Popes Say The Darndest Things

While researching regarding Duns Scotus we came across two documents of Benedict XVI that contain some remarkable opinions--opinions that cut to the heart of his papacy.

The first document is the text of a General Audience given on July 7, 2010. The General Audience was devoted to John Duns Scotus.

Anselm's Platonism and the Development of Doctrine

In Questions of Authority I posed the following question:

This leads us to the question: is it possible that the Church can mistakenly put forward as doctrine theologizing that is based on misunderstandings of Scripture?

The example I provided was one that Avery Dulles cited re Original Sin:

In recounting the challenges faced by the authors of the Catechism, Dulles points out one doctrinal matter in particular:

The doctrine of original sin caused particular difficulty, and was studied at length by a special commission. In the past fifty years numerous theologians have proposed ways of updating the traditional teaching, which relied heavily on contestable interpretations of the creation narratives in Genesis and of Paul's letter to the Romans.

Josef Pieper, writing in 1960 in his well known survey Scholasticism, touched on these issues from an historical standpoint in his treatment of Anselm of Canterbury—most famous for his so-called ontological “proof” for the existence of God. Pieper begins the extended passage ( pp. 60-65) by noting that, of the two ways in which human reason may be “overvalued,” the “overvaluation of logical deduction from general principles,” is

especially linked to the Platonic-Augustinian view of the world; it is a latent peril of that view. And it is this peril of “deductive rationalism” which Anselm of Canterbury conjured up, and which thereafter lingered in Western Christianity.

Questions of Authority

Back in November and early December of 2011, Crisis Magazine ran two articles that address the issue of change in Church teaching.  The first, Catholics and “Usury”: A Tragic History, by Jeffrey Tucker, addresses an issue that, at first glance, appears to be largely of historical interest--although the history of that problematic issue ran on for well over a millenium.  Usury, of course, is a case in which Church teaching appears rather incontrovertibly to have actually changed, and as such it is cited repeatedly by those who wish the Church to change other teachings, as well.  The second article, Can the Church Ban Capital Punishment? by Christopher A. Ferrara, on the other hand, takes up an issue that only arose quite recently.  Church teaching on Capital Punishment has not changed--despite some high profile efforts on the part of a recent pontiff--and for some this is a concern.  Taken together these articles are an excellent starting point for addressing issues regarding the Church's teaching authority.

The "Theologism" of Bonaventure

Recapitulation

This project began with an examination of the "archaic ontology" described in the works of Mircea Eliade--the ontology of the man of "archaic" or traditional cultures.  It is our thesis that the basis outlook of the archaic ontology served as the basis for most later developments in the intellectual history of mankind, and that only by coming to an understanding of archaic ontology are we able to understand the intellectual history of mankind, including the ideologies of the modern world.  It may be well to recapitulate some of these ideas before we proceed further, in order to recall the connection between archaic ontology and such seemingly unrelated phenomena as the theology of a 13th century Christian theologian, such as Bonanventure.

Chesterton's Thomist View of Myth

G. K. Chesterton's magnum opus, The Everlasting Man, amounts to a theory of man in history from a Christian apologetic perspective.  The overarching theme is that what could be called the "methodology" of the Christian revelation--God's self revelation in Jesus rather than in a book--is remarkably "in tune with" human nature as we see it in history.  While it would be unwise to seek a complete theory of man in a book of apologetics--we cannot expect to find anything quite like Eliade's theory of archaic ontology--The Everlasting Man is, like so many of Chesterton's works, shot through with keen insights that repay careful study.  This is particularly true of Chesterton's reflections on the nature of mythology and its relation to Christianity, a topic that is central to his overall argument.  For Chesterton, to understand myth is to understand man, and in important respects this approach leads him to address these issues in ways that are both original and also shed greater light than other more familiar approaches.

PDF Version

I'm in the process of constructing a PDF document containing most of these posts to date.  I'm also editing the documents to varying degrees--some very little, some to a greater extent.  The PDF document is somewhat differently ordered.  While it remains basically in historical order, there have been a few changes.  So far I've completed work up to Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The 1988 Erasmus Lecture, which is a rather heavily edited document.  In addition, some document titles have been changed.  Here's the Table of Contents for the PDF document:

Part 1: Toward a Theory of History

Eliade: Cosmos and History

Eliade: The Regeneration of Time

The Terror of History

Misfortune and History

Religion and the Origins of Civilization (Dawson)

Misfortune and History - Continued

The Rise of the World Religions

Islam and Christianity--Modernity v. Tradition

Part 2: The Religion of Israel

The Religion of Israel I: Issues, Canaanite Origins

The Religion of Israel II: Archeology and the Exodus and Conquest

The Religion of Israel III: Origins of Ancient Israel

The Religion of Israel IV: Historical Overview of Ancient Israel

The Religion of Israel V: Frank Moore Cross on Israelite Religion

Mark Smith: History and the Israelite Scriptures

Mark Smith: Challenges to Israel During the Biblical Period

Mark Smith: Monotheism and the Structures of Divinity

Mark Smith: Collective Memory and Amnesia in the Israelite Scriptures

Mark Smith: From Scriptures to Bible

Death and Immortality

Frank Moore Cross: Theogony, Cosmogony and Philosophy

Part 3: Early Greek Thought

The Early Development of Greek Thought

Eliade: From Theogony to Philosophy

Part 4: Toward a Theory of Revelation

Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The 1988 Erasmus Lecture

Israel and Revelation

Messy Revelation

The One Who Is To Come

According to the Scriptures

According to the Scriptures - N. T. Wright

Scripture as Tradition

Jesus and the Israelite Scriptures

A New Counter-Reformation?

Benedict XVI and the State of Israel

Part 5: Early Christianity 

The Identity of God: Creator

Creation Ex Nihilo In Early Christian Thought

The Identity of God: Trinity

Trinity and Revelation

Paul and the Yetzer Ha-Ra

Early Christian Thought on Original Sin

Original Sin: The Later Fathers

Part 6: Christianity in the West

Benedict at Regensburg

Augustine and the West

Reason and Revelation: The Islamic Case and Western Parallels

Both Etienne Gilson, in his classic study The Unity of Philosophical Experience (UPE, 1937), and Benedict XVI in his 2006 address at the University of Regensburg (Three Stages in the Program of De-Hellenization)--previously discussed in Benedict at Regensburg--have found it useful in discussing the crisis of the West to compare the Western crisis to the earlier crisis of Islamic thought.  As we continue our consideration of the development of Western thought, we will do likewise.

Augustine and the West

David Knowles begins his chapter on St. Augustine in The Evolution of Medieval Thought by noting Augustine's almost overwhelming influence not only on Medieval thought but on all Western Christendom. In fact, Knowles' judgment could, and should, be extended to Western thought as a whole in many important respects:

St Augustine, it would be generally agreed, has had a greater influence upon the history of dogma and upon religious thought and sentiment in Western Christendom than any other writer outside the canon of Scripture. (29)

Even in this day, Augustine's influence remains paramount in the West. For example, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church it is Augustine and not Thomas Aquinas who is--with the exception of Scripture--the most frequently cited authority. Nor is Augustine's influence confined to religion, for the roots of most of our political and philosophical ideas in the West can be found in the various attempts to resolve the problems that Augustine bequeathed us and the implications of his thought.


Thus, almost immediately after he notes Augustine's great influence, Knowles goes on to point out what may appear at first to be a paradoxical "dark side" to Augustine's influence:

Yet, strangely enough, there is an obverse to this brilliant medallion. If Augustine was a second Bible to the dark and middle ages, he was all but the gospel of the three great heresies, Lutheranism, Calvinism and Jansenism, that absorbed so much of the mental activity of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries... Not only has his teaching on grace, free-will and predestination been pressed into service against orthodox belief, but his teaching on the Eucharist has been interpreted in a non-Catholic sense. (30)

Jesus and the Israelite Scriptures

Over two years ago we concluded Messy Revelation by stating:

The old models of exegesis--coded messages that are uncovered and interpreted by exegetes using grammar, allegory, typology, etc.,--are attempts to house train God, to make his self revelation in Jesus conform to a pattern that is comfortable for men. But is it reasonable that we should expect this of God? Enns' answer, if I may extend his logic somewhat, is or should be, No. We should expect, rather, that revelation should be "somewhat messy." For the reason that reality, and above all human life, is "somewhat messy." Enns, of course, is following his Protestant (Judaizing--h/t Spengler) model of revelation, by which God "speaks to man through Scripture," but he realizes that that is not the whole story. Not by half. For, "in much the same way: he enters into our world and uses our own cultural patterns to reveal himself." Here, unfortunately, Enns is still trapped within the notion of God's self revelation in Jesus having been accomplished through a collection of books that we call the New Testament, rather than in the very personal reality of Jesus of Nazareth. For the Christian, Jesus IS revelation, and all else, including Scripture, can only be "revelation" in a secondary sense. This must be the beginning of exegesis. And as a start we must seek to determine Jesus' own understanding of how to deal with "scripture."

We are now in a position to follow up on the project we defined as central to development of a theory of revelation: What was Jesus' own understanding of “scripture?” To answer that question we will look at how Jesus made use of the Israelite scriptures. That is, we will examine how the Gospels portray Jesus' use of those scriptures when speaking in his own voice, as opposed to how the evangelists use the Israelite scriptures when reflecting on the meaning of Jesus' life, death and resurrection.

Israel and Revelation

What follows is the text of an email I sent some years ago.  Since it constitutes in many respects the outline of a theory of revelation it seemed appropriate to post a lightly edited version of it.

Sometimes I recommend books more for the ideas and issues that they raise than for the actual solutions that they offer. With regard to Eliade, I see his importance as due to his formulation of what he calls the "ontology" of archaic man (the man of "traditional" cultures), the ontology of archetypes and repetition. Of particular importance, in my view, is that he recognizes that the strand of Western thought known by the Greek term "philosophy" is, in fact, derived from this archaic ontology--as of course is the advanced thought of other cultures as well. This, I believe, provides the indispensable framework for any theoretical understanding of man in history.

Original Sin: The Later Fathers

J. N. D. Kelly resumes his discussion of original sin in Chapter XIII of Early Christian Doctrines, “Fallen Man and God's Grace.” Having dealt with the earlier Fathers, up to the 3^rd Century, he now turns to the later Fathers. He once again contrasts the relative optimism of the Greek Fathers with the decidedly pessimistic Western view of man, especially the Augustinian tradition that was passed on to the Western Middle Ages. He then notes the unsettled state of opinion regarding the origin of the soul. Early Christians were in general agreement that man is composed of body and soul, but there was some disagreement as the specifics. The opinion of most of the Greek Fathers--that the soul for each individual is created by God at the moment that the body is ensouled--ultimately won the day.

That, however, was not at the time a universal opinion. We have seen that Origen—an influential figure—held that the soul pre-existed the body and was attached to a body as punishment for sins that were committed by the soul in its pre-existing state, i.e., before being “assigned” to a body. This was definitely a minority opinion, but was not formally condemned until the 6^th Century. Hilary, Ambrose (d. 397) and Jerome all accepted the dominant Greek view, which was to become the orthodox view in both East and West. Pelagius (d. 420), of course, also held that view.

There was also a third view, the traducian view of Tertullian, which held that the soul of the offspring is somehow generated from the souls of the parents. Tertullian, as we have seen, held a materialist view of human nature. In the East, Kelly notes (345) that Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394) seemed to share something like Tertullian's view, for he argued (against Origen) to the effect that the soul comes into being simultaneously with the body but that “the power of God work[ed] mysteriously on the human sperm to change it into a precious living being.”

However, by far the most important figure who tended toward Tertullian's views was Augustine (d. 430). While Augustine never fully made his mind up on the matter, and while he was critical of Tertullian's materialist views, he also realized that “a spiritual version of the same theory [traducianism] fitted in best with his teaching about original sin.” (345)

Early Christian Thought on Original Sin

We have seen (in Paul and the Yetzer Ha-Ra) that in Second Temple Judaism—the period during which the Genesis Adam and Eve narrative was written—there was no sense that this narrative had to do with a “Fall” of man based on an “Original Sin.” Rather, the narrative was intended to express the experience of the human condition in all its frailty and imperfection. The Judaic concept of the origin of human sin was instead expressed through the metaphor of the evil and good impulses in man, the yetzer ha-ra and the yetzer ha tov. Man was subject to both good impulses as well as purely natural impulses that, if embraced in a turning away from God, constituted a type of self worship that defined sinfulness. Habitual yielding to this impulse involved mankind in a downward spiral of sin, as described graphically by Paul in his Letter to the Romans.