Purgatory and its alternatives

I was reading Jerry Walls’ lovely piece on purgatory for class. Thinking about it has made me realize that given that all who are in heaven are morally perfect, and almost nobody is morally perfect before death, we have the following options:

1. Almost no Christians end up in heaven.

2. There is purgatory after death during which character changes.

3. There is instant and radical character change at the moment of death.

4. There is a temporally extended and empirically invisible sanctification just before death, probably with time being subjectively stretched.

I think it’s tempting to think of purgatory as an odd Catholic addition to Scripture (though there is 1 Cor. 3:15, of course)—maybe even for a Catholic to think that. But consider the other options.

Option (1) is super pessimistic. It doesn’t make the Gospel really be the Good News it is.

Option (3) is at least as much—and perhaps more so—a theological addition to Scripture as purgatory may seem to be. It’s compatible with Scripture that there is such a sudden moral transformation, but so is purgatory, and both of them are major divine actions going over and beyond what is expressly given by Scripture. Both are suprising, I suppose. Of the two, however, the instant moral transformation seems a lot less in keeping with God’s usual way of proceeding with us. Presumably, being instant, this moral transformation is not something we could have much cooperation in. And it feels a bit odd to think that we struggle over many years to grow morally—and then in an instant it’s all fixed. It makes one wonder why we bothered to struggle. (On the purgatory story, the struggle makes sense, because purgatory does not exempt one from effort.)

Option (4) is also a theological addition to Scripture. It has the advantage over (3) that it is not instant, and hence is more in keeping with God’s typical way of proceeding with us. But it has the serious disadvantage of appearing to be rather a skeptical hypothesis—especially when it is not actually announced by God that that’s what God does for most people. Moreover, while I certainly am open to God using the period just before death for moral transformation, there is something odd about this being how God normally proceeds with Christians. For often the period just before death is naturally unsuited to moral transformation: the mind is falling apart as death takes the body. God could choose that difficult moment, but it doesn’t seem to fit well with a picture of a God who likes to make grace build on nature.

If I were a Protestant, I think would definitively reject (1), and then I would be inclined to suppose that (2) is somewhat more likely than either one of (3) and (4).

Two decreases in tension between faith and science

Over the past two hundred years or so, one new tension point arose for the relationship between Christianity and science due to scientific progress—namely, evolution. At the same time, several tension points disappeared due two other instances of scientific progress.

The first instance of this scientific progress was the general abandonment of the Aristotelian eternal world model of the universe with Big Bang cosmology. In the middle ages, Jewish, Islamic and Christian thinkers struggled with the tension between the science/philosophy of the day strongly tending towards a universe that always existed and the theological commitment to a creation a finite amount of time ago. That problem is gone.

The second instance is our scientific understanding of the continuity of organic development from zygote to embryo to infant to adult, which has made quite implausible the old view of discontinuous transition in utero from vegetable to animal to human. This old view was the dominant scientific view of human origins until fairly recently, and it had serious tensions with Christian theology.

The first of these embryological tensions was with Christian moral views about abortion. While traditionally Christians opposed both contraception and abortion, abortion was morally seen as a form of homicide. But on the discontinuous transition view, abortion prior to human ensoulment would only be contraception.

The second embryological tension was a technical problem in Christology. Suppose that in the Incarnation we have the vegetable, mere animal and rational animal sequence. Then Aquinas observes there are two possibilities, neither of which is theologically appealing.

First, it could be that God becomes incarnate as a vegetable or a mere animal. But this seems, as Aquinas says, “unbecoming”. And he seem to be right. The Incarnation reveals to us the person of the Logos, and it would be unbecoming that the Logos become a non-personal being.

Second, it could be that the Incarnation happens only at the beginning of the third stage of development, namely once everything is ready for a rational animal. But then Aquinas says “the whole conception could not be attributed to the Son of God”. Indeed, don’t we even have a tension with the Apostles’ Creed line that Christ “was conceived by the Holy Spirit”? For on this option, Christ was not conceived at all. What was conceived was a vegetable, not Christ. (Indeed, none of us were conceived on this view.) Moreover, one might worry that then there would be a sense in which the flesh of Christ would pre-exist the Incarnation. And that makes it difficult to say that the Word became flesh—for the flesh that Scripture says he “became” would already in a sense have been there, and one can’t become this flesh, since this flesh already has its own identity. (Granted, there may well be some Aristotelian metaphysics one can do to lessen this last worry.)

Aquinas solves the problem by supposing that Christ is conceived fully formed in Mary’s womb, and hence has the rational soul from the first moment of his existence. But this solution is itself problematic. Absent gradual development from a zygote, is this conception at all? If God were to create an adult human either ex nihilo or out of some pre-existing matter, we would not consider that a conception. But neither should we then consider it a conception if God creates a fully-formed fetus, even if he does that out of the pre-existing matter of Mary. So we still have a problem with the Apostles’ creed’s “was conceived by the Holy Spirit”. Moreover, it seems that this deprives Mary of a significant chunk of her motherhood.

But the problem entirely disappears once we think that the human beings begin their existence at conception. Christ is conceived by the Holy Spirit, presumably in that Mary’s ovum is transformed into a zygote by the infinite power of the Holy Spirit, which zygote is the Christ who then grows in utero like we all do.

(Catholics also note that the new scientific understanding of human embryonic development also helps with the doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception—for only a rational being can be immaculately conceived, since original sin or freedom from it can only apply to a rational being.)

In defense of a changing beatific vision

It is widely taken in the Thomistic tradition that:

1. Different people in heaven have the beatific vision to different degrees, corresponding to the saints’ different levels of holiness.

2. The beatific vision does not change with time for a given individual.

I think there is a tension between these two claims which is best resolved by dropping the no-change thesis (2). Dropping the difference thesis (1) is not an option for Catholics at least, since it’s a dogma taught by the Council of Florence.

To see the tension, note that the fact that different saints have holiness to different degrees implies that those saints who have a lesser holiness have not maxed out what human nature makes possible. And holiness is attractive to the holy, and infectious. If one saint is less holy than another, it seems likely that given a sufficient amount of time, we would expect the second saint’s greater holiness to inspire the first to even greater holiness. And then we would expect the beatific vision to increase.

We also have one New Testament case where it seems likely that a person’s level of beatific vision has increased. In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes of knowing someone who, fourteen years ago, was caught up to the third heaven. It is common to take that to be a modest reference to Paul himself, and the “third heaven” to be a reference to the beatific vision. Now, eventually Paul died and experienced the beatific vision again. It seems very implausible to think that the significant number of years between Paul’s first experience of heaven and his final experience of heaven did not result in Christian maturation and growth in virtue. Thus, it seems quite plausible that Paul had greater holiness when he died than when he was first caught up to heaven, and hence by the correspondence thesis (1), he had a greater degree of beatific vision at death than at the earlier incident.

Note, too, that a Catholic cannot say that the level of holiness is fixed at the time of death, since then purgatory wouldn’t make sense. And, intuitively, we would expect heaven to be inspiring of growth in holiness!

Now, one could insist that the level of holiness is fixed at the time of entry to heaven. But if so, then we couldn’t really say that the death of a saint is always something to rejoice at. Imagine that Paul had died at the time of his first experience of the beatific vision. Then on the no-change view of the beatific vision, he would eternally have had a lesser beatific vision than in actual world where he continued to grow in holiness for over decades more.

A picture of continual growth in holiness and the beatific vision fits better with our temporality. One may worry, however, that it takes away from the picture of resting in God. However, rest is compatible with change. One of the best ways to rest is to read a good book. But as one reads the book, one grows in knowledge of its content. And if one worries that the thought that one will come to have a greater happiness should induce in one a present sorrow of longing, I think it is plausible that with perfect virtue one would no more find the expectation of greater future happiness to be a source of sorrow than a lesser saint would find the observation of greater saints a source of envy. And, coming back to the book analogy, when one reads a good book, there need be no unhappiness at the fact that there is more of the book yet to come—on the contrary, one can rejoice that there is more to come. (In some cases, there may be a weak negative emotion as one longs for the author to reveal something—say, the solution of a mystery. But not every genre will generate that.)

Furthermore, there is good reason to think that change is not incompatible with rest. Since we will have bodies in heaven, and we will flourish in body and soul, while bodily flourishing involves change, heavenly rest must be compatible with change. And plausibly some of the bodily activities we will engage in will involve a variation in the level of happiness at least in some respects. Thus, eating is an episodic joy, and music, I take it, involves much in the way of anticipation and change.

Material and formal mortal sin, and an insidious form of scrupulosity

This post is aimed primarily at Catholic readers, and especially Catholic readers given to a certain mode of scrupulosity (a disorder where one is unduly and irrationally worried about one’s sinfulness) I will describe further on down. I will say a little about the distinction between material and formal sin, then discuss a special form of scrupulosity that is enabled by knowing the distinction, and end with some philosophical considerations that should help defuse this form of scrupulosity.

Background:

The Catholic tradition distinguishes material and formal sin. Material sin is an action that is objectively in itself against the moral law. Formal sin, on the other hand, is an action insofar as one is morally culpable for it. Formal sin requires that one believe the action to be wrong and that one be sufficiently free in performing the action. Talking of something as material sin, or material sin of a certain sort, is talking of the act in itself. Talking of it as formal sin, or a formal sin of a certain sort, is talking of the relation between the agent and the act.

One can have material sin without formal sin: if in a very difficult medical ethics case, a doctor is told by a panel of otherwise trustworthy bioethicists that an operation is permitted, and performs the operation, and it turns out the bioethicists were wrong, the doctor has committed a material sin, but is unlikely to be guilty of formal sin.

The distinction can also be used not simply to remove responsibility but to reduce it. The Catholic tradition distinguishes mortal sin, which separates one from God by a definitive (but forgiveable, since God’s grace is immense) act of rejection, from venial sin, which does not definitively reject God. Given this, you can have mortal material sin which is not formally mortal. In such a case, you might not be clear enough on the grave wrongness of the action or you might be insufficiently free for the sin to be formally mortal, although you have enough clarity and enough freedom for formal venial sin.

A form of scrupulosity:

At the same time, logically speaking, things can go in the other direction. You can have material sin without formal sin. If the difficult medical operation is in fact permissible, but the trustworthy bioethicists tell the doctor that it is wrong, and the doctor performs it while believing it to be wrong, the doctor commits a formal sin without a material sin.

Similarly, it should be logically possible to have a sin that is materially venially sinful but which is formally mortally sinful because the agent misjudges the act as much worse than it is.

In my late teens and 20s, I suffered a lot from scrupulosity: I was constantly afraid that I had committed a mortal sin, in a way that was disproportionate to my actual moral failings (which I had plenty of, but mainly they weren’t the ones I was scrupulous about). And the possibility of a materially venially sinful act that is formally mortally sinful worried me a lot. I would say to myself things like: “Granted, on reflection, this was not objectively a mortal sin, and maybe not even a sin at all, but maybe at the time I thought it was grave, and so I was formally mortally sinning.” And I would engage in fruitless and agonizing soul-searching to figure out what it was that I was thinking when I was engaging in the act. I know I am not alone in suffering from this.

But even though it is logically possible to have a formally mortal sin that is materially venial, it is a striking historical fact that the Catholic tradition typically uses the formal-material distinction to excuse rather than to accuse, to the point where one fairly recent writer in a very helpful piece on scrupulosity actually writes that it is impossible to have the materially venial but formally mortal combination.

I thought about this, and realized that there is actually an asymmetry between using the formal-material distinction to lower responsibility and using it to boost responsibility. Here it is. Cases where a materially mortal sin is formally venial due to the agent’s error are easy to get given our individual and communal fallenness. All that’s needed is that the agent have enough considerations—say, coming from errors circulating in the community—against the thesis that the act is gravely wrong to induce sufficient doubt to make the action as done by the agent no longer be a definitive rejection of God.

But cases where a materially venial sin becomes formally mortal due to the agent’s error require that the agent definitely see the action as wrong. And that requires a more thoroughgoing kind of epistemic malfunction. It’s not enough that error induce sufficient doubt—that’s quite easy, hence the commonality of the responsibility-reducing case—but the error has to sufficiently silence the truth to make the agent definitely believe the erroneous thing. For without definite belief that the action is gravely wrong we do not have formally mortal sin.

Imagine that Bob is committing gluttony by eating one more potato than he should, and due to some error—perhaps grounded in an eating disorder—he starts worrying that eating this potato is a mortally sinful case of gluttony, but he continues eating nonetheless. But here is something else that is likely: unless Bob is very far gone down the path of error, he likely has a bit of common sense testifying in him that eating an extra potato is not a serious matter. On the one hand, then, he has error pulling him to think that it is mortally sinful to eat the potato, but on the other hand, he has common sense. The result is very likely to be a divided mind, rather than a mind definitely believing that the action is mortally sinful, and hence it is very unlikely that the action be formally a mortal sin.

In other words, it is easy to muddy the waters enough to reduce responsibility, but it is a lot harder to come to the kind of definite erroneous belief that would be required to increase responsibility.

And a fortiori it is even harder to have a case where an action isn’t materially sinful at all but due to error it becomes formally mortally sinful. Again I think such cases are possible, but I expect they are quite rare.

Finally, I would think that the rare cases where the formal-material distinction functions to raise responsibility are going to be even rarer in Catholics. For Catholics not only have conscience, but they have the Church’s guidance, and so it is even harder for them to be definitely mistaken.

Should we see Christian division as a scandal?

[I am now thinking that the main point of this post may be mistaken for the reasons I state my in 11:58 AM October 5, 2020 comment. Nonetheless, I think the Bayesian stuff at the bottom of the post may be correct, and so perhaps the disunity between Christians should not as such count as evidence against the truth of Christianity.]

It is often said that the fact that Christianity is divided into multiple denominations is a scandal and a tragedy. Now, in one sense the question of scandal is empirical: are people led away from the truth by this division? I don’t know the answer to the empirical question. On the one hand, it seems likely that some are. On the other hand, if all Christians had exactly the same doctrine, I suspect many would be suspicious of whether this unity is produced by the strength of the evidence or by social control.

But in any case, the question I want to address is not empirical, but rather whether it makes sense to be intellectually scandalized by the division of Christianity into multiple denominations and whether we should see it as a tragedy. And here there is a point that I have never seen address: when we discuss Christian division, we need to get clear on what we are comparing it to.

For the sake of argument (but not contrary to fact!) let’s suppose that if there is a true version of Christianity, it is the Catholic one. My argument will if anything be more compeling if a smaller denomination is singled out as the best candidate for the truth. Then, rounding to the nearest billion, we live in this world:

• w₁: 8 billion people, of whom 2 billion are Christians, of whom 1 billion are Catholic and the other billion are divided among multiple
  denominations.

But now compare to this world:

• w₂: 8 billion people, of whom 1 billion are Christians, all of whom are Catholic.

This is a world with no religious division. But from the Christian point of view is there reason to think this is a better world? Assuming the true version of Christianity is Catholicism, in w₁ and w₂ we have an equal number of people who identify with the true version of Christianity. But in w₁ there is another billion people who identify with other versions of Christianity. If Catholicism is the true version of Christianity, still these other versions are closer to the truth that not being a Christian is. (And a Christian who thinks Catholicism is not the true version of Christianity will presumably think that w₁ is much better than w₂.)

If the the relevant contrast to our denominationally divided world w₁ is w₂, then there is no tragedy and no one should be scandalized by the denominational division.

I suppose that when one thinks of the denominational division as a tragedy and a scandal, one is comparing w₁ to something like:

• w₃: 8 billion people, of whom 2 billion are Christians, all of whom are Catholic.

And, indeed, if Christianity is correct and the right version of Christianity is Catholicism, then as far as these numbers go, w₃ is better than w₁.

So, it all depends on what we are comparing the denominational division scenario to: are we comparing it to a scenario where the actual world’s non-Catholics (still assuming arguendo that the normative form of Christianity is Catholicism) aren’t Christian or to a scenario where they are Catholic?

Moreover, it is clear that even if a Catholic says that it is a tragedy that a billion Christians aren’t Catholic, it is a much greater tragedy that 7 billion humans aren’t Catholic, and 6 billion of them aren’t even Christian.

What if we don’t care about numbers, and just care about the fact of division? Suppose, abstractly, that there is a theistic religion R. Should we see significant division between adherents of R as evidence for R, against R or neutral? From a Bayesian point of view, one question to pose seems to be:

1. Given that R is the true religion, would we expect to see significant division or unity among the adherents of R?

Here is an argument for the unity answer. If God exists, he wants people to know the truth, so we would expect that everyone or nearly everyone should subscribe to the correct form of R, call that form R₁, and if that’s true, then of course nearly all adherents of R will be adherents of R₁.

But thinking about it this way mixes up two different arguments against Christianity: the argument from disunity and the argument from the fact that most people aren’t Christian. It’s the argument from disunity that we want to evaluate. To that end, instead of asking (1), I think we should ask:

2. Given that R is the true religion and yet the majority of human beings does not subscribe to R, would we expect to see significant division or unity among the adherents of R?

But now I don’t think we have much reason to say that we should expect unity. Let’s say that abstractly we have versions R₁, ..., R_n of religion R, that R₁ is in fact the correct one, and that all the versions agree on some fundamental claims F definitive of R as such. So, should we expect that all those who accept F should accept R₁ as well?

I see one main reason to think this: God wants us to know the truth. But it is already a part of the background assumptions in (2) that God’s desire that we know the truth does not result in the majority of humans subscribing to R, much less R₁. Given this part of the background, why should we expect the majority of those humans who subscribe to F to accept R₁?

Now, it may be that some religions are obviously logically interwoven, such that if one accepts the fundamental claims, the rest follows with sufficient obviousness that we would expect the vast majority of people who accept the fundamental claims to accept the less fundamental ones. But it seems to me that there is little reason a priori to think that the true religion should have such obvious logical interweaving.

So, I don’t think that given both that R is the true religion and that the majority of people do not accept R, I do not think we have reason to expect unity among the adherents of R. Indeed, we might reasonably expect that if there is a true version R₁ of R, there will be a significant core of people who accept R₁ and then a penumbra of people who accept some parts of R₁ but reject others, thereby landing themselves in some other version R_i of R.

In light of this, it seems to me that once we have evidentially taken into account the fact that the majority of people are not Christians, the further fact that the Christians are denominationally divided does not seem to be significant evidence against Christianity.

Analogies to ectopic pregnancy

The standard Catholic view of tubal pregnancy is that it is permissible to remove the tube with the child. The idea seems to be that the danger to the mother comes from the potential rupture of the tube, and hence removal of the tube is removal of that which poses the danger, and the death of the child is a non-intended side-effect, with the action justified by double effect. I’ve always been queasy about this reasoning, but I now have two related analogies that make me feel better about this.

Case 1: There are two astronauts on a spaceship, with no oxygen left in the air. The astronauts are wearing spacesuits with oxygen tanks. The oxygen tanks are sufficient for the astronauts to survive until they get home: 50% of the oxygen can be expected to be used up before getting home. However, one of the tanks is rigged by a malefactor with an explosive device such that if more than 20% of the oxygen is used, it will explode, killing both astronauts. The astronaut wearing that particular spacesuit is unconscious and cannot be consulted. It is not feasible to disarm the bomb or to swap tanks. The conscious astronaut removes the explosive tank from the other astronaut’s space suit and throws it into space, knowing that this will result in the unconscious astronaut dying from lack of oxygen. The intention, however, is to remove the item that will dangerously rupture if it is left in place. It is not the intention to kill the other astronaut. This is true even though it is the other astronaut’s breathing that would trigger the tank’s explosion.

The proximate source of the danger is the oxygen tank. But the more distant source is the breathing. It seems very plausible that it makes a moral difference whether the conscious astronaut shoots the unconscious astronaut to stop their breathing (wrong) or removes their tank to expel the danger (right action). This seems a legitimate case of double effect reasoning.

Case 2: Much as in Case 1, but (a) there is intense radiation outside the spaceship’s shielding, so that getting pushed into space even while wearing a spacesuit on will be fatal, and (b) there is no way to separate the tank from the astronaut. Thus, the other astronaut picks up the explosive tank, and throws it far into space. The tank is connected to the unconscious astronaut, so the unconscious astronaut flies out with the tank, and is killed by radiation. The tank never explodes, because the oxygen doesn't get depleted

Again, this seems a perfectly legitimate case of double effect reasoning.

What about the alternative of removing the child from the tube, which orthodox Catholic ethicists tend to reject (unless done in the hope reattaching in the correct place)? Well, the child is connected to the tube via a placenta. The placenta is to a large degree an organ of the child. As I understand it, removal of the child from the tube would require intentionally cutting the placenta, in a way that is fatal to the child. This directly fatal intervention seems akin to slicing the astronaut to remove them from the suit. This seems harder to justify.

Eucharist talk

I gave a Thomistic Institute talk on the Real Presence today. Here are the slides and here is the audio. I am particularly pleased with my argument against the purely symbolic view of the Eucharist.

In vitro fertilization and Artificial Intelligence

The Catholic Church teaches that it is wrong for us to intentionally reproduce by any means other than marital intercourse (though things can be done to make marital intercourse more fertile than it otherwise would be). In particular, human in vitro fertilization is wrong.

But there is clearly nothing wrong with our engaging in in vitro fertilization of plants. And I have never heard a Catholic moralist object to the in vitro fertilization of farm animals.

Suppose we met intelligent aliens. Would it be permissible for us to reproduce them in vitro? I think the question hinges on whether what is wrong with in vitro fertilization has to do with the fact that the creature that is reproduced is one of us or has to do with the fact that it is a person. I suspect it has to do with the fact that it is a person, and hence our reproducing non-human persons in vitro would be wrong, too. Otherwise, we would have the absurd situation where we might permissibly reproduce an alien in vitro, and they would permissibly reproduce a human in vitro, and then we would swap babies.

But if what is problematic is our reproducing persons in vitro, then we need to look for a relevant moral principle. I think it may have something to do with the sacredness of persons. When something is sacred, we are not surprised that there are restrictions. Sacred acts are often restricted by agent, location and time. They are something whose significance goes beyond humanity, and hence we do not have the authority to engage in them willy-nilly. It may be that the production of persons is sacred in this way, and hence we need the authority to produce persons. Our nature testifies to us that we have this authority in the context of marital intercourse. We have no data telling us that we are authorized to produce persons in any other way, and without such data we should not do it.

This would have a serious repercussion for artificial intelligence research. If we think there is a significant chance that strong AI might be possible, we should stay away from research that might well produce a software person.

In vitro fertilization and creating genuine artificial intelligence

Catholic teaching says that there is (at least barring special divine dispensation) exactly one permissible way for human beings to directly produce new human beings: marital mating. This isn't just an arbitrary prohibition--arbitrary prohibitions like the one against pork went out (or, more precisely, underwent aufhebung) when the New Covenant came in. What is the reason for this restriction? We can, after all, permissibly produce other kinds of animals in other ways. There is no Catholic teaching against using artificial insemination in cattle.

I see two options. The first is that it is just the reflexiveness in human beings producing human beings requires the restriction. This seems implausible to me. Imagine that we meet Martians. It would be very odd to think that the Vulcans could permissibly produce new human beings in vitro and humans could permissibly produce new Vulcans in vitro, although humans couldn't permissibly produce humans in vitro (or Vulcans Vulcans).

The second option is that this has something to do with what is special about the target of production: a new human being. But what is it that is special about this target? It seems plausible that it is personhood. This suggests that we are only permitted to directly produce persons by marital mating. (Why? Maybe it has something to do with the more intimate way in which persons are images of God, and hence sacred, as in Paulo Juarez's comment. Or maybe there is a Kantian argument that other forms of production would fail to treat the persons as ends.)

But now if we were to generate genuine artificial intelligence--not merely computers acting as if they were intelligent--then we would have produced a person, and done so apart from marital mating. If I am right that it is personhood that is at the root of the prohibition on in vitro fertilization, it seems to follow that (at least barring special divine dispensation) it is impermissible for us to produce genuine artificial intelligence (AI).

Should this ethical constraint hamper AI research? That depends on whether there is significant reason to think that computers could ever actually have genuine intelligence. If dualism is true (and Catholicism entails dualism), then the only way a computer could gain genuine intelligence, as opposed to merely behaving like an intelligent thing, would be by gaining a soul. But perhaps God has enacted something like a law of nature by which whenever matter is organized in such a way that it could support intelligence, then that matter comes to be ensouled. If so, there could be an ethical problem in aiming at genuine artificial intelligence, and this could ethically restrict AI research since we might not know where the line of sufficient organization would be crossed (presumably, though, we're not that close to the line yet).

Maybe, though, things aren't so simple. Maybe rather than there being a general prohibition on our producing persons except by marital mating, what we have is a general prohibition on our directly producing persons by means other than the natural direct means for originating those kinds of persons. For humans, the natural direct means for origination is marital mating. But for intelligent computers, factory production could perhaps be the natural means for originating. Maybe, but I find more plausible the idea that we simply do not have the right to make persons, except by marital mating.

Does Christianity require a belief in matter?

The doctrines of incarnation, resurrection and real presence certainly require us to believe ordinary language existence claims about bodies, bread and wine. It's hard to take Scripture to be inspired without believing ordinary language existence claims about plants, animals, mountains, seas, etc. But do we need to believe that there is matter?

A search of the Church Councils up to and including the First Vatican Council turns up nothing dogmatic about "matter" in the relevant sense of the word (I am not including the technical sense of "matter of a sacrament" in sacramental theology). Searching for "material" finds some talk of material weapons, material flesh, and material food and drink. But I think that it would seem to me to be an overreach to take the Councils to be dogmatically teaching that weapons, flesh and food and drink are material. Rather, the relevant distinction seems to be between the spiritual weapons, spiritual flesh and spiritual food and drink and their ordinary earthly versions, rather than teach something about the nature of the ordinary versions, except that they differ from the spiritual.

I used to think that we need to believe hylomorphism. After all, the Fifth Lateran Council teaches that the soul is the form of the body. But while this gives us the morphê (form) part of hylomorphism, it doesn't give use the hyle (matter) part. We need to believe that the soul is the form of the body; not that it is the form of the matter.

If this reading of the Tradition is right, then Christian philosophers do not need to try to figure out the knotty question of what constitutes materiality. We have to accept, in some way, the existence of bodies, bread and wine, but we don't have to say that these things fall into some philosophically important kind like "matter". The handful of statements about "material" things we can simply understand in the vague way as about "things relevantly like ordinary things around us", without thinking that matter is any kind of metaphysically or physically important kind. We don't have to worry that if it turns out on our best science that physical reality is constituted by fields rather than particles, then we will have a conflict between faith and science. We still would have to find a way of locating bodies, bread and wine within physical reality, but we would not have to identify them with bits of matter.

Of course, it may turn out that the concept of matter has philosophical or scientific use apart from the needs of faith. But I have a suspicion that thinking about the nature of the body may be more promising than thinking about the nature of matter.

A Catholic argument against presentism

1. If Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is true, then there is a time t such that an accident of bread exists-at-t and no substance of which it is an accident exists-at-t.
2. It is metaphysically impossible that an accident exists and no substance of which it is an accident exists.
3. If presentism is true and x exists-at-t, then it is true at t that x exists.
4. Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is true.
5. If presentism is true and Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is true, then it is true at some time t that an accident of bread exists and no substance of which it is an accident exists. (By 1 and 3)
6. There is no time t such at that time it is true that an accident of bread exists and no substance of which it is an accident exists. (By 2)
7. So at least one of presentism and Catholic teaching on the Eucharist is false. (By 5 and 6)
8. So presentism is false. (By 4 and 7)

Traditionally, Catholic philosophers have denied (2). But (2) is very plausible, so we have a good argument against presentism.

The holiness of the Church and clerical scandals

Does gravely immoral activity by the clergy detract from the holiness of the Church as it is on earth, the Church militant? It sure seems so. But I want to argue, very speculatively (and I will withdraw the claim if it turns out that the Church teaches otherwise), that it directly detracts no more—or at least not significantly more—than equally gravely immoral activity by similar numbers of laity would.

Consider the three features we desire the Church as found on earth to have: doctrinal orthodoxy, liturgical integrity and holiness of life.

The doctrinal orthodoxy and liturgical integrity of the clergy does indeed especially contribute to the doctrinal orthodoxy and liturgical integrity of the Church. If a priest or especially a bishop is unorthodox, all other things being equal, that in itself detracts more from the orthodoxy of the Church on earth than when a lay person is unorthodox, simply because of the teaching role of the clergy. Similarly, if a priest or bishop engages in liturgical anarchy, say by changing some prayers at Mass, that detracts from the liturgical integrity of the Church more than if a lay person does so, all other things being equal.

But when a deacon, priest or bishop (including a pope) is wicked, that no more (and no less) directly detracts from the holiness of the Church than when a non-cleric person is wicked, when the degree of wickedness is the same. We can see this by considering the happier flip-side. Think of a non-cleric like St Teresa of Avila (she was a nun, of course, but a nun is a non-cleric[note 1]) and a priest like St John of the Cross. The holiness of their lives directly contributed to the holiness of the Church. But it would, I think, be mistaken to say that St John's holiness contributed more, or was a more central contribution, than St Teresa's just because St John was a priest and St Teresa was not. To say that would be to engage in clericalism, and is perhaps a species of the same error that leads to Donatism. The clergy's activity makes a special constitutive contribution to the Church's orthodoxy and liturgical integrity. But a layperson's holiness is just as constitutive of the holiness of the Church as the holiness of a deacon, priest or bishop. Mary makes a greater direct contribution to the holiness of the Church than any deacon, priest or bishop—not counting Christ the High Priest—ever did or would.

Of course, wickedness in a deacon, priest or bishop (and especially when the bishop is pope) typically has a greater negative effect on the Church's holiness, because it is more likely to scandalize others, leading them either to imitate the wickedness or abandon the faith. This indirectly detracts from the Church's holiness.

Suppose every single Catholic priest next year committed some particular grave and scandalous sin. That would be a terrible thing, would have a very unfortunate negative effect on the Church, and may God preserve us from this disaster. But it would no more directly detract from the Church's holiness than if some other group comprising 0.04% of the world's Catholic population committed an equally grave sin.

That said, a sin that is otherwise of the same sort may be graver when committed by a cleric, because (a) the cleric bears a responsibiity for avoiding the further negative effects and (b) is less likely to be excusable through ignorance. The above assumes we are dealing with sins of equal gravity.

Christ promised that the Church would be holy. The above argument shows that an argument based on clerical crimes that the Catholic Church cannot be Christ's Church because Christ's Church is holy is no stronger than argument based on equal numbers of non-clerical crimes would be. But an argument based on the crimes committed by non-clerics would fail: we do not expect the Church's holiness to imply the sinlessness of her members. The Church while holy as a body—the body of Christ—is yet a Church for sinners who need Christ's reforming grace. Thus the argument based on clerical crimes also fails.

And then, of course, there is always Boccaccio's argument.

Gutting on Church authority

Gary Gutting has an interesting opinion piece where he argues that the Bishops don't have the right to define the teachings of the Catholic Church for the purposes of American political discussion, because most American Catholics disagree with them on matters like contraception.

Imagine the Tall Persons' Club, where by well-established and generations-old tradition, the executive council is made up of the three tallest members, and the president is the tallest member. I voluntarily join the Tall Persons' Club, because I love many of its traditionally established activities, such as the annual cleaning of the giraffe enclosure in the local zoo, the discounted tickets to basketball games and the spectacular fireworks on Robert Pershing Wadlow's birthday.

However, I believe that the governing structure is an unfortunate one, because I think (a) height does not correlate with intelligence, (b) a focus on absolute rather than group-relative height is unfair to some ethnic groups, and (c) we should also do more for ostrich conservation than the present leadership does. Moreover, many members are with me on this. But nonetheless, by voluntarily joining the club, I have given its three tallest members a certain right to speak on my behalf on club-related matters. This is particularly true if there are other clubs that engage in similar activities but have a governing structure closer to what I like.

There are a number of important disanalogies, of course. For instance, one might believe that membership in the Catholic Church is necessary for eternal salvation. If one believes that, then one will have a very serious reason to be a member of the Church no matter how much one disagrees with the Magisterium, and the voluntariness that was essential to my story about the Tall Persons' Club is decreased. However, I don't know of any Catholics who disagree with the Magisterium on contraception who think that membership in the Catholic Church is necessary for salvation.

Another disanalogy is that many people become members of the Catholic Church not by their own choice, but by infant baptism (which, as I think Augustine notes, emphasizes that salvation is not by works). However, given a pluralistic society like ours, they are at least typically remaining in the Church voluntarily.

What counts as "the opinion of a group" is a really tough question. But it certainly isn't determined by looking at what the majority believe. For instance, it is false to say that it is the opinion of the Music Department that the earth goes around the sun, though no doubt that is the opinion of the majority of the members of the Music Department. It is not the opinion of the Music Department because the Music Department has not come to this view by the established methods for forming a corporate view of a matter proper to the Music Department. So majority opinion is not a sufficient condition for group opinion. Nor is it a necessary condition for something to be the opinion of a group that the majority believe it, even in the case of an institution whose traditional governance is by simple majority vote. A group can come up with a joint compromise proposition, approved by a majority vote, where in fact no one individual in the group endorses the proposition in its entirety (whether it is ever morally licit to vote in favor of a group resolution to endorse a proposition one takes to be false is a different question).

(Also, the following rather interesting thing can happen in a group. There may be two groups with the same or almost the same membership but with different governance structures, and opinions, preferences and decisions will then be differently attributable to the two groups. For instance, there may be the Music Department as an academic department and the Music Department as a social group. Perhaps the Music Department as a social group likes a particular brand of beer, but that preference is not of the Music Department as an academic group unless they vote for it in a Department meeting. It could be that there is the Tall Persons' Club as such and the Tall Persons' Club as a majority-governed group of individuals. We should then say that ostrich protection is a goal of the second group but not of the first.)

Furthermore, those of us who at least in principle like the idea of constitutional democracies (or monarchies, for that matter--I am Canadian, after all) should not say that the authority of a group derives from synchronic endorsement by the members. For it is a crucial feature (and very important for protecting minorities) of a constitutional system that it persists in authority even when at a particular time the majority fail to respect that authority (in this way, it is like marriage; one also thinks of Ulysses tied to the mast). The military oath in the United States is, importantly, an oath to protect the Constitution, not the present preferences and choices of the American people.

But I am out of my depth in the social/political philosophy stuff.

The Catholic Church: infallible, liar or lunatic

It has hit me (and no doubt I am not the first) that the Lord/liar/lunatic argument can be adapted to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church claims immense dogmatic and practical authority over Christians. She claims infallibility. She is, thus, either infallible, or liar, or lunatic.

Is she a liar? Then we have the puzzle that she has done so well at preserving early Christian doctrines in the face of heresy after heresy. In our time this is particularly clear, I think, in the case of her teachings on sexuality and the protection of human life, her unyielding insistence on the infallibility of Scripture, and the central preaching of the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation.

Is she a lunatic? Then we have the puzzle that lunacy would be the domain of the Church of such men and women as Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Descartes, Pascal, Terese de Lisieux and John Paul II. The Church with the most intellectually seriously worked out intellectual tradition that the Christian world has known (and probably that the world has known) would then be a lunatic. That is not so plausible.

So the most plausible story is that she is infallible.

We may supplement this argument as follows. Paul talks about the Church as the pillar and bulwark of truth (1 Tim 3:15). Jesus talks of the Holy Spirit's guidance for the Church. All this at least suggests that there is a Church which is a reliable guide. But which Church has a plausible claim of being a reliable guide over the centuries? In the end, I think only the Catholic Church, though a case (I believe in the end somewhat weaker) can also be made for the Orthodox Church. But if the Catholic Church is a reliable guide, it is implausible that she is also a liar or a lunatic. And so she's infallible.

If I am right in this post, then earlier, less ecumenical Protestants, in their condemnations of papistry, may have been onto something important: one can't be ambivalent towards the Catholic Church, just as one can't be ambivalent towards Christ. For if the Catholic Church is not infallible as she claims, she is a liar or a lunatic.

The perils of intra-Christian apologetics

Here is a fascinating post by my colleague Frank Beckwith.  I can certainly theoretically see the danger, though I am not sure that as empirical matter of fact it's that common.  I suppose the danger is a species of the general thesis that arguing for p can convince one's interlocutor of ~p or of even worse things.

Boccaccio's argument for the Catholic faith

In the second story of the first day of the Decameron, we have the story of how Giannotto tried to convince a Jewish friend named Abraham to become a Christian. Giannotto is a fairly ignorant merchant, but his arguments have sincerity. Abraham, on the other hand, is a theologically well-educated Jew. But instead of making mincemeat of his friend's arguments, out of friendship and perhaps a movement by the Holy Spirit (so the narrator suggests), he resolves he'll go to Rome to see what the alleged vicar of Christ is like, in order to decide which faith is correct. Giannotto thinks all is lost:

if he goes to the court of Rome and sees the wicked and filthy lives of the clergy, not only will he not change from a Jew to a Christian, but if if he had already become a Christian before, he would, no doubt, return to being a Jew.

Nonetheless, he sends his friend with his blessing. Abraham goes to Rome and sees all the sin among "the Pope, the cardinals, and the other prelates and courtiers". Abraham returns, and Giannotto is sure that there is no longer a chance of conversion. He asks Abraham what he thought of the Papal court. Abraham responds:

I don't like them a bit, and may God condemn them all; and I tell you think because as far as I was able to determine, I saw there no holiness, no devotion, no good work or exemplary life, or anything else among the clergy; instead, lust, avarice, gluttony, fraud, envy, pride, and the like and even worse (if worse than this is possible) were so completely in charge there that I believe that city is more of a forge for the Devil's work than for God's: in my opinion, that Shepherd of yours and, as a result, all of the others as well are trying as quickly as possible and with all the talent and skill they have to reduce the Christian religion to nothing and to drive it from the face of the earth when they really should act as its support and foundation. And since I have observed that in spite of all this, they do not succeed but, on the contrary, that your religion continuously grows and becomes brighter and more illustrious, I am justly of the opinion that it has the Holy Spirit as its foundation and support, and that it is truer and holier than any other religion.... So, let us go to church, and there, according to the custom of your holy faith, I shall be baptised.[note 1]

Now, while over the past century we've been blessed by popes of exemplary holiness (though of course there has been much wickedness elsewhere among the clergy and laity), the argument does not require present papal wickedness. What it requires is the surprising way that despite all the wickedness, the Church survives and grows. One might object: but if the Catholic faith were the true faith, wouldn't we expect that the hierarchy would be holy in the first place? While the analogy is not perfect, this is similar to asking, in the case of someone who was apparently miraculously healed, why God would have permitted the illness in the first place. The question is a good and tough one, but it does not make the healing (in the case of the cancer) or the survival and growth (in the case of the Church) less wonderful.

We might enhance the above by recalling another argument. The Catholic Church's formal teaching is coherent, despite having been developed over twenty centuries. The teachings are not only coherent at one time, but are coherent over time (and cohere with Scripture as well, but I don't want to rely on this if the argument is to be convincing to Protestants). The best explanation of this coherence is that it is the work of the Holy Spirit. Arguments along these lines have been developed by Menssen and Sullivan. Observe, too, how this consistency is not observed in most other Christian bodies—sexual ethics is a nice example, with contraception once condemned by all theologians (including Luther and Calvin) and now widely accepted by non-Catholic bodies (with the notable exception of some individual Protestants and some Orthodox bodies—though even in the latter, there is a reluctant acceptance of remarriage after divorce). But now combine this argument with Boccaccio's. The consistency over time is amazing enough—but when one notes that the consistency includes popes who were, apparently, quite wicked, but who, nonetheless, did not formally teach the Church anything contrary to the earlier faith, the argument becomes even stronger.

Sacramental theology

There are two approaches to Christianity (and perhaps to other religions). One is with a "metaphysicalizing impulse (MI)", and the other is a "pragmaticalizing impulse (PI)". Those with a PI are likely to take the central features of, say, baptism, matrimony and the Lord's Supper to be, broadly, pragmatic features: these liturgical actions are performatives in Austin's sense, which have normative and psychological effects. Those with an MI are likely to take the central features of these kinds of liturgical actions to be a metaphysical effect that provides at least partial truth-grounds for the normative effect and that supernaturally causes effects in the souls of those who genuinely participate.

It often seems like the difference between Christians who have the MI and those who have the PI has a basis in temperament more than anything else. To some people, metaphysicalizing comes naturally, and to others, pragmaticalizing comes naturally. The metaphysicalizers may accuse the pragmaticalizers of a shallowness and maybe sometimes a subjectivism. The pragmaticalizers may accuse the metaphysicalizers of a tendency to irrelevancy and maybe sometimes of using metaphysical speculation as a way to put off the hard work of living the Christian life.

Both metaphysicalizing and pragmaticalizing needs to be a part of Christian theology. That pragmaticalizing needs to be a part of Christian theology is clear from the fact that Christianity is not gnosticism. The Christian life is not a way of life centered on learning esoteric metaphysical claims, but is centered on living out the love for God in communion with others.

However, to neglect metaphysicalizing is to neglect a significant part of the difference between Old Testament and New Testament commandments. Some of the Old Testament commandments were normatively grounded merely in God's command. There is no intrinsic reason to avoid mixing different kinds of fabric in one's garments beyond the fact that God forbade it with his authority. Some of the commandments may have had a symbolic meaning, which was mysteriously fulfilled in the New Testament, and some may not have even had that. But the New Testament largely puts away the merely arbitrary and the merely symbolic divine commands (or, perhaps more precisely, transfers much of the authority over the merely symbolic to the Christian community, which then, as a diachronic and hierarchical community, gets to decide how exactly to celebrate that which God has put in place, with much more freedom—notice, for instance, how nobody thinks that in New Testament times God has very specific prescriptions for clerical dress, that being left to Church authority), focusing on that which is of intrinsic significance. If divinely prescribed central liturgical actions, such as those of baptism, matrimony and the Lord's Supper remain, these cannot simply be arbitrary and/or symbolic commands of the sort that were given in the Old Testament. The need for obedience here must be somehow grounded in reality. And the metaphysicalizer has an explanation here. Baptism changes the soul of the genuine participant, incorporating her into the Body of Christ in a mysterious way that goes beyond the symbolic and even beyond the performative (it is not just a human work—if it were a performative, it would be just a human work, and that is contrary to the focus on grace). Matrimony genuinely joins two people, not merely symbolically linking them together, not just being a performative, not even simply changing God's attitude to them ("making them married in the eyes of God"), but actually changing the people in a supernatural way that is quite mysterious, and that provides them with the grace to live out the pragmatic aspects. The Lord's Supper is commanded because in it, it is the Lord who offers himself quite literally to us for us to consume his flesh, thereby receiving the grace to live more fully as members of Christ's body.

Without metaphysicalizing, the distinction between the Old Testament and the New is obscured. The metaphysics provides a grounding for the normative effects. But without practicalizing, we have gnosticism.

Hope from history

Sometimes the Christian may feel depressed over present errors and distortions, supported by intellectual and cultural elites, defended by individual Christians, and sometimes perhaps insufficiently condemned by the elders. It may seem like various battles, such as the ones over abortion, divorce, and Sunday work/shopping (I do not equate the three issues), are lost, even among many of the faithful. Sometimes it helps me to remember past battles that also appeared to be unwinnable but that have been won, mainly to increase hope, though a wiser person than I might also learn lessons from the past victories.

Two past battles seem to me particularly memorable: simony and duelling. They are different kinds of examples. Simony (the charging of money for sacraments), as far as I know, was never strongly supported by anybody but the simoniacs themselves. But nonetheless it seemed to be a vice that for centuries was impossible to root out. Yet now, by the grace of God, we are almost entirely free of it. Duelling was supported by much literature, and by examples in the highest society of people who engaged in this sin without any sign of shame. The situation might well have seemed hopeless, and the defense of the Christian teaching on the sanctity of life would have seemed crazy. Yet, again, while people still fight, the cold-blooded, formalized duel to the death is almost entirely gone, as are its defenders. It's almost a miracle—or perhaps literally it is a miracle.

Also certain kinds of once-mighty ideological enemies of Christianity are no more. An interesting case is the puritanical secularist, whom one now one meets mainly in the pages of Chesterton and in history books. For instance, Gonzales in The Mexican Revolution quotes the revolutionary Saturnino Cedillo (around 1920):

I want land. I want ammunition so that I can protect my land after I get it in case somebody tries to take it away from me. And I want plows, and I want schools for my children, and I want teachers, and I want books and pencils and blackboards and roads. And I want moving pictures of my people, too. And I don't want any Church or any saloon.

Or any brothel, too, I bet. These kinds of secularist revolutionaries seemed to have four enemies: the exploiting classes, the Church, the saloons and the brothels. This sternly moralistic secularist was a formidable enemy in his time: his just opposition to exploitation, drunkenness and prostition did make it harder to fight against him. But he is no more. That is a pity in some ways.

Loss of faith

Sometimes, Christians worry whether they might not have lost their faith. Here is a line of thought that might be comforting, though it is probably only acceptable to Catholics. Faith being a gift of grace, it is not possible to lose faith without losing sanctifying grace. It is not possible, however, to lose sanctifying grace but by committing a (formal) mortal sin. Therefore, faith can only be lost through committing a mortal sin. But in a serious Christian, mortal sin is very unlikely to be something done casually—it is a free and conscious rejection of God's love, after all. Faith is not, then, something one can "just lose". It is something one can reject, but only by a mortal sin.

Inerrance

Occasionally, the rhetorical question is asked of inerrantists: "What's the use of having an inerrant text, if your interpretation of the text is fallible?" Sometimes this question is asked by opponents of inerrance, and sometimes by those who think that those who accept inerrance don't go far enough—they should also accept an infallible exegetical authority. I've done this myself, as an argument for Catholicism.

But the argument implicit in the question is not a good argument without further work. It would be silly to ask: "Why do you care about having a calculator that makes no mistakes, given that you can punch the wrong numbers into it and read the answer off wrongly?" When using a fallible calculator, there are three sources of errors: the calculator, the data input, and the reading of the output. Surely it is a good thing to be able to eliminate one of the three, even if the other two remain.

Furthermore, there is the following advantage to having an inerrant text: progress in interpreting the text is apt to get us closer to the truth of the matter in the subject the text is about. But if the text is wrong on some point, it might be that the better we interpret it, the further from the truth we find ourselves (if we take the text to be authoritative). It is worth having this feature. We might be currently unable to tell what Scripture requires of us in some matter, but it is not unreasonable to devote significant effort into trying to figure it out—because it is likely true.

But let's go back to the rhetorical question and see if we can make it into any argument that can be defended. First of all, it's not clear how "What's the use of p?" even when met with no answer gives us reason to deny p. What's the use of the moon? I don't know, but my not knowing the use for it doesn't seem to significantly affect my confidence that it's there.

However, inerrance isn't like the moon. Inerrance is very unlikely without a miracle. And we might think that God doesn't work miracles except with good reason. So perhaps we could argue that if inerrance is of no use, God wouldn't bother with it. But that's going to be weak. How could we rule out all uses of inerrance? And in fact, surely there are some. The belief that Scripture is inerrant has inspired many people to obey various good commands in Scripture. Moreover, it is better be inspired by a true rather than false belief. So there is surely some use of inerrance. One might worry that the miracle is too great and the benefit disproportionately small. But I don't see why an omnipotent being can't do a great miracle for a small benefit (God helps me find lost objects sometimes—for all I know, he may even be miraculously transporting the lost objects to me, though somehow it seems more likely that he is simply directing my attention to the objects), nor do I see the benefit as small.

Still, there is, I think, some force in the argument of the rhetorical question. There are four sources of errors in information obtained from a text: errors in the original, errors in copying, errors in reading (decoding of words), and errors in interpretation. If it turns out that there are likely so many errors in interpretation that the benefit of lack of errors in the original is quite small, then there is something to be said for asking why God would have ensured a lack of errors in the original without ensuring an infallible method of interpretation. (If a measurement has two sources of error, one of the order of magnitude 0.001 units and the other of the order of magnitude of 0.020 units, a scientist would be unlikely to try to minimize the first error without trying to minimize the second.) But this would require a further argument that fallible interpretation would be quite unreliable—we couldn't just base the argument on the mere fact that interpretation is fallible. Moreover, I think this wouldn't so much an argument against inerrance, as an argument for an infallible method of interpretation (such as a magisterium or tradition or both).

Is it the case that errors in the interpretation of the Bible are so very common that there is something to the argument? I think it might be. Granted, there may be wide exegetical agreement on certain basic points. But if the point of inerrance is simply to preserve agreement on these basic points, we would not need full inerrance, but a more limited doctrine of preserving the truth in the basics (this point was made by one of our grad students in discussion today). So we might still argue: If we think God valued truth in such a way as to give us full inerrance in Scripture, we have good reason to think that he would also have ensured an infallible interpretative method, since that would serve the same value. This is an argumentum ex convenientia, an argument form well loved by medieval theologians.

So, yes, there is something to the argument in the original rhetorical question, but it would take significant effort to defend it carefully. I haven't put in that sort of effort in this post.