{"id":3633,"date":"2019-08-24T17:39:58","date_gmt":"2019-08-24T17:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/08\/24\/on-the-specificity-of-traditional-catholic-claims\/"},"modified":"2019-08-24T17:39:58","modified_gmt":"2019-08-24T17:39:58","slug":"on-the-specificity-of-traditional-catholic-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/08\/24\/on-the-specificity-of-traditional-catholic-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Specificity of Traditional Catholic Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just over the transom from Vito Caiati:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I want to thank you for recommending Garrigou-Lagrange's L'\u00e9ternelle vie et la profondeur de l'\u00e2me<\/em>, which I am reading now and enjoying, while casting an eye of the relevant sections St. Thomas\u2019 Summa Theologiae<\/em>, with which I was already somewhat familiar. <\/span><\/p>\n

I find Garrigou-Lagrange's thoughts on the nature, capacities, and final destinies of souls after death fascinating and often quite moving; at the same time, I simply cannot accept the idea that any living person, no matter how rich a philosophic tradition informs his thought, can possess anything like the extent and specificity of knowledge of final things that are claimed in his or St. Thomas\u2019 books.  On these matters, we face, other than the promises and hints found in scripture, nothing but mystery that is impenetrable by human reasoning.  Why pretend that we \u201cknow\u201d more? It is one thing to use the ancient philosophers to explore theological questions and quite another to create a theology of the soul from them, which is what I think is at work here.  As a Roman Catholic, I don\u2019t want to take a sola scriptura<\/em> position on this matter, but greater epistemological modesty should inform our efforts in speaking of final things. I can\u2019t help feeling that there is a certain naivet\u00e9 behind all of this talk of the afterlife, however much it is draped in luxuriant concepts and subtle distinctions.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I too am troubled, if that is not too strong a word, by the extreme specificity of paleo-Thomist theology as perhaps best exemplified by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.  I must say, though, that I find this theology 'infinitely' preferable to the diluted pablum now served up in the Church as she succumbs to secularism and works out her own extinction. But I digress.<\/span><\/p>\n

The doctrine of the immutability of the soul after death  is an example of what I mean by extreme specificity:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The ordinary magisterium of the Church teaches that the human soul, immediately after death, undergoes judgment on all the actions, good or bad, of its earthly existence. This judgment supposes that the time of merit has passed. This common doctrine has not been solemnly defined, but it is based on Scripture and tradition. There are no merits after death, contrary to what many Protestants teach. (Life Everlasting and the Immensity of the Soul<\/em>, p. 50)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Garrigou-Lagrange supports the doctrine from Scripture and the traditional commentary thereon. For example, he quotes John 9:4 where Jesus says, "I must work the work of Him that sent me whilst it is day; the night cometh when no man can work." He then lists various Fathers. "These Fathers teach that after death no one can longer either merit or demerit." (52)  He continues in this vein for several pages drawing upon different passages and different Fathers.<\/span><\/p>\n

What bothers Dr. Caiati also bothers me, namely, the presumption to know things beyond our ken. There is something  epistemically immodest and perhaps even epistemically pretentious about claiming to have such a detailed knowledge of soteriological mechanisms. <\/span><\/p>\n

Can one be quite sure that there is no merit after death, no chance of metanoia? Suppose that after death the scales fall from Christopher Hitchens' spiritual eyes and he sees that he was wrong in his atheism and that his cocksure atheism was driven by overweening pride and arrogance and that he had been blinded by his brilliance like Lucifer. He repents.  If I were God, I would send him to purgatory and not to hell for all eternity.  I could argue in detail for this competing view, in which there is merit after death.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps I will be told that if the magisterium teaches infallibly that the soul, immediately after death, is judged, and that this judgment presupposes and thus entails that the time of merit has passed, then we can and do have objectively certain knowledge in this matter.  If so, then my little theological speculation is but a private judgment lacking objective certainty.  But then we are brought back to the problem of private versus collective judgment<\/a> and the problem whether anyone can justifiably credit the claim of any institution of men, even if divinely instituted and inspired,  to render a collective judgment that is objectively certain with respect to questions of faith and morals.<\/span><\/p>\n

The truth is absolute and infinite and largely beyond our ken in this life. No institution has proprietary rights in her. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just over the transom from Vito Caiati: I want to thank you for recommending Garrigou-Lagrange's L'\u00e9ternelle vie et la profondeur de l'\u00e2me, which I am reading now and enjoying, while casting an eye of the relevant sections St. Thomas\u2019 Summa Theologiae, with which I was already somewhat familiar.  I find Garrigou-Lagrange's thoughts on the nature, … Continue reading “On the Specificity of Traditional Catholic Claims”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-corner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}