I have not read the whole review, just the excerpts that you posted. It is wonderful and beautifully written. Let yourself really enjoy this! He is spot on about your prescience.
If only it were possible to buy Tom Holland airfare to Rome [PS a man from the peripheries, after all] and a guarantee that he would be heard upon walking into the Synod on Synodality. Larry Chapp and others are writing that many of the people there are 180 degrees from where we should be.
Btw, it was recently pointed out to me by another member of this Substack, that the original Harry Potter, before Radcliffe, bears a striking resemblance to our host:
I actually haven't read any of your books yet—primarily because with how much you've talked about them and excerpted from them over time, it sort of feels like I get the gist, even as I know there couldn't be any substitute for experiencing the books themselves as you intended them. I'm going to read this one, though. And I've intentionally been ignoring all your excerpts from it, so as to not get a false sense of familiarity before actually checking it out.
I'm finally working on "The Benedict Option" (with encouragement from Laura M), so you're not alone in that boat. Like you, I am really looking forward to this book!
I'm like that too. I read Rod's posts faithfully, and watch loads of podcasts, etc., so I sort of feel like a Dreher fan, but I've never actually read any of his books. I think if I were to do so, I'd start with "Crunchy Cons", which seems to get things right about a lot of people not fitting in dockets. I've been put off "Live not by Lies" because of the nonsense about Woke being Marxist, when it's actually the ultimate logic of capitalism.
Yeah—the “cultural Marxist” concept is pretty fraught, having to do with a bastard lineage through those critical theorists who tried to unite Marx and Freud in an explanation for why the revolution never came. In a sense it’s possible to say Marx is sort of their ancestor, but I think that’s a rather useless stretch.
Gotta say, not a fan of the now-politicized word, "weird." We're not weird. We're normal than normal can be. Living in wonder is the only sane way to live!
I'm going to try to keep "weird" out of my online vocabulary for a while, because, yes, it's over used right now. Of course there are somethings that can be legitimately given that label.
(Also, I live in Austin TX, where the slogan "Keep Austin Weird" is printed on T-shirts. But sadly that ship has sailed, and Austin is no longer weird. It is just gentrified and normal now.)
Just like the country around Thornfield where, when Rochester accuses Jane Eyre (in the 2011 Fukunaga movie) of waiting for her “people”, that is, “the imps and elves and little green men”, she replies, “Sadly they are all gone. Your land is neither wild nor savage enough for them.”
“If the choice is between living in a meaning-vacuum and death, we will choose death. Meaninglessness is why suicide is the number one cause of death in the West among teenagers and young adults. At a macro level, this choice for death is seen in the decision of entire nations to stop inducting the few remaining children they have into their cultural and civilisational inheritance, while preventing further children by recourse to contraception- and abortion-technologies. In short, we cannot stand a life without meaning, and since we don’t know how to recover meaning, we’ve decided to annihilate ourselves.”
People have always had ways to limit births. If nothing else, by avoiding sex.
I don't get the complaint about contraception, used for reasonable purposes to limit the number and arrange the approximate timing of one's children-- Nature itself has ways of doing that with animals and plants.
In any event it will not be a disaster if our numbers shrink back to what they were when I was born: very roughly half of what they are now, both here in the US and internationally. Prudence is always a virtue, and "Nothing in excess" applies in this matter too.
Rod - Quick comment on the Swedish interview, which was awesome. Others on the list can expound better, but there are legitimate theological reasons fundamentalist Protestants don't put bloody Jesus on their altar cross and it has nothing to do with denial of Jesus's suffering. Theologically sound teachers like the late R.C. Sproul provide a profound criticism of Catholic doctrine on this point. Others here are more qualified to expand further, Carl Trueman would be highly qualified, for example But this misstatement is jarring. Thanks and keep it up!!!
As an aside the Orthodox depiction of the Crucifixion very often shows an impassive Jesus, avoiding the gore one all too often finds in Western depictions.
For the first thousand years, Jesus on the Cross was impassive or even triumphant in Western art, too. Then the High Middle Ages happened and the Franciscan promotion of emotive piety. . . .
There was a formal theological position at one time to deny that Christ actually did experiencing suffering on the Cross. It got all mixed up with the Monophysite controversy and the Church never did pronounce on it one way or the other. As practical question I would say it's an absurd idea and flies in the face of Scripture, but I do think it heavily influenced Christian art, esepcially in the East.
From the beginning, the earliest depictions of the crucifix show an impassive Christ to emphasize that he is in command of his death. I've even seen a Carolingian drawing where the Crucified Savior is laughing (!) as Ecclesia catches his blood in a chalice. But Late Antique Christian artists were squeamish about depicting a Corpus on the Cross and preferred decorated Crosses with Jesus. It took until the 8th C before they were willing to show Christ dead there.
Haha - OK, but I do not count. I viewed a 3-minute video on Calvinism today hours before this came out, because I was discussing Calvinism with Hope on the last Substack. I thereby know, heh. And - I hereby inform you that there are two sacraments in Calvinism. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. However, I expect Rod, by apparent implication, is getting at the fact that sacrament is understood quite differently, has a very different definition - In their theology sacraments are "signs" which Catholics and Orthodox would think means they are not really sacraments at all. Westminster Confession: "A sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ in his church, to signify, seal, and exhibit unto those that are within the covenant of grace,":
Oh, come on, Bobby. I'm talking metaphysics here. Reformed Christians have a meaningfully different metaphysics from Orthodox and Catholics (whose metaphysics also differ from each others). You don't mean the same thing by "sacramental" that we do. I think you're wrong, but I'm not criticizing you for it. It's important to understand the difference, though, for the sake of my argument.
Morello’s observation, “we can neither live without meaning nor author meaning out of our own personal post-modern journeys of self-discovery”, is consistent with the examination of the waste land communicated in TS Eliot’s poetry and, in its first part, reflects the conclusion reached by Viktor Frankl from his concentration camp experience - and upon which he built logotherapy (though I doubt that either Eliot or Frankl would have given much weight to the term, “post-modern” which, to the extent that it actually describes anything, is connected to no essence distinct from that of the modernist desert).
I remember an European Conservative article of a dude who works by wielding a mace and attacking the weeds in his yard, to the soundtrack of Gregorian Chant. Sounds Crunchy-Con to me!
Congratulations on the review, Rod, and thank you for directing us to it.
I did not know of Morello, and he is clearly thoughtful and intelligent. His "shout out" to Valentin Tomberg as an authority, however, piqued my curiosity. Tomberg did convert to Catholicism later in life, from what I understand, but for much of his life he engaged in theosophy and related spiritual disciplines or schools of thought that are far from small "o" orthodox Christianity. I wonder whether Tomberg disavowed his earlier beliefs after conversion, and I wonder how Morello regards theosophy.
I have similar questions about Tomberg, and Morello's seemingly favorable view of his ideas on hermetic magic. To me it seems like a tangent to Christian faith that leads in the wrong direction.
I'd argue that you simply don't need it, and since it's in a sense "shaky" there's no value in monkeying around with it. If the Tarot, for instance, was invented in the 1400's, there's no need for it -- all the necessary elements for Christian contemplation were long in place by that time. It would seem to me that the "chains of sanctity," both East and West, do perfectly fine without it.
I don't know if I wrote about it when I first read Morello praising Tomberg, but I am strongly against using the tarot, as Tomberg advocated. I'm not educated enough to know for sure, but it seems intuitively true that the Catholic Morello is trying to find his way to what Orthodox Christians already believe, re: metaphysics.
I think it is important to see the creation as both *good* and *fallen*. Yes God is omnipresent but earth is also, as C.S. Lewis put it, "the silent planet." There was a reason the Resurrection was shocking (and Thomas doubted) because miracles are rare and there is a difference between the operations of natural law and supernatural events. Yes demons are real buy the Bible points out idols and foreign gods are also fake (e g., Elijah ridiculing the fake gods who can't burn the altar, etc).
An interesting thought to me, though: our understanding of natural law is purely inductive, not deductive. We know how gravity works because we've seen it work a gazillion times, not because it is logically necessary like 2 + 2 = 4. So, in principle, we don't have a perfect understanding of of "natural law". And so we also don't really know whether a unique and strange event is 1) a violation of natural law or 2) a marginal property of natural law that only manifests under very rare and narrow conditions.
So, a miracle could simply be a statistical anomaly, not an ontological anomaly. A miracle could show us a rare thing about natural law that we did not previously understand, as opposed to superseding natural law altogether. We wouldn't know the difference—since again, we do not have a perfect, deductive understanding of natural law.
Yes but a miracle is due to agent causation, not natural law, so it's not a result of just "manifesting" but is instead the result of a free act by a supernatural agent
Well, my view is that natural law is also due to agent causation: gravity doesn't just "go" on its own, it happens because of an archangel continually doing his job. So in that sense I guess I believe that natural law per se doesn't exist, and that it's just a useful conceptual shorthand for the regularities of nature that we typically observe. In the metaphysical sense, everything is supernatural.
It's interesting to hear you come out and say that. The impression I have from listening to The Lord of Spirits podcast is that what you describe is how people in biblical times also understood the world. I have been wondering if serious Christians today think the same way--evidently at least one does!--and whether that worldview is the one that most corresponds to the reality. I'm not convinced, but it is intriguing.
Your view resembles that of Islam (some schools at least) in which there is no such thing as "causation" beyond Allah willing everything.
A rejoinder is that natural law exists, and it is decreed by God, but he has nevertheless allowed occasional exceptions so that freedom may also manifest in creation.
Well, this is still the Christian God we're talking about, so Him willing everything doesn't amount to an arbitrary fiat of power or an exclusion of creaturely freedom.
I think that it’s more like the Fall has resulted in a certain sapping or weakening of the fabric of the Creation, such that things aren’t quite how they’re supposed to be down here. Also, though, I wonder: is the “evil” of a natural disaster somewhat relative? What’s evil, after all, is not merely water slamming against the earth; it becomes evil only because there are people in the way.
Also, I’d add that I don’t think all angels are charged with taking an interest in us humans or our protection. Angels charged with maintaining the regularities of nature and the cosmic spheres would probably have other things on their mind than whether we happen to be in the way of a hurricane.
That sounds more Islamic. A lot of Islamic philosophy completely rejects causation; when one billiard ball hits another, God arbitrarily moves the second ball, but is under no compuction to do so.
As I replied to Jon above, the fact that He wills it wouldn’t mean that it’s arbitrary. The Christian God is not merely about arbitrary power, and He is under the compunction of the Logos that defines His own nature.
Christians writings in the early generations of the Church routinely referred to "gods made by men's hands" implying that some (many?) such deities were just made up by people.
Accepting that Satan was involved with the earth, and perhaps the entire material universe, long before the Fall of Adam is biblical, and also resolves a lot of difficulties, such as the suffering of animals.
I would be most interested in expository discussion on this subject in Morello’s European Conservative article:
“I have insisted elsewhere that the question of the nature-grace relation (or the nature-supernature distinction, if you like) that has traditionally preoccupied theologians is absolutely essential to a Christian account of re-enchantment. Indeed, in my forthcoming book on Christian re-enchantment entitled Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries (to be published by Os Justi Press later this year), the nature-grace question is at the heart of the case I develop. If we don’t get our account of this topic right, in our quest to re-enchant our world, we will oscillate between a view of nature that underestimates its fallenness and a mysticism that has little to do with our embodied existence in the world—two errors to be avoided.
As it happens, all Christian denominations are stuck in a rut over this issue.”
The last line there rings false, insofar as Orthodoxy is much less stuck in that rut than the others. I'd say check out David Bentley Hart's book *You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature*.
I am not a theologian, but my sense from casual reading about Aquinas is that ex ante, God wills all men to be saved, but ex poste, does not. Ah, one might argue, but for God, all moments are the present moment, so for God, all of human history is ex poste. Therefore, the very act of creating Hitler, God predestined Hitler for Hell. (I am assuming that Hitler is in Hell strictly for the sake of argument.). So, why not just not create Hitler or send him directly to Hell? Well the second option (not create Hitler in the world but send him directly to Hell based on his free will bad choices which he would have made had he lived on earth) is really unloving and unfair, and Hitler would have a legitimate argument with God that "I would never have done what you said I would have done, so you should not have sent me directly to Hell.". So to be fair, God had to let Hitler live and then go to Hell. But then how about not creating Hitler in the first place?. Then no nonrepentant mortal sinners would be created. Then one must ask: in such a world, does free will actually exist? No it doesn't. And God wanted free will for us, God wants our love freely given. Who doesn't want want to be loved freely. Receiving or giving compelled love (automans) would be awful. That isn't even love is it? It's slavery.
If you follow Molina instead of Aquinas then God chose to create a possible world containing Hitler because the resultant evil was needed to attain some greater good (e.g., a greater number of souls saved in the long run, since under chaos theory only God knows the ripple effects of any good or evil act in history)
Yes, but I would say the greater good is creating a free will creature that is capable of giving and getting love and appreciating all that God has made. God doesn't need us but He enjoys us. And He is generous. If one is very rich, one likes to lavish gifts on friends and relatives. Even secretly.
Agreed. And on a related note, I also believe that God has premised absolutely nothing on evil: it is superfluous to Him, and He never had any need or use for it. He can bring good out of the evil we leak into the Creation, but that doesn't mean He needed it or that it was a part of His plan.
Yes, this is just the sort of speculation about individual salvation that Orthodoxy tends to avoid. It is literally none of my business where Hitler, or any other deceased person, eternally resides, and therefore it's unhealthy to theologize based upon such speculations.
Rob, I used Hitler as a straw man to make an argument. I don't know that Hitler is in Hell. I needed a name. We do know Hell exists and souls are there--because Jesus refers to Gehenna and warns us not to land ourselves in Hell by doing grave evil (unrepentant).
Jon, one has to assume that existence is a greater good than non-existence. Then, one has to assume second that freedom is a greater good than not. God could have created creatures that could only love Him and others. Now pretend you're God. Meh. Not generous enough, and sort of boring. Imagine being with such creatures and you are God. You're bored, aren't you? These creatures do not have a single original thought. But we DO.
For God, death is a technicality. For God, dying is just like fall8ng asleep. He wakes us up again. Now my arguments do not solve the problem of pain, especially for lower creature like dogs. And babies. So, that is a problem no one has solved, not even CS Lewis, who wrote a book on this topic, solved the problem of pain. I do not know what Aquinas said on the problem of pain--what one resorts to is "mystery". And we all have a point in which we crack under torture. And for some, including me, this threshold might be quite low. I am counting on God to make me tougher if that moment arrives. No one gets out of here alive, and if the USA goes hard Left, there will be tortures. The J6 prisoners, who were mostly framed by the Feds, are bring tortured. And the Israeli hostages are being tortured. If one is born in North Korea, life is pretty much torture. Ah, the problem of pain.
Excellent! Congratulations!
I have not read the whole review, just the excerpts that you posted. It is wonderful and beautifully written. Let yourself really enjoy this! He is spot on about your prescience.
If only it were possible to buy Tom Holland airfare to Rome [PS a man from the peripheries, after all] and a guarantee that he would be heard upon walking into the Synod on Synodality. Larry Chapp and others are writing that many of the people there are 180 degrees from where we should be.
https://gaudiumetspes22.com/blog/the-synod-and-the-posture-of-perpetual-grievance-my-latest-in-the-catholic-world-report
https://gaudiumetspes22.com/blog/larry-chapps-synod-diary-part-three
Have you seen this guy Radcliffe's hair-do? Anybody who spends that much time in front of the mirror is not to be trusted.
Radcliffe?
Presumably, Father Radcliffe, O.P. who was just named a cardinal.
Radcliffe as in Harry Potter?
Btw, it was recently pointed out to me by another member of this Substack, that the original Harry Potter, before Radcliffe, bears a striking resemblance to our host:
https://reachareader.com/products/harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone-used-paperback-j-k-rowling
I wonder who that could've been. . . .
Dunno, but I deny that said person who pointed this out resembles a certain companion of Scooby-doo.
edit: I mean to say "said poorly-read person".
Never mind, then.
Small point: That's the 1st American cover, which was predated by the British edition, which can be seen here: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/es/wiki/Bloomsbury?file=Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher%27s_Stone_%28U.K_child_version%29.jpg. However, one of Rowling's own sketches from even earlier can be found at the top of the page here: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-mediums/drawing/jk-rowling-drawings/
Thank you for the links.
I actually haven't read any of your books yet—primarily because with how much you've talked about them and excerpted from them over time, it sort of feels like I get the gist, even as I know there couldn't be any substitute for experiencing the books themselves as you intended them. I'm going to read this one, though. And I've intentionally been ignoring all your excerpts from it, so as to not get a false sense of familiarity before actually checking it out.
I'm finally working on "The Benedict Option" (with encouragement from Laura M), so you're not alone in that boat. Like you, I am really looking forward to this book!
I'm like that too. I read Rod's posts faithfully, and watch loads of podcasts, etc., so I sort of feel like a Dreher fan, but I've never actually read any of his books. I think if I were to do so, I'd start with "Crunchy Cons", which seems to get things right about a lot of people not fitting in dockets. I've been put off "Live not by Lies" because of the nonsense about Woke being Marxist, when it's actually the ultimate logic of capitalism.
Yeah—the “cultural Marxist” concept is pretty fraught, having to do with a bastard lineage through those critical theorists who tried to unite Marx and Freud in an explanation for why the revolution never came. In a sense it’s possible to say Marx is sort of their ancestor, but I think that’s a rather useless stretch.
Gotta say, not a fan of the now-politicized word, "weird." We're not weird. We're normal than normal can be. Living in wonder is the only sane way to live!
I'm going to try to keep "weird" out of my online vocabulary for a while, because, yes, it's over used right now. Of course there are somethings that can be legitimately given that label.
Agreed. 'Weird' has a far-left mainline Protestant connotation with denial of biblical inerrancy and pro-LGBT sparkle creed type worship
I like weird. Make the Gospel weird again!
(Also, I live in Austin TX, where the slogan "Keep Austin Weird" is printed on T-shirts. But sadly that ship has sailed, and Austin is no longer weird. It is just gentrified and normal now.)
Just like the country around Thornfield where, when Rochester accuses Jane Eyre (in the 2011 Fukunaga movie) of waiting for her “people”, that is, “the imps and elves and little green men”, she replies, “Sadly they are all gone. Your land is neither wild nor savage enough for them.”
If you live in Austin, it's a little weird.....and that's a compliment.....you're welcome.
You beat me to it, having gone to UT Austin for grad school many moons ago.
I went there for undergrad—graduated back in 2011.
Great review indeed! Can't wait to receive my signed copy of the book...
Great review!! I’m certain there are many more to come!
congrats Rod!
I can’t wait to read the book. I plan on driving to a local bookstore to get it tho.
As Ted would say, “this”:
“If the choice is between living in a meaning-vacuum and death, we will choose death. Meaninglessness is why suicide is the number one cause of death in the West among teenagers and young adults. At a macro level, this choice for death is seen in the decision of entire nations to stop inducting the few remaining children they have into their cultural and civilisational inheritance, while preventing further children by recourse to contraception- and abortion-technologies. In short, we cannot stand a life without meaning, and since we don’t know how to recover meaning, we’ve decided to annihilate ourselves.”
People have always had ways to limit births. If nothing else, by avoiding sex.
I don't get the complaint about contraception, used for reasonable purposes to limit the number and arrange the approximate timing of one's children-- Nature itself has ways of doing that with animals and plants.
In any event it will not be a disaster if our numbers shrink back to what they were when I was born: very roughly half of what they are now, both here in the US and internationally. Prudence is always a virtue, and "Nothing in excess" applies in this matter too.
Yes! And what matter Calvinism or Thomism, quite small when this has been recognized!
Rod - Quick comment on the Swedish interview, which was awesome. Others on the list can expound better, but there are legitimate theological reasons fundamentalist Protestants don't put bloody Jesus on their altar cross and it has nothing to do with denial of Jesus's suffering. Theologically sound teachers like the late R.C. Sproul provide a profound criticism of Catholic doctrine on this point. Others here are more qualified to expand further, Carl Trueman would be highly qualified, for example But this misstatement is jarring. Thanks and keep it up!!!
As an aside the Orthodox depiction of the Crucifixion very often shows an impassive Jesus, avoiding the gore one all too often finds in Western depictions.
For the first thousand years, Jesus on the Cross was impassive or even triumphant in Western art, too. Then the High Middle Ages happened and the Franciscan promotion of emotive piety. . . .
There was a formal theological position at one time to deny that Christ actually did experiencing suffering on the Cross. It got all mixed up with the Monophysite controversy and the Church never did pronounce on it one way or the other. As practical question I would say it's an absurd idea and flies in the face of Scripture, but I do think it heavily influenced Christian art, esepcially in the East.
From the beginning, the earliest depictions of the crucifix show an impassive Christ to emphasize that he is in command of his death. I've even seen a Carolingian drawing where the Crucified Savior is laughing (!) as Ecclesia catches his blood in a chalice. But Late Antique Christian artists were squeamish about depicting a Corpus on the Cross and preferred decorated Crosses with Jesus. It took until the 8th C before they were willing to show Christ dead there.
I wrote about this earlier this year:
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/03/29/cosmic-crucifixions/
Indeed. Also, the Reformed are non - sacramental? That's news to us.
Non - sacerdotal, yes. Non - sacramental? Hardly. And Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are cordially asked to keep their opinions to themselves.
Haha - OK, but I do not count. I viewed a 3-minute video on Calvinism today hours before this came out, because I was discussing Calvinism with Hope on the last Substack. I thereby know, heh. And - I hereby inform you that there are two sacraments in Calvinism. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. However, I expect Rod, by apparent implication, is getting at the fact that sacrament is understood quite differently, has a very different definition - In their theology sacraments are "signs" which Catholics and Orthodox would think means they are not really sacraments at all. Westminster Confession: "A sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ in his church, to signify, seal, and exhibit unto those that are within the covenant of grace,":
Someone once suggested an idea for a Calvinist bumper sticker, "Calvinist, but not by choice!"
Oh, come on, Bobby. I'm talking metaphysics here. Reformed Christians have a meaningfully different metaphysics from Orthodox and Catholics (whose metaphysics also differ from each others). You don't mean the same thing by "sacramental" that we do. I think you're wrong, but I'm not criticizing you for it. It's important to understand the difference, though, for the sake of my argument.
And Lutherans see ourselves closer to the Catholic and Orthodox end of the spectrum, but not quite the same, either.
Morello’s observation, “we can neither live without meaning nor author meaning out of our own personal post-modern journeys of self-discovery”, is consistent with the examination of the waste land communicated in TS Eliot’s poetry and, in its first part, reflects the conclusion reached by Viktor Frankl from his concentration camp experience - and upon which he built logotherapy (though I doubt that either Eliot or Frankl would have given much weight to the term, “post-modern” which, to the extent that it actually describes anything, is connected to no essence distinct from that of the modernist desert).
Weightlifting is a Dreher Crunchy-Con thing? This is not visually apparent.
Well, it's more of an ideal.
I remember an European Conservative article of a dude who works by wielding a mace and attacking the weeds in his yard, to the soundtrack of Gregorian Chant. Sounds Crunchy-Con to me!
Congratulations on the review, Rod, and thank you for directing us to it.
I did not know of Morello, and he is clearly thoughtful and intelligent. His "shout out" to Valentin Tomberg as an authority, however, piqued my curiosity. Tomberg did convert to Catholicism later in life, from what I understand, but for much of his life he engaged in theosophy and related spiritual disciplines or schools of thought that are far from small "o" orthodox Christianity. I wonder whether Tomberg disavowed his earlier beliefs after conversion, and I wonder how Morello regards theosophy.
I have similar questions about Tomberg, and Morello's seemingly favorable view of his ideas on hermetic magic. To me it seems like a tangent to Christian faith that leads in the wrong direction.
I'd argue that you simply don't need it, and since it's in a sense "shaky" there's no value in monkeying around with it. If the Tarot, for instance, was invented in the 1400's, there's no need for it -- all the necessary elements for Christian contemplation were long in place by that time. It would seem to me that the "chains of sanctity," both East and West, do perfectly fine without it.
I don't know if I wrote about it when I first read Morello praising Tomberg, but I am strongly against using the tarot, as Tomberg advocated. I'm not educated enough to know for sure, but it seems intuitively true that the Catholic Morello is trying to find his way to what Orthodox Christians already believe, re: metaphysics.
I think it is important to see the creation as both *good* and *fallen*. Yes God is omnipresent but earth is also, as C.S. Lewis put it, "the silent planet." There was a reason the Resurrection was shocking (and Thomas doubted) because miracles are rare and there is a difference between the operations of natural law and supernatural events. Yes demons are real buy the Bible points out idols and foreign gods are also fake (e g., Elijah ridiculing the fake gods who can't burn the altar, etc).
An interesting thought to me, though: our understanding of natural law is purely inductive, not deductive. We know how gravity works because we've seen it work a gazillion times, not because it is logically necessary like 2 + 2 = 4. So, in principle, we don't have a perfect understanding of of "natural law". And so we also don't really know whether a unique and strange event is 1) a violation of natural law or 2) a marginal property of natural law that only manifests under very rare and narrow conditions.
So, a miracle could simply be a statistical anomaly, not an ontological anomaly. A miracle could show us a rare thing about natural law that we did not previously understand, as opposed to superseding natural law altogether. We wouldn't know the difference—since again, we do not have a perfect, deductive understanding of natural law.
Yes but a miracle is due to agent causation, not natural law, so it's not a result of just "manifesting" but is instead the result of a free act by a supernatural agent
Well, my view is that natural law is also due to agent causation: gravity doesn't just "go" on its own, it happens because of an archangel continually doing his job. So in that sense I guess I believe that natural law per se doesn't exist, and that it's just a useful conceptual shorthand for the regularities of nature that we typically observe. In the metaphysical sense, everything is supernatural.
It's interesting to hear you come out and say that. The impression I have from listening to The Lord of Spirits podcast is that what you describe is how people in biblical times also understood the world. I have been wondering if serious Christians today think the same way--evidently at least one does!--and whether that worldview is the one that most corresponds to the reality. I'm not convinced, but it is intriguing.
Your view resembles that of Islam (some schools at least) in which there is no such thing as "causation" beyond Allah willing everything.
A rejoinder is that natural law exists, and it is decreed by God, but he has nevertheless allowed occasional exceptions so that freedom may also manifest in creation.
Well, this is still the Christian God we're talking about, so Him willing everything doesn't amount to an arbitrary fiat of power or an exclusion of creaturely freedom.
So are natural evils like Helene specifically caused by God's angelic agents?
I think that it’s more like the Fall has resulted in a certain sapping or weakening of the fabric of the Creation, such that things aren’t quite how they’re supposed to be down here. Also, though, I wonder: is the “evil” of a natural disaster somewhat relative? What’s evil, after all, is not merely water slamming against the earth; it becomes evil only because there are people in the way.
Also, I’d add that I don’t think all angels are charged with taking an interest in us humans or our protection. Angels charged with maintaining the regularities of nature and the cosmic spheres would probably have other things on their mind than whether we happen to be in the way of a hurricane.
That sounds more Islamic. A lot of Islamic philosophy completely rejects causation; when one billiard ball hits another, God arbitrarily moves the second ball, but is under no compuction to do so.
As I replied to Jon above, the fact that He wills it wouldn’t mean that it’s arbitrary. The Christian God is not merely about arbitrary power, and He is under the compunction of the Logos that defines His own nature.
Christians writings in the early generations of the Church routinely referred to "gods made by men's hands" implying that some (many?) such deities were just made up by people.
Accepting that Satan was involved with the earth, and perhaps the entire material universe, long before the Fall of Adam is biblical, and also resolves a lot of difficulties, such as the suffering of animals.
I would be most interested in expository discussion on this subject in Morello’s European Conservative article:
“I have insisted elsewhere that the question of the nature-grace relation (or the nature-supernature distinction, if you like) that has traditionally preoccupied theologians is absolutely essential to a Christian account of re-enchantment. Indeed, in my forthcoming book on Christian re-enchantment entitled Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries (to be published by Os Justi Press later this year), the nature-grace question is at the heart of the case I develop. If we don’t get our account of this topic right, in our quest to re-enchant our world, we will oscillate between a view of nature that underestimates its fallenness and a mysticism that has little to do with our embodied existence in the world—two errors to be avoided.
As it happens, all Christian denominations are stuck in a rut over this issue.”
The last line there rings false, insofar as Orthodoxy is much less stuck in that rut than the others. I'd say check out David Bentley Hart's book *You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature*.
Thanks!
I am not a theologian, but my sense from casual reading about Aquinas is that ex ante, God wills all men to be saved, but ex poste, does not. Ah, one might argue, but for God, all moments are the present moment, so for God, all of human history is ex poste. Therefore, the very act of creating Hitler, God predestined Hitler for Hell. (I am assuming that Hitler is in Hell strictly for the sake of argument.). So, why not just not create Hitler or send him directly to Hell? Well the second option (not create Hitler in the world but send him directly to Hell based on his free will bad choices which he would have made had he lived on earth) is really unloving and unfair, and Hitler would have a legitimate argument with God that "I would never have done what you said I would have done, so you should not have sent me directly to Hell.". So to be fair, God had to let Hitler live and then go to Hell. But then how about not creating Hitler in the first place?. Then no nonrepentant mortal sinners would be created. Then one must ask: in such a world, does free will actually exist? No it doesn't. And God wanted free will for us, God wants our love freely given. Who doesn't want want to be loved freely. Receiving or giving compelled love (automans) would be awful. That isn't even love is it? It's slavery.
If you follow Molina instead of Aquinas then God chose to create a possible world containing Hitler because the resultant evil was needed to attain some greater good (e.g., a greater number of souls saved in the long run, since under chaos theory only God knows the ripple effects of any good or evil act in history)
Yes, but I would say the greater good is creating a free will creature that is capable of giving and getting love and appreciating all that God has made. God doesn't need us but He enjoys us. And He is generous. If one is very rich, one likes to lavish gifts on friends and relatives. Even secretly.
Re: Therefore, the very act of creating Hitler, God predestined Hitler for Hell.
That makes God the deliberate author of sin and evil, so I could never accept it.
Agreed. And on a related note, I also believe that God has premised absolutely nothing on evil: it is superfluous to Him, and He never had any need or use for it. He can bring good out of the evil we leak into the Creation, but that doesn't mean He needed it or that it was a part of His plan.
Yes, this is just the sort of speculation about individual salvation that Orthodoxy tends to avoid. It is literally none of my business where Hitler, or any other deceased person, eternally resides, and therefore it's unhealthy to theologize based upon such speculations.
Rob, I used Hitler as a straw man to make an argument. I don't know that Hitler is in Hell. I needed a name. We do know Hell exists and souls are there--because Jesus refers to Gehenna and warns us not to land ourselves in Hell by doing grave evil (unrepentant).
Jon, one has to assume that existence is a greater good than non-existence. Then, one has to assume second that freedom is a greater good than not. God could have created creatures that could only love Him and others. Now pretend you're God. Meh. Not generous enough, and sort of boring. Imagine being with such creatures and you are God. You're bored, aren't you? These creatures do not have a single original thought. But we DO.
For God, death is a technicality. For God, dying is just like fall8ng asleep. He wakes us up again. Now my arguments do not solve the problem of pain, especially for lower creature like dogs. And babies. So, that is a problem no one has solved, not even CS Lewis, who wrote a book on this topic, solved the problem of pain. I do not know what Aquinas said on the problem of pain--what one resorts to is "mystery". And we all have a point in which we crack under torture. And for some, including me, this threshold might be quite low. I am counting on God to make me tougher if that moment arrives. No one gets out of here alive, and if the USA goes hard Left, there will be tortures. The J6 prisoners, who were mostly framed by the Feds, are bring tortured. And the Israeli hostages are being tortured. If one is born in North Korea, life is pretty much torture. Ah, the problem of pain.