Conservative Philosophy

For 18 months, in addition to various other tasks, I've been teaching formal classes in Philosophy on the junior college and high school level. While I've always found teaching to be personally invigorating, explaining the history and concepts of philosophy has been quite stimulating as it has sharpened my thinking, hopefully my writing (you can be the judge of that), and broadened my mental Weltanschauung.

During this past year, I've used a variety of resources in the high school classroom. FIRST THINGS has become a staple especially when discussing morals & ethics to Catholic students. The conversion of Dr Robert C. Koons has led me to investigate Right Reason, a blog that I'm sure I'll continue to use as a resource.

Currently on Right Reason, Alexander Pruss has been offering an occasional commentary on love. I've found it fascinating, especially since the high school Christian Philosophy class ended the year studying Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est. (It yielded some of the best papers by high school students that I've ever read.) I'll also want to spend some time reading Pejman Yousefzadeh's interesting comments on Nietzsche.

Therefore, I'm commending Right Reason to my readers--especially those who are interested in philosophy.

Abstracting the Concrete

Yesterday on the FIRST THINGS blog, Adam G. Cooper wrote a commentary on the conversion (or, as some are calling it, "reversion") of Robert C. Koons from Lutheranism to the Catholic Church.

Koons is a reputable philosopher at the University of Texas and, until recently, a life-long Lutheran in the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod. In announcing his decision to leave Lutheranism and join the Catholic Church, Koons points his readers to a fairly extensive document that reveals his thinking on several doctrinal points.

Cooper's summary is worth reading. In particular, I found several points that resonated with me. Obviously, I came to a different conclusion (for several key reasons) than Dr Koons, but the following issues were the same.

Cooper writes:

How is it that a teaching so strongly incarnational in principle is so pervasively idealist and nominalist in practice? Just how does Lutheran theology go about describing justification from the point of view of what happens bodily, in this or that person?

Of course, conceptually, it is right, even necessary, to insist on a strict distinction between justification and sanctification. Even Cyril of Alexandria could have said the same about the two natures of Christ—in the abstract! But concretely, is it possible to draw such a hard and fast line? True enough, Lutheran theologians have always admitted that the distinction between faith and works is more logical than temporal. Perhaps Koons overstates the narrowness of the Lutheran position when he represents the confessions as teaching that “no active cooperation by us is involved” in our eventual transformation. Whatever might be said in actual Lutheran preaching, however, the Formula of Concord explicitly asserts a necessary synergy between the regenerate will and the operations of the Holy Spirit. To refuse to cooperate is effectively mortal.

Be that as it may, one cannot help but think Koons is on the mark when he alerts us to the virtual gnosticism in the Lutheran position, at least as it is commonly stated and practiced. Recall Augustine’s famous line: While God created us without us, he doesn’t justify us without us. But it is precisely creatio ex nihilo and Christ’s resurrection from the dead that Lutheranism fastens onto as parallels to God’s act of justifying sinners. I am not denying the fitness of the analogies. After all, they are Pauline (Rom. 4: 17). But once again, what would happen if we tried to read them “bodily” or, as it were, “from below”: Who or what is justified, and to what end?

Similar concerns arise when one considers the insistence in forensic justification on all the real changes taking place coram Deo (before the face of God). Here again, Lutheran teaching is liable to tend toward abstraction. But where else is coram Deo except in the concrete means of grace: baptism, absolution, the sacrament of the altar? Locating our righteousness outside ourselves—in the Christ personally present and active in those means—is fine. Koons observes that epistemologically and phenomenologically speaking, this emphasis is entirely accurate: imputed righteousness “is not introspectible or internally ‘feelable.’” But in order to save, the means of grace must still intersect with real people with real bodies and intellects and wills. Surely it must be admitted that somehow we are involved, unless one approves of a gnostic disdain for the natural, creaturely order.

Koons has some salient points to make on sola scriptura as well. In Lutheran teaching, each individual believer is obliged to attach him- or herself to an orthodox congregation, using Scripture alone as an evaluative norm. But this, says Koons, is “an impossible burden.” In contrast, “on the Roman Catholic view, the individual believer can recognize the true church, not only by examining its doctrines one by one, but also by investigating its historical connection (via a physical and social chain of transmission) to the apostles.” Koons does not want to his readers to escape their individual responsibility. His point is simply that doctrinal fidelity cannot be separated from institutional unity as a mark of catholicity.

Loved Restores what Love Created

Excerpts from the sermon preached today at Holy Incarnation Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church, a Western Rite Vicariate parish in the Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.


The praise, worship and adoration of the Most Holy Trinity separates Christianity from all other religions. For none other “worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.” (Quicúmque vult) ... [So] the chief thing is not the teaching, but the worship. The chief thing is not that we can adequately and reasonably describe the mystery of three persons in one God. The chief thing is that we continually and equally ascribe all glory, honor and worship to the Father through His only-begotten Son in the Holy Spirit.

For this reason we were made. ... When God determined to make man, He did so in order that He might build a relationship with us. He desired to extend the love that He is beyond Himself; and He desired that we be the creatures who could and would return His love. He desired to create men so that He might make His home in them; and He desired that we would receive Him. He desired to show mercy; and He desired that we give Him thanks.

It was all, then, designed to be a true, loving relationship, with God as the initiator and we as the respondents; with God saying, “Let us make man,” and we responding, “Thy hands have made me and formed me”; with God begetting in love and pouring out His love and ceaselessly extending love; and we being in love—in the love that He is and gives.

Yet when we broke this covenant of love—when we determined to love ourselves, rather than loving Love Himself; when we determined to take pride in ourselves, rather than praising the Lover who loved us into being; when we determined that we deserved to be love, and to initiate our own self-loves, and to gratify whatever we thought was lovely; when we determined to do whatever we pleased with what God’s love had made. Then our love turned cold, and our life in God spiraled out of control, and our desires became disordered. But worst of all, our praise, worship and adoration for the Trinity ceased to flow purely and truly; and so it dried up in our hearts and died on our lips.

Yet this did not quench Our Lord’s love for us. Neither did it cause Him to turn against us. With us, spurned love quickly turns to hate, and jealousy begets rage. But with Our Lord, spurned love increased His desire to seek us out, to entice us back, and to restore lost love. So, in the cool of the day—that is, when our love had cooled toward Him—the Lord God came looking for us as a good father eagerly yearns for his prodigal son, as a Good Shepherd earnestly seeks a lost sheep, and as an innocent and pure woman diligently searches for a lost coin. ...

It is no mistake or mere coincidence, then, that after Our Lord’s Passion had loved the world back to God; after the Lover, in Love, gave up and then resurrected His Beloved; after Love covered a multitude of sins—it is not happenstance that Our Lord Jesus directed His first bishops to reclaim and restore all men, one by one, by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For in baptism for the remission of sins, in baptism which returns life where there was death, in baptism which restores and renews lost love—in this “the Trinity is united in showing mercy” (St Peter Chrysologus), in the same way that the Trinity was united in creating man.

So man is begotten by the love of the Father through the Son in the Spirit; and man is re-begotten by that same love. Man is loved into being by the Most Holy Trinity; and man is restored in love by the same Holy Trinity. Man is created, and man becomes a new creature, by the fullness of the Godhead. And in this way, by the initiative of the Father, Son and Spirit, the covenant of love is renewed; and the relationship is repaired; and the true synergy between God and man is re-established.

Faith in the Trinity

The Faith which the holy Patriarchs and Prophets received from God before his Son was made Flesh, the Faith which the holy Apostles heard from the Lord himself present in the Flesh, the Faith which the same Apostles learnt by the teaching of the Holy Ghost not only to preach by word of mouth, but also to leave behind them in their writings for the healthful instruction of all that should come after,--that Faith teacheth that the Trinity, that is to say, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, is but one God.

From The Book on Faith by St. Fulgentius (Source)

Principle Issues: Books Along the Way

More often than I can count, I've been asked to recommend books that I found useful as I contemplated becoming Orthodox. More often than not, the inquirer is looking for only a few noteworthy books. Moreover, the inquiry presumes that one can read his way into the Church. One can't. For the Church is not an academy or library; rather, she is a living organism, a body. Therefore, what is key is not knowledge but relationship; and not the letter, but the Spirit.

Nevertheless, knowledge and letters (i.e., books) are not unimportant. For they help clarify the relationship and articulate the organism. Or, to say it another way, while faith does not require understanding, understanding forms and informs faith.

As I've pondered the question in order to give a reasonable and cogent answer, I have reviewed the past five years and determined that there certainly are many books that have been most helpful. But I keep coming back to three in particular--the three that I am certain formed my understanding of and stoked my desire for the Church. These three are: the English Missal, the Anglican Breviary and daily selections of homilies from the Church Fathers.

During the five years leading up to my chrismation, I daily read these three books as a celebrated daily Mass at the Lutheran congregation that I served. During that five I period, I gradually drifted away from trying to "Lutheranize" these texts by careful editing (as had been my arduous practice), but rather to let the propers, Psalms, hymns, prayers, and fathers speak for themselves, earnestly endeavoring to understand their context while determining that I was not smart enough to correct self-perceived mistranslations or accretions but humbly attempting to hear and learn from these texts. In Lutheran parlance, I no longer exercised a magisterial but a ministerial use of reason concerning the liturgy and the fathers.

I am convinced that this use of these texts, more than anything else, led me in time to the understanding that, while I miraculously and wondrously exercised the grace of the Holy Spirit through preaching and the Sacraments, I did so outside of the Church--much like the man in Mark 9.

As I stated above, along the way many other books, articles and discussions were helpful. But these three texts--the Scriptures in the liturgy, the Scriptures in the breviary, and the Scriptures interpreted by the fathers--were, for me, the most formative in my "journey."

On a Personal Note

This week I was officially hired to teach full time at Cabrini Catholic High School. I'll be teaching Philosophy, German, World Religions, and Scriptures. I am grateful to Fr. Joe and all the folks at Cabrini who have graciously extended me this opportunity.

In addition to my teaching duties, I will continue serving Holy Incarnation Orthodox Church as well as part-time teaching for an online junior college.

Principle Issues: Orthodoxy and Confessional Documents

For several years, I was frustrated in my attempts to locate the "confessional documents" of the Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy has catechisms, systematic theology books, councils, canons and statements as well as church fathers. Some time ago, I read a list of "confessional documents" supplied by Bishop Kallistos Ware and thought I had finally found what I was looking for--only to be told that the list was not the list I wanted, and then to read Bishop Kallistos more carefully to learn that he himself did not claim what I hoped he had claimed.

Gradually, in time, I began to understand two key principles. First, Orthodoxy has no central body of "confessional documents" because it does not have a central hierarchical authority. This does not mean that Orthodoxy has no authority. It's authority is the authority of the Spirit of Christ, whose Word is enshrined in the Scriptures yet comes alive in the myriad chronological, historical and pastoral contexts of the Church.

Second, the closest thing that Orthodoxy has to a body of "confessional documents" is the liturgy. In Orthodoxy, the liturgy is inviolable because it is understood to be not of human origin but of the Spirit. (NB: "Liturgy" in Orthodoxy refers not exclusively or legalistically to the texts or rubrics.) Hence, as I once heard said, what is in the liturgy is what is to be believed. This puts the liturgy on par, then, with the various "confessional documents" common in post-reformational western churches.

On this latter point, the following words by the late Jaroslav Pelikan have proven quite helpful.

14.1 The Ambivalence of the Orthodox Church Toward "Symbolical Books"

Several factors in Christian history have often led to the issuance of confessions of faith, including the challenge from a hostile environment, the crisis of doctrinal schism, and the necessity of indigenization. A review of these would show that they have been at least as powerful within Eastern Christendom since the schism between East and West as they have been in the West, even in the West since the Reformation with its plethora of confessions. And yet, during most of the history of Eastern Orthodoxy, those factors did not produce a vast corpus of confessions of faith, as they had done in the early church and as they went on doing in the West especially during and since the Reformation, but only a select few statements of faith that became more or less official (and usually "less" rather than "more" official). As a result, to a degree that would not be true of most other communions that have official confessions, it is possible for two scholars almost exactly a century apart to speak about the "identity" of Orthodoxy without so much as mentioning these statements of faith. (399-400)

...

14.2 The Liturgy as the Church's Preeminent Confession of the Faith

A principal reason for this ambivalent position of "symbolical books" within Eastern Orthodoxy lies, however, in the distinctively Eastern versions, articulated in a special way in the Philokalia, of the inseparable connection between "the rule of prayer [lex orandi]" and "the rule of faith [lex credendi]." That connection has been important throughout Christian history, across the various boundaries of denomination and confession, also in the West. But interpreters of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, whether sympathetic or critical, are agreed on the proposition that within Eastern Orthodoxy The Divine Liturgy According to Saint John Chrysostom is an especially forceful illustration of the universal principle of lex orandi lex credendi; as noted earlier, it differs from the liturgies of other traditions, including even The Book of Common Prayer of Anglicanism, by being accorded a special position among the Eastern Orthodox confessions in the standard published collections of "symbolical books." Anastasios Kallis...introduced his edition of the liturgy with the explanation: "The identity of Orthodoxy consists neither in a doctrine nor in an organizational system, but in the correct praise of the Triune God, which has its center in the celebration of the Eucharist, or simply in the Liturgy, through which the one congregation assembled in the name of Christ becomes his body, his church." (405; emphasis added)

From Credo by Jaroslav Pelikan

God as a Guest in our Hearts

An excerpt from the sermon preached today at Holy Incarnation Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church, a Western Rite Vicariate parish in the Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.


Today’s great feast celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the Twelve Apostles. Through them, the Father’s Word and Spirit is offered to all men and bestowed upon all those who receive Him in true faith. And through this ministry in the Spirit, the holy Catholic Church is constituted as a real, concrete, visible body which gathers around the Holy Eucharist, in communion with all faithful bishops.

Yet St Gregory the Great reminds us that there is also another aspect that we celebrate at this great feast—an aspect which you might find more personal and of greater comfort. St Gregory declares that “this solemnity…commemorates the coming of God as a guest in our hearts.” By pointing us to this aspect of today’s feast, St Gregory is reflecting on the words Our Lord Jesus spoke to His apostles. Just a few minutes ago, you hear Our Blessed Lord say, “If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”

Together with His Son in the Holy Spirit, our merciful and loving Father does indeed enter the hearts of the faithful who love and desire Him. For the person who loves the Lord with his whole heart, the person who desires God with his entire being—that person cries out, “Come, Holy God, and make your home within me. Fill me with your Holy Presence, and comfort me with your unending Consolation, and relieve me with the peace that only You can give.” And Our Lord does not disappoint, but readily and speedily comes to those who call upon Him in true faith; and He helps those who earnestly seek His help; and He comforts those who lay aside their pride and submit their cares entirely to Him.

It's hard to say "I'm sorry" & "I forgive you"

I wrote this several years ago, and perhaps I've posted it here before (I can't recall). Nevertheless, it seems apropos.

I can’t decide which is harder—to say “I’m sorry” or to say “I forgive you.”

Based on my own personal experience as well as the experience of observing and encouraging parishioners, I know that both statements are very difficult to say with conviction. This is especially true when the hurt is deeply felt; or when you’re embarrassed, ashamed or frightened by what you’ve done.

When that’s the case, it’s a lot easier for us to ignore the situation or seal ourselves off from others. It’s a lot easier to make like nothing happened, and hope the problem goes away. And it’s a lot easier to hold a grudge, or blame someone (or something) else for the wrong we’ve done.

On the one hand, we’re afraid that if we apologize it won’t be accepted; or worse yet, that another confrontation will occur. And on the other hand, we’re afraid that if we forgive, then the other person will think everything’s back to normal, or that the offense meant nothing.

Do you see how much we are controlled by our fears? Our fear of talking to another person keeps us from apologizing. And our fear of being abused keeps us from forgiving.

Because of our fears, we falsely assume that it’s best if we simply don’t deal directly with the person who wronged us—or who we wronged. Oh, we’ll complain to others and talk about what someone has done (or not done) to us. But we falsely (and, often, stubbornly) believe that it’s easier and better—for them and you—just to avoid the other person.

I’m convinced that we so easily avoid the hard thing of saying “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” because we’re so practiced at it. How many people do you avoid at work or in your family simply because you can’t bring yourself to say “I’m sorry” or “I forgive you”? How many grudges do you carry? How many times have you left or avoided an event just because the other person was there—and you didn’t want to (or were afraid to) run into them?

Yet that is not how the mercy of Our Lord calls us to act. Precisely because that is not how Our Lord acted toward us.

Consider this: When Adam & Eve, when Cain, when the children of Israel, or when the Jewish leaders offended Our God and Lord, did He simply write them off? Did He ignore and avoid them? Did He run from them, or act as if they didn’t exist? Or did He seek them out, and reach out to them, and extend His forgiving hand, and offer the way to make amends? In short, did He do whatever it takes to achieve reconciliation?

Granted, in many of these instances—to get our attention or theirs—Our Lord speaks harshly and sternly. But even that is better than avoiding and ignoring. And so even Our Lord’s harsh speaking and threats are motivated by His mercy for us—and His desire to be reconciled to us.

Love and mercy—that’s what motivates Our Lord God to sacrifice His Son on the cross. For love and mercy are at the heart of reconciliation. His love for us—each of us—moves Our Father to do whatever He can to reconcile us to Himself. And this He does, even though we are the ones that wronged Him—and that continue to wrong Him (especially when we wrong each other).

Do you see what great lengths our heavenly Father goes to in order to repair what we damaged, and to bridge the gap between us and Him? St. Paul reminds us that “He did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Rom 8.32). And in another place, the Apostle reminds us that God send His pastors and priests to us in order to accomplish His ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5.17-20).

We are grateful that Our Lord does not treat us as we treat each other; that He continually offers us reconciliation in His Son; and that He does not take the easier road, but does the most painful and necessary thing. In short, we are grateful for His mercy and love.

But do we understand that being reconciled to God means that we also ought to be reconciled to each other; that we ought not let grudges linger; that we ought not hold things against anyone else—especially if he or she is of the household of faith? That is the point when St Paul pleads with us to “be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5.20). God has already reconciled us to Himself. For us to be reconciled to Him, we ought to be reconciled to one another.

That means we need to do the hard thing by saying either “I’m sorry” or “I forgive you.” (Have you noticed that often you need to say both?) And it also means that we need to put away our fears by saying those words to all who need to hear them—Christian or not; stranger or loved one; member or non-member.

For to this you have been called by the mercy of God: to live in the mercy that He has shown and given and poured into you.

Of course that’s not easy! But it is necessary. And, most importantly, it is our Life in God.

The Jewish Pentecost & the Church's Pentecost

This comparison by Dom Prosper Guéranger in his The Liturgical Year is helpful in placing the coming feast in its Scriptural and historic context. These paragraph are just the beginning of a much lengthier (5670 word) essay which is reproduced halfway down this webpage.

In the old and figurative Law, God foreshadowed the glory that was to belong, at a future period, to the fiftieth day. Israel had passed the waters of the Red Sea, thanks to the protecting power of his Paschal Lamb! Seven weeks were spent in the desert, which was to lead to the promised land; and the very morrow of those seven weeks was the day whereon was made the alliance between God and His people. The Pentecost (the fiftieth day) was honoured by the promulgation of the ten commandments of the divine law; and every following year, the Israel­ites celebrated the great event by a solemn festival. But their Pentecost was figurative, like their Pasch: there was to be a second Pentecost for all people, as there was to be a second Pasch, for the Redemption of the whole world. The Pasch, with all its triumph­ant joys, belongs to the Son of God, the Conqueror of death: Pentecost belongs to the Holy Ghost, for it is the day whereon He began His mission into this world, which, henceforward, was to be under His Law.

But how different are the two Pentecosts! The one, on the rugged rocks of Arabia, amidst thunder and lightning, promulgates a Law that is written on tab­lets of stone; the second is in Jerusalem, on which God's anger has not as yet been manifested, because it still contains within its walls the first fruits of that new people, over whom the Spirit of love is to reign. In this second Pentecost, the heavens are not overcast, nor is the roar of thunder heard; the hearts of men are not stricken with fear, as when God spake on Sinai; repentance and gratitude are the sentiments now uppermost. A divine fire burns within their souls, and will spread throughout the whole world. Our Lord Jesus had said: 'I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled?' The hour for the fulfilment of this word has come: the Spirit of love, the Holy Ghost, the eternal uncreated Flame, is about to descend from heaven, and realize the merciful design of our Redeemer.

Jerusalem is filled with pilgrims, who have flocked thither from every country of the Gentile world. They feel a strange mysterious expectation working in their souls. They are Jews, and have come from every foreign land where Israel has founded a syna­gogue; they have come to keep the feasts of Pasch and Pentecost. Asia, Africa, and even Rome, have here their representatives. Amidst these Jews pro­perly so called, are to be seen many Gentiles, who, from a desire to serve God more faithfully, have embraced the Mosaic law and observances; they are called proselytes. This influx of strangers, who have come to Jerusalem out of a desire to observe the Law, gives the city a Babel-like appearance, for each nation has its own language. They are not, however, under the influence of pride and prejudice, as are the inhabitants of Judea; neither have they, like these latter, known and rejected the Messias, nor blasphemed His works whereby He gave testimony of His divine character. It may be that they took part with the other Jews in clamouring for Jesus' death; but they were led to it by the chief priests and magistrates of the Jerusalem which they reve­renced as the holy city of God, and to which nothing but religious motives have brought them.