Books that Matter

R. R. Reno has a great post on "Books that Matter" at the First Things blog. Here are the last couple paragraphs, which I found wonderful:

Beware, then, reading solely for agreement. Few think their ideas to the end. Few write with the penetrating clarity necessary to see what is at stake in the beliefs we accept and reject. To see and know the full power and attraction of falsehood may be a necessary preparation for more fully accepting the truth. I do not deny that, in the end, beauty is one with truth and goodness. But in this life we are almost always a long way from the end.

Even the best books that convey the most reliable truths are not perfect. We cannot read our way to the Kingdom of Heaven. Golden books, whether great, semi-great, or unique to our strange intellectual and spiritual circumstances, are never pure. Only one book is without imperfection. But the Bible is not really a book at all. Golden books guide the mind and excite our desire for truth. The Bible does surgery on our soul. It shimmers with the living presence of the divine Word. We do not so much read as hear it. And in hearing, the sacred page does what no human book can do. It pierces our minds and hearts, cutting to the joints and marrow of our thoughts and intentions (Heb. 4:12).

Haunted by the Angelic Doctor

Semester Two of my graduate school experience has begun, and I'm beginning to notice a curious trend: Everywhere I go (in everything I read), I find some reference to Thomas Aquinas, his fellow scholastics, or the neo-scholasticism of de Lubac's and Danielou's nouvelle theologie. First, in my course on Chaucer, the scholastics (along with Jacques Maritain) played a central role in Eco's Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, offering what Eco terms a "unifying vision" of beauty in relation to truth, goodness, and the One. Then comes Bruce Holsinger's The Premodern Condition, in which Holsinger seeks to situate the French literary theoretic tradition within its broadly medieval framework--a task impossible without noting, for instance, Bataille's engagement with Danielou over a cup of tea regarding an article of his on Nietzsche. (Of course, there's also the fact that de Certeau was taught by de Lubac, and that Lacan himself engaged with Teilhard de Chardin, facts noted by Marcus Pound in a recent interview: http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=293).

Next, in my seminar on historicity, Henry Adams finds that his search for the historical roots of the Virgin's force lead him back to the scholastics (in "The Dynamo and the Virgin" from _The Education of Henry Adams_). Not to mention I'm planning on writing a paper on MacIntyre's notion of tradition for the course.

Furthermore, in my Romantic Atlantics class on trans-atlantic literature, an engagement with Benedict Anderson's _Imagined Communities_ provoked a thorough discussion of his conception of the secular and how it related to other conceptions, such as Charles Taylor's. Anderson's "empty, homologous time" is meaningless without its contrast to the "Messianic time" of Benjamin, which, it was argued, reached its peak in the Middle Ages and the time of the Scholastics. For the same class, finally, we just finished Scott's excellent (and underappreciated) novel _Guy Mannering: Or, the Astrologer_. The comic figure Dominie Sampson (the name should tip you off) is a sort of Scholastic lost in the wrong century, and he appropriately quotes from Latin theological sources and spends his days researching in his library of obscure works inherited from a Scottish bishop.

In short, I'm pleasantly confused as to whether, at this supposedly "secular" university, I'm receiving a more thorough education in literary scholarship or Sacra Doctrina!

Oakes on Pure Nature

Edward Oakes, writing on recent discussions within the Catholic Church on limbo, has a very helpful synopsis of the debate concerning human nature, in which Henri de Lubac was a chief participant. This synopsis came a little late for me, since I was introduced to the topic through John Milbank's The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural, which I hardly understood when I first read it last Christmas--an appropriate time to read a book on the relationship between grace and human nature. (I also picked up a copy of one of Lubac's key works on the subject, The Mystery of the Supernatural, at Loome a couple weeks ago.) So, here's Oakes:

"Parallel to this debate on limbo was another one concerning “pure nature.” If we grant that God created us all with a desire for union with him, does that not imply an “obligation” on his part to grant us the fulfillment of that desire, since he created us for union with him? But does that “obligation” on God’s part not in turn undermine the concept of the gratuity of grace, which says that God is under no obligation to grant what is freely his to give? Hence the concept of “pure nature,” which was, as everyone conceded, a purely theoretical distinction, made solely to guard the concept of gratuitous grace. But, as far as de facto creation went, Augustine himself says, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” And does not Thomas Aquinas say that “every intellect naturally desires the vision of the divine substance” (Summa Contra Gentiles III, 3)?

That of course is only one sentence from the vast sea of Thomas’ writings, and many other Thomists dispute the point, citing other texts. I cannot take a position on that debate here. All I want to say is that if Henri de Lubac is right in his book The Mystery of the Supernatural, then this conclusion inexorably follows:

It is said that a universe might have existed in which man, though without necessarily excluding any other desire, would have his rational ambitions limited to some lower, purely human, beatitude. Certainly I do not deny it. But having said that, one is obliged to admit—indeed one is automatically affirming—that in our world as it is this is not the case. . . . [Thus] the “desire to see God” cannot be permanently frustrated without an essential suffering. To deny this is to undermine my entire Credo. For is not this, in effect, the definition of the “pain of the damned”? And consequently—at least in appearance—a good and just God could hardly frustrate me, unless I, through my own fault, turn away from him by choice. The infinite importance of the desire implanted in me by my Creator is what constitutes the infinite importance of the drama of human existence.

This is hardly the place to resolve this extremely complex debate. I only wish to point out how many theological presuppositions come into play when theologians discuss the Eschaton in its relation to the sacraments, grace, free will, and sin (both original and personal)."

David Bentley Hart: "Nihilism and Freedom: Is There a Difference?"

Following is a summary of a recent lecture by David Bentley Hart here at the University of Minnesota, which I organized.

Before a crowd of roughly 75 U of M students, faculty, staff, and community members, David Bentley Hart offered a lecture last Thursday, March 22 on the topic of freedom and nihilism. He made clear at the outset that he was using the term “nihilism” not in a pejorative sense, but rather as a strictly technical philosophical definition: Nihilism as a fairly peaceful mode of existence that seeks to give up any claims to the desire to rule by force through metaphysical schemes, which ultimately destroy even God in their libido dominandi.

Hart sought to understand two competing notions of freedom in Western culture: How have we come to an understanding of freedom as the absence of strictures, as the glorification of will (and therefore nihilistic, since there is nothing higher than an individual’s will)? Why did we move away from the earlier understanding of freedom as a structure for choosing well, towards the good, in accordance with our nature? What, if anything, can be said in support of either definition of freedom?

As an aside, Hart mentioned that if the will is truly free, there’s no reason why it must remain confined to each individual person. We might, for instance, choose to refashion humanity in accordance with our utterly free will, something unthinkable in previous centuries.

Nietzsche’s story of the channeling of the gods into God and then into ourselves (with the subsequent “death of God”) and Heidegger’s tale of Christianity as one more attempt among many throughout the history of Western philosophy to master reality through a metaphysical scheme both have much to commend. The Christian tradition has, in fact, led us to our current nihilistic understanding of freedom.

But, Hart claims, this has not occurred for the reasons outlined by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Rather, our notion of the Christian God had, since the time of the scholastics, contained within itself the nihilism that would work itself out into our understanding of our own freedom as humans. In emphasizing God’s absolute will at the expense of focusing on his nature, scholastics such as John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham laid the groundwork for theological reflection throughout the centuries to come.

Rather than God being the eternal good, God has simply become the biggest individual around, and in exalting his absolute sovereignty, even regarding good and evil, we have sought to appropriate that same absolute freedom of will in our own lives. But to this God, Heidegger claimed, “man can neither pray nor make sacrifices,” and he must be abandoned. Hart stated that the godless thinking which has resulted from this abandonment of God is perhaps closer to the true understanding of God than the scholastics’ understanding, upon which both Catholic and Reformed theologies draw.

Hart concluded by affirming Heidegger’s recognition that our modern conception of freedom, nihilistic at its core, has to some degree resulted from the misguided voluntaristic turn of Christian theology. Before such theology, Hart emphasized, atheism is a preferable alternative.

The lecture concluded with a response by a University of Minnesota Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, Dr. Timothy Brennan. Dr. Brennan suggested that Hart's own reference to and conversation with Nietzsche and Heidegger was part of a trend within academic discourse which itself perpetuates the nihilistic culture Hart descried, by promoting a limpid individualism at the expense of substantial political engagement. A vigorous question and answer period closed out the evening.