Christ's Cry from the Cross

What is a Catholic to believe about the manner in which Christ has redeemed us by His death? That is, what is a properly Catholic soteriology? Anselm has done a thorough job of refuting the common Protestant error of Penal Substitution elsewhere on this blog (look for "Anselm's Posts on Soteriology" on the sidebar), but what, in a positive sense, is a Catholic left with to believe once we have refuted the errors of those who espouse Penal Substitution?

This is a big question with many facets. There are many ways the conversation can go, but I think the following five issues are the few key points for discussion:

1) The Agent of Christ’s Death
2) The Nature of Christ’s Sufferings
3) What About Christ’s Death Makes it Atoning
4) Interpreting Different Scriptural Texts Dealing with the Atonement
5) How Christians Appropriate the Grace Merited in the Atonement

There is no way to tackle this at once, but I think I would actually like to begin with the fourth point on Scriptural texts dealing with the Atonement, especially Christ’s cry of dereliction (“My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” –Matt. 27:46). This verse is usually a proof text for the Protestant claim that Christ is experiencing “abandonment” by God the Father. This abandonment, in the Protestant idea, comes about as a result of Christ literally being “made sin”, that is, loaded with the actual sins of the whole human race in such a way that He assumes the guilt due to us. Because of this, God Himself forsakes Christ and Christ bears the full brunt of the guilt of man’s sin in isolation from God. Thus, the cry from the cross means that Christ is giving voice to this horrendous experience of being forsaken by His Father.

In the first place, I think it is evident that this cannot mean what Protestants think it does. As Anselm has pointed out elsewhere, Christ enjoyed the beatific vision constantly, even during the Crucifixion, and this has been infallibly defined by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis. Christ also specifically references the hour of His passion in contrasting the abandonment of His disciples with the faithfulness of God the Father, who is “always” with Him:

“Behold, the hour cometh, and it is now come, that you shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (John 16:32).

This means that the cry of Christ from the cross cannot mean that His vision or union with God the Father was obscured during the Crucifixion. But the point of this post is not to say what the cry of Christ does not mean, but rather explore what it does mean.

There are many theories as to what Christ’s last, anguished cry means. The Church’s most eminent saints disagree at times, and I might add that not all of their opinions are tenable, in my opinion. St. Ambrose, for example, says:

It was in human voice that he cried: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" As human, therefore, he speaks on the cross, bearing with him our terrors. For amid dangers it is a very human response to think ourself abandoned (Of the Christian Faith, 2.7.56).

Though it may be a human thing to think oneself abandoned, it is not something we can attribute to Christ since, even in his human nature, His intellect was free from positive error, and if we were to say that Christ wrongly believed Himself to be abandoned by God, this would indeed constitute a positive error.

Aquinas states that the difficulty with this passage comes in understanding what it means to be “forsaken” or “given up”, and in typical Aquinas fashion, gives several definitions of the phrase:

As observed above, Christ suffered voluntarily out of obedience to the Father. Hence in three respects God the Father did deliver up Christ to the Passion. In the first way, because by His eternal will He preordained Christ's Passion for the deliverance of the human race, according to the words of Isaias (53:6): "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquities of us all"; and again (Is. 53:10): "The Lord was pleased to bruise Him in infirmity." Secondly, inasmuch as, by the infusion of charity, He inspired Him with the will to suffer for us; hence we read in the same passage: "He was offered because it was His own will" (Is. 53:7). Thirdly, by not shielding Him from the Passion, but abandoning Him to His persecutors: thus we read (Mat. 27:46) that Christ, while hanging upon the cross, cried out: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" because, to wit, He left Him to the power of His persecutors, as Augustine says (Ep. cxl). (ST, III, 47, 3).

In my opinion, however, it is St  John Chrysostom who comes closest to the mark here in referring Christ’s cry to Psalm 22 and giving it a prophetic significance. Chrysostom says:

Why does he speak this way, crying out, "Eli, Eli, lama sabach-thani?" That they might see that to his last breath he honors God as his Father and is no adversary of God. He spoke with the voice of Scripture, uttering a cry from the psalm. Thus even to his last hour he is found bearing witness to the sacred text. He offers this prophetic cry in Hebrew, so as to be plain and intelligible to them, and by all things Jesus shows how he is of one mind with the Father who had begotten him (The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 88.1).

Christ’s cry itself, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me” is taken from Psalm 22:1, the same Psalm that prophesies all of the details of the Crucifixion:

~All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads; (v. 7)
~Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet – (v. 16)
~I can count all my bones --they stare and gloat over me; (v. 17)
~they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots. (v. 18)

It is as if, in His final breath, He is saying, “Look, that which is written in the Psalm is coming to pass before your very eyes.” According to Hebrew custom, it is sufficient for our Lord to quote only the first line of the Psalm to bring the whole thing to remembrance, just as it is now when someone says, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”, “Te Deum”, or “O’ Say Can You See”; the recitation of the first line calls to mind the whole, and everything the whole implies. Therefore, Christ’s cry can be seen as a kind of final appeal to the Scriptures that testify that He is Who He claims.

John Paul II interprets Christ’s cry from the cross as being a sign of continuing communication between the Father and the Son despite the apparent abandonment of the Son by God – and I think we have to keep that word apparent in the forefront of our minds, because to the Pharisees and those who were watching, it did indeed appear as if He had been abandoned. John Paul II says:

"On the Cross, Christ's total forgiveness, even of his executioners, establishes the new justice. Dearest "Brothers and Sisters, the cry of Jesus on the cross (cf. Mt 27,46) is not the anguish of a desperate man, it is the prayer of the Son who offers his life to the Father for the salvation of all mankind. From the cross Jesus shows the conditions which enable us to forgive. To the hatred with which is persecutors nailed him to the Cross, he responds with a prayer for them. He not only forgives them, he continues to love them, to want their good and to intercede for them. His death becomes the full realization of Love" (Message of John Paul II for World Mission Sunday, 19 May 2002).

The only problem here is that the Pope interprets Christ’s words “not as the anguish of a desperate man” but as a “prayer of the Son who offers his life to the Father” but does not explain why the prayer is then phrased awkwardly in the context of God-forsakenness. I do think JPII is close to the truth here, but it needs better explanation.

St. Augustine has a very helpful explanation, connecting the various threads of thought from Chrysostom, Aquinas and John Paul II. He sees the cry as an expression of Christ’s humanity, akin to “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” In other words, because Christ was a man, He did not, on a natural level, like the idea of being scourged and crucified. But, because His human will was perfectly in accord with His divine will, He was likewise able to say, “Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” Augustine interprets the cry from the cross similarly:

Out of the voice of the psalmist, which our Lord then transferred to himself, in the voice of this infirmity of ours, he spoke these words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He is doubtless forsaken in the sense that his plea was not directly granted. Jesus appropriates the psalmist's voice to himself, the voice of human weakness. The benefits of the old covenant had to be refused in order that we might learn to pray and hope for the benefits of the new covenant. Among those goods of the old covenant which belonged to the old Adam there is a special appetite for the prolonging of this temporal life. But this appetite itself is not interminable, for we all know that the day of death will come. Yet all of us, or nearly all, strive to postpone it, even those who believe that their life after death will be a happier one. Such force has the sweet partnership of body and soul (Letters, 140 to Honoratus 6).

In his most compassionate humanity and through his servant form we may now learn what is to be despised in this life and what is to be hoped for in eternity. In that very passion in which his proud enemies seemed most triumphant, he took on the speech of our infirmity, in which "our sinful nature was crucified with him" that the body of sin might be destroyed, and said: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" ... Thus the Psalm begins, which was sung so long ago, in prophecy of his passion and the revelation of the grace which he brought to raise up his faithful and set them free" (Letters, 140 to Honoratus 5).

Thus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” means “O’ God, why was it necessary that the sins of man should demand such a price?” with the implied answer, “Into your hands a commend my spirit,” the “Not my will but thine” statement of the Crucifixion. Thus Christ’s cry becomes one not of despair but of absolute abandoning trust. His sufferings are Job-like, and his cry is reminiscent of Job’s response to his own sufferings, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).

This interpretation takes some thought to come to, and admittedly I do not like it as much as Chrysostom’s straightforward interpretation of the cry as being in fulfillment of Psalm 22. A lot of this also has to be wrapped in to a more thorough treatment of Catholic soteriology, which I do not have time for at the moment but will hopefully get to in the near futue.

Taking Protestants to a Bad Novus Ordo

When the Novus Ordo Missae was first promulgated, it was presumed, almost assumed, that a simplification of the liturgy would mean that the new Catholic Mass would be more acceptable to Protestants. Though this was certainly not a primary motive in promulgating the new Mass, some envisioned that true ecumenical progress could come from the Novus Ordo, and this was seen as a happy consequence of its promulgation. Given that theory, it is ironic that the Novus Ordo that we often get in practice actually has a contrary effect. I am referring to what others have called the "Can't Take a Protestant to a Bad Novus Ordo" phenomenon.

For a moment let us forget about rubrics and papal instruction, on lofty ideals of how the Mass ought to be celebrated and what we ought to get out of it - let us put it all aside and instead look at the experience of an average Catholic at your average parish. Judging by my experience in my own region, I would say that probably 15% of the liturgies are what I would call more or less in line with what the Church envisions, while the other 85%  deviate from the Church's ideal, some to a greater degree than others. You know what I am talking about - inventive liturgies, ad libbed prayers, weak homilies, terrible music, no spiritual development, little sense of the transcendent, bad art, etc. etc. I don't think I need to go on listing the catalog of Novus Ordo bizarrities here.

This fact is bad enough for the Church as it is, but the problem is compounded from an apologetical standpoint when we start to bring into the equation Protestants who are seeking the Truth or whom we actively recruit to come to Mass. It is standard fare of Catholic apologetics to insist upon the superiority of the Mass to any other form of Christian worship, due to its institution by Christ, the sacramental presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the ordering of the Mass towards the glorification of God, the participation of the angels and the saints in the worship, the immense graces made available, etc.

This is all well and good, but it is when we actually first convince our Protestant friend to attend a Mass that our real problem begins. If we are lucky, we can convince him to come to Mass where and when we choose, and go alongside with him to ensure his experience is authentic. He of course will want to know why, in the Universal Church, must he only attend a certain, limited amount of parishes and not others, and we will have to explain to him how the vast majority of Catholic parishes are not suitable places to grow in spirituality, that they may not preach orthodoxy, that despite professing, "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church," the reality on the ground is that few parishes actually practice the historic faith as professed in the Creed. The Protestant will invariably ask why this is, and then we introduce them to the entire sorry history of the post-Vatican II era, introducing the Protestant to terms like "liturgical abuse" and other things he would have never heard or even thought of had he not expressed interest in Catholicism; he must learn about liturgical worship and lose his liturgical innocence in the same breath - in short, he must be made aware that since Vatican II, the Church has apparently become schizophrenic. If he ventures to go off on his own to check out a Catholic Mass and randomly attends one of these progressive parishes, he will see confirmation of all of this, at which point he may wonder how the Church professed in the Creed and defended by Catholic apologists relates to the freak-show liturgy and limp-wristed homily he just had to endure. If anything, he goes away shaking his head wondering what this thing called 'Catholicism' is.

To put this into a concrete example: I have a very dear friend, a Protestant, who loves the Lord tremendously, has a hearty respect for Church history and the Fathers, and in all things is an exemplar of a good Christian soul, though being non-Catholic, his faith is imperfect. I desire with all my heart for this friend to come into the fullness of faith. And yet, if he were to suddenly get interested in Catholicism and go to his local Catholic parish on a whim, what he would see would make him laugh (or cry?), and he would come away, not more impressed by the faith, but rather less interested than before. If he were ever to come to a Mass, I would have to go out of my way to make certain that he only went to a parish that I approved of him going to - and this state of affairs ought not be.

In looking at this, I think there are several areas we can meditate on in their relation to how a Protestant might be affected:

1. It is part of the Church's teaching that God is encountered in the Mass in an immediate and exceptional manner. Does the nature of the liturgy reflect this reality?

If we teach that the Eucharistic liturgy is an encounter with the divine, do sparsely decorated sanctuaries, sloppily dressed altar boys, ad libbed, flippant prayers, and banal, poorly executed music serve to reinforce this ideal? Do they not rather detract from it, and leave the outside observer with the impression that we do not practice what we preach? That our faith at best suffers from a disconnect between praxis and dogma and at worst is a hypocritical sham?

2. Our faith tells us God becomes present to us through the Church's liturgical action. We have already examined the role of the clergy; what about the disposition of the congregation? Do they testify that liturgy is a meeting with God?

Lex orandi, lex credendi. We know that these weak liturgies beget congregations who are likewise lukewarm in their participation: people sloppily or immodestly dressed, yammering in the Church, clapping as at performances, little participation in singing the Mass parts, checking cell phones and playing with iPods during the liturgy, chewing gum, and acting in general in a way that is not fitting with the dignity of the liturgy.If an outside observer, knowing what we claim about our liturgy, sees such behavior on the part of the people who claim to be benefiting from the fruits of the Mass, will they not presume that Mass itself must be no less casual than the people attending it? Will they not think that all this talk about Christ being present during the Mass is simply empty words, since the people obviously do not behave as if this were true?

I heard a story once about a murderer in England who was about to be hanged. As he was approaching the gallows, a pastor was walking beside him, telling him, somewhat dryly, as if by rote, about God's forgiveness and mercy. The condemned man looked at the pastor and said, "Do you really believe that? If that were true, I would crawl across England on broken glass just to tell people." Similarly, when an observer witnesses the relaxed, casual, non-chalant way that many of our Masses are said, will he not likewise assume that we either do not really believe what we say or that it is not true?

3. What about the manner of life of the Catholics a Protestant is likely to encounter in these poorly executed Novus Ordo liturgies?

If the Faith, and the Mass in particular, really do make available all of the graces that we claim in our apologetics, then Catholics ought to demonstrate the effects of this grace in their lives. Granted, each person is an individual, and tares are always found in the midst of the wheat, but I personally have frequently been disheartened by the worldliness of people I have encountered the times I have had to go to a progressive parish: cussing and blasphemy in the parking lot, all out drunkenness at parish events, liberal and anti-Catholic social causes advocated from the pulpit and supported by the parishioners, and in general a demeanor among many parishioners that reveals a total lack of spiritual formation or even an interest in spiritual things. I want to avoid here making blanket judgments about entire parishes, but I think you know what I am getting at - parishes that are spiritually alive tend to bear good fruit in the lives of their parishioners, while parishes that are spiritually dead tend to replace authentic spirituality with a lot of social causes and parish activities that give the illusion of vibrancy but do not actually contribute to the holiness of anybody. Thus, you tend to find a spirit of worldliness that pervades progressive parishes, a worldliness that will stick out like a sore thumb to any devout Protestant and reinforce their belief that the Catholic faith is something shallow.

4. Another issue likely to raise a red flag with a Protestant inquirer is the fact that poor liturgies tend to go hand in hand with wimpy homiletics.


If anything turns a Protestant off to Catholicism, it is listening to a bad homily. And modern Catholicism has lots of bad homilies. Shallow theology, ignorance of Scripture and Tradition, lack of spiritual insight and sometimes heresy and worldliness, coupled with a dull delivery, certainly contribute to turn Protestants (and even many Catholics) off. But fortunately, the flip side is also true - few things are able to reach out and really draw a Protestant in like a good, solid homily from a holy priest. This was one of the things that people loved about Father Corapi (er, I mean, the Black Sheep Dog) before his fall was his stellar homilies.


This is true with each of these issues - if poor liturgies or music or preaching makes Protestants laugh at us, then reverent liturgies, excellent music and powerful preaching makes them stand up and take notice. Am I being overly sensitive about this issue of not feeling comfortable taking a Protestant to a bad Novus Ordo Mass? Maybe; we have to remember that it is the Holy Spirit's job to convert people, not our own, and that things that seem out of place to us might not to a Protestant. When I first came back to the Church, I was thrilled that there was a liturgy at all, and it took many years before I started questioning the nature of that liturgy. Then again, if we know that something like terrible music or a worldly pastor will be a stumbling block to one interested in the Faith, I don't think we should intentionally put that stumbling block before them.

The real issue is that this is an unjust dilemma - being in the position of defending the Church and the liturgy with our words and writing but then having to apologize for the actual state of it in practice when trying to evangelize others. It simply ought not to be; the liturgy should be the liturgy, and the fact that it is not so, and how this effects my evangelization of my non-Catholic friends, is a problem I have not yet successfully resolved.

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Were David and Jonathan Homosexuals?

Like most Christians, I was completely unaware that the pure and devoted friendship of David and Jonathan as recorded in the book of 1 Samuel is taken by many in the world to be a homosexual relationship. This concept had never crossed my mind until one day when I was perusing the shelves of a used book store in Ann Arbor. I was looking through their history section and noticed a small sub-section on the shelf labeled "Homosexual History." Wondering how homosexual history was different from normal history (and looking to make sure no one was watching me), I pulled a few titles out of this section. The one that caught my eye was titled Homosexual Heroes: David and Jonathan, or something similar. It was an entire booklet, at least fifty pages in length, in which the story of the two friends was told from a homosexual vantage point in which their homosexuality was simply taken for granted, based on a few passages from the Old Testament. As I later found, this assumption that David and Jonathan were gay is very prevalent in the non-Christian world

One of the passages alleged as support for this noxious assumption is 1 Samuel 18:1, which says:

"And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking to Saul, the son of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."

The "knitting" of the souls is taken to mean that David and Jonathan had a romantic relationship.

A more frequently cited "proof-text" for the homosexuality of David and Jonathan is found in 2 Samuel 1:26, after David hears about the deaths of Saul and Jonathan at the hands of the Philistines on Mount Gilboa. David utters a profound dirge on behalf of the fallen, in which we see David say this about Jonathan:

"I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women" (RSV).

The implication of this passage is that since David's love for Jonathan is "passing the love of women", David must like men more than women, if you know what I mean. Before moving on to address this interpretation, we ought two look at two other translations of the verse. The Septuagint version is pretty similar to the RSV, mentioning David's love for Jonathan being "beyond" what he feels for any woman:

"I am grieved for thee, my brother Jonathan; thou wast very lovely to me; thy love to me was wonderful beyond the love of women" (LXX).

Just for fun, here is the King James Version:

"I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women" (KJV).

The Douay-Rheims is interesting. Of all the translations, only this one significantly adds to David's words regarding his feelings for Jonathan. Note how it attempts to clarify what David means when he says he loves Jonathan more than a woman:

"I grieve for thee, my brother Jonathan: exceeding beautiful, and amiable to me above the love of women. As the mother loveth her only son, so did I love thee." (Douay)

This is noteworthy because of its inaccuracy. The last phrase, "As a mother loveth her only son, so did I love thee," does not appear in the Latin. The full Latin of verse 26 says:

"Doleo super te frater mi Ionathan decore nimis et amabilis super amorem mulierum" (Vulgate).

This literally says, "I am beyond sorry for you, brother Jonathan; exceedingly beautiful and pleasing to me beyond the love of women" (super amorem mulierum). There latter phrase about a mother loving her son does not appear in the Latin. It seems, therefore, that this may have been a gloss or footnote inserted to explain the nature of David and Jonathan's love, as if the translators of the Douay were sensitive to a possible misunderstanding of the text.

So, now that we have looked at what the Scriptures say, what can we respond to this? Does this evidence indicate that David and Jonathan had a homosexual relationship?

First, from a simple theological standpoint, we know David was not a homosexual, because Scripture states that David was "a man after God's own heart" (1 Sam. 13:14, Acts 13:22). Since David was a man after God's own heart, and since Scripture also plainly states that  "neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals" will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 6:9-10), then we can easily infer that David was not a homosexual, especially since he is mentioned in the New Testament as one of the heroes of the faith (Heb. 11:32). How could God be a man after God's own heart if he routinely practiced a sin that is abominable in the eyes of God?

David did commit adultery, of course, so we are not saying that a man after God's own heart cannot sin. But to live in a constant, active homosexual relationship for years, and to express no penitence or sorrow for it, is quite a different matter, just as committing one sin and being sorry is different from abiding in a permanent state of mortal sin. So, while one can be a man after God's own heart and still fall into sin, I think it is not possible to be described by Scripture as "a man after God's own heart" and live in a constant state of sin.

Second, this pro-homosexual interpretation neglects to take into account the Middle Eastern conception of a man's relation to his wife. In the Middle East, a man's primary kinship is with other men, not with his wife. For example, during dinner time, the wife and daughters would set the table, but when it was time to eat, a man, the sons, and if any were invited, the man's friends, would dine together, while the women would depart and dine separately or after the men. This was still common practice into the 20th century. A man did not have intimate conversation with his wife. If a man wanted advice, or wished to have an intellectual discussion, talk about business, or just wanted to make casual, light conversation, he sought out the company of other males. That's not to say there were not tender moments with the wife, nor that there was no conversation between the two; but it is a well-known fact that, in Middle Eastern culture, a man, if he has anything remotely important to discuss, does it with another man, not with his wife. The friendship of other men is valued higher than that of a man with his wife.

Third, we could also point that the classical Greco-Roman view also parallels the Semitic concept of friendship as superior to marital love; indeed, marital love is only one category of friendship, and any truly happy romantic relationship (amor) must be based first on friendship (amicitia). Though many of the ancients, such as Plato, Seneca, et al, wrote on the nature of friendship, the two most important works are probably Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics and Laelius de Amicitia by Cicero. I think the classical view of amicitia is fittingly summed up between these two works.

If we begin with Nichomachean Ethics, we see Aristotle defining friendship as the most superior kind of love - a love that is a kind of "reflection" of self-love, but that teaches us to transcend our selfish tendencies and find good in another, just for the sake that he is:

"The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he is related to himself, since a friend is another self; and therefore, just as his own being is choiceworthy him, the friend's being is choice-worthy for him in the same or a similar way" (NE 1170b6-9).

Though Aristotle includes marital love under the concept of friendship, it is primarily a non-romantic friendship between two persons of the same gender (simple friendship) that Aristotle refers to here.

In Cicero's Laelius de Amicitia, Cicero (online here), Cicero takes us through a very long dialogue on the nature of friendship. The dialogue is between Gaius Laelius and his sons and friends as Laelius reflects upon Scipio Africanus, his dear friend who had just departed. The characters talk about the nature of friendship, what makes a good friend, and how friends grieve for one another when one is lost. Because this so closely parallels the story from 2 Samuel (David grieving for Jonathan), it is a valuable reference to our discussion. Note that all of the following citations refer to friendship (amicitia) between two men:

"If I were to assert that I am unmoved by grief at Scipio's death, it would be for "wise" men to judge how far I am right, yet, beyond a doubt, my assertion would be false. For I am indeed moved by the loss of a friend such, I believe, as I shall never have again, and — as I can assert on positive knowledge — a friend such as no other man ever was to me" (De Amicitia, 3).

Here Laelius asserts that Scipio's friendship to him surpassed that of all others, just as David asserted of Jonathan. Cicero goes so far as to have Laelius state that a man-to-man friendship is the greatest gift bestowed upon mankind by the gods:

"For friendship is nothing else than an accord in all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection, and I am inclined to think that, with the exception of wisdom, no better thing has been given to man by the immortal gods" (De Amicitia, 6).

Again, simple friendship is placed as the highest gift to man, higher than marital love. In case you think that I am stretching the meaning of Cicero's words here to apply exclusively to non-romantic friendship, consider the next passage, in which Cicero describes how amicitia springs not from necessity, but from human nature. He states that the love of a parent to a child is the primal form of all friendship, for a parent truly loves his child "as another self", in accord with Aristotle's definition. But he will go on from there to discuss the friendship of men, citing two eminent Roman heroes as exemplars. Marital love is not mentioned:

"Wherefore it seems to me that friendship springs rather from nature than from need, and from an inclination of the soul joined with a feeling of love rather than from calculation of how much profit the friendship is likely to afford. What this feeling is may be perceived even in the case of certain animals, which, up to a certain time, so love their offspring and are so loved by them, that their impulses are easily seen. But this is much more evident in man; first, from the affection existing between children and parents, which cannot be destroyed except by some execrable crime, and again from that kindred impulse of love, which arises when once we have met someone whose habits and character are congenial with our own; because in him we seem to behold, as it were, a sort of lamp of uprightness and virtue. For there is nothing more lovable than virtue, nothing that more allures us to affection, since on account of their virtue and uprightness we feel a sort of affection even for those whom we have never seen. Is there anyone who does not dwell with some kindly affection on the memory of Gaius Fabricius and Manius Curius, though he never saw them? (De Amicitia, 8).

It is not the marital love is not important, but it is that the ancients, both the Semitic peoples and the Greco-Romans, viewed the friendship of a man to a man to be superior to the love of a man to his wife. It is true that, in the later, decadent days of Greco-Roman civilization, this exaltation of same-sex love was sometimes perverted into a preference for pedophilic relationships - yet we must not read the moral degeneracy of some Greeks and Romans into the removed philosophical observations of Aristotle and Cicero, who both make these assertions without reference to erotic relationships. Again, Cicero will say that this friendship excels all other relationships and again incorporates Aristotle's definition, stating that friendship alone can sustain man:

"Seeing that friendship includes very many and very great advantages, it undoubtedly excels all other things in this respect, that it projects the bright ray of hope into the future, and does not suffer the spirit to grow faint or to fall. Again, he who looks upon a true friend, looks, as it were, upon a sort of image of himself. (De Amicitia, 7).

He then ends his discourse with a statement about the deceased Scipio very similar to that which David makes about Jonathan, again reaffirming that it is simple friendship (amicitia), not romantic love (amor), that Cicero has in mind here:

"For my part, of all the blessings that fortune or nature has bestowed on me, there is none which I can compare with Scipio's friendship" (De Amicitia, 27).

The purpose of this long digression is to establish the fact that, throughout the ancient world, the friendship between a man and a man was valued higher than the relationship between a man and a wife. We may not like it, but this is simply the way the ancients thought. It is completely natural that David should have found Jonathan's love surpassing that of women, because Jonathan was his best friend, and in the antique world, a man was expected to be closer to his friends than to his spouse.

We could note that David makes a similar lament for his son, Absalom, in 2 Samuel 18:

"The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!" (2 Sam. 18:23).

Of course, we find nothing amiss in this impassioned lament, because we understand it to be completely natural that a parent would weep thus for their child. If this is the case, then why should we find it surprising that a man should similarly weep for his friend, seeing that friendship was valued as the highest of all human relations in the ancient world?

So desperate are the promoters of the homosexual agenda to find support in the Bible for their perverted worldview that they twist the pure and admirable friendship of David and Jonathan into the most vile thing imaginable. As with most other attempts of non-Catholic secularists to find support for their base actions in the Scriptures, this one is based on poor theology, ignorance of culture and a desire to conform the word of God to perversion rather than to reform perversion based on God's word.

Update: Summer Theology in Italy

A slight adjustment of the dates of the Scholastic Theology Summer Program which I mentioned recently has been made necessary. The new dates, fixed now and confirmed, are June 18 - June 30.

Here is a quick overview of the program calendar. See the official website for more details.

18 June, Monday: Arrival Day.
19 June, Tuesday: Academic Day.
20 June, Wednesday: Academic Day.
21 June, Thursday: Optional Trip to Assisi.
22 June, Friday: Academic Day.
23 June, Saturday: Academic Day.

24 June, Sunday: Morning in Norcia - Optional Trip to Cascia in the Afternoon.
25 June, Monday: Academic Day.
26 June, Tuesday: Academic Day.
27 June, Wednesday: Academic Day.
28 June, Thursday: Optional Trip to Rome.
29 June, Friday: Feast of Saint Peter and Paul in Rome.
30 June, Saturday: Departure Day (or you can extend your stay in Rome!)

Cardinal Meisner on the Identity of the Priest

As we prepare to embark upon the journey of Lent, it is fitting to reflect on the importance of the sacrament of penance, especially in its relation to the role of the priest and the "ministry of reconciliation" that God has entrusted to His faithful priests. Below are some excerpts from a talk given by Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne, Germany, from a talk entitled "Conversion and Mission" that was given at the conclusion of the 2010 "Year of the Priest." The Cardinal speaks about the necessity of frequenting and offering confession as intimately bound up with the identity of the priest and says that priests who do not offer confession (or go to it themselves) are not mature enough to be priests:

"One of the most tragic failings that the Church has suffered in the second half of the twentieth century is to have neglected the gift of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of penance. In us priests, this has caused a tremendous loss of spiritual profile. When the Christian faithful ask me, "How can we help our priests?" I always reply, "Go to them to confess." When the priest is no longer a confessor, he becomes a social worker of a religious kind. In fact, he lacks experience of the greatest pastoral achievement, of working together so that a sinner, thanks also to his help, leaves the confessional newly sanctified. In the confessional, the priest can penetrate into the hearts of many people and, from that, encouragement and inspiration may result for his own following of Christ.

Therefore, it is not sufficient in our pastoral work just to want to make corrections to the structures of the Church, to make it appear more attractive. It is not enough! What is needed is a conversion of heart, of my heart. Only a converted Paul could change the world, not an expert in "ecclesial engineering." The priest, with his being assimilated to the form of the life of Jesus, is so inhabited by Him that Jesus becomes perceptible by others in the priest.

The biggest obstacle preventing Christ being seen through us is sin. It prevents the presence of the Lord in our lives and for that reason nothing is more necessary to us than conversion - also for the purposes of the mission. It is a matter, in short, of the sacrament of penance. A priest who does not frequently take his place on one and the other side of the grille of the confessional suffers permanent harm to his soul and his mission. Here certainly lies one of the major causes of the manifold crisis in which the priesthood has come to find itself in the last fifty years. The very special grace of the priesthood is precisely that the priest can feel "at home" on both sides of the grille of the confessional: as penitent and as minister of forgiveness. When the priest distances himself from the confessional, he enters into a grave identity crisis. The sacrament of penance is the privileged locus for the deepening of the identity of the priest, who is called upon to make himself and believers return to draw upon the fullness of Christ.

If there were nor sinners, who need forgiveness more than daily bread, we could not precisely know the depth of the Divine Heart. The Lord points it out explicitly, "I tell you, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting than over ninety-nine upright people who have no need of repentance" (Luke 15:7). Why ever- we ask ourselves once again - does a sacrament that stirs such great joy in heaven evoke such antipathy on earth? The reason is our pride, the constant tendency of our heart to fence itself in, to be sufficient unto itself, to isolate itself, to close in on itself.

For this reason, the spiritual maturity to receive priestly ordination by a candidate for the priesthood, in my opinion, becomes evident from the fact that he regularly receives - at least as often as once a month - the sacrament of penance. Indeed, in the sacrament of penance, I meet the merciful Father with the most precious gifts He has to give, namely the "giving," the forgiving and the giving of grace to us. But when someone, precisely because of his rare attendance at confession, says in fact to the Father, "Keep Your precious gifts for Yourself! I don't need You or Your gifts!" then he stops being a child, because he excludes himself from the fatherhood of God, because he does not want to receive His precious gifts. And if one is no longer a child of the heavenly Father, then he cannot become a priest, because a priest is, first and foremost, the son of the Father through baptism, and then, through priestly ordination is, along with Christ, son with the Son."

From the Miles Christi newsletter, #136, Feb, 2012
www.mileschristi.org

The Heresies of Balthasar

For the past month, I have been slogging through Alyssa Lyra Pitstick's monumental tome Light in Darkness, subtitled, "Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ's Descent into Hell." It is a massive work, but tremendously thorough and takes on von Balthasar like few in the post-Conciliar Church have been willing to do. Balthasar is most known, of course, for his idea that we may reasonably hope that hell may be empty, but Pitstick takes the fight to the heart of Balthasar's theology: his doctrine that Christ was abandoned by the Father and suffered the pains of hell on Holy Saturday. As Pitstick demonstrates, this theology of the "Descent" is actually central to all of Balthasar's theology and actually serves as the premise upon which he will build his conclusion that we may hope for universal salvation.

I have not finished the book yet, though I am drawing close. Even so, I can say that Miss Pitstick has done us all a tremendous service in putting this work together. I for one an appalled that so many otherwise orthodox individuals in the Church, from theology professors right on up to John Paul II and Benedict XVI, find Balthasar's theology credible. I dismissed his "hope for universal salvation" theory as completely contrary to our tradition about two seconds after somebody explained it to me, and it mystifies me that so many other learned persons continue to dally with it. But Pitstick's book does more than expose the flawed thinking behind Balthasar's empty hell theory - it exposes him as heretical (or at least extremely counter to tradition) in his Christology, soteriology, Trinitarian theology, sacramental theology, ecclesiology and almost every other area across the theological spectrum, leading the reader to the conclusion that, not only is Balthasar mistaken on his empty hell hypothesis, but his entire corpus of theology is extremely questionable and that this man is far from the trustworthy theologian that Ignatius Press and many in the Magisterium would have us believe.

Case in point (and there are many cases to which we could point); Balthasar's concept of sin. The traditional Catholic concept of sin is that sin is understood as a privation, especially with reference to original sin, which is a privation of grace. St. Thomas says that every sin is a kind of privation, either of "form or order or due measure" (De malo, 2:2). St. Thomas affirms Augustine's teaching on sin as a privation of the good:

"Sin is nothing else than a bad human act. Now that an act is a human act is due to its being voluntary, as stated above, whether it be voluntary, as being elicited by the will, e.g. to will or to choose, or as being commanded by the will, e.g. the exterior actions of speech or operation. Again, a human act is evil through lacking conformity with its due measure: and conformity of measure in a thing depends on a rule, from which if that thing depart, it is incommensurate" (STh, I-II, Q. 71, art. 6).

Here we see Thomas stating that sin is an act that falls short of a standard ("due measure"); in other words, it is a lack of the good, a privation of something that ought to be, although Thomas is careful to explain that sin is not a "pure privation" (I-II, Q. 72, art. 1); in other words, to say it is a privation is not to say that sin is "nothing." Sin is "a word, deed, or desire, contrary to the eternal law" (I-II, Q. 71, art. 6),   "an act deprived of its due order"; since all creatures desire the good, truly or mistakenly, sin occurs when a lesser, perceived good is substituted in place of the eternal good. This act falls short, is defective of perfection, but is nevertheless a real act, though an act whose nature is to be sinful by defect. Thus, sin as an act willed by the sinner is certainly a reality, but it has no ontological existence, nor could it, being understood as a privation.

The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

"The act [of sin] is something positive. The sinner intends here and now to act in some determined matter, inordinately electing that particular good in defiance of God's law and the dictates of right reason. The deformity is not directly intended, nor is it involved in the act so far as this is physical, but in the act as coming from the will which has power over its acts and is capable of choosing this or that particular good contained within the scope of its adequate object, i.e. universal good" (source).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church will also use terms that present sin as a privation; it is a "failure", a "wound" (CCC 1849), the latter of which was a popular term in antiquity and the Middle Ages to explain the concept - just as a wound or sickness is the privation of health, so sin is the privation of the good.

Most readers of this blog are familiar enough with the traditional doctrine of sin as a privation that I don't think I need to cite any more sources to establish it. This is an important point, however, because Balthasar will go on to misinterpret the traditional approach taken by St. Augustine and St. Thomas to mean that sin is "nothing." He will state that the idea of sin as a privation does not adequately grasp the reality of sin's horror.

It stands to reason that, since a privation does not have ontological existence, it cannot be objectively separated from the subject in which that privation is found. One cannot have sickness in and of itself apart from a subject who is sick (we may have a cancer cell isolated in a test tube, but that is not sickness. Sickness does not arise until that cancer attacks a human host, who, as a person, becomes sick due to the absence of health brought about by the cancer). Similarly, we cannot isolate sins from the sinner. The way sin must be handled is to be "washed away", "blotted out" or "expiated" in the context of the restoration of the sinner himself. A piece of wood with a hole in it cannot be repaired by trying to remove the hole from the wood; the hole must be filled in the context of the wood, because a hole can only exist in something.

Balthasar's dissatisfaction with the privation theory of sin leads him to posit a real, ontological existence for sin, contrary to Augustine, Thomas, the implications of the Catechism and almost all of ancient and medieval Catholic tradition. Sin becomes an ontological reality by a sort of negative creation, in which man, by the passion and willfulness that he puts into sinning, turns sin into a positive reality. Balthasar says:

"It is possible to distinguish between the sin and the sinner...Because of the energy that man has invested in it, sin is a reality, it is not 'nothing.'" (Theo-Drama, vol. V, pp. 266, 314).

Because sin has this ontological reality, it can be abstracted from the sinner and, consequently, removed to another locus. Here Balthasar's theology of sin crosses into his soteriology. Because sin is a reality that can be separated from the sinner, it is possible to "load" it on to Christ, who literally assumes the sins of every person in His death, but especially in His Descent:

"[Sin] has been isolated from the sinner...separated from the sinner by the work of the Cross" (ibid., 285, 314).

Thus, because sin is able to be loaded onto Christ, Christ literally takes the sins, and the guilt, of every sinner on to Himself, and in His death and Descent, literally becomes sin, in such a real, metaphysical sense that Balthasar makes the shocking statement that the Incarnation is "suspended" while Jesus is in the tomb:

"Holy Saturday is thus a kind of suspension, as it were, of the Incarnation, whose result is given back to the hands of the Father and which the Father will renew and definitively confirm by the Easter Resurrection" ("The Descent into Hell", Spirit and Institution, Explorations in Theology, vol. IV, pp 411-412).

If all sin and all guilt and all punishment for sin has been loaded upon Christ by the Father, who wills to actively "crush" and punish the Son as if He had sinned, then there is no more wrath or punishment left that any sinner could endure eternally. All his sins have been abstracted from him and loaded on to Christ. Conversely, if there is no wrath left for the sinner, there is no real merit left for the saint, at least in the way traditional Catholic theology has understood it. Here, Balthasar sounds downright Lutheran in his understanding of salvation:

"[The sinner's] hope can only cling blindly to the miracle that has already taken place in the Cross of Christ; it takes the entire courage Christian hope for a man to apply this to himself, to trust that, by the power of this miracle, what is damnable in him has been separated from him and thrown out with the unusable residue that is incinerated outside of the gates of the Holy City" (Theo-Drama, vol. V, 321).

The language of the sinner clinging "blindly" to an act that has already taken place reminds one of the Protestant jargon of "resting in God's finished work"; as with Luther, the sin of man is separated from him and placed on Christ, who in turn bestows upon us righteousness. The difference between Balthasar and Luther here is that Balthasar appears to make the operative principle the virtue of hope rather than faith. Balthasar vehemently denied that his soteriological doctrine was Lutheran, because he emphasized charity and hope along with faith and thus technically did not teach "faith alone" (and Balthasar emphasized the redemptive nature of the Descent, something Luther ignored), but in practice, it seems that Luther and Balthasar are very close together here inasmuch as they both agree in sins being abstracted from the sinner, "loaded" upon Christ who is then punished with God's wrath, and the sinner appropriating the righteousness of Christ by faith-hope in a finished work that has already been completed.

There is so much more we could point to with Balthasar, but here I merely wanted to show how he breaks from Catholic Tradition not only in his teaching of an empty hell, but on many other things as well; in this case, the idea of sin having a positive existence that can be abstracted and separated from the man, as opposed to the traditional Catholic idea of sin as a privation.

I highly recommend Pitstick's book. I will also probably do some more stuff on Balthasar in the future on here because his teachings are so pernicious. I knew he was questionable, but until I read Pitstick's book, I did not understand how truly horrific and contrary to Tradition some of his concepts really are.

Matt. 6:5-6

In the Gospel, our Lord warns us:

"And when ye pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, that love to stand and pray in the synagogues and corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men: Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. But thou when you shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret: and thy Father who sees in secret will repay you." (Matt. 6:5-6).

How often this verse is trotted out by smug atheists whenever Christians try to make any sort of public demonstration of their faith: a prayer chain outside an abortion clinic, a controversy over a manger scene in a public place, prayers of protest outside an adult nightclub or bookstore. Always, this verse is brought out by the opponents of the Church, as if it absolutely prohibits Christians from doing any sort of prayer or evangelizing in public. Just recently someone posted this verse on my Facebook wall when I tried to organize a prayer chain for my community.

What does the Bible say about prayer? This would be too great a topic to take up here, but it suffices to say that there is plenty of "public prayer" throughout the Scriptures, such as those at which Solomon dedicated the Temple, for example. Prayer in the New Testament is often public as well, as all the Temple liturgies that the Apostles participated in were in public (Acts 3), not to mention the greatest manifestation of the Spirit in the New Testament on the day of Pentecost saw the Apostles praying publicly in front of thousands. Not to mention that many of the most memorable prayers of the early Church were those uttered by the martyrs while they stood exposed to thousands in the arena waiting for death, and that in the coming centuries, public processions and public acts of prayer and penance were not only common, but lauded by the Church as an especially efficacious way of securing God's blessing upon a people. Clearly, Christianity, both apostolic and patristic, never understood public prayer to be forbidden by Matthew 6:5.

As with the following verse about not praying with "vain repetitions" (Matt. 6:7), where the emphasis is not so much on repetition as with the repetitions that are vain, Matthew 6:5-6 does not prohibit prayer in front of others in an absolute sense, but rather warns against people praying "that they may be seen by men." That this is so is evident by the contrast Jesus makes between praying "as the hypocrites" and praying sincerely. The prayer of the sincere disciple is "in secret" and seen only by the Father; this contrasts with the prayer that is done to be "seen by men" and is done by the hypocrites. The structure and syntax of the verse makes it clear that was is being condemned here is not praying in front of others, but praying for the purpose of being praised by men and thought pious.

Furthermore, if we were to take this verse in the absolute sense that many atheists would like to attribute to it, it would prohibit us from every praying in front of anybody. Husbands would not be allowed to pray with or in front of their wives or children, teachers at religious schools would not pray before class in front of their students, a minister or bishop could not give an invocation at a college graduation ceremony, nor could a priest even offer the prayers of the Mass, since these occasions all involve praying in the presence of others and the words of the Gospel, if interpreted in an absolute sense, leave no exception; all prayer must be done "in thy chamber" and offered "to the Father in secret." Obviously, no Christian of any denomination has ever suggested such a scenario.

The verse does, however, stress the importance of maintaining a private prayer life and returning to a kind of vital, one-on-one encounter with the Lord that is the inner source of joy and spiritual vitality. Even Jesus was used to retreating to a "remote place" when He wished to pray (Mk. 1:35). So, I do not mean to suggest that Jesus admonition to pray in secret is to be completely interpreted away. We should all have a private, intimate prayer life. But we do need to interpret in context, and the context, coupled with a unanimous tradition, demonstrates that Matt. 6:5-6 in no way prohibits prayer in front of others, but like Christ's other injunctions in the Gospels, asks us to consider of motivations for whatever we do. Anything that we do just to be seen by men is always done out of pride and is to be avoided. But there is nothing wrong with prayer in public or prayer with others for honorable or pious motives.

Join Us in Italy this Summer

Dear readers,

Please allow me to introduce you to a superb opportunity this coming Summer. Yours truly, together with a couple of colleagues, has launched an annual scholastic theology program in the middle of beautiful Italy. This year's program is entitled "Encountering Christ in the Gospels." You can browse the official website for all the details, but let me give you the essentials here:

• Studying the four Gospels, the heart of all theology, by reading them in their entirety together with the commentaries of the great masters of the Catholic tradition: St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas. We will also look at a few chapters from Papa Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth books.
• The program culminates with an authentic scholastic disputation, complete with objections, sed contras, replies, and the definitive respondeo of the 'Master'.
• Daily Mass and divine office (all in the traditional form!) with the Benedictine Monks of Norcia.
• Location in Norcia, the birthplace of Ss. Benedict and Scholastica.
• Day trips to Assisi and Cascia, and a weekend in Rome for the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul.
• June 23 - July 7, 2012.
• Only 675 euro for tuition, room, and board. At the moment that is about $879.

Obscure Saints: Henrik of Uppsala

To call St. Henrik obscure is only possible to an English speaking Catholic. For us, he is so obscure that he does not even have an entry in the voluminous 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia. But, to Finnish Catholics, he is the nation's patron and one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, and of today.

Henrik was born Henry, an Englishman, sometime in the early 12th century. It is unknown where he began his ecclesiastical career, but in 1152 he appears as a companion of papal legate and fellow Englishman Nicholas Breakspear (later Pope Adrian IV), who spent two years in Scandinavia trying to organize the Church in that region. Henrik appears to have remained behind, where he was later appointed Bishop of Uppsala, primatial See of Sweden, in 1156. This was around one year after Eric IX Jedvardsson, also known as King Eric the Saint, took the throne of Sweden. Henrik, who had a heart for missionary work, found a friend and supporter in the zealous King Eric, who was anxious to spread the Faith into neighboring Finland as a means of not only winning souls, but stabilizing his own borders.

Allegedly, Eric organized a sort of crusade to bring Finland under Swedish rule and spread the Faith, although there is no contemporary evidence of such a military adventure. What is certain is that, at the behest of King Eric, the Bishop of Uppsala was persuaded to go to Finland to spread the Faith in that region. He was not in Finland long when he was murdered by a pagan Finn, to whom tradition assigns the name Lalli. According to some accounts, his martyrdom occurred as a result of Henrik attempting to enforce a canonical penalty on a murderer; in the more popular tale, Henrik stops to purchase some food from a local woman before crossing a frozen lake by slegde. When the woman's husband Lalli returns home, she tells him only that Henrik came and took the food but neglects to mention that he also paid for it. In anger, Lalli follows Henrik out upon the ice of the lake where he murders him and takes his mitre home in gloating triumph. According to tradition, Henrik was martyred on January 20th, 1156.

Finnish cultural tradition has taken a macabre interest in speculating about the fate of Lalli, the murderer. All traditions agree that Lalli died soon after Henrik, unrepentant and tormented. The favorite story of Lalli tells how he came home from the murder wearing the bishop's mitre. When he went to remove it from his head, his scalp came off with it; thus St. Henrik is often depicted in medieval iconography standing on top of Lalli, who is always depicted as bald. Other stories tell of Lalli being pursued relentlessly by a band of mice who constantly tried to eat him alive. There are tales of Lalli climbing a tree or moving from house to house to escape the gnawing mice; finally he seeks refuge at sea, but the mice some how find him and he and the mice end up drowning together. The gnawing mice which relentlessly seek to devour Lalli are an apt symbol of the gnawing of conscience.

Henrik soon became the national saint of Finland, although he was largely ignored outside of Scandinavia. In Scandinavian countries, his feast day (January 20th) is the occasion of a tremendous festival called Heikinpäivä. The Heikinpäivä festival, though originally a Finnish solemnity, is actually more important in other areas of the world that were settled by Finns than in Finland itself, which has lost touch with much of its Catholic past. The region of the world that is best known for its festive celebration of Heikinpäivä is Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which was settled by Finns in the 19th century. The Michigan celebrations are largely civic and cultural in nature, having lost a lot of the relevance to the martyr-saint, but it is still a real treat to visit the north during the time of the this festival.

St. Henrik, ora pro nobis!

Reliability of the Fathers (4 of 7)

In my previous posts on the Church Fathers and their general reliability as authentic interpreters of the truths of the Gospel, we have looked at the objection that the legalization of Christianity fundamentally altered the Church's understanding of itself and its beliefs, that the difference in "cultural horizons" between the Greek and Latin fathers and the Jewish apostles made a faithful transmission of apostolic truth to later generations impossible, and that the transformation of the Church from a Jewish to a Gentile reality made the teachings of the Gentile Fathers unreliable.

Today, we look at the fourth objection of my Protestant interlocutor (the original objections of this interlocutor can be found in post one of this series). In objection four, our interlocutor states that the teaching of the Fathers is unreliable due to:

The rise and dominance of the legalistic and ascetic strains within Christianity.

This is actually two objections: by "legalistic" I assume he is referring to the gradual development of the Church's hierarchical and canonical structure of governance, especially with relation to the "charistmatic" tendencies in the early Church, which though never entirely died out, were less and less prevalent from the 4th century on. By "ascetic", I can only assume he is referring to the rise of monasticism from the late 3rd century onward.

Let's start with the first objection: Do the evolution of a hierarchy governed by canonical norms and the simultaneous rise of monasticism mean that the Church Father's understanding of the Scriptures is flawed or untrustworthy?

First, note that the interlocutor is coming at the early Church with what we could call a hermeneutic of historical rupture. He is operating on the assumption that Early Apostolic Church = No Legalism, but Patristic Church = Legalism.  The interlocutor shares the common Protestant idea that the primitive Church was governed in a decentralized manner with charismatic impulses fulfilling the role that the hierarchy would fulfill later. This is too big an argument to take up here, as it would involve a massive survey of the role of hierarchy in the early Church and the development of what we would call "canon law." I think it suffices to say that asserting that apostolic Christianity was not "legalistic" is based on a false understanding of apostolic church, and that opposing a primitive "charismatic" Church to a latter "hierarchical" or "legalistic" Church is a false dichotomy. I have written about the charismatic vs. institutional concept elsewhere. Regarding whether or not the Church of the apostolic era (late 1st t- mid 2nd century) was "legalistic", we should keep a few things in mind:

The Didache, the earliest Christian document we have outside of the New Testament, is full of what many Protestants would consider "legalisms", for example:

"But concerning baptism, thus shall ye baptize. Having first recited all these things, baptize {in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit} in living (running) water. But if thou hast not living water, then baptize in other water and if thou art not able in cold, then in warm. But if thou hast neither, then pour water on the head thrice in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But before the baptism let him that baptizeth and him that is baptized fast, and any others also who are able; and thou shalt order him that is baptized to fast a day or two before" (7:1-7).

These are distinctions that modern Protestants would presume to be legalistic - why the preference for running water over still? And why cold rather than hot? And commanding fasting for two days prior? Most Protestants would consider these commands to be legalistic, if for no other reason than that they are not commanded by the New Testament, but in a larger sense, because the convey the message that not only Faith matters, but exactly how the commandments of our Lord are carried out liturgically.

Or consider this passage, also from the Didache:

"And let not your fastings be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and the fifth day of the week; but do ye keep your fast on the fourth and on the preparation (the sixth day) day" (8:1-2).

If I were a Protestant and insisted that fasting should only be done on certain days of the week, my teaching would be called "legalist" for the reason that one day would be valued above another. Yet here we have this alleged "legalism" right in the midst of the apostolic era, in fact, in the earliest document outside of the New Testament. The Didache is full of this sort of stuff - the exact words to use in the Eucharist, how many days a prophet is allowed to stay in a home, and, interestingly enough, commands to appoint bishops and deacons (15:1). Yet all of this occurs in the midst of commandments about how to handle visionaries and prophets, and in one verse, it says that bishops and deacons also "perform the service of prophets" (15:2). 

What we gather from this is that those who say that the first generations of Christians were only concerned with living the Sermon on the Mount and living by charismatic impulses are mistaken. The charismatic certainly existed, but it existed side by side with a developing canonical ("legalistic") framework. Furthermore, these two aspects of the Church were not opposed to one another; in fact,  the ideal seems to be that the charismatic is exercised through the hierarchical, as we see in the comment about bishops being prophets.

Not to deny any change between the apostolic era and later generations. The institutional aspect of the Church did become more solidified over time, but that is natural and to be expected with any concept, as Newman said. And it is true that as Christianity became more mainstream, and the average lay Christian became less of an ascetic, that charismatic gifts decreased among the laity. But the point we need to stress here is that there was never a time when a hierarchical, legalistic Christianity "rose" and then "dominated" because Christianity never was an amorphous, non-legalistic movement. The charismatic and hierarchical, the Spirit-filled and "legalist" were all the same movement, and there was no "dominating" of an earlier form of Christianity by a latter. Thus, though the Church developed naturally as it grew, we can discern no radical rupture between an apostolic and a patristic Church, and since there is no rupture in the form of the Church, we should assume no rupture in its teaching or interpretation of the content of Revelation, either.

Not that there was no resistance to hierarchical developments, but interestingly enough, those who most resisted the hierarchical developments and insisted on granting primacy to the charismatic were the heretical groups such as the Marcionites, Montanists and the various Gnostic sects.

Let us move on to the second objection: that the "rise and dominance" of the ascetic strain of Christianity means a disruption in the Church's understanding of Sacred Scripture.  

As with the first objection, this one puts up a false dichotomy between a non-ascetical primitive Christianity and a later Christianity dominated by asceticism. The fundamental error in this thinking is the confusion of ascetical with monastic. The interlocutor is correct if he means that Christianity was not always monastic, but he is sadly mistaken if he thinks it was not always ascetical. Asceticism means the disciplining of the body to bring it into subjection to the higher faculties, especially through fasting and abstinence from external things that, while good, are given up in order that the soul might attain to higher things. This practice of ascecis was always present in the Church, from the virgin martyrs of the first centuries who voluntarily abstained from marriage for the sake of the kingdom, going right back to St. Paul who said:

"Know you not that they that run in the race, all run indeed, but one receiveth the prize. So run that you may obtain. And every one that striveth for the mastery refraineth himself from all things. And they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown: but we an incorruptible one. I therefore so run, not as at an uncertainty: I so fight, not as one beating the air. But I chastise my body and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway" (1 Cor. 9:24-27).

Monasticism did not spring up until the mid-third century, but asceticism was always with us. Indeed, monasticism was simply a new expression of asceticism, which was necessary as Christianity became an increasingly mainstream movement and ascetics sought new ways to live out their ascecis within the developing Church. But, as with the arguments about the hierarchy, the problem here is in viewing the monastic movement as a radical departure from what had come before. But, once we recognize the presence of the ascetical spirit even in the early, urbanized Christianity of the apostolic era, we see the emergence of monasticism as something that organically flowed from what had come before it and in no way constituted a real rupture, either in practice or belief.

Furthermore, as we established in our first post on this subject, with regards to accuracy of biblical interpretation, the gradual intensification of the ascetical spirit in the monastic movement does not make the Church's interpretive tradition less sure, but rather more certain, as the teachings of the Fathers carry weight "because they are men of eminent sanctity and of ardent zeal for the truth, on whom God has bestowed a more ample measure of His light" (Providentissimus Deus, 14), according to Pope Leo XIII. In other words, the fact that in the third century we start to see incredibly holy men like St. Anthony and St. Paul the Hermit pop up means that, by their ascecis and rigorous life of prayer and penance, they have a greater focus on the truth and a clearer insight into the meaning of the Scriptures.

Based on this, exegesis that comes out of this period is not only consonant with what came before (inasmuch as the monastic movement was an organic development of the earlier ascetical tradition, rather than a new idea that "rose" to "dominance"), but we can expect a more precise development and a greater insight into the spiritual life inasmuch as the desert fathers were eminently holy.

This is a very long post and I do not pretend that it has answered the objections as fully as they could be. But, I do believe that we are mistaken to think the Fathers in general are unreliable just because the hierarchy and the Church's expression of ascecis naturally developed over the centuries. Development does not mean change. Development means development, and as development is natural and organic, and in the case of the Church, Spirit led, what comes prior must be interpreted in light of what comes later. The first century is interpreted in light of the second, the second in light of the third, and so on. There is no real rupture, no real sense in which we can assert that what a Christian of the fourth century understood when he read the Scriptures was radically different than what a Christian of the first century saw.

Next time, we will look at a similar objection based on the development of using the process of "deselection" to establish orthodoxy.

Penance and Satisfactory Punishment

I suppose this post is more of a question than a commentary. I have often noted that penances imposed by most confessors these days are a bit on the light side: praying three Hail Mary's, reading one Psalm, "doing a good deed", or something similar. I have likewise reflected that, were one to make these confessor-imposed penances the sole source of penance in one's life, that individual would still be far from the detached, mortified Christian that the saints envision in their moral exhortations. I wonder, for serious sins like adultery or apostasy, if the penance given by the confessor is too light, is the debt of punishment even wholly made up for?

Suppose someone commits the sin of adultery, which we all agree is a serious sin that incurs a large stain that must be expiated by penance. Now suppose the confessor assigns a penance of three Hail Mary's. Assuming the penitent is properly contrite and has the fitting dispositions, is this penance sufficient to atone for the stain of sin incurred by the sin?

I can only think of three possible solutions:

1) The penance is not sufficient because of a defect in the degree of the penance itself. There remains a debt to be expiated, the amount of which is relative to the insufficiency of the penance. Supporting this approach would be the praxis of the Church throughout the ages, wherein confessors have typically given heavier penances for more serious sins, suggesting that atoning for a more serious sin requires a corresponding penance that is equally weighty. St. Thomas' teaching that the debt of punishment is removed by the imposition of a "satisfactory punishment" that is able to restore "equality of justice" would also support this (I-II, Q. 87, art. 6).

2) The penance is entirely sufficient, not because of the content of the penance itself, but because of good disposition of the penitent in performing it, especially by virtue of obedience to the confessor's command, even though the content of the penance might be materially insufficient. Supporting this position would be the teaching of many of the saints, who state that it is not their penances considered materially that are effacacious (because suffering is not intrinsically good), but rather the degree to which they proceed from charity or obedience. Thus, an act that is in itself neutral can be rendered good by virtue of obedience. This is why St. Thomas calls it a "special virtue" (II-II, Q. 104, art. 2). Therefore, a materially insufficient penance carried out in obedience to a confessor with the proper disposition is able to completely expiate the punishment due to sin insofar as the grace that comes through acting in obedience fills whatever is lacking in this respect. Obedience makes it work.

3) The penance may be neither totally sufficient not totally insufficient, but will be as sufficient as the charity of the penitent makes it. In this scenario, neither the content of the penance nor the factor of obedience determine the sufficiency of the penance, but the intensity of the charity on the part of the penitent (although I would presume the charity must be that much more intense if the penance is materially insufficient). I like this explanation because it can encompass the other two - it does not deny that a penance may be materially insufficient, and also can factor in obedience since, as St. Thomas say, obedience flows from charity (II-II, Q. 104, art. 3). But if this were the case, it would leave the majority of penitents in a bad place, since, if we are operating on the assumption that the vast majority of penances imposed today are materially insufficient, it is up to the penitent to "make up for this" either by extra, self-imposed penances or by performing the materially insufficient penances with an extraordinarily intense degree of charity, which I doubt the vast majority of penitents in this country are doing.

I am not a theologian, and this is something I am a bit foggy on. Does anyone have any light to shed? What happens to the fellow who commits adultery, gets assigned three Hail Mary's, and does them with the proper (but not extraordinary) dispositions? To what degree is the debt of punishment remitted?

FAITH Magazine's definitions of "Inspiration"

In the Diocese of Lansing, we have this magazine called FAITH that gets mailed out for free to the household of every regular Catholic. Though there are some decent elements in FAITH magazine, it often happens that what I read gets my eye twitching; sometimes I have had to take FAITH magazine out to the woodshed (here and here). This month was no surprise. In a section called "Theology 101", the magazine interviews two theologians and asks them to answer "What does the Church mean when it says that the Scriptures are inspired?" Oh boy. (If you want to see the actual source, check out this article from FAITH's website)

The first theologian, a priest from Mundelein Seminary, offers this definition of inspiration:

"The notion of the sacred Scriptures as inspired means that what is in the Scriptures is what God wants to be there, i.e. the Holy Spirit is behind the human words through which God communicates to us. Because of this inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the human words that comprise the Scriptures are trustworthy in regard to both faith and the moral life and contain the revelation of who God is to us, and of who we are in relation to God and to each other."

This definition is not totally deficient, but it gives me pause. In what sense is the Holy Spirit "behind" the words of the Bible? The Holy Spirit could, in the more common sense of the term, 'inspire" me to create a beautiful poem or song. In this common sense of the word inspiration, it could also be said that the Holy Spirit is "behind" the words of my song or poem. But the mere idea that the Holy Spirit is "behind" something does not include the ideas the inerrancy.

Also, this priest's statement that the Scriptures are "trustworthy in regard to both faith and moral life" is also too vague. Trustworthy? The words of Fulton Sheen are trustworthy; heck, the words of Jimmy Akin are generally trustworthy. To use the adjective "trustworthy" in explaining the authority of the Scriptures is vastly deficient, since this can be predicated of any other trustworthy teacher. What needs to be said is that the authorship of the Holy Spirit makes the Bible inerrant and infallible, not simply "trustworthy."

I also hesitate when he says this trustworthiness applies to "both faith and moral life." He seems here to be restricting inerrancy ("trustworthiness") to only those portions of Scripture that have to do with faith and morals, whichever those are! In other words, he appears to be interpreting Dei Verbum 11 in a strict sense, which is not the way the Council intends the document to be interpreted, and not the way Tradition has understood it (see here).

In short, all the answers of this priest are structured in such a way as that it avoids the apparently unpleasant topic of inerrancy. Let's see how the second theologian interviewed explains the concept of inspiration.This second theologian, a lay theologian, also from Mundelein, says:

"The Church has made clear that any ultimate definition of inspiration must consider the very real contributions of both its divine and human authors. Further, the Church has eliminated three inadequate definitions of inspiration because they fail to recognize this balance of divine – human cooperation, namely mechanical dictation, mere assistance and subsequent approbation. Mechanical dictation, often depicted in stained-glass windows as an evangelist writing on a scroll as an angel whispers in his ear, places too much emphasis on God while reducing human cooperation to mere passivity."

Before we go on, we ought to ask ourselves, in what way, and when, has the Church "eliminated" dictation as a way of understanding inspiration? Of course, the theologian offers no evidence to back this up. It is a common theme in modern biblical theology to try to distance oneself from the idea of dictation. Has the Church "eliminated" dictation? I don't think so. Look at the following Magisterial statements:

"For the Sacred Scripture is not like other books. Dictated by the Holy Ghost, it contains things of the deepest importance, which in many instances are most difficult and obscure" (Providentissimus Deus, 5).

"But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred... For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true" (Providentissimus Deus, 20).

"You will not find a page in [St. Jerome's] writings which does not show clearly that he, in common with the whole Catholic Church, firmly and consistently held that the Sacred Books - written as they were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit - have God for their Author, and as such were delivered to the Church. Thus he asserts that the Books of the Bible were composed at the inspiration, or suggestion, or even at the dictation of the Holy Spirit; even that they were written and edited by Him. Yet he never questions but that the individual authors of these Books worked in full freedom under the Divine afflatus, each of them in accordance with his individual nature and character…" (Spiritus Paraclitus, 8).

We could also look to the Council of Trent, which did not shrink from utilizing the word dictation:

"The sacred and holy, ecumenical, and general Synod of Trent, - lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the same three legates of the Apostolic See presiding therein, - keeping this always in view, that, errors being removed, the purity itself of the Gospel be preserved in the Church; which (Gospel), before promised through the prophets in the holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth, and then commanded to be preached by His Apostles to every creature, as the fountain of all, both saving truth, and moral discipline; and seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating [Spiritu Sancto dictante], have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand..." (Council of Trent, Session IV, Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures, 1546).

Clearly, the Church has not "eliminated" dictation. On the other hand, it seems that Tradition actually favors this interpretation of inspiration. I understand that it was not FAITH magazine but the theologians from Mundelein who gave these answers, but FAITH ought to have known better than to publish these inadequate and misleading statements.

It may be objected that the popes and Council of Trent support dictation, but not "mechanical dictation," and this is the phrase the theologian initially uses. Of course, if by "mechanical dictation" the theologian means a sort of inspiration that completely denies the human element (in other words, denies that the Scriptures can truly be said to have human authors), then I would also reject this definition as inadequate. But is this what this theologian means?

The theologian explains dictation by equating it with a very traditional image. Dictation is "often depicted in stained-glass windows as an evangelist writing on a scroll as an angel whispers in his ear." In other words, this theologian sees mechanical dictation as that form of dictation that is traditionally depicted; in other words, the Church's traditional understanding of dictation. Thus, while I do acknowledge that there is the potential for "mechanical dictation" to be something different from simple dictation, the fact that the theologian cites the traditional image of the inspired evangelist receiving the Gospel from the whispering of an angel as an example of mechanical dictation, I can only assume that "mechanical dictation" is the same thing as "dictation", as it is used in the passages above cited.

By the way, if you are wondering what answer the second theologian finally did give to what constitutes inspiration, here is what she offered:

"[A] believing community passes down traditions that capture faithfully their experience of God, and that subsequent generations also experience these as compelling and pass them on until eventually the traditions reach the written form that we now call sacred Scripture."

The emphasis is laid on the experience of the community rather than on the actual, historical revelation of God to an individual person. This is cited as the idea behind the "process" of inspiration, but again, this definition totally leaves out the concept of inerrancy.

I don't know what more to say, except to restate my earlier opinion that this magazine has the nutritional value of styrofoam.

Best Posts of 2011

The year 2011 was my first year since I began this blog that I was not employed by the parish as a DRE and Youth Director, so I had a little bit more time to devote to blogging and felt more freedom to blog about whatever I wanted. The result was some of the most scholarly posts I have ever done (in my opinion). Here are my picks for the top posts of 2011. By the way, if you enjoy this blog, please consider forwarding some of these articles to your friends or "liking" this blog's Facebook page (linked up at the top):

Program for Parish Renewal: First in a four part series of how my pastor took a crazy. liberal parish and transformed it into a bastion of orthodoxy.

Last Supper and Liturgy: Examining the seating arrangement at the Last Supper.

Priestless parishes as a fait accompli?  The tendency of many dioceses to put forward the ideal of a priestless parish as a normative and even desirable state of affairs.

French clergy in the age of Louis XIV: An examination of the moral and intellectual state of the French clergy during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Rob Bell: Stressing the fault lines of Protestantism:  The controversy over Rob Bell's book "Love Wins" reveals an inherent weakness in Protestant thought.

"I am of Paul; I am of Apollos": A refutation to a common Protestant interpretation of 1 Cor. 10:13-17.

St. Augustine did not "invent" original sin: A refutation to the common assertion that the concept of original sin was invented by St. Augustine of Hippo.

Books that won't imperil the soul:  Thirteen recommended books in the fields of theology, philosophy, history and literature.

The JustFaith program is not Catholic: One of my most highly viewed posts of all time on the heretical tendencies of the JustFaith program.

The Assumption: Not a question of history:  Why we believe in the Assumption despite the fact that the dogma is not explicitly taught prior to Council of Nicaea.

Reliability of the Fathers: The first post in a long series about the general reliability of the Church Fathers in establishing what is the true faith.

The Homosexual Compromise: A refutation of the common assertion that homosexual orientation is acceptable in a priest so long as they don't "act on it."

Rectificare Errata: The fake encyclical I posted on April Fool's Day.

A federalist solution to abortion: Why returning abortion laws to the states is a licit strategy for ending abortion in this country.

Liturgical minimalism hurts the poor: The liturgical minimalism done in the name of making the liturgy more accessible to the poor actually hurts the poor.

Authority over demons in the Early Church: In the early Church, average lay people had authority over demons, which they exercised simply by virtue of their baptism.

Is Gandhi in hell? Using Gandhi as an example of how the principle of invincible ignorance is abused.

Speeding up to slow down: How my diocese's attempt to implement the new translation of the Missal actually put our parish behind, at least with regards to music.

What day was Jesus really born? An examination of the evidence in support of December 25th based on the time of Zechariah's service in the Temple.

Law and Tradition: Why, despite the admirable trend towards Tradition in the current Church, tradition itself can never be restored simply by legislation.

Top Ten Careers for Catholics: Ten fields you could go into instead of majoring in "liberal arts."

Christ's descent into hell: An examination of St. Thomas' reasons for why Christ descended to the dead - none of them agreeing with the reasons put forth by Balthasar. Article by Anselm.