Tuesday, February 28, A.D. 2012

Copts in Crisis

I hope that everyone is having a beneficial lenten season so far.

Last month, Robert Spencer published an article about the current troubles that the Copts are facing in democratic Egypt: “Requiem for the Third See of Christendom.” Spencer provides a brief history of the Alexandrine Church with some attention shown to the christological controversy that separates the Copts and the other non-Chalcedonian Christians from the Orthodox and from Rome.

Life in dhimmitude is always precarious. Foolish Westerners ought to consider the Copts; for the same fate may await Brits, Frenchies, Scandinavians, and Germans one day. The Hebrew scriptures offer many precedent situations wherein people who once followed God were delivered to enemies as a result of their apostasy. We should take heed.

May the Copts reclaim their freedom, may they convert their fellow Egyptians, and may they return to the Church in fulness.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, February 28, Anno Domini 2012
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Friday, January 27, A.D. 2012

The Pro-Life Cause, Orthodoxy, and Hope

Following the prolife theme of this week’s posts, I recommend that you read Matushka Frederica Mathewes-Green’s address, “The Pro-Life Cause, Orthodoxy, and Hope.” Matushka Frederica speaks of her own transformation from an abortion rights supporting feminist to a supporter of the prolife movement, and she lists some interesting selections from the fathers concerning abortion. Here are segments of her speech:

You may be surprised to learn that abortion was common in the ancient Roman Empire. The methods were more dangerous than today (I should say, more dangerous to the mother; every abortion is lethally dangerous to the child). But those methods were nevertheless used by women who wanted to conceal sexual activity, or who were forced to have abortions by their husbands and lovers.

The ancient, pagan world was a harsh one. Not only were children aborted before birth, but a newborn child was not officially received into a family until its father picked it up and held it. If the father didn’t want the child he simply refused to take it up, and the child was legally abandoned. This was called “exposing” an infant; it would be placed in some public place, and the social fiction was that someone else might pick it up and care for it. Sometimes people did take in these babies, and rear them to be sold as slaves or put on the street as prostitutes. But, often enough, no one took the child before it was found by dogs or other animals, or died of exposure and starvation.

And this was legal. It was a harsh world. Christians stood out as different, in that world. They were different in seeing every human being as worthy of dignity, whether free or slave, male or female, Jew or Gentile (as St. Paul said in Galatians 3:21). One of the big differences between Christians and pagans was that Christians did not have abortions. From the earliest years, the Church Fathers spoke against abortion. Let me read you some of their statements.

This is from the Didache, a work which was written about the same time as the Gospels: “You shall not murder a child by abortion.”

The Letter of Barnabas, written about the same time, repeats those words. “You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not murder a child by abortion.” Note the connection he makes there. This is not about sexual morality, it’s about loving your neighbor, who in this case is a helpless child.

The Letter to Diognetus, probably written around 125, describes to a nonbeliever what Christians are like. He writes, “They marry, as do all others; they beget children, but they do not abort fetuses.”

The Apocalypse of Peter says that, in heaven, aborted children are cared for by an angel named Temlakos. He writes, “The children shall be given over to the caretaking angel Temlakos, and those who slew the children will be punished forever, for this is God’s will.”

Matushka Frederica continues:

Yet, even though the early Christians refused to participate in abortion, a terrible rumor circulated about them in those days. You know that, in the centuries when Christianity was illegal, some parts of our faith were kept secret and not shared outside the community of believers. For example, the Holy Mystery of the Eucharist was something only baptized Christians knew about, and it was never spoken about to nonbelievers. We still say, in the pre-communion prayer of St. John Chrysostom, “I will not speak of your mystery to your enemies.”

Yet rumors started to circulate that Christians were cannibals. There was a story going around that in Christian worship a baby was put inside a sack of flour and beaten to death, and then eaten. Well, if you thought people in your neighborhood were doing that as part of a religious ritual, you’d want to see them executed too. And you can see how the rumor is a mixed-up version of our belief that Christ came to earth as a child, and that he gives us his Body and Blood in the Eucharist. So, many of the early Christians were martyred because they were thought to be child-killers and cannibals, and some early writers protest it’s a lie, Christians do no such thing, while it’s pagans who commit abortion and expose newborns.

Minucius Felix wrote, around 200 AD, “I would like to meet the person who says …that we [Christians] are brought into the faith by means of the slaughter and blood of an infant. Do you think that it can be possible for such a tender little body to receive such fatal wounds? Is it possible for anyone to pour forth the new blood of a little child, scarcely come into existence? Nobody is capable of believing this—except the person who would do it. Yes, I see that you expose your newborn children to wild beasts and to birds, and at other times crush them to death. There are some women who drink medicines that extinguish the life of a child while it is still inside their body, and thus murder their own relative before they bring it forth.”

Tertulllian says that for Christians, “Since murder has been once and for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb. …To interfere with a birth is merely an earlier way of killing a person. It doesn’t matter whether you take away a life that has been born, or destroy one that is coming to birth.” (Apology 9:8) Elsewhere he wrote, “We hold that life begins with conception, and that the soul also begins at conception; life has its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.” (Apology 27)

St. John Chrysostom wrote, “Do you condemn the gifts of God, and fight against His laws? Childlessness is seen as a curse, but you seek it as though it were a blessing. Do you make the chamber of birth a place of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is formed to give life to perpetuate killing instead?” (Homilies on Romans 24)

St. Basil puts medicines that cause abortion in the same category as other kinds of killing. He writes, “The man or woman is a murderer who gives a potion, if the person that takes it dies from it. So also are they who uses a medicine to procure abortion; and so are those robbers who kill on the highway.”

Matushka further shows how our Orthodox appreciation for pre-natal life has scriptural and festal sources. She quotes the story of the Visitation in the Gospel of Luke, wherein Elizabeth exclaims at Mary’s visit,  “Why do I deserve such honor, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.”

Moreover, we celebrate not only the birthdays of Mary, John, and Jesus—September 8, June 24, and December 25, respectively—but also their conceptions—December 9 (a day later than the December 8 celebration for the Latins), September 23, and March 25, respectively. Christians have always been a people of and for life . . . and life more abundant.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, January 27, Anno Domini 2012
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Monday, December 19, A.D. 2011

How to Deal with Heretics

To those on the real old calendar, happy feast of Saint Nicholas!

Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church in Springdale, Arkansas has a brief summary of Nicholas’ life and work. Among the items listed is the famous episode at the Council of Nicea where Nicholas struck Arius for his blasphemy. Marc from Bad Catholic offers some amusing commentary “On the St. Nick Punch.” Though it is in indisputably bad taste, I enjoyed his caption for the painting of Nicholas’ strike: “BOOM! YOU JUST GOT KRIS KRINGLED SON!”

Three years ago when I wished everyone a “Happy Feast of Saint Nicholas,” I mentioned a movie about Nicholas that was due out the following year. Production has evidently stalled; the movie has not yet been released. Maybe the delay is due to funding or to the poor economy. However, Nicholas of Myra should eventually be released.

С праздником!

Posted by Joseph on Monday, December 19, Anno Domini 2011
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Friday, August 19, A.D. 2011

Mount Tabor

I wish those on the old calendar a blessed feast of the Transfiguration, as well as a happy birthday to my sister.

The gospels do not specify upon which mountain the Transfiguration occurred, though Christian tradition holds that it was Mount Tabor. Christians have made pilgrimages to the mount since antiquity, though the Mohammedans demolished all Christian edifices in the thirteenth century. Centuries later, the Ottomans allowed first the Franciscans and then the Orthodox to rebuild monasteries and temples on Mount Tabor. The site BibleWalks has pictures and information, and there is another page for the Orthodox Monastery of Saint Elijah.

Interestingly and coincidentally, my sister’s namesake has a historical connection to Mount Tabor, as recounted in the fourth chapter of the Book of Judges.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, August 19, Anno Domini 2011
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Friday, July 1, A.D. 2011

A New Family

I would like to wish every proper fortune and blessing for my brother and soon to be sister-in-law on their wedding. The expert on nuptial counsels for the past two millennia has been Saint Paul. From his letter to the Ephesians:

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;
Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;
Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

You may also profit from reading Saint John Chrysostom’s related homily on marriage.

May you have a happy life together, full of joy and good deeds!

Posted by Joseph on Friday, July 1, Anno Domini 2011
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Monday, May 23, A.D. 2011

Rome under the Arians

I often think about my gaps in historical knowledge, which are undoubtedly small when compared to my ignorance of which I am not even aware. One such topic involves the Roman Christians’ experience under Arian dominion. Many people mistakenly think that the Germanic invaders in late antiquity were pagans, but most of them were Arians who seem to have treated the conquered Catholic population with a good deal of mercy. I would like to know more about the occupation and how it affected the religious climate in Rome. I know that Roman popes and other Catholic bishops had extensive diplomatic relations with the Arian rulers, but I do not know if there was significant political pressure or persecution due to religious differences.

Much of the Arian controversy in the East was due to politics. Constantine’s heirs were Arians or Arian sympathizers, and the eastern empire was the more interesting half in the fourth century controversy. Non-specialists know a bit about the theological ragings in the East, while we do not hear much about the West. Why? The following are some uninformed but reasonable guesses.

—By the time of the Arian ascendency in the West, the Orthodox position had been solidly established and defended due to the theological work and conciliar decisions of the fourth century. Therefore, the Catholic populace in the West was dedicated to the Nicene formulation, and the Arians had no chance of convincing them otherwise.

—Likewise, we could say that the firm Orthodoxy of the Roman Church had never succumbed to Arianism from within—from influences internal to the empire. It is thus not surprising that the Romans never succumbed to Arianism from without.

—The Germanic Arians persisted in their (recent) ancestral commitment to Arianism for tribal reasons. Once they settled down and began to engage the issue theologically, they slowly converted to the Catholic Church.

—Similarly, the Germanic Arians were Arian for tribal reasons; Arian missionaries had converted their pagan tribes to a heretical form of Christianity. Their interest in Arianism was not theologically grounded. Therefore, when they took over Western lands, they did not do so to impose Arianism. They wanted riches and power. Like the Mongols, they could have been religiously tolerant because they were largely theologically apathetic. In the East, by contrast, the Arians were devoted to the cause for religious reasons.

—In the fourth century East, the Arians benefitted from the support of the established government and, quite often, ecclesial leadership. In the fifth century West, the Arians were foreign conquerors. The populace would have been more resistant to the “other.”

—The Germanic Arian invaders did not displace the population but only the imperial leadership. They did not have the numbers to transform Western lands into Arian bastions. The West remained Catholic just as England, after William’s invasion, retained its Anglo-Saxon language. Eventually, the Plantagenets adopted the conquered’s speech, and the Arians adopted the Catholic faith.

—The Germanic invaders were not prepared to run the civilization that they conquered. They had no spare time to invest in religious reformation.

—The Germanic Arians may not have seen the Catholic Church as inimical as the Arians in the East. For they were more recent converts to Christianity from a more primitive paganism than Greco-Roman paganism. Therefore, they may have been tolerant of the Catholics because they were more likely to identify Catholics as religious kinsmen when compared to the paganism of their recent past and of their contemporary cousins north of the Danube.

I would like to know more about the topic if anyone would like to suggest resources.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, May 23, Anno Domini 2011
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Friday, March 4, A.D. 2011

Kristor Poses Evil Problems

Kristor has responded to my “Before Choice” post:

I should like to clarify first that I do not think that Lucifer’s Fall was unconditioned, or arbitrary, or even blind. It was not wholly ignorant, for Lucifer was acquainted with goodness (in just the same way that the goodness of apples was quite familiar to Eve, before she took and ate the forbidden fruit). When he took a sinful course, he must have apprehended the good that was potential in it. Its defects must not have appeared to him as such, or he would never have taken it. Before he Fell, he was ignorant of evils, but knowledgeable about goods. This is the only way we can construe him as a rational being; and the same goes for Adam, and Eve. If we do not assume that they were ignorant of evil, then we are forced to the conclusion that their behavior in choosing it was purely arbitrary – just what you are rightly concerned to avoid.

We must remember that for creatures the middle term between absolute indeterminacy and complete predetermination is not excluded. There is such a thing as partial predetermination. So, behavior can be orderly without being wholly preordained. If it were not so, there would be no such things as creaturely decisions, or actions, or therefore sins.

As to the unintelligibility of evil, I think we are both indicating the same reality with different gestures.

The image of the boy writing badly, even with the master orthographer’s hand to guide him, is like my image of the baby thrashing on the changing table. The errant movements of the baby or the boy are not chaotic, or unconditioned, or arbitrary, or irrational, or unintended, or wickedly motivated, or even inherently evil; they are merely errant, and error may wreak either good or ill.

Now, whether we name the original factor of that error “ignorance,” as I do,  or refuse to name it, as you do,  either way we indicate a species of ultimately unintelligible evil, by using what is to gesture toward that which is not, and which cannot therefore be referred to directly (“ignorance” is in- “not” + gnarus “aware”). Whether by saying, “no-thing,” or by saying nothing, we both refer to the same unintelligible darkness. And there is no way to make sense of that darkness; no way to come up with an explanation for an innocent adversion thereto, that will enable us to understand how Lucifer could have come to a fully informed, rational conclusion ex ante that, mutatis mutandis, it was a good idea to sin. We agree that he could not have done so: you emphasize that to do so is impossible, in any case; I agree, and emphasize that he could not therefore have had the equipment to do so.

But this introduces a deeper problem. Consider first that ignorance is a defect of being, for ignorance is lack of information – is, i.e., formlessness; that same formlessness endemic to unconditioned prime matter: tohu wabohu, formless and void, as Genesis has it. And a thing is unintelligible in itself to the extent that it is deficiently formed – that, i.e., it is less than fully formed. But how could tohu wabohu ever have come to pass? Or, how could any tiny bit of formlessness have come to pass? How could there be a defect of form anywhere? If God exists, how can anything that is be less than perfectly formed, according to its nature? For, to be at all is to be informed by God; and to be informed by God at all is to be informed by him through and through.

Put another way: given God’s infinity, and the consequent utter pervasion everywhere of his uncreate Light, how can there be darkness anywhere, of any kind? The Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. But, how could there ever have been any darkness in the first place, given the eternal presence everywhere of that Light?

So we see that the Problem of the Fall is just a special case of the Problem of Evil. Given the possibility that he might do evil, and given the fact that, as you say, there is no way to understand evil in itself, we can see how Lucifer might have done it without fully understanding what he was getting himself into (is it even possible, metaphysically, for a creature ever to understand fully what he is getting himself into, beforehand?). We see how it could happen, even though it doesn’t make any sense, and can’t make any sense. Fine. But if God exists, how could there be even a possibility of doing evil? If God exists, how could there be such a thing as unintelligibility or ignorance, anywhere?

God cannot prevent non-god. Being as such cannot prevent non-being. Indeed, being entails the possibility of non-being: if there is a thing, then there is an alternative to that thing, while if there is no thing at all, then there is no alternative thereto, either. If there are no numbers at all, then there is no 0. But if there is 1, then there is 0 (I know, I know: 0 is not nothing; the analogy to the numbers is metaphorical, rather than strict). Thus the question why there is something rather than nothing is nonsense; unless there were something, there could not even be nothing. But given that there is something, then necessarily there is the possibility of something else; and the alternative to being as such is non-being. Thus the mere fact of God’s existence entails the possibility of non-existence.  God cannot, then, create a world that is not subject to the risk of evil, just as he cannot create a stone that he cannot lift. NB that it is not a defect in God that he cannot actualize nonsense. Thus evil is not a defect in his coding. We do not say that a coder is guilty of writing bad code because his program does not do something that the very logic of the programming language disallows.

The risk of creaturely evil, then, is entailed by the existence of God; and this would be so, even were there no creatures. So, the option of evil was necessarily open to Lucifer ab initio; it was not an extra added feature that God threw into the mix. And since evil was metaphysically unintelligible to Lucifer prior to his sin, he could intend evil in a non-arbitrary way without having any rhyme or reason to rationalize his decision: in that decision was no pattern, no logic or order, but rather the absence thereof. That being the case, there is no explanation for what he did. All we can say of Lucifer’s sin is that he could do it, and he did do it.

The problem of the fall is indeed part the larger problem of evil, and I confess that I do not know how to approach the unapproachable, unintelligible puzzles thereof. Insofar as we can lay the groundwork for an understanding of evil, I am anxious that we do not betray a few basic principles—namely, that God is good, that evil has no being of its own, and that evil is not a necessary constitutive aspect of reality. People may think that the “unintelligible, uncaused, uncausing” approach to the problem is a dereliction of philosophical duty, but I subscribe to it, as unsatisfying as it is to our minds that naturally seek to understand, because it holds an “apeironic” space where I cannot see a rational explanation. It is a parenthesis of ignorance, and while that troubles me, I see no way to resolve it. To use the imagery of groundwork, again, I would rather have somewhat disjointed architecture due to the refusal to build upon bad and unstable land than the construction of an impressive edifice upon a rickety foundation. I judge modernity to be the latter, and to keep its consequent building from toppling over constantly requires ever new methods in rigging supports. Ultimately, collapse will occur, and each brilliant, novel support beam is merely a delay of the inevitable. In mentioning this, I am not stating that Kristor’s approach warrants the same fate; I just do not know how do you solve a problem like evil (I would much rather spend time bothering with less burdensome quandaries, like Maria Rainer).

As an aside, I think that we ought to distinguish between non-being and nothing as I argue in “Imperfection”:

A cantankerous metaphysician might claim, following old Parmenides, that the world is really a confused mixture of being and non-being. Things asserted to be are not just as they are. If you make any positive statements about anything formal or particular, you simultaneous and implicitly assert that they are not many other things. The even is not odd, and the pear is not an apple. Each being is not everything else. Hence, reality demands both being and non-being. From the Eleatic to Plato’s Sophist to today, we can see how such a statement makes sense.

Yet, I claim that non-being in the sense of negation within the matrix of reality is not the same as nothingness—evil or anti-being—which is the negation of being as such. God is the source of being and non-being, but we ought not to claim that God is the source of nothingness. That would indicate that God’s act of creation is paralleled, Hindu-style, with God’s act of destruction—and not creative destruction, by the way. Such a cosmic view makes good and evil equal forces from their transcendent source beyond good and evil, the dualism of which annihilates all of our ethical views where we privilege being over nothingness.

As with my different levels of imperfection, I risk irritating some folks due to my “Christianist” tendencies; yet I think that these two meanings of non-being and nothing are distinct. Negation has an intelligible role in affirmation. Similarly, what the Aristotelians call potentiality is an intelligible sort of non-being. Even the concept of pure non-being, as in pure potentiality or Aristotelian “prime matter,” ought not to pose a problem for us. Its unintelligibility results from its formlessness, but its particular kind of formlessness has meaning and a role in the cosmic whole. For I suppose that I am another happy parricide against the venerable Parmenides. The world is a hierarchy of being, and such an order requires the more intelligible and the less intelligible. Pure possibility, perhaps תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ from Genesis, may be a requisite for the world of becoming—the counterpart to pure being, which I take to be the energies of God. For formlessness is a necessary condition of creation—of being’s manifesting its image in time and space in a necessarily imperfect world. I distinguish such imperfection, and its unintelligibility, from evil and its unintelligibility . . . condemning myself to be a little bit more Bonaventuran and a little less Plotinean than Platonic purists would like.

Here are the previous posts for this thread:

“Orthodoxy and Evolution”

“Kristor on the Fall”

“Evil Christians”

“Unde Malum”

“Kristor Promotes Ignorance”

“Kristor Elucidates the Darkness”

“Before Choice”

Posted by Joseph on Friday, March 4, Anno Domini 2011
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Tuesday, March 1, A.D. 2011

Before Choice

Forgiveness Sunday approaches, when we commemorate the exile of our race from paradise. It is timely, then, to consider the fall. Several posts from the past two weeks have examined this unfortunate marring of creation, and I am grateful to Kristor for his offered insight. Indeed, Arimathea has been having its own Kristorfest, which sounds like a real tradition. Imagine pious, young women dancing on the midsummer feast of Saint John in a Scandinavian village. That does sound appealing. Anyway, Kristor holds that the fall can be traced to ignorance (“Kristor on the Fall”), and I object to his thesis by arguing that all attempts to give an account of evil are mistaken; for evil is unintelligible because it has no being of its own (“Unde Malum”). Evil is a parasite of being, and there is no reason for it. To provide an account for evil is to make it intelligible, which is to make it good and therefore not evil. Kristor responds by noting that creatures of limited understanding could not know the wages of sin before sinning, and thus the fall was a result of ignorance (“Kristor Promotes Ignorance” and “Kristor Elucidates the Darkness”). He moreover argues that one cannot sincerely assert as true that which one knows is false, which would have been the case in the fall if we do not attribute it to ignorance. If I follow Kristor’s argument, I think that he means that Adam’s act of disobedience in choosing another good beside God had to be the result of ignorance. For unfallen Adam could not have intentionally asserted a metaphysical falsehood–that is, that the self is to be preferred over God.

Kristor freely gives many gems. I already mentioned my joy at his connecting God’s redemption of fallen creatures to God’s creation of the world ex nihilo. I also found Kristor’s analysis of sin quite useful:

But I don’t think that this sort of understanding amounts to comprehension of evil in its essence, there being no such thing out there to comprehend. It amounts only to recognition of a shared misadventure. In that sense, only, do we “understand a mistake due to ignorance.”

“A shared misadventure”–perspicacious! Kristor’s explanation of the Platonic doctrine of recollection is one of the best summary descriptions that I have seen. Like a true disciple, he exhibits that synoptic vision of the master. Furthermore, Kristor’s connecting recollection with the discursive nature of human reason is very insightful.

Nonetheless, I still reject his overall thesis for the same reasons that I presented in “Unde Malum.” Evil is unintelligible, and efforts to uncover the causes of evil cannot succeed. I do not dismiss Kristor’s arguments, but I think that they apply on a level epiphenomenal to the inscrutable moment of evil. I do not like the term epiphenomenal here, but I do not know how to describe it better. Let me lay some preliminary stonework to the explicative outhouse that I wish to build.

I agree with Nietzsche’s observation that there is no “self,” but rather a multitude of selves populate our psyche. We see the same insight in the Platonic dialogues, where Socrates describes the soul as a complex structure of rational, thumotic, and appetitive forces. I think that such comports with experience. One of my favorite images in the Republic depicts the soul as the little, rational man, the thumotic lion, and the many headed beast, each head of which represents a different appetite. Our experience of our soul is not of a simple unity but of an often tumultuous crowd, the various elements of which pull us in different directions. One of our goals in life is to cultivate virtue and harmony of soul such that the little rational man is able to rule the entire soul. We ought to subject our passions to our nobler, rational selves. This multiplicity of the soul relates to one of the great insights of the Republic–that man, or at least fallen man, has a contradictory nature such that earthly fulfillment is impossible. To satisfy one part of the soul is to starve or to cripple another part of the soul. As such, we must prioritize and regulate ourselves accordingly.

I was discussing this multitudinous aspect of the soul recently with my friend Andrew, which then led to a discussion of the will. Andrew stated that the Western conception of the will as its own unified faculty originates in Augustine’s writings. For the pre-Augustinian ancients, the will is a complexity of deliberative and appetitive drives, the strongest of which wins and determines our choices. Nietzsche makes similar points when he notes that what we call the self is that strongest or most dominant part of the soul with which we identify ourselves. That favored part becomes the “real me,” though this ego changes as we develop, and we are rarely aware of this transition. I think that this makes sense, and it reflects my own experience, as well.

I find this complex understanding of the self and consequently of the will a superior alternative to the commonplace understanding of the will as an absolute, independent, undetermined faculty of choice. Such a view makes the will unintelligible and creates moral difficulties that appear unresolvable. For if the will is so absolutely independent, then whether it chooses one thing or another seems utterly arbitrary. If it is truly arbitrary, then the actions of agents–who are normally seen as moral agents–become unintelligible. There is no rational account for why such a disconnected will would choose this rather than that. When a religious tradition makes God such a disconnected will, then good and evil and all of reality become unintelligible–the undecipherable product of unintelligent and unintelligible caprice. More modest problems result from seeing men in such a way. For how are certain choices “good” and praiseworthy while other choices are “bad” and blameworthy if the act of choosing itself is separate from other considerations. These choices become good or bad after the fact, which appears to me to be an oddly basic form of consequentialism.

In contrast, let us see the human soul as a multitude of forces that aim for various objects according to their nature. In a virtuous, good soul, there is an order where, in Socratic terms, each element does its proper job and where the internal rule of the soul follows the true hierarchy of goods. In such a soul, there is no unintelligible choosing. Rather, the soul, as a collective of ends and desires, is ruled by its highest deliberative faculties that choose based upon knowledge of the good and, as we exist in a particular time and place, of circumstances. Such a virtuous soul could still be mistaken, given limited knowledge, but the mistakes would not be moral errors.

This model of the soul and of the will is also useful for understanding human freedom. We are not blank slates that create our own goods. Rather, rational souls differ from subrational souls due to the presence of the rational faculty in them. Both men and beasts seek the good by nature, but for men, the seeking of the good occurs through reason. Some people commonly think that freedom of the will means that we can choose whatever in the sense of the unconditioned, undetermined will previously mentioned. Were that true, then evil choosing would only be evil in its consequences; the act of choice itself would be morally neutral. I find such unacceptable. Instead, man is determined by reason just as a bee is determined by instinct. Both men and bees sometimes err, however. Men fail in their reason, and bees fail through a corruption of instinct. The rational aspect of the failure in the former we consider a moral failing, whereas we attribute no such sin to the latter. Why? If we judge so because we “chose” not to follow reason, then why did we choose so? It seems that such bad choices follow from a disorder in the soul. We can see how such disorder occurs in the life of man. Aristotle’s ethical observations aptly detail the formation of virtue and deformation of vice in the human soul, where upbringing and choices have enormous consequences for our characters. Such failings ultimately follow from the fall. I fully agree with Kristor when he notes that evil anywhere taints everything. We participate in each other’s sin locally and cosmically, further distorting the order of the world and of our souls. Man is the microcosm, and our sinful soul mirrors the tarnished creation.

If we look at the original act of the fall, we cannot trace back to any problematic moral dominoes that serve to corrupt Adam (to say nothing of the angels, the psychic order of which is unknown to us–unless we attribute Adam’s fall to that malevolent influence). It is concerning this moment that Kristor writes of evil:

. . . if a thing is absolutely unintelligible to us, is it not metaphysically impossible for us to know anything about it? And does not that metaphysical ignorance suffice to provide for the possibility that we might turn toward it, without knowing what we were doing?

According to Kristor’s argument, unfallen man, in his state of ignorance, blindly chose B instead of A, thereby condemning our race to perdition. I disagree, and I would like to explain better my earlier statement,

That any unfallen creature would turn away from its source and prefer the lower to the higher seems to follow another trajectory than trying the unknown because it is unknown. For the choice is not an arbitrary one, as between unknown paths. Rather, it is the deliberate rejection of the source of being for nothingness.

The various parts of our soul have their objects by nature. They are not undetermined or unconditioned; as I previously noted, I reject that conception of human freedom. I do not think that we are wills wandering blind in the darkness of an unknown world. Rather, to use a geeky image, I think that we are “programmed” souls, though our code becomes increasingly corrupt as a result of bad input and the consequent processing mistakes. It is impious to hold that Adam would originally have had bad code. For his malfunctioning and corrupted code could be attributed to bad design (God’s fault as the initial code writer), viral input (Satan’s fault), or, my position, nothing . . . the fall is unintelligible.

Furthermore, though evil is corrosive and worsens the disorder in the human soul, we still see men at times revert to their proper functioning. This is perhaps related to Kristor’s observation, “Now notice that at its very inception from God, every occasion of existence is innocent.” We should expect such; the soul by nature seeks its ends. It is the disorder that should trouble us. For man is not an independent fact of existence; he relies on God for everything. Our choosing is not free in the sense that we write our own stories. Rather, we are like schoolboys who write with the Lord’s hand on ours, unable to move the pen on our own. God animates our hand so that we write. It is truly God’s writing, and it is truly our own writing, though in a derivative sense. Mysteriously, however, we have the power, though it is not a positive but a negative power, to thwart our master’s guidance, which then distorts our orthography. We continue to leave a line of ink only because God continues to move our hand, but the inelegant scribbles are the unintelligible results of our unintelligible uncooperation.

I think that this image helps to resolve the Augustinian and Pelagian knots that other models of human nature make. We are because God is (or rather because God manifests being). We do because God does. We are free in the sense that God provides us with reason so that we allow him to move us. That we may prove recalcitrant creatures is unanswerable. It is not that we inexplicably choose B (to disobey God) instead of A (to obey God). Rather, there is no choice at all. There is no assertion, metaphysical or otherwise. What we perceive as sinful choice, along with all the profound moral insight and analysis relevant to that choice, from Socrates to MacIntyre, is epiphenomenal to this prior mystery of the soul. Such is what I meant when I wrote that the choice to turn from the source of being to nothingness is not arbitrary. We are by nature oriented toward being. To direct ourselves in any other direction defies our own nature. Lucifer’s rebellion would have been an unintelligible act of violence, and so for every subsequent act of affirming nihilism. The regularity of it and our familiarity with it dull the shock, but evil still horrifies and disorients us. It is the blackness that cannot be seen.

Here are the previous posts for this thread:

“Orthodoxy and Evolution”

“Kristor on the Fall”

“Evil Christians”

“Unde Malum”

“Kristor Promotes Ignorance”

“Kristor Elucidates the Darkness”

Update: My interlocutor responds in “Kristor Poses Evil Problems.”

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, March 1, Anno Domini 2011
Orthodoxy • Patristics • Scripture • Non-Chalcedonianism • Protestantism • Roman Catholicism • (0) Comments • Permalink

Friday, February 25, A.D. 2011

Kristor Elucidates the Darkness

I asked Kristor to flesh out the arguments that he made in “Kristor Promotes Ignorance,” wherein he claimed that we need ignorance to explain homo lapsus lest we fall for unacceptable metaphysical positions. He complied:

Here is an explication of the three jumps that occurred early in my last, that I thought each called out for some explanation. I apologize for the fact that it wanders a bit, and repeats itself from time to time. I apologize also for its great length. Rather than being a coherent, economical piece of argumentation, it is the record of an exploration of new territory, in which I encountered a number of new insights. Each time that happened, I saw fit to connect the novel concept back to what had gone before, and that had prepared its ground. That process in turn yielded new fruits. As you will see, what follows is itself an example of the stepwise, stumbling exploration of conceptual space that it discusses.

These are the three jumps:

1.  How is the unintelligibility of evil related to the Socratic doctrine that ignorance is the factor of vice?
2.  How is it that if ignorance is not the factor of vice, anamnesis is false?
3.  How would the falsehood of the Socratic doctrine of anamnesis undermine the Aristotelico-Thomistic doctrines of Divine omnipotence and necessity?

Jump 1 is rather straightforward for anyone passing familiar with Platonism, I think. Perhaps I don’t need to spell that one out. Oh, what the hell, I ought to be thorough. If evil is utterly unintelligible, then ex ante ignorance about it is metaphysically necessary for any non-omniscient being: there is, metaphysically, no possible way that a non-omniscient being who has not yet experienced the wages of sin could even begin to know what they are, in any concrete way. Such an innocent being would not understand why it was a bad thing to be alienated from God, or to die, or to suffer, because all of those concepts (including “bad”) would be to such a creature utterly meaningless, incommensurable with anything he had ever known. For before he Fell, he would have known only unalloyed good. And as you pointed out, there is no way to make sense of evil in terms of good; but, unfortunately, there are no other terms available to us, whatsoever; the only terms we can possibly use – and this is an analytical truth – refer to gradations of Good. Evil is non-being, and what is not cannot be denoted by reference to itself, but only by reference to what it is not. That’s why we call it “no-thing.” So, there is no way to explain pain to someone who is utterly unfamiliar with it. To someone who has never seen green, but has seen red, we can say, “green is a color, the way red is a color, but different.” Our interlocutor will have some notion, however inexact, of what we mean by “green,” or at least of what sort of thing we mean by the term. But someone who has never seen at all will have no idea what we are talking about in saying “green” and “red,” and we will have no way to explain it to him. So with pain. Someone who has suffered burns, but never a broken bone, can have some idea how much a compound fracture would hurt. Someone who had never suffered would find suffering as such inconceivable. “Suffering” and “pain” would be empty categories to such a one – unless he were omniscient, and had always known what they signified.

An unfallen creature who knew what evil is like would never decide to Fall; but no unfallen creature can know what evil is like. So, Socrates is correct that ignorance of the true nature of vice, and therefore ipso facto also of virtue, is the source of our first turn to the former from the latter.

Jump 2 is harder.

There is a common objection to the doctrine of anamnesis, that asks, “If all of us already implicitly know all about trigonometry, why is trig so hard to learn? Why do we have to learn it at all? Why don’t we all just know it, without having to think about it and puzzle over it? The fact that we must in fact work very hard to understand trig means that we don’t all know from the get go about trig, or by extension about virtue and vice.” Now, this objection is easy to answer: that we know or instantiate all the eternal truths implicitly, by virtue of our mere participation in being, does not mean that we know or instantiate them all explicitly. One can’t be all things: one can’t wholly embody all the truths about vegetables, and also embody the truths about animals. Only some truths are compossible to, or in, a finite being. So also with a finite rational intellect: it cannot contemplate all truths at once, but must treat of them a few at a time, seriatim, and stepwise parse their relations, that stretch out infinitely far into the limitless conceptual distance. Such is our predicament, as worldly creatures.

St. Thomas argued that angels needn’t undertake this laborious process of ratiocination in order to know truths; he thought they knew all truths simultaneously and directly, by being in that relation to God proper to their natures – by being, that is, always immaculately turned toward him in love, worship and adoration. Directing their gaze unremittingly toward God, they directed their gaze toward the entirety of truth. Apprehending him, they apprehended that entirety in a single glance. And this is perhaps what the saints enjoy in the Beatific Vision. They see everything, both eternal and contingent, all at once. So, a finite being can know all the truths only by virtue of apprehending them in God. Thus to see all things through God, is to be unworldly. An unworldly being may participate in a world, of course, as the angels participate in ours, or the saints participate in Heaven; but does so through God. Unworldly creatures are oriented – an apt word – toward God, and their adaptation to a world is a derivate of that orientation.

For worldly beings, the relation is reversed. Worldly creatures are adapted to a world, and their orientation toward God is a derivate of that adaptation. They may enjoy the Beatific Vision, but they must do so by means of participation in a world – they must climb a Jacob’s Ladder. This is by no means an impossible feat, for everything that is tells the Glory of God. This is the Doctrine of General Revelation; and the factual truth of that Doctrine is in the first place the basis of our capacity as creatures to repent and turn to God. We are fitted to God, as wax to the mold; mens capax dei. In the second place, it is the basis of anamnesis. Thus natural theology, nature mysticism, and natural science all have a shot at genuine verisimilitude, and may offer access to truth, in just exactly the same way that human mathematicians have a shot at true mathematical insight. Nor, therefore, is sinfulness entailed by worldliness. Heaven is, after all, also a world. But the difficulty for worldly beings is that they are distracted by their prior attention to other creatures from the direct apprehension of all truth in God. Thus distracted, their vision is obscured; they see through a glass only, and darkly. This limitation of their vision does not entail their Fall, but does make it possible, and indeed not unlikely.

Furthermore, one needn’t turn first from unworldliness to worldliness in order then to Fall. Lucifer did not. He Fell from Heaven directly. All that is needed, in order to Fall, is creaturely freedom – or rather, technically, license – and ignorance of sin’s actual meaning – i.e., of its experiential character.

So far, so good: anamnesis has withstood that challenge. Worldly beings can know only a portion of the eternal truths at any one time. Thus it is impossible for worldly creatures to attain complete simultaneous comprehension of trigonometry, or of virtue and vice. No matter how much they may be able to comprehend at any one time, they cannot comprehend the whole of math, virtue, or vice. How could it be otherwise, since, as I pointed out in my last, no creature can simultaneously comprehend even the truths at work even in an internal combustion engine?

But NB that while “worldly creature” is not just a way of saying “Fallen creature,” nevertheless any creature of our world is ipso facto a bit infected with the Fall. Even the good and faithful subatomic particles that constituted Hitler’s body were forced by their fidelity to that portion of the Logos proper to their nature to a complete cooperation with his monstrous evil. A causal order requires of the creatures participant therein that they should account for each other, fully; only thus may a coherent world be stitched together. So, an evil particle anywhere in a coherent causal order queers the whole shooting match. All the other particles thereof are deflected from their paths toward the Good by the inertial influence of an evil particle. This is how all of us are infected ab initio by Original Sin. Original Sin is not at first our own; but we do inherit it, so that it is an aspect of our natural, Fallen constitution.

Now notice that at its very inception from God, every occasion of existence is innocent. So long as a novel occasion attends first to God – so long as it loves the LORD our God with all its heart, soul, mind and body – it will not Fall. But if such a novel occasion is taking up its place in a Fallen world, it will participate in that world’s Fall, by virtue of the necessity imposed upon it by its participation in any given world, that it conform itself to the causal order thereof. And to participate in a Fallen world is to forget God, at least a bit. It is to forsake the Beatific Vision. And this is something that a novel creature could elect for itself only on account of its ignorance of the full meaning of its decision.

The Fall is not just something that happened at the very beginning of things, that doomed all subsequent occasions, although it is that indeed. No. It is more. Like creation, the Fall is reiterated at each new moment. For think of it: what is it that prevents the world as a whole from a decision to repent completely of its sinful past, and turn to the LORD, right now, right this very minute? Nothing. Any creature may turn to God at any time, and live. So, all creatures could thus turn. They do not. The evil order of this world perdures. And this happens because the Fall is reiterated by each new creaturely occasion of this world. Such reiterations can occur only because each new creature, as wholly innocent at its inception, is ignorant ex ante of the consequences that must follow from a decision to Fall. Any creaturely occasion that fully comprehended the consequences for itself of a Fall from Grace would remain obedient; but no creature that has not Fallen can fully comprehend the consequences of such a Fall. No innocent creature is competent to such a decision.

How, then, is all this related to anamnesis?

The necessary integrity of all truths requires that the Socratic doctrine of anamnesis be true. Nothing can exist that does not implicitly express the whole truth. So, any truth is in principle necessarily available to the introspection of any existent being. But, finite creatures must ratiocinate in order to apprehend truth, and may err in so doing. They are, therefore, necessarily ignorant of the whole truth.

Yet when they discover the truth – and by “truth” I mean now metaphysical truth of the sort that Plato understood as the only object of what could properly be called “knowledge” – they find it completely compelling. Once grasp a truth, and thenceforth the notion of believing otherwise is impossible to entertain seriously, the effort to carry through upon it perverse and pointless. To see what I mean, try earnestly to believe with all your heart that 2 + 2 = 5.

This happens because the achievement of new knowledge is the recognition of truths we had already implicitly expressed by our very being. So, the compulsion that a truth discovered exerts upon us is a measure of the agreement engendered by our faithful credence therein, between our rational will and our whole being, and indeed between that will and being as such. When we learn a truth, we discover what we have always enacted by our very existence, but without ever having explicitly recognized the fact. Learning the truth, we learn more about who we truly are. We learn why we have acted always as in fact we have – and, often, why we have always wanted to act in a certain way, and failed.

If then it were really possible to disbelieve a truth once discovered, that would be tantamount to a bit of self-murder. It would be, not just amnesis, but amnesis undertaken willfully, purposely – undertaken, that is, in the full anamnetic knowledge that the undertaking of amnesis was not really meant, was a kind of lie. It would be a decision to embody falsehood and evil; but since these things don’t exist, that would make it an attempt to enact non-being. To enact non-being as such is not possible. Only positive goods can be enacted. Non-being cannot be instantiated.

And to intend amnesis would be to intend to instantiate non-being. It can’t be done. To demonstrate that this is so, try believing with all your heart that 2 + 2 = 5.

Here, then, is the reason that the falsehood of the Socratic doctrine that ignorance of truth is the factor of vice would entail the falsehood of the Socratic doctrine of anamnesis: if it were indeed possible to enact a contravention of a metaphysical truth, and really genuinely to believe that contravention after one had already discovered its falsehood, then that truth would not really be true, and one would not have embodied it implicitly from the get go, and thus would not already have known it implicitly, so as through anamnesis to discover it. If it is in fact possible for a fully informed being to disbelieve a metaphysical truth, then there just is no metaphysical truth, nominalism is true (despite the fact that “nominalism is true” is self-refuting), and knowledge in the Platonic sense – including anamnesis – is impossible.

So, in order to believe a contradiction of a metaphysical truth, an innocent creature would have to be ignorant of its truth. The only way to err, then, with respect to metaphysical truths – the truths of mathematics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, theology, metaphysics, and so forth – or to behave in contravention thereto, is on the basis of ignorance thereof.

This holds, NB, only for innocent beings. For beings who have already Fallen, the situation is much more complicated, and dire. For Fallen beings, it is quite possible to behave in contravention to the truth, despite their understanding thereof. Indeed, it is easy. God forgive me, I know this to be so. Operating under his own steam on the data of his history, a Fallen being cannot but replicate the Fall; cannot but destroy himself altogether in the end. Grace only can save such a one. Oh, LORD, make haste to help us.

On, then, to jump 3. How would the falsehood of the Socratic doctrine of anamnesis undermine the Aristotelico-Thomistic doctrines of Divine omnipotence and necessity? This one is really the most straightforward of the lot, once you have taken on board what I have just said about jump 2.

Being per se and all the truths thereof are both necessary and incontrovertible. If we could truly enact a metaphysical falsehood – by, e.g., saying truly that “2 + 2 = 5” – this would not be so. In that case, there would be no metaphysical truths. And, if there were no metaphysical truths or metaphysical necessities – these are just two different ways of indicating the same reality – then there would be, not only no Divine necessity or omnipotence, but no God.

There is much here to mine. I shall attempt to respond to at least some of Kristor’s points soon. Until then, please reflect, in all the good meanings of the word.

Here are the previous posts for this thread:

“Orthodoxy and Evolution”

“Kristor on the Fall”

“Evil Christians”

“Unde Malum”

“Kristor Promotes Ignorance”

Update: See my response with “Before Choice,” followed by “Kristor Poses Evil Problems.”

Posted by Joseph on Friday, February 25, Anno Domini 2011
Orthodoxy • Patristics • Scripture • Non-Chalcedonianism • Protestantism • Roman Catholicism • (0) Comments • Permalink

Monday, February 21, A.D. 2011

Kristor Promotes Ignorance

Lapsarian loquaciousness lingers here on Arimathea, as Kristor graciously invests his considerable talents to help us understand the fall. For the full background thread of this post, please see “Orthodoxy and Evolution,” “Kristor on the Fall,” “Evil Christians,” and “Unde Malum.” Kristor has responded to my criticism in “Unde Malum,” and he defends his theory that the fall occurred due to ignorance. I need some time to think about his response, but I would like to share his argument as today’s entry. I am not posting Kristor’s genteel introduction because my narcissism requires starvation rather than indulgence.

. . . Over many years of wrestling with this issue, I had finally arrived at ignorance as the only possible way by which the first sin could have happened. I have never been wholly satisfied with the notion, but then I have never found anything else nearly so adequate. And it seems to me that there must be a way to make sense of the Fall; for after all, it happened: it is an actual fact of being, and since being is intelligible, this fact too must be somehow intelligible. I agree with you about the utter unintelligibility of evil, yet it seems to me that its unintelligibility is deeply connected with our ignorance. Indeed, I would suggest that they are coterminous. For, could Socrates have been just wrong about the pivotal role of ignorance in sin? Would that not make him wrong also about anamnesis? And would it not also make Aristotle and Aquinas wrong about the omnipotence and necessity of God?

But those are some pretty big jumps. Let me pull back, a bit. Let me sum up what follows by saying, simply: if a thing is absolutely unintelligible to us, is it not metaphysically impossible for us to know anything about it? And does not that metaphysical ignorance suffice to provide for the possibility that we might turn toward it, without knowing what we were doing?

What is, is ipso facto intelligible. To the extent then that a thing is existentially depraved, that depravation is in itself unintelligible. As you say, we reckon the defect of a thing by reference to the perfection of its nature. That part of the whole virtue of a man that is lost by his surrender to alcoholism is not known in itself. Rather we compare the remnant virtue of the fallen man to the virtue of the perfect man, and tot up their positive values, and then take note of the difference between the sums thereof. The drunk are slovenly, perhaps, and smelly; the sober, in general, not so much. So noting, we apprehend in either sort of men positive values, actual habits of becoming and properties of being. The drunkard’s depravation is unintelligible in se, and incalculable; the negative of virtue is just nothingness, which has no mete or measure. So, we cannot reckon it in our calculus of goods. How could it be otherwise? For non-being has no goods. And any depravation of being, however trivial, is through and through just a portion of sheer nothingness, no? It has no properties, for it does not exist to have them. So, it cannot be even apprehended, let alone comprehended. Indeed, it is immense; not that it is large, so much but that it is, in the original sense of “immense,”  immeasurable, incommensurable with anything that is. Thus the merest jot or tittle of sin is equal to the whole infinite difference between being and non-being; is an abyss without bottom. This is part – just one part – of the reason that only God had the ontological resources to redeem our fallen nature. God has the power to redeem sin because it is the power to create ex nihilo.

Alright: if evil is simply unintelligible, then it simply cannot be known; there is nothing about it that we can grasp, because there is nothing to it, at all. So, we cannot but be ignorant about it, ex ante. Indeed, even ex post, we cannot know it directly, but only by virtue of its consequences in the derogation of our being.

We all “understand” what it is like to err out of ignorance, because we have all done it. We are all ignorant. So we “see” how it could have come to pass for Satan, that he found himself in a state of sin, without having recognized beforehand what that would mean for him, what its consequences would be for his life. Indeed, it seems that this is the only way Satan could have found himself in such trouble; if he had known beforehand what he was getting himself into, his decision to get into it would be incomprehensible; indeed, it would be metaphysically impossible. But I don’t think that this sort of understanding amounts to comprehension of evil in its essence, there being no such thing out there to comprehend. It amounts only to recognition of a shared misadventure. In that sense, only, do we “understand a mistake due to ignorance.”

You say, “the choice is not an arbitrary one, as between unknown paths.” But it is. Because evil is utterly unintelligible, we could not have known the path of evil before we took it; and until we had taken it, we could not have known how precious our life was, by contrast, before we Fell. You can’t know what you’ve got, till it’s gone. Before we Fell, we understood neither the nature of the Fall, nor the full value and beauty of our innocent obedience.

And this, it seems to me, is why the myth of Eden puts the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil at the very center of the story, and of the Garden. Before Adam and Eve ate of that Tree, they were ignorant even of their nakedness; no alternative thereto had ever occurred to them. They had no idea why anyone would ever want to hide or cover anything in the first place. And their very first acts after they ate were to cover, and to hide. It cannot be that this crucial aspect of the myth indicates nothing at all to us about how the Fall happened. What does it tell us? Not having Fallen, Adam and Eve did not know what it was to Fall, and they did not, therefore, know that they had not Fallen.

Notwithstanding all that, can we make sense of the original decision to sin? Can we discover the inner logic that undergirded that decision? No. Nor did I mean to suggest that we could. The appeal to ignorance, rather, suggests that there is no order or logic to the original decision to sin, because it was, not a decision to sin – not a decision intentionally aimed at pain and death – but just to do something that was not yet fully understood. That decision was like the thrashing about of an infant, who by his thrashing rolls himself off his changing table, and so plummets to the floor. The baby’s thrashing is not disorderly or illogical – indeed, it may be an expression of overflowing joy, of pure untrammeled orderliness and goodness, so far as they may be expressed in a baby – but it is not informed, or therefore constrained, by knowledge of what a fall from the changing table could mean: it is ignorant of falling. It is ordered only by such simple, exquisite goods as he so far comprehends. The appeal to ignorance, then, just is an appeal to the ultimate unintelligibility of evil.

It is difficult, from our fallen perspective, to conceive of a state of utter ignorance of the wages of sin. But if the world is a creation of a perfectly good God, such a state was a metaphysical necessity for at least the first instant of the first creaturely career.

The abyss of evil in se is as sheer and dark to us as non-being. We may gaze into that abyss, but we can never see it. We cannot comprehend it, the way we comprehend intelligible things like engines or syllogisms.

Yet do we, when all is said and done, comprehend engines or syllogisms? No; what a vain conceit! They are intelligible, to be sure; but who has plumbed their uttermost depths?

But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me. … Whence then cometh wisdom? Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.

Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.

God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof. For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven; To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder: Then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out. And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.

Socrates agrees with Job: to depart from evil is understanding; so, to be evil is to want understanding.

I really appreciate the following point: “This is part – just one part – of the reason that only God had the ontological resources to redeem our fallen nature. God has the power to redeem sin because it is the power to create ex nihilo.” I have never considered that before, but I find it very insightful. I also like the clever teaming of Socrates with Job at the end. Maybe Plato did study with the Hebrews when he was in Egypt. I tend to think that he and his teacher received their inspiration more directly, but the spark of the divine is evident, regardless.

Update: Kristor explains his arguments more fully in “Kristor Elucidates the Darkness.” See my response with “Before Choice,” followed by “Kristor Poses Evil Problems.”

Posted by Joseph on Monday, February 21, Anno Domini 2011
Orthodoxy • Patristics • Scripture • Non-Chalcedonianism • Protestantism • Roman Catholicism • (0) Comments • Permalink