The Divine Metaphor

My recent post on Called to Communion is called "The Divine Metaphor". Here's an excerpt:

Seeing that nature itself, revealed by God, is so inclined to teach us truth by metaphor, it comes as no surprise that the divinely revealed Scriptures make frequent use of allegory and symbolism. When the modern skeptic reads that John the Baptist wore camel’s hair and a leather belt, he thinks that the author is trying to conjure up a connection between St. John and Elijah. It has never occurred to the skeptic that what is said of John may actually be true. But on the other hand, when the Scriptures speak of the sun standing still, it has never occurred to the skeptic that the Scriptures might be speaking metaphorically. It’s obvious in the latter case, but in the former as well, a metaphor is at play. The divine metaphor opposes both fundamentalism and skepticism. The gospels record that Jesus rose on the third day, and the skeptic wants to insist that the gospel authors are inserting their own symbolic theology. This assumes the very antithesis of my argument: that God is not capable of enacting anything with meaning!

Read the whole thing here.

Pope Benedict Condemns Bombing in Cotabato City

This past Sunday, terrorists detonated a bomb during mass near the Cathedral of Cotabato City in the Mindanao region of the Philippines. My charity, the Philippine Aid Society, has established a relief fund and we will raise funds throughout the month of July to support the victims and their families. Please consider a donation of any amount to the Cotabato Relief Fund.

Hundreds of churchgoers remained inside the cathedral after the powerful explosion, praying even more fervently for “peace.” The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said that Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo was delivering his homily when the incident occurred, causing panic among churchgoers.

Read the whole story here.

Aren't We All God's Children?

I've heard it asked many times before in defense of some perversion, "Aren't we all God's children?" (which the wicked man asks when he means, "Doesn't God justify this sin?")

Well the answer is yes and no. We are all God's children but in different ways. Even irrational creatures are God's "children" in some sense. Listen to Aquinas:

Now it is manifest from the foregoing (27, 2; 28, 4), that the perfect idea of paternity and filiation is to be found in God the Father, and in God the Son, because one is the nature and glory of the Father and the Son. But in the creature, filiation is found in relation to God, not in a perfect manner, since the Creator and the creature have not the same nature; but by way of a certain likeness, which is the more perfect the nearer we approach to the true idea of filiation. For God is called the Father of some creatures, by reason only of a trace, for instance of irrational creatures, according to Job 38:28: "Who is the father of the rain? or who begot the drops of dew?" Of some, namely, the rational creature (He is the Father), by reason of the likeness of His image, according to Deuteronomy 32:6: "Is He not thy Father, who possessed, and made, and created thee?" And of others He is the Father by similitude of grace, and these are also called adoptive sons, as ordained to the heritage of eternal glory by the gift of grace which they have received, according to Romans 8:16-17: "The Spirit Himself gives testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God; and if sons, heirs also." Lastly, He is the Father of others by similitude of glory, forasmuch as they have obtained possession of the heritage of glory, according to Romans 5:2: "We glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God." - Summa Theologica 1.33.3

Kingdom, Church & Communion

Kingdom

Objections to co-identifying the Kingdom and Church together spring, no doubt, from a purely eschatological rendering of “Kingdom.” It was always referred to eschatologically by Christ because while He was among us, it had not yet been fully manifested. But in the Church we do indeed see the “beginning of the Kingdom” because it is “already present in mystery” through her.¹ Now there is certainly an eschatological dimension of the Church as the Bride of Christ while she awaits her final purification for the Bridegroom, but nevertheless she retains her identity as Bride of Christ and mystically the Body of Christ right now as she sojourns this earth as the Church Militant. For this reason, eschatological renderings of the Kingdom should not hinder our appreciation of the Kingdom of God as mystically present in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the Kingdom, in its present stage.

If this is so, and Christ Himself is the founder of the Kingdom, then the phrase “hierarchical continuum”, as applied to the Church, is supremely applicable. She is, as all Kingdoms are, a hierarchy and she shall continue in perpetuity. The objections to this phrase are raised for reasons parallel to the Gnostic agenda – as the gospel made Christ too mundane, so this conception of Kingdom makes the Church hierarchy too mundane. The kingdom, in their mind, is too involved in the space-time continuum; or more likely, involved in too dangerous of a way.

Those who would attack the Catholic Church are quite sure that she is one and the same, and therefore retains the ‘guilt’, as the aggressor in the Crusades and the Inquisition, but they are equally as certain that she is not the same, existing in continuity, as the Church who called the council of Nicaea and yet cannot offer a principled reason for this distinction.

As for the hierarchy: the individual Christian is directly connected to Christ spiritually, but sacramentally, he is connected to Christ only as a foot is connected to the head (through the hierarchy of the body) and not directly. The believer cannot bypass the hierarchy of the Church in his connection to Christ any more than a foot can bypass the hierarchy of the body in its connection to the head. It has been demonstrated here and in the links above, that Christ indeed founded a hierarchy which continues in perpetuity – one which cannot be broken and cannot, without penalty, be disobeyed.

Church & Communion

The divinely revealed marital analogy between Christ and the Church is helpful for developing a proper ecclesiolgy. The Church must be one because, as Dr. Peter Kreeft says, when Christ returns for His bride, He shall not be found a polygamist.² Unity is one of the four marks of the Church which we confess in the Nicene Creed. The Apostles’ Creed also offers a helpful and trustworthy insight into identifying the true Church. As the Apostle’s Creed shows, Christians have always confessed faith in “the Holy Catholic Church” and in the “Communion of Saints” as explicitly distinct concepts.

The very ordering of these phrases suggests not merely an explicit distinction, but also a certain procession. We believe in the Church first because it is she who gave birth to the saints. But Protestant ecclesiology regularly confuses the Church with the Communion of Saints and this is a discontinuum of the orthodox Christian faith.

After this final case regarding the Catholic ecclesiology, which will be published shortly, we shall turn our focus to the authority of the Scriptures. We spoke of the Church first because it is she who holds them in her bosom and has delivered them faithfully to her children. But before we discuss the authority of the Scriptures, we must agree on the ecclesiological foundation of our faith.

Originally posted at Called to Communion.

Objective Beauty & Diversity

The modern mind does not understand beauty because it thinks beauty is wholly subjective. There may be a sense where degree of beauty is subjective, but beauty itself is as objective as mathematics. If we understood beauty, we could as easily refer to the beauty of a math formula as of a painting.

A thing is beautiful because, and insofar as, it conforms to a certain standard of perfection. But it seems then that pure beauty could have no diversity. For example, if all persons were purely beautiful, they would all look the same since they all conformed perfectly to a certain standard, namely: absolute beauty.

But let's take the example of a circle. A circle is called beautiful insofar as it is perfect and has no flat edges; i.e. it conforms to the ideal and perfect circle. But there may be different sizes of circles all conforming exactly to the perfect circle. Albeit crude, this is an example of how diversity might be admitted while maintaining an objective standard for beauty. For a more complex example, a mathematic formula is said to be beautiful insofar as it is true. But there are limitless possibilities for true formulas and the diversity may be great. So there is an objective standard for beauty along with unlimited diversity.

Pensees on Audio Book

Pascal's Pensees is now available on Librivox as a free audio book. I haven't read this since becoming Catholic. I'm looking forward to reading it again. Just passing it along for what it's worth.

Another Reformed Convert

I'm about a year late on this one but I'd like to point you all in the direction of Epigone's Eloquence, the blog of a young Dutch student of philosophy that entered the Catholic Church about a year ago. Here's his pithy account of the decision to convert.