Apparently, my reaction to Brad Gregory’s chapter on ethics went the way of Facebook updates. So let me return to the subject of Roman Catholicism and Aristotle.
Out of curiosity, I went over to Called to Communion to see what the folks there have to say about Aristotle. I ran across this from Mr. Cross himself:
That is why Aristotle is so important. Aristotle shows how from what we already know through our common human experience of the world, we can understand virtue and vice, and their epistemic grounding in philosophical truths about human nature and the human person. Our shared human nature provides the shared rational framework and criteria by which to adjudicate between various hypotheses, and so reason together. It is only by this mutual participation in rationality that Hitchens and Wilson can criticize each other’s positions, in something more than a solipsistic way. What both are missing, is Aristotle. And that is why watching them debate is like watching the skeptic Sextus Empiricus debate Nicolas of Autrecourt, whose fideism was condemned by the Catholic Church in the fourteenth century. So when I reflect on ten years of teaching Aristotle, in light of my position twenty years ago, I see the way in which Aristotle provides an important philosophical understanding of nature, the very nature that grace perfects and upon which grace builds.
This comes in the context of the debates between Christopher Hitchens and Doug Wilson, where Bryan Cross’ veneration of philosophical certainty leads him to conclude that “there is no common rational ground by which to adjudicate between the positions of Wilson and Hitchens. That is why Hitchens is exactly right when he says, “There is no bridge that can suffice.” (6:39) . . . . If one’s whole epistemic edifice is built upon a mere leap-in-the-dark assumption, as Wilson’s is, then since nothing can be any more certain than that upon which it rests, one still does not get any certainty.”
Well, where exactly is the common ground between Aristotle and Paul (or Jesus for that matter, or the Magnificat while I’m at it) when it comes to good works? Christians believe (or are supposed to) that sinners can’t be good apart from grace. But Aristotle is all about virtue apart from grace. How could he be otherwise, since he knew nothing about grace? This doesn’t mean we need to throw Athens overboard in good Tertullian fashion. We do happen, this side of glory, to live with a lot of people who do not have grace. So finding ways that they can be good apart from grace is useful at least for proximate ends of communities and neighborhoods. Still, at the end of the day what Aristotle and Thomas meant by virtue is a long way apart thanks to the advent of Christ.
And by the way, curious is the charge that Protestants are wrong to appeal to Paul apart from papal approval but Roman Catholic teachers of virtue may appeal to a pagan without the slightest criticism.
I also ran across a defense of transubstantiation at Called to Communion that made an interesting point about historical development. To the charge that Rome’s teaching on transubstantiation depends on Aristotelian metaphysics, the blogger appealed to Jaroslav Pelikan:
. . . the application of the term “substance” to the discussion of the Eucharistic presence antedates the rediscovery of Aristotle. In the ninth century, Ratramnus spoke of “substances visible but invisible,” and his opponent Radbertus declared that “out of the substance of bread and wine the same body and blood of Christ is mystically consecrated.” Even “transubstantiation” was used during the twelfth century in a nontechnical sense. Such evidence lends credence to the argument that the doctrine of transubstantiation, as codified by the decrees of the Fourth Lateran and Tridentine councils, did not canonize Aristotelian philosophy as indispensable to Christian doctrine.
So, Called to Communion recognizes that Aristotelian metaphysics may be a problem. But Aristotelian ethics are okay?
This was not the historical point, though. Since Roman Catholicism of the Protestant era was heavily dependent on Aristotelian ethics (see Gregory and Alasdair MacIntyre), and since the West did not really appropriate Aristotle until the medieval renaissance associated with Aquinas and the rise of universities, just how ancient is the ethical framework that rejected Luther and Calvin’s constructions? For all the talk about the ancient church and the early church fathers, do the Called to Communion folks believe that Ireneaus and Polycarp were thinking about the Christian life in Aristotelian categories?
I ask partly because I don’t know, partly because the way some put the past together looks remarkably arbitrary.
177 Comments
Reading the interchanges here by scrolling up — in backwards chronological order — is a surreal experience.
Darryl says: Don, this is about ethics and being good in an ultimate as opposed to a proximate sense. I quoted a chapter from the confession on the fall, not about epistemology or ontology. Why are still talking about a different area of philosophy?
Me: I have conceded your point concerning ethics. I really have. I was hoping to get your perspective, as one who has attended and teach at a reformed seminary, on how reformed academia treats Aquinas in this area of philosophy.
Jed,
I appreciate your response and your sympathies with Thomistic thought. I recently posted excerpts from an article by J.A. West and am wondering how you, or anyone else who is interested, would respond to these thoughts from a reformed perspective:
Don,
From the perspective of this Reformed layman I think there is much to commend here, but there is also aspects of Thomistic thought that need to be corrected by a more Biblical, and Reformed anthropology. I’ll start with what is commendable:
In the last paragraph, West’s description of the Thomistic conception of the role of the will in the acquisition of beliefs and in faith, I would agree with Aquinas that “The assent of faith is produced by the will being moved sufficiently by the object of faith [God Himself] and therefore the intellect is brought to assent.”. I agree that faith is the work of God, working upon the human subject and his faculties for belief, in order to bring about faith. But, I am not sure if how I see the truth of Thomas’ statement here lines up with how he would frame it. Reformed and Roman Catholics both have always affirmed that human faith is always owing to the prior work of God – our disagreements are fundamentally over the sufficiency of faith to salvation, and the relationship between faith and works.
But, where I disagree with Aquinas, is on his understanding of how the will and intellect have been marred by depravity. For Aquinas, the will is “an innate positive inclination towards the good. It is that aspect of a rational agent which disposes her to pursue what she considers good.”. And from both West’s summary of him, and Aquinas elsewhere, it is clear that Thomas does not conceive of the will being so wrecked by sin that the “good” to which it is inclined, is merely “good” as perceived through fallen faculties. What is perceived as “good” may range from something hopelessly evil, or a genuine “good” tainted in some respect whether the taint exists in the “good” thing itself, or in the inclination toward the good.
From the very beginning, Scripture presents the depravity of human inclinations, which would include inclinations of the soul in the starkest of language: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”(Genesis 6:5). For the will to be inclined by God, the grace of God must quicken the soul to new life that alone can make it possible for the will to be inclined to faith. Otherwise, the soul, which includes the faculty of the will, continues to be bent by evil, and is incapable of assenting to true faith. This is, as I understand it, part of why Rome and the Reformed have such radically different conceptions of grace and depravity. For Rome, the will needs grace like someone with an infection needs antibiotics – grace’s medicinal properties heal the sick soul enabling it to assent to faith. Yet the Reformed insist that the soul is (in it’s spiritual capacities to relate to God) dead in it’s sinfulness – beyond the aid of any medicine, and needs new life that comes through God’s unmerited favor, which can give the soul a capacity that it never had before, which is to receive from God, and in the newness of life it has been given by God, be inclined to true goods.
Like I stated previously, I think Aquinas is indispensible with respect to his reflections on causation, the existence of God, on orthodox formulations on the doctrine of God and the trinity. I also think his observation of the created order (e.g. Natural Law), and how humans evaluate truth claims are immensely helpful. But when it comes to matters of salvation (which gave rise to the material cause of the Reformation), Aquinas bears little resemblance to his Reformed predecessors. In many ways the Reformers were seeking to reform a church that had been, like no one other than Augustine, shaped by Thomas three centuries prior. They didn’t want to throw out the baby with the bath-water, which is why we see elements of Thomistic theology unmodified in our confessions (e.g. WCF 2.1), and Reformed scholars through the magisterial and confessional age affirming Thomistic Natural Law; but they sought to reform those areas where the church, and Thomas had slipped into error, namely how man was made right with God, and the basis on which church authority rested.
Don,
Don’t waste your time on West if you haven’t read Luther or Calvin on the “bondage of the will”. (Packer’s intro to the first is also outstanding before he went gunnybag on Evang.& Cath. Together.)
It’s called total depravity/original sin.
Neither the intellect or the will are inclined to any spiritual good whatever West/Acquinas opines.
WCF VI.
I. Our first parents, . . . became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and
faculties of soul and body.
IV. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled,
and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all
actual transgressions.
Romans 3:10,11 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
None. Nada. Zip. Zero.
Nevertheless both Rome and much of contemporary Prot. evangelicalism/arminianism affirm “free will” or the doctrine that man, dead in his trespasses and sins, can of his own free will, repent and believe in Christ. Then and only then does regeneration take place. Thus Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham, the American apostle of arminianism in his polular (novel?) How To Be Born Again.
But not only is this to put the cart before the horse, why settle for the dessicated evangelical version when the Roman variety has so much more pzazz and tradition, ritual and liturgy?
Romans 9:15,16 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
Bob,
Thanks for jumping in. I found this to be especially helpful:
Neither the intellect or the will are inclined to any spiritual good whatever West/Acquinas opines
One of the hardest issues is the difficulty in discerning the difference of “spiritual good”, and by this I mean a good that is commendable or acceptable to God, and “proximate goods” which have the appearance of good based on human evaluation, and may even have demonstrable external benefits from a human frame of reference. In my reading of Aquinas so far, I think he totally misses the distinction. Are humans capable of proximate good? Of course and in this sense Thomistic virtue ethics may be quite useful in evaluating how one might be virtuous in this world (in a proximate, non-spiritual sense). But, Thomas does not seem to have any place for a kind of goodness that works on the human plane, but it totally useless in commending man to God.
I think there is a limited element in which Aquinas is right – the will is inclined to pursue what it perceives as good. But, because the will, and its perceptive powers are totally depraved, its pursuit of perceived goods will always bear the taints of sin. This is what baffles me most about Thomas, his understanding of theology proper is astoundingly accurate – so how could man, so tainted, commend himself to God in all of his divine perfections? I realize we are all, to a degree products of our own time, and that Aquinas’ soteriology was not unique in the Medieval Church – but I am amazed that he missed on this so badly. What is even more baffling to me, is that once Rome was confronted with the Reformers Biblical, and even Augustinian doctrines of depravity, they doubled down.
I often wonder when reading Thomas, whether or not he would have gone along with Rome when presented with well-orbed Protestant arguments. There are certain aspects in his thought that make me think maybe, and then others that make me less optimistic. But, no matter how sympathetic some in the Reformed camp might be to certain aspects of Aquinas, we simply cannot agree on some very important, very basic issues – sin and depravity being one such matter.
Don, I’ve been out of theological education for almost ten years. My sense is where Van Til reigns, Aquinas doesn’t receive a favorable hearing. Among those who read Calvin without neo-Calvinist glasses, continuities between Aquinas and the Reformers are likely more plausible.
Jed and Bob S.,
Thanks so much for your responses. I am on board with both of you. I think however, I ascribed to Aquinas the understanding that, as Jed puts it the will is inclined to pursue what it perceives as good. But, because the will, and its perceptive powers are totally depraved, its pursuit of perceived goods will always bear the taints of sin. Do we know for sure that Aquinas does not hold to this understanding? Like Jed, I would be amazed if he missed on this so badly.
I also believe that this understanding nicely explains how unbelievers are able to produce works of beauty measured by mastery of a skill learned. Furthermore, since God is the ground of all beauty, it is possible for an unbeliever to unwittingly, and in some sense, produce a work that reflects the beauty of God.
Darryl,
I suspect you are right. So perhaps the better question would be to what degree does Van Til reign in reformed academia?
That was a very interesting discussion between Don, Jed and Bob. The question of grace, and what grace consists of, was heavily debated between the Reformers and Catholic theologians. At least that is my understanding. We are saved BY GRACE and THROUGH FAITH. Is this grace by which we are saved the imputation of Christ’s righteousness or something the Spirit does within the ontological being and makeup of the individual? Or, maybe it is both. Is there any way this can be bibilically proved or by good and necessary consequence be deduced from the Scriptures. And, is this a critical issue that believers should concern themselves with?
Also, can anyone compare and contrast what the Catholics thought grace consisted of compared to how the Reformers described grace?
And grace, however the Scriptures defined it, has to be the cause of faith, right?
John Yeazel: And grace, however the Scriptures defined it, has to be the cause of faith, right?
RS: In the Historical Introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will (pp. 58-59), written by Johnson and Packer (1957 edition), they assert that the real moving cause of the Reformation was the modergistic work of God in salvation. “Whoever puts this book down wihtout having realized that evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain. The doctrine of free justification by faith only, which became the storm-centre of so much controversy during the Reformation period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformer’s theology, but this is hardly accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centred upon the contention of Paul, echoed with varying degrees of adequacy by Augustine, and Gottschalk, and Bradwardine, and Wycliffe, that the sinner’s entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only. The doctrine of justifiction by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace; but it actually expressed for them only one aspect of this principle, and that not its deepest aspect. The sovereignty of grace found expression in their thinking at a profounder level still, in the doctrine of monergistic regeneration–the docrine, that is, that the faith which receives Christ for salvation is itself the free gift of a sovereign God, bestowed by spiritual regeneration in the act of effectual calling. To the Reformers, the crucial question was not simply, whether God justifies believers without works of the law. It was the broader question, whether sinners are wholly helpless in their sin, and whether God is to be thought of as saving them by free, unconditional, inviincible grace, not only justifying them for Christ’s sake when they cam to faith, but also raising them from the death of sin by His quickening Spirit in order to bring them to faith. Here was the crucial issue; whether God is the author, not merely of justification, but also of faith; whether, in the last analysis, Christianity is a religion of utter reliance on God for salvation and all things necessary to it, of of self-reliance and self-effort.”
JY, we are not saved by any reformation or even restoration of the ‘soul’. We are redeemed per the vicarious death and life of Jesus Christ. It’s an incredibly important distinction, and not to be a smart arse, but this is the good and necessary deduction of all redemptive history(scriptures). Here’s the WCF
Chapter XI. Of Justification
Section I.—Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.
Sean and Richard,
Let us not forget that our being is a most gracious gift of God. I would also remind you:
None of this contradicts WCF XI.
Don, What’s with the hedging your bet on this subject? JY’s question was regarding the interrelation between grace and faith and imputed righteousness for salvation. This is the soteriological ground of the reformation, the material principle if you will. This is what the WCF on justification specifically answers. If we need to condition this principle I’m not sure what the point of protestantism is.
sean: JY, we are not saved by any reformation or even restoration of the ‘soul’. We are redeemed per the vicarious death and life of Jesus Christ. It’s an incredibly important distinction, and not to be a smart arse, but this is the good and necessary deduction of all redemptive history(scriptures).
Here’s the WCF
RS: But before WCF XI, there is WCF X. Perhaps I am misunderstanding your point, but the sovereign pleasure of God in regeneration is not in contrast to the work of Christ or the application of Christ, but is at the heart of it.
WCF: Chapter X Of Effectual Calling
I. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed time, effectually to call,[1] by His Word and Spirit,[2] out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature to grace and salvation, by Jesus Christ;[3] enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God,[4] taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh;[5] renewing their wills, and, by His almighty power, determining them to that which is good,[6] and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ:[7] yet so, as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace.[8]
II. This effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man,[9] who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit,[10] he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it.
Richard, who said anything about contrasting X and XI ? We are not SAVED/REDEEMED per restoration or renovation. We are enabled to respond by faith to Christ. I’m amazed by the insistence to qualify justification.
sean: Richard, who said anything about contrasting X and XI ? We are not SAVED/REDEEMED per restoration or renovation. We are enabled to respond by faith to Christ. I’m amazed by the insistence to qualify justification.
RS: Who is trying to qualify justification? John asked this: “And grace, however the Scriptures defined it, has to be the cause of faith, right?” I gave a quote that I thought demonstrated that grace was the cause of faith. I didn’t see anywhere in the quote that it said that we were saved by restoration or renovation, and I still don’t. It just puts the focus on the sovereign grace of God in regeneration which precedes faith. In no way does it quality justification (at least as far as I can see), but is actually in line with WCF X which is certainly in line with XI.
Richard,
Must be a misunderstanding then because I was responding to this;
“Is this grace by which we are saved the imputation of Christ’s righteousness or something the Spirit does within the ontological being and makeup of the individual? Or, maybe it is both.”
And XI says this;………….Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them…………
sean: Richard, Must be a misunderstanding then because I was responding to this;
“Is this grace by which we are saved the imputation of Christ’s righteousness or something the Spirit does within the ontological being and makeup of the individual? Or, maybe it is both.”
RS: Ah, I thought you were responding to my quote from the Bondage of the Will and was completely lost as to why. I can now see why you responded the way you did. It makes perfect sense. Thanks for setting me straight.
And XI says this;………….Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them…………
Richard no setting straight going on, just clarification. Thanks.
John,
Is this grace by which we are saved the imputation of Christ’s righteousness or something the Spirit does within the ontological being and makeup of the individual? Or, maybe it is both. Is there any way this can be bibilically proved or by good and necessary consequence be deduced from the Scriptures. And, is this a critical issue that believers should concern themselves with?
That is a really good question, and I think it cuts at the heart of the difference of Protestants and Catholics on both human sin, and on how divine grace remedies the matter. I was just digging through Horton’s The Christian Faith to see how he addresses your question, and his subsections “Union With God Through the Soul’s Ascent Versus Union With Christ Through the Son’s Descent” and “Infused Habits” (pp. 605-12) in Chapter 18 “Union With Christ”. Here’s an excerpt that deals with the Thomistic/Roman position:
Don, CVT is still in the saddle at both Westminsters (though one of those seminaries wouldn’t see it that way because there CVT rides a white horse). At other Reformed seminaries, I believe CVT is less prominent and always has been.
Sean,
I am not trying to hedge or qualify what you refer to as the material principle of the reformation. I am only pointing out that it is God Who has given us our being, and He alone that can revive our will, which due to the fall was oriented on our glory, not God’s.
Don, here’s Packer;
“It has been common since Melanchthon to speak of justification by faith as the MATERIAL PRINCIPLE of the Reformation, corresponding to biblical authority as its formal principle. That is right. Of all the Reformers’ many biblical elucidations, the rediscovery of justification as a present reality, and of the nature of the faith which secures it, was undoubtedly the most formative and fundamental. For the doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas. It bears a whole world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of God the Saviour. The doctrines of election, of effectual calling, regeneration, and repentance, of adoption, of prayer, of the Church, the ministry, and the sacraments, are all to be interpreted and understood in the light of justification by faith, for this is how the Bible views them. Thus, we are taught that God elected men from eternity in order that in due time they might be justified through faith in Christ (Rom. 8:29f.). He renews their hearts under the Word, and draws them to Christ by effectual calling, in order that he might justify them upon their believing. Their adoption as God’s sons follows upon their justification; it is, indeed, no more than the positive outworking of God’s justifying sentence. Their practice of prayer, of daily repentance, and of good works springs from their knowledge of justifying grace (cf. Luke 18:9-14; Eph. 2:8-10). The Church is to be thought of as the congregation of the faithful, the fellowship of justified sinners, and the preaching of the Word and ministration of the sacraments are to be understood as means of grace because through them God evokes and sustains the faith that justifies. A right view of these things is possible only where there is a proper grasp of justification; so that, when justification falls, true knowledge of God’s grace in human life falls with it. When Atlas loses his footing, everything that rested on his shoulders collapses too.”
It ain’t me who coined it the ‘material principle of the reformation”, though I agree with it.
Sean,
Me too. Thanks for the quote.