Aquinas

Read Along: The Last Superstition Part 4

It’s been quite a while since I did my last post of a read along for Feser’s book. As promised, here is the next post on his next chapter “Scholastic Aptitude.” In this chapter, Feser introduces the scholastic views of the soul and natural, and he uses these concepts to talk about the fetus, same-sex marriage, and the purpose of sex. Lastly, he briefly discusses faith, reason, and evil.

When it comes to the soul, Aquinas took Aristotle’s view that everything in our experience is made up of form and matter. The soul just so happens to be the form of “or essence of a living thing” (121). But from that it follows that every living thing has a type of soul. Moreover, there is a type of hierarchy with these souls. At the bottom of that list is the vegetative soul or “nutritive soul” that has the powers of “taking in nutrients, growing, and reproducing itself” (121). Next, the animal soul has the powers of sense experience and locomotion (movement). Lastly, there’s the rational soul, which has the powers to “grasp abstract concepts [...] and to reason on the basis of them” and the ability to have free will. Now, the hierarchy works in the following way: the highest type of soul is the rational soul and it contains its own powers in addition to the powers of the animal and vegetative soul. So, for example, when we look at humans who have the rational soul, we see that humans can reason (rational soul), can move around and interact with other objects via the senses (animal soul), and humans can take in nutrients by eating food and it can reproduce through *gasp* sex.

Feser reminds readers not to forget how final and efficient causality works. Feser writes,

As we have seen, a thing’s having a certain form goes hand in hand with its having a certain final cause or natural end, or a hierarchically ordered set of final causes or natural ends. A plant is ordered toward taking in nutrients, growing, and reproducing itself; those are the ends nature has given it. An animal has these ends too, along with the ends entailed by its distinctive powers of sensation and locomotion. (122)

Feser goes into much more detail about the soul and responds to some of the ridiculous objections brought by Dennett and Dawkins about how neuroscience is making free-will and the soul a thing of the past. Essentially, Feser briefly demonstrates that neuroscience doesn’t harm Aquinas and Aristotle’s view of the soul at all. Rather, neuroscience is going to be consistent with it! Eventually a discussion on the soul will lead us to ask when a human being gets his rational soul. So, when does he or she get one?!

At conception. For a soul just is the form–the essence, nature, structure, organizational pattern–of a living thing, an organism. And the human organism, as we know form modern biology, begins at conception. [...] Once you add Aquinas’s metaphysics to modern biology, there can be no doubt that the soul is present from conception, and thus that a human being exists from conception. (128)

On the section of natural law, Feser does a wonderful job of breaking down the view of final causality and essence,  while applying it to same-sex marriage and sexual ethics. I’m going to forgo discussing this section simply because I’m planning a future post on sexual ethics and contraception from a natural law perspective that will use a lot of material from this section of Feser’s book. So, I’d rather not have to repeat myself again. So, if you’re just itching to read this chapter, sorry! Either buy the book, or wait for my future post ;)

Now, about faith, Feser describes it as this:

faith is from the point of view of traditional Christian theology: belief in what God has revealed because if God has revealed it it cannot be in error; but where the claim where He had revealed it is itself something that is known on the basis of reason. Faith doesn’t conflict with reason, then; it is founded on reason and completes reason.” (157)

Another interesting point that Feser brings up is how not every Christian is going to sit and study all the arguments for God’s existence and the Bible’s reliability. Not every Christian is going to have their beliefs “intellectually” grounded, so to speak. Unless you’re an academic or intellectual, you aren’t going to plow through a metaphysics textbook and try to understand the nature of reality. So, are people’s reasons for believing in faith entirely blind? Not necessarily. Feser asks readers to think about Einstein’s E=MC^2 equation. The lay person on the street probably has no clue how this equation works, what it stands for, and all the calculations involved at reaching it. Yet, we hold that they’re justified in believing in its truth because the believe it “on the authority of those from whom they’ve learned it” (158). So, why, then, can’t this work for religion? In other words, “if this is legitimate in other aspects of life, there is nothing per se wrong with it in religion” (158).

After slapping the new atheists a bit, Feser talks just briefly on the problem of evil. If you thought the chapter “Getting Medieval” was good, wait until you read through this chapter. It’s rare that I find books that are real page turners and are funny and intellectually rigorous. Good thing Feser has a knack for being both.

Etienne Gilson on God

 

“What God is in His eternal self, He remains as cause of events. Creatures passing through time have given Him various names. But each name marks a relationship between creatures and Him, not between Him and creatures. Man emerges from nothingness–and calls God his creator. Man recognizes this creator as his supreme master–and calls him Lord. Man sins, is lost, is saved by the Word made Flesh–and he calls God his Redeemer. This long history is developed in time and in a changing world, but God is no more changed by it than a column which moves from right to left as we pass to and fro before it. God is Creator for those whom He creates and whom His eternal efficacy redeems each moment from nothingness. He is Savior of those whom He saves and Lord for those who profess to serve Him. But in Him creation and redemption are but His action which, like His power, is one with His act-of-being. In order that the first principle of philosophy rejoin in this way the God of religion, and in order that the same God of religion be Author of Nature and God of history at the same time, it has been necessary to follow the meaning of the name of God in its profoundest existential implication. I Am is the only God of whom it can be said that He is God of philosophers, and scholars, and God, too, of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.” (142-143)

-Etienne Gilson in The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas

Christwire.org and Christianity

For some time now I’ve been hopping in and out of Christwire.org and reading some of their stuff. I’m pretty sure this is a satire site, and honestly, some of the stuff is funny. But on the other hand, there is something really sad about the type of material on this site, namely, that there are Christians who are really like this.

First of all, I do not want to come off as an arrogant know it all (trust me, I don’t know a lot), and I don’t wanna be a jerk to other Christians who genuinely believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and who believe that he is, indeed, the “way, the truth, and the life.” But, from time to time I just want to bang my head against the wall because of the way some Christians have denigrated Christianity to a superstition and emotional roller-coaster. So, what type of Christians am I referring to here? The ones that Christwire portrays: The Christian that believes that Satan is in every single bad thing that happens (like getting a flat tire or diarrhea); the Christian that thinks that if you study philosophy you have become a pagan; the Christian who thinks faith means you leave your brain at the door.

I love these people. But it’s so hard to see some Christians act like this and represent Christianity as some sort of superstitious soap opera. These sorts of errors need to be corrected because it gives off the wrong message to other people that misinforms them about what the Christian worldview really is. If we are to be effective ambassadors for Christ, we need to inform people, not misinform. We need to give the right message and show people that the Christian worldview is the picture of reality.

The prosperity gospels, the therapeutic Jesus movement (oh, don’t get me started there), and the superstitiousness and emotionalism that is just running rampant all over the Christian culture really doesn’t help in reaching out to other people and informing them.

Ok, I’m going to comment on what I call the therapeutic Jesus movement. I just couldn’t resist. So prepare for an aside. Plus, I think this fits in perfectly with the idea that we must inform other people and not misinform them. The idea is basically that if you give your life to Christ and surrender it to Him, your life will be a bundle of roses, Jesus will take your problems away, Jesus will take your addictions away and make you into a new person. No doubt Christ is in the business of changing lives and healing people. I don’t disagree with this one bit. And yes he will make you into a new person. BUT, Jesus’s entire goal is not to make you into Mary Poppins and let you run through the rose fields. Jesus came to save those who were lost. Jesus came to restore the broken relationship between God and man that came as a result of us our sin and rebellion. In the process, does God change our character? Yes! But he doesn’t do so so that you can just live life nice and dandy, but so that you can be transformed more into his image and so you can fulfill your purpose on this earth.

The problem I see is that our focus becomes fixated on God’s meeting our every need and want. We’re essentially telling people that God is here to take all their problems away, make them perfect people, and send them on their way. This might not be the intention, but this is the way it’s packaged and sold. What the therapeutic Jesus movement does is it makes the change and good itself (the feeling of elation and happiness, the drug free life) the   the object of fulfillment. The ultimate end becomes becoming like that guy who is good, or being the good guy I wanna be, or reaching my “potential as a Christian,” or being “blessed” financially, spiritually, and what have you. Being drug free, doing good, etc. are goods, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be blessed. But these things are lesser goods, and they should not be the object of our desire. These things will to fulfill us and they are not our ultimate end.

I think this brings us nicely to the question of “what exactly is our purpose then?” What is our ultimate end? The westminster confession sums it up nicely: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, [a] and to enjoy him for ever. [1]. In making God, who is the supreme good, the object of our desires, happiness comes as an inevitable by-product. In other words, happiness comes with the package. That’s when God changes us, takes away our unhealthy and bad addictions, and He uses us and brings forth happiness as we fulfill our ultimate end. Our human nature is ordered so that we fulfill our ends, and this is ultimately and perfectly fulfilled by God alone. So all these things that a lot of Christians in this thereupetuic movement focus on are distractions. We shouldn’t focus on being like this or being like that, but focus on Christ. In doing so and in orienting ourselves to Him, we begin to make changes and God begins to make changes, and things start happening inevitably.

It’s a slight change of perspective that makes all the difference

Yeah, that was a long aside, but I felt like it was an important discussion. Anyways, I’m huge on critical thinking and logic, and I think this should play a monumental role in the Christian life. It shouldn’t be the only role, but it should play a major role nonetheless. God gave us brains and reason, after all. Yet, I look around and see a lot of Christians just going with the emotional flow of the Christian sub-culture and this goes out the window. I love my Christian brothers and sisters dearly. It just bothers me that I look around and see that everything in the Christian circle is dominated by emotion. Emotion per se is not a bad thing. We need it and it’s something that is a part of our human essence. But that’s not all that Christianity is about. Yes, there is a great deal of emotion involved when I think of Christ and what He’s done, but there’s a lot a great deal of intellectual work and philosophy, and a great deal more with regard to walking the Christian path. We need to be well rounded and we need more critical thinking to offset the emotionalism that’s just gripped Christianity. We need to get back to the basics and fundamentals of Christianity (and NO I am not saying we need to be a fundamentalist in the way that secularism has defined the word, that is, the crazy-psycho pathic Christians who blow up abortion clinics). We need to get back to what the Gospel is and who God is and why He came. We need to show people that reason and faith do not contradict each other, and that Christianity is not anti-science. We need to articulate our views precisely and strongly, and we need to have a heart of servant. Have the heart of a servant and the will of a soldier. It can be done; it just needs to be balanced.

If we’re going to make a difference and win this culture, we have to act like we actually live in this world. Too many times Christians take the whole “be separate from the world” literally to another level. They fabricate their own reality amongst themselves and just live amongst themselves, isolated from the real world. You know, the kind of world we share with other people? The kind of world in which we all experience pain and suffering together? So, why don’t we work with our fellow human beings and show them what Christianity really is. Let’s really reach out, defend, and proclaim the name of Christ. That means we meet people where they’re at.

There’s so much that can be said and I really hope I wasn’t all over the place. There’s just SO much to say and so much I see. I think we can do it. With the rise of even more Christian philosophers and apologetics, we’re starting to see more and more Christians critically reflecting over their faith and bringing this into the market place of ideas. It starts with leaders. People who are willing to study scripture hard, really seek God in prayer and in the scriptures, studying philosophy, getting an education and really seeking truth. If we emphasize an overall approach, because I believe God permeates every avenue of life, we can really turn this thing around and show how Christianity really is vibrant in all areas of life: Spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally. And most importantly, we’d demonstrate how Christianity is reality.

 

Read Along: The Last Superstition Part 3

Maybe I’m being biased simply because I’m a fan of Feser or because I’m pretty much an Aristotelian-Thomist myself, but I’m definitely loving this book.

In the next chapter “Getting Medieval”, Feser turns to our favorite philosopher Thomas Aquinas (for a more in-depth treatment of Aquinas and Thomism, I highly urge you to check out Feser’s book Aquinas. I own it and I’ve read it, and it’s probably the best introductory book I’ve read so far on Aquinas. I did an extensive book review and summary of the book here for AP315). Simultanouesly, Feser unleashes and rips at the four horsemen of the New Atheists once again. I found myself chuckling and laughing once all over again. I mean, for those who are not already familiar with Feser and how he is on his blog, this book and his tone may bother some people, and it may annoy some.

Before turning to Aquinas and his arguments, Feser devotes a good amount of time to slapping the hands of the New Atheists for getting just about everything about Aquinas wrong. Things get pretty philosophical after this since Feser turns towards the existence of God. Feser did something really interesting that brought a lot of clarity and helped gauge people’s conception of God. He broke down the conceptions people have of God into 5 gradations:

1) The first is the kind of description you see village atheists have of God, namely, that God is some old dude up in the sky that’s sitting on a cloud and shooting thunderbolts at people.

2) The second gradation is that in which “God doesn’t really have a bodily form, and His thoughts and motivations are in many respects very different from ours. He is an immaterial object or substance which has existed forever, and (perhaps) pervades all space. Still, he is, somehow, a person like we are, only vastly more intelligent, powerful, and virtuous, and in particular without our physical and moral limitations” (87).

3) This one is really long, and I’m honestly too lazy to just quote the whole thing, but I feel like Feser does a better job of explaining it than I do…*sigh* decisions, decisions. Basically, God is not an object alongside other objects but God is existence itself. “The world is not an independent object in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to ‘go away’; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when he plays and vanishes the moment he stops” (88).

4) God understood by a mystical experience

5) God through which Aquinas knows Him through the “beatific vision attained by the blessed after death” (88).

The conception Feser takes as being the correct one and the one that Aquinas is true to is number 3. When discussing the Unmoved Mover argument, it’s important to have an understanding of the act and potency concepts mentioned earlier in the book (Feser also give an in-depth treatment of this in his book Aquinas). Feser goes into the whole technical philosophy and walks you through how Aquinas reaches his conclusions. I’m simply too lazy and tired right now to give you a summary of it (sorry!). He only discusses the Unmoved Mover and the First Cause arguments. He also demonstrates how the First Cause argument completely sidesteps the “issue” of the beginning of the universe and how Aquinas was not aiming to argue that the universe had a beginning. Whether or not the universe has a beginning, Aquinas’s argument for the First Cause still flows through nicely. Feser also criticizes Dawkin’s “argument” against the Fifth Way. With his sarcasm and colorful language, Feser remarks, “Well, if Dawkins really wants his consciousness raised, he should love this little revelation: Aquinas’s Fifth Way has nothing to do with Paley’s design argument or the creation/evolution debate. This is awful luck for a monomaniacal Dawkins afflicted with Dawkins’s strange intellectual variation on Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but there it is” (111). Feser sure does get Medieval and anyone wanting a good philosophical defense of a few of Aquinas’s arguments is going to love this chapter (Once again, if I haven’t stressed it enough already, if you want more of this, DEFINITELY get Feser’s other book Aquinas).

So far I have just one tiny complaint. I feel like Feser hasn’t given enough of a justification for formal and final causality. He does explain it a bit, but he doesn’t really talk much about it or defend it in depth. I’m hoping he will, but for the most part Feser disappointed me there. However, he does do a decent job of presenting the Aristotelian world view. Then again, this book isn’t really meant for much an in-depth analysis and defense of Aristotelian-Thomism.

I think what I’ll do now is just do a post on each chapter. I’m pretty much almost done with the book. I just have 60 pages left, but I’m behind on the blogging. So, I’ll just divide up the posts to doing a post for each chapter leaving just 3 posts left in total. The next post will be on chapter 4 which is titled “Scholastic Aptitude”.

 

Read Along: The Last Superstition

Since I finished God, Freedom, and Evil I figured I’d do another Read Along and post my thoughts on my current read, which is Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition. Feser is definitely one of my favorite philosophers and influences, and he shows why in this book. Feser is both rigorous and humorous, while also being a great writer that can write clearly, precisely and concretely (it’s hard to find a philosopher who can have all of these traits). I think in his own right, Feser is a cross between Aquinas in rigor and Christopher Hitchens in rhetorical skill, and he’s able to blend these perfectly when needed. This book is where Feser shows this blend.

First of all, I entirely agree with Feser’s approach in this book. Not only is he matching up to and surpassing the New Atheists in the intellectual war, but also in the rhetorical one. “It is essential,” Feser proclaims, “then, not only that its intellectual pretensions are exposed but that its rhetoric is met with equal and opposite force” (25). I entirely agree. Most of the village atheists (and I’m referring to a specific group of atheists since I know that not all atheists are like this, or that not all atheists like the way the New Atheists handle things) don’t listen to intellectual arguments, and most of their own arguments are simply rhetorically filled with demeaning attacks towards religion. I think it’s about time someone not only knocks them off their feet by intellectually challenging them (not that this hasn’t been happening), but by also burying them into the ground by demolishing them with some witty rhetoric.

Most of the introduction and first chapter is focused on pretty much calling out the New Atheists and just ripping them down. Feser admits that for the time being, most of what he’s saying are just assertions, but he promises to flesh them out with intellectual argumentation and rigor in the remaining parts of the book. One part that really cracked me up was when Feser basically called particular atheists–those who say that believing in God is on par with believing in the easter bunny–a “shallow and sophomoric jackass” (15).

Feser’s description of the typical village atheist or “skeptic” is another masterful product of his wit:

A copy of Skeptic magazine ostentatiously tucked under his arm, the Darwin fish on the bumper of his car proudly signals his group identification with other members of the herd of “independent thinkers.” He “knows” that there is no God, and he isn’t whether even the thoughts he thinks he’s having are real or not. But he is pretty sure that his “selfish genes” and/or his “memes” in some way manipulate his every action, and quite certain that there’s nothing questionable per se about ‘”marrying” another man, strangling an unwanted disabled infant, or sodomizing a goat or a corpse (if that’s “what you’re into”). Despite his hatred of religion, he thinks global warming a greater danger than Islamic terrorism, and whether “meat is murder” is a proposition he thinks eminently worth of consideration. (17)

I think his description is as true as it is funny (and I think it was pretty funny). Sadly, I come across a lot of atheists like this, even in the philosophy department at my school. It’s as if Dawkins personally trained all his little cronies himself. They all follow the ridiculous and irrational model laid out by people like Dawkins, and Feser points his finger at this as well. Feser also reiterates an observation that many Christian philosophers have been pointing out (not that they’re the only ones who point it out, but they’re the ones who do it more and more), namely that the issues between science and religion is a battle of philosophies and not of science and religion per se. Feser calls this a myth. Plain and simple. He tells us that the dichotomy is between two metaphysical systems: that of “Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas on the one hand, and modern naturalism on the other” (21).

Most of his first chapter is spent on ripping on the New Atheists and setting the groundwork for what’s to come. The second chapter is where things get interesting (and fun for you ancient philosophy junkies). Feser begins to briefly sketch the history of ancient philosophy starting with Thales. He enters into Plato’s theory of forms and up to now he is discussing realism, nominalism, and conceptualism. Feser hasn’t spent time making a case just yet. He’s still just tilling the ground and explaining the ancient philosophy and is directing the conversation mainly over universals and forms since later he will use a lot of these concepts when he turns to Aristotle and Aquinas. This is as far as I’ve gotten. I’m really loving it. The book is a light read, but not light enough to where you won’t get any substantial philosophy. The way it’s looking, I think Feser is going to take me for a good ride with his book. I’ll keep you all posted on my reading and thoughts as I continue reading through. Hopefully I don’t finish it fast enough to where I won’t post anymore and thus won’t have anymore to write on this!

 

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