Philosophia Perennis

There is a new, and promising, Catholic philosophy blog out there--Philosophia Perennis. So far only one post, but they have multiple contributors, so more should be there soon.

About these posts

A graduate student told me that sometimes I say crazy things, and suggested that I do so to get a reaction. I plead guilty to both. However, I have to say that I mean the crazy things that I say to get a reaction. I am punctilious about the duty not to lie, and if something from me has the form of assertion, and isn't explicitly disclaimed or plainly in some non-assertive context like play-acting or joke-telling, I really do mean it. In particular my posts, though sometimes written in a tongue-in-cheek style and espousing seemingly absurd doctrines, are quite sincere. (That said, it may be that a back post no longer reflects my current views--perhaps a commenter has persuaded me out of some view I held, in which case I owe her my gratitude.)

At the same time, what I say may sometimes need to be read carefully, and one cannot rely on ordinary-language implicature. If I simply entitle something "An argument for p", I am not claiming that what is offered is a sound argument for p, or even an interesting argument, but only that it is an argument (of course if I don't think it's an interesting argument, then I'm not that likely to post it, am I?) If I label something a "valid argument", then my only claim is that it is valid--I am not affirming the premises or the conclusion, nor am I even claiming that the premises are coherent. If I call something a "sound argument", then I am endorsing the premises and the conclusion, and committing myself to the argument's validity, but I am committing myself to no claim about the argument's usefulness.

Finally, as a general rule of interpretation, I never mean to contradict any teaching of the magisterium of the Catholic Church, be the magisterium extraordinary or ordinary, infallible or fallible (even where the magisterium is fallible, I am much more fallible). I am committed to repudiating any view of mine should it be shown to have contradicted the teaching of the Church.

Natural Family Planning versus contraception

Patricia and Marcus are a married couple. Each day, they prudently decide whether or not to engage in marital union. To make that decision, they weigh all the relevant factors they can, gathering information relevant to the decision ahead of time when appropriate. They do nothing to intentionally decrease the fertility of their bodies, and when they decide to unite maritally, they do nothing to intentionally decrease the likelihood of conception.

What I have described is not a contracepting couple. What may not be immediately obvious is that I have described a couple practicing Natural Family Planning (NFP). One way to look at NFP is precisely as the gathering of some of the information relevant to a prudential decision whether or not to engage in marital union at a given time, and then making the decision in part in light of that information. For, plainly, the probability of conception is information relevant to a prudent decision whether or not to engage in marital relations. The way the information is relevant will depend on other information. If, for instance, the couple is suffering from severe financial distress, the learning that the probability of conception is high will make the decision to engage in marital relations less prudent than these relations would be if the probability were low. On the other hand, if the couple is in good personal, financial and relational health, learning that the probability of conception is high will make the decision to engage in marital relations more even more prudent than it would be if if the probability were low. ("Prudence", here, is Aristotelian phronêsis, of course.). It is clear, by the way, how NFP is useful not just to the couple for whom conception would be imprudent, but also to the couple trying to conceive.

Information relevant to the decision whether to engage in marital relations includes how tired the two persons are, what privacy is available to them, what their feelings about each other are, what potentially time-consuming duties they may have, whether there are any relevant medical considerations, and so on, all enter into the decision. That this kind of information needs to enter into the decision is clear and uncontroversial. But likewise, information about further consequences of an action is relevant to deciding whether to engage in the action or not, and hence fertility information is likewise relevant.

Seen in this way, it is clear that one cannot object in principle to every instance of NFP without being committed to at leat one of two implausible views:

1. It is wrong for a couple to engage in sexual relations when the likelihood of conception is low.
2. It is wrong for a couple to refrain from engaging in sexual relations because the likelihood of conception is high.

For unless one holds one of these two views, one cannot object to a couple deciding to engage in sexual relations when the likelihood of conception is low, and one also cannot object to a couple deciding not to engage in sexual relations because the likelihood of conception is high. Nor can one fault a couple for making the decision whether to engage in sexual relations or not in the light of all relevant information. But making such decisions on a day-to-day basis is all that NFP need consist in. Catholic tradition rejects both (1) and (2). Hence, the Catholic tradition does not contain a prohibition against NFP. Moreover, the prohibition against contraception is a prohibition against intentionally rendering the body or act less fertile than it would otherwise would be, and does not imply either (1) nor (2). Hence there is a relevant difference between NFP and contraception.

Objection 1: Although (1) is clearly innocent, what the couple is doing is not just deciding to engage in sexual relations when the likelihood of conception is low, but because the likelihood of conception is low.

Response: Consider the sense of this "because". It is not so much that the low probability of conception is their reason for having sex--after all, there are many uncontroversial activities other than sex that have much lower probability of conception, say sharing ice cream. Rather, the low probability of conception may imply the absence of a defeater to their independent reason to unite maritally, this defeater being the bad consequences of conception in their special situation (e.g., one of financial hardship). When deciding whether to engage in any action that isn't an all-things-considered duty, we need to consider potential defeaters. So if (1) and (2) are innocent, it must also be innocent to take into account the presence or absence of defeaters, since one must always do that in the case of a decision whether to engage in marital relations.

Objection 2: Over and beyond the daily decision between engaging and not engaging in marital union, there is the "plan of action as a whole", which in the case of a couple who uses NFP to avoid conception involves the timing of intercourse so as to avoid conception, and it is this plan of action as a whole that is analogous to contraception.

Response: There need not be any such overarching plan of action. When I described Patricia and Marcus, I did not attribute any such plan to them. Rather, it is possible that the couple is deciding, on a day to day basis, whether sexual union on that day is prudent in light of all the relevant information they have gathered. Granted, there may be an on-going condition (say, financial) which renders sexual union imprudent when it has a non-low probability of conception, and they need not think through the details of that condition each day, but can simply be on the lookout for when, if ever, the condition comes to an end. But it is quite possible to decide day after day on the same grounds--and yet for it to be a genuine decision, though it may become somewhat habitual. The fact that it is a genuine decision is evidenced by the data that at times NFP couples do decide to have sexual relations even when it is imprudent to do so, apparently without a significantly prudentially relevant change in circumstances (this is probably the main source of pregnancies among couples using NFP to avoid conception).

That said, one can imagine a couple who instead of deciding on a daily basis decides that over the next six months they will try to avoid conception. Still, it seems to me that they are likely to be making a daily decision whether they ought to keep to their earlier resolution. That said, I do not need to defend the actions of such a couple. To argue that NFP is morally permissible, I need to argue that there is some set of circumstances and motives under which NFP is permissible. It is false that NFP is permissible under all circumstances and with all possible sets of motives, and I actually suspect that a married couple's decision to refrain from conception ahead of time, without reference to changing circumstances, is morally problematic. Note that it is different to decide once for six months not to conceive, and another simply to expect that over the next six months one will each day have all-things-considered reason to avoid conception, but to still be making the decisions on a daily basis, since after all the reason to avoid conception might go away.

Summary: One way for NFP to be practiced, and it is this one way that I am defending here, is to think of it as the gathering of certain information relevant for the decision (I talk of "daily", but that is just a convenience--it could in principle be hourly) whether or not to engage in marital union at a given time. The information in question is fertility information. The prudent couple, of course, will also gather other information, and take that into account. Seen this way, NFP is not only clearly morally permissible, both in light of reason and of the Catholic tradition, but is positively virtuous, involving the virtue of prudence, as well as, when abstinence is called for, the virtue of self-control. What is the alternative? To fail to gather relevant information?

Oeconomic necessity

A theological concept that I haven't seen much recent discussion of, but that strikes me as important, is what I will call "oeconomic necessity" (together with the related "oeconomic possibility": p is oeconomically possible iff not-p is not oeconomically necessary), referring of course to the "economy of salvation" rather than the sort of stuff economists talk about. The concept is not entirely clear. Paradigm cases are claims like the following claims (all of which I accept):

1. It is oeconomically necessary that if an unbaptized person after the time of Christ's resurrection repents of her sins and has water poured over her by another along with the other's saying the words "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit", with the relevantly right intentions on the part of both, the sins are forgiven.
2. It is oeconomically impossible for an adult of at least normal intellectual capacities to be saved without at least implicit faith.
3. It is oeconomically necessary that whatever the bishop of Rome teaches all Catholics definitively in a matter of faith and morals is true.

Metaphysical necessity entails oeconomic necessity, but not conversely. Oeconomic necessity supports counterfactuals:

4. Had Patricia begged God to forgive her sins, she would have eventually entered heavenly life.

A simple-minded account of oeconomic necessity is that p is oeconomically necessary iff the content of divine revelation entails p. But this doesn't quite capture the concept. Revelation might at least in principle contain oeconomically contingent claims. God might reveal that in January 15, AD 26, one of Jesus's customers complained unfairly about the quality of a table that Jesus had made for him. This claim would then be found in revelation, but wouldn't be oeconomically necessary--it wouldn't be necessary in light of the plan of salvation. It is oeconomically necessary that (de dicto) whatever God reveals is true, but it can be oeconomically contingent that God reveals p.

The best characterization I have of oeconomic necessity is entailment by God's commitments (e.g., covenants or promises) and salvific plans.

The concept lets us distinguish some views. Thus, the standard universalist probably thinks:

5. It is oeconomically necessary that everyone is saved.

But one could imagine a moderate universalist who thinks

6. As a matter of oeconomically contingent fact, everyone will be saved.

One way to read the von Balthasar thesis about the possibility of hoping for everybody to be saved is that one can deny (5) while hoping for (6). One can similarly have anti-universalist views which distinguish between the following two claims:

7. It is oeconomically necessary that someone will be damned.
8. As a matter of oeconomically contingent fact, someone will be damned.

There is a real difference here. Someone who believes in double predestination and who thinks that the damnation of some is an important part of God's plan of salvation may affirm (7). On the other hand, I incline towards (8).

Another application is that a Catholic who believes that Anglican ordinations are typically invalid is committed to the claim that there is no oeconomical necessity that the bread and wine at a typical Anglican liturgy change into Christ's body and blood, but might nonetheless think that this could happen as an oeconomically contingent matter of fact ("by special divine dispensation"). We should not, however, count on what is oeconomically contingent.

The Church of Christ "subsists in the catholic Church"

Vatican II's Lumen Gentium 8 says:

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other Apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the truth". This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.

(I changed the capitalization to match the Latin.) Much discussion has been expended on the claim that the Church in the world "subsists in" the Catholic Church. Some interpreters took this as a weakening of the traditional teaching that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church. On this reading, the Church of Christ is a larger entity, and the Catholic Church is a part of it. A fairly recent Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) statement states that "subsists in" indicates "full identity".

I want to argue that the CDF is right on textual grounds (though the CDF is presumably also drawing on non-textual information about the intentions of the Council Fathers).

What does the mysterious phrase "subsists in" mean? Here we have to remember that at the time of Vatican II, the lingua franca of Catholic thought was Thomism. Even those who did not philosophically or theologically agree with St. Thomas would use thomistic vocabulary to express their views. The phrase "subsists in" is a scholastic phrase that Aquinas uses a number of times. Here are the claims I've found in my search of a lot of Aquinas' works (admittedly in English, but I am trusting the translators):

• God subsists in his essence
• The divine understanding subsists in itself
• The essence of the Father subsists in the Son
• Human beings subsist in their essences
• Christ subsists both in a human and a divine nature
• Things subsist in their being
• A substance subsists in its species
• The form of the angel or the separated soul subsists in the being

The first thing to note is that "subsists in" is linguistically compatible with identity; the divine understanding subsists in itself, and it is Aquinas' doctrine that God is identical with his essence. Most of Aquinas' uses of the phrase state the relationship between an entity and its essence or existence. A thing exists in and through its essence and existence, deriving its essential operations from that essence, and, except in the case of God, is wholly dependent on that essence and existence, incapable of existing apart from it. So, it seems, the Council is saying that the Chruch of Christ is either identical with the Catholic Church or exists in and through the Catholic Church, wholly dependent on the Catholic Church, incapable of existing apart, and deriving its essential operations from the Catholic Church, not as one thing from another, but as a human derives intellectuality from being human.

The phrase, thus, is compatible with identity as well with a very intimate relationship that isn't quite identity. We need to turn to context now. First, take the paragraph as a whole. The first sentence says that the "one Church of Christ" is "one, holy, catholic and apostolic". To read the text as saying that the Church of Christ is not identical with the Catholic Church is to attribute to the text the absurdity of saying that the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic" Church is not the catholic Church. One might try to distinguish between "catholic" in the sense of "universal" and "catholic" in a sense that indicates the Roman Catholic Church, but the text makes no such distinction, and it is fair to assume that the same word is used in the same sense in the same paragraph.

Next, take the phrase "although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure", which elements are described as "gifts belonging to the Church of Christ". This text, I think, does not fit well with the idea that the Church of Christ is the larger entity that includes the Catholic Church as a part of it. For if the Church of Christ were the larger entity, there would be no need to emphasize that the elements of sanctification and truth (I assume these are the many true and good things found in non-Catholic congregations) do in fact belong to the Church of Christ.

Moreover, the preceding paragraph introduced a distinction between the Church as a "society structured with hierarchical organs" and the "mystical Body of Christ", which two natures it says are not separate but form a complex entity, and are like the two natures of the incarnate Christ. The "society structured with hierarchical organs" surely is the Catholic Church. It cannot refer to some alleged larger Church of Christ that includes Protestants, since Protestants do not have hierarchical organs as Lumen Gentium understands them (Lumen Gentium understands the hierarchy as constituted primarily by the Pope and Bishops). But at the same time, this discussion of the Church as a structured society surely is the same entity as the Church of Christ "constituted and organized in the world as a society". Lumen Gentium's overall understanding of organic structure is hierarchical: the Pope is the principle of organic unity, and from him proceeds the unity of the Bishops.

So, the context leads us to accept that in the thought of Lumen Gentium the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church. But why, then, the use of "subsists in"? Here is a suggestion that may be completely wrong: Some of the operations of the Catholic Church (e.g., the sacrament of baptism) extend beyond the Catholic Church. Yet they always are the operations of the Church of Christ, and derive their efficacy from Christ's promises to the Catholic Church. It is not that the Church of Christ extends beyond the Catholic Church, but the operations of the Church of Christ do. And the use of "subsists in" makes possible such a distinction. This fits with the CDF's explanation, I think.

The deposit of faith

Consider the following objection to the Catholic faith (this is based on something I got by email): Catholicism includes a large number of detailed and substantive doctrines that do not seem to be derivable from God's revelation as completed by around the time of death of the Apostles, even though the Catholic Church herself claims that revelation was completed by around the time of death of the Apostles.

Consider, after all, something like the doctrine that Mary was free of original sin from the first moment of her conception. This is a detailed and substantive doctrine that seems to go far beyond the information given in Scripture and what we know about the faith of the first century Church from non-Scriptural sources. The objection is an incredulous stare at the possibility that such doctrines could be derived from revelation as completed by around the time of death of the Apostles. But:

1. Twenty simple axioms of Euclidean geometry generate an infinity of detailed and substantive theorems. These theorems are such that there is no prima facie way to see that they would follow from the axioms. It can take centuries and centuries for humankind to discover that they can be derived. It should, thus, be no surprise at all that we can derive from a set S of propositions new propositions that are details and substantive, and that seem to go far beyond S. This is particularly true when S is not a list of twenty axioms, but includes about 27,570 verses of the Old Testament, about 7956 verses of the New Testament, as well as decades of Apostolic preaching which Catholics think became embedded in the tradition of the Church, particularly in her liturgy.

2. Furthermore, unlike the development of geometry which is as far as we know is typically done by the unaided human intellect, the development of Catholic doctrine is claimed to be done by the human intellect guided by Holy Spirit.

3. Moreover, the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church not only contain particular doctrinal axioms from which we can derive further propositions, but contain ways of reasoning or rules of inference that embody an understanding of how God deals with the world. Prominent among these is typology. In the New Testament and the Church's liturgy, we learn that God works through parallels. The people of Israel pass through the sea; Christians pass through baptism. Adam sins and from his sin comes death; Christ conquers sin and from his conquering sin comes life. The New Testament (Luke 24:27) says that all of the Old Testament scriptures tell us about Christ. Thus there may be substantive ways of reasoning embodied in Scripture, liturgy and theological practice, ways of reasoning that include typological reasoning. These ways of reasoning are, plainly, more than just formal rules of logic. They are based, rather, on an understanding of God as acting in certain ways (maybe with certain motives), as producing a certain kind of deeply interconnected history.

And new insights might well come from this. Christ corresponds in an important way to Adam; but Mary in the Church's understanding corresponds in an important way to Eve. Just as Eve was created without sin, so, too, Mary was created without original sin. Now it is true that prima facie one might have tried different typological correspondences--one might, for instance, make Mary's being conceived in sin be parallel-by-contrast to Eve's being sinless (as Christ's raising us is parallel-by-contrast to Adam's bringing death on us). Working out a deep understanding of the typology here, and connecting it with many other aspects of Christian doctrine, is going to be difficult. It may take centuries, thus, for the Church to settle on a particular understanding, e.g., to see that the parallel between the new creation in Christ and the old creation in Adam does in fact call not just for Christ the new Adam to be without original sin, but Mary the new Eve as well, but of course with her freedom from the weight of original sin flowing from Christ's redemption, just as our Church's freedom from the weight of original sin does.

Conclusion: It should be no surprise if from a very large body of axioms, which includes substantive rules of inference, one could derive many doctrines that one is individually surprised by.