Category: Religion

The Infirmity of Reason versus the Certitude of Faith

Substack latest. Some thoughts on Pierre Bayle.

Reason is infirm in that it cannot establish anything definitively as regards the ultimate questions that most concern us. It cannot even prove that doubting is the way to truth, “that it is certain that we ought to be in doubt.” (Pyrrho entry, Bayle’s Dictionary, tr. Popkin, p. 205) But, pace Pierre Bayle, the merely subjective certitude of faith is no solution either! Recoiling from the labyrinth into which unaided human reason loses itself, Bayle writes:

On Suspending Judgment Regarding the Big Questions

Does God exist? You can reasonably argue it both ways. The same goes for such other ‘big questions’ as whether there is personal survival of bodily death.  Now on many other issues where the arguments and evidential considerations  pro et contra are equally good and cancel out, it is reasonable to suspend judgment and unreasonable not to.  But not with respect to the big or ultimate questions. Or so I shall argue.   But first some terminological regimentation.

There are four different types of attitude one can take with respect to a proposition:  Accept, Reject, Suspend, Bracket.

To accept a proposition is to affirm it.  To reject a proposition is to deny it. One cannot on pain of embracing a contradiction accept and reject one and the same proposition.   LNC rules the discursive plane.

To suspend a proposition is to take no stance with respect to its truth or falsity, its ‘truth-value’ as the philosophers say.  It is neither to affirm it nor to deny it. One suspends judgment as to its truth-value. There is no doxastic commitment either by way of belief or disbelief.

What I am calling ‘bracketing’ is something different still. Consider the Trinitarian dogma,  “There is one God in three divine persons.”  Some will affirm, some deny, others suspend the proposition they take it to express; there is, however, a fourth possibility.

Here is a little speech someone might give.

“The Trinitarian sentence you uttered makes no sense; it is unintelligible, if not in itself then at least for me.  It strikes me as self-contradictory and thus expresses no definite thought or proposition. I cannot accept or reject since I do not know what I would be accepting or rejecting. For the same reason I cannot suspend: with respect to what proposition would I be suspending judgment?”

The fourth stance, bracketing, is a sort of suspension, but not with respect to truth-value but with respect to propositional sense. The sense of a declarative sentence (a sentence in the indicative mood) is the proposition it is used to express. And so the bracketing stance or attitude amounts to a suspension of commitment to there being a proposition the sentence expresses.

“I cannot evaluate a thought unless there is a thought to evaluate, and the Trinitarian sentence does not seem to me to express a thought.  The sentence, being self-contradictory, lacks a determinate propositional sense and therefore is unintelligible to me.”

That is surely a stance one can, and some do, take. Note that I mentioned the Trinity doctrine only as an example in order to explain bracketing.  The topic is not the Trinity. So please no comments on the coherence or incoherence of that doctrine.

With the above as background, I advance to my thesis.

THESIS: With respect to many propositions, both the theoretically rational  and the practically rational course is to suspend judgment; with respect to some propositions, however, it would be practically irrational to suspend judgment. It would be imprudent or pragmatically ill-advised. Among the latter: there is a God; the soul is immortal; we will be judged, rewarded and punished in the hereafter for some of what we have done and left undone here below. (I am presupposing a distinction between theoretical and practical (pragmatic, prudential) rationality.)

My point is that for beings  of our constitution it would be practically irrational and highly imprudent to suspend judgment on the questions of God and personal immortality. For if one did so one would not be likely to live here and now in such a way as to assure a positive post-mortem outcome.  After all, we do not know that the soul is immortal nor do we know that it is not. The questions are theoretically undecidable.

But man does not live by theory alone. We are not mere transcendental spectators but interested free agents, interested in the sense of embedded in real being. (inter esse) We have interests in this life and beyond it: we are concerned with our ultimate felicity, well-being, and continuance in being.

If we had no interests beyond this life, if we were pure spectators, we should suspend judgment on the ultimate questions and go back to the everyday and its proximate concerns.    That would be the reasonable thing to do — if we were pure spectators and the big questions were of merely theoretical interest.   Whether God and the soul are real or unreal would then be on a par with  whether the number of electrons in the universe is odd or even.  Since the latter question is theoretically undecidable, it would be practically irrational to waste any time on it.

This is essentially the attitude of the worldling when it comes to God and soul and the like. “Who knows?” “People say different things.” “The supposedly wisest among us have contradicted one another since time immemorial.” “Why waste time on this philosophy nonsense when you could be living to human scale by pursuing a profession useful to others, making money, buying a house, founding a family?” Remain true to the earth; make friends with the finite; don’t hanker after a hinter world; this world is all there is.

My thesis, however, is that while is is both theoretically and practically rational to suspend judgment on many questions, this does not hold for those  questions pertaining to our ultimate felicity and well-being. My thesis presupposes the real possibility of ultimate felicity and well-being.  And so, to appreciate my thesis you cannot have the mentality of a worldling. You have to have had the experience of the ultimate nullity  of the proximate concerns I mentioned. You must have the sense that this world and this life are ‘vanishing quantities.’ You have to have been struck and troubled by the transience of life and the impermanence of things. You have to take that troubling impermanence as an indicator of the relative (not absolute) unreality of this life.  You have to possess the Platonic sensibility.

Now I can’t argue you into that sensibility any more than you can argue me out of it. Argument comes too late. Or rather it comes too soon. What I mean is that argument and counter-argument disport upon the discursive plane which is foreground to the ultimate background, the Unseen Order.  What breaks the standoff for some of us is a glimpse into the  Transdiscursive, a peek behind the veil.  But only some have had the Glimpse. It is  a divine gift, a gratuitous granting ab extra.  Others will say that the Glimpse experience has zero noetic quality; it is something on the order of a Spinozistic  experientia vaga, or a random neuronal swerve, a ‘brain fart.’  There is no resolution to this dispute over noetic quality on the plane of theoretical reason. You will have to decide what you will believe and how you will live.

In sum:

You are violating no canon of theoretical or practical rationality if you decide to live as if God and the soul are real.  And since the questions are theoretically undecidable, you will decide either by an explicit act of will or willy-nilly (nolens volens) how you will live. The will comes into it. Why do I say you will decide? Because if you don’t decide, that non-decision amounts practically to a decision for the other side of the question.

The atheist and the mortalist who abstain from taking a stand  cannot help but take a stand, practically, though not theoretically, for atheism and mortalism.

More on Hylomorphic Dualism and the Distinctness of Souls Post Mortem

Edward Feser writes,

Hey Bill, many thanks for your Substack post on Immortal Souls.  I’ve written up a reply   As you’ll see, at the end I give a shout out to your book Life’s Path: Some Trail Notes which I have enjoyed and profited from.  You are the rare contemporary philosopher who has both technical chops and the virtue of wisdom in the broad sense that includes understanding of concrete human life.  It’s amazing and depressing how many academics are utterly devoid of the latter.

Thanks for the kind words, Ed.  Now on to your criticisms.

You say that on the A-T theory, “while each individual physical substance has its own substantial form, with physical substances of the same species their substantial forms are of the same kind.” You suggest that this is something I haven’t understood, but I don’t disagree with you.  Your point is that each physical substance has its own substantial form.  That’s right;  we all understand that Aristotelian forms are not Platonic Forms.  Unlike Platonic Forms, which enjoy a transcendent existence in a topos ouranios whether or not they are instantiated here below, Aristotelian forms  can exist only in concrete particulars.  Platonic Forms  are transcendent, Aristotelian forms  immanent. As I see it, Platonic Forms are transcendent in two senses: (i) they exist whether or not any concrete particulars participate in them; (ii) they do not enter into concrete particulars as constituents of them.  Aristotelian (substantial) forms, by contrast, are not transcendent but immanent, and in a two fold-sense: (iii) they cannot exist on their own but only  in concrete particulars; (iv) they exist in concrete particulars as their constituents.  Thus Platonic participation (methexis, μέθεξις) is very different from the relation that obtains between a complete Aristotelian primary substance and its ontological constituents or ‘principles’ which are not themselves substances. Plato and Aristotle thus offer two very different theoretical explications of the pre-analytic or pre-theoretical notion of instantiation.

As you say, and I agree, an Aristotelian substantial form “is a concrete principle intrinsic to a substance that grounds its characteristic properties and powers.”  You also say, and I agree, that on the A-T theory, “the soul is a substantial form of the kind that gives a physical substance the distinctive properties and powers of a living thing.” It follows from these two points that each living physical substance has its own soul or psyche, where the soul of a living thing is its life-principle.   This holds for both human animals such as Socrates and Plato and for non-human animals. We also agree that humans, unlike other living things, have both corporeal and noncorporeal properties and powers. So far, I believe we are ‘on the same page’ at least with respect to what the A-T theory says. I take it we agree on the content of the theory; our dispute concerns its coherence.

But let’s dig a little deeper. It seems to me that the A-T conception further implies that matter (materia signata) plays a dual role: it both individuates and differentiates.  These are different ‘ontological jobs’ even though on the A-T scheme  signate matter does both of them.  Two questions.

(Q1)  Why do Socrates and Plato each have their own individual substantial forms and thus — given that souls are substantial  forms — their own individual souls? Answer: because forms, which cannot exist Platonically, but only in concrete particulars,  are individuated or particularized  by  the  parcels of matter which they inform or in which they inhere.

(Q2) Why do Socrates and Plato differ numerically? Why are they two and not one? Because each is a numerically different hunk of matter.  So matter (designated matter) is the ground both of the individuation of forms — that which makes them individuals and not universals — and that which grounds the  numerical difference of the two complete physical substances.

So much for the pre-mortem situation of Socrates and Plato.  With respect to the pre-mortem  situation, Aristotle and Thomas pretty much agree about human beings (rational animals). Post-mortem, however, important differences surface due to Thomas’s Christian commitments which, needless to say, are not shared by Aristotle.  And so we need to ask how well these Christian commitments comport with the Aristotelian scheme.

For Thomas, human souls after death are (1) subsistent, (2) separable, (3) multiple, (4) incomplete,  (5) personal, and (6) such that the soul no longer functions as a life-principle but  only as a ‘seat’ of noncorporeal intellectual operations. I’ll explain these points seriatim.

Ad (1).  The souls of rational animals, unlike the souls of nonrational animals,  continue to exist after death.

Ad (2). The souls of rational animals can and do exist after death in a disembodied state, i.e., apart from  matter. So they don’t merely subsist; they subsist in an immaterial way.

Ad (3). Just as there are many human beings ‘on earth,’ i.e., in the physical realm, there are many disembodied human souls after death. Whatever the number is, it is neither one nor zero.  Moreover, for each human being that existed ‘on earth,’ there is exactly one soul after death (whether in heaven, hell, purgatory, or limbo) and this soul after death is numerically identical to the soul of the human before death. Thus the soul of Socrates after death is numerically the same as the soul he had before death.

Ad (4). Human souls after death, but before resurrection, are substances all right, but  incomplete substances in that they lack a body when it is their nature to exist in an embodied state.

Ad (5). Human souls after death are persons in that they are conscious and self-conscious, albeit in non-sensory ways. In Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chs. 92-95, Aquinas elaborates on the will’s fixity after death: “souls immediately after their separation from the body become unchangeable in will with the result that the will of [a] man cannot further be changed, neither from good to evil, nor from evil to good.” (Ch. 92, top.)  Suppose you go straight to heaven after death.  Your will will be eternally fixed upon the good. This fixity of will is a modality of consciousness and also of self-consciousness inasmuch as the soul will be aware of its fixity of will.  That is, the soul is aware that it wills, and what it wills. What’s more, the souls in heaven presumably can ‘hear’ petitionary prayers from souls ‘on earth’ and ask God to grant those petitions.  This non-sensory ‘hearing’ is a modality of consciousness. The souls in heaven are aware of the petitions and formulate the intention to intercede with God for the benefit of the earthly petitioners.

Ad (6). Dead humans are no longer alive.   So the soul of a human after death and before resurrection does not function as a life-principle.  It can so function only if it is joined to an animal body that it enlivens or animates. But the soul of a human after death does function as the subject of conscious states such as the volitional state of willing only the good.  The soul of a human before death, however, functions in both ways, as an animating principle, and as that in a human which is aware when it is aware of this or that.  The difference is between the soul as life-principle and the soul as subject or ego or I.

I hope I have made clear that I really do understand what the A-T theory maintains.  My disagreements with Ed Feser are not about the content of the theory, but about its coherence and thus its tenability.

The point I was making in the Substack piece could be put like this.  After the death of a mortal man such as Socrates, and the dissolution of his material body, the soul he had can no longer be his soul. The reason for this is that the individuating or particularizing  factor, signate matter, which made the soul he had his soul, is no longer present after death. To appreciate this point you must not forget that the form of a  (primary) substance is not itself a (primary) substance, but a ‘principle’ — Ed uses this very word — or constituent of a substance which together with the material  constituent constitutes a (primary) substance. Thus the constituents or ‘principles’ of a substance are not themselves substances and therefore not themselves metaphysically capable of independent existence.  Bear in mind that for Aristotle, primary substances are basic entities in the sense that they do not depend on anything else for their existence in the way a smile depends on  face.  But what I have just argued — that the soul of Socrates after death cannot be his own soul — contradicts (3) which is a non-negotiable doctrinal commitment of Thomism.  The lesson to be learned from this is that Aristotelian hylomorphism is not consistent with the characteristic commitments of Thomism.  Note that I am not denying the doctrinal commitments listed above.  My point is that they cannot be rendered intelligible by the use of Aristotelian conceptuality, in particular, hylomorphism.

My point can also be made from the side of differentiation.  Thomas is committed to saying that Socrates and Plato are as soulically  or psychically distinct  in the afterlife as they are in this life.  But in the afterlife before resurrection they lack material bodies.  Lacking bodies, they lack that which could ground their numerical difference. So if the two men after death are two numerically different souls, then souls are not mere Aristotelian forms. They are substances in their own right.  This is why Richard Swinburne, no slouch of a philosopher, speaks plausibly and indeed correctly of “Thomist substance dualism.” (Are We Bodies or Souls? Oxford UP, 2019, p. 82)

Aristotle is not a substance dualist, but Thomas is.  This is not to say that Thomas is a substance dualist in the very same sense that Descartes is. But he is a substance dualist nonetheless.

I expect Ed to balk at this and reiterate the bit about ‘incomplete’ substances formulated above in point (4).  Let’s think this through as sympathetically as possible.  If a life-principle is actually functioning as such, then there must be a physical body it enlivens or animates. It therefore makes perfect sense for Thomas to say to say  that it is the nature of  a  life-principle to be joined to a body.  For a life-principle to be a life-principle of a material thing, there must be a material thing whose life-principle it is. So if human souls are life-principles, then it is the nature of the human soul to have a body. But post-mortem souls before resurrection are not functioning as life-principles. And yet Thomas insists that after death and before resurrection human souls continue to exist and are numerically the same as the souls that existed before death.   One survives one’s bodily death as a person, as a self, as a subject of conscious states. So is it not obvious that human souls before death and after death (but before the re-embodiment consequent upon resurrection) are not mere substantial forms but substances in their own right?  I say it is obvious and it puzzles me that what is obvious to me is not obvious to Ed.  Try this syllogistic chain on for size.

  1. No forms for Aristotle are substances.
  2. All souls for Aristotle are forms. Therefore:
  3. No souls for Aristotle are substances. (1, 2)
  4. All and only substances for Aristotle are capable of independent existence. Therefore:
  5. No souls for Aristotle are capable of independent existence. (3, 4)
  6. Some souls for Aquinas are capable of independent existence. Therefore:
  7. Some souls for Aquinas are not souls in Aristotle’s sense of ‘soul.’ (5,6)

I conclude that Aquinas’s conception of the soul is not hylomorphic sensu stricto but substance-dualist. Hylomorphism does not render the angelic doctor’s doctrinal commitments intelligible.  And that was my point.

I have heard it said that Thomas is an Aristotelian on earth, but a Platonist in heaven.  That is an approximation to the truth, but it just now occurred to me that it is not quite right, and may be more clever than truthful.   For Aquinas is committed to the diachronic numerical identity of the person or self both in this life and on into the after life. So even in this life there has to be more to the soul than a life-principle. I conclude that even in this life Thomas is not wholly Aristotelian.  If Thomas is a substance-dualist in heaven, he must also be one on earth as well .A follow-up post will make this more clear.

Addendum (10/29).  This morning I found a section  on Aquinas in John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, Eerdmans 1989, p. 11-13.   Cooper makes points that support what I argue above. He states that Thomas “combined important features of the Aristotelian body-soul relation with a basically Augustinian dualistic framework.” Although “Thomas uses Aristotle to emphasize the unity of human nature,” he “remains with Augustine in affirming that the soul is a distinct substance which can survive biological death.” Cooper appreciates that a Christian cannot take an Aristotelian  approach to the soul. “For Aristotle’s soul is only the form of the body and not a substance as such. Therefore it cannot survive death as an individual entity.” (13) Thomas abandons Aristotle by holding that “the soul is both the form of the body and an intellectual substance in its own right.” 

Swinburne, Cooper, and I are saying the same thing.

Is Trump Still the TACO Man? Or is he now THE HAMMER?

VDH, Ten Iranian Questions:

Trump had warned the Iranians on numerous occasions. They never got the message. They were apparently listening to the American Left’s smears of Trump as a “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”)—a silly slur phrase that just died Saturday night.

And die it did. To hell with the American Left with its Tampon Timmies, its Joyless Behars, its cortically-challenged Cortezes, and its Kamalian clowns.   (It should be clear that I am no longer quoting my man Hanson.)

Some fear that Midnight  Hammer will lead to a wider war. It might. The world, led by  the USA, will then have the opportunity to rid itself once and for all of the current Iranian Islamist theocracy. That would be a good thing, and easy to accomplish: destroy the oil refineries first, and see if that gets them to back off, and "build back better," to coin a phrase.  If they remain recalcitrant, destroy their power grid.  No more pussy-footing around with these evil-doers. It's not 1979 any more, or the Carter administration.

Their  particular brand of Islamist insanity would then be finished forever. Do you doubt that? It would be finished in its concrete exemplification just as Nazi ideology was finished in its concrete exemplification in 1945. By 'concrete exemplification of an ideology' I mean its existence in an actual State.  Once the current Iranian Islamist theocracy is concretely at an end,  it is not likely to come back.  I will fire off two more points and you guys can have at me in the combox.

First. A great power such as the USA cannot be wholly non-interventionist, although it ought to be as non-interventionist as it can be consistent with self-preservation and the defense of its allies.  No nation-building! Non-interventionism is good, but it has limits. One limit is reached when anti-civilizational savages pose an existential threat to we us  the (more or less) civilized.  I call our enemies 'anti-civilizational,' but you ought not call them  'medieval' as some pundits do unless you want to advertise your historical ignorance and slam an entire epoch.

An existential threat is a threat not merely to one's physical existence or biological life, but to one's way of life.  The radical Islamist trilemma: conversion, dhimmitude, or death is radically unacceptable — which is why I call it a trilemma: three prongs, each of which is unacceptable.  If one has been nuked out of physical existence, then one has been 'nuked' out of cultural existence as well.   

This is why Khamenei and the boys cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. We do not yet know the extent or efficacy of Trump's bunker-busting despite Trump's typical boasts and exaggerations. (Trump is a builder, a promoter, and a bit of a carnival barker, but still vastly superior to any of the electable Democrats.) The Iranian nuclear program has, however, surely suffered a major set-back.  If they get it going again the IDF and the USAF will kick the mullahs' collective ass one more time.

Second. The Iranian people have a right to any system of government they choose so long as it poses no existential threat to any other State.  Who the hell are we to tell them how to live when our Western societies, dripping with decadence, are hanging by a thread?  (Leastways, until Trump came along.) If the Iranians want a theocracy, that is their business.  Is it objectively certain that our classically liberal system is better than a theocratic system?  No, or so say I, even though I firmly believe that our system is better than any theocracy. What if they want an Islamic theocracy? No problem with that either, so long as the Islam in question is moderate and wields no such trident as the one lately described.  I wish Zuhdi Jasser the best of luck in his quixotic quest to reform Islam.

Ann Coulter a while back said that we should invade the Muslim lands and convert them to Christianity.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.

Convert Muslims? Sheer madness. Coulter is a very intelligent woman, but sometimes intelligent people say stupid things.  Of the Abrahamic religions, Islam is the worst. Schopenhauer describes it as "the saddest and poorest form of theism."  It is the religion of terror at the present time. An inferior religion, it gives rise to an inferior culture, downstream of which is a benighted politics.  But Islam is their religion and it is better than no religion. Try barging into people's lives to convince them to renounce their parents, their hometown, their region, their religion, their folkways.  Try that down in Hillbilly Holler or anywhere.

Convert the benighted Muslims for the sake of their immortal souls because Jesus claimed to be via, veritas, vita? "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6, KJV. I was brought up on Douay-Rheims, but I love that old English.)   Why not make it more specific: extra ecclesiam salus non est, where the ecclesia in question is the Roman Catholic Church? That won't sit well with our Protestant or Eastern Orthodox pals, and it shouldn't. I go a step further: paths to salvation are many. I won't argue it out, leastways not now; I'll just refer you to the work of Frithjof Schuon. See, for example, The Transcendent Unity of Religions.

How about converting the Jews? Another form of folly. Here is an instructive short piece by Rabbi Yehiel Poupko.

Are Catholics Christians?

A fellow philosopher writes,

While reading Clarence Thomas’s opinion in Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services (2025), I came across this sentence: “Americans have different views, for example, on whether Catholics are Christians.” I’ve heard it said, before, that Catholics aren’t Christians, but never knew what to make of it. (The same thing is said about Mormons.) Have you written about this (about whether Catholics are Christians)? What must one think Christianity is in order to believe that Catholics aren’t Christians? Strange.
I haven't written about this topic because it is perfectly obvious that (Roman) Catholics are Christians.  Proof: The Catholic Apostle's Creed. Every Catholic is a Christian, but not conversely.  Calvinists, for example are Christians but not Catholics. Similarly for all the other Protestant sects. No Protestant is a Catholic. That too is obvious.  
 
Did Justice Thomas, for whom I have great respect by the way, cite anyone who claimed that Catholics are not Christians?  Who would say such a thing?
 
People say the damndest things. There are people who say that math is racist. Now that does not even begin to make sense, involving as it does a Rylean category mistake. Not making sense, it cannot have a truth value, that is, it cannot be either true or false. Mathematics does not belong to the category of items that could sensibly be said to be either racist or non-racist.  Compare: 'How prevalent is anorexia nervosa among basketballs? More prevalent than among footballs?' Those questions involve category mistakes.  Other examples: What is the volume of the average thought? What is the chemical composition of the number nine?  What size shoes does God wear?
 
People who assertively utter 'Math is racist' are using those words to say something else, although it is not clear what. Perhaps they  mean to say that since blacks as a group are not good at mathematics, giving them math tests is a way of demeaning or oppressing them and can have no other purpose. Or something.  Speaker's meaning in this case strongly diverges from sentence meaning.
 
Can this distinction help us explain what people mean when they say that Catholics are not Christians?  Going by sentence meaning, the claim is obviously false.  But one might use those words to express the proposition that Catholics are not true Christians, where a true Christian is defined in some narrow and tendentious way, as, for example, someone who refuses to accept the Hellenically-tainted doctrines emanating from a magisterium (teaching authority)  that interposes itself between the individual soul and God as revealed in Holy Writ.
 
We are now in the vicinity of No True Scotsman.  Among the so-called informal fallacies is Antony Flew's No True Scotsman. Suppose A says, "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge." B replies, "But my uncle Angus puts sugar in his porridge." A responds, "Your Uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!"
 
Similarly, A says, "No Christian is a Roman Catholic." B replies, "But my Uncle Patrick is a Roman Catholic."  A responds, "Your Uncle Patrick is no true Christian!"

From the Mail Bag: Old-Time Reader Swims the Tiber

This just in from Russell B.:

Long time no talk.

I hope you’re doing well. I have been thinking about your work on existence over the past 3-4 years very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it has made me swim the Tiber (well, I was born and raised Catholic so did I actually leave?). But I had to leave Protestantism; there was nothing left for me there. However, my biggest problem was divine simplicity. Long story short: I think your view (and Barry Miller’s view) is more or less the proper way to think about existence which in turn helps make DDS easier to swallow. And, if I might add, while the view is philosophically rich, I find the mystical and religious implications much richer. I have been obsessed with the mystics and in particular Teresa of Avila and Juan de la Cruz. I am unsure if you have felt similar ways in which their ideas deeply coincide with a God that just is Being itself. I don’t really know if I have words to describe how other than it just 'appears' to me that way.
 
Another way in which you helped me religiously was helping me decide between between Eastern Orthodoxy and Rome. They are essentially the same religion but I remember you saying that we need to approach truth from four different angles: philosophically, morally, religiously, and mystically. Well, I would say that Catholicism uses all four of these approaches while Orthodoxy ignores the first. This was huge for me. Now I know you have problems with the amount of dogma the Catholic Church has. This was also a stumbling block for me but I have tried to approach the matter like the parable where Jesus says only a child will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It has been humbling to say the least. 
 
Very good to hear from you, Russell.  Here are a couple of questions and some comments that will interest you and perhaps others.
 
1) What were your reasons for becoming a Protestant in the first place and then leaving Protestantism, apart from acceptance of DDS? And what sect did you leave?
 
2) You ask whether I think  mysticism, particularly that of the two great Spanish mystics you mention, coheres with the notion of a God who is ipsum esse subsistens.  I do indeed. I am sure you are aware of Exodus 2:14: Ego sum qui sum . . . dic illis: QUI EST misit me ad vos. On Mount Sinai God reveals himself to Moses, and communicates to him the following message to be relayed to those at the foot of the mountain, a message presumably not couched in the words of  any human language: "I am who am . . . say this, 'He Who Is sent me to you.' "
 
To my mind, this passage from Exodus expresses the identity of the God of the Bible with the God of the philosophers. The God of the Bible, a being, reveals himself to man as Being itself.  The two upward paths, that of religion and that of philosophy, come together as one at the apex of the ascent in the divine simplicity.  The ascent to the Absolute is thus onto-theological.  And so, the two paths, neither of which in itself is a mystical path, culminate in a mystical unity, that of the simple God.  It is a mystical unity in that it defies discursive grasp.  We ineluctably think in opposites and naturally balk at talk of a thing identical to its attributes, its attributes identical to one another, its essence  identical to its existence, and so on.
 
You can come to understand how a God worth his salt must be ontologically simple without being able to understand how he could be ontologically simple. You can reason your way up to the simple God, but not into him or his life.  There will be no syllogizing in the Beatific Vision.  Discursivity must be dropped as it must also be dropped in the transition from ordinary, discursive prayer to the Prayer of Quiet, the first stage of infused contemplation, with several more beyond it.  These stages are well-described in Teresa's Interior Castle, and in all the manuals of mystical theology.  Poulain, about whom I say something over at Substack, is particularly good.
 
Mystics properly so called, such as Teresa de Avila and Juan de la Cruz, are able to jump immediately to the apex by mystical intuition.  And so there are three upward paths, although the mystical way is perhaps not well-described as a path inasmuch as it can be trod in an instant  without any preparatory ascesis if one receives an infusion of divine grace. (Grace is gratuitous and so cannot be brought about by any technique.)   The philosopher plods along, discursively, step by step. The religionist proceeds tediously with rites and rituals, petitions and penances and processions, fasting and almsgiving, kneeling and standing.  Mystics, properly so-called, do these things  as well, but not as well and not as much.  You may have noticed, Russell, that St. Teresa is a pretty sharp thinker who works out a criteriology for the evaluation of mystical experiences in The Interior Castle, a late work of hers, and the one I would recommend to people above her others.  It is short and easy to read.
 
As for Thomas Aquinas, the main exponent of DDS, he too is a mystic, a minor mystic if you will, not at the level of Teresa and Juan, not to mention Meister Eckhart, et al.   I believe the only experience of Thomas's we are aware of is the one at the end of his life which prompted him to give up writing. See my Substack article, Why Did Thomas Aquinas Leave his Summa Theologiae Unfinished? Aquinas is all three: philosopher, religionist, mystic.  Or it might be better to say he wears four hats: philosopher, religionist, theologian, mystic. 
 
This response is beginning to get lengthy, so I'll leave two more comments I have until later.  The Comments are enabled.
 
 
Ipsum esse tattoo

Could a Jew Pray the “Our Father”?

I return an affirmative answer at Substack.

It dawned on me a while back that there is nothing specifically Christian about the content of the Pater Noster. Its origin of course is Christian. When his disciples asked him how they should pray, Jesus taught them the prayer. (Mt 6:9-13) If you carefully read the prayer below you will see that there is no mention in it of anything specifically Christian: no mention of Jesus as the Son of God, no mention of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us (the Incarnation), no mention of the Resurrection, nothing that could be construed as even implicitly Trinitarian. So I thought to myself: a believing (non-Christian) Jew could pray this prayer, and could do so in good faith. There is nothing at the strictly doctrinal level that could prevent him. Or is there?

Read the rest.

Intercessory Prayer

A friend inquired,

Never understood how your prayers can benefit me. Do you?

I wrote back,
If you have  no trouble understanding petitionary prayer, why should you have a problem understanding intercessory prayer? 
He responded,

Prayer is hard to understand. In a legal proceeding if my testimony can exonerate some one, I see the relevance. When I pray for you, does this imply I have some grounds for defending or recommending you morally? I don't think so. Is prayer a plea for mercy more than justice? Don't know. If I pray for someone fighting cancer, am I pleading for mercy? Well, sort of.

A Substack entry of mine opens as follows:

I tend to look askance at petitionary prayer for material benefits. In such prayer one asks for mundane benefits whether for oneself, or for another, as in the case of intercessory prayer. In some of its forms it borders on idolatry and superstition, and in its crassest forms it crosses over. A skier who prays for snow, for example, makes of God a supplier of petty, ego-enhancing benefits, a sort of Cosmic Candy Man, as does the nimrod who prays to win the lottery.  Worse still is one who prays for the death of a business rival.

Perhaps not all petitionary prayer for mundane benefits is objectionable.  Some of it simply reflects, excusably,  our misery and indigence.  (Did not Christ himself engage in it at Gethsemane?)  But much of it is objectionable.  What then should I say about the "Our Father," which, in the fourth of its six petitions, appears precisely to endorse petitionary prayer for material  benefits?

Now let's consider my friend's cancer example. Suppose you have stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and I pray to God for you. That would be a case of petitionary prayer in its intercessory form.  I could pray for your recovery or I could pray that God grant you the spiritual strength bear up well and accept your coming demise with equanimity as a sort of purgatory on earth and thus as an opportunity to atone for your sins and put your spiritual affairs in order.  It seems obvious to me that I should do the latter and not the former, especially if the friend is say 60+ years old and has had a good life.

Would it not be utterly absurd, and indeed morally offensive, to call upon God to grant a few more years of life to the old coot so he could waste more time chasing women, hitting little white balls into holes, and piling up  loot? I would even go so far as to argue that it is metaphysically offensive. After all, if the God of classical theism exists, then everything else is next-to-nothing in comparison ontologically (being-wise) and axiologically (value-wise).  This is is traditional RCC doctrine, not that the likes of Begoglio & Co, understand it or could explain it.

My friend asked, "If I pray for someone fighting cancer, am I pleading for mercy?" In some cases, but not in every case.  In the case I just sketched, I am not praying that God have mercy on the cancer victim's soul, or that God intervene in the course of nature  to stop the metastasis of the malignant cells.  I am praying that God spiritually fortify the soon-to-be-dead man so that he can make good spiritual use of his suffering and naturally inevitable death.

Worldly Success and Spiritual Growth

Worldly success can easily ensnare, and most will fall into the trap. But for some, worldly success has the opposite effect: it reveals the vanity, the emptiness, of worldly success, and thus subserves spiritual advance.  One is therefore well-advised to strive for a modicum of success as defined in the worldly terms of property and pelf, name and fame, status and standing, love and sex, the pleasures of the flesh. 

The successful are in a position to see through the goods of this life, having tasted them; the failures are denied this advantage, and may persist in the belief that if only they could get their hands on some property and pelf, etc. then they would achieve the ultimate in happiness.

A corollary is that a young person should not be too quick to renounce the world. Experience it first to appreciate the reasons for renunciation.  Contemptus mundi is best acquired by mundane experience, not by reading books about it  or following the examples of others. Better a taste of the tender trap before joining the Trappists. (Have I spoiled this little homily with the concluding cleverness?)