different nature than that with which they were created by God. There is first of all no Scriptural warrant for such an assertion, but it also means that God's sovereign will in the creation of human nature can be thwarted. So even fallen nature retains the natural capacity to will its natural object: God.
But wherein lies the failure of human persons to act in accordance with that will? It lies precisely in the personal mode of existence. In the Trinity and in Christ, Person, nature and will are fused in such a way that the personal mode of willing is certain of its object and always accomplishes the end it seeks. In human persons prior to the eschaton, the person, nature and will are not so fused. The personal exercise of the will is framed by a lack of certain discrimination about real and perceived goods and thus deliberation is necessary, and with it the capacity to err and to sin (though error and sin are not themselves necessary to such a mode of existence or the willing which accompanies such a mode). Adam sinned, not from a misuse of the natural will, but from a misuse of the personal mode of willing.
It should be clear then that persons do not act by the necessitation of their wills and the strongest inclinations at the moment of willing preceding the act, but rather act by the employment of the will according to their personal mode of existence. This is true of the Trinitarian persons, of the Christ, and of humans. In the Trinity and the Christ, the personal mode of existence is such that person, nature and will are fused in such a way that the willing which accompanies their personal mode of existence is, properly speaking, non-deliberative. The Trinitarian Persons have no need to discriminate among the good acts available to Them, since all such goods acts are Their own generation. Similarly, the Person of the Logos has deified the human nature and will in the union in his Person of God and man, and in so doing, fixed the two natures and wills such that there is no need to discriminate among the real goods, since all such goods are immediately known to him, the human nature and will participating hypostatically in the goods brought forth by the Trinity. But in human persons prior to the eschaton, the person, nature and will are not so fused, and the personal mode of willing is precisely the deliberative will necessitated by the pre-eschaton human mode of existence. It is the nature of the human will, even when fallen, to seek its true object in the Creator. But since the human person is not deified, its discrimination among goods is not fixed in prudential virtue, and in the personal mode of willing human deliberation is capable of directing the will away from its natural object toward an apparent good.
In short, it is not that the will directs the person to an act, but that the person, in the employment of the will from his mode of existence, directs the will toward an act. This is not to say that human acts are never determined by the strongest inclination of the will. After all, akratic acts are a reality of human existence prior to the eschaton. But it does not follow that since some, or even most, human acts are so constituted that all human acts must be so constituted.
In other words, humans are not so constituted that they must always naturally will sin, which would attribute sin to God and would be a blasphemy. Rather, humans can freely will the good--as they have been created to do--and can employ their wills according to their personal mode of existence in such a way that they can truly and really choose to do acts that are good. But then it does not follow that since humans can freely will some acts that are good, namely they can freely will to choose their own salvation, that they are able to accomplish what they will to choose. No human can accomplish his own salvation. Only God's grace can accomplish that salvation both in the willing and the choosing, and in the long ascetical pursuit of deification which God's grace must also accomplish, not only universally in Christ, but particularly in the person. And, indeed, no synergist would ever claim differently.
Kevin has responded to my last reply to him in his Till...God's Great Judgment Seat. He has also replied to Perry's comments (at Kevin's "Synergies of Christ") in his (Kevin's) most recent post Real Union and Legal Talk. I'm grateful for both his replies, as they offer some important clarifications. But as Perry will doubtless wish to take on Kevin's (lengthy) "Real Union and Legal Talk" I will not direct my comments to that post per se. Making use of his clarifications, I will direct my own comments to the concepts embedded in "Till . . . God's Great Judgment Seat."
In our discussion, Kevin has reiterated that he bases human action in human willing which is constrained by nature. Kevin claims that personhood is real and not merely nominal, that a person exercises a will, but that that will is constrained by that person's nature, thus eliminating the possibility that a human person could will in opposition to their nature. Or, to state it positively and perhaps more correctly, that a person will always will according to their strongest inclination at the moment of willing. Kevin also admits to a synergistic account of human action after regeneration (or in the context of progressive sanctification), though he also claims that the work of Christ done in a person cannot fail. Presumably by this he means that since after regeneration a person's nature is regenerate, the inclinations of the nature will always most strongly incline toward God, so a person cannot but will (progressively ever greater) union with God.
Part of the issue, it seems to me, is that Kevin wants to maintain a theological determinism (that God is in some way the necessary and sufficient cause of all events, including human acts, though Kevin would, I suspect, subscribe to divine-human joint sufficiency in determining human acts) while at the same time preserving ultimate moral responsibility and a concept of personhood which embraces these presumably fundamental tenets. But if this is the case, then human willing cannot meaningfully be a function of personhood but a function of nature (either depraved or regenerate), and “person” here is a mask of sorts identifying the particular instance of a human nature.
I will grant that Kevin can make an argument for ultimate moral responsibility for a will that is free only insofar as it is constrained by its nature--though I, myself, find such arguments thin--but I fail to see how his understanding of personhood can be hypostatic as opposed to prosoponic. The person here seems to me to be only in such a way as to instantiate a particular human nature. It is the will of the nature that does all the work. The person, even if real in a certain way, is little better than a name by which is identified a particular instance of a nature.
I am, perhaps, overstating the case somewhat, ascribing to Kevin an Aristotelian notion of personhood that he doubtless will reject. But I wonder if he doesn't see what I take to be the logical entailments by which I reach my conclusion. If the human will is a faculty of the nature, if that will always wills according to its strongest inclinations, and if a person cannot exceed his own nature, and thus is always constrained to will according to that nature, even if it is the person that wills, how is it that a person is anything other than his own will? What sense does it make to say that a person directs his own will, if that will cannot but will what the nature dictates?
Kevin thinks to escape this dilemma by predicating to nature all the things that a person (in the hypostatic sense) would do anyway. That is to say, a person only wills and does what a person wills and does because those are the natural constraints on what a person wills and does. But how is this not subsuming personhood to nature? And if we subsume personhood to nature, we have made will the operative agency. Personhood is will, but will is a faculty of nature. Thus personhood is a faculty of nature.
Kevin admits that his use of "coextensive" for personhood and nature confuses what he intends to say. But it strikes me that he is constrained by his own paradigm to say just this. If a person does not exceed his nature, if a person's will is constrained by his nature, and if a person cannot will except in accordance with his nature, then personhood is coextensive with will and coextensive with nature, and the charge I have been making of Kevin that person and nature are identical in his schema appears to me to hold.
Furthermore, on Kevin's schema, a will cannot but will what its nature directs, specifically, it will always will in the direction of its strongest inclination. This is problematic, however, in the case of Jesus. Kevin and I agree that Christ had two natures, human and divine, and two wills, human and divine. Kevin notes that in Christ the union of those wills was accomplished in that the wills both willed the same thing. However, I don't think the Scriptural witness bears him out. I turn to the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:37-44/Mark 14:33-41). There Christ asks that if it be possible that the cup he was about to drink (his death) might pass from him. Then he says, “Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” Kevin's view that Jesus' two wills both willed the same thing cannot hold in light of this verse. For if they willed the same thing, then Jesus had no need to deny the object of his human will (drawing back from death), and would simply have acquiesced to the Father's will.
Note carefully, though, what I am not saying. I am not saying that Jesus' human will was opposed to his divine will. Nor am I saying that Jesus' two wills were not in union. Let me be clear: there is no opposition, and there is union. But under Kevin's schema, this cannot be the case.
How do I explain, or rather, how has patristic teaching explained, this seeming discrepancy. Namely, that the two wills both willed according to their nature, which is to say, each will willed its own object (the human will the good of preservation of life, the divine will the atoning sacrifice ordained by God), and that the human will turned away from the good object it intended (preservation of life) toward another equally good object, the acquiescence to God's ordained work of salvation.
That is to say, under Kevin's schema, asserting strongest inclination as the object of a will simply cannot work. But why not? It fails to work in two ways. First, the texts themselves explicitly describe a denial of Jesus' human will to serve the divine will. But if Jesus did no sin, and if his human will's strongest human inclination was not sin, how is it that his human will was denied? It seems to me that Kevin can give only one answer: that the divine will subsumed the human will. But this is monothelitism.
It also fails to work not because Christ had a sinful nature like us, but rather it fails because under Kevin's model, even Christ had a nature that could have been corrupted (else he could not have been tempted in every way such as we are), and thus like Adam, could have resisted his strongest inclination. He could have done this in two ways. If Kevin asserts that Christ had a human nature like Adam, then he could resist his God-ward inclinations for sin (as Adam did). Or, if we posit that Christ's strongest natural human inclination is to live, and we affirm that such is an unqualified good, then Christ resisted that strongest inclination to submit it to the will of God. Either way, Christ, in his human nature, could have resisted his strongest human inclination (and in the patristic understanding of the Garden, he actually did).
Kevin, however, will likely argue that, however we explain the two wills in Christ, humans born under the Federal Head of Adam do, indeed, follow the strongest inclination of their will, which just happens to always be sin. They are unable to do anything else. But if this works for unregenerate man, it also has to work for regenerate man: he will always will according to his strongest inclination, which, now that it has been regenerated, can and does will the good (or God). Presumably this is why he also says that the work of Christ cannot fail. There is a synergy, of sorts, after regeneration, but if the synergy of which Kevin speaks is that exemplified in Christ under Kevin's schema, it has the same problems it must overcome.
In other words, the personhood of which Kevin speaks cannot be more than the nominal particularization of a human nature and will, for no matter the particular state of that nature and will, it cannot will against its nature (sin if it is unregenerate; holiness if it is regenerate). Kevin will doubtless point to his explicit commitment to progressive sanctification, that it is still possible for regenerate beings to sin. But this hardly deflects the points I make, for I would be quite surprised if Kevin believed the regenerate could ever truly fall from grace by their own efforts.
But given all these, to me, logical entailments of his position, then his denial of equating personhood with nature, while genuine and sincere, cannot follow from his own understanding of nature and will. Indeed, if we map these entailments onto God we end in modalism, and if onto Christ, we end in monotheletism. But if Kevin gives up his monergistic schema, and adopts hypostatic personhood, he can preserve that which he seeks to maintain.
Two respondents to Lynne Rudder Baker's 2003 article "Why Christians Should not be Libertarians: An Augustinian Challenge" (Faith and Philosophy, 20:4 (2003): 460-478), which article is not online, give some cogent responses criticising her compatibilist account of free will. (Both links below are pdf files.)
John M. Depoe's Why Christians Should not be Compatibilists: A Response to Baker
Kevin Timpe's Why Christians Might be Libertarians: A Reply to Lynne Rudder Baker
What I hope to accomplish here is a brief summary of the questions and issues surrounding the notion of free will. The philosophical positions enumerated here are the ones that are behind (though with variations) the ones espoused in the diablog on soteriology. (Note: Perry also has a good, detailed summary of the philosophical issues and questions here.)
First of all, the very notion of the "free will" is, itself, philosophically difficult to nail down. What we mean by "free will" is notoriously difficult to articulate. While all of the interblogolocutors in the soteriology debate can start with a rather strong affirmation of some of the central doctrines on which our discussion is based, even among ourselves we have differing views on what we mean by "free will." Is the will a faculty the nature, or the operation of a person? Is the will "free," and to what extent? And (given our answer to the extent we posit freedom to the will) what difference does that make? Is choosing different than willing? Can the will be determined but choice remain free? What sense can we make of "free choice"? I don't propose here to answer these questions--after all, the philosophical discussion itself is laborious and ongoing--but only to survey some of the important issues, and to clarify broad positions.
Free will usually indicates some state of affairs such that the human agent can and does rationally author, or reasonably causes, his or her own acts. (But this description hardly covers all the possible options available in the current philosophical debate.) In other words, free will is usually tied to the notion of causation of actions. In general, two interrelated questions are asked about this question:
Depending on how one answers those two questions, there are four possible positions that one take on the matter of free human action and the compatibility of free will with one's answer to the question on free human action:
| Determinism | Indeterminism | |
| Incompatibilism | (Hard) Determinist | Libertarian |
| Compatibilism | Soft Determinist (Compatibilist) | Sceptic |
The question of determinism focuses on outcomes, or effects, of antecedent causes and events; i. e., Does human willing always entail one and only one consequent action derived from antecedent causes or events? The question of indeterminism focuses on the possibility of alternate outcomes from one set of antecedent causes or events; i. e., Are there at least two alternative possible consequent acts from the antecedent causes and events to which human willing can be directed?
The question of compatibilism focuses on the quality of freedom a will must have to will freely; i. e., What sense does it make to say a will is free though human action is determined? The question of incompatibilism focuses on the coherence of having a will that is free; i. e., What sense does it make to say a will is free though human action is determined (or, undetermined)?
Those who claim human action is determined fall into two broad camps: hard determinists and compatibilists (or sometimes called "soft determinists"). Hard determinists answer the question on compatibility in the negative: free will and determinism don't jibe. Thus, "free will" is essentially a contradiction, and nonsensical. One can always and only will one consequence, which is determined by antecedent causes or events. The will is not free from this causal chain, nor free to direct it. In current philosophical discussion on free will, this is an extremely rare position.
Compatibilists, however, argue that though human action is determined by antecedent causes and events, the will is free within those constraints. That is to say, though the will is determined toward one and only one consequent human act, the will is free to will that act. Compatibilists make use of "Frankfurt examples" to show that free will (and with it moral responsibility) is not predicated upon the necessity that there be two or more alternative possibilities available to an agent. An agent can be constrained by causes and events (internal and external) toward only one consequent action, yet still be free to act and thus responsible for that action. In current philosophical discussion on free will, this is to a great degree a majority position.
Libertarians (or, incompatibilists) argue that human action is not determined by antecedent causes or events (that there are at least two alternative possible actions one may choose to fulfill) and that it is coherent to speak of free will in the context of such indeterminism. That is to say, future human actions are not a result of chance or luck, even though at any given moment of decision the outcome is undetermined and (in the case of two alternatives) could go either way. Some libertarians make us of the examples of the indeterminancy principle in physics as well as recent findings in brain physiology of parallel neural pathways, to bolster their case that free will is not merely chance or luck. Libertarians, with compatibilists, posit that the will is free and therefore that humans are indeed the authors of their actions and morally responsible for them. It should be noted that libertarians are not required to argue that all human action is undetermined, but that at least some human action is free. Thus, even if it were shown that some human action is determined, this would not invalidate the libertarian case, per se. Libertarians, though a smaller group of those involved in the free will discussions in philosopohy than are the compatibilists, still make up the primary alternative to compatibilism. There are two currently popular forms of libertarianism: causal indeterminism, which focuses on the ultimately responsible choice of the undetermined human action caused by free will (a self-forming act), and agent causation, which focuses on the control an agent has over the events he or she causes.
Finally, with regard to sceptics, the chart may appear misleading. It may appear from the chart that sceptics think free will is compatible with indeterminism. But one should remember that there are two questions that are being asked: is human action determined, and is free will compatible with determinism? Sceptics align with libertarians in positing that human actions are undetermined. But sceptics differ from libertarians in that they also happen to find the whole concept of an undetermined human act caused by a free will incoherent. They are not necessarily claiming that the freedom of human actions are compatible with indeterminism per se, but that it simply makes no sense to speak of an undetermined free will; i. e., these are usually the critics of libertarianism that raise the issue of chance or luck, which itself invalidates the whole notion of free will, for it invalidates having any control over human actions. Sceptics align with compatibilists, not in the sense that free will is compatible with determinism, but rather that they deny the sort of free will that libertarians posit. Some think that free will scepticism is a growing coterie of advocates in the philosophical discussions on free will.
Clearly, as these philosophical questions relate to our soteriology discussion, Perry and I take what may be called a libertarian position (though Perry and I might have some slight differences between us in our individaul accounts of free will), while Darren, Kevin and John take what may be called a compatibilist position. The specific issues and questions of these two theological positions on free will have been and are being elucidated and analyzed.
From the Antiochian Archdiocese:
We join in mourning the loss of Pope John Paul II, the great leader of the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time we rejoice in his ministry, and the legacy of compassion that he leaves to the world. We bring to mind the teaching of St. Ignatius of Antioch in his exhortation to Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna on the role of the bishop:
"Lift up all men, as the Lord lifts you; put up with all in love, as you actually do. Be diligent in unceasing prayers; ask for more understanding than you have; watch with a sleepless spirit. Speak to each individual after the example of God; bear the sickness of all, as a perfect athlete. Where the labor is greatest, the gain is great." (Ignatius to Polycarp 1:2-3)
It seems clear that Pope John Paul II, in his episcopacy, was true to this teaching. He touched many people of all races and religions by his example of caring, love, and compassion. He also served as a strong example of what it means to suffer and die with grace. He has "fought the good fight" (2 Timothy 4:7)
His Eminence Metropolitan PHILIP had met Pope John Paul II on two occasions and was impressed by his faithfulness, and holiness. Surely his soul is resting in peace and his memory is eternal.
From Orthodox Church in America:
On Saturday, April 2, 2005, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Herman, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, sent letters of condolence to Angelo Cardinal Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State, and Walter Cardinal Kasper of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, upon learning of the death of Pope John Paul II.
"I greet you with brotherly love in Christ and extend the condolences of the Holy Synod of Bishops, Hierarchs, Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America," Metropolitan Herman wrote. "Throughout the many years of his service as spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church, he was a shining example of dedication to the episcopal ministry and to the high office to which he was called and a 'good steward of the manifold grace of God' [1 Peter 4:10]."
Metropolitan Herman also noted that, in word and deed, the late Pope "constantly reminded all humanity of our shared responsibility to defend the rights of the poor, the defenseless, and those who have no one to speak for them" and remained steadfast "in proclaiming the 'Gospel of Life' and in safeguarding the dignity and sanctity of life in all its stages.
"This, perhaps, will be his greatest legacy, not only to the faithful of the Roman Catholic Church, but also for all Christians and all people of good will," the letter of condolence concluded.
Earlier in the week, upon learning of the Pope's failing health, Metropolitan Herman sent a letter of concern to Cardinal Kasper.
During his lengthy pontificate, Pope John Paul II met with several hierarchs of the Orthodox Church in America in the Vatican and during his visits to North America.
From the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America:
We participate in the sorrow of the Roman Catholic Church during this difficult time of the departure of Pope John Paul II, and we join the world in offering prayers knowing that he is now in the world of eternal rest.
The Pope, who began his papacy in October 1978, has guided the Roman Catholic Church through transforming years, remaining firm on traditional values while offering love, compassion, and forgiveness. He touched many people with his gentle manner and his openness to people of other religions.
During the tenure of Pope John Paul II, the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church has improved significantly. In a most recent relevant event last November, Archbishop Demetrios, spiritual leader of 1.5 million Greek Orthodox Christians in America, had the opportunity to visit and be with the Pope in a special occasion at The Vatican. This was a ceremony during which the Pope, responding to the request of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, returned the Holy Relics of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory the Theologian, two of the most prominent Fathers of the undivided Church. The Holy Relics now rest at the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople.
We, as Orthodox Christians, will always remember, among other instances, this expression of a desire for reconciliation and unity as we pray for the repose of his soul.
Note: As I did in my St. John Cassian post below, I have emailed John Hendryx to alert him to this post and give him a fair chance to respond. Though a private email exchange between us took place on Monday-Tuesday, 04-05 April, he has not replied to my last email to him on Tuesday 05 April 13:30 CST.
If you haven't been following the discussion between John, Perry and me in the wake of my post on St. John Cassian, you will likely find yourself overwhelmed coming at it today. (Depending on your webbrowser, if you printed off the post and all the comments, it would be over sixty pages.) But let me encourage you to take the time and read through the comments, because the issue itself is extremely important, and the issues and problems raised in the discussion will be made clear, or so I hope, with some careful and slow reading.
One of the respondents is John Hendryx, who runs the Monergism.com site. In his A Prayer That a Synergist Won't Pray article, he has issued the following challenge:
I often post full debates on these topics at monergism with both sides answers full showing. If you feel I have set up a straw man in my portrayal of your theology you should be able to answer a few easy questions on what it takes to receive Christ. If you can answer these questions and show that you still believe in salvation by grace alone, apart from any merit (or sheer chance) then I shall admit defeat. ("I don't know" doesn't count) Here are the questions:
- Why is it that one unregenerate person believes the gospel and not another?
- Was he able to generate a right thought, produce a right affection, create right belief, while at the same time man #2 did not have the natural wherewithal to come up with the faith to be saved?
- If they both made use of the same grace, did one make better use of it than the other?
- If prevenient grace places us in a neutral state, then what motivates one man to believe and not another?
- What principle in him made him choose what he did?
- If all men are neutral in prevenient grace was it by chance that one believed and not another?
- Is it the grace of God that makes you differ from unbelievers or is it your faith?
As with most of these sorts of challenges, the challenger assumes his own position to be true, and the questions are framed with that assumption. This, of course, begs the question, for if monergism is not true, then these questions are meaningless. Take for example the final question:
Implicit in this question is that regeneration is an either/or reality: either the grace of God is the cause of belief and regeneration, or personal choice is the cause of belief, with which God cooperates by bestowing his grace. But this is not what the synergist believes. The synergist believes that both the grace of God is the cause of belief and regeneration and that the person chooses to believe and so freely cooperates with God's grace. On a synergist reading, then, this question is meaningless, for synergists do not accept a natural opposition of human willing to God's grace. Synergists posit a personal opposition to God's grace. In other words, synergists distinguish between personal operation of the will and the natural ordering of the will.
So a synergist cannot answer John's question on his terms, for the synergist does not accept monergism. The proper question would be, Where does the opposition to God's grace lie: in the human person, his hypostasis (or his person) or his nature (his will and desires)? From there either respondent can proceed to make their case.
This is why it is that for a synergist to answer the questions prima facie is to concede the implied argument that monergism is true. On the other hand, if monergism is not true, and if the challenger's understanding of synergism is false, then these questions not only prejudice the discussion, but are nonsensical.
But John's challenge is a helpful one in that it will bring to the fore the problems of monergism and why the historic Church was right to reject it and adopt a synergist understanding of regeneration.
The simple answer, on synergist terms is that one unregenerate person hypostatically directs his will away from the belief that God has graced him with, while the other unregenerate person hypostatically directs his will toward the belief granted him.
What is highlighted here is the diametrically opposed understandings of personhood, nature and willing that monergists and synergists have. Monergists, because they believe that God is the only operative agent in regeneration, must posit that man is both incapable of belief and unable to believe. Only in this way can God's regenerative work--which monergists believe necessarily excludes human choice--be preserved. Thus monergists posit a view of the human person such that the will is determined by nature, and the hypostasis (or personhood) of an unregenerate person is inextricably fused with that nature. Since, monergists believe human nature to be sinful, then the human hypostasis cannot but choose to sin. But this view requires that persons are identified with their nature, which effectively negates personhood.
This view ultimately leads to modalist heresies in God, for if persons are identified with their natures, then God's person is essentially and necessarily his nature. But if this is so, then the Trinitarian Persons are mere nominal realities, and this is Sabellianism. Furthermoe, this person-nature identification applied to the Godhead, requires that God must create because it is his nature to create. His act of creation is not predicated on a free act of love, but on the necessity of his nature and its will. And this necessity is simply pagan Plotinian absolute simplicity.
Thus, from the very first question, we see the heretical entailments of monergism.
Once again, this question is mistaken. Human act, in this case believing, does not arise from affectional or mental states. An act, which is the “fulfillment” of a potentiality, must arise from some cause. Mental states are, as the word implies, static. They do not move, they do not cause anything. An act is caused by a choice. Thus neither a regenerate or an unregenerate person believes or disbelieves on the basis of any affectional or mental state. Either person believes or disbelieves on the basis of a personal choice, which choice is caused by the hypostatic operation of the natural will.
That is to say, both persons, having been given God's grace, have, by that grace, the natural wherewithal to believe, or to disbelieve. God's grace does come first, middle and last in this. But that grace can be resisted, as the hypostatic operation of the natural will, which is naturally ordered to God, turns that will and nature away from its natural object in the greatest Good to a lesser apparent good.
Here is another glaring difference between the synergism Perry and I espouse, and the monergism John espouses. In reality, the regenerate person makes better use the natural will than does the unregenerate, and the regenerate is able to do so on the basis of God's grace. Neither God's grace, nor the natural will given such grace, is deficient. The deficiency precisely lies in the character of the personal operation of that will which has been energized by God's grace. And this is why an unregenerate person is morally responsible for his choice. Monergism must necessarily ascribe to God the moral responsibility for the lack of belief in the unregenerate, for the only difference, in monergism, between the belief of the regenerate and the unbelief of the unregenerate is God's work. And if it is God's work, it is God's responsibility. If the human person cannot author his own acts, since his will is in bondage to his fallen nature, and a person is identified with his nature, then he logically cannot have any moral responsibility for their act.
(But this contention of mine involves some argumentation on the issues of compatibilism and moral responsibility which I need not go into here. It is enough to simply elucidate the differences.)
This is another example in which the monergist necessarily posits human nature in a relation of opposition. In other words, for a monergist, the opposition between humans and God is predicated on the nature of human persons. But, if human nature is inherently opposed to God, then it is inherently evil. But then the question becomes: Whence this evil nature? If human nature was originally created good, how could a good human nature be an evil human nature, especially in light of the fact that no person has ultimate responsibility for his evil nature, since that nature was merely inherited from his ancestors? Indeed, if we reject the preexistence of souls, then we must accept that God is involved in the creation of each personal instance of human nature. But this has God involved in the creation of evil human nature. But this is little more than Manichean dualism, and is, of course, a heresy.
So, it is not that grace (prevenient or otherwise) puts us in some neutral position, but rather, grace energizes our hypostatic operation of the will which makes us able to freely choose.
Furthermore, it is ultimately irrelevant what motivates human choice. Both regenerate and unregenerate persons are “motivated” to choose the ultimate Good that is God. But the regenerate freely chooses to believe, while the unregenerate chooses to disbelieve.
The principle of the choice in regeneration resides in the graced-by-God human hypostasis. It does not and cannot reside in the human hypostasis per se, but does lie wholly both in the energies of God and the energies of the human person. Far from being a contradiction, this synergistic principle is that which is seen in the Incarnation.
In fact, this is why monergism must logically entail the heresy of montheletism. For if the human nature is inherently opposed to God, then Jesus could have had only one operative will: the divine one. But this has been condemned in the Sixth Council.
This question confuses indeterminism with chance. Simply because human choice is undetermined does not then logically entail it arises by chance. On the contrary, it is not either determinism or indeterminism, which is a false dilemma, but rather is there an explanatory schema such that we can give reasons why an act happened. In this case, the reasons why one believed and another did not have to do with God's grace and the operation of the will by the human person. Thus, the agent is undetermined, and thus free to choose, but that choice is not merely a chance event.
Since I handled this question above, I'll simply reiterate: Once again, we are presented with a false dilemma. What makes a believer differ from an unbeliever is precisely both grace and faith. There is no essential relation of opposition between grace and faith here, but a synergy of hypostatic operation of the will.
So, on some of its most fundamental tenets, monergism entails heresy, which is just another way of saying, monergism itself is a heresy.
And that is what I contended in my original soteriology post.
It's all in the wording of the question, isn't it? Remember the much-ballyhooed ABC news poll on Terri Schiavo and how the whole country was supportive of Michael Schiavo?
It seems Zogby came out with a poll in which the questions more accurately reflected the Terri Schiavo situation. Lo and behold, most Americans opposed what was done to Terri:
Polls leading up to the death of Terri Schiavo made it appear Americans had formed a consensus in favor of ending her life. However, a new Zogby poll with fairer questions shows the nation clearly supporting Terri and her parents and wanting to protect the lives of other disabled patients.The Zogby poll found that, if a person becomes incapacitated and has not expressed their preference for medical treatment, as in Terri's case, 43 percent say "the law presume that the person wants to live, even if the person is receiving food and water through a tube" while just 30 percent disagree.
Another Zogby question hi[t]s directly on Terri's circumstances.
"If a disabled person is not terminally ill, not in a coma, and not being kept alive on life support, and they have no written directive, should or should they not be denied food and water," the poll asked.
A whopping 79 percent said the patient should not have food and water taken away while just 9 percent said yes. . . .
"When there is conflicting evidence on whether or not a patient would want to be on a feeding tube, should elected officials order that a feeding tube be removed or should they order that it remain in place," respondents were asked.
Some 18 percent said the feeding tube should be removed and 42 percent said it should remain in place. . . .
The poll found that 49 percent of Americans believe there should be exceptions to the right of a spouse to act as a guardian for an incapacitated spouse. Only 39 percent disagreed.
When asked directly about Terri's case and told th[at] her estranged husband Michael "has had a girlfriend for 10 years and has two children with her" 56 percent of Americans believed guardianship should have been turned over to Terri's parents while 37 percent disagreed.
Do I need to spell out the implications for you? Okay, here it is: The mainstream media in their reporting on Terri Schiavo abandoned objectivity and became partisan advocates for the euthanasia movement. They were puppets whose strings were pulled by George Felos and other anti-life advocates.
In the Terri Schiavo killing, there was a lot of talk and renewed interest in advanced directives, or "living wills." For those who want their pro-life, pro-person views reflected in such documents, I point your attention to the following:
The Will to Live Project: The Pro-Life Living Will
Christian Medical & Dental Associations' Advance Directive Kit
Make sure you discuss this with your family and friends, and always seek the advice of legal counsel.
I've collected the following links, for those who would like to explore the Holy Father's theological and pastoral legacy.
Feeling a little blue today? You need to go here and click on the link (911tape_1.zip) in the first message. It's a zip file of a Windows Media Player audio recording of a 911 call. A woman at Burger King wants to call in the police to make sure they do it her way. Hilarity ensues.
(Via Opinion Journal, which has a transcript on their Best of the Web Today for Thursday 31 March 2005, last item.)