Sufficient Grace

A reader (!) asks, "If we accept that man's cooperation with sufficient grace always remains in potency if he is not given an efficacious grace how, then, can we understand man's culpability in resisting sufficient grace when no efficacious grace to cooperate with it is granted?"


Hmmm, good question, and certainly a classic! What sort of guilt (culpa) is there in those who could not cooperate with grace? 


Take first the example of the unbaptized baby. Until regenerated, the infant bears the culpa of original sin, and is subject to that sin's poena, punishment. Yet the child has no personal sins, no personal sins to be punished. (Hence Limbo, with its perfect natural happiness apart from supernatural beatitude. Here we have culpability without positive punishment, it seems to me.)


Second, what about the sinner, the person whose deeds have been evil, who does not receive the efficacious grace to cooperate with God? I'm not sure it's precisely the lack of cooperation that is culpable. (I'll have to check and see how the Church treats this!) I'll guess, for the moment, that our best course is to think about people who don't receive the actual efficacious grace to cooperate in the same way that we think of divine reprobation: God withholds supernatural assistance from them as a punishment for actual sins. It's their (our) malice, uncharity, and sloth that cause guilt and justify punishment -- not the mere lack of cooperation, and still less the lack of operative grace.


This has got to be one of the murkiest parts of theology. It would be easier if semi-Pelagianism were true, and there were no predestination. All this requires more thought.

Ressourcement

My copy of Flynn & Murray's Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology arrived. It's fat, at least, which makes its $105 price tag slightly less appalling. It's hard to say whether this is appropriate reading for the Triduum Sacrum, which starts tomorrow, but here I go. I will use this space to take notes, with a view to writing something more substantial later on. 

The ressourcement (return to sources) is often named as the more conservative movement in 20th C. theology, especially at and after Vatican II, it's opposite number being aggiornamento (updating, adapting "to today"). I'm not sure what "conservative" means here. Though this book may teach me otherwise, my impression to date is that ressourcement was a revolutionary movement, a return that involved jumping over the heritage that was actually handed down in favor of an historical reconstruction. 

Something tells me my reading of Nicolás Gómez Dávila (the Colombian philosopher) will be helpful in dealing with ressourcement and "historical" theology. History is a young discipline, and theologians are in love with it -- perhaps as they were once in love with philosophy? Gómez Dávila warns always against solutions and reforms: it is not he, the reactionary, who thinks a return to the past will solve things; instead the reactionary seeks shade from current madness, is skeptical but not hopeless, and waits on divine deliverance while he lives and works against fraud, intellectual dishonesty, and barbarism.

I like NGD more and more. 

Theological Argument

I keep meeting people who (though they should know better, and even have degrees in theology or its ancillary disciplines) appeal to everything but divine revelation to answer theological questions. They argue from experience, from other people's claimed experience, from history, from principles of ethicists or liturgists or ecclesiastical bureaucrats, from the social sciences, and from vague moralistic renderings akin to "What Would Jesus Do?" But arguments from revelation are rare. The usual theological loci are neglected. Even broadly metaphysical arguments (from the nature of the First Cause, or from the disproportion between human action and supernatural effects) are missing.

In its most disturbing form this comes from zealous Catholics who are on the side of the angels. I'm thinking of Radical Orthodoxy, positivist Catholic ethicists, moral arguers, culture critics, and fans of the ressourcement movement. It's hard to say what's missing. Deep theological formation? Continuity with living tradition? Instinct? Maybe just the basic point that theology draws its principles from the mind of God. (Recently I heard a priest class theological arguments from authority as the very weakest sort of argument -- forgetting what he must have learned in seminary, viz that such arguments are indeed weak, except when, as was the case in this instance, the authority in question is God. THEN the argument from authority is strong indeed, and properly theological.) Oh, well.

Grouse, grouse. Maybe next I'll review this new book, coming out of Ireland, about the ressourcement movement. It's expensive, so I must find a journal that wants a review!

Historical Theology

Historical Theology studies the history of theology, especially the development of theological and religious ideas in their social, cultural, or other historical context. It's fascinating, important, and hugely influential. For Catholics HT was given a boost by the Second Vatican Council, which directed that seminary education in dogmatic theology should take the "genetic" approach:

Dogmatic theology should be so arranged that these biblical themes are proposed first of all. Next there should be opened up to the students what the Fathers of the Eastern and Western Church have contributed to the faithful transmission and development of the individual truths of revelation. The further history of dogma should also be presented, account being taken of its relation to the general history of the Church. Next, in order that they may illumine the mysteries of salvation as completely as possible, the students should learn to penetrate them more deeply with the help of speculation, under the guidance of St. Thomas, and to perceive their interconnections. They should be taught to recognize these same mysteries as present and working in liturgical actions and in the entire life of the Church. They should learn to seek the solutions to human problems under the light of revelation, to apply the eternal truths of revelation to the changeable conditions of human affairs and to communicate them in a way suited to men of our day. (Optatum totius, n.16) 


These pedagogical instructions are an incentive, at least to me, to distinguish (a) systematics from dogmatics, (b) clerical education from theological education, and (c) overall formation from theological education. OT n. 16 is typically taken as a design for individual seminary courses: each dogma course begins with the Bible, proceeds through the Fathers and the twists of Church history, pays a visit to Aquinas, and runs into reflections on the life of the Church. I think we'd do better, however, to take this paragraph of OT as a plan for overall priestly formation. Ordinandi should soak in the Bible and the Fathers, should learn church history, and should be challenged (and already motivated) to connect the eternal truth with present-day questions. The speculative penetration of divine truth and the appreciation of the analogy of faith, under St Thomas's guidance, is the properly theological part of this education. This ought not to be restricted, I'd say, to a week or two or three in any given course: instead following Aquinas's pedagogy in sacred doctrine should be the main work of every theology course. I assume, however, that the other matters--Scripure, the Fathers, etc.--are being learned elsewhere, both in the classroom and outside it.

If systematic theology (i.e., theology) courses must all be taught genetically, then what about courses in Scripture, Patristics, History, Liturgy, Pastoral Theology, etc.? Will these have dogmatic and indeed Thomistic sections, since their material is, or contributes to, dogma? Hmm, I thought not. You could wreck a good theological education program by embracing OT n. 16 too vigorously.

Curmudgeonly Note on Undergraduate Theology

A Catholic college or university should, of course, have courses (and requirements!) ensuring that undergraduates are suitably educated in the doctrine, history, and culture of the faith. Typically, though, undergrads are no more ready for theology than they are for law or medicine. Future theologians would be well-served by a good philosophy program, supplemented by spiritual formation (the liturgy and sacraments, private prayer, lectio divina) and by courses in the positive religious sciences, loosely so called. My scheme would be for the undergraduates to study the Scriptures, Church history, and perhaps apologetics, making it clear that these are preparatory subjects for theology proper.

Who should teach undergraduates theology? Those qualified and willing, of course. A Dominican with an STL, if he reads widely and constantly in theology, is an excellent candidate. I don't think, though, that simply teaching undergraduates is a good work for Dominicans with doctorates in theology proper. Unlike the brethren with doctorates in most secular subjects, theologians don't have a subject that lends itself to undergrad presentation. Nobody would dream of sending new high school graduates into a major seminary to begin a B.Div. (STB, MDiv, or whatever); but somehow we think the same rudimentary theology courses can be watered down even further to make them part of the BA curriculum. Well, maybe. But I doubt it.

Labor Day

Like the world, Labor Day was created in six days. That's how long it tool for the bill to sail through Congress and be signed into law by President Grover Cleveland in 1894. The holiday was created to soothe unionized labor in the wake of the Pullman strike (which involved railroad workers in the company monopoly-town of Pullman, Illinois; the strike became violent, disrupted the Mail, and was forcibly put down by US Marshalls and the Army, with a dozen deaths).

The ambiguity of our public holiday matches the ambiguous role of organized labor. Everybody knows unions have done a lot of good, and have also been crooked and sometimes violent. The same can be said of employers. Accordingly a Christian observance of Labor Day needs nuance, and will call for honesty, justice, and generosity from workers and employers alike.

The Scriptures teach that the need for hard labor results from original sin. While Adam was supposed to tend the garden of Eden from the very beginning, it was only after the Fall that he began to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow. During this life the redeemed must still toil, and "those who do not work should not eat." But at the same time the Gospel urges and delivers a freedom from anxiety about toil. We're supposed to work, but are not supposed to worry about what we are to eat, or drink, or wear. "Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness," says Jesus, "and all these things will be given you besides." We can be content, indeed joyful, with a poor sufficiency, knowing that God is our great and everlasting love and treasure. We work a few shifts, and as hard as they may be we can look forward to a sabbath that lasts forever, and to the crown of life, everlasting life in God, as our great reward.

(Not the sermon I preached today, but something like this might not be bad next year!)

Man Fully Alive

It was trendy at and after Vatican II to quote this phrase from St Irenaeus's Adversus haereses (iv.20.7): "The glory of God is man fully alive...." The second half of the sentence was often omitted, as was the context of the remark.

The passage is: "The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God. If the revelation of God through creation already brings life to all living beings on the earth, how much more will the manifestation of the Father by the Word bring life to those who see God."


It's the beholding of God that gives glorious divine life to man. Without the visio Dei, we're dead. And how do you get this vision? Only in the Word, who makes God known while still preserving the invisibility of the Father. And notice that St Irenaeus also distinguishes between natural, earthly life--given by the Word in creation--and the supernatural life that comes from the manifestation of the Father in Christ. 


Keep this up and, next thing you know, people will start to think the Catholic faith is natural, so that believers can be "architects of a new humanity." Yikes!