"One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed or happy." - Aristotle (from Nicomachean Ethics) 

"The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride." - Sirach 7:8

_________________________________________________________________________

Part I. The Tendency of Things:

It was first argued by Aristotle of Stagira (albeit derivatively from his many predecessors) that humanity's ultimate pursuit is that of happiness, for everything is said to be worthwhile if it contributed to what left one not wanting. 

St. Thomas Aquinas, the great commentator of Aristotle, upped the ante on this notion of happiness as a kind of upper limit, reasoning how "Happiness is Man's supreme perfection." 

"Now each thing is perfect in so far as it is actual", Aquinas points out; "since potentiality without act is imperfect.  Consequently, happiness must consist in Man's final act."   

But, according to humanism (and, more recently trans-humanism), the ideologies of the modern age: nothing can transcend humanity and its projects themselves.  So, can this final act be Man himself?  Or, of some such "Technological Singularity" that surpasses that of Man? 

Here, the Angelic Doctor answers "no":

"If, then, we speak of Man's last end, it is impossible for Man's last end to be the soul itself or something belonging to it."

Why is that?  

"Because the soul, considered in itself, is as something existing in potentiality: for it becomes actually knowing from being potentially knowing; and actually virtuous from being potentially virtuous. 

Now since potentiality is for the sake of act as for its fulfilment, that which in itself is in potentiality cannot be the last end. 

Therefore the soul itself cannot be its own last end."

To phrase it more simply, that which is capable of being acted upon (i.e. growing, developing, even "evolving" towards some kind of newer or higher form, etc.), even if reflexively upon itself through development in relation to the world around it is still by its own merits and powers incapable of realizing its own finality.  Otherwise, it could bypass all of those steps and arrive at its appointed end in the supreme realization of itself independent of any steps in time, i.e. in aeternitatis, or "in Eternity."   

[A major hint here: that which is bound by time cannot be "perfect" (and thus lacking nothing) because it is subject to change which implies that the "optimal" has not and cannot been fully attained; for Aristotle and Aquinas, any form of impermanence or temporality implies a lacking of sorts, namely with respect to being.].

To conclude: that which can change, alter, and adjust cannot by its own nature determine when it shall rest. 

Other determinants will shape that outcome.  For a flower, it will be the supply of water, nutrients, and sunshine.  For a song, it will be the tuning of the instrument or the competency of the instrumentalist.  For a baseball game, it will be either the remaining daylight or a winning run at the bottom of the 9th+ inning (Baseball traditionally allows for no "ties").  This is what it means for something to be contingent--- that is, necessarily constrained by a host of other conditional requirements that may or may not be in place.

So much for flowers, songs, and baseball games.  But what about a human being? 

Part II. The Problem with Man:

Is the notion of perfection in a human being as straightforward as these other things?  Here, of course, I do not speak of humanity according to our animality--- questions of nutrition, good health, safety from predators, freedom from disease, "fitness", etc., which apply to the entire genus of animals, and thus encompasses their well-being in a general sense.  Those are more or less "softball questions."  They are easy to point to, measure up, and answer.

No, I mean the question more specifically to the prospects unique to Man's humanity.  Yes, what of the perfection of a human being in this far more specific sense?  What makes one person more realized in his human potential than another?  What are we tracking here?  What are we defining?

It is precisely that pause after this difficult question and the uncertainty behind that pause that is philosophically interesting; for, we do not allow (as per Aquinas' reasoning above) for a single human being, a group of human beings, or even humanity writ large to define their own ultimate end.  It does not make any sense to do so precisely because perfection involves pure act devoid of anything lacking.  For, if human perfection did involve potentiality, and thus amounted to adding one more thing to yet another concatenation of other things ad infinitum, then such an entity would not be considered perfect much less perfectible (because something would always in principle be lacking to any historical, contingent being of any kind.).

You see, there would be no end to it (Well, except perhaps by Death, which in some sense, is the closest thing the secularist has to God.).

This is why St. Augustine famously prayed, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You." 

People have a tendency--- due to their sinfulness (as St. Augustine would know personally)--- to add one thing after another in an illusory and misdirected pursuit happiness.

In our own day, this is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that "rich people"--- that is to say, people perfectly secure in their short-term physical comfort (which is to say most people these days)--- will nevertheless go out and find new and unnecessary problems for themselves that speak to their spiritual misery.

What are we to make of this tendency?

Our inability to fully achieve happiness in any lasting sense either means that human life is itself absurd (which is hard to square up with the rational order of things presupposed by scientific inquiry) or that there is something that can allow us (as contingent beings as explained above) to realize this "final act" in some extraordinary if analogical relationship with something that is not contingent.

 

Part III. The God Hypothesis:

For theists, this could only be God.

It is the author's opinion here that the beginning of the "religious question" pivots on the realization that there is only one necessary thing in the face of life's countless possibilities--- or, one last end that we have discussed at length--- and whatever it is (and a good deal of thought has gone into such a question), it is certainly not of our own making, intention, or design as the Angelic Doctor explained above.  For anything that can result from our efforts can be added to, fine-tuned, perfected further to no foreseeable end. 

Without God, you see, there is no end to anything.  And, by the same logic, there is no beginning to anything. (Interestingly enough, it is only the ever present and perpetual Middle that is never in dispute-- is that not interesting?  Even so, there are such things as beginnings and ends.  We speak of them all the time: when faced with death, the concept of an end is hardly an illusion itself; by the same token, when we speak of taxes, we speak of definitive periods.  So the saying goes...)

Now, the best way modern men have approached this eternal question that follows from these observations is to deny the very notion of a "last end" (and curiously enough, the prospect of happiness as defined above).  But doing so speaks more to psychological convenience than metaphysical truth. 

There is a consequence in such a deflationary attitude towards life: one has the misfortunate of forcing "happiness" to equate with some constituent part vs. the integrity of the whole that is often attributed to happiness as a kind of whole (say, by reducing "happiness" to maximized pleasure, minimized pain, or even a "nobility" of purpose or something along those lines that, of course, is not readily identifiable with happiness in any lasting and thus true sense.).  Given the unconditionality of both is why defining Happiness on the one hand leads us to defining God on the other.

But modern men and women see things differently from our two saints and our ancient pagan philosopher.  That much is beyond dispute.

Regarding happiness (the more approachable subject), I would say that this evasion towards the reducible elements over the "Big Picture" is not justifiable.  Teleology, or the tendency towards a final end, itself is not a superstitious illusion cast by wishful thinking but informs various other disciplines ranging from the biological sciences to cybernetics.  Anybody who understands how a thermostat works will appreciate teleology at work in the world!  No, there is nothing false about what is a general observation in other aspects of life.  So why not the life of human beings?  Why in all of our arrogance as a species are we the one exception to the tendency of all other observable things in the Universe that have constraints, tendencies, and purposes that define what they essentially are? 

For whatever reason (and in truth, there is none), Humankind alone considers itself is the author to its own ends when it comes to the root of our very desires (as if there were transparency already there and easily accessible, which much of modern psychology has largely debunked as far as expectations go, which is yet another irony stacked on the bountiful table of ironies that is secularism.).

These are not legitimate reasons, but they are understandable in a human sense and they do converge on the root cause of our tendency to rationalize against belief in First and Last Causes: hardly coincidental, Man's sense of freedom as we shall soon discuss--- the quintessential hallmark of the modern man--- is clearly at stake in such questions as the fixed destiny of the last end. 

And there are a host of personal reasons to not want it to be true.  Does it not make one uncomfortable that he or she might be judged according to what they do in life?  Surely.  Is it not potentially shameful (and hurtful) to realize you are a failure in life (and, that there is such a thing as being a failure)?  No doubt.  Or, that our actions have eternal consequences that we have yet to realize?  Troubling!  There are many ways to phrase the real problem, isn't there?  And so, what do we do instead of accepting such a question?  We say, "stop asking questions and simply enjoy your life!  And <cough> allow me to do the same!"  If only cancer were so deferential as the sickness of the soul is asked to be.

Whatever the reason for this tendency for evasion towards spiritual things (and, yes, that is the reality of which I am stabbing at), this religious question, of course, is rarely asked openly in a modern world that as a whole is better known for its bustling frenetic pace, love of sensual and conceptual novelty, and change for the sake of change.  Rarely, do thinkers take to time to realize that all of this activity, exploration, evolutionary open-endedness, and what not is motivated by a seemingly unquenchable appetite for the Infinite that seeks the Infinite in all the wrong places (namely, in this finite world).   

Perhaps, St. Augustine who spent his entire life in search of answers to the hardest questions was not off the mark? 

 

**Ok, so goes my effort to sell you the problem, what then is this blog about?**:  

 

Part III. Has Anyone Proposed a Solution to These Problems?

This blog is broken down (roughly speaking) into five parts.  The first proceeds by asking what this "God stuff" even means.  The second asks what this "Bible stuff" is really about.  The third, fourth, and fifth ask what it means for the Church to even have authority in these matters. 

Let us proceed...

(1) Natural Theology: Seeking God by Your Own Mind:

Here, I examine the apologetic tradition of Natural Theology (or, the kind of theism that is developed philosophically without direct argumentative appeal to institutionalized religion [and yes, many philosophers and poets have ventured into these questions.). 

Purpose: I do so with the hopes of reinforcing what I have developed above, but also emphasizing the personhood of God (the heart of classical theism, as opposed to impersonal view of God) as both rationally defensible and the very grounds for His self-disclosure through Revelation.   The aim of this part is to awaken secular materialists from their dogmatic slumbers and to get "spiritual but not religious" people to sober up and take religion seriously.  To do so, I have to make it clear what we mean by "God" and "natural religion" both.

(2) Foundational Theology: Foregrounding God's Communicative Act with Humanity:

Having developed a cohesive view of God's nature, I venture into the second topic of how to assess the personal God through the prism of Biblical narrative as inspired by God Himself:   You see, if we are to speak of a personal God, it would make sense for that person to speak to His creation.  Ok, what does that mean?  How can we be sure of it?  Here, we will venture from a coherent understanding of God at a conceptual level towards a Foundational Theology of His communicative action where we discern the orchestration of parts and whole of God's relating Himself to Man.  Doing so, we advance the rational basis of theology itself (and, the extent to which we can take stock of the contents of Revelation once again through the use of reason enkindled by faith).   In this part, we even discuss why the virtue of Faith would have value apart from (but not opposed to) that of Reason as championed in #1.

Purpose: The aim of this section #2 is to caution "theological skeptics" away from the presumption that religion is basically an emotional connection with the Divine or a relationship rooted in feelings (that by nature come and go).  While emotional connections are important (indeed crucial to any relationship), they do not obscure the fact that Faith is an intellectual act.  It is about knowing God and, even more pressingly, believing Him by virtue of the signs that He conveys about His own Truth.  We do not love things we do not know.  We do not love other people's parents.  We love our parents.  Knowledge--- even if imperfect knowledge by acquaintance--- is necessary for feelings of any kind to even be possible.

(3) Sacred Tradition: The Ecclesiastical Context for Biblical Textuality

Third, having pointed out the intelligibility of the Scriptures (with the examination of both their "internal evidence" and "extrinsic evidence" in alignment with Classical Theism of the first topic, we go beyond the mysterious virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love towards defending the rational integrity of Theology as a synthesis of what was revealed.  But theology as a necessary taking stock of "doctrine" takes place somewhere and within someone at all times.  Here we focus on the movement from the textuality of the Bible towards the contextuality of Tradition (and the inescapability of both as mutually constituted realities of the same Revelation).  When you investigate a historical event, you do not simply consult primary sources.  Rather, you consult second-hand sources as well and use both to ground claims about what happened.  Tradition works this way with the caveat that we are not living in the past of the Gospel, but its eternal relevance to now and always.   In other words, I want to show how a "Tradition" is theologically inescapable from any use of Holy Scripture when we make doctrinal demands on what was revealed to us.  Tradition is as unavoidable as the context for the historical and ongoing understanding any text.

Purpose: The point of doing so is to emphasize that God (as described in classical theistic Natural Theology) is still present and disclosing His will in ways that expand upon and do not contradict His initial inspirations.  Tradition reflects this ongoing inspiration and, thus, forms a constituent part of what was revealed and has the same relationship with the Sacred as does Holy Writ.  For this reason, Tradition is not "manmade" as it were, but Providential in its scope (as it is of the same cloth as Holy Scripture.).  This part of the blog is for the religiously minded who are blind to this all-important source of truth and insight and partake in a more limited relation with God by an exclusivist commitment to the Holy Scriptures alone.  In fact, this exclusivity not only risks getting less out of one's engagement with God, but it can actually invite unprincipled readings of Scripture in the best cases and outright heresy in the worst.  There is a long not-so-illustrious history of Christians "going their own way" that has only undermined the social fabric of the Church as an institutional reality clearly attested in Acts and other books of Holy Scripture (also, see Philippians 2:2).

 

(4) The Teaching Authority of the Church: Where is the Source of Harmony Between the One and the Many (This Side of Eternity)?

Fourth, I examine lower case "t" traditions (plural) and upper case "T" Tradition (singular), as distinct yet parallel realities that pose unique problems in relation to authority and obedience, and their resulting consequences for meaning, consensus, and thus authenticity that arise in the face of such unavoidable pluralism.  It is important to investigate man-made custom (which is purely temporal and contingent) from authentic developments in Tradition (which is integral to Doctrine itself).

Purpose: The point of doing so is to point out that "appeals to tradition" have their own unique issues that are underexplored when compared to Scriptural exegesis (as a separate yet related problem of the pluralism treated above).  Here, we talk about the letter and the spirit of the letter and how true Tradition will not sacrifice the latter for the sake of the former.  Hierarchy of precedence must be respected and the criterion for what counts as Tradition (as a higher order Paradigm for the single sown fabric of the Church) comes before all questions of mere custom.  Here, we discuss the historical development of the concept of the Magisterium.  The student, as a rule, should not "teach" the teacher, even if the teacher can learn from his students.  However, by definition, it is the teacher who teaches and the student who studies.  This hierarchical relationship, itself a metaphysical reality, must be observed with regard to magisterial claims. There is the prospect of an excessive preoccupation with lower case "traditions" whose literalist and strict implementation potentially runs at odds with their stated purpose.  Traditionalism, as Chesterton once pointed out, is not the same as conservatism.  Traditionalism when mistaken as a mindless imitation of the past can and, at times, does devolve into the vice of antiquarianism and a willful and uncharitable inattentiveness to reading the room for the sake of some idea in your head of how things should be.   The development of doctrine, the changes in discipline, and many other eventualities reflect the organic nature of the Church as a living mystical "bride of Christ."  Going with the favored agrarian metaphors of Christ, one speaks of the nature of a Tree not best by observing the seed nor the sapling (even if they tell us something of what is to come).  The nature of a thing is the reality of its destiny not the appearance of its origin or growth.  Adam was not created from the Earth as a child or an adolescent, but rather as a Man.  For, that is what he is.

 

(5) The Church as a Saint Maker: Or, the Criterion for Believing Her Unique Telos Amid a Vicious World

Lastly, I approach the question of authority of the Church by the raison d'etre of this unique Institution: that is, for the sanctification, integrity, and moral clarity of Her saints, or "holy ones."  The effective end of the Church for any mortal man or woman is as this necessary medium in the cultivation of supernatural virtue following salvic grace in the acceptance of Christ by Baptism.  But how do we know we are growing in holiness (the ongoing purpose of the Sacraments)?  This is the final question: what does it mean to persevere?  To persevere by doing what exactly?  What are we doing as Christians and as a Church?

Purpose: The ongoing perseverance in that state of grace that we received upon initiation into the Church requires a lifelong articulation of what virtue is and how to cultivate it not merely from a theoretical point of view of understanding but, more importantly (and challenging), towards a concrete and deeply habituated sense in any given situation of what it means to be virtuous.  That is, what "saint-making" (proposed as the telos of the Church Militant) takes for granted is a virtue epistemology above all in relation to the principled obedience to God's will (who is both our sole origin and end).  The point of doing so is to articulate what true obedience encompasses by a reflection on virtue, knowledge of virtue and vice, and the practices that ensure a systematic and deeply enrooted distinction between the two, and ultimately the pathways towards Heaven and Hell. 

 

Conclusion:

From point 1 through point 5, the blog begins with perfection in the abstract (namely, the necessary attributes of God for even our conception of "perfection" to have purchase in life) and ends with perfection in the concrete (namely, membership in the communion of the saints and the particular qualities of the saints that we would benefit by imitating in our own times and places).  The union of the perfectible creature and the always perfect Creator is what it means in a spiritual sense to join God in Heaven.  In this blog, I take up the life of St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Therese of Lisieux, and St. Benedict of Nursia in particular but also elaborate on the Martyrology at times to explore how this union can be anticipated and encouraged here and now.

And if the structuring of the blog seems too ambitious (and no doubt it is), I can turn to Matthew 5:48 to justify my purpose: "But you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

"At hearing this [on another occasion], the disciples were thrown into great bewilderment; Why then, they asked, who can be saved? 

Jesus fastened His eyes on them, and said to them, "Such a thing is impossible to man's powers, but to God all things are possible." (Matthew 19: 25-26).

 

May the Lord bless you and keep you!  Keep up hope!  Practice the Faith.  And stay honest and humble!  Amen.