Edward Feser's Blog, page 23

End of semester open thread

Let’s start the summer break off right, with an open thread.  Now’s the time to get that otherwise off-topic obsession of yours off your chest, at long last.  From plunging stocks to Pet Rocks, from buying Twitter to Gary Glitter to sharing an Uber with Martin Buber, everything is on topic.  The usual rules of good taste and discretion apply.  Previous open threads archived here.

Benedict is not the pope: A reply to some critics

Patrick Coffin has posted an open letter by Italian writer Andrea Cionci, replying to my recent article criticizing Benevacantism.  What follows is a response.  In his introduction to the letter, Patrick objects to my use of the label “Benevacantism,” calling it a “nonsensical devil term”(!)  I can understand why he doesn’t like the word, because it is an odd one and doesn’t really make much sense.  But I didn’t come up with it.  I had to use some label to refer to the view, and chose “Benevacantism” simply because it seemed to be the one most widely used.  But Patrick prefers the label “Benedict is Pope” or “BiP” for short, so in what follows I’ll go along with that.

In addition, Patrick says: “Feser also tweeted a seven-point criticism of my evidence VIDEOthat Pope Benedict XVI is still the true Pontiff of the Catholic Church.  Which I answered, point by point.”  I don’t know why Patrick would make such a bizarre claim, but whatever the reason, it isn’t true.  I have written nothing, on Twitter or anywhere else, about his video.  All I did on Twitter was object to his false and gratuitous accusation that Catholic World Report and I were acting out of a financial motivation.  And since I never wrote any “seven-point criticism” of his video, Patrick naturally could not have written a “point by point” response to it.  Perhaps he has me confused with someone else?

The “emeritus” red herring

Anyway, let’s move on to Cionci’s reply.  He opens with what he presents as merely a secondary argument in favor of the BiP position, even acknowledging that it is “very trivial.”  That’s a good thing, because the argument is extremely weak indeed, even if some BiP advocates (like Patrick in his video) try to make hay out of it.  Cionci writes:

If Pope Benedict had really wanted to abdicate, as the official narrative would [sic] – given the discretion, modesty, and correctness of the man – he certainly would not have made all those messes: to remain with the pontifical name, dressed in white, in the Vatican, under a canonically non-existent papacy emeritus. What good is it? Out of vanity? For the sake of throwing a billion or more faithful into confusion?

End quote.  To see what is wrong with this, consider that if I were to retire and then take the title “Professor Emeritus,” no one would think: “Gee, this is confusing!  Is he really retiring or not?”  And they would not think this even if I asked people to continue calling me “Professor Feser,” wore a tweed jacket, kept hanging around campus, kept writing books, etc.  A “Professor Emeritus” is not some unusual kind of professor, but rather a former professor.  The title is honorific and implies no continuing status as a faculty member.  Everyone knows this, of course. 

But the same thing is true of the title “Pope Emeritus.”  A “Pope Emeritus” is not an unusual kind of pope, but rather a kind of former pope.  That’s all.  And the continued use of the papal name, the white garments, living in the Vatican, etc. are analogous to a former professor’s still being called “Professor,” still coming to campus from time to time, etc. 

Hence the facts cited by Cionci and other BiP advocates are no evidence at all for the BiP thesis, not even “very trivial” evidence.  Indeed, they constitute powerful evidence against the thesis.  If you were wondering whether someone was still a professor, and then you heard that he has taken the title “Professor Emeritus,” you would hardly conclude from that that he is still a professor.  On the contrary, you would conclude that he must notbe.  Why would he call himself “Emeritus” if he was?  In the same way, the fact that Benedict calls himself “Pope Emeritus” is, all by itself, compelling evidence that he is not the pope, and that he “really wanted to abdicate,” to use Cionci’s words.  Cionci speaks of the “confusion” that the “Pope Emeritus” title and other papal trappings have caused, but the only confusion here is on the side of the BiP advocates.  Everyone else realizes that “Benedict is Pope Emeritus” logically entails “Benedict is not the pope.” 

Much ado about “munus”

Cionci’s main argument, though, is the business about the purportedly momentous distinction between “munus” and “ministerium” that BiP advocates are always on about, as I noted in my previous article.  To be sure, he appeals to more than just this distinction.  Indeed, there is much (frankly bizarre) heavy going about the allegedly grave significance of the precise moment of Benedict’s post-resignation helicopter ride, of the “ancient papal time system” (whatever that is), of “German dynastic law,” of the “German Carnival Monday” celebration, of St. Malachi’s prophecy, of whether the phrase “Supreme Pontiff” is written in caps, and other esoterica and minutiae.  And we are told that we must discern, between the lines of official statements, what Benedict is subtly trying to convey to us through a “communicative system” that Cionci calls the “Ratzinger Code.”  All of this has been pieced together by Cionci by collating “the contribution of numerous specialists: theologians, Latinists, canonists, psychologists, linguists, historians etc.” 

Hence, despite Cionci’s insistence that Benedict would never want to cause “messes” or “confusion,” he still somehow concludes that the Pope Emeritus signals his true meaning to the faithful only through the painstaking efforts, over many years, of a diverse group of independently operating scholars, as assembled by and filtered through Italian writers who get Patrick Coffin to post their stuff on his website. 

Because I don’t want to be uncharitable, I don’t want to call all of this nuts.  But I do want to make it clear that that is absolutely the only reason I do not want to call it that.

In any event, it is still the munus/ministerium distinction that is doing the heavy lifting, so (mercifully) we can just focus on that and leave “Ratzinger Code” adepts to their labors.  Here it is useful to bring to bear a recent exchange at Matt Briggs’ website between Fr. John Rickert, a critic of the BiP theory, and historian Edmund Mazza, a prominent defender of the theory.  It must be said at the outset, in fairness to Prof. Mazza, that he is a much more sober-minded advocate of the view than the folks I’ve been talking about so far in this post.  All the same, Fr. Rickert decisively refutes Mazza’s position, and in particular the arguments based on the munus/ministerium distinction.

Recall that the distinction is that between the officeof the papacy (which is what “munus”is said to connote) and the active exercise of the powers of the office (which is what “ministerium” is said to convey).  BiP theorists like Mazza try to make a big deal out of the fact that in the declaration of his resignation, Benedict referred at first to the “munus” of the papacy, but then goes on to say that he is renouncing the “ministerio” of the bishop of Rome.  What this means, they claim, is that he gave up only the active exercise of the office of the papacy, but not the office itself.

To see what is wrong with this, imagine that Joe Biden read a statement wherein he first referred to the “presidency” and then a little later on said he was resigning as “chief executive” of the government of the United States.  Would you think: “Hmm, it seems that he might be giving up only the active exerciseof the presidency, but not the presidency itself!”  Would we be faced with the puzzle of whether it is still really Biden rather than Kamala Harris who is now president?  Of course not, because everyone knows that to speak of the “presidency” and to talk about being “chief executive” of the U.S. government are two ways of saying the same thing.  There would be absolutely no significance to the use of different terms at the beginning of the statement and the end of it.

But the same thing is true of Benedict’s statement.  For as Fr. Rickert emphasizes, “munus” and “ministerium” too can mean the same thing.  Indeed, Mazza and Cionci themselves admit that it can mean the same thing.  They admit that it is only context, and not the words considered in isolation, that can tell us whether the speaker means to use them in different senses.  So what is the relevant context in this case?

Mazza answers by trying to tease out significance from something Benedict said in an interview years after resigning, and something else he said in a book years before becoming pope.  Cionci answers by appealing to the “Ratzinger Code” exotica referred to above.  What they ignore is what most readers might naturally suppose to be the most important bit of context – namely, what else he said in the course of declaring his resignation. 

Fr. Rickert, however, does not ignore this.  He notes that Benedict stated at the time that “the See of St. Peter will be vacant… and a Conclave for electing a new Pope…must be called.”  That shows that he believed himself to be renouncing precisely the office of the papacy itself, and not merely its active exercise.  In reply to Mazza, Fr. Rickert also points out that in the very title of his declaration of his resignation, Benedict speaks of the munus in the genitive singular, and of its “abdication,” or disowning of the office in an unequivocal sense.  Mazza himself quotes Benedict’s statement that he has given up “the power of the office for the government of the Church.”  And as Fr. Rickert notes, in canon law the office of the papacy and the right to exercise its powers go hand in hand.  To give up the latter entails giving up the former. 

Hence the immediate context of Benedict’s use of “munus” and “ministerium” makes it crystal clear that he meant to use them as synonyms.  Nor, of course, did he say anything whatsoever at the time to indicate otherwise.  It is only later on that people started trying to tease out some remarkable, hidden significance to the use of the two terms.

I think it is worth adding that, as anyone who has read his work knows, Benedict does not write like a Thomisic philosopher or canon lawyer, but has a more literary style.  Hence, where a dry, plodding Scholastic (like me) might just repeat “pope” or “papacy” several times in a single paragraph, Benedict prefers to mix it up with more colorful phrases like “Petrine ministry.”  It is fallacious to infer some hidden meaning lurking behind what are really nothing more than stylistic flourishes.

The (unmeetable) burden of proof

Amazingly, in what purports to be a reply to my article, neither Cionci nor Patrick say a single thing in response to the arguments I gave there!  In particular, they have nothing to say about what I argued are the theologically catastrophic implications of the BiP position, which are far worse than the problems with Francis’s pontificate (which BiP advocates delude themselves into thinking they are solving by claiming Francis to be an antipope).  They simply rehash standard BiP talking points (and, in Patrick’s case, he repeats the third-rate debater’s trick of insinuating that I have some financial motivation).

This illustrates the unseriousness of much BiP argumentation.  But the unseriousness is not merely intellectual.  It is moral.  For a Catholic publicly to accuse a sitting pope of being an antipope is not merely to entertain some eccentric theological opinion.  It is (if the accusation is false) potentially to lead fellow Catholics into the grave sin of schism.  Moreover, the very foundations of the day-to-day governance of the Church – the binding force of papal directives, the validity of ordinations (and thus of the sacraments), and so on – depend on knowing who the pope really is.  The BiP thesis calls all of that into question.  Canon law famously declares that marriages are presumed valid unless proved invalid.  This makes sense given how much in the lives of men, women, and children rides on being able to know that one is validly married.  How much more must a papal resignation be presumed valid, when the basic governance of the entire Church rides on it?

Nor, if such a resignation were invalid, do laymen have any business proclaiming it such – say, by confidently declaring from their Twitter accounts that we have a “fake pope,” on the grounds that some academic one has interviewed for one’s podcast has said so.  Even if there were a serious case for the BiP position (which, as we have seen, there is not), it is for the Church alone to decide the matter. 

But even this is merely academic.  For it’s not just that the burden of proof is on BiP advocates, and not on their critics.  It’s not just that it is for the Church, and not for BiP advocates, to settle the question.  An even more fundamental problem for the BiP position is that the matter has already been settled.  The relevant jury is not still out on this.  It came in with its verdict years ago.  The matter was settled when Francis was elected and the Church (including Francis’s predecessor Benedict himself, and including Catholics who were not happy with the results) accepted that he was pope. 

Now, as I and others have shown, the arguments claiming to establish the invalidity of Benedict’s resignation are no good.  And as canon lawyers like Ed Peters have shown, the arguments claiming to establish that Francis’s election was invalid are also no good.  But these are not the considerations I primarily have in mind here.  For even apart from the specifics of those debates, and a priori, we can know from the very nature of the papal office that the BiP position is simply a non-starter.  The reason is that, for the Church as a whole corporate body to accept as pope a man who is not in fact the pope would be contrary to her indefectibility, and thus contrary to Christ’s promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against her.  This is just standard, traditional Catholic theology.  (Robert Siscoe provides a useful overview of the main points here and here.)  Hence the morally unanimous acceptance of Francis as pope in the years immediately following his election is by itself enough to ensure that he really is pope.

As Aquinas observes, though schism is distinct from heresy, they are closely related.  Quoting St. Jerome, he notes that “there is no schism that does not devise some heresy for itself, that it may appear to have had a reason for separating from the Church.”  In the present case, though denying that Francis is pope is not itself heretical, it does presuppose the doctrinally erroneous proposition that the Church can err even when morally unanimous in accepting a man as pope.

Hence, though some of them mean well and are understandably anxious about the state of the Church, those peddling the BiP position are on extremelydangerous ground, doctrinally and spiritually.  It is not only a gigantic time-waster (which would be bad enough when the Church and the world are faced with serious problems as it is), but something much worse.

Socratic loyalty

Socrates was so critical of his country that he was put to death by it.  Yet he could have escaped execution had he wanted to.  The reason he did not, as he famously explained in Plato’s Crito , was out of loyalty to the country of which he was so critical, and which willed to destroy him.  I don’t think that Socrates’ example is, in this case, one that we are bound to follow; Aristotle did no wrong in fleeing, lest Athens sin twice against philosophy.  All the same, that example is worth pondering for contemporary conservatives tempted to oikophobia by the sorry state of the West, and for Catholics tempted by the sorry state of the Church’s human element to depart from her, or to refuse due submission to the Roman Pontiff. 

The argument of the Crito

Socrates’ argument, in brief, is that one’s country is like one’s father or mother, so that to deny its authority over one would be like denying the authority of one’s parents.  Now, to flee Athens so as to avoid execution would, Socrates continues, be tantamount to denying its authority.  Hence, he concludes, it would be wrong for him to flee.  However unjust, his execution was in his view something he had to suffer out of a kind of filial loyalty.

Naturally, one might object to this argument in several ways.  But one objection that I think has no force is the claim that Socrates is being inconsistent.  In Plato’s Apology, Socrates had, of course, refused to submit to the command that he cease philosophizing.  Continuing to philosophize was, he argued, required by obedience to a higher law than that of Athens.  Because of this, it is often suggested that there is a tension between the views presented in the two dialogues.  (This has come to be known as “the Apology-Crito problem.”)  But the parental analogy shows, in my view, why there is no genuine inconsistency here.

Suppose you are a minor and your father commands you to do something immoral – to steal a bottle of whiskey from the supermarket, or to bully other children, or whatever.  You ought to disobey those particular unjust commands.  But that doesn’t entail that he is no longer your father or that you can in general deny his authority over you.  He is still owed the minimal respect that any father is owed.  He still possesses the general authority over you that a father has over a child, and still ought to be obeyed when his commands are lawful.  And you may have to suffer unjust punishments for your refusal to obey particular unjust commands.  For example, if he grounds you for a week for refusing to steal, you’ll just have to grin and bear it until you reach adulthood and are no longer under his authority.

Obviously there are going to be extreme cases (such as those involving sexual or extreme physical abuse) where a parent ought to lose custody of a child.  I put those cases aside for present purposes, and focus just on the less extreme sort of case, in order to understand Socrates’ argument.  The general principle he is appealing to, it seems to me, is that in the case of parental authority, it is possible for a child to have a right to refuse obedience to a specific unjust command while still having no right to deny a parent’s generalauthority over one.  And he argues for a parallel to his relationship to Athens.  He is saying that even though he has a right and indeed a duty to disobey certain specific commands (such as the command to cease philosophizing), it does not follow that he has a right to reject the city’s generalparental-like authority over him (as, he thinks, he would be doing if he fled the city in order to avoid execution).  Hence there is no inconsistency between the positions he takes in the Apology and the Crito.

That doesn’t by itself guarantee that the argument is, at the end of the day, correct.  One might still challenge the assumption that the city is relevantly like a parent.  Or one can accept this assumption, but then argue that the injustice in the case of Socrates’ execution is so grave that the city is acting like an extremely abusive parent, who ought to lose “custody” of Socrates (so that he can justly flee).  My point is just that I don’t think the charge that Socrates is being inconsistentis a good objection.

Now, in fact Socrates is also on strong ground in comparing one’s country to one’s parents.  Modern readers, who tend to think of politics in terms of the individualist “social contract” model inherited from Hobbes and Locke, are bound to find this odd.  But from the point of view of classical political philosophy, for which human beings are by nature social animals, the family is the model for social life in general and parental authority the model for political authority.  Hence, for Aquinas (and indeed for Catholic social teaching more generally) patriotismand a general respect for public authorities are moral duties falling under the fourth commandment. 

Suffering for one’s country

The weakness in Socrates’ argument is rather that he takes it too far.  Again, even in the case of literal parents, it is possible for them to lose their authority over a child when the abuse is sufficiently egregious.  And the analogy between one’s country and one’s parents is in any event not an exact one, insofar as one’s duties to one’s country are weaker than those to one’s parents.  Hence the threat of unjust execution would in fact justify Socrates in fleeing the city. 

All the same, there is a nobility in Socrates’ decision, and if he goes too far in one direction, it is also possible to go too far in the other direction.  What Socrates gets right, I would argue, is that there is at least a presumption in favor of being willing to suffer injustice fromone’s country for the sake of one’s country.  And this flows from a filial love and duty that is at least analogous to the love and duty one owes one’s parents.  The presumption can be overridden when injustice has too deeply permeated the basic institutions of one’s country.  But the presumption is nevertheless there, and we are duty-bound to be careful lest we judge too hastily that it has been overridden.

The “Don’t tread on me” spirit of traditional American thinking about political matters can blind us to this presumption.  I’m not entirely knocking that spirit; I largely share it myself, and it has its salutary aspects insofar as Americans are sometimes less inclined than others are to go along with idiotic and immoral governmental policies (like open-ended lockdowns, for example).

But at least in the view of some observers, some right-wingers have judged that “wokeness” has so thoroughly corrupted our country and civilization that they no longer merit our loyalty.  And in my view this is a rash and irresponsible judgment.  That is by no means to deny the danger of wokeness, which I regard as a satanic menace that cannot be compromised with.  Wokeness delenda est.  But it is, to say the least, premature to judge that this menace will win the day, as is manifest from the revulsion that its excesses have generated in the electorate. 

Twenty-five years ago, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’s First Things magazine generated a fierce intra-conservative controversy by raising the question of whether the principles governing the American judicial system might at some point become so contrary to the natural law that citizens will no longer owe it their allegiance.  This is an even more serious question today than it was then, and the debate merits re-reading.  All the same, it is premature now, as it was then, to judge that we have reached the dreaded point of no return.  We clearly have not – as is obvious from the fact that we still have the freedom to discuss the matter.

Our forebears literally shed their own blood to save their country from tyranny.  It would be the most contemptible softness and “sunshine patriotism” to think that (say) getting kicked off Twitter, or being required to wear a mask – obnoxious as these things are – mark the End of Democracy and absolve us from any further loyalty to our country and its institutions.  Yes, wokeness is a monster.  So we should work to save our country from it, rather than retreating into a fantasyland of crackpot conspiracy theories and political fanaticism and sympathy with the West’s enemies.

Suffering for the Church

Loyalty to country is not absolute, but loyalty to the Church must be, because unlike one’s country, she is divinely protected from total corruption.  The project of saving one’s country from tyranny and decadence can fail.  The project of saving the Church from bad prelates and heretics cannot fail.  To despair of such salvation – to fret that the problems remain unresolved after ten or fifty or a hundred years – is to sin against the virtues of faith and hope, which demand of us that we take the long view.

But it is also a sin against charity.  It is a shallow love which endures only to the extent that the beloved remains attractive.  Caritas demands more.  As St. Paul wrote, “perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die.  But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8).  Similarly, we must love and pray for our own enemies, and not just our friends and families.  How much more must we love the Church, even when her human element is dominated by immoral and faithless men?  Indeed, especially then, since this is when the Church most needs us?  How much more must we love and uphold the foundation of the Church, the papacy, even when (and again, especially when) the office is held by someone who fails to do his duty?  And yet there are those Catholics whose personal disappointments lead them to abandon the Church, and those who strain to find fanciful rationalizations for refusing submission to Christ’s vicar. 

This is not to deny for a moment that there can be legitimate respectful criticism of the Church’s authorities, including the pope, as the Church has always recognized.  But if such criticism does not have the desired effect, then the only option is patient forbearance rather than picking up one’s marbles and stomping off.  As the instruction Donum Veritatis teaches:

For a loyal spirit, animated by love for the Church, such a situation can certainly prove a difficult trial.  It can be a call to suffer for the truth, in silence and prayer, but with the certainty, that if the truth really is at stake, it will ultimately prevail.

We find here too a parallel with Socrates, who simultaneously criticized the governing authorities while refusing to subvert their authority, even to the point of submitting to unjust punishment.  But the more apposite parallel is to Christ.  As Socrates rebuked Crito, so too Christ rebuked Peter, who similarly, and wrongly, urged him not to put up with the injustice that the authorities of his day sought to inflict on him: “Get behind me, Satan!  You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men” (Matthew 16:23). 

Fr. Gregory Pine on prudence

Modern moral philosophers typically have much to say about abstract principles, but are not of much help for the average person seeking concrete moral advice.  Self-help books, meanwhile, have practical relevance but are philosophically superficial.  One of the strengths of Aquinas’s ethics is that it is philosophically sophisticated while at the same time offering practical guidance to non-philosophers.  This is especially true of his treatment of the virtues.  But even Aquinas sometimes needs a bit of exposition to make him accessible to modern readers.

For this reason, works like Fr. Gregory Pine’s new book Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly are most needed and welcome.  It is philosophically and theologically well-informed, while at the same time written with admirable clarity and relevance to real-world problems.  And its subject matter is of special importance, since prudence is that cardinal virtue most crucial to the successful pursuit of the moral life.

Fr. Gregory is interviewed about the book at Word on Fire, has given a brief overview of it on Pints with Aquinas and discussed it in greater depth on The Catholic Man Show.  Take a look!

Whose pantheism? Which dualism? A Reply to David Bentley Hart

Over at Substack, David Bentley Hart has written an open letter in reply to my recent review, at Public Discourse, of his book You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature.  What follows is my own open letter in response.  Before reading it, it would help if you’ve already read my review and Hart’s reply.

Hello David,

Many thanks for your enjoyable and vigorous rejoinder.  If your eyes fall on this, I know they will be rolling at the prospect of yet another round.  But I cannot resist a reply to what seem to me basic misunderstandings, along with crucial concessions disguised as rebuttals.  I do promise to refrain from Photoshop antics and cheap puns, for the sake of preserving our armistice and basic good taste.  Plus, I wouldn’t want any of your readers to spill their sherry. 

As it happens, I have already addressed some of the points you make in a response to your namesake Seth Hart, who had also objected to my review of your book.  (No, he’s no relation to you, in case you are wondering.)  I don’t expect you to have read that, but I mention it since some people reading this will have done so, and I apologize to them for the overlap between what I say here and what I said there.  There’s new stuff here too, though, to make it worthwhile for them to read on.  (In case you are tempted to follow the link to my reply to Seth, I apologize to you too, since in that article I did indulge the temptation to pun.  It seems that on that score I am not able not to sin.)

The computer analogy

Let’s begin with my analogy of the laptop computer, which you characterize as a real howler.  Your substantive points (as opposed to derisive rhetoric) fail to justify that characterization.  In any analogy, there are only certain features of the analogues that are relevant to the point being made with the analogy.  For example, when Christ compares himself to a thief in the night, it would be silly to object to the analogy on the grounds that thievery is sinful and Christ is sinless.  For thievery is simply not relevant to the specific point being made with the analogy.

It is also crucial to follow out an analogy consistently.  There’s a scene in the Whit Stillman movie Barcelona where the character Ted compares the belligerents in a Third World civil war to warring ant colonies.  His listeners are outraged, one of them thinking that his point is that Third World populations are, from the American point of view, like mere ants.  Another objects that people in the Third World are people and not ants.  Ted tries, without success, to explain to them that they are missing the point – that it is an analogy, and that everyone, including Americans, is being reduced to ant scale in the analogy.  This illustrates how we need to be careful before jumping to conclusions about what the elements of an analogy are meant to correspond to in the real world.

I realize you know how analogies are supposed to work, but you seem momentarily to have forgotten it when evaluating the one I gave.  For you make errors in interpreting my computer analogy comparable to those I have just used as illustrations.  First, you complain that a computer is an artifact, whereas human beings are natural substances.  Now, as a card-carrying, dues-paying, unreconstructed Aristotelian metaphysician, I am, of course, as aware as anyone of the radical difference in kind between nature and artifice, which reflects the difference between substantial and accidental form.  But that is simply irrelevant to the specific point of the analogy, just as it is irrelevant to the specific point of Christ’s analogy that thievery is sinful.  There is a fact of the matter (even if it is a man-made fact of the matter) about what a computer is and what it was made for, and that’s enough for the purposes of the analogy.  True, artefactual kinds have fuzzier boundaries and functions than natural kinds, but that does not entail that they have no boundaries or functions at all.  And again, the rough-and-ready boundaries and functions that we unproblematically attribute to them every day are good enough for the purposes of the analogy.

You also complain that what actualizes the potential of a laptop computer to be supplemented with new applications, hardware, and the like, is a cause that is as much within the natural order as the computer itself is (rather than anything miraculous).  But here, like the listeners in Barcelona, you’re not paying careful enough attention to what corresponds to what in the analogy.  Yes, actual computers and their users and updaters are all in the natural order, just as human beings are human beings and not ants.  But again, it is an analogy, for goodness’ sake.  In the analogy, the computer itself is meant to correspond to human beings in a state of “pure nature.”  And supplementing it with new applications, hardware, etc. is meant to correspond to divine action to raise human beings to a supernatural end.  Yes, in real life, those who add an application or hardware to an existing computer are not performing a miracle or doing anything supernatural, but – to repeat myself – it’s an analogy.

Now, what is key to understanding the analogy is that there is a sense in which the laptop computer, without any such supplemental applications or hardware, is already complete as is.  It is not like, say, a computer without a battery or a functioning keyboard, which would obviously be incomplete.  Refraining from adding applications or hardware to the computer would not be like leaving out a battery.  The computer can do everything its designers and purchasers intended it to do even if the new applications and hardware are never added to it, whereas it could notdo so if it didn’t have a battery or functioning keyboard.  This is analogous to human beings in the state of “pure nature,” who would be complete with just natural knowledge of God and without the beatific vision.

The USB ports and downloading capacities of the computer correspond to the obediential potency for a supernatural end that human beings have even in a state of pure nature.  And it is crucial to understanding the analogy that the new applications and hardware that these make possible are sometimes unplanned and unforeseenby the designers of the computer.  So, the fact that designers do foresee somefuture applications and hardware does not undermine the analogy.  Neither does it “do your work for you” by effectively folding the supernatural into the natural.  In the analogy, it is, again, the unplanned and unforeseen future applications and hardware that correspond to the supernatural end, not the planned and foreseen ones.

Because said applications are unplanned and unforeseen – and thus do not exist within the computer even in an implicit or embryonic way – they can in no way arise from within the computer as it stands, but can be put into it only from without.  That corresponds to the way in which a supernatural end must be imposed on the state of pure nature entirely from without.  All the same, the USB ports, etc. – which are already built into the computer – make this external imposition on the computer possible.  (It would not be possible to put into, say, an old Commodore computer or Apple II Plus, hardware or software that is developed today for modern computers.)  And this corresponds to the fact that rational creatures have (as sub-rational creatures do not) a build-in obediential potency for the beatific vision, even though the beatific vision is in no way a natural end.

This is why the analogy illustrates more than just “non-repugnance,” contrary to what you say in your reply.  The USB ports, etc. positively point to there being some new applications and hardware or other that might be added.  That’s more than mere non-repugnance vis-à-vis such additions.  At the same time, they do not positively point to certain specific applications or hardware that might be added (namely, to those that were totally unknown and unforeseen by the designers of the computer).  This corresponds to the way that human beings in a state of pure nature point, by virtue of their rationality, to the possibility of some kind of supplemental end or other – but without pointing to the beatific vision specifically.

I am well aware, by the way, that you say much in your book about the distinction between the way the notion of an obediential potency was understood prior to Cajetan (which you illustrate with the example of Sara’s pregnancy) and how it was understood by Cajetan and his Thomist successors (where it is clearly meant to underwrite a truly supernatural end).  My analogy was intended to illustrate only what you characterize as the post-Cajetan conception, which is why it is a red herring to argue (as you do) that my analogy is not a good way to illustrate the other conception.  My review had gone way over the word limit as it was, and I had to leave things out.  Indeed, my review explicitly warned readers that “I have left out various nuances and details.”  But those details were not relevant to the specific points I was trying to make.

Anyway, here’s the thing.  When it is properly understood, the computer analogy is fine.  Read charitably (or, really, just fairly) it is not the ineptly prepared dog’s breakfast you make it out to be.  I understand that you are nevertheless going to reject the notion that I am using it to illustrate.  But to go on about the analogy being an “absolute catastrophe,” about its doing your work for you, about its not even getting Thomism right, etc. – well, there’s a lot of heat there to warm the hearts of the fans, but no light.

The bat analogy

You also miss the point of the analogy I borrow from Thomas Nagel, about wondering what it is like to be a bat.  You object that desiring such knowledge amounts to mere “curiosity,” whereas the desire for the beatific vision is obviously much more than that.  But while that is of course true, it is irrelevant to the specific point I was making with the example.

Because we are rational animals, we can conceptualizewhat it is like to be a bat, and can go on to wonder what it would be like.  We can even positively want to know what it would be like.  At the same time, given that our perceptual apparatus is by nature so different from that of a bat, we cannot in fact know this.  And being rational, we can know that we can’t know it.  Hence, we can judge both that in some sense it would be desirable to know this and that it is not a kind of knowledge that is “in the cards” for us.  Because it is not, we don’t judge this lack of knowledge to be a loss or incompleteness in our nature, the way that we would judge, say, the lack of vision as a loss or lack of completeness (since it is part of our nature to be able to see).

The example is meant to illustrate the idea that a rational creature can in some sense desire to know something and yet at the same time not regard the impossibility of fulfilling that desire as a loss or a lack of completion.  And this parallels human beings in a state of pure nature who, being rational creatures and knowing God as first principle of the world, can go on to wonder what it would be like directly to apprehend the very essence of God.  At the same time, they would judge that that kind of knowledge is simply not one that is open to us – that it is “above our pay grade,” metaphysically and epistemologically speaking – and thus they would not experience this incapacity as a loss or an imperfection. 

It is true that knowledge of the divine essence is incomparably more significant than knowledge of bat phenomenology, but, again, that is simply irrelevant to the specific point of the analogy.  You would no doubt respond, as you do in your reply, that any rational nature would have to regard the incapacity for the beatific vision as a loss or an imperfection.  But that simply reasserts your position against mine, without arguingfor it; that is to say, it begs the question.  You might then go on (as indeed you do in your reply) to say that this is simply not a “sane” position to take, and warn that I “will lose the debate” if I take it.  But this merely adds foot-stomping to the question-begging. 

It is also false to claim that my analogy fails insofar as learning what it is like to be a bat would require replacing one nature with another – viz. human nature with bat nature – and thus make your point for you.  That is clearly not the case.  Our nature is to be rational animals.  And if, super-naturally, the capacity for a bat-like echolocation were added to our existing repertoire of animal capacities, we would still have the nature of rational animals (and not the nature of bats, which are of their nature non-rational).  Once again, my analogy, when one is careful to note exactly what it is intended (and not intended) to illustrate, is perfectly fine.

Pantheism

OK, so let’s get to the pantheism business.  One thing I need to emphasize from the get-go is that I was, of course, not attributing to you everything that the Stoics, Spinoza, or Hegel believed.  I was not characterizing you as a “synthesis of all pantheists” or the like.  I was merely making the point that you do say things that echo some of the distinctively pantheist themes of each of these thinkers, even if you put your own twist on them and wouldn’t endorse everything they say.  Hence, to note that you differ from the Stoics in this way, from Spinoza in that way, from Hegel in this other way, and so on, is not to the point.  Yes, of course you’re not a Stoic pantheist, a Spinozist pantheist, or a Hegelian pantheist.  You’re a David Bentley Hart pantheist.  Hence, still a pantheist.

To be sure, “pantheism” is a label that has been applied to a pretty broad range of thinkers, from Vedantists to Parmenides to Marcus Aurelius to John Scotus Eriugena to Spinoza to Hegel to Einstein to Deepak Chopra.  But not anything goes.  The boundaries may be fuzzy, but they are not non-existent.  Hence it will not do for you to say, in response to the charge of pantheism, that it is a label you “can neither reject nor accept, since it is meaningless.”  And in fact that is different from what you conceded just a couple of years ago, when, during an earlier exchange of ours, you said:

The accusation of pantheism troubles me not in the least.  For one thing, it’s a vague word used of far too many different things.  But there are many ways in which I would proudly wear the title…  I am quite happy to be accused of pantheism – or of paganism, monism, syncretism, Hinduism, panpsychism, and so on, since I regard none of those labels as opprobrious.

End quote.  So, we have it on the expert testimony of one David Bentley Hart that David Bentley Hart is (some kind of) pantheist.  Indeed, even in this latest reply, you concede: “But, yes, you have me, I am a metaphysical monist.”  So which is it?  “Oh please, don’t fling the silly ‘pantheist” charge!” or “Damn right I’m a pantheist, wanna make something of it?”  Pick a strategy and stick with it!

True, you go on to claim that you are in this regard merely placing yourself in the tradition of “Eriugena, Eckhart, and Cusanus, [and] also drawing from Gregory and Maximus.”  But (putting aside issues about how these various thinkers ought to be interpreted) saying “They’re ‘pantheists’ too!” is very different from denying the charge of pantheism.  I cannot help but wonder if you are being a bit coy lest too frank an acknowledgement of your pantheism might alienate those among your readers for whom that would be a bridge too far.  But I’d urge you to let your Yes be Yes and your No, No.  Anything else is from the marketing department.  (Not that I think you care about selling books.  But I do think you care about selling ideas.)

As I emphasized in my aforementioned reply to your namesake, the lens through which I am viewing the pantheism question is – you will be utterly unsurprised to hear – that provided by the First Vatican Council and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century papal teaching and its Neo-Scholastic inspiration.  There are, for example, these bracing passages from the Council:

If anyone says that finite things, both corporal and spiritual, or at any rate, spiritual, emanated from the divine substance; or that the divine essence, by the manifestation and evolution of itself becomes all things… let him be anathema.

If anyone… holds that God did not create by his will free from all necessity, but as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself… let him be anathema.

There is Pius X’s Pascendi, which takes “the identity of man with God” to be the chief note of pantheism.  There is Pius XI’s Mit Brennender Sorge, which identifies “raising the world to the dimensions of God” as a variety of pantheism.  And so on. 

Now, in You Are Gods, you say that because we are capable of a supernatural end, human beings “must be divine – ‘naturally’” and “must always already have been divine,” so that “our being in God and God’s being in us are both also and more originally God’s being as God.”  You say that “creation… [is] revealed as being ‘located’ nowhere but within the very life of God as God.”  You say that “creation inevitably follows from who [God] is.”  You say that “nothing in nature or history can be simply extrinsic to this movement of the Father’s ‘achievement’ of his own essence in the divine life.”  You say that:

Only the God who is always already human can become human.  Only a humanity that is always already divine can become God… God is all that is.  Whatever is not God exists as becoming divine, and as such is God in the mode of what is other than God.

And so on.  I quote other relevant remarks in my review.  Surely no one reading this needs to do the math, least of all you.  If pantheism includes the sorts of things condemned by the Council and the popes, thenyour position is clearly pantheistic.  At the very least, it “savors of pantheism,” as Pius X would say.

You would no doubt respond, as you do in your reply, that “I do not believe in the organs of authority that you believe in.”  I know that.  That’s not the point.  I don’t for a moment expect you to give up your pantheism simply because the Piuses condemned it.  But I do not think it is too much to ask for you frankly to acknowledge that your position is indeed exactly the sort of thing they condemned.  You would lose some Catholic readers – and (I cannot tell a lie) I think that is why you don’t just come out and admit the obvious – but the true nature of the dispute between us would be clearer.

It is also no good for the 1,234th time to rattle off a list of the Mighty Dead, as if the mere incantation forced them to testify on your behalf.  The devil knows scripture, and he knows the Fathers too.  I daresay he’s even read them in the original Greek and Latin.  What they said is one thing, and what you say they meant is not necessarily the same thing.  Take the theosis of Irenaeus and Athanasius, which held a powerful attraction for me when I began to reconsider Christianity after years of being an atheist (and still does).  I would interpret it in a Thomistic way, which preserves the sharp distinction between creature and creator.  You would no doubt regard such an interpretation as anachronistic and superficial, missing the deep (cough pantheistic cough) meaning implicit in these Fathers, even if unrealized by them.  Who is right?  Merely citing them is not going to answer that question.  The same is true of thinkers you regard as more obviously supporting your side, such as Gregory.  Precisely because you and I both regard them as incorporable within our respective positions, merely name-checking them cuts no ice.

Orthodoxy

Now, the question is, in part, a question of what is an orthodox reading of such thinkers.  In my review, I quoted a number of lines from You Are Gods evidencing your rejection of traditional criteria of Christian orthodoxy – and your appeal to extra-Christian sources as if they were equal in authority, or in some cases perhaps even of greater insight, than some Christian sources.  On the one hand, you quibble with some of the details of what I say.  For example, when I note with disapproval that you suggest that Christian thinkers “have a great deal to learn” from Vedanta, you respond:

And?  Would you raise objections to the term “Neoplatonic Christianity?”  Would you have resisted the use of Platonism by the early Christians?  How about Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism by Thomas?  Would Thomas’s reliance on a Muslim philosopher like ibn Sina have horrified you?

But once again you have missed the point.  I am, of course, happy to learn from Vedanta, and from Neoplatonism, Avicenna, and (for that matter) my electrician and the guy who does my taxes.  But here’s one thing we are not going to learn from Vedanta: what Christianity is. 

On the other hand, the main point I was making in that section of the review is one that you basically concede.  In your reply, you write: “I admit that what others consider orthodoxy is not my primary concern” and “I do not care whether what I say fits a particular definition of orthodoxy.”

Well, here’s one problem with that.  It’s not entirely true.  For you do not present the position you develop in You Are Godsas merely inspired by Christian writers, alongside others.  You present it as the Christian position, and you condemn rivals like Neo-Scholastic Thomism as positively contrary to Christian teaching.  Similarly, in That All Shall Be Saved, you presented your universalism as Christian teaching full stop, and dismissed rival positions like Thomism and Calvinism as simply getting Christianity wrong.  (Indeed, it even seems, at least in those moments, that perhaps you envy the Piuses their authority to issue anathemas!)

So, it appears to me that you have a tendency to speak out of both sides of your mouth.  When it suits your purposes, you are happy to play the orthodoxy card against your opponents.  When accused of flouting orthodoxy yourself, it’s suddenly: “Orthodoxy schmorthodoxy, let a thousand flowers bloom!”  That’s the sort of rhetoric that may work well with people who are into rhetoric of that sort.  But logicallyspeaking… well, I don’t need to finish the sentence.

Hence, when you admonish me: “Do not arrogate to yourself the right to speak for Christian tradition in general” and “there are more things in Christianity… than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” what else can I say but: Right back atcha, David. 

Except that our positions are not really at a stalemate at this point, since I really do believe that there is such a thing as orthodoxy and that there are objective criteria by which that can be determined.  You, I think, do not.  I suspect that the traditional Catholic-Orthodox-Protestant debates over the sources of authority bore you.  I gather that, when the term “modernism” enters the discussion, you’ll offer an impatient sigh, with a side order of eye rolls.  But, when pressed, you’ll concede that yes, at least where questions about the authority of tradition, the history of dogma, and the like are concerned, your sympathies are with thinkers of the sort condemned in Pascendi.  Stop me when I‘m getting warm.

So, while you may think I get Christianity wrong, I am most certainly trying to get it right.  I don’t think you are doing that, not fundamentally anyway.  You admitted as much in That All Shall Be Saved, where you suggested that if it should turn out that your universalism really is inconsistent with Christianity, you would give up Christianity rather than universalism – appealing to your own “conscience,” against which, you say, “the authority of a dominant tradition… has no weight whatever.”

Hence what you defend in that book and in the new one, I would suggest, is not really Christianity itself, but rather a personal theology that takes certain Christian thinkers as key sources of inspiration.  It is, at the end of the day, essentially David Bentley Hartism.  And so, I agree with you when you say that “for all intents and purposes, we profess different faiths.”

Well, that’s basically it.  I appreciate the good sportsmanship of your reply, your kind words about my philosophy of mind book, and the kind words you have had elsewhere for Five Proofs of the Existence of God.  As you know, I admire your own books Atheist Delusions and The Experience of God, and I know that they have meant a lot to some of my own readers.  It is where we get into matters of more specific Christian concern that we, and our readers, begin to diverge.  That is regrettable, but there it is.

The big book on the soul that I am currently working on is one that mostly deals with matters on which our sympathies converge.  And so, I think that for the most part you will like it.  Except for the section on the postmortem fixity of the will, which you will hate. 

May God bless you too.

Best,

Ed

Tales from the Coffin

In my recent post criticizing Benevacantism, I deliberately avoided naming specific individuals, in the hope of preventing the debate from degenerating into a clash of personalities.  I also said: “I make no judgment here about the culpability of those drawn to this error, many of whom are well-meaning people understandably troubled by the state of the Church and the world.”  Unfortunately, not everyone is keen on keeping the discussion civil or focused on arguments and evidence.

Patrick Coffin, the longtime Catholic apologist, has in recent months been promoting Benevacantism.  I’ve known Patrick for years and have counted him a friend.  He has kindly had me on his show a few times.  Despite all that, he has decided to take the low road in responding to my arguments.  After Catholic World Report reprinted my article, he posted the following remark on Twitter:

Evidence-aphobia. @IgnatiusPress which runs @cworldreport, also owns the rights to Benedict/Ratzinger's English translations (which are great, btw). Must. Protect. The ca$h cow.

End quote.  When I objected to this unjust, uncharitable, and utterly gratuitous resort to the fallacy of Appeal to Motive, Patrick doubled down:

Calm down, Ed. It's not mysterious but *obvious* that you'd want to defend those who publish your books (which are excellent, btw), & understandable that they'd want to repost your criticism. Boy howdy, does pointing out financial conflicts of interest get people mad.

End quote.  So, in Patrick’s view, sincere disagreement with the arguments for Benevacantism and grave concerns about its schismatic implications are not enough to explain why I and the people at CWR are opposed to it.  It must, deep down, really be about money.  And if I object to such an accusation, it can’t be because I regard the accusation as grossly unfair.  It must be because he’s struck a nerve.

Needless to say, this is unhinged, and reminiscent of that other Catholic apologist to have gone off the rails, Mark Shea.  I pointed this out to Patrick, who responded:

Taking refuge in insults and condescension when you run out of arguments is sad from a professional philosopher. I'm glad you haven't gone ad hominem or anything. I'll let readers decide what's what and where the fallacies lie. Peace.

End quote.  Thus did this exchange lead us at last to Bizarro world, where to object to a condescending, insulting ad hominem attack itself somehow amounts to a condescending, insulting ad hominem attack against the guilty party.

I note also that, though in some of his Twitter comments on my article, Patrick once again calls his readers’ attention to the considerations that he thinks support Benevacantism, he has not responded to the specific objections I raised in the article.

All of this pretty much speaks for itself.  I will simply emphasize that if the arguments for Benevacantism are as strong as Patrick supposes, he should be able to defend them without gratuitously insulting a friend who has approached the issue in a civil manner.

Benevacantism is scandalous and pointless

In his book The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies , David Stove observes that an argument once given by philosopher of science Imré Lakatos “manages to be scandalous and pointless at the same time” (p. 8).  He was referring to Lakatos’s having made use of certain historical examples, some of the details of which Lakatos admitted he had made up himself.  The idea is that, as bad as dishonest scholarship is, worse still is defeating the whole purpose by admitting that that is what you are doing.  I put aside for present purposes the question of whether Stove’s characterization of Lakatos was actually fair.  What I’m interested in here is the general idea of a position that is simultaneously scandalous and pointless.

I can’t help but think of Stove’s remark when I consider the growing fad in some conservative Catholic circles for “Benevacantism” – the theory that Benedict XVI is still pope, so that Francis is an antipope.  (The word is a portmanteau derived from “Benedict” and “sedevacantism.”  Which doesn’t really make much sense, given that the view does not claim that there is currently no pope, as sedevacantism does.  Some people prefer other labels, such as “resignationism” or “Beneplenism,” for reasons you can google if you’d like.)

You might think the view too silly to be worth commenting on.  But there are two reasons for doing so, namely that it is scandalous and that it is pointless.  It is scandalous insofar as those promoting it are leading Catholics into the grave sin of schism, i.e. refusing due submission to the Roman Pontiff, who (like it or not) is in fact Francis.  And while it is the view of only a small minority, some of them are influential.  I make no judgment here about the culpability of those drawn to this error, many of whom are well-meaning people understandably troubled by the state of the Church and the world.  But that it is an error, there can be no reasonable doubt.

That brings me to the other reason for commenting on Benevacantism, which is that it is pointless.  In particular, the view is incoherent, and indeed self-defeating, but in a way that seems to me to be philosophically interesting.  To see how, let’s begin by calling to mind the motivationpeople have for wanting Benevacantism to be true (as contrasted with the arguments they give for it – I’ll come to those in a moment). 

It is not news that Pope Francis has, over the years, made a number of theologically problematic statements (about Holy Communion for those living in adulterous relationships, capital punishment, and other matters) and done a number of problematic things (such as reversing Benedict’s motu proprio on the Latin Mass).  I’ve addressed these controversies many times before and am not going to rehash it all here.  The point to emphasize for present purposes is that Benevacantists suppose that the problem posed by Francis’s questionable statements and actions can be dissolved if it were to turn out that Benedict is still pope.  For in that case, the problematic statements were not made by a true pope, so that there is no need to explain howa pope could commit such errors.

Now, one problem here is that this “solution” is simply unnecessary.  The Church has always acknowledged that popes can err when not speaking ex cathedra, and whatever else one thinks of Francis’s controversial statements and actions, they all would, if erroneous, fall into the category of possible papal error.  Francis may have said and done more theologically dubious things than the best-known popes of the past who have done so (such as Honorius and John XXII), but they are dubious statements and actions of the same basic kind.  The problem is extremely serious, but again, it’s within the boundaries of what the Church and her faithful theologians have always acknowledged could happen, consistent with the clearly defined conditions for papal teaching being infallible.  (I’ve addressed this issue in detail elsewhere, such as hereand here.)

But that’s not primarily what I’m talking about when I say that Benevacantism is pointless.  To understand that we need to understand the arguments for the view.  In 2016, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, personal secretary to Benedict XVI, gave a now-famous speech wherein he said that the pope’s resignation had created an “expanded” Petrine office with two members, an “active” one and a “contemplative” one.  The Petrine “munus” – which can mean “ministry” or “service, duty, guide or gift” – is, the archbishop said, therefore something Benedict still participates in even after resigning.  Indeed, his acceptance of the office of the papacy in 2005 was “irrevocable.”  This, Gänswein said, is why it is appropriate that he retains his papal name, still wears papal white garments, and remains within the Vatican.

Given how close Gänswein is to Benedict, these remarks were widely understood to reflect the Pope Emeritus’s own views.  And it is completely unsurprising that they raised everyone’s eyebrows – and, as it happens, a few people’s hopes.  For they seem to imply that, despite his resignation, Benedict may in some sense think of himself as still holding the papal office, at least in part.  And this has given rise to at least two different versions of Benevacantism, which rest on two different theories about how the views conveyed by Gänswein purportedly cast doubt on the validity of Benedict’s resignation.  They go as follows:

Theory 1: Benedict didn’t really intend to resign.  According to this theory, Benedict distinguishes the munus of the papacy (in the sense of the office itself and its duties), from the ministerium or actual exercise of the powers of the office.  What Benedict renounced, according to this theory, is only the latter and not the former.  That is to say, he retains the munus of the papacy, but decided to turn the ministerium over to another, who ended up being Francis.  Francis, for this reason, is said by Gänswein to be the “active” member of this expanded papal office.  But Benedict, who now retains only a “contemplative” role, is still the one who in the strict sense holds the munus and thus the papacy.

Theory 2: Benedict did intend to resign, but failed.  According to this alternative theory, Benedict did indeed intend flatly to resign the papacy.  But since he holds the views reported by Gänswein, he did not succeed in validly doing so.  The reason is that the functions of the papal office simply cannot be divided in the way Benedict, according to the theory, supposes they can be.  Hence his resignation was predicated on a false understanding of what he was doing, and that invalidates it.  He is therefore still pope.

Now, I don’t think either of these theories is plausible for a moment.  But let’s pretend they were.  Would they solve the problem they are intended to solve – that is to say, the problem of having to deal with a genuine pope who says and does theologically highly problematic things?  Not in the least, which is why I say Benevacantism is pointless. 

Suppose theory 1 were true.  Then Francis would be something like Benedict’s viceroy, acting on his behalf and with his authority.  His words and actions would have whatever authority they had precisely insofar as he acts in Benedict’s name, and in effect would therefore be Benedict’swords and actions, especially if Benedict did nothing to correct them.  (Call to mind here Aquinas’s teaching in Summa Theologiae II-II.182that the active life “serves rather than commands” the contemplative, which is superior to it.  Hence, if the papacy really were divided into “contemplative” and “active” members, the latter would be the instrument of the former.)

Surely the difficulty here is obvious.  It would follow that Francis’s problematic words and actions too would, in effect, be Benedict’s problematic words and actions.  Hence this first version of Benevacantism would do nothing at all to solve the problem of how a pope could say and do the problematic things Francis has done.  It would merely relocate responsibility for these problematic words and actions from Francis to Benedict.  Indeed, it would make the situation worse, because you would not only have a pope who is ultimately responsible for the problematic words and actions in question, but one who also, on top of that, allows the faithful to be confused about who exactly the pope really is.  Benevacantists think of Benedict as a better pope than Francis, but in fact this first version of their theory would entail that he is a worse pope.

Suppose instead we went with theory 2.  This is hardly better; indeed, it may even be worse still.  For one thing, on this scenario too, Benedict does not turn out to be a better defender of orthodoxy than Francis is.  Rather, the theory would make him out to be such an incompetent and unreliable defender of orthodoxy that he would not even understand the nature of the papacy itself, which is supposed to be the ultimate bulwark of orthodoxy.  Indeed, he would be so incompetent and unreliable that he would not even know who the pope really is, and that it is precisely he himself who is still pope.  He would, in effect, be in schism from himself, and guilty of subordinating himself and the rest of the faithful to an antipope!

This would be a superior guardian of orthodoxy than Francis?  Seriously?

But it gets worse.  Suppose one of these two versions of Benevacantism were true.  What is the Church supposed to do?  Presumably, on the best case scenario, Benedict himself would publicly endorse some version of the theory.  But that would be a disaster.  If he endorsed theory 1, he would in effect be saying that he has silently allowed the Church to be gravely misled and misgoverned for almost a decade – that he has been pope all along but has failed to carry out his duties as pope, and done so on the basis of a novel theological theory that has no ground or precedent in the historical teaching of the Church.  Why, in that case, should any Catholic trust him or his magisterium ever again?  And of course, millions of Catholics would not trust him, nor would they accept this shocking claim, and would continue to recognize Francis as pope.  This would entail a schism unprecedented in Church history, with no clear means of resolution.

Suppose instead that Benedict came to endorse theory 2, and made an announcement to that effect: “Hey, listen up everyone, it turns out I am still pope after all!  No one is more surprised about this than I am, but there it is.  I hereby immediately resume my duties and command Francis to step aside.”  Why should anyone regard this judgment as any more sound than the earlier judgment he made to the effect that he was no longer pope?  In which case, again, why should any Catholic ever trust him or his magisterium again?  And here too, millions of Catholics would not accept this announcement, but would judge that he had gone crazy and continue to follow Francis.  Again, we’d be stuck with an unprecedented and irresolvable schism.

Or suppose – as, it goes without saying, is the far more likely scenario – that Benedict goes to his grave without endorsing any version of Benevacantism.  What then?  If he dies before Francis, how are we ever supposed to get a validly elected pope ever again, given that so many of the current cardinals have been appointed by Francis, whom Benevacantists claim to be an antipope?  We would be stuck with all the problems facing sedevacantism.  And things would hardly be any better if Francis dies before Benedict while Benedict continues to maintain that he is no longer pope.

To call Benevacantism half-baked would be too generous.  It is a complete theological mess.  It offers no solution whatsoever to the problems posed by Pope Francis’s controversial words and actions, and in fact makes things much worse.  And on top of that it leads Catholics into the grave sin of schism.  Hence, as I say, it is both scandalous and pointless at the same time.

It is also a non-starter even apart from all that, because there can be no reasonable doubt that Benedict validly resigned.  Canon 332 §2 of the Code of Canon Law tells us:

If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone.

Now, Benedict publicly and freely resigned his office, and has publicly reaffirmed that his decision was taken freely, in answer to those who have speculated otherwise.  He has also explicitly acknowledged that there is only one pope and that it is Francis.  His resignation thus clearly meets the criteria for validity set out by canon law.  End of story.

Some have suggested that the resignation cannot have been made freely because, they say, it was done under the influence of an erroneous theory of the papacy, namely the one described by Gänswein.  But this is a non sequitur, as any Catholic should know who is familiar with the conditions for a sin to be mortal – grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent.  My point isn’t that Benedict’s resignation was sinful, but rather that these conditions illustrate the general point that the Church distinguishes acting with full knowledge and acting with deliberate consent or freely.  And canon law makes only the latter, and not the former, a condition for the validity of a papal resignation.  Hence, even if Benedict’s resignation was made under the influence of an erroneous theological theory about the papacy, that would be irrelevant to its having been made freely and thus validly.

Some will nevertheless insist that Benedict did not act freely, because they speculate that he was being blackmailed or otherwise acting in fear.  But he has publicly denied this, and after nine years no one has offered any evidence that it is true.  Note also that canon law says that it is not necessary that a resignation be “accepted by anyone” in order for it to be valid.  Hence neither Benedict nor anyone else is under any obligation to prove to the satisfaction of Benevacantists that his resignation was valid in order for it actually to be valid.

But what about the views reported by Gänswein?  If they really are Benedict’s, don’t they cast at least some doubt on his resignation?  No, not at all.  They are merely the personal opinions of a man who is now just a private theologian, who apparently believes that his novel office of “Pope Emeritus” is in some respects analogous to, and even inherits some of the dignity and functions of, the separate office of the papacy – an office he no longer holds, and which he has acknowledged he no longer holds.  One might accept his theory about the nature of the office of “Pope Emeritus” or reject it, but that is irrelevant to whether Benedict validly resigned.  And it remains irrelevant even if Benedict believed this theory prior to resigning, for then too it would have been nothing more than Benedict’s private theological opinion rather than an official teaching of the Church.

Francis, and Francis alone, is the pope.  You may lament this, but it is reality.  And the first step in dealing with some reality you don’t like is to face it, rather than retreating into fantasy.

Two Harts beaten as one

At the blog Jesus and the Ancient Paths, PhD student Seth Hart defends his namesake David Bentley Hart against the objections I raised in my Public Discourse review of the latter Hart’s new book You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature .  What follows is a response to the former Hart’s four lines of criticism.  In case you are wondering, the article informs us that there is no relation between the two Harts.  To avoid confusion, I’ll mostly refer to them as “S. Hart” and “D. B. Hart” in what follows.  I am, in any event, thrilled by the prospect of some new cringeworthy puns.

Thin skin for me, but not for thee

D. B. Hart’s predilection for gratuitous invective is so central and well-known a feature of his style that no reviewer can entirely avoid mentioning it – any more than the reviewer of a Steely Dan album can avoid discussion of production values and jazz influences, or any more than the reviewer of a David Mamet movie can avoid a reference to Pinteresque dialogue.  At the same time, the topic of Hart’s rhetoric is at this point so hackneyed and boring that, unless there is some special reason for discussing it, a passing reference is all that is called for. 

Hence, in my review I devoted only a single paragraph (out of 26) to citing some choice examples from the new book – primarily to illustrate the implausibility of Hart’s claim to “disinterestedness,” though also to indicate how much heavy lifting abusive rhetoric is really doing given that Hart does not even mention, much less respond to (as a truly scholarly book on his topic should have), the actual arguments of specific contemporary Thomists such as Feingold, Long, and Hütter.  Having done that, I devoted the rest of the review to more interesting and substantive matters.

But even this mild, passing, unavoidable reference to D. B. Hart’s rhetoric was too much for S. Hart, who judges it “petty,” and indeed among the “rather extreme examples” (!) of the foibles of a review so “weak” and “egregious” that it reads like an “an April Fool’s joke” (!)  The elder Hart’s stream of vituperation, we are assured, is in reality “rather tame” and indeed “quite playful.”  And here we see that curious combination of psychological traits so often observed in the D. B. Hart fan base – frothy-mouthed relish of every insult Hart tosses at an opponent, coupled with lemon-juice-on-paper-cut hypersensitivity at the slightest criticism of the Master himself.  Not being a psychiatrist or spiritual director, I cannot claim entirely to understand the complex.  Anyway, at the moment I’m less interested in discussing D. B. Hart’s rhetoric than S. Hart is, so let’s move on.

Laptop lacuna?

In my review, I used the analogy of a laptop computer in order to illustrate the idea of an obediential potency.  I trust that most readers don’t need to be reminded that an analogy doesn’t need to be perfect in order to make some narrow point, and that only certain features of the analogues are playing a role in an analogy.  For example, when Christ compares himself to a thief in the night (Matthew 24:43; Revelation 16:15), the fact that thievery is sinful is irrelevant to the specific point of the analogy.  Hence it would be inept to object to the analogy on the grounds that Christ could not sin.  The disciples would have to have been pretty thick to respond: “Lord, how can you compare yourself to a criminal?  Is this an April Fool’s joke?”

In the case of the laptop computer analogy, the point was just this.  There is an obvious sense in which the laptop, considered just by itself and without anything you might connect to it, is complete.  You might in principle use it for years without ever plugging anything into one of the USB ports or downloading new applications, without it ever malfunctioning or otherwise failing to do what it was designed to do.  This was meant to be analogous to the notion of natura puraor “pure nature.”  Had human beings never been offered the supernatural end of the beatific vision, there is a sense in which they would have been complete as long as they had the natural knowledge of God available via philosophical argument and the like.

At the same time, the laptop is designed in such a way that you could add software and equipment to it in a way that would make it capable of doing things that would not otherwise be possible.  For example, you could download movie playing software, a speaker system, and the like, in order to make of it a home entertainment system.  These additions would have to come from outside the existing system; just using the software already on the machine wouldn’t do it.  At the same time, there is something about the computer itself that makes such upgrading possible, such as the presence of USB ports, the fact that it has a sufficiently powerful operating system, and so on.  (For example, you could not download existing software of the kind in question on an old Commodore computer or Apple II Plus.)

This was meant to parallel the idea that divine causality operating on human nature from outside can raise us to the possibility of the beatific vision, but that there also nevertheless already has to be somethingpresent in human nature to makes us suitable for such elevation, namely our rationality.  Non-human animals are not capable even in principle of being raised to the beatific vision, not even by divine action, precisely because they lack rationality.  They are analogous to computer systems that have not been constructed with any means of adding on to them new hardware or software.

Obviously, I am not saying that human beings are in any otherrespect analogous to laptop computers, any more than Christ was saying that he is in any other respect like a thief.  And of course, the analogy is not perfect.  In the nature of the case, you are never going to find perfect analogies for the supernatural in the natural order.  But it is a good enough analogy to make the specific point I was trying to make – that something can in one sense be completeeven if at the same time it can also be raised to a higher end, and only because of something already built into it.  And having something already built-in that makes it possible for a thing to go beyond its operations as an already complete instance of its kind is what having an “obediential potency” involves.

If you want to criticize the analogy, that’s fine.  But I fail to see in it the “April Fool’s joke” level of stupidity S. Hart hyperbolically attributes to it.  Certainly his specific objections draw no blood.  Yes, as he notes, human beings are true substances with intrinsic teleology, whereas computers are mere artifacts with extrinsic teleology.  So what?  How does that affect the specific point of the analogy, any more than the fact that thievery is sinful and Christ sinless undermines our Lord’s analogy?  It is good enough for the narrow purposes of the analogy that computers have the relatively stable (even if extrinsic) teleology that longstanding artefactual kinds have, and that some of the specific applications and equipment that could be added to them later might not be foreseen by the designers at the time they were designed.

It is true that Aristotelian-Thomist philosophers (myself included) often hammer on the sharp difference between true substances and artifacts.  But the A-T position does not entail that we can draw no interesting analogies whatsoever between true substances and artifacts, and I know of no A-T writer who would say such a ridiculous thing.  To insist that apples and oranges are different does not commit you never to acknowledging any similarity at all between the two.

S. Hart writes:

Feser’s example seems to only prove Hart’s point.  The very fact that laptops have USB ports and the capacity to download new software means that their creators intended their further upgrading.  In a sense, they are teleologically directed toward the further actualization of their various features.

End quote.  The problem with this is that though the laptop’s creators intended further upgrading in a general way, what is relevant for the specific purposes of the analogy is that (a) there is nevertheless a sense in which the laptop is complete as it is, and (b) there might be some particular upgrade that was not intended by the creators – for example, a specific app that was not invented at the time the laptop was made.  The USB ports and downloading capacities leave the laptop open to upgrades in a general way, but without aiming specifically at that upgrade in particular.  Similarly, rationality leaves human nature open in a general way to the possibility of a supernatural end such as the beatific vision, but without actually aiming at it in particular.

Bat analogy or bad analogy?

I also borrowed Thomas Nagel’s famous example of our being unable to know what it is like to be a bat, in order to make a different, if related, point.  Rational beings that we are, we can raise the question of what it is like to be a bat.  At the same time, we might judge that this particular kind of experiential knowledge is not possible for us, given that we and bats have such very different physiological natures.  Because it is not a kind of knowledge we are “built for” in the first place, we need not experience this inability as a deprivation, the way people do experience the inability to see or hear, or the loss of a limb, as deprivations. 

By analogy, even if human beings in a state of “pure nature” could raise the question of what it would be to have direct knowledge of the divine essence, they might still judge that this is simply not possible for beings of our limited rational nature.  And if so, they would not regard the impossibility of achieving the beatific vision by our natural powers as a deprivation, any more than they would experience the impossibility of knowing what it is like to be a bat as a deprivation.  (That is, of course, not for a moment to suggest that the inability to know what it is like to be a bat is remotely as significant as the inability to achieve the beatific vision.  That is not the point of the analogy.)

S. Hart’s objection to this is that, from my own A-T point of view, I would have to agree that contemplation of the forms or natures of things is the highest form of knowledge.  Yet knowledge of what it is like to be a bat has nothing to do with knowing its form.  Therefore (Hart’s conclusion seems to me, as far as I can follow the convoluted discussion of this passage from his article), my bat analogy fails.

The problem with this is that the analogy would fail only if I was claiming that the specific way that (a) knowing what it is like to be a bat is analogous to (b) the beatific visionis that they both involve knowledge of the form or nature of a thing.  But I made no such claim.  I claimed only that they both involve knowledge of somekind or other.

For my specific purposes, the analogy requires only the following parallel between the two cases.  Because we, like bats, are capable of sensory experience (considered as a general mode of cognition), we can raise the question of what it is like to be a bat, but without actually being aimed by nature toward that specific (bat-like) sort of experiential knowledge.  That’s why our ability to raise the question does not entail a sense of deprivation.  Similarly, as rational creatures, human beings in a state of “pure nature,” like human beings to whom the supernatural end of the beatific vision has actually been given, can raise the question of what it would be to have direct knowledge of the divine essence.  But because those in a state of “pure nature” are nevertheless not directed naturally toward such knowledge, it does not follow that they would experience that inability as a deprivation. 

Pantheism schmantheism

S. Hart isn’t too keen on my characterization of D. B. Hart as a pantheist.  He begins his criticism as follows:

Feser finally accuses Hart of collapsing God and world into an undifferentiated unity, committing him to pantheistic heresy.  Indeed, there are points in isolation that seem to suggest this, such as the line, “God is all that is.”  However, Hart is nearly always quick to qualify this response.  In this case, he follows it with, “Whatever is not God exists as becoming divine, and as such is God in the mode of what is other than God.  But God is not ‘the other’ of anything.” 

End quote.  So far, then, S. Hart’s defense of D. B. Hart against the charge of pantheism seems to be:  “True, that first unambiguous statement sure looks like pantheism – but hey, check out this second, clear-as-mud statement!”  Not promising.  But actually, there’s more, so let’s move on.  S. Hart then writes:

There is, then, a nonidentical relationship between God and creation, though such a distinction is much more fluid than anything Feser will allow. 

End quote.  How S. Hart can be so sure of this, I have no idea.  After all, in the line cited as mitigating the pantheism, D. B. Hart says that what is (only seemingly?) not God actually “is God in the mode of what is other than God” and that “God is not ‘the other’ of anything.”  Which sounds to me like a God-world collapse after all, as far as I can make anything of it.  If there’s any wiggle room here, though, that’s not because D. B. Hart has been more precise than I let on in my review, but precisely because he is so imprecise.  Anyway, to continue on with S. Hart:

[Feser] thus compares Hart to Spinoza, apparently unaware or unconvinced by Carlyle’s reevaluation of Spinoza as a panentheist…

As further proof, Feser cites Hart’s positive treatment of Advaita and Vishishtadvaita Vedantic thought, apparently unaware that “Vishishtadvaita” means qualified nondualism.  These very qualifications prevent any flat identity of God and world.

End quote.  Well, yes, Seth, I know what “Vishishtadvaita” means, but thanks for the free lesson.  I also know something our erudite grad student appears not to, viz. that “pantheism” is, historically, a very fluid concept.  It needn’t always entail “an undifferentiated unity” (to borrow S. Hart’s phrase) but can include doctrines that allow for some kind of differentiation between God and the world even while affirming an ultimate unity between them.  That’s precisely why everyone from Vedanta thinkers to Parmenides to Marcus Aurelius to John Scotus Eriugena to Spinoza to Hegel to Einstein to Deepak Chopra have – rightly or wrongly, and despite their important differences – all sometimes been classified as pantheists.  If you check out the old Catholic Encyclopediaarticle on pantheism, you’ll see that it emphasizes the great diversity of forms of pantheism, opines that there probably has been no pure form of pantheism, and proposes that the key notes common to the varieties of doctrine labeled “pantheist” are as follows:

• Reality is a unitary being; individual things have no absolute independence – they have existence in the All-One, the ens realissimum et et perfectissimum of which they are the more or less independent members;

• The All-One manifests itself to us, so far as it has any manifestations, in the two sides of reality-nature and history;

• The universal interaction that goes on in the physical world is the showing forth of the inner aesthetic teleological necessity with which the All-One unfolds his essential being in a multitude of harmonious modifications, a cosmos of concrete ideas (monads, entelechies).  This internal necessity is at the same time absolute freedom or self-realization.

End quote.  Now, I submit that D. B. Hart’s position is pretty clearly pantheist by the Catholic Encyclopedia’s standard.  (Indeed, some of that gauzy passage almost sounds like Hart could have written it.)  And this is extremely important from the point of view of Catholic theology, because the Encyclopediareflects what Catholic writers had in mind by “pantheism” in the era when Pope Pius IX, the First Vatican Council, Pope St. Pius X, Pope Pius XI, and Pope Pius XII repeatedly made a point of condemning pantheism as a clear and present danger.

Naturally, I am well aware that philosophers of religion and theologians these days prefer to draw sharper terminological boundaries between “pantheism,” “panentheism,” and so on.  However, being the card-carrying reactionary unreconstructed Baroque Scholastic manualist Thomist that I am, I am more interested in what the Catholic theological tradition has had in view when analyzing and criticizing pantheism.  And I think it is pretty obvious that Hart’s views fall within the range of doctrines that Pius IX, Vatican I, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, et al. would condemn as “pantheist.”

I don’t think D. B. Hart would deny this; on the contrary, I think he’d wear it as a badge of honor, at least in private when knocking back a few drinks with the posse.  Certainly he is not shy in You Are Gods about the fact that his views cannot be reconciled with what was hammered out as official Catholic teaching on matters of nature and supernature by the time of Pius XII. 

It is also rather rich for S. Hart to accuse me, out of one side of his mouth, of being insufficiently precise in my analogies – while, out of the other side of his mouth, approvingly citing D. B. Hart’s imprecise and inconsistent formulations as evidence that he ought to be acquitted of the charge of pantheism.  Rich, but not in the least surprising, given that “Heads, Hart wins; tails, Hart’s critics lose” is standard shtick with the Hart fan base.

S. Hart’s remaining point vis-à-vis the pantheism issue is one I confess to being unable to make heads or tails of.  It seems to amount to this: “Because Feser himself routinely defends the form/matter and essence/existence distinctions, he cannot consistently complain when Hart deploys these notions in what Feser takes to be a pantheist manner.”  But this is such an obvious non sequitur that I fear I must be missing something.  Any reader who can come up with a more plausible interpretation will win a no-prize.

Well, that’s it.  I’m sorry if I’ve been a little hard on Hart the younger, despite his asking for it.  But I’m sure he won’t mind, delighting as he does in “playful” invective and all!

Touring the fifth circle

For readers who are wondering, yes, I’m on Twitter now.  (I’m not referring to the fan account that has been there for some time, but to my own personal account: @FeserEdward)  I confess to feeling somewhat unclean, since I have not changed my very low opinion of the medium.  The reason for signing up is simply to be able to see what is going on, and I don’t intend to be very active on it myself.  If I ever am, I ask my family and friends to stage an intervention.

Hart’s post-Christian pantheism

Well, kids, it’s that time again.  David Bentley Hart’s new book You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature is now out.  So is my review, “David Bentley Hart’s Post-Christian Pantheism,” which you can read at Public Discourse.  As you will see, the title of my essay is not invective, but pretty much just a straightforward description of what’s in the book.