Combinatorial Prayer

Father, find me, draw me in. Jesus, save me, here I am. Spirit, heal me, draw me in. Father, teach me, here I am. Jesus, lead me, draw me in. Spirit, find me, here I am. Father, save me, draw me in. Jesus, heal me, here I am. Spirit, teach me, draw me in. Father, lead me, here I am. Jesus, find me, draw me in. Spirit, save me, here I am. Father, heal me, draw me in. Jesus, teach me, here I am. Spirit, lead me, draw me in. Father, find me, here I am. Jesus, save me, draw me in. Spirit, heal me, here I am. Father, teach me, draw me in. Jesus, lead me, here I am. Spirit, find me, draw me in. Father, save me, here I am. Jesus, heal me, draw me in. Spirit, teach me, here I am. Father, lead me, draw me in. Jesus, find me, here I am. Spirit, save me, draw me in. Father, heal me, here I am. Jesus, teach me, draw me in. Spirit, lead me, here I am.

Peace

Scholasticism

I'd like to propose the hypothesis that part of the continuing distance between Lutheranism and Catholicism is due to their differing stances on Scholasticism.

Luther rejected Scholasticism, and favored arguments based on Augustine (he was an Augustinian monk, after all), the earlier Fathers, and Scripture directly. Part of this comes out of Luther's critique of monasticism, which Aquinas, Scotus, and other Scholastics held in high regard. Indeed, from a Lutheran point of view, the Summa was a scholarly apology for the religious status quo of Aquinas's day. There's no hint of critique, just a panglossian sense of whatever is, is as it must and should be. Our subsequent and sustained divergence from the Catholic Church and the structures reflected in the Summa is a living refutation of that, at least for us. Between the Aquinas's scholarly defense of a static and hierarchical world-view and Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda lies an almost unbridgeable difference in understanding the place and purpose of the Church in the world.

Part of the Lutheran skepticism, though, came from the primary intellectual stance of the Scholastics, that all truth points to God, and that some truth, some knowledge of God, was accessible to non-Christian thinkers. In this, the intellectual commitments of the Scholastics are more acceptable to the modern man than Luther's Christian exclusivity. Looking at Scholasticism more positively, which is to say, from outside of the circle of specifically Lutheran critique, the triumph of Scholasticism was to reconcile Aristotelian rational philosophy with Christian theology.

This gives rise to an entirely separate critique of Scholasticism, which perhaps appeals more to the modern man, who would applaud the implicit universalism that underlies Scholasticism, while noting that both philosophy and theology have moved on since the days of Aristotle and Aquinas respectively. In this, the Catholic instinct to defer reflexively to the Summa denies the fundamental intellectual commitments that underlay it. Stated metaphorically, the Summa was a milestone, not a goal, and the effort to reconcile all truths to a single universal truth ought to be addressing, embracing, and reconciling the new truths of our era, including but not limited to the truths of science, and our better understanding of the ancient near-Eastern cultures that incubated our faith. In this, the best work of our era (at least, that I'm aware of) comes from Polkinghorne (an Anglican priest and theoretical physicist) and Gould (a biologist and secular Jew).

Peace

While I take responsibility for the content of this note, I'd like to acknowledge my debt to my current diakonia teacher, Bruce Rittenhouse, for the phrase "philosophy and theology have moved on," and the argument that this phrase distills. There is in this condemnation enough in his remark for both Catholic and Lutheran, and perhaps in that a basis for moving on.