Ronald Knox on Evangelicalism

To be tied to no dead hand of tradition, bowed down by no cumbrous legacies of antiquity, leaves the mind more free for speculation, and the heart for adventure. But in disclaiming the dead, you are yourself disclaimed by the dead. If you are not prepared to blush for Alexander the Sixth, it is childishly inconsistent to take pride in the memory of Saint Francis. You may claim a kind of sentimental connection with the Christianity of earlier ages, but not a historic, not a vital continuity. The Fathers of the early Church may be your models and your heroes, but they are no genuine part of your ancestry.

- The Belief of Catholics, Chapter 2

Cardinal Dulles on the Scriptural Basis of the Filioque

I'm quite glad that I ran across Cardinal Dulles' article on the Filioque. It has a very interesting section about the scriptural basis of that phrase in the creeed. The full text of the article can be found here.

In appraising the importance of the filioque, one must compare it with two other positions regarding the origin of the Spirit. The first, the so-called "monopatrist" position, affirms the procession of the Spirit from the Father alone. This was the formula preferred by Photius and his strict disciples, although it has little basis in the earlier Eastern tradition. The other Eastern formula, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, is found in many Eastern fathers, including Epiphanius, Ephrem, Cyril of Alexandria, and John Damascene." This formula was also employed by the Patriarch Tarasius at the Second Council of Nicea (A.D. 787).11

The first Eastern alternative, "from the Father alone," if asserted in a rigid and exclusive way, has many disadvantages in comparison with thefilioque. It may be asked, most fundamentally, whether the monopatrist position can account for the terminology of the New Testament regarding the Holy Spirit. Admittedly we do not have any New Testament text which teaches formally that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, but a number of texts, read in convergence, seem to imply this. John 5:19, for example, says that the Son does only what He sees the Father doing-a statement which seems to refer to the externally existing Son and hence to imply that the Son, together with the Father, breathes forth the Spirit. In John 16:14 Jesus says that the Spirit of Truth will take from the Son what is the Son's and declare it to the believing community. This "taking" is often understood as referring to the procession. Then again, in the Revelation to John, the river of the water of life is said to flow from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:l). Read in conjunction with Ezekiel 36:25-26, John 3:5, John 4:10, and 1 John 5:6-8, this river of living water may be understood as the life-giving Spirit.

What is merely suggested by these texts is impressively confirmed by the titles given to the Spirit in the New Testament. He is repeatedly called the Spirit of the Son (Galatians 4:6), the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7), the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:17), the Spirit of Christ (1 Peter 1:11), and the 'Spirit of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1: 19). It is not enough to declare that the Son sends the Spirit, as most monopatrists do, since it must be explained how the Son gets the power to send the Spirit as His own. Correctly insisting that the temporal truth must have an eternal ground, Karl Barth holds that the Spirit of the Son eternally proceeds from the Son.12

The Filioque: What Is at Stake? by Avery Cardinal Dulles

Faith & Works

The Protestant notion of "faith alone" has always been a little strange to me, even when I was a protestant. It didn't seem to take into account the way that God's grace transforms us to be more like Him.

Can someone who has faith, but doesn't love, be saved?

The answer is obviously no.

To say otherwise is to invert Paul's hierarchy of virtues: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13

We know that love is necessary. But a good protestant might object that the sort of faith we're talking about isn't simple belief, but a "loving faith." That's fair enough.

But then the challenge is why use the phrase "faith alone" when we really mean "faith + love?" In fact, the phrase is even more suspicious than that. Consider that this is the only time the phrase "faith alone" appears in scripture…

"You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone." James 2:24

Here is what the Catechism says about Faith…

1814 Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith "man freely commits his entire self to God."78 For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God's will. "The righteous shall live by faith." Living faith "work[s] through charity."79

1815 The gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned against it.80 But "faith apart from works is dead":81 when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body.

1816 The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: "All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks."82 Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: "So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven."83

79 Rom 1:17; Gal 5:6.
80 Cf. Council of Trent (1547): DS 1545.
81 Jas 2:26.
82 LG 42; cf. DH 14.
83 Mt 10:32-33.

The Euthyphro Problem in a Monotheistic Context

Plato's dialogue Euthyphro presents a logical problem about the meaning of piety (or more broadly, the Good) in a polythestic society. The basic question: "Is something good because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is good?"

In its original polytheistic context, it was a way for Plato to point to the fact that there is some external moral standard that even the gods must bow to.

Occasionally, modern skeptics or atheists will attempt to use the same line of argument to make the idea of a monotheistic God problematic. This modern adaptation follows the these lines.

"Is something good because God approves it, or does God approve it because it is good?"

1. If we answer that something is good because God approves it, then it would seem that the good is merely arbitrary, and that tomorrow God could declare cannibalism and adultery good. Clearly a God of this sort wouldn't be a God worthy of worship.

2. If we answer that God approves something because it is good, then it would seem that there is something superior to God that even God must obey. This sort of God clearly isn't omnipotent, and thus isn't the sort of God that monotheistic religions worship.

But the problem with this line of argument is that it presupposes a contrast between God and the Good which isn't possible in the classic monotheism of Augustine, Aquinas, etc. In their conception, there can be no contrast between God and the Good because God is the Good. The self-identity of God as the Good renders the question itself nonsensical.

"Is something good because the Good approves it, or does the Good approve it because it is good?"

The question no longer poses a problem. The answer is simply, yes, it is good because the Good approves it, and yes, the Good approves it because it is good.

This classic conception of God as the Good is shared across the monotheistic religions, but it was originally worked out specifically in relation to the idea that Christ is the Logos. The word Logos has many meanings in the philosophical tradition, but they include things like Reason, Moral Law, Wisdom, etc.

Because of this, arguments which depends on a contrast between God and the Good can only succeed with a sort of super-voluntaristic understanding of God's sovereignty which override an understanding of God's unchangeable nature as the Good itself.

Women's Ordination and Gregory the Theologian

As a fairly conservative Catholic who believes that the male-only priesthood is correct, one of the things that bothers me is the really bad arguments that conservatives often make in order to justify the Church's practice.

The problem with most of the arguments I've heard is that they imply that Christ assumed manhood, but not womanhood.

Now, this might not sound so bad to a lot of conservatives, but having recently been studying how the early Church hammered out Christology, it strikes me as incompatible with one of the fundamental principles of Christian doctrine.

"That which is not assumed is not healed" -- Saint Gregory the Theologian

If Christ assumed manhood, but not womanhood, then following St. Gregory's principle, women cannot be saved. Obviously this is heretical. But it seems the natural conclusion of the arguments conservatives typically use.

So, the trick is to find a way to articulate the necessity of an all-male priesthood without saying that Christ assumed manhood, but not womanhood.

Perhaps rather than focusing on manhood/womanhood as if they were things that could be assumed independent of each other, we should speak of Christ assuming Human Nature as a whole, including the sexual differentiation that encompasses both manhood and womanhood.*

Of course, that might mean no longer attempting to use Christ's incarnation as male to explain the all-male priesthood. On the other hand, perhaps there is a way to do so without running afoul of St. Gregory's principle. I'm just not sure what it might be yet.

* The medieval mystics, notably Julian of Norwich, managed to conceive of Christ as both male and masculine while simultaneously feminine (though not female).

Created Grace

Contra certain converts, the Eastern Orthodox tradition does seem to have a place for the Latin concept of "created grace."

'There is nothing strange,' Palamas writes, 'in using the word "grace" both for the created and the uncreated and in speaking of a created grace distinct from the created.' In what sense can one use the same word 'grace' about fundamentally different realities? We have seen that Palamas was aware of the many meanings of the word; he defines the matter thus: 'All that flows from the Spirit towards those who have been baptized in the Spirit according to the Gospel of grace, and who have been rendered completely spiritual, comes from the Source; it all comes from it, and also remains in it.' A Study of Gregory Palamas by John Meyendorff, pg. 164

Love as Justification and Faith

The fact that the horizon of the love given to us always greatly exceeds our own, and that the disparity can never be wiped out in this life, justifies everything presented as the 'dogmatic' aspect of faith: It may remain immeasurably beyond our capacity to realize this love which is the truth, yet it is no inexistent 'idea', but the full reality from which (In Christ and the Church, his unspotted bride,) all our striving and strength stems; that is why our act of faith in an ever greater love is necessarily identical with our act of faith in an ever greater truth which we cannot understand gnostically with the help of reason since it is pure love, a gift which remains for us an inconceivable miracle.

- Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, Chapter VII