What’s Wrong with the World

So could the weakness of Christians for suicidal multi-culti nonsense be deeply rooted in scripture?

No. Not, at least, in the sense that I think you mean it. I'm sure some Christians think so too, though.

Mahony.

Thanks, Badger - corrected.

I would say that, on this issue, Thomas Fleming is indispensable for understanding how liberalism is ultimately a perversion and not a progression of Christian ethics. Any man who is espousing multiculturalism or advocating mass immigration in the name of Christianity is doing so out of either 1)ignorance or 2) dishonesty. Besides, looking to Mahony for wisdom or authority on matters of ethics is ridiculous, seeing as how he is chided more often by Catholics than anybody else.

I don't see how the Galatians passage has anything to do with legal policy of border enforcement. Other than the whole, 'taking the verse of out context' thing, it seems clear that this verse has nothing to do with governmental policy. It's talking about who is part of the promise made to Abraham.

If there ever was a verse that we ought to rethink using in isolation, and there are many, it's this one. I mean, without the surrounding verses, not only is the whole context entirely lost, the individual sentence doesn't make much sense as there clearly are still Jews, Greeks, free men and slaves, and men and women.

While I would like more theologically mature politicians ideally, I often wish many of our current ones would simply be cease using biblical proof-texts. It's often damaging to the real message of Scripture, lacks genuine application to whatever their pet project is and makes many of us, by association, look confused and silly.

The people who think Christianity caused liberalism have to account for the 14 centuries or so of Christendom in which Christianity favored hierarchy, monarchy and non-liberal societies.

More specificity is needed, too. Western Christianity certainly took a liberal turn as Western Europe did. But which sects led the way? Did Christian churches lead or follow the zeitgeist? Are the churches to blame, or their secularizers?

The Multi-culti suicide has one basis in 19th century altruism, a perverted form of Christianity. If you often meet Christian-bashing Randians, send them the old Catholic Encyclopedia's condemnation of altruism.

"all...are one in Christ Jesus," Paul writes. Perhaps this is a helpful place to start. Paul emphasizes not equality but *unity* under the Fatherhood of God.

So is multiculturalism an egalitarian movement first or a universalist movement first? I'm inclined to think it is the former, since multiculturalism and universalism have severe conflicts in addition to their mutually reenforcing habits.

Therefore the multicultural invocation of Galatians is an appropriation, and not something evident in the text itself.

The US Catholic hierarchy's position on immigration must be understood in the context of American Catholicism being an immigrant Church. Their pro-immigration habits were set long ago, on pragmatic as much as principled grounds.

What those guys said.

All are one in Christ Jesus?

Then let us hold all equally responsible for upholding the law.

http://tinyurl.com/yl4b3qm

Kevin J. Jones: I take it that "the people who think Christianity caused liberalism" would "account for the 14 centuries or so of Christendom during which [it] favored hierarchy, monarchy and non-liberal societies" by pointing out that much of what passed for "Christianity" during the so-called "age of faith" consisted in great big gobs of Germanic tribalism combined with carefully selected dollops of Christian scripture.

That, at least, would be my guess.

Which explains all the Germans on board the Spanish galleons and galleases at Lepanto, and all the German traditions that percolated through Byzantium through all the years when that half-Germanic empire shielded Europe from Islam.

Steve:

...Christians in leadership positions...

More specificity is needed, too. Western Christianity certainly took a liberal turn as Western Europe did. But which sects led the way? Did Christian churches lead or follow the zeitgeist? Are the churches to blame, or their secularizers?

It is as I explained to my mother who is extremely left-wing on such issues: when the Romans were pagans they persecuted Christians; when they became Christians they persecuted pagans.

I'm a little lost in this this discussion. Edward the Lesser wrote that "Any man who is espousing multiculturalism or advocating mass immigration in the name of Christianity is doing so out of either 1)ignorance or 2) dishonesty." Kevin Jones writes that "The people who think Christianity caused liberalism have to account for the 14 centuries or so of Christendom in which Christianity favored hierarchy, monarchy and non-liberal societies."

So I gather from these passages that it would be foolish to think that Christianity caused liberalism; and it would be similarly foolish to think that Christianity entails multiculturalism or the advocacy of mass immigration. But is it possible to be a good Christian (i.e., one who is neither ignorant about Christianity nor dishonest) who favors both multiculturalism and the advocacy of mass immigration (like Michael Dummett)? Along the same lines, is it possible to be a good Christian who supports Christianity and liberalism (like C. Stephen Evans) or even one who sees Christianity as the cause of liberalism?

I'm not so concerned about the answer to the above questions--from my experience, lots of philosophical doctrines that you wouldn't think could thrive together are often combined (e.g., hard incompatibilism and Christianity; materialism and Christianity; and many others, I'm sure), so I'd be shocked if Christianity and liberalism or multiculturalism or advocacy of mass immigration were straightforwardly incompatible.

That said, I _am_ pretty interested in Christian dynamite. Is Nietzsche right that Christianity advocates an equality of souls before God, or is that a misinterpretation of Christianity?

Is Nietzsche right that Christianity advocates an equality of souls before God, or is that a misinterpretation of Christianity?

No. Christianity maintains, at least in its traditional, hierarchical and sacramental expressions, a belief in an aristocracy of souls; the spiritual aristocrats are venerated as saints, and their petitions besought on our behalf. Christianity does maintain that any Christian may, by God's grace and his cooperation therewith, attain to those lofty heights, but is under no illusion that a simple equality of effort will suffice; some will have to exert themselves more arduously than others.

I agree with Maximos, and would take it further into the theological arena: The very reason there are differences in the order of good between various men is due to God willing some men greater good than He wills others. For instance, God willed certain glories to David, and other benevolence to Peter, neither identical though both great. It is fundamentally true that God looks at each person individually, and in his own light, and does not measure Ed by what He intends for Lydia. Some are teachers, some prophets, some healers...none designed to be "equal" to all the others.

That said, there is certainly a egalitarian element to Christianity that cannot be severed from it without killing it altogether. The Samaritan woman at the well showed this to us: No matter how true it is that the great saints are called to goods that we are not called to, still every single one of us, without exception, may with humility seek to receive grace at the hand of the Lord. And every single one of us is called to holiness. While the holiness of John may look vastly different from the holiness of Paul, in each of them their holiness bears a great resemblance to Christ.

I think that liberalism as practiced by at least 95% of its practitioners ignores the spiritual aspect of that equality, or rather of that universality of opportunity to receive grace, and tries instead to mold it into a material equality, an equality of results rather than opportunity, in and for this world alone. Either focus - either on results rather than opportunity, or this world rather than the next - would distort Christianity gravely. Both together, well...

One of the chief differences between liberalism and traditional Christianity is in their respective anthropologies. The latter rejects the former's roseate Rousseauian view of man. These two are irreconciliable: you can't believe in the Fall of man and his innate, unsullied goodness at the same time. This isn't to say that there aren't deeper philosophical differences that cause the divergence of anthropologies; only that this particular divergence seems to be one of the more readily apparent ones.

I think the problem arises in part when people start finding penumbras around the things Scripture says. It ought to be possible to understand that God loves and values each individual and cares as much about the ultimate good of the child with Down's Syndrome as about the brilliant mathematician but that none of this has any implications at all for immigration policy. Why should it? If we don't blame the authors of the 14th Amendment but rather the liberal courts for interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment to contain a right to abortion, we shouldn't blame St. Paul for open borders Catholicism.

I understand opposition to the kind of multiculturalism that shrugs its shoulders at female circumcision or Mugabi-style kleptocracy. I also agree that Christianity isn't exactly egalitarian. Paul is pretty clear in I Corinthins 12 that some parts of the body of Christ are more honorable than others.

However, it seems that some Christian anti-multiculturalism leads to a racial separatism that I don't believe is compatible with Christianity. For Steve and others, what should the relationship be between members of the body of Christ from different races?

I think definitions are key here. When I think about Christianity and liberalism I think of ideas like democracy and ending slavery. Those were liberal ideas that grew out of a developed Christian ethos. Conservatives tend to define liberalism as anything they don't like. So they forget that these ideas were once liberal.

Certainly liberalism and Christianity are not as much in tune as they used to be. I think immigration and the environment are some areas where Christianity does seem to lead to liberal positions. Remember, if you ignore what the magisterium says when they oppose conservatism then you have nothing to say when a liberal opposes what they say on another issue. You want people to be Catholics first and liberals second. That is great. But that only makes sense if you are Catholics first and conservatives second.

How can you tell? It requires a degree of intellectual honesty that very few liberals or conservatives have. One sign is how you view the churchmen when they disagree with you. Cardinal Mahoney must be an idiot. He cannot be a man ordained by God to teach His truth. If he was thinking like God he would be thinking like me.

Randy, not everybody in this conversation--Christian or non-Christian--is Catholic. Some of us think we can, you know, criticize Cardinal Mahony and say he's wrong without being inconsistent with something else we believe about the church or something.

Randy,
Rather than being Catholics first and conservatives second, perhaps we ought to be Christians first and everything else second -- including Catholic (if at all). It's Christianity, not churchianity.

Those who dissent from Roman Catholic churchmen are not therefore dishonest, perhaps not even mistaken.

Randy:
Cardinal Mahoney must be an idiot. He cannot be a man ordained by God to teach His truth. If he was thinking like God he would be thinking like me.

Yes, I have run into conservatives who speak in a way that effectively sounds just like this. But what at least some of them mean is this: Cardinal Mahoney must be an idiot. He cannot be a man carrying out his ordination by God to teach truth when he refuses to teach what the Pope and the Church teach, and acts in a way contrary to what the Church teaches. If he was thinking like God and the Pope and the Church, he would be thinking more like how I think, 'cause I am trying to think like God and the Pope and the Church think.

Another indicator of intellectual honesty is whether you find yourself criticizing BOTH conservatives as well as liberals when they contradict the Church. If you never criticize any dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist, status-quo conservatives, then maybe you haven't noticed that sometimes they don't walk with the Church, and so maybe you aren't being careful enough.

I see a definite Catholic/Orthodox bias to the discussion here. Maximos wrote, Christianity maintains, at least in its traditional, hierarchical and sacramental expressions, a belief in an aristocracy of souls; the spiritual aristocrats are venerated as saints, and their petitions besought on our behalf. Christianity does maintain that any Christian may, by God's grace and his cooperation therewith, attain to those lofty heights, but is under no illusion that a simple equality of effort will suffice; some will have to exert themselves more arduously than others.

Protestantism maintains the priesthood of all believers, does not believe in prayer or supplication to "saints", and many Protestants don't believe in "equality of effort", because they don't believe in effort, they believe in the saving grace of Christ. So trying to show that liberalism did not arrive from Christianity won't work by expounding Catholic/orthodox doctrine.

So trying to show that liberalism did not arrive from Christianity won't work by expounding Catholic/orthodox doctrine.

Well, yes. But saying that liberalism evolves out of Christianity qua Christianity is not the same thing as saying that liberalism evolves out of this specific expression, or set of family resemblances, of Christianity.

Rob G wrote, "One of the chief differences between liberalism and traditional Christianity is in their respective anthropologies. The latter rejects the former's roseate Rousseauian view of man. These two are irreconciliable: you can't believe in the Fall of man and his innate, unsullied goodness at the same time."

I think two important liberals--Hobbes and Kant--differ markedly from Rousseau on this score. Hobbes thought that man was by nature competitive over scarce resources, mistrustful of others, and glory-seeking. Kant advanced the doctrine of radical evil, according to which everyone begins his moral life with both a propensity to evil (this makes people inclined to favor their own happiness over the fulfillment of their moral obligations) and a freely chosen evil disposition (this makes them morally responsible for having "activated" their propensity to evil). Pretty far with Rousseau, and compatible with the doctrine of the Fall. (Indeed, Kant posited a propensity to evil and an evil disposition as a way of interpreting the doctrine of the Fall. Note as well that he was roundly criticized for this positing, for instance by Goethe, who wrote: "Kant required a long lifetime to purify his philosohpical mantle of many impurities and prejudices. And now he has wantonly tainted it with the shameful stain of radical evil, in order that Christians too might be attracted to kiss its hem.")

Maximos wrote, "No. Christianity maintains, at least in its traditional, hierarchical and sacramental expressions, a belief in an aristocracy of souls; the spiritual aristocrats are venerated as saints, and their petitions besought on our behalf. Christianity does maintain that any Christian may, by God's grace and his cooperation therewith, attain to those lofty heights, but is under no illusion that a simple equality of effort will suffice; some will have to exert themselves more arduously than others."

As far as I'm familiar with the Catholic doctrine of grace, it goes like this: God gives his sanctifying grace to everyone; not everyone rejects it; those who don't reject it become sanctified and are capable of carrying out good deeds on their own. Assuming I haven't misunderstood the Catholic doctrine, it seems as though effort comes in mainly after you're sanctified,* and it also seems to have the egalitarian component that everyone receives grace (not to mention the additional egalitarian component that everyone receives prevenient grace in being created in the image of God). So for Catholics, would the notion of an aristocracy of souls amount to the claim that some who are sanctified are more able to carry out good deeds on their own than others who are sanctified?

*--One could argue that effort comes in during sanctification. After all, it's up to you to accept or reject the grace, right? Well, I'm not so sure. Wouldn't the claim that it's up to the person himself whether he accepts grace amount to semi-Pelagianism? That's why I wrote that "those who _don't reject_ [God's sanctifying grace] become sanctified". The idea comes from Eleonore Stump (who claims to get it from Aquinas--and from what I gather, she's a good Aquinas scholar, so this might have some evidential weight), who distinguishes among three mental states: accepting, rejecting, and not rejecting. She claims that no one accepts God's grace, but some don't reject it. I don't know if effort would enter in here either--it seems like the main component for determining whether you reject or don't reject grace is your openness to acknowledging that you're a sinner in need of God's help. In regards to this, Maximos, would you claim that the spiritual aristocrats can see themselves as in need of God's help with less effort than the spiritual plebians?

I think Maximos makes several good points--about hierarchy and also about any attempt to say that liberal multiculturalism arises out of Christianity per se.

But I would add, as a Protestant who believes in the priesthood of all believers, doesn't accept prayers to the saints, etc., that I doubt anyone trying to accuse Christianity in this way can meet this challenge: Construct an argument that is valid and uses only highly plausible other premises from a proposition such as "The church should not have a hierarchical structure" or "Prayers to saints are not heard and answered by the saints" or even "All believers are priests before God" to the conclusion "America should have open borders."

Have fun.

I mean, come on. It just seems to me pretty darned obvious that you aren't going to be able to get these sorts of strong public policy prescriptions from these fairly abstruse theological propositions.

True, Bobcat, but I was speaking of liberalism as it manifests itself today. It seems to me that in terms of the current liberal/progressivism, the Rousseau strain has won the day, and has been the prominent one for quite a long while. Hence Russell Kirk's putting forth of the idea of the imperfectibility of man as a core conservative principle, etc.

Most people are as familiar with Mahony's writings as they are the spelling of this name. He is one of the few dioceses in the country that wasn't defined by Protestantism before Catholics settled the area. If California were its own country, which it is big enough to be, it would wouldn't be an anglo-saxon protestant one, particularly the southern half. It is this that paleos and restrictionists find offensive. The folks that want to put walls, rip families apart, and throw people back to Mexico are a minority in Southern California. They also happened to be filled with unsavory characters. I still remember the priest being hung in effigy down there.

Liberalism comes from Christianity like death comes from life: where there's no life, there's no death; where there's no Christianity, there's no liberalism. But life and death are contraries; and so are Christianity and liberalism.

Mangan writes:

Protestantism maintains the priesthood of all believers, does not believe in prayer or supplication to "saints", and many Protestants don't believe in "equality of effort", because they don't believe in effort, they believe in the saving grace of Christ. So trying to show that liberalism did not arrive from Christianity won't work by expounding Catholic/orthodox doctrine.

You are assuming here that Protestantism is a form of Christianity, when actually it is a form of...death.

In regards to this, Maximos, would you claim that the spiritual aristocrats can see themselves as in need of God's help with less effort than the spiritual plebians?

If you're looking for concision in an answer, I'd would say yes, generally speaking. There are saints, however, who had beginnings utterly unpropitious for sanctity. Personal constitutions vary dramatically, on account of intra-familial relations, relations within a community, culture, individual volition, natural inheritance (yes, biology has something to do with it), and a certain ineffable "thisness" of the human person. Such personal constitutions, temperaments, or personalities influence baseline receptivity to divine grace.

It just seems to me pretty darned obvious that you aren't going to be able to get these sorts of strong public policy prescriptions from these fairly abstruse theological propositions.

Not as a matter of logical development or exposition. But as a matter of family resemblances, well that's another matter entirely, and that's more or less how people tend to reason in these matters.

Mangan:

Protestantism maintains the priesthood of all believers, does not believe in prayer or supplication to "saints", and many Protestants don't believe in "equality of effort", because they don't believe in effort, they believe in the saving grace of Christ. So trying to show that liberalism did not arrive from Christianity won't work by expounding Catholic/orthodox doctrine.

Protestantism doesn't believe in the equality of all souls either, unless you refer specifically to those denominations that have explicitly gone liberal (like the Piskies). Scripture makes clear that God loves his children more than those still in rebellion against Him, for starters. It also recognizes hierarchy in heaven. The best you can say is that Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism) maintains a sort of potential equality of souls.

George R.

You are assuming here that Protestantism is a form of Christianity, when actually it is a form of...death.

Deuce,

I think your taking accidental particulars for the essence. Egalitarian Catholics? Open-borders Catholics? OK, maybe. Egalitarian or open-borders Catholicism? No such thing.

Rather than being Catholics first and conservatives second, perhaps we ought to be Christians first and everything else second -- including Catholic (if at all). It's Christianity, not churchianity.

That's like saying we ought to be Christians first and everything else second -- including Calvinist/Lutheran/etc.

This is most readily apparent on immigration, but carries through to other social issues, like abortion, health care, etc. Funny, that.

Well, if you consider numerous Protestant churches which actually approve abortion, etc.; it isn't so surprising that there would appear to be those things seemingly characteristic of certain churches. Funny, that.

Liberalism, I would say, is a Christian heresy -- so yes, it came out of Christianity, but in the same way that Arianism, Nestorianism, etc. did. You couldn't have had Arianism without Christianity, but it would be absurd to suggest that the denial of Christ's full divinity is therefore "really" a Christian idea. Similarly, you couldn't have had liberalism without Christianity, but it would be equally absurd to suggest that liberal egalitarianism is somehow therefore a deeply Christian idea.

But the thing is this: Liberalism -- or more precisely, modernism, of which liberalism is a species -- is the defining heresy of this age of Church history. Just as you could barely scratch a bishop in the fourth century without finding underneath either an Arian or someone who at least rhetorically fudged Trinitarianism so as not to offend Arian sensibilities, so too in recent decades do even the most conservative churchmen so moderate their expressions of orthodoxy, and strain to meet liberalism half-way wherever they can, that they often sound like liberals themselves. (To paraphrase Jerome on Arianism, the world has groaned and marvelled to find itself liberal.)

Hence, these days, you can scarcely find a bishop, not even the most conservative ones, who will just come out and say straightforwardly that every human being has an obligation to convert to Catholicism -- even though this is, as it always has been, irreformable Catholic doctrine. Even the most daring statements to this effect are always buried in so much ecumenism-speak that they are half-retracted and apologized for by the time said bishop has closed his mouth or put his pen down.

If most of them can't even think clearly or speak honestly about the most important issues, then, it is no surprise if some of them -- especially the ones who aren't even conservative in the first place -- talk nonsense about lesser issues (e.g. immigration).

Hence, these days, you can scarcely find a bishop, not even the most conservative ones, who will just come out and say straightforwardly that every human being has an obligation to convert to Catholicism...

Would you rather they proclaim the truth in the manner George R. has?

You are assuming here that Protestantism is a form of Christianity, when actually it is a form of...death.

Although George R. may actually have a point here; it wouldn't be conducive to the kind of ecumenical hogwash so popular these days, as advocated by the likes of Groeschel et al (no offense, Kevin & company).

Yet, I find it ironic that an ecumenical grazer would have been so vocally opposed to these efforts, let alone, be against them.

Egalitarian or open-borders Catholicism? No such thing.

Indeed, there are quite a number of Catholics across the nation (including clergy) who are quite opposed to such things.

The liberal opinions of one errant bishop such as Mahoney do not Catholicism make.

You are assuming here that Protestantism is a form of Christianity, when actually it is a form of...death.

It must really burn people like you that it is the Protestant churches who are bringing the majority of the unchurched nations to Christ, as well as bringing many nations like various Latin American ones back to Christ.

Great comment, Ed. A parallel I wouldn't have thought of before (Arianism and liberalism and the history of the 4th and present centuries).

Certainly liberalism and Christianity are not as much in tune as they used to be. I think immigration and the environment are some areas where Christianity does seem to lead to liberal positions.

Only if you ignore the Old Testament. When God established the laws of Israel, immigrants were required to integrate into Israeli culture, even to the extent of abandoning their old religions and worshiping Yaweh exclusively.

Christianity is neither liberal nor conservative; "it just is what it is."

Hundreds of years ago, what we might call liberalism and conservatism were not so heretical owing to the greater acceptance of Christianity. Today, in its own way, they are arguably equally heretical in a way that is almost even complementary.

Thanks, Lydia. BTW, vis-a-vis "converting to Catholicism," mention should be made of the Pope's just-announced creation of a new canonical structure to facilitate the reunion of conservative Anglicans with Rome. This is what ecumenism should be but seldom is: yes, understanding of and agreement to preserve what is valuable in the distinctive liturgical traditions and spiritualities of groups out of communion with Rome, but always at the same time insisting that they come back into communion.

Of course the usual ecumaniac suspects, both within the Catholic Church and without, are up in arms over it. The nerve of Benedict, a Pope acting like a Pope!

It must really burn people like you that it is the Protestant churches who are bringing the majority of the unchurched nations to Christ, as well as bringing many nations like various Latin American ones back to Christ.

Bringing them back to Christ? Are you sure you know what you’re talking about, Mike T? Where is this Christ, to whom these unchurched majorities are presumably being brought back? He’s in the churches? I defy you to provide one shred of evidence for this. (And don’t give me any malarkey about “faith;” I think we've all had just about enough of that dodge.)

But let’s face it, Mike T., you don’t have any evidence; you just believe what you want to believe. That’s what Liberalism is all about.

Where is this Christ, to whom these unchurched majorities are presumably being brought back?

That isn't even close to what I said. I said that it is the Protestant churches which are bringing the gospel to the unchurched lands in most cases today, and that it is also the Protestant churches which are rebuilding core Christian faith and values in places like Latin America where it fell into a semi-paganism.

(And don’t give me any malarkey about “faith;” I think we've all had just about enough of that dodge.)

So I guess "Now faith is [not] the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen..."

Ed,

I thought of your comment about "Liberalism -- or more precisely, modernism, of which liberalism is a species" when I read this article today:

http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71&Itemid=121&ed=1

The author seems to pinpoint Locke as the start of our current troubles, which is distressing to me given his influence on the Founders! I would be interested in your take on the article.

So I guess "Now faith is [not] the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen..."

Mike T,
You know the words of St. Paul, but you don't know what they mean. Just because faith is the evidence of things not seen does not mean that we do not also need evidence that is seen.

I really don't think that this is the venue for a duke-it-out fight over Catholicism vs Protestantism. That's not what this thread is about. We don't have the right format and tools for a good fight here either. So can we cool the rhetoric a bit?

I think that it is obvious that just about everyone here agrees that open borders is (a) a bad notion, and (b) has nothing to do with Christianity properly understood. What seems to be under debate is the extent to which (if at all) this notion springs out of Christianity in some fashion. Well, if it has nothing to do with true Christianity, then it can only spring out of Christian groups by way of some kind of deformity or degeneracy. If that's the case, does it really matter if the precise mechanism of deformation runs through one (or more) prior step(s) that already start to wander from true Christianity (take your pick: Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Catholicism, Orthodox, etc), or whether it manages to spring degenerated out of ALL of these, and is therefore not in principle allied to any one of them particularly?

I agree that there are some Protestant churches that seem to have swallowed the stupidity of open borders as a whole. This seems to point in a direction of saying stupid-open-borders is more attuned to Protestantism. But (at least, it seems to me) there are certain types of Catholics who seem even more soft-headed and doltish on the matter than any Protestant church. So what does that point toward?

I think what the evidence really points to is that neither Protestants nor Catholics are immune to the dangers of our damaged culture, and are thus susceptible to falling for dumb theories that have been presented with micro-thin veneers of a Christian basis. Both Protestants and Catholics are in error when they spout this nonsense, and thus both are poor Christians insofar as they embrace the nonsense.

Paul - I'm no expert, but I believe that Spain was taken over by Germanic tribes several hundred years before the battle of Lepanto.

Byzantium is, of course an extremely complicated case. I gather that some of the Eastern emperors got on better with the Arabs than they did with their semi-barbaric, but putatively Christian, European brethren - guys like St. Louis & Richard the Lion-Hearted.

I agree for once with Steve regarding the Christian evangelical pretext, although I would call it an American excess rather than a liberal one.

Mark 25
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; 36 naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? or athirst, and gave thee drink? 38 And when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 And when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.

Statue of Liberty -
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

"That's like saying we ought to be Christians first and everything else second -- including Calvinist/Lutheran/etc."

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Ach! My terrible mistake, that should be Matthew, not Mark.

It seems to me that Ed's statement that liberalism is a Christian heresy but that this doesn't make the doctrines of liberalism into doctrines of Christianity (anymore than the non-deity of Christ is a Christian doctrine because it was part of Arianism) pretty much closes the issue. He's obviously right. If you find passages in the New Testament that sorta-kinda vaguely suggest gooey liberal multi-culti nonsense if you look at them squint-eyed, that just means that...somebody (actually, several somebodies, over many years) looked at them squint-eyed and gradually produced liberalism throughout the course of history as a sort of debased perversion of Christian ethics. That sounds to me, in fact, like exactly what happened.

I would second Edward Feser's notion that, while certainly not Christian, liberalism can be seen as a heretical perversion of Christian faith. I also think that it is essential to define just what it is we mean when we say "liberalism." Ethically speaking, liberalism entails universal notions of justice which are not based on human nature, the type espoused by men like Godwin and Rawls but also the kinds formulated by men like Kant and Mill. This has culminated in an ethic that stresses man's obligation to humanity as such instead of his particular obligations to God, family, friends, community, etc. I take it that the central argument here is whether this is a proper evolution or development of the Gospel or whether it is a perversion of it. If you look at the Christian tradition in its entirety, I think you would have to believe it is the latter. Augustine, Aquinas, Alphonsus and the Church in general have always held that man's natural obligations are always central to his moral life. The radical egalitarianism and universal, hyper-rationalist ethic of the modern world that largely characterize Western liberal democracies is an aberration.

I really don't think that this is the venue for a duke-it-out fight over Catholicism vs Protestantism. That's not what this thread is about.

Of course it isn't, but it brings out the bigots like George R who find it easier to scapegoat an entire legitimate wing of Christianity for a shared problem than to admit that the problem is too big for that.

The fact of the matter is that every denomination is under siege. Each has its own strengths, each has its own weaknesses in fighting this battle.

We would do better to stop fighting the Reformation/counter-Reformation and shake hands in agreement that there are a lot of ideological wolves in sheep's clothing in our churches.

There's an assumption regnant throughout the entire illegal immigration discussion. To wit, that to help Mexicans and Central Americans means first and foremost accepting their illegal entry into the United States.

We can both help them, help their society, clean up the rampant and triumphant corruption endemeic therein, help them stay with their families, and at the same time, respect our borders, our culture, what at another time was commonly accepted as "the American way."

But the thing is our foreign policy does little if anything to clean up Mexico, to clean up those states south of the Rio Grande.

Mexico is a disaster today, was a disaster yesterday, yesteryear, and over a hundred years ago. And the thing is, if action isn't taken rather drastically, what obtains today will obtain on the morrow.

Which of thinks that the basket of nations around the Carib are moving forward?

Mexico's probs need to be solved first and foremost INSIDE Mexico, and allowing Mexican lighter-skinned elites to ciphon off pressures by a deliberate policy of forcing their darker-skinned co-citizens to seek a better life in the United States, is without any doubt whatsoever, a crime against the humanity of their darker-skinned co-citizens.

They're forcing them away from family members.

They're forcing them away from the graves of their ancestors.

They're forcing them away from the culture of their birth.

They're forcing them away from the soil of their lineage.

They're forcing them away from their neighbors, friends and associations.

In every respect, what this DELIBERATE policy is doing is a horror against the poor of Mexico.

And it's done by Mexican elites, and it the effects thereof innure to their benefit, and their benefit alone.

Washington and the people of the United States shouldn't stand for it for a nanosecond.

Christianity caused "liberalism" (aka leftism) in the same manner that Christianity caused (for instance) Pelagianism.

George R:

Just because faith is the evidence of things not seen does not mean that we do not also need evidence that is seen.

Just when I thought my head was going to explode, I read Edward Feser's post which I believe brought everone's rabbits back to the right trail. I am not schooled in church history or philosophy, but thanks to Lydia's post regarding Feser's statement, I think I am comprehending some of this.

Thank you for your support.

Jeff,

I'll have to take a look at the article, but I am not a Locke fan, for reasons I spell out at length in my book Locke and which are indicated in an old TCS Daily article of mine:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=081407B

Man, you seem to be the expert in putting things in people's mouths that they clearly didn't say or intend.

Deuce,
You don't think that Mike T was suggesting that St. Paul meant that faith alone sufficed for evidence? OK, maybe you're right.

But let me ask you this: What do you think about what I was suggesting, that empirical evidence is a mark of true religion? I think it's hard to deny that it is.

(By the way, if anybody's rabbits find themselves on the wrong trail as a result of this post, I apologize in advance.)

Ed,

Thanks so much for that link! For all W4 readers, the article is a great introduction to Professor Feser's thoughts on Locke as well as links to other articles of his concerning Scholasticism, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment.

I've always puzzled at the seamless connection some folks see between Christianity and Aristotle, as if its worldview and his, its intellectual methods and his, its taxonomy and his, were the same -- or even fundamentally compatible. The Aristotle-izing of the faith in the middle ages is no less a deformity than its subsequent Locke-izing, and one wonders if the liberalizing we have been discussing is as much an outgrowth of the wholesale adoption of Aristotle's unchristian modes and methods as it is of anything else named so far.

I've always puzzled at the seamless connection some folks see between Christianity and Aristotle, as if its worldview and his, its intellectual methods and his, its taxonomy and his, were the same -- or even fundamentally compatible.

Well, maybe you know what I'm going to say. But anyway, here it is: If you mean "There are things Aristotle himself believed, and/or that certain followers of Aristotle believed, that are incompatible with Christianity," then sure, that's true. But then, no one has ever denied that. What they've said instead is that there are certain key Aristotelian ideas that can be formulated in a way that is at least (a) compatible with Christianity, and even (b) more consistent with the claims of Christianity than any other philosophical system is.

If you're going to deny either (a) or (b), then, you have to have to be much more specific than a claim such as "Aristotle and Christianity are not compatible." Take, for example, the theory of act and potency, and the sort of argument for God's existence Aquinas builds on it -- not Aristotle's own argument, mind you, but Aquinas's formulation. How, specifically, is Aquinas's argument or the conception of God he develops on its basis (God as pure act, immutable, immaterial, outside time and space, etc.) incompatible with Christianity?

Furthermore, if you think the argument is incompatible with Christianity, where exactly is the argument mistaken? Because if you are a Christian who rejects the cocneption of God arrived at via the argument, you also have to maintain that the argument fails -- that it is somehow fallacious or rests on a false premise (which exactly?)

What you cannot do as a Christian is say "Oh it may be fine as a philosophical argument, but it has nothing to do with Christianity." Because if the argument works, that means that the God it argues for exists. And if that God exists and the argument is incompatible with Christianity, that would entail that Christianity is false.

So, you are committed to quite a lot if you are going to maintain that "Aristotle is not compatible with Christianity." In particular, you are committed to maintaining (a) that no significant distinctively Aristotelian philosophical theses are compatible with Christianity, and (b) that no arguments for any of these theses actually work.

Those are very large claims. As such, they require substantial argumentation. Merely claiming, or vaguely insinuating, that "Aristotle is not compatible with Christianity" will not do.

Oh, and re: deriving liberalism, of all things, from Aristotelianism: knock yourself out -- others have certainly tried. But I won't hold my breath.

Michael Bauman vs. Edward Feser on the compatibility of Aristotelianism & Christianity - I think maybe this deserves its own thread?

Ed,

Surely you see that the historically based and textually based narrative theology of the ancient Israelites, Jesus included, is not the same as that of any of the Greeks.

To the Hebrews, for example, you meet God in history, or not at all. Aristotle doesn't talk about the revelation or character of God as He reveals Himself in his mighty historical actions or in the inspired words and narrative that explain those actions. Aristotle is, and must be, a stranger to the real character and personality of God. Aristotle's God does not speak in human language or act in discreet historical events. But Yahweh does. Yahweh is knowable, is known, precisely because He is the One who makes and keeps his promises, because He is the One who delivers his people from bondage in Egypt, and because He is the One who raises his Son from the dead -- not as some nameless, generic, uncaused cause or prime mover (or that than which no greater can be conceived).

Aristotle's God is not known either by historical events or, most especially and clearly, in an identifiable historical Person, Jesus. Indeed, to Christ (not to Aristotle) God is Christologically defined: "Have I been with you so long, yet you ask me to show you the Father? He that has seen me has seen the Father," Jesus said. He also said that He and his Father were one, and by "one" he did not mean metaphysically; He meant one in purpose, affection, allegiance, etc. He said He did what He saw his Father do and He said what He heard his Father say. The God of Aristotle, or of Plato, is not known that way. They would find such assertions basically crude and unthinkable. Further, the fundamental importance that Hebrews placed upon the Divine name, both in identifying and knowing the one true God, is utterly lost on the Greeks.

Our friend Pascal was right: The God of the philosophers, Aristotle's included, is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob -- nor that of Jesus. The former god, for example, is known primarily in terms of its metaphysical characteristics. The latter God is known primarily in terms of His character. The difference between metaphysical characteristics and character is profound -- but habitually both overlooked and collapsed in some circles, Thomas's especially.

Further, the difference between the Greek system of ethics and virtue, on the one hand, and the content of Divine righteousness and command, on the other, is also profound. The teachings of the prophets and of Christ on righteousness do not well mesh with the teaching of the Greeks. It's a long journey, for example, from The Republic and the Politics to the law of Moses. The moral content and requirements of the one are not those of the other, whether we think of their origin, their content, their function, or their purpose.

If you do not see how subjecting Biblical revelation to Greek philosophical categories and methods radically alters that revelation; if you do not see how pulling Hebrew revelation though this foreign grid, thereby making it assume a new shape and content, is a giant step toward liberalism and its subsequent hijacking of Christian revelation, then the Thomistic habit of mind is far too deeply ingrained and the Hebrew turn of mind is far too absent.

Surely you see that the historically based and textually based narrative theology of the ancient Israelites, Jesus included, is not the same as that of any of the Greeks.

Sure, they're not the same. But "X and Y are not the same" does not entail "X and Y are incompatible." The claims "Feser is a philosopher" and "Feser is a husband and father" are different claims, but perfectly compatible, and indeed both are true. The claims "Feser is a carbon-based life form" and "Feser is a husband and father" are even more different -- the former is in the language of physical science and the latter is in ordinary language, rich with moral and emotional connotations absent from the former. But the two claims are still perfectly compatible, and indeed still both true.

Similarly, "God is pure act" and "God delivered Israel from the house of bondage" are very different kinds of statement. But simply calling attention to that obvious and uncontroversial fact by itself does absolutely nothing to show that they are incompatible.

Re: all the other stuff you say, it all amounts to nothing more than giving various examples of how bibical descriptions of God are very different from philosophical ones. Fine, great, but again, everyone already knows that. What I'm asking for is an example of incompatibility. If you're right, it should be very easy to give one: Simply find an example of, say, a specific Thomistic statement about God that you take to be incompatible with some biblical statement -- not just different from it, but logically incompatible with it. In other words, a case where Aquinas says something of the form P and the Bible says something of the form Not-P, or vice versa -- taking into account that many biblical statements are intended figuratively (e.g. I assume you'll agree that God does not literally have a footstool).

And, by the way, I'm still waiting for your explanation of how the theory of act and potency is incompatible with Christianity, and of why Aquians's argument from motion is defective. You can start with an explanation of why the claim "God is pure act" is incompatible with some biblical claim or other. Or pick something else if you want. Anything. And again, don't go on again about how different the language is. I know that already. Please give me a putative contradiction between Aristotelian claim P and biblical claim Not-P.

Same thing with the stuff about ethics -- so far all I'm seeing is the same sort of sweeping, imprecise, undefended bare assertion of incompatibility.

If you do not see how subjecting Biblical revelation to Greek philosophical categories and methods radically alters that revelation; if you do not see how pulling Hebrew revelation though this foreign grid, thereby making it assume a new shape and content, is a giant step toward liberalism and its subsequent hijacking of Christian revelation, then the Thomistic habit of mind is far too deeply ingrained and the Hebrew turn of mind is far too absent.

Oh, it's this kind of game, is it? Oh goody, two can play that! So here goes my volley (I trust the reader to add in his mind's ear the appropriate level of pomposity):

"Prof. Dr. Bauman, if you don't see how all you are doing is repeating your assertions at greater length without actually giving any arguments for them; if you don't see the distinction between mere difference and genuine incompatibility; then maybe you're just too much emotionally and intellectually invested in all this romantic 'God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers!' stuff to be able to think critically and rigorously about it."

"Or maybe you just don't know what the word 'incompatibility' means."

Steve, I'm sorry if this has become a threadjack -- but he started it! ;-)

Michael, I'm sure that what you're saying here about Aristotle and medieval philosophy would apply equally to Plato and the Church Fathers? If so, how do you propose to filter out the "bad" Greek philosophy and come to a pristeen Hebraic Christianity, while at the same time keeping the Creed and the key conciliar Christological definitions, which have Greek lineaments?

Ed,
Get serious. No one's going to reproduce here in a combox what has been done many times at book length elsewhere. If you've read those books and are not convinced by them, then nothing I say here will convince you. But if you haven't read the books that make this case in exquisite detail, you should. It is not obvious to me that you have read them because to this point nothing you have said in defense of Aristotle actually addresses the differences I have simply pointed out and that others have graphically delineated, differences concerning, for example, the indispensable (got it? -- indispensable) role of history and narrative, and the equally indispensable role of the incarnation. Nothing. You simply cannot begin where the Greeks wish to begin and get to Yahweh. It's a non-starter. If you wish to say that a combox dialogue is insufficient for that huge defensive task regarding Aristotle, then fine. But don't throw it up as a failure on someone else's part if they point out differences rather than make a book length case that has already been made compellingly several times and places before. In the space offered by a combox, I'm simply pointing out quite significant differences, just as I normally would simply point out the differences between Marxism and the free market. If you actually require a detailed explanation to see those enormous differences and their attendant incompatibility, whether theological in the one case or economic in the other, a combox will not do you much good. Even at this rate, the replies go on far too long.

And yes, I know what "incompatibility" means. I also recognize it when I see it. I'm sorry if you do not. You seem unable to acknowledge, for example, the enormous differences in content, purpose, origin, and function between, say, the Nicomachean Ethics and either the 10 Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. There is no bridge between them. Incompatibility indeed. Or, put differently, when Paul encountered the Greeks and their unknown God, he didn't start talking about prime movers, or uncaused causes. He started talking about Jesus and the resurrection. The God about which Paul spoke was genuinely unknown to the Greeks, and could be known only by history, more specifically by the incarnation.

The hijacking of Biblical theology by Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy is no less an example of unjustifiable intellectual imperialism than that perpetrated later by the Lockeans and the Enlightenment, which you rightly deplore. Nor is it any less an alien intrusion and unjustifiable transformation of the revelation God gave of Himself. It's just one you're more at home with, even if Christ and the prophets are not. Aristotle's philosophy is often the enemy, the underminer, of Biblical theology and religion, just as was Locke's, Hume's and Descartes'.

Rob G,
Yes, you are quite right about the Platonism of certain, perhaps even many, of the ancient church fathers. My dissatisfaction with them is not less than my dissatisfaction with some of the medievals (even those born centuries after the middle ages ended). Indeed, it's part of why I agree so fully with John Milton's view (in his De doctrina christiana) that theology went off track early and widely. If you want to see but one way in which early theology went off track, then I'd recommend the little book by Thomas Torrance on grace in the apostolic fathers.

Steve,

Interesting post. Similar debates have been taking place TakiMag, Chronicles, and elsewhere. It's a growing trend among conservatives to view Christianity as becoming dangerously left-wing. Some conservatives in Europe have given up on Christianity altogether and returned to indigenous European religions. Regarding some of the Christian criticism of conservatives turning toward paganism, I recently wrote:

Although I am fond of Mark Hackard’s pieces on Russia, he seems to cast our pre-Christian ancestors into darker recesses of Hades than did Dante (who found much to value in his pagan predecessors).  Although concepts like amor fati and a fallen world play important roles in understanding pagan religions, their abstract nature obscures the concreteness of the spiritual lives the pagans lived.  Although heroic themes are central to epics, the daily lives of pagans would have been replete with more mundane deities and ancestral obligations.  Their world was animated by a tapestry of spirits interwoven with their own family histories.  For the 19th-century Breton Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, author of Ancient City, the pagan religions were largely ancestral where procreation played a central role in passing along these generational obligations.  In short, familial and ancestral duties were everything - exemplified by Aeneas saving his family and ancestral gods from burning Troy.  In this sense, pagan religion is not only about a set of ideas, but blood.  Their gods were their ancestors, both in the immediate domain of gods like the lares and in the removed sphere of lineages traced back to major gods (e.g. Romans tracing their lines to Aeneas to Venus, or Germans tracing their lineages to the Vǫlsungs to Odin).  And it is one’s duty not to let the family line, interwoven with the gods, die out.  It’s no coincidence that maritare in Latin means both “to wed” and “to procreate.” Preserving the tribe meant everything.

Regarding this debate on TakiMag, it’s noteworthy that everyone is in agreement about the pitiful state of Christianity today.  The religion that gave us Chartres Cathedral and Bach today produces:  strip-mall Christian bands singing classics like “Jesus Rocks”; a Jacobin pro-life movement denouncing abortion as racist and a violation of universal human rights; religious leaders from all political persuasions arguing that it’s our Christian duty to accept mass immigration from the Third World; and liturgies espousing the universal brotherhood of man.

I suppose the real debate is an academic one:  Has Christianity had these tendencies from the beginning (as argued by Alain de Benoist) or are they perversions of the Enlightenment (as argued by Thomas Fleming in the Morality of Everyday Life)?  I tend to side with the latter, but wonder whether these transformations can be undone.

Regardless, the future appears bleak; Richard [Spencer] is correct that Christianity’s real growth will be in the “global south,” and this future will not be Western in any meaningful sense of the word.  I’m reminded of a recent canonization in Mexico where “dancers dressed in feathered Aztec costumes shook rattles and blew into conch shells” and priests “read from the Bible in Spanish and in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs”; or the recent phenomenon in Brazil of removing European traditions from Christianity and replacing them with African or Amerindian ones.

Michael,

I didn't ask for a book-length survey. I asked for a single example of incompatibility -- not mere difference (about which you have once again gone on at length, though perhaps a little less than book-length), but incompatibility. Just one. That should take, oh, maybe a sentence.

Re: getting to the biblical conception of God from Aristotle alone, who ever said you could? If you'd stop wasting time attacking such straw men and repeating stuff about all the many differences there are between Aristotle and the Bible -- stuff we all already know about and which I'm acknowledging now for I think the third time -- and just get to that one sentence-long example of actual incompatibility, we could all go home early.

Come on, Michael, I'm beggin' ya!

"If you want to see but one way in which early theology went off track, then I'd recommend the little book by Thomas Torrance on grace in the apostolic fathers."

I'll look that up, Michael. I've read some Torrance but not that title. Hopefully it's not just warmed-over Harnack. In return, I'd suggest you give Jaroslav Pelikan's Christianity and Classical Culture a look. Unfortunately, I can't call it a "little book," but it's not War and Peace either.

As a brief but pithy look at some of these questions, I've found this article by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon to be very helpful:

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-06-085-f#

Of course, it's no surprise that if you look at "grace in the apostolic fathers" through the lens of Reformation theology, you might think that soteriology went early off-track. My advice would be: take off the lens and look again.

But let me ask you this: What do you think about what I was suggesting, that empirical evidence is a mark of true religion? I think it's hard to deny that it is.

Show me the empirical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. To paraphrase Paul, the validity of Christianity rests on that point.

The empirical evidence for the resurrection issue is _definitely_ a threadjack, and the only reason I'm saying anything about it is because it's my shtick, and even more my exceedingly learned husband's shtick. I can't figure out who is denying (or who someone thinks is denying) that there is empirical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but I certainly side with those who say there _is_ such evidence. And I think that's very important. But this thread isn't the place to have the argument. It did seem to me important to fly the flag, though, as it were, since the question has arisen somehow or other.

I can't figure out who is denying (or who someone thinks is denying) that there is empirical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but I certainly side with those who say there _is_ such evidence.

For my part, my challenge was based on vernacular use of the word which regards testimonial evidence as something distinct from empirical evidence.

Based on Tim and Lydia's excellent work on this subject--they and N.T. Wright are really the must-reads of contemporary argument for the historicity of the resurrection--, there's both testimonial and empirical evidence (if you include inference to the best explanation as empirical evidence; if you don't, then there are lots of historical events that have no empirical evidence for them either). However, I wonder about making your belief in Christ dependent on the arguments of Wright and the McGrews (which sounds like a folk group, BTW) is a good or bad idea. It might be worth a thread on that.

But more topically: Michael Baumann, do you think God has a body? If not, what do you make of the passages where God apparently _does_ have a body? If you don't take them literally, is that because of your importation of philosophy? If you do take them literally, what do you make of the passages where God doesn't have a body?

I would like to add to Edward Feser's argument by pointing out that the attempt to claim that Christianity and the Hellenistic philosophical tradition are per se incompatible is one of the most ahistorical claims I have ever heard in my life. From the Church Fathers to Pope Benedict, the Church has always used the language of the philosophers in order to elucidate the Truth of the Faith. Read Clement or Justin Martyr and see how Christianity's relationship to philosophy is critical in understanding the Faith in a rational manner.

So far, only the most superficial caricatures have been given in defense of the idea that Christianity and the philosophy of the Greeks is irredeemably incompatible. The truth is the truth, and Christians live in the same world as everybody else, so if brilliant thinkers have honestly described reality then no Christian should cower away from integrating it into the Truth of the Faith.

Finally, I should add that the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the natural law (which would include what we would call politics) are held, by Catholics, to be preambles to faith and not matters of faith. In other words, they are held to be attainable by human reason. To deny the philosophical tradition of Christianity that draws its inspiration largely from the Greco-Roman world is to force the believer into the most crude form of fideism, a heresy condemned by the entire Christian tradition, the kind of which Tertullian would approve.

Although I am fond of Mark Hackard’s pieces on Russia, he seems to cast our pre-Christian ancestors into darker recesses of Hades than did Dante (who found much to value in his pagan predecessors).

Nobody who has read Romans 1 or Acts 17 can doubt that there is something true and perhaps even beautiful in pagan religions. It doesn't negate the fact that in Christ we have the fullness of God's self-revelation.

Preserving the tribe meant everything.

Don't have time to read the entire debate at Taki, but if this is cited as a reason why a reversion to paganism ain't so bad, well, Uncle Screwtape would be proud: "Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason."

To deny the philosophical tradition of Christianity that draws its inspiration largely from the Greco-Roman world is to force the believer into the most crude form of fideism, a heresy condemned by the entire Christian tradition, the kind of which Tertullian would approve.

It is also true that primacy must be given to revelation over observation and reason because human reason is flawed and limited in perspective. For example, Christians routinely contort themselves into knots to Christianize the inherently atheistic TENS, rather than humbly submitting that our knowledge of the universe, and our ability to even know the history of the universe, might be far more flawed and weaker than we realize.

The Bible even warns us that there are, in fact, things beyond our reason's scope. The mind of God is a perfect example. Human reason simply cannot meaningfully grasp the fullness of the ways of God.

"It is also true that primacy must be given to revelation over observation and reason because human reason is flawed and limited in perspective." -Mike T.

In a certain sense, this is correct, but there is only one Truth. The truths attainable by the light of reason do not and cannot contradict the truths attainable only by the light of Faith. The question of primacy is not relevant when speaking of the verifiability of truth. That God exists, which is demonstrated by reason, does not contradict God being a trinity of persons. Neither truth has primacy in terms of one being more or less true than the other. The truths of revelation only have primacy in the sense that they cannot be attained by human reason but only by, well, divine revelation.

Also, there is no attempt to ascertain the entirety of reality, natural and divine, via human reason. Nothing in Christian tradition recommends that we seek to. Imposing limits on human reason, then, is not a controversial claim to make. In fact, it is most admirably defended by Aquinas.

I would also like to hear an answer from Michael to Bobcat's question. And Edward's Tertullian comparison is, I must say, one that I was tempted to make as well.

Let me give an example of the sort of thing I think Michael should be providing if he's going to make his position plausible. He compares Aristotle's influence on Christianity to Locke's, and claims that I should object to the former no less than to the latter.

Well, I can give you many specific examples of where I think Lockean positions are incompatible with Christianity. To take just one, I think that the Lockean approach to personal identity is incompatible with Christianity, because it entails (whether Locke himself would welcome such an implication or not) that fetuses and severely brain damaged human beings are not persons, so that to kill them does not count as murder -- contrary, of course, to Christian morality.

Might a Lockean try to argue that the appearance of incompatibility here is misleading, and that this apparent tension between Lockeanism and Christianity can be resolved? Sure, he can try to argue for such a position, though I don't myself think it will fly. But at least we've got here a specific, concrete example of a putative contradiction -- not just a difference between Lockeanism and Christianity, mind you, but an apparent incompatibility. And thus we've got a straightfoward claim on the table that we can debate -- not some airy, sweeping "How can you fail to see the difference?!" stuff.

We are all waiting to hear Michael give us a parallel example involving Aristotelianism. And again, it will not do to say "Aristotle saw pride as a virtue" etc. What matters is not what Aristotle himself personally held, but what Aristotelian Christians (e.g. Aquinas), who have tried to purge Aristotelianism of its unhappy elements, have said that is still by Michael's lights incompatible with Christianity. No Christian Aristotelian has said that pride is a virtue. But there are Christian Lockeans who have tried to marry his conception of persoal identity to Christianity (e.g. Locke himself.) So we need an example parallel to that. So, Michael, give us a specific example of how what Aquinas (say) has said in an Aristotelian vein about God, or ethics, or anything, is incompatibnle with Christianity. If you want to say "To defend the example adequately would require a book-length treatment," fine, I understand. I'm not asking for the complete case. Just an example.

Prof. Ed - I have no problem with "thread-jacking." But I do think that your exchange with Prof. Bauman deserves a wider audience than it's going to get on the tail end of comments to this li'l thread o' mine.

As to the supposed incompatibility between Greek and Israelite categories of thought, was not "logos" a term of art in Greek philosophy, particularly among the Stoics, for quite some time before John used it in the preamble to the 4th Gospel? When John used that term, he had for many years resided in Ephesus, on the Milesian coast - the very font of Greek pre-Socratic philosophy. Now, Philo absolutely insists that Pythagoras learned his stuff during his sojourn as a young catechumen in the Temples of Syria, and that Platonism is therefore really just Mosaic thought transposed a key. Philo was contemporaneous with Jesus. Platonism and Aristotelianism suffused the whole Mediterranean basin in 1 AD.

Jesus was born and raised in a land where Greeks and Hebrews had been living together and talking to each other for hundreds of years. How likely is it then that when John wrote, he was ignorant of all this, and used "logos" the way a vernacular speaker would?

Prof Ed,

I greatly admire your sharp logical approach here.
Not to take Mr. Bauman's part in this - because I don't think Aristotelianism is wildly incompatible with Christianity, as he seems to - but I do think that the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis played a part in the development of liberalism, and hence the decline of the West.

My Thomistic friends have always claimed that Aquinas represents the summit and peak of philosophy and theology, and that it was all downhill after that (sometimes spoken slightly tongue in cheek - I think.) I've often wondered why they don't wonder more why it was all downhill after that. The summit was reached on the Augustinian/Platonic synthesis of philosophy and theology - the downhill slide, I think, is rightly rooted in what Aquinas did, and is owed to the following real incompatibility:

Matter must not be, cannot be, the principle of individuation! This unfortunate idea is the root of all materialism. We in the West, at Aquinas's hands, suffered what no other culture in the world has - we had materialism woven right into the foundation of our theology, and hence of our civilization, by one of our most brilliant minds.

Scotus, bless him, came along and tried to limit the damage, but it was too late. A fideistic and nominalistic reaction was not long in coming, and then Protestantism, and then all the rest.

So, as much as I admire and respect Aquinas, and your own excellent Thomistic analyses of various topics, my admiration is tempered somewhat by this knowledge.

My claim would be the following: There is a real incompatibility between Aristotle/Aquinas and Christianity insofar as Christianity embraces what is true, and there is something demonstrably false at the core of Thomistic metaphysics; namely, that matter is the principle of individuation.

Hello Dan, and thanks for offering a specific answer. But why, exactly, must the thesis that matter is the principle of individuation lead to the thesis that matter is all that exists (i.e. materialism)? Certainly Thomists are not materialists, and for good reason: on their conception of matter, though material objects are individuated by matter, they are nevertheless given their identity by form, and there can in principle be no matter without form. The view is thus the opposite of reductionistic; it is instead holistic, since matter and form are mere abstractions apart from the substances composed of them, and cannot be understood apart from the latter. (The human soul -- the form of the human body -- is of course a special case, and for reasons that put Thomism even further away from materialism, since it alone among the forms of material things can subsist apart from matter.)

So, for you to make your case, a plausible connection between the theses in question has to be made, and the presence of the word "matter" in both hardly suffices.

Like many others, I would take Ockham's nominalism to be the real turning point, and here the connection between the view in question and the danger to Christianity is obvious: without true universals there can be no human nature to ground natural law in, no natures of things to ground causal powers and thus no causal route to God's existence, etc.

Hello Prof Ed,

You ask the question:

"But why, exactly, must the thesis that matter is the principle of individuation lead to the thesis that matter is all that exists (i.e. materialism)?"

The one must lead to the other, not due to any logical necessity, but only due to the human and spiritual ramifications of the thesis. Matter as the PofI would lead to hard materialism humanly, if I am correct in thinking that 1)matter as PofI is false, and 2)Materialism is evil, and 3)the so-called "moderate realism" of Aquinas is a step towards it(materialism), and 4)the whole thrust and impulse of fallen man and Satan is towards unbelief and the materialism that undergirds it.

Moderate Realism, you see, is also moderate nominalism in the same degree, necessarily. There is a spectrum of belief from hard realism to hard nominalism, with any number of points in between. Likewise but perhaps more controversially, nominalism and materialism are the same thing seen from opposite perspectives: Materialism tells us what is real positively (matter only), while nominalism tells us negatively what is not real (universals). To the precise degree that one is nominalist, one is also materialist, even if that is not usually recognized.

So, to the great consternation of my Thomist friends who, like you insist that they are no materialists, I have to insist that not only are they half-way there insofar as their moderate realism is also moderate nominalism and moderate materialism, but matter as PofI is harldy less than an exaltation of matter, and an elevation of it to the status of universals, for without it there is now no identity. As such, matter as PofI is a gross distortion of reality.

So, without going into it any deeper, I believe that this philosophical move, this metaphysics, not only frustrates and radicalises those who sense something wrong but can't articulate it, it also gives aid and cover to those whose impulse is to push further into hard nominalism and materialism. All this wouldn't matter a bit, of course, if it just happended to be true, for the truth is its own defense, but as I said, I believe it's also demonstrably false when one looks closely at the related but essential doctrine of "prime matter."

In the end I would just say that any untruth incorporated into the faith is bound to corrupt it in sometimes subtle ways. In otherwords, there are going to be spiritual consequences if we get it wrong.

Dan McCulloch:

Matter must not be, cannot be, the principle of individuation! This unfortunate idea is the root of all materialism.

Pope Saint Pius X, Doctoris Angelici:

The principle theses in the philosophy of Saint Thomas are not to be placed in the category of things to be debated one way or another, but are to be considered the foundation upon which the entire science of earthly and divine things is based.

Sacred Congregation of Studies (The 24 Thomistic Theses published following Doctoris Angelici):

#11. The principle of individuation, i.e., of numerical distinction of one individual form from another with the same specific nature, is matter designated by quantity.

The truths attainable by the light of reason do not and cannot contradict the truths attainable only by the light of Faith.

Hypothetically speaking, that's true. However, modern Christians are wont to jump on scientific fads and bandwagons like TENS, and that is hardly rational from the perspective that you defended. Since there were no human witnesses to the beginning of the world, and precious little physical evidence that we can truly verify, what we can practically attain through reason and observation is likely to be quite inferior to what we can gain through revelation.

Logic is nothing more than a set of rules for processing data and is useless without reliable data. Christians forget that too often.

Logic is nothing more than a set of rules for processing data and is useless without reliable data.

1) What is reliable data?
2) It is possible, at least on some levels, to have a flawless logical argument that is wrong, nevertheless.
3) It is possible, on some levels, to have a flawlessly illogical argument this right, nevertheless.
4) It is possible, on some levels, to have an argument where contradictory arguments are presented, and yet, truth may be determined (a classic example is humor).

While I agree that we sometimes oversell human logic (and every philosopher should have this statement framed on their wall above their keyboard), nevertheless, if God is rational, in any sense, then logic, in itself, cannot fail. We, however, may fail to use logic. Part of using logic is to make sure the premises are correct.

The Chicken

Furthermore, Dan M,

If matter is not the principle of individuation, what is it? And if it is not the principle of individuation, what is? And if there is no principle of individuation, how can there be a principle of identification? And if there is no principle of identification, how do you avoid nominalism?

What would Scotus say?

Dan,

If you admit that the one does not lead to the other of logical necessity, then you're conceding that Aristotelianism is logically consistent with Christianity. Furthermore, you're undermining the only argument you've insinuated against the Thomistic thesis in question, viz. that it is incompatible with Christianity. (For you keep telling us that the thesis that matter is the principle of individuation is false but never say why, except perhaps by asserting that it is at odds with Christianity -- even though, again, you now admit that it is not really logically incompatible with Christianity after all. What gives?)

Furthermore, what could it possibly mean to say that moderate realism is the same as "moderate nominalism" (whatever that is)? Realism in all its forms asserts the objective existence of universals and nominalism denies their existence. Hence moderate realism, like all forms of realism, is flatly inconsistent with nominalism, "moderate" or otherwise.

While I agree that we sometimes oversell human logic (and every philosopher should have this statement framed on their wall above their keyboard), nevertheless, if God is rational, in any sense, then logic, in itself, cannot fail. We, however, may fail to use logic. Part of using logic is to make sure the premises are correct.

Take TENS, for example. Our observations show us many species that look like they lead up to man. Yet we have no way to accurately ascertain their relationship to us. For all we know, they all coexisted together as independent species rather than giving rise to one another. Scientists have built an entire alternate history on what is, in many respects, little more than guesswork. That point was proved recently when paleontologists had to sheepishly admit that a significant number of alleged dinosaur species were, in fact, immature skeletons from previously discovered species.

My point in bringing this up is that God certainly is rational. We may be rational in many respects too, but there is a chasm of data and wisdom separating the two. The overselling of human logic leads to hubris on that point.

Prof Ed,

Re your response to me above, you're confusing different lines of argument - allow me to clarify.

Recall my basic claim: That matter as principle of individuation is simply false, and hence incompatible with Chritianity abosolutely.

You asked something different, namely, why would the Thomistic position on matter necessarily lead to hard materialism? My answer to that is different - it doesn't necessarily as a matter of logic, obviously. But it is a step in the wrong direction that, like so many other kinds of false steps, can over time drive people and society to even worse.

I explained adequately, I think, for a combox, why moderate realism entails things also in respect of nominalism and materialism - but I can understand why you would find them disagreeable.

Hope this helps.

George R.,

It is scandalous, that is, it scandalizes me that anyone would try to claim that it's incumbent upon a believer to accept Thomistic metaphysics.

I don't think even Prof Ed would make that claim - after all, if that's the way it is, why argue? St Pius X has spoken! Would that make Scotus a heretic? Not that I'm committed to a Scotistic position - I'll accept a range views - as long as they don't include the proposition in question.

As for your other questions, to answer all that would be the treadjack of all threadjacks - but since the implication behind them is that there are no other viable alternatives, I'll just answer that there are, and Scotus would be a very good place to start reading.

Dan,

I think if you keep considering Auqinas' understanding of matter you will see that it makes sense and is not objectionable.

Recall my basic claim: That matter as principle of individuation is simply false, and hence incompatible with Chritianity abosolutely.

Well, if its purported falsehood just is the reason for its incompatibility with Christianity, then it seems to me you've now got two new problems:

1. Now you're essentially conceding that you haven't in fact given us any reason at all to believe that the principle is false -- you've just repeatedly asserted that it is.

2. Worse, your thesis that Aquinas's principle of individuation is incompatible with Christianity is now completely trivial and uninteresting, since the incompatibility in question is merely of the sort that any false statement has with a true statement. Compare:

"The proposition that my car is in the driveway is incompatible with Christianity!"

"Really? What an odd and interesting claim -- how do you figure?"

"Because my car isn't in the driveway -- it's parked on the street."

"Oh. I see. Look, I've got some things to do..."

Presumably the claim of Michael and like-minded theologians, to the effect that Aristotelianism and Christianity are incompatible, is meant to be more interesting than that! Presumably they mean that the two would be incompatible even if Aristotelianism were true, so that one must accept one or the other, but not both, on pain of inconsistency. (And Michael consistently refuses to give us any actual arguments against Aristotelian positions anyway -- he just keeps asserting their incompatibility without explaining to us, despite repeated requests that he do so, whether he means to imply by this that e.g. the argument from motion is unsound, and that the claim that God is pure act, is false.)

Hi Ed,

I'll give it a shot on Michael's behalf.

Thomism claims that God is divinely simple. Divine simplicity, though, is incoherent, so accepting Thomism is incompatible with accepting Christianity.

Thomism claims that God is divinely impassable. Divine impassibility, though, is incompatible with the claim that God suffered, so accepting Thomism is incompatible with accepting Christianity.

I don't myself know that simplicity is incoherent--honestly, I think such debates are beyond my abilities, so I just someone like Stump's word that simplicity is not incoherent--but I do often worry about impassibility.

Hi Bobcat,

Divine simplicity, though, is incoherent, so accepting Thomism is incompatible with accepting Christianity

Well, that potential example seems analogous to Dan's claim in that it makes the alleged incompatibility uninteresting, since there would in this case be no special incompatibility Thomism would have with Christianity -- it would be "incompatible" in just the same uninteresting way that "2 + 2 = roast beef" and "The number 48 loves cheeseburgers" are. Or at least it would be if divine simplicity were incoherent. Which it isn't. ;-)

And of course, this purported example also has the disadvantage of implausibly making Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and a cast of thousands "unChristian," because they advanced divine simplicity -- maybe Michael would be happy with this, but then there is, you know, the rest of the world to consider. (Also, divine simplicity is de fide Catholic teaching, solemnly proclaimed at two councils. Not that Michael would care, but that is surely not a small piece of evidence for someone judging whether something is at least compatible with Christianity.)

Divine impassibility, though, is incompatible with the claim that God suffered, so accepting Thomism is incompatible with accepting Christianity.

Ah, now that's a more promising line for someone with Michael's views. (It would have been nice if he had given it -- if indeed he denies impassibility -- since he could have done so in a short sentence, like you have. Oh well...)

This is a big topic, of course, but that even this example is, though better than any of the others yet given, nevertheless not a promising one for someone with views like Michael's, can be seen from two considerations:

1. The Bible itself says (among other relevant things) "I am the Lord, I do not change." Impassibility! Maybe Michael would insist that that can't be what the passage in question really means, but if so he will need to do it in a way that neither commits him to contradictions in Scripture (Did God really at one point regret creating the human race? But I thought He never changed?) nor involves any philosophical analysis of the divine attributes (a big no-no, apparently, for Michael). Good luck with that.

2. Reconciling Christ's suffering with impassibility -- I assume that's what you had in mind -- is on all fours with reconciling the Incarnation with any of the divine attributes, including ones Michael would presumably accept (omnipotence, omniscience, etc.) So, again, there is no unique problem here for Thomism. And of course, the way the Christian tradition has explained the relationship between Christ's divinity and humanity has always made use of philosophical concepts. But the Christian treadition, you see, is apparently out of sync with the Church of Michael, so...

Prof Ed,

Alright, I'll bite. It seems to me that deep metaphysics in a combox is not what you want at this site, and is an even worse threadjack, but since you're an administrator at this site, I'll assume that in calling for this you know what you're doing.

First, your analogy is a poor one - your car in the driveway is not supposed by anyone to be woven into Christian theology, and Aristotelianism is. If it were, the mere fact of its not actually being in the driveway would indeed be interesting, for now an objectively false claim is woven into our theology.

I can't speak for Mr. Bauman, but as far as I'm concerned, the issue of compatibility of Aristotelianism with Christianity turns on exactly what you want to rule out - its truth. As you've rightly pointed out, the mere fact of its differences doesn't establish incompatibility. Its differences are the very reasons one might want to use it as a support or extension of the faith, i.e., it covers areas of the faith not addressed by scripture or tradition. But to use it as such, the whole issue is how accurately it can be used to describe reality. If it doesn't describe reality well, i.e., if it's false, or if it has significant areas of incoherence, it's incompatible. Likewise, if using it necessitates the distortion of areas of the faith to make it fit, it's incompatible - which is just another way of saying it's false, because our original deposit of the faith, we take on faith to be true. I think it does distort areas of the faith as I'll detail below.

So, begging to disagree, it is interesting, at least to me, when I find what I believe to be untruth woven into theology. To me, that's as incompatible as "incompatible" gets.

Now, you demand an explanation for why I think matter cannot stand as PofI - ok.

The concept of matter is the concept of extension in three dimensions. This concept also stands as a principle together with the principle of form in Aristotelian and Thomistic metaphysics, the two of which together are used to explain all reality, including angels and God. So far, so good - all systems are like this, they start with axiomatic First Principles. The problem in both Aristotle and Aquinas is that they drift back and forth between an understanding of matter strictly as a principle, and matter as some kind of "stuff." This difficulty naturally results in confusion, for it is the subtle importation of the idea of quantity into what should be strictly a First Principle. Quantity, as the dear reader will recall (not you ED - I know you know this already!), is an "accident" in this system, i.e., it is not essential, or of the essence of a thing, or substance. The form in which a thing participates is responsible for the essense. As far as Aristotle and Aquinas are concerned, that's it as far as the identity of a thing goes; its species is given under its form, and the particular matter out of which it's made individuates it as "this" particular instance of the species.

Unfortunately, this conception is inadequate to establish the identity of human beings, angels, and even animals - each of which is a special case requiring fudging of the theory to make it work. I've got to limit this somehow, so rather than go into all these, I'll just say here that these internal "tensions" as some like to call them, are all we have to falsify a bad metaphysics. Metaphysics is not like the material sciences; we don't have the kind of falsification in M. that the sciences do. A metaphysical theory is evaluated by how well it explains the facts, its internal coherence, and its explanatory power. Matter, since it's nothing more than the principle of extension, gives no particular identity to creatures of the form, "human being." If we fudge the matter principle to include the idea of quantity, which as we noted above is accidental to a substance, we get no further. We also find that on this understanding of reality we can't explain scripture; specifically, the bible clearly indicates thought and consciousness in the "intermediate state," while according to Thomistic metaphysics our mysteriously differentiated human form cannot think apart from the matter it was once married to. We also have no reason to think that Human Form, separated from its particular matter can even exist, since no other forms do. Some of this is due to the "moderate realism" of Aquinas that I referred to before. The most troubling difficulty with the Aristotelian/Thomistic doctrines concerning matter are at the extreme end concerning so-called "primary matter," but I won't go into that here, except to say that I think that's where the doctrine finally shows circularity.

So, after all that, I suppose you could say that neither extension nor quantity nor both together can get you an explanation of the most interesting aspects of human identity, especially in its endurance beyond death, of the personality beyond death, or thought in the intermediate state. Some Thomists of my acquaintance flatly deny any consciousness in the intermediate state. Our only hope, they say, is resurrection of the body.

I doubt very much that our resident Thomists will see it, but these positions are all intimately related to a mild, creeping materialism.

Hi Ed,

You wrote, "Reconciling Christ's suffering with impassibility -- I assume that's what you had in mind -- is on all fours with reconciling the Incarnation with any of the divine attributes, including ones Michael would presumably accept (omnipotence, omniscience, etc.) So, again, there is no unique problem here for Thomism."

First, I did mean Christ's suffering.

Second, yours is an interesting response, but I'd want to know more. Is the idea something like "Jesus in his human nature was passable, but in his divine nature he was not"? If so, it still seems as though God did not suffer, and I was under the impression that God's understanding and experiencing our suffering was one of the most significant claims Christianity made. But you can't experience suffering without being affected, can you?

Dan,

This exchange between us began because you claimed that Aquinas's principle of individuation was incompatible with Christianity. Your original justification for this claim was that the principle in question leads, you said, to materialism. Later you admitted that it does not in fact logically entail materialism after all. And later still you more or less conceded that the supposed materialist connection really wasn't to the point in the first place. Instead, it was simply the (alleged) falsity of the principle that made it incompatible with Christianity.

This was the reason for my car analogy. Yes, of course claims about cars are obviously less relevant to Christian theology than metaphysical claims are. But you're the one who has progressively so watered down your (originally quite bold) assertions to the point where the car analogy has become appropriate. For, again, you are now claiming that the mere (alleged) falsehood of Aquinas's principle is what makes it incompatible with Christianity. And that is something that can be said of any false claim, whether about cars, carrots, or croutons.

This is why I said that short of some argument against the principle itself, you really have made no case at all for incompatibility. I wasn't "calling for," much less "demanding," that you make such a case, nor do I think this is the forum in which to make it. I was simply pointing out that, by virtue of so weakening your original position to the point that only the falsehood of Aquinas's principle would make it incompatible with Christianity, you have put yourself in a situation where your claim of incompatibility has no justification at all short of a metaphycial case against that principle.

So, don't blame me! If what you really meant in the first place was only that Aquinas's position is false, and that that alone is why it is incompatible with Christianity, then (a) you should have said so from the start and not wasted time with all the irrelevant stuff about materialism, and (b) you should have realized that you were in that case making a claim which could not be supported without getting into metaphysics -- in which case, why were you bringing it up in a combox discussion to which you yourself seem to think it is not appropriate?

Having said that, let me make some brief observations about your metaphysical claims:

The concept of matter is the concept of extension in three dimensions.

Not on an Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of matter it isn't. This is Descartes you're describing, not St. Thomas.

The problem in both Aristotle and Aquinas is that they drift back and forth between an understanding of matter strictly as a principle, and matter as some kind of "stuff." This difficulty naturally results in confusion, for it is the subtle importation of the idea of quantity into what should be strictly a First Principle.

No, no, no, no. I don't know where you're getting this, but it isn't A-T metaphysics. It seems to me you are reading a modern conception of matter back into Aristotle and Aquinas. (For A-T, matter isn't quantity but rather that which takes on form; quantity is a feature of complete substances, not of matter by itself; etc.) No wonder you think there's a problem with it!

Unfortunately, the rest of what you say here amounts to more bare assertions (about how A-T can't explain this and that etc.).

So, here's where we've got to: You've progressively weakened your claim that Aquinas's principle of individuation is incompatible with Christianity to the point where nothing less than an argument for the falsity of that principle would suffice to make your view at all plausible. Then when you give such an argument, it is a combination of an egregious misunderstanding of what Aquinas says with some more bare assertions.

I think we're done here!

Bobcat, don't forget that we're talking here about one Person in two natures -- it's not that there's a divine Person associated with the divine nature and a separate, merely human person associated with the human nature, as if the latter suffered but not the former. The one (divine) Person suffered, albeit in His human nature.

Anyway, this does take us well off-topic -- and the topic itself (Michael's views) was already off-topic!

Prof Ed,

I've never seen a more egregious misrepresentation of the facts of an argument than your above, but I'm content to let what I said speak for itself. I have no idea how you can honestly make the case you just did.

One moment you seem to understand the irrelevance of hamburgers and roast beef, the next you're right back at it. I've got to assume, for the sake of charity, that this is more of the Internet Syndrome Argumentation that so frequently arises at this site.

Well, Dan, I have no idea why you think what I said was a misrepresentation. Especially since you haven't bothered to tell us exactly what I got wrong. Funny old world...

Matter, since it's nothing more than the principle of extension..

Electrons have no extension in space, but are counted as matter by modern scientists. i realize this adds nothing to the discussion. It's just a minor nit. It does, however, seem to side with Ed's, definition of how Aquinas would classify matter.

The Chicken

To add to Dr. Feser's brief critique, it's difficult--if not misleading--to argue that Aquinas thinks that form is the essence (or species) of a composite thing. De Ente II seems to say pretty clearly that it is the matter-form composite that is the essence of the thing, not the form alone. And it is from the essence that a thing is placed within a particular genus or species. Thus, form alone is not responsible for giving a thing its essence or species.

Just pointin' that out.