I Want To Meet That Guy

Joshua Lim: “Barth was of little help here. His constant criticism of all human knowledge, a consistent overflow of the Protestant notion of total depravity mixed with Kantian skepticism, led to a point where no one church or person could be trusted–for God is ever the Subject and can never be made into an ‘object’ that is controlled by man. Though Barth was undoubtedly reacting to the Protestant Liberalism of his time, his own christocentric solution only held things in abeyance without giving a permanent solution. Ultimately, by insisting so heavily on the event character of revelation, the focus on the actual content of revelation itself could only be blurred. As one Catholic theologian put it, Barth’s “insistent cry of ‘Not I! Rather God!’ actually directs all eyes on itself instead of on God. Its cry for distance gives no room for distance.”

 

For my part, the precise content of revelation is exactly what is at issue in this debate. The positing of a fundamentally invisible Church that has no means of distinguishing branches within and schisms from itself thereby disqualifies itself as a true mediating authority between the individual and God. As I've said before, an individual cannot be the arbiter of divine revelation and a receiver of it at the same time. Revelation in its precise content is the fuel for liturgical action, whether public or private. If we have an ecclesiology that does not in fact allow us to know what God has said, we cannot do it. We cannot do the gospel.

 

I have never been averse to the acknowledgment of human finitude, to the likelihood of my own failures and misjudgments concerning even very important matters. But to surrender to this thoroughgoing skepticism especially in the name of hermeneutical humility presents an obvious problem which might have been missed: if the matters of theology are not simply ad hoc expressions of personal preference or cultural inertia, we must have a principled way to say, "I follow these men, and these doctrines as opposed to others." The new ecumenism seems to flatly ignore the real implications of lowest common denominator dogmatic theology. Worse still, it does not do justice to the men who pledged their sacred honor, and often their very lives, in defense of particular doctrines, which, despite the inevitable multiplicity, contains ample evidence of the desire for truth. If the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ finds fault with her children and the men who led them astray, some such as myself find a far greater fault in the notion that it is a fool's errand to seek a singular truth, and a reliable means by which to distinguish it from error. Theological skepticism is flatly contrary to the message of the Incarnation, whereby God himself took on flesh to overcome human weakness, rebellion, and sin. Shall we say that he in any way was less than victorious in his effort? Is it not wiser to say--somewhat ironically along with Barth--that our separated communities, which are the visible manifestation of our inability to profess a common faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, constitutes a grave sin? Is it not also an intellectual sin against ourselves and God to feign agreement where it does not in fact exist?

I'm Back, And A Lot Has Happened

You all know what has happened in Oklahoma, I'm sure. I pray for those who have died, that they soon enjoy the Beatific Vision, knowing God face-to-face very soon, if they do not see it right now. I pray for those here who have lost loved ones, including children. You alone, O Christ, know their sorrow. Give the Holy Spirit abundantly to all in need of comfort. Turn the hearts of the wicked toward You, and remind us all to seek the things that last, since we have seen that so much does not. We pray this through Christ, Amen.

I'm Just Sayin'

5 Thoughts For Today

5. We skipped the spring after the extended winter, and went right to summer. St. Louis, everybody!

4. It probably won't rain until September 30, now.

3. Yes, this is Watergate-level bad, Mr. President. Better get out now. And if you're lucky, Don Cheadle will star in a semi-sympathetic biopic in 30 years.

2. OK, it will be Jaden Smith.

1. Anybody who hopes Gosnell goes to Hell REALLY doesn't understand the gravity of what they say.

Monday Night With The Cards (And Mom)

We sat in section 147. That is essentially field-level, to the right of home plate. We could hear the pop of the catcher's glove, and the crack of the bat. It was plain to me that the umpire at home was "squeezing" the pitchers; that is, he wasn't calling strikes. As a result, the score was 3-3 after 2 innings. The Mets as a club are in a bad way. They didn't have a chance without the extra walks granted by the stingy umpire. In all frankness, I did say that both Stevie Wonder and Ronnie Milsap could better call the game. In my defense, I did not yell this at the umpire; I merely shared it with my mother.

Lance Lynn, who was the starting pitcher for the Cardinals, shut down the Mets for 5 consecutive innings before the Cardinals scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 7th. They pinch-hit for him in that inning, so he was correctly and justly awarded a win. Those runs were the winning margin.

There is a magic to baseball, and to these Cardinals. It is very early, but the Cardinals have a record of 24-13, leading the National League Central, (and all of baseball) and they look like a team that can win the whole thing. They will win this division, and they can beat anyone they meet in the playoffs if the pieces fall just right.

It Goes Like This

1. Communion with God is the fulfillment of the human person;

2. God is offering that communion, and indeed, obligates man to seek it;

3. That communion requires of man the total submission of himself to God in a loving, filial relationship;

4. The purpose of theology is to know how to enter into that relationship; (and secondarily, to begin to understand the nature of it)

5. The basis or driving force of theology is God's self-revelation for the purpose of communion with man;

6. God cannot deceive or be deceived;

7. Therefore, God must safeguard the truths of theology and make them accessible, based upon His nature and intent.

Your Epistemic Crisis Is Showing

Actually, with profuse apologies, knowing God is not like knowing your auto mechanic in an important way. I absolutely agree that natural knowledge, having been forced to acquire a level of certitude well beyond what is required for living and acting, caused a severe curtailing of
 what humans thought they could know. We moved from epistemic realism to idealism and nominalism, and now, a rigid empiricism rules the day. We cannot simply say that natural knowledge has been limited by bad philosophy, though it has. We must also preserve the truth that theology requires a higher certainty still. If theology--even after all caveats, qualifications, and disagreements about sources of revelation are laid aside--does not ultimately ground its conclusions in God, who cannot deceive or be deceived, it serves no purpose. In other words, we need absolute certainty in theology, unlike in other fields. For one to say, "I do not need intellectual certainty," one is first failing to distinguish nature and grace, (and the fact that grace perfects it, but does not destroy nature) and that communion with God--and the doctrine of God--cannot be subject to the vagaries of empirical consensus. And that still applies even had we not limited science, properly speaking, by unwarranted philosophical commitments.

Franchise Mode Is Awesome

This is a relatively new feature on sports video games, where one controls the finances, the drafting of new players, and of course, the game on the field. In actual sports, drafting is highly inexact. The 3-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Tom Brady was the 199th selection in his draft. In most games, however, you can spend the time to make sure that a high pick is not a bust. My favorite thing to do is trade my roster's highest-paid player (a surefire star) for a very high draft pick.

If you can get the same task done for less money, you do it, in this context. There are very few moral dilemmas related to justice when one's employees are super-rich. GMs have to be ruthless.

The basic concept behind things like 'Moneyball' is to figure out what you need to win, and giving up the least to get it. The market value of a star will be inflated by his reputation, and by competition over his services.

My insight was to figure out a style that worked for my personnel, and place each person in a position to do ONE THING very well. A star player does many things exceedingly well; that's why he or she is expensive. But suppose that key person were not a star. He has that one thing. And you've identified that you need it. In my example, we have the San Antonio Spurs (basketball) from the 2004-2005 season. At the outset, I found a center to replace the retiring David Robinson. So the defensive core of the club was the great Tim Duncan, and this other center I found in the draft. Offensively incompetent, he could certainly block shots and rebound. But I realized 1 thing: against an opponent who shoots well and is able to get open to shoot, we need to take the ball away. I need a point-guard who can steal the ball. I found the free agent Brevin Knight, who possessed the highest rating in the entire league for steals. He's quick, but his ability to shoot and other things was highly suspect. It would have to be lay-ups at the basket on the fast break if he was going to score. Shot-blockers, rebounders, and a ball thief. And I was far under the league salary cap. But I needed one more thing. We needed to be able to score in what they call the half-court: both teams set, running plays at one end of the floor. We don't need a star; just a shooter. A 3-point shooter. And so that's what I did. You don't need the best players at every position; you need ONE THING. It saves piles of money. And a team with money can buy a star if they fail to find him. Every great team needs its star.

What got me thinking about this was the free agency departure of Albert Pujols in 2011. Don't kid yourself: Statistically, those were on the whole the greatest 11 seasons to begin a career in the history of baseball. If he retired tomorrow, he's a lock for the Hall of Fame. Yes, he's that good. But an irreconcilable dilemma occurs when one's diamond in the rough becomes the game's best player: he wants to be paid accordingly. But a GM pays for the present, not for the past. He cannot give 300 million dollars over the next 10 years to a 32-year-old. Yet the player has earned that reputation; his value is determined by what others will play him. His value to a team is the skills he contributes to victory. A good GM will slightly overpay an irreplaceable centerpiece. And that will be known, because a key player will know perhaps that he is not irreplaceable to every team, but he is to this team. Yadier Molina is this person for the Cardinals. It does not serve to overpay the one who can be replaced, but the one who cannot.

Good Point, I Say

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/westminster-in-the-dock-reflections-on-the-peter-leithart-trial/#comment-23127. This is the heart of the entire struggle. Forget the Catholic conclusion; doesn't matter as much as the question. Answer the question: What is the relation between my visible community, and the allegedly invisible Church? If it doesn't have real authority right there, it doesn't have any. See how the ecclesiology in its ambiguity drives doctrinal relativity? This is Newman's great insight. A person is compelled to find the basis for divine truth, not merely by a claim to possess it, but he understands that he himself must have been mistaken in his manner of apprehending it, in his method.

Still Not A Feminist

But this is good. Nor do I have an opinion on this particular matter, because A) I'm Catholic; B) the words don't mean the same thing within Catholic theology and praxis as in this context (or at least it seems unwise, based upon my knowledge and experience, to presume that the meanings of the terms are the same) and C) it seems like we need more precise definitions in general.

On a personal note, if it is not manly to watch musicals--and like them--then here are my Man Cards. And yet, those cards would not be worth the paper they are printed on. Because that's stupid. You hear that, Driscoll? Stop turning manliness into an awkward health class video from 1978. One of the things I love dearly about "The Doctrine Of Humanity" by Charles Sherlock (quite apart from the bad arguments for female ordination, and that terrible Anglican/Protestant sacramental presumption) is that he includes a chapter on being a man, and one on being a woman. He says essentially that you are manly or womanly partly just by being what you are. And though we may be rightly upset by cultural markers and definitions in either direction that box us in at the margins, we can't accept wholesale redefinitions, either. After all, generalizations or stereotypes are rarely false in every way, or on every occasion.

As I understand the terms, I do not share the goals and assumptions of various feminisms, even if I could sympathize with some of the people who might adopt the label. I am not unaware that feminism broadly speaking is multifaceted; nevertheless, I do believe--and I do ask pardon if I cause offense--that Christians of various stripes have affirmed the movement uncritically, in response to a self-perception of having accommodated Christian teaching to various misogynistic cultural structures.

The extent to which this has actually occurred is legitimately in question, and, to be frank, we cannot use a bad idea to fix a problem, even if we gain wide agreement on the problem.

The problem is, this culture--we--hate women. In truth, we hate men also, but we hate women more. We objectify them, shame them, kill them, and oppress them in so many different ways, it boggles the mind. And a great many of the oppressors think that they are helping! For all I know, Sandra Fluke is reading this. Sandra, you hate women. You hate yourself, and you don't even know. Or maybe you do. But I want people to be who they are supposed to be. I am not the arbiter of that, but I know that killing your own children, and pumping yourself full of drugs because you do not accept the responsibility of being a human being (our sexuality as it comes to us) is not it.

I also deeply know that the "rape culture" is real, and I know that the young people who committed the crimes in Steubenville are not unique. In general, we think it's OK to use each other--especially women--to please ourselves. And both sexes perpetuate that, unless we are actively working against it. And that's what unites commentary on moral degradation with feminist critiques. It's just that some of us have not been careful to put the blame where it belongs, even when those crimes are a symptom of the deeper problem.

We don't need "equality"; we need love and mutual self-giving. Life between men and women is not supposed to be zero-sum. And that is the feminist/chauvinist assumption behind the entire discussion. It will continue harming us until we expose it for the lie that it is.

The Brilliance Of Catholic Apologetics On The Church

I say this not as an apologist myself, though perhaps I am, but as one who looked and said, "Here are two horns of a dilemma, neither of which are conducive to the position I hold or want to hold, but one must be correct." There were about 8 of these. But let us concentrate on the Church. See, the Fathers insisted that apostolic succession was the principal means by which the Church was identified. The third party in all of this is the Catholic Church of today. So, the interesting problem is this: Both the ancient Church (pick a century; doesn't matter) and the Catholic Church agree that this is correct, and as a necessary inference, that therefore, the Church is fundamentally visible. One problem with the basic claim of the Reformers is that one cannot test their counter-claim (that "apostolic" refers to doctrine) in any meaningful way. Who will definitively establish the body of doctrine from which the ancients allegedly fell away? I have more choices than I could possibly adjudicate, and none is obviously correct. (Tyranny of the Plausible)

So, the Catholic Church says, "OK, it's possible that AS was not the means by which the Church was identified, but 1) Why did everyone besides heretics and schismatics say it was, and 2) Where did orthodoxy come from, if not from that visible community?"

That orthodoxy is inextricably tied to the community to which it is given. That's another way to say that the Church must be fundamentally visible. One cannot even say with any reasonable coherence "Outside the Church, there is no salvation" if one cannot define "Church," and if there is no non-arbitrary way to determine who is outside her (or not). And if some visible body lacks both the jurisdiction and divine infallibility to make that determination, then an individual quite rightly would presume that he still is in full communion with the Body of Christ, which is not strictly synonymous with the boundaries of the community he inhabits, in this [invisible Church] view.

The man is playing a shell-game of pretended deference to these external authorities, whose jurisdiction he himself defines. And he ignores the real organic unity to which he is actually bound.

The argument that moral turpitude vitiates jurisdiction is an implicit concession that the jurisdiction is real. On the other hand, if the jurisdiction was never real, no longstanding rectitude would bestow it. That seems like an obvious point.