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.
5 comments:
It's nice to have you post again.
I think you should proofread this, especially about seven lines from bottom you use ought twice in the same sentence and it goofs the sentence up.
Because of JH and James, I too have thought a lot about Catholicism and the possibilities of a rapprochement between the Catholics and Lutherans (rapproachement between different Lutheran camps will be far more difficult).
Their hierarchy and their placing bishops and popes out of the line of critique is an enormous mistake, and this is what led Luther to his first attempt to cut down the whole tree (picture it as a tree wafting way up into heaven with the pope being the least likely to have his feet on the ground in any kind of pragmatic sense).
Luther was a man with his feet on the ground.
Aquinas was wafty. He didn't have kids or a wife, and his head was way up there where his feet weren't.
Feet must be planted firmly on terra firma, methinks, to have a practical philosophy.
The universalism of the Catholics is a good thing (I like Roger Scruton's attempt to build on this, and Mary Ann Glendon, too -- another Catholic, and a pro-life feminist, like Sarah Palin, but Glendon teaches at Harvard, and Palin, is only a Fox News Contributor).
I used to walk in the blizzards of Finland with a Lutheran pastor. I was reading the Summa for my book on Gregory Corso, and asked him if he thought that our fingernails would continue to grow in the afterlife. He said, "Luther didn't have time for questions like that."
In a sense, Luther was already where Hume was later on. Many have said that such questions lead nowhere because they are neither here nor there, not falsifiable, in Popper's sense.
But they are still important!
Aquinas didn't have much of a sense of the grounded reality of how things grow naturally. He didn't have a decent understanding of the food chain. Animals were for him emblems of spiritual reality.
Luther meant a step back toward terra firma.
You'd think a scientist like Gould would be more empirical. But Gould won't allow certain questions to be asked. IQ type questions are forbidden if they have us arrive at forbidden answers (we are not all equal, or there is a hierarchy within human nature where some are more naturally talented than others).
So he is in fact a sneaky little religious fellow, like most of those out of our top institutions today. Including the president.
Religion of a kind that is very difficult to pin down, and very sneaky, and pesky, that no one dare question.
Luther would have asked all the hard questions irregardless of the prevailing hierarchy.
thanks stu
for this
my knee jerk inclination is to point out that thomas "corrected" augustine on a number of very important issues
but always believed the great sinner augustine to be the foremost theologian
and i think this point was lost on the reformers
the "we've moved on" refrain was implicit in 1600 -- but there was a stark awareness that some very valuable things were left behind
the weave of thomas and aristotle through christian thought cannot be removed from the warp and wuf of the weaving
thomas can hardly be called static for he was aware of the intense activity involved in thinking and living -- he always advocated for a strong intellectual dynamism -- and ample freedom for thinking
hierarchy and a seperate magisterium with control over the governance of bishops and priests and religious orders is a necessity
most followers do not perceive this as oppressive in fact it is comfort it is the awareness of need that food for thought and the sacred trust of teaching and serving with honor and virtue are in need of protection -- always have been always will be
the covenant between priests is one of trust and humans fail that trust...humans get blindsided humans act selfishly at times humans are afraid...the voice of the law has become draconian...we put to death well over a million human souls every year in this country alone and the prisons are bulging...and all the real criminals have jobs in hollywood
the morality of catholic catechesis is rooted in a proven body of thinking which extends through the whole tradition from paul to ireneaus to basil the great to athanasius to anthony the hermit to augustine to benedict to peter lombard to abelard (ooo he got the knife ooo) to alcuin to scotus to ambrose to thomas to bonaventure to suarez to vincent de sales to jacques maritain gertrude elzabeth margaret anscombe to denise levertov to ralph mcInerny
we must not ignore or begrudge gilgamesh his place in world literature
richard john neuhaus saw clearly that we can pretend to move on
but at the tragic peril of missing something essential
my friend sally has looked into polkinghorne a bit
i used to read goulds' articles all the time and found them very interesting always amusing and often hilariouos
he had a intellectual petpeeve with teilhard de chardin
but he went a bit berzerk there at the end he was taking the acknowledgement of JP II over the galileo affair ( it was a re-echoing of an acknowledgemnt from about 1640 that galileo was indeed correct - discoveries made by the jesuits) but that in itself represented an admission of fallibility and that within the same breath the pope cited the work of darwin and biologists since
darwin and applauded the view of the world brought forth by biological science -- well gould took this to mean that was the pope making the whole matter into a law and was arguing well we should just all call this the law of natural selection since nothin now stood in the way of it being a law
but it seems to me he missed an essential scientific point - one he never came to terms with
and so i can't trust him
what does polkinghorne say we should move on to?
i'm arguing that the whole of science must go through a very thorough examination of conscience
there must be a full accounting on some moral grounds before any headway is gained
science is outside ethics
on its own accord
kant hegel nietszche the empiricists husserl descartes heidegger sartre american pragmatists - all together they fall short of the clarity and depth of thomas
libraries hospitals schools
stewards of sacred rites and places
really cool art
that's what luther scorned
or
he set the mood for ongoing scorn
calvin scorned it more
take the popes' wardrobe take the rosey shoes take the monalisa take the michelangelos take the roualt take the windows take it all
but don't dismiss thomas
i'd forsake all the church's riches
before i'd forsake my beloved brother
yet if you'd like for me to limit my references to thomas within the thought of 20th century thinker jacques maritain i'd be happy to consider that as a middle ground
the learning of the scholastics was rooted in the concept "skola" (gk)
i am advocating for a return a heroic all out rebellious return to "skola" - reflective knowing
as opposed to
deductive reasoning
leisure
thomas insisted on leisure
something sadly lacking in our culture
we should return to "skola"
things are as they iz
that iz fo sho
but they iz what they iz
because someone long ago
took iz seriously
we shouldn't forget that
jh
jh,
I'm delighted that you read and reacted to this.
Let me respond generally, rather than point-by-point.
Lutherans are not going to accept proofs by human authority. So I'm really arguing for a different way. You value Aquinas because of his ideas and arguments. If they're that good, bring them in, just don't attribute them to the saintly Doctor. If his ideas and arguments meet with approbation from your opponents, that is the time to attribute them to Aquinas, with citations. You'll seem all the more humble, and you'll have raised Aquinas in the opinion of your opponents.
As for Gould... Gould was convinced that Teilhard de Chardin was responsible for the Piltdown fraud, a practical joke carried so far that it could not be backed out of. I don't know the particulars well enough to know whether this is a reasonable hypothesis, but it's not unique to Gould. But as far as I recall, Gould respected de Chardin otherwise, and viewed this as an unfortunate aberration. What I particularly liked about Gould was his notion of the separate magisteriums of science and religion. He saw each as being truthful, but distinct. And everywhere in contact.
Polkinghorne takes the view that the evils of creation are unavoidable consequences of its essential goodness. Science can teach us a lot about the essential tradeoffs, and this can help us move away from blaming God for things that seem bad to us. For example, if we accept that humans are evolved, then we have to view biologies in which both variation and selection hold as good, but cancers and other bad outcomes follow inevitably. His specific examples seem to me to be particularly insightful, and well argued scientifically and religiously.
I can only agree with you as regards leisure. The pattern of intensive ministry alternating with retreat and spiritual replenishment that characterizes Jesus in the Gospels is a model we'd do well to emulate. Somehow, we've become satisfied with an always engaged, but only partially committed view of vocation, which leaves us tired, depressed, and uncreative. I'm owed a sabbatical or two, but don't have the faintest idea how to actually take one :-(.
thomas and i concede as does jacques maritain that the evil we see inherent in the world is contingent upon good...the doses seem to be rather constant...the trick to life is getting it all going toward the good
try as he might gould was never able to actually observe a mutation that lent itself to natural selection...his understanding of variations was never all that much more complex than gregor mendel's....evolutionary theory is a legitimate template with which to observe nature...but my sense...after tracking around the orchard in a blissful state of bucolic surrender to spring...i simply have this nagging sense that nature is far more subtle far more amazing far more terrible in her beauty...and evolutionists are a little too mechanical for my tastes...i'll listen to shubert over prokofiev any day
i do subscribe to the beautiful synthesis of understanding behind the work of MARY MIDGELY who i think rightly points to the impulse for reductionist thinking neat little summations that get to the structure of everything and the concomitant realization that at some crucial level these reductioist social trends are more harmful than good...i think that's what she said or maybe she came down on the side that social agendas evolving as it were out of a particularized rhetoric were actually evil....these became evil despotic passionate agendas for people and then whanmmy it's all chemicals and TVz from here on in
or did i speak too soon
the reason thomas believed philosophy was necessary for the comprehension of theological purposes was linked to the fact of the propensity for man to find wisdom....wisdom as a prerequisite for theological speculation...that tendency which takes people in the direction of dusty old books...and is linked to various questions of transcendantal intuition -- if there is such a thing -- certainly there must be such a thing if i am able to think it
yeah
i'd expect a good naturedly drunken canadian tirade from ole jacques right about now
sometimes the whole war thing looks sadly out of obamas hands
he's like a kid in a sandbox who realizes the guns are real
but don't get me started
enough catholic blather for one night
peace
jh
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