The Great and Holy Sabbath

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.

Genesis 2.1-3

Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Genesis 3.17b-19

I was not raised religious, so when I became a Christian in my mid-twenties I was not familiar with very many of the traditional interpretations of scriptural passages and religious practices. An example that comes to mind today is the saying of Our Lord, which can be found in all four Gospels, that "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." When I first heard this text proclaimed I'm pretty sure I thought that it meant that God gave us the Sabbath day as a day of rest, that it was "ours" in that sense. But of course that sense doesn't make any sense of the context in which Our Lord said that the Sabbath was made for us, because, of course, he and his disciples weren't resting when they were accused of violating the Sabbath, they were picking grains of wheat as they walked along. Perhaps someone raised in the Church would have known what I only figured out over time, that the text refers to God's mercy. Our labors are a result of our Fall, and God gave us a day on which we must not labor, so that in our resting state we may stand as a sign to all the world that our Fall is not irreversible, thanks to God's great mercy.

Today is the Sabbath day par excellence, since it is the central point of the sacred Triduum in which God poured himself out for us on the Cross and rose again from the dead. The old creation, with all its labors and passions, passed away on Good Friday, and our state of condemnation with it, and on the Sunday of the Resurrection a new creation, a re-creation of our primordial state, takes its place. Between the two is a day of rest, commemorating the great mercy and love that is the bridge between the old creation and the new. In the Office of Readings for today we read the traditional account of Christ's descent into Hell on this day, to bring the Good News of the new creation to Adam, Eve, and all the rest who passed from the old creation before the coming of the kingdom. This story is a very old one; more recently Holy Saturday has been portrayed as a "waiting day", the so-called "Vigil" day, or "Easter Even", in which creation sits expectantly at the tomb awaiting the coming forth of her Lord in glory. Both of these things, the old tradition and the new interpretation, reflect, in my view, an attempt to "do something" with Holy Saturday. It's so obvious, after all, what the Friday of Our Lord's Passion and the Sunday of his Resurrection are all about, but what are we to do with that day in between?

Coming to Christianity as a convert who is all too keenly aware of his need for mercy, I look on Holy Saturday somewhat differently. The Passion is done, the Price has been paid, so there is no "waiting" involved in this "Easter Even". The Resurrection is coming, but before it does I am bidden by the Commandment to bask for a time in God's great mercy, before I turn to the joyous celebration of the start of a new creation. Have you ever taken a great deal of trouble to wrap a Christmas or birthday gift for someone whom you love deeply? Maybe you selected special paper, perhaps you took some time to make a bow and to curl some ribbon, maybe you worked hard to get those corners folded over just right. Whenever I get a gift like that, a gift that was obviously hand wrapped with such great care, I make it a point to take in the labor of love that is the wrapping before I start ripping into it. Indeed, such gifts I do not "rip into", but instead I usually undo the wrapping very carefully, and sometimes I save it. To this day, 20 years later, I still have the wrapping in which the woman who was to become my wife gave me the first gift she ever gave me, which turned out to be a very nice Rosary. God's infinite mercy and love is the finest of papers in which our gift of redemption has been wrapped, and once one realizes that, one no longer takes the Sabbath for granted as a mere "day of rest". We rest not so that we may begin laboring again the next day, but so that we may breath deeply of God's mercy, take it in, enjoy the wrapping and exult in the great work of love that God has accomplished for us, because He loves us.

He loves us. Don't rip into that paper and toss it aside, but drink it in with your soul and savor it. Most weekends Christians are content to regard Sunday itself as the "Sabbath day", because it is the "Lord's Day". But this weekend is different: this weekend the Sabbath day and the Lord's day are two different days, and we have a chance to experience God's entire Sacramental message to us in a way that it is very difficult to capture on other days. Spend this Great and Holy Sabbath basking in God's mercy, so that tonight, when you celebrate your recreation, you will have that sense of loving gratitude and Eucharistic joy that will draw you closer to God.

Quantum Textual Differences

Some of you may remember that I have been reading through the Greek NT as part of my "Lenten exercises." Although I've done this every Lent for nearly 15 years, I think I benefited from doing this more this year than I have in a long time; in the near future I plan to post some on why I think this is so, but before I do that I'd like to remark on a few textual curiosities that popped up in the course of the reading. If you've ever browsed around in various translations of the Gospel of St. John, you may have noticed that there is some difference of opinion as to how best to punctuate verses 3 and 4 of the first chapter. In the King James Version, for example, the two verses read

(3) All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (4) In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

This punctuation was maintained in the Revised Standard Version, which reads

(3) all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. (4) In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

In the Revised New Testament of the New American Bible, however, the verses are punctuated this way:

(3) All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be (4) through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race.

I will pass over in silence the inconcinnity of that "the light of the human race", but if you look into this matter further you will find that the majority of translations made before the 1980s favor the punctuation adopted by the King James Version and retained in the Revised Standard Version, but that there is a growing preference for the punctuation adopted in the New American Bible. What difference, exactly, could any of this possibly make?

Punctuation as such was not something that was in widespread use in antiquity. Indeed, one is hard pressed to find it much in evidence anywhere in the 1st century, when the Gospel texts were first being committed to writing. In fact, putting spaces between words was not exactly a common practice, let alone putting in little marks to indicate new sentences or breaks in thought. The text of these two verses on most manuscripts would have looked vaguely like this (I'm attempting to imitate the look of uncials here--it's only an approximation):

ΠANTA∆IAYTOYEGENETOKAIXΩPICAUTOYEGENETOOY∆EEN
OGEGONENENAYTΩIZΩHHNKAIHZΩHHNTOΦΩCTΩNANΘPΩΠΩN

If it's hard to imagine reading a text like that for very long you needn't worry: not many folks in those days could read anyway. These manuscripts weren't for the idle middle classes lounging around after an eight hour day down at the office. The market for these texts was primarily a scholarly one (the word "scholar" is derived from the Greek word skholê, which means "leisure time"). The scholarly set was familiar enough with the writing conventions of the day to be able to read such texts with (relative) ease. I suppose we could get used to it, too, if we had nothing else to compare it with. To see some samples of manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, check out the website for the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.

In the case of John 1.3-4 the problem of breaking up the text into sense units is an interesting one. We have evidence that St. Jerome punctuated these two verses differently at different stages of his career. In his commentary on Habbakuk, dating from around 391-392, he cites the verses in the form employed in the New American Bible. But in many of his works dating from the period 401-416, including his Homily on the Gospel of John (401-410), he cites these verses in the form employed by the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version. So within a period of about 10 years, it seems, St. Jerome changed his mind about the best way to read these verses. What may have prompted the change?

The Macedonians were given their name from the fact that it was thought that they were followers of Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople from around 342 until he was deposed in 360 by the Arian Council of Constantinople. Although the association with Macedonius is doubtful, the Macedonian heresy, for better or for worse, was attributed by St. Jerome to him. The fundamental feature of this heresy is the denial of the divinity of the Holy Spirit (hence the Macedonians are also known as the Pneumatomakhoi). In his Homily on the Gospel of John St. Jerome notes that there are many who read these verses "badly" (male legunt), and he goes on to explain their error this way. The heretics appeal to the punctuation that we find nowadays in the New American Bible, and that St. Jerome himself had used in his commentary on Habbakuk. Since it is the Holy Spirit that gives life through Christ, the heretics argued, we must read the Gospel as telling us that the Holy Spirit is a creature of the Word, since the Gospel itself tells us that "what came-into-existence through him was life, and that life was the light of men." In other words, the Gospel itself clearly tells us that the life that was the light of men, i.e., the Holy Spirit, was one of the things that came-into-existence through the Word. So St. Jerome, in his Homily on the Gospel of John, recommended reading the verses differently--in particular, he recommended the punctuation that we find in the King James Version--in order to avoid the possibility of reading the Gospel in the Macedonian, Pneumatikomakhoi way. Subsequent Fathers relied on St. Jerome's recommendation, changing the punctuation of the verses so that they say rather explicitly that only those things that came-into-existence (i.e., not the Holy Spirit) came into existence through the Word. Period. New Sentence. "In Him was life," etc.

It is worth pointing out, I think, that the older reading, the punctuation adopted by St. Jerome in his Commentary on Habbakuk, is preferable to the later, anti-Macedonian reading. First, the anti-Macedonian reading is extremely ad hoc, and has the Gospel telling us something rather banal, namely, that the things that came into existence came into existence through the thing that brought them into existence. That's like saying that all paintings are painted by painters. It's true, but trivially so. Second, it has the Gospel informing us that there was life in the Word, and that life was the light of men. Taken with the previous verse, this is just a restatement of the same thought: the Word is what brings things into existence and, in the case of living things, causes them to be living things. None of this is very interesting, but of course trivial truths are certainly truths, so we cannot accuse St. Jerome of perverting the meaning of the Gospel for purely polemical purposes.

However, the older punctuation tells us something quite extraordinary and remarkable. It tells us about something specific that came about through the agency of the Word, namely, the renewal of that eternal life that was lost by men at the Beginning. It is worth pointing out that this was the reading favored by St. Jerome when he was translating the Scriptures into the version that we now know as the Vulgate. This means, in my opinion, that it is arguably a more authentic reading of the tradition, since it was not influenced by a polemical purpose, namely, the combatting of a semi-arian heresy.

Little differences can add up to big ones, and the ways in which we read our texts are not always matters of easy and unambiguous decisions. In the present case the placement of a single comma can make an enormous difference. Imagine having to sort things out without any punctuation marks at all!

Magical Thinking

Imagine an educational environment in which something like the following scenarios would be possible.

First, imagine a class in elementary mathematics where the teacher is required, by state law, to allow his students to define mathematical functions any way they like. Generally speaking, for example, the "addition" function takes numbers as inputs and gives other numbers as outputs and the outputs follow the pattern with which we are all familiar: 1 + 1 = 2; 1 + 2 = 3; 1 + 3 = 4; etc. Suppose, however, a student wants to define the "addition" function differently, so that, for example, 1 + 1 = 17; 1 + 2 = 36; 1 + 3 = 2; etc. (here "et cetera" cannot mean what it did above; it must mean, rather, something like "in a continuously random manner"). It should be possible, of course, for a student to define the "addition" function in such a way that 1 + 1 yields a different number each time it is "calculated", that is, it can have as its answer anything the student likes.

Before we get into a discussion of how the teacher would grade our student's math homework under this sort of regime, let's imagine another scenario. This time, imagine a medical school, where, alongside tradition "Western Medicine", a "spiritual medicine" is also taught, again by state mandate. According to the "spiritual medicine", illness and disease is not caused by pathogens of the sort we're all familiar with, but by evil spirits. The "medical students" at this "medical school" may choose to specialize in either traditional "Western Medicine" or they may specialize in "spiritual medicine". Some students may want to study both, but that is difficult because they are two very different curricula: neither one overlaps with the other in any way. In particular, "spiritual medicine" requires that they know how to perform various dances and sing certain sorts of incantations, while "Western Medicine" requires them to know anatomy, biology, chemistry, you know, that kind of stuff.

Do these scenarios seem workable to you? I suppose they are workable in the sense that they could, indeed, be mandated by law if we were so inclined to mandate things, but are they workable in a more pragmatic sense? If students could learn mathematics they way I described it above, how far would they get in the general "marketplace of ideas"? Could they manage, for example, to keep their own checkbook balanced? Could they get elected to national office and have power over the U.S. budget, or trade relations? What about medicine? Which sort of "doctor" would you choose to go to?

In short, these scenarios seem very silly indeed, and yet it is something very like one of these scenarios that Christoph Cardinal Schönborn regards as the natural state of affairs in what he calls "a truly liberal society". Such a society is one in which

students [are allowed] to hear of the debate between anti-teleological theories and those scientists and philosophers who defend teleology in nature. And this, in turn, requires considerable freedom in the discussion of open questions in evolutionary theory. Commonly in the scientific community, every inquiry into the scientific weaknesses of the theory is blocked off at the outset, and there prevails a type of censorship similar to that for which the Church is frequently reproached.

This is from Cardinal Schönborn's recent essay, "Reasonable Science, Reasonable Faith", in the April issue of First Things, an essay adapted from his address given at the pontifical colloquium on creation and evolution in September of last year. What is the purpose of "allowing students to hear" of the "scientific weaknesses" of evolutionary theory? If it is merely a matter of letting students know that there are biblical literalists out there who think that evolutionary theory is incompatible with Christian belief, a class in evolutionary biology hardly seems the proper venue for the dissemination of that information. The only possible scientific purpose for "allowing students to hear" about the "scientific weaknesses" would be in order to test, scientifically, they theory of evolution itself. It turns out, however, that the "test" that Cardinal Schönborn has in mind is not a test of evolutionary theory itself, but of materialism. Students in science classes should be allowed to question the very foundations of the discipline in which the theory is being proposed. It is not enough, Schönborn claims, for the scientist to endorse a merely methodological materialism, since, according to Schönborn, even to "endorse" a view is to presuppose something other than materialism: you cannot "endorse" a view or "propose" a scientific theory if materialism is true, because to "endorse" or "propose" presupposes the existence of immaterial things: spirit, reason, and freedom. These things, he claims, cannot be "reduced" to the material.

Regular readers of this blog already know that I am, myself, an anti-materialist, but of the arguments against materialism that I have seen this is probably among the weakest. Indeed, it begs the question, since Schönborn nowhere shows that these could not be reduced to materialist processes in principle, he simply assumes that they cannot be, and uses this assumption as a proof that materialism is false. Eliminative materialists like the Churchlands have long since shown arguments such as this to fail.

This is not to say that I don't have a certain degree of sympathy for Cardinal Schönborn's own methodological stance. He says that

Scientism - - by which I mean the philosophy (usually implicit and unrecognized) that modern science is the only way of gaining objective knowledge of reality - - must be overcome.

I believe that is true, but it is not a very important truth. For example, what ought we to call the adherents of "scientism"? To form a word in the usual way would give us "scientist", and yet I don't think we want to call the advocates of "scientism" "scientists", because most working scientists are not advocates of "scientism", indeed, very few deeply thoughtful people would advocate it at all, since it is virtually self-contradictory (let the letter "S" denote the view of "scientism" that the only way of gaining objective knowledge of reality is through modern science: can modern science, then, tell us that "S" is true?). There are, of course, advocates of "scientism" as Schönborn defines it floating around out there, but they are mostly dyspeptic outliers like Harris, Dennett, and Dawkins. These people, actually, are not exactly idiots, but they are ideologues, which is why scientism appeals to them.

The editors of First Things are not idiots, either, and yet they seem to fall victim to a kind of ideology of their own at times, especially when it comes to this issue of the connection between global materialism and the defense of evolution. Schönborn's essay is neither convincing nor philosophically sophisticated, and yet it has managed to find more than one eager audience of yes-men. Reading it is like watching a theocon version of The View, with Schönborn filling in for Rosie O'Donnell with his vapid pseudo-aristotelian inanities carelessly cribbed from Copleston's History of Philosophy and Fr. Neuhaus doing time as Barbara Walters, silently egging on the Schönborns in the While We're At It section while pretending that the Stephen Barrs don't exist. I suspect that the reason has less to do with anyone's commitment to scientific methodology and more to do with thumbing one's nose at the advocates of scientism. Not that it isn't fun to thumb one's nose at such people, but still. Cardinal Schönborn is quite right when he says

If [George C.] Simpson had said merely that no plan according to which mankind came about may be discerned using the purely quantitative-mechanical methods of scientific inquiry, then this assertion could be correct. But this way of looking at things - - this "self-limitation of reason," in the words of Benedict XVI's Regensburg address - - is not "given by nature" but is a deliberate, methodological, and eminently goal-oriented choice.

He is right, but it is a straw man, because few, if any, reasonable scientists would say otherwise. Nor does it help that this particular quotation comes immediately after this howler:

The existence of a ship leads to the question "Who constructed it?" - - and so the self-evidence experience of nature (as being directed toward an end, as ordered, and as beautiful) leads to the question "Where do these marks of intelligence come from?"

It's difficult to imagine a more naive approach to this particular problem. Even Cicero had deeper thoughts than this. It's ironic, in a way, that those who are ordinarily the strongest defenders of the idea that there is such a thing as objective truth are suddenly driven to scientific anti-realism when science has something to say that they don't find congenial. Of course, the position being defended by Schönborn has a certain advantage to it: being a priori it will have the advantage of necessity, a feature that no scientific hypothesis can share. Talk about fightin' dirty!

There was a movement afoot in the first half of the twentieth century to make philosophy more like science. The Positivists, Logical Positivists, Verificationists, and others shared a vision of empiricist philosophical method that took nearly thirty years to send off to the ash heap of philosophical history. It would be too bad if we traded a movement to turn philosophy into science for a movement to turn science into philosophy. But there seems to be a new movement afoot - - what to call it? Illogical Positivism? - - that appears to aim to do just that. The demarcation problem is not really that much of a problem, and the sooner folks on both sides of this issue realize that, the better off all subsequent discussion will be.

Bishop Daniel Herzog Comes Home

According to a story at The Living Church Foundation, Bishop Daniel Herzog, the retired Episcopal Bishop of Albany, NY, has entered into full communion with the See of Rome. While I don't think salvation hangs on such things, I do confess to a certain amount of excitement at such news. Is it nothing more than a feeling of pride that yet one more person is out there who sees things more or less the way I do, or is it genuine joy at the prospect of at least some partial restoration of that Unity for which Our Lord prayed so fervently? I suppose if I were honest I would have to say it's both, though I hope that someday I will grow up enough to feel only the latter. In writing to the new Bishop, William Love, of his decision, Bishop Herzog had this to say:

My sense of duty to the diocese, its clergy and people required that I not walk away from my office and leave vulnerable this diocese which I love. I believed that it was my responsibility to provide for a transition to the future. Your subsequent election and consecration discharged that duty and has given me the liberty to follow my conscience, and now resign my orders and membership in the House of Bishops.

It is certainly no reflection on you or your ministry which Carol and I both admire and respect and for which we pray daily. Needless to say, we have only fondness and appreciation for you and the diocese in whose ministry Carol and I have invested the past 35 years of our lives.

I can think of at least one other Episcopal Bishop that I would like to see make a similar decision, even prior to retirement. Then all would indeed be right with the world in my tiny little mind. Failing that, I take comfort in knowing that plenty of non-Catholics are already in a state similarity, if not Unity, that surpasses even what some of my fellow Catholics are able to muster. So things are, perhaps, not as bleak as they sometimes seem.

"Moderate" vs Authentic

According to the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Daniel Maguire of Marquette University has been "corrected", so to speak, by the Committee on Doctrine of the USCCB for his non-Catholic views regarding contraception, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Last June he sent out pamphlets to all the Catholic bishops in the United States called "The Moderate Roman Catholic Position on Contraception and Abortion" and "A Catholic Defense of Same-Sex Marriage". According to the Committee on Doctrine:

Since it is apparent that considerable efforts have been made to give these views the widest possible distribution as if they were a valid alternative to the teaching of the Catholic Church, the Committee on Doctrine...considers it important to offer a public correction of the erroneous views proposed in these pamphlets.

There is the usual language of proper formation of conscience, and an appeal to the Catechism of the Catholic Church for proper direction on these topics.

Daniel Maguire, a frequent Talking Head in the media when it comes to the solicitation of the "Catholic" point of view, is not widely known as the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to the intellectual defense of Catholic teaching, so his present case of foot-in-mouth disease comes as no surprise. Nor is it surprising, even while it is rather embarrassing, that he is a professor in the Theology department of Marquette University, a nominally Catholic university. Least surprising of all is Dan Maguire's reaction to the statement by the Committee on Doctrine:

A pity beyond all telling.

His website, The Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health and Ethics, boasts an interview with Maguire in which he laments the "bishops' failure to get off pelvic issues and talk about peace, poverty and other cutting-edge issues" (and yet he was the one who published a whole book with Oxford University Press in 2003 on precisely the "pelvic issues" that he accuses the bishops of being obsessed with). For those of you who may be interested, there is also a piece about Frances Kissling on the website. You'll be glad to know that she "keeps the faith" while "backing abortion".

There is one last item on the Maguire website that interests me. It is called a "Letter from a Catholic Theologian to All 270 United States Catholic Bishops". It turns out that the "theologian" in question here is none other than Dan Maguire. Maguire's training is in ethics, though he did earn a degree in "theology" from the Gregorian in Rome (more grade inflation). I have a friend here in the Math department who likes to tell me that he is a philosopher because he earned a PhD (philosophiae doctor) degree in mathematics. So I suppose Maguire thinks he is a theologian because he has the STD degree. That sort of reasoning would dovetail rather nicely with the rest of his logic.

It's All About the Blood

I went to see 300 the other day with my son. It was more his speed than mine, even though I'm a lot closer to being 300 years old than he is. He's 13, and in spite of the R rating the movie seemed to have been aimed at 13 year old boys, so it was perfect for him. I didn't think it was a bad movie, but it wasn't really a good movie, either. It was about as cartoonish as a movie can be without actually being a cartoon, and it bore little resemblance to the actual historical details, other than the fact that Leonidas and all his pals get killed in the end (oops! that was a spoiler, wasn't it? Well it shouldn't be: shame on you if it was for not knowing more about one of the most important events in Greek history). There was a rather curious attention to gory detail in this movie. Watching this movie you might get the impression that there are upwards of five gallons, rather than pints, of blood in an average human being. Even the final title sequence at the end of the movie is formed by blood spatter patterns being splashed up onto the screen in slow motion.

The day before we saw 300 the whole family went to see The Road to Terebithia. A very different movie, though there is loss involved in it, too. When a movie is well made, though, a single death turns out to be much more moving than 3000. Indeed, I found myself depressed for two days after watching The Road to Terebithia, whereas the slaughter and mayhem of 300 was so over the top that I actually laughed out loud at one particularly graphic decapitation that unfolded in the ubiquitous slow motion.

It occurs to me that history ought to serve to humanize, rather than dehumanize us. The story of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans and 2800 allies ought to have been much more moving than it was in 300. When the focus is on the killing, however, we become like Leontius from Plato's Republic who, upon noticing that corpses, victims of the plague during the Peloponnesian War, were being piled up outside the walls of Athens, cursed his own eyes for desiring to see such a spectacle. Leonidas and his 300 made a valiant sacrifice of their own lives that day, buying time for their allies and for the Greek fleet. That fact was completely lost in the movie, even while we watched their sacrifice unfold before us. It reminded me of Saving Private Ryan, another war movie where death and dying overshadowed history and story-telling. Critics claimed that Saving Private Ryan was a kind of cri de coeur against war in general, and I suppose that a movie like 300 could also be interpreted that way: both movies give us very graphic arguments against resorting to war to settle our differences. But All Quiet on the Western Front accomplishes the same thing without making us feel like Leontius. When you notice the gore and body parts more than you notice the message, the movie as a medium has become degraded, and it's no longer about telling us an important story, it's just about blood and our own debauched rubber-necking that finds in the blood an easy excuse to forget about the causes of war and our responsibility for avoiding it.

I Get Paid for Doing This

Remember Steve Martin's old stand up routine from the late 1970s? That's OK, I don't remember it very well, either, but I do remember that he used to sing a song while playing his banjo and wearing a fake arrow-through-the-head about how much fun it is to be a stand up comic. The chorus of the song including the line "I can't believe I get paid for doing this." Sometimes I get the same feeling about being a professional philosopher.

In the most recent issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies (vol. 15.1, March 2007) there is a short essay called "Hyperheaps" by W. D. Hart. The essay is only two pages long, but it manages to introduce one of the most important concepts in the history of philosophy: a formal definition of a "heap". A "heap", it seems, consists of at least four items: three to form a "base" and a fourth that is stacked on top of them. This is a proposed "solution" to a paradox that is variously called the Sorites Paradox (from the Greek word for a heap) or the Paradox of the Heap. The alleged paradox is that it is hard to tell what constitutes a heap if one is to try to give a formal definition of a heap in the form of an algorithm. You see, if you have only one grain of sand, or one grape, you evidently do not have a "heap" of sand or a "heap" of grapes. Now, suppose you propose the following algorithm: adding one more element to something that is not a heap does not constitute a heap. So adding one more grain of sand, give you two grains, does not make a heap; adding one more grape, giving you two grapes, does not make a heap. But surely if you apply the algorithm enough times, eventually you will get a heap. How could you not? But as the algorithm is defined you will never get a heap, which seems paradoxical.

See how important philosophy can be in the real world?

The purpose of the paradox is not to make you declare that there are no heaps, but to get you to think about the nature of boundary conditions, especially seemingly vague boundary conditions. But now that we have an official definition of "heap" I suppose we won't have much occasion to think about such things any more.

It is a tremendous loss to philosophy and to our culture generally.

Plus ça change

Here is the abstract for a very interesting article to be found in volume 17 (2006) of Acta Patristica et Byzantina:

According to a report of Gregory of Tours a controversy arose in the course of the 2nd Council of Mâcon (585 AD) on the question whether women can be called "man". Some historians have interpreted this as a minor incident merely concerned with aspects of the meaning and usage of the Latin word homo. Through exploring the possible intellectual background and the general historical context of the 2nd Council of Mâcon this article, however, shows that the discussion led in Mâcon was concerned with the fundamental theological-anthropological question whether women have the same status before God as men.

The article is by Katharina Bracht of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The journal is hard to find but I recommend perusing it now and then if you can get your hands on it.

Secret Codes

I have never been a huge fan of the Straussian approach to interpreting Plato. Straussians often have very interesting and valuable things to say about Plato, but they sometimes read more into the text than seems to me to be warranted by what Plato actually says. In defense of their views they will often cite a passage from Aristotle where he says something about "Plato's 'unwritten doctrine'", that is, they claim that Plato often says things rather cryptically, his texts making arguments that are quite different from what the words actually say, and you have to be in on the secret code underlying the text in order to know what Plato really thinks on a particular issue. Needless to say, the Straussians sometimes think that they know this secret code and, hence, are in a better position to interpret Plato than those who do not know the code.

That's a rather cartoonish sketch of the Straussian position, but it gets across something of the flavor. At any rate, as I said, I'm not a huge fan of the approach, but if I were perhaps I would be able make some sense out of the comments made about me today at Reformed Catholicism. In particular, the claim is made there that I criticized their use of the Vincentian Canon when I posted on the topic yesterday. For the life of me I fail to see how my post could be interpreted as a criticism of their use of the Canon as a motto, but I confess that I may not be in on the Secret Code that reveals how any discussion of the Canon itself can be construed as a criticism of someone who quotes it.

They also suggest that I am being pedantic in pointing out that the motto as they have it is inaccurate. One can forgive a popularizer for using popular sources, perhaps, but I note with some satisfaction that the trend among Reformed Christians generally tends rather more to a salutary and refreshing exactitude with respect to textual references, indeed, almost to the point of scrupulosity in some cases, and so this particular defense of devil-may-care laxity is perhaps not so very disappointing, however (unintentionally) ironic it may be in the present case. I suppose there may be some connection between careful scholarship and the capacity to give and respond to reasons, however; it may serve to explain, at any rate, the level of discourse to be found at Reformed Catholicism. Too bad there are not more people like Socrates running about these days: he, rather famously, averred as to how he regarded it as a favor to have someone correct him when he was in error Nowadays the tendency seems to be to defend the error as truth at all costs, as though dialectic were some sort of zero sum game where saving face is the principal intellectual value.

As for the other misapprehensions and distortions to be found there today, I will leave their discovery to the reader as an exercise; as pedantic as I am, I am not so very pedantic as to feel the need to respond to every vapid banality that comes my way. If you choose to go there looking for further howlers, have fun: it may be that you will not need the skills of a Straussian to find them all.

On Rallying Cries

Fr. Al Kimel of Pontifications has drawn my attention to a post at a blog called Reformed Catholicism (where, apparently, at least one person thinks that the title of Augustine's Retractationes means "retractions"!) that argues, in effect, that the truth is out there. One may seriously disagree with certain elements of the Reformed tradition, it is suggested, but they are certainly right to criticize the tendency of some Roman Catholic apologists to begin from the assumption that the Roman Catholic Church is "the Church" and only then to investigate the history of the Church in an attempt to fit the facts to the hypothesis: "it’s high time that popular Catholic apologists take the time to offer real arguments for the legitimacy of their understanding of Church history."

Well. I hope Fr. Al wasn't too offended by that, since it makes it rather obvious that the author never reads Pontifications. Be that as it may, I couldn't help noticing that the blog has a little motto in the upper-right corner: "quod semper, quod ubique, et quod ab omnibus." That, in case your Latin is a little rusty, is a misquotation of the so-called "Vincentian Canon", a little nuga posited by St. Vincent of Lérins in his "Commonitorium" (II.3) as a means of distinguishing between true and false Tradition. The actual text is "quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est." Perhaps the actual order of the elements doesn't matter too much, since most people who quote it want to use all three elements as part of a single test of "catholicity", that is, a test for what really does count as "the Church". Since St. Vincent was writing in the 5th century the "semper" had a decidedly more limited extension than it does now, but his own view was that Scripture was more important than Tradition, and the Church's authority was invoked only for the purpose of determining what the correct interpretation of Scripture was. No danger of question begging there! He did not rule out the possibility of doctrinal development, as he explicitly states in the "Commonitorium" that the truth of Scripture becomes more fully explicated in the process of history.

Since the "Commonitorium" is the first text to assert this principle it would not be unreasonable to wonder whether the Vincentian Canon itself can pass its own test: was this Canon itself "believed everywhere, always, and by all"? Possibly, though there is no empirical evidence in support of such a claim, nor is the meaning of the principle itself obviously clear. Since St. Vincent himself endorsed the principle of the development of doctrine through historical exegesis, did he himself intend the Canon to exclude exegesis as well as eisegesis, as some would maintain? What sort of test is required to ascertain whether a particular belief really has been held by everyone in all times and places? What level of authority is required to interpret claims to have satisfied the test? The problems go on and on: the Canon creates many more difficulties than it solves, though it does offer some degree of hope to those who find comfort in a priori principles.

In any event, it does make for a rather nice rallying cry. Interestingly it is used as such by Reformed Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics alike. Nobody seems to dispute the value of the Canon; what is disputed is rather its meaning and application. Sadly, the Canon itself cannot settle such disputes without begging the question, and any other method of settling them would, if the Canon is being defended, need to pass the Canon's test - - which obviously cannot be applied until disputes about its meaning and application are settled.

Mohr on MacIntyre on Stein

Two books about Edith Stein by Alasdair MacIntyre get "thumbs up" from Eric Mohr of Duquesne University (quondam universitatis ohioensis) at The Charioteer. MacIntyre is perhaps best known for his work in communitarian moral theory, a brand of ethics that traces its lineage back through Saint Thomas Aquinas to Aristotle and Plato. (He was teaching at Duke when I was a graduate student there; he was the only professor to assign a Greek text [the OCT of the Nicomachean Ethics] as the basic textbook for a course.) The books are Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue 1913-1922 (Rowman and Littlefield 2005), and Edith Stein: The Philosophical Background (The Origin and Development of her Thought) (Continuum 2006) and, as Eric notes, the titles suggest that there is more to come. One hopes that there is Mohr to come as well from that excellent blog.

Sorry about that. I'm up to my ears in grading of final papers, and one gets a little giddy.