Edward Feser's Blog, page 70

Hiroshima, mon Amoris? (Updated 12/16)

Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia has been something of a bombshell.  And its critics worry that it will have something like a bombshell’s effect on the Church.  Most readers are no doubt aware of the four cardinals’ now famous dubia (“doubts”), requesting from the pope clarification on certain doctrinal questions raised by the document.  This was preceded earlier this year by a statement from forty-five theologians and clergy asking the pope to repudiate theological errors they take to be apparent in the document.Some defenders of Amoris have been decidedly heated in their response to these developments.  Fr. Pio Vito Pinto, Dean of the Roman Rota, alleges that the cardinals have caused “a very grave scandal, which could even lead the Holy Father to take away their red hats.”  Retired Bishop Frangiskos Papamanolis accuses the cardinals of “sin,” “apostasy” and “sacrilege.”  Papal advisor Fr. Antonio Spadaro opines that Amoris is “very clear” and that “a questioning conscience can easily find all the responses it is seeking, if it is seeking sincerely” and criticizes those who “pose questions in order to place another in difficulty, provoking divisions.” 

So far, however, the pope himself has not responded, either to the four cardinals or to the forty-five theologians.
But the controversy is evidently just getting started.  This week, twenty-three prominent Catholic academics and clergy have issued a statement in support of the four cardinals.  Philosopher Robert Spaemann, a friend of Pope Benedict XVI, also supports the cardinals and calls on others to join them.
At First Things, “new natural law” theorists John Finnis and Germain Grisez today summarize their own letter to the pope urging him to condemn certain errors being propagated in the name of Amoris.  (E. Christian Brugger, another “new natural law” theorist, has also been critical of Amoris and of the pope’s endorsement of the Argentine bishops’ interpretation of the document.)
At Crisis, Fr. James Schall notes that “to avoid giving answers, when giving answers is your job, seems odd.”
The Catholic Thing warns of “the dangerous road of papal silence.” 
Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture notes what the pope cannot say if he does decide to speak.
At Crux, even veteran liberal Catholic journalist John Allen rejects the glib assurances of the critics of the four cardinals that the meaning of Amorisis perfectly clear.
At Catholic World Report, Carl Olson asks: Can Amoris Laetitia be reconciled with Pope St. John Paull II’s Veritatis Splendor? 
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Church’s chief doctrinal officer, refrains from answering the dubia, but does insist that the teaching of John Paul II remains binding.
The Catholic Herald worries about the “intemperate and angry,” “emotive,” and “sentimental” reactions of some of the critics of the four cardinals, about the “anti-intellectualism” and “contempt for rationality and logical discourse” these critics exhibit, and about the “cult of personality” they have built around the pope.
The Herald also marvels that, interpreting Amoris, “a papal adviser has [in effect] said that extramarital sex could be a moral duty.” 
Canon lawyer Edward Peters demonstrates the theological muddleheadedness of some of the remarks made by critics of the four cardinals. 
Bishop Athanasius Schneider compares the abuse the cardinals have received to the treatment of dissidents under the Soviet regime.  He has compared the current situation to the Arian crisis.  Two other bishops also defend the four cardinals.
The National Catholic Register reminds Cardinal Cupich that the synod on the family in fact did not approve communion for the divorced and “remarried.”
Ross Douthat at The New York Times weighs competing interpretations of Amoris Laetitia and warns of “the end of Catholic marriage.”
More dueling interpretations: Philosopher Rocco Buttiglione attempts to answer the dubia and argues that Amoris can be reconciled with past teaching.  In sharp contrast, at Rorate Caeli, philosopher John Lamont argues that we are essentially in a situation like the one which faced the Church in the time of Pope Honorius.
Both defenders and critics of Amoris Laetitia fear that schism will be the sequel. 
Nor is Amoris the only statement from Pope Francis to have raised questions about continuity with traditional teaching on marriage and related matters.  The remarks the pope made this summer about the validity of Catholic marriages and cohabitation are problematic in ways noted by Fr. Gerald Murray, Robert Royal, Ed Peters, and others.  There are also problematic aspects of the pope’s reform of the annulment process.  Brugger, Christopher Tollefsen, and others have noted the problematic character of some of the pope’s remarks about contraception.  And so on.
Whatever happens next, both the pope’s actions and those of the four cardinals and forty-five theologians should be kept in theological and historical perspective.

UPDATE 12/11: Regina interviews influential Vatican-watcher Edward Pentin about what is going on in Rome.  I will add further new links as the occasion arises. 

UPDATE 12/15: An Australian archbishop denounces “absolutism” and the four cardinals’ “false clarity.”  At Crux, Austen Ivereigh accuses defenders of the four cardinals of being “dissenters” comparable to those who argue for “women priests, an end to mandatory celibacy and an opening in areas such as contraception.” 

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, another cardinal comes to the defense of the four.  Bishop Schneider defends Christ’s teaching on marriage.  And at First Things, Prof. Joseph Shaw explains why Catholic academics are supporting the four cardinals.

UPDATE 12/16: Canon lawyer Edward Peters on popes and heresy.  Cardinal Burke is interviewed.  Historical parallels to the four cardinals.

Some commentary of my own forthcoming soon. 

Hiroshima, mon Amoris? (Updated 12/15)

Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia has been something of a bombshell.  And its critics worry that it will have something like a bombshell’s effect on the Church.  Most readers are no doubt aware of the four cardinals’ now famous dubia (“doubts”), requesting from the pope clarification on certain doctrinal questions raised by the document.  This was preceded earlier this year by a statement from forty-five theologians and clergy asking the pope to repudiate theological errors they take to be apparent in the document.Some defenders of Amoris have been decidedly heated in their response to these developments.  Fr. Pio Vito Pinto, Dean of the Roman Rota, alleges that the cardinals have caused “a very grave scandal, which could even lead the Holy Father to take away their red hats.”  Retired Bishop Frangiskos Papamanolis accuses the cardinals of “sin,” “apostasy” and “sacrilege.”  Papal advisor Fr. Antonio Spadaro opines that Amoris is “very clear” and that “a questioning conscience can easily find all the responses it is seeking, if it is seeking sincerely” and criticizes those who “pose questions in order to place another in difficulty, provoking divisions.” 

So far, however, the pope himself has not responded, either to the four cardinals or to the forty-five theologians.
But the controversy is evidently just getting started.  This week, twenty-three prominent Catholic academics and clergy have issued a statement in support of the four cardinals.  Philosopher Robert Spaemann, a friend of Pope Benedict XVI, also supports the cardinals and calls on others to join them.
At First Things, “new natural law” theorists John Finnis and Germain Grisez today summarize their own letter to the pope urging him to condemn certain errors being propagated in the name of Amoris.  (E. Christian Brugger, another “new natural law” theorist, has also been critical of Amoris and of the pope’s endorsement of the Argentine bishops’ interpretation of the document.)
At Crisis, Fr. James Schall notes that “to avoid giving answers, when giving answers is your job, seems odd.”
The Catholic Thing warns of “the dangerous road of papal silence.” 
Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture notes what the pope cannot say if he does decide to speak.
At Crux, even veteran liberal Catholic journalist John Allen rejects the glib assurances of the critics of the four cardinals that the meaning of Amorisis perfectly clear.
At Catholic World Report, Carl Olson asks: Can Amoris Laetitia be reconciled with Pope St. John Paull II’s Veritatis Splendor? 
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Church’s chief doctrinal officer, refrains from answering the dubia, but does insist that the teaching of John Paul II remains binding.
The Catholic Herald worries about the “intemperate and angry,” “emotive,” and “sentimental” reactions of some of the critics of the four cardinals, about the “anti-intellectualism” and “contempt for rationality and logical discourse” these critics exhibit, and about the “cult of personality” they have built around the pope.
The Herald also marvels that, interpreting Amoris, “a papal adviser has [in effect] said that extramarital sex could be a moral duty.” 
Canon lawyer Edward Peters demonstrates the theological muddleheadedness of some of the remarks made by critics of the four cardinals. 
Bishop Athanasius Schneider compares the abuse the cardinals have received to the treatment of dissidents under the Soviet regime.  He has compared the current situation to the Arian crisis.  Two other bishops also defend the four cardinals.
The National Catholic Register reminds Cardinal Cupich that the synod on the family in fact did not approve communion for the divorced and “remarried.”
Ross Douthat at The New York Times weighs competing interpretations of Amoris Laetitia and warns of “the end of Catholic marriage.”
More dueling interpretations: Philosopher Rocco Buttiglione attempts to answer the dubia and argues that Amoris can be reconciled with past teaching.  In sharp contrast, at Rorate Caeli, philosopher John Lamont argues that we are essentially in a situation like the one which faced the Church in the time of Pope Honorius.
Both defenders and critics of Amoris Laetitia fear that schism will be the sequel. 
Nor is Amoris the only statement from Pope Francis to have raised questions about continuity with traditional teaching on marriage and related matters.  The remarks the pope made this summer about the validity of Catholic marriages and cohabitation are problematic in ways noted by Fr. Gerald Murray, Robert Royal, Ed Peters, and others.  There are also problematic aspects of the pope’s reform of the annulment process.  Brugger, Christopher Tollefsen, and others have noted the problematic character of some of the pope’s remarks about contraception.  And so on.
Whatever happens next, both the pope’s actions and those of the four cardinals and forty-five theologians should be kept in theological and historical perspective.

UPDATE 12/11: Regina interviews influential Vatican-watcher Edward Pentin about what is going on in Rome.  I will add further new links as the occasion arises. 

UPDATE 12/15: An Australian archbishop denounces “absolutism” and the four cardinals’ “false clarity.”  At Crux, Austen Ivereigh accuses defenders of the four cardinals of being “dissenters” comparable to those who argue for “women priests, an end to mandatory celibacy and an opening in areas such as contraception.” 

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, another cardinal comes to the defense of the four.  Bishop Schneider defends Christ’s teaching on marriage.  And at First Things, Prof. Joseph Shaw explains why Catholic academics are supporting the four cardinals.

Some commentary of my own forthcoming soon. 

Hiroshima, mon Amoris? (Updated)

Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia has been something of a bombshell.  And its critics worry that it will have something like a bombshell’s effect on the Church.  Most readers are no doubt aware of the four cardinals’ now famous dubia (“doubts”), requesting from the pope clarification on certain doctrinal questions raised by the document.  This was preceded earlier this year by a statement from forty-five theologians and clergy asking the pope to repudiate theological errors they take to be apparent in the document.Some defenders of Amoris have been decidedly heated in their response to these developments.  Fr. Pio Vito Pinto, Dean of the Roman Rota, alleges that the cardinals have caused “a very grave scandal, which could even lead the Holy Father to take away their red hats.”  Retired Bishop Frangiskos Papamanolis accuses the cardinals of “sin,” “apostasy” and “sacrilege.”  Papal advisor Fr. Antonio Spadaro opines that Amoris is “very clear” and that “a questioning conscience can easily find all the responses it is seeking, if it is seeking sincerely” and criticizes those who “pose questions in order to place another in difficulty, provoking divisions.” 

So far, however, the pope himself has not responded, either to the four cardinals or to the forty-five theologians.
But the controversy is evidently just getting started.  This week, twenty-three prominent Catholic academics and clergy have issued a statement in support of the four cardinals.  Philosopher Robert Spaemann, a friend of Pope Benedict XVI, also supports the cardinals and calls on others to join them.
At First Things, “new natural law” theorists John Finnis and Germain Grisez today summarize their own letter to the pope urging him to condemn certain errors being propagated in the name of Amoris.  (E. Christian Brugger, another “new natural law” theorist, has also been critical of Amoris and of the pope’s endorsement of the Argentine bishops’ interpretation of the document.)
At Crisis, Fr. James Schall notes that “to avoid giving answers, when giving answers is your job, seems odd.”
The Catholic Thing warns of “the dangerous road of papal silence.” 
Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture notes what the pope cannot say if he does decide to speak.
At Crux, even veteran liberal Catholic journalist John Allen rejects the glib assurances of the critics of the four cardinals that the meaning of Amorisis perfectly clear.
At Catholic World Report, Carl Olson asks: Can Amoris Laetitia be reconciled with Pope St. John Paull II’s Veritatis Splendor? 
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Church’s chief doctrinal officer, refrains from answering the dubia, but does insist that the teaching of John Paul II remains binding.
The Catholic Herald worries about the “intemperate and angry,” “emotive,” and “sentimental” reactions of some of the critics of the four cardinals, about the “anti-intellectualism” and “contempt for rationality and logical discourse” these critics exhibit, and about the “cult of personality” they have built around the pope.
The Herald also marvels that, interpreting Amoris, “a papal adviser has [in effect] said that extramarital sex could be a moral duty.” 
Canon lawyer Edward Peters demonstrates the theological muddleheadedness of some of the remarks made by critics of the four cardinals. 
Bishop Athanasius Schneider compares the abuse the cardinals have received to the treatment of dissidents under the Soviet regime.  He has compared the current situation to the Arian crisis.  Two other bishops also defend the four cardinals.
The National Catholic Register reminds Cardinal Cupich that the synod on the family in fact did not approve communion for the divorced and “remarried.”
Ross Douthat at The New York Times weighs competing interpretations of Amoris Laetitia and warns of “the end of Catholic marriage.”
More dueling interpretations: Philosopher Rocco Buttiglione attempts to answer the dubia and argues that Amoris can be reconciled with past teaching.  In sharp contrast, at Rorate Caeli, philosopher John Lamont argues that we are essentially in a situation like the one which faced the Church in the time of Pope Honorius.
Both defenders and critics of Amoris Laetitia fear that schism will be the sequel. 
Nor is Amoris the only statement from Pope Francis to have raised questions about continuity with traditional teaching on marriage and related matters.  The remarks the pope made this summer about the validity of Catholic marriages and cohabitation are problematic in ways noted by Fr. Gerald Murray, Robert Royal, Ed Peters, and others.  There are also problematic aspects of the pope’s reform of the annulment process.  Brugger, Christopher Tollefsen, and others have noted the problematic character of some of the pope’s remarks about contraception.  And so on.
Whatever happens next, both the pope’s actions and those of the four cardinals and forty-five theologians should be kept in theological and historical perspective.

UPDATE 12/11: Regina interviews influential Vatican-watcher Edward Pentin about what is going on in Rome.  I will add further new links as the occasion arises. 

Hiroshima, mon Amoris?

Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia has been something of a bombshell.  And its critics worry that it will have something like a bombshell’s effect on the Church.  Most readers are no doubt aware of the four cardinals’ now famous dubia (“doubts”), requesting from the pope clarification on certain doctrinal questions raised by the document.  This was preceded earlier this year by a statement from forty-five theologians and clergy asking the pope to repudiate theological errors they take to be apparent in the document.Some defenders of Amoris have been decidedly heated in their response to these developments.  Fr. Pio Vito Pinto, Dean of the Roman Rota, alleges that the cardinals have caused “a very grave scandal, which could even lead the Holy Father to take away their red hats.”  Retired Bishop Frangiskos Papamanolis accuses the cardinals of “sin,” “apostasy” and “sacrilege.”  Papal advisor Fr. Antonio Spadaro opines that Amoris is “very clear” and that “a questioning conscience can easily find all the responses it is seeking, if it is seeking sincerely” and criticizes those who “pose questions in order to place another in difficulty, provoking divisions.” 

So far, however, the pope himself has not responded, either to the four cardinals or to the forty-five theologians.
But the controversy is evidently just getting started.  This week, twenty-three prominent Catholic academics and clergy have issued a statement in support of the four cardinals.  Philosopher Robert Spaemann, a friend of Pope Benedict XVI, also supports the cardinals and calls on others to join them.
At First Things, “new natural law” theorists John Finnis and Germain Grisez today summarize their own letter to the pope urging him to condemn certain errors being propagated in the name of Amoris.  (E. Christian Brugger, another “new natural law” theorist, has also been critical of Amoris and of the pope’s endorsement of the Argentine bishops’ interpretation of the document.)
At Crisis, Fr. James Schall notes that “to avoid giving answers, when giving answers is your job, seems odd.”
The Catholic Thing warns of “the dangerous road of papal silence.” 
Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture notes what the pope cannot say if he does decide to speak.
At Crux, even veteran liberal Catholic journalist John Allen rejects the glib assurances of the critics of the four cardinals that the meaning of Amorisis perfectly clear.
At Catholic World Report, Carl Olson asks: Can Amoris Laetitia be reconciled with Pope St. John Paull II’s Veritatis Splendor? 
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Church’s chief doctrinal officer, refrains from answering the dubia, but does insist that the teaching of John Paul II remains binding.
The Catholic Herald worries about the “intemperate and angry,” “emotive,” and “sentimental” reactions of some of the critics of the four cardinals, about the “anti-intellectualism” and “contempt for rationality and logical discourse” these critics exhibit, and about the “cult of personality” they have built around the pope.
The Herald also marvels that, interpreting Amoris, “a papal adviser has [in effect] said that extramarital sex could be a moral duty.” 
Canon lawyer Edward Peters demonstrates the theological muddleheadedness of some of the remarks made by critics of the four cardinals. 
Bishop Athanasius Schneider compares the abuse the cardinals have received to the treatment of dissidents under the Soviet regime.  He has compared the current situation to the Arian crisis.  Two other bishops also defend the four cardinals.
The National Catholic Register reminds Cardinal Cupich that the synod on the family in fact did not approve communion for the divorced and “remarried.”
Ross Douthat at The New York Times weighs competing interpretations of Amoris Laetitia and warns of “the end of Catholic marriage.”
More dueling interpretations: Philosopher Rocco Buttiglione attempts to answer the dubia and argues that Amoris can be reconciled with past teaching.  In sharp contrast, at Rorate Caeli, philosopher John Lamont argues that we are essentially in a situation like the one which faced the Church in the time of Pope Honorius.
Both defenders and critics of Amoris Laetitia fear that schism will be the sequel. 
Nor is Amoris the only statement from Pope Francis to have raised questions about continuity with traditional teaching on marriage and related matters.  The remarks the pope made this summer about the validity of Catholic marriages and cohabitation are problematic in ways noted by Fr. Gerald Murray, Robert Royal, Ed Peters, and others.  There are also problematic aspects of the pope’s reform of the annulment process.  Brugger, Christopher Tollefsen, and others have noted the problematic character of some of the pope’s remarks about contraception.  And so on.
Whatever happens next, both the pope’s actions and those of the four cardinals and forty-five theologians should be kept in theological and historical perspective.   

Why not annihilation?

Another post on hell?  Will this series never end?  Never fear, dear reader.  As Elaine Benes would say, it only feelslike an eternity.  We’ll get on to another topic before long.
Hell itself never ends, though.  But why not?  A critic might agree that the damned essentially choose to go to hell, and that it is just for God to inflict a punishment proportionate to this evil choice.  The critic might still wonder, though, why the punishment has to be perpetual.  Couldn’t God simply annihilate the damned person after some period of suffering?  Wouldn’t this be not only more merciful, but also more just?  
Suppose Hitler and Stalin merit millions of lifetimes worth of suffering given the number of people they killed, and that this punishment ought to be inflicted simply for the sake of retributive justice, since deterrence, rehabilitation, and protection are purposes of punishment that no longer apply after death.  Wouldn’t a punishment of many millions of years suffice?  Why would it have to go on forever?  Why not a prolonged period of great misery following by nothingness?
On reflection, however, this annihilationist position doesn’t make sense, for several reasons.  Begin with a consideration that does involve deterrence.  In The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life , Fr. Charles Arminjon argues that if the sufferings of hell were temporary, they would be insufficient to deter at least some wrongdoing.  At least some people might judge certain sins to be so attractive that they would be willing to suffer temporarily, even if horribly and for a long time, for the sake of committing them.  They might even thumb their noses at God, knowing that however grave are the evils they commit, they will only ever have to suffer finitely for them.  They will see their eventual annihilation as a means of ultimately escaping divine justice and “getting away with” doing what they wanted to do.

Now, I think this is plausible, though it would be a mistake to take deterrence to be the fundamental consideration here.  For deterrence value is not a sufficient condition for just punishment.  An offender must in the first place deservea certain punishment before we can go on to consider whether inflicting it would also have value as a way of deterring others.  However, given what has been said in my previous posts on this subject, it is clear that an offender can deserve everlasting punishment.  For (as I have argued, following Aquinas) those who are damned perpetually will to do what is evil, never repenting of it.  They are perpetually in a state that merits punishment, and thus God perpetually ensures that they receive the punishment they merit.  If such an offender adds to his intention to do this evil the further intention of “getting away with it” by virtue of being annihilated, that only adds to the reasons why he must be punished perpetually rather than annihilated. 
Annihilationism and this response to it take for granted, though, that the person who is damned wants to be annihilated, and as Jerry Walls argues, that is open to question.  Annihilationism also assumes that it would be good and indeed more merciful to annihilate the damned person, assumptions challenged by Jonathan Kvanvig and Eleonore Stump.  As Stump points out, from a Thomistic point of view, being and goodness are convertible, so that to keep a soul in being rather than annihilating it is as such to bring about good rather than bad.  As Kvanvig points out, just as capital punishment is a harsher penalty than life imprisonment, annihilation is plausibly, by analogy, a harsher punishment than perpetual confinement in hell.  And as Walls points out, a soul that is damned may prefer to persist forever willing the evil it has chosen, even though this involves unhappiness.
Keep in mind that, as I have suggested in earlier posts, it is a mistake to begin reflection on the subject of hell by calling to mind stereotypical and simplistic specific examples of sins and punishments.  The skeptic who starts by imagining someone being roasted over a pit and punctured with pitchforks over and over forever for the minor crime of stealing a candy bar is, naturally, going to find it hard to believe that anyone would choose to keep this sort of thing up eternally rather than being annihilated.  After all, people often choose suicide over lesser tortures than that.  But that is, again, precisely the wrong way to begin the inquiry.
The right way is to begin with the most relevant general metaphysical and moral principles, then work through concrete examples that most clearly illustrate those principles, and only after that to proceed to all the less clear and more controversial questions about whether this or that particular sin would merit eternal punishment and whether this or that particular sort of punishment would be fitting for someone to suffer eternally.  Hence in previous posts I started by setting out considerations concerning the fixed nature of the will of a disembodied soul, the nature and justification of punishment in general, and so forth.
Where the question of annihilation is concerned, among the general principles we have to keep in mind is Aquinas’s dictum that “every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according to its nature” (Summa Theologiae I-II.94.2).  This is true even of the suicidal person, who will spontaneously duck if your throw a knife at him, struggle at least initially if you start to choke him, and so forth.  Preserving himself in being is his natural tendency.  It can be resisted (as it is when someone actually commits or attempts suicide), but self-preservation is a thing’s default position.
A second general Thomistic principle to keep in mind is that, as John Lamont emphasizes in an excellent article on Aquinas’s understanding of hell, the choice to do good or evil is (whether or not we always consciously think of it this way) fundamentally a choice for a certain kind of life – a choice for being a certain kind of person, for having a certain kind of character -- rather than merely for a certain specific action.  And a third general Thomistic principle to keep in mind is that we always choose what we take to be in some way good, even when what we choose is in fact bad and even when we know it to be in some respects bad.
So, take some way of life X that is in fact bad and leads to misery but which many people nevertheless take to be good and actively pursue even when they know it is making them miserable.  X might be a life of cruel domination over others, or of the greedy pursuit of wealth at all costs, or of the envious tearing down of others, or of sexual debauchery, or of drunkenness or drug addiction, or of immersion in endless trivial distractions, or of self-glorification.  The specific example doesn’t matter for present purposes (though it might be a salutary exercise to think in terms of whatever sin it is you personally find the most appealing or difficult to resist).  
Now, we are all familiar with the phenomenon of people who live lives of one of these sorts, and who are miserable as a result but who nevertheless stubbornly refuse to change their ways.  They love the evil to which they have become habituated more than they hate the misery it causes them.  They may also love defying those who urge them to change.  They insist that there is nothing wrong with them, that their unhappiness is due to others rather than to themselves, that it is in any case better to live on their own terms than to concede anything to those criticize them, etc.  They do not wish for death.  On the contrary, they perversely relish their unhappy lives, focusing their attention on the good they think they perceive in the end they have chosen, trying not to dwell on its bad fruits, and being firmly intent on proving wrong those who criticize them.  They manifest the sort irrationality often said to be paradigmatic of insanity, viz. doing the same foolish thing over and over and hoping for a different result. 
The right way to begin thinking about the person who is damned is, I would suggest, to imagine someone like this, but who persists in this particular kind of irrationality in perpetuity.  The damned person is the person whose will is fixed at death on the end of being a person of type X.  That is to say (to apply the general Thomistic principles referred to above), it is fixed on something taken to be good (however mistakenly), and thus on something desired; it is fixed on an overall way of life, and not merely on some momentary act; and it is fixed on being or existing as a person who lives that way of life.  What the damned person is “locked onto” at death is precisely a way of being, rather than on annihilation. 
In refraining from annihilating the person who is damned, then, God is precisely letting that person have what he wants.  As C. S. Lewis puts it, the saved are those who say to God “Thy will be done,” and the damned are those to whom Godsays “Thy will be done.”
But wouldn’t the damned change their minds?  Wouldn’t buyer’s remorse set in after a season in hell, leading them to say “Whoa, on second thought, I’ll go for annihilation!”  No, because, for the reasons set out in my first post in this series, the soul after death cannot change its basic orientation, cannot alter the fundamental end onto which it is locked.  And opting for annihilation would require such a change.  Hence the soul that is damned, I am suggesting, perpetually wills to exist despite being perpetually miserable.  If this seems insane, that is because it is.  But again, we are familiar with something like this kind of perverse thinking even in this life, in the example of miserable people who refuse even to try to reform but also have no desire to stop living.
Now, we often feel sorry for such people.  So wouldn’t those in heaven feel sorry for the damned – especially if some of their own loved ones are among the damned?  Wouldn’t God therefore annihilate the damned for the sake of the saved, even if not for their own sakes? 
No, and here too, as John Lamont points out in the article linked to above, we can be misled by the examples we take as our models for the damned.  In particular, we might think of that person we know who is habituated to a certain bad way of life, who is miserable as a result, but who might still reform if given enough time and who also has certain good traits.  We might imagine that this person, when in hell, would be essentially like he is now.  And we might then think: “He has such good in him too!  Wouldn’t that lead him to change his ways eventually?  And doesn’t it merit him some happiness, even if he has to be punished for his sins?”  And the problem is that in imagining this, we are, as Lamont points out, attributing to the person in hell traits which he has now but which do not and cannot exist any longer in the afterlife.  For the reason people in this life are mixtures of good and evil is that they are still embodied, and thus not absolutely fixed on either good or evil.  And after death, this is no longer the case.  (Again, see my first post in this series.) 
Hence the good that was in the evil person in this life has completely dropped away after death.  What is left in the lost soul is nothing soft, nothing kind, nothing merciful or wanting mercy, nothing that could generate in the saved the slightest sympathy.  There is only perpetual irrational malice.  If you want an image of the damned, imagine human faces on which there is written only blind, defiant, miserable rage and hatred forever and ever.  Basically, a non-stop Occupy Hell rally.  To which the saved can only shrug and say: “Whatever.  Knock yourselves out, guys.”

Mexican link off

Argentine standoff: Pope Francis and the four cardinals, as reported by National Catholic Register and Catholic Herald .  Commentary from First Things and Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
Richard Dawkins misrepresents science, according to British scientists. 
Philosophy and laughs at Oxford with J. L. Austin, at Aeon.
Enter the Brotherhood of Steely Dan, at Vinyl Me, Please.  Live for Live Music looks back on Gaucho.
At Crisis magazine, Anthony Esolen asked: What will you do when persecution comes?  And then the persecutors came for Anthony Esolen, as reported by The American Conservative , National Review , Touchstone , and Catholic World Report.
Michael Lind on how science fiction fails us, at The Smart Set.

At Vanity Fair, Exorcist director William Friedkin on exorcist Fr. Gabriele Amorth.
To deal with ISIS, says the Archbishop of Canterbury, let’s start by admitting the obvious.
A new edition of The Gifts of the Holy Spirit by John of St. Thomas is forthcoming from Cluny Media.  A translation of Fr. Josef Kleutgen’s Pre-Modern Philosophy Defended is forthcoming from St. Augustine’s Press.
Simon Evnine’s Making Objects and Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts, Actions, and Organisms is reviewed by Lynne Rudder Baker at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Bleeding Cool reviews the new book Art of Atari .
Catholic World Report on Anthony McCarthy’s new book Ethical Sex.
Matthew Levering’s Proofs of God: Classical Arguments from Tertullian to Barth is reviewed by William Carroll at Public Discourse.
At BuzzFeed, how Trump advisor Steve Bannon sees the world.
Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University by Jon Shields and Joshua Dunn, Sr., is reviewed at the Claremont Review of Books.
The University Bookman on The War of the Worlds in H.G. Wells, Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, and beyond.
At Public Discourse, Allison Postell reviews Jonathan Sanford’s Before Virtue: Assessing Contemporary Virtue Ethics. 
Bill Maher, Michael Moore, and Slate Star Codex urge their fellow Trump critics to stop it with the PC bullshit already.
 
Real Clear Religion reports that Thomism is ready for its close-up.
James Gleick’s Time Travel: A History , reviewed at The New York Review of Books.
The late Scott Ryan, greatly missed friend of this blog, recorded an album, The Gift, before his death.  Scott’s wife Lilla has started a KickStarter campaign to get the album heard.
New from Stephen T. Davis: Rational Faith: A Philosopher's Defense of Christianity.
The Washington Post reviews Peter Ackroyd’s new book on Alfred Hitchcock.  An interview with Ackroyd at The University Bookman.  Los Angeles Review of Books on Stanley Kubrick. 
If, like me, you’ve spent a big chunk of your life hanging out in L.A. area bookstores that no longer exist, you’ll dig the Bookstore Memories blog.  (I remember well when Hollywood Boulevard was bookstore row.  You’d never know it today, alas.) 

Does God damn you?

Modern defenders of the doctrine of eternal punishment often argue that those who are damned essentially damn themselves.  As I indicated in a recent post on hell, from a Thomistic point of view that is indeed part of the story.  However, that is not the whole story, though these modern defenders of the doctrine sometimes give the opposite impression.  In particular, they sometimes make it sound as if, strictly speaking, God has nothing to do with someone’s being damned.  That is not correct.  From a Thomistic point of view, damnation is the product of a joint effort.  That you are eternally deserving of punishment is your doing.  That you eternally get the punishment you deserve is God’s doing.  You put yourself in hell, and God ensures that it is appropriately hellish.As Aquinas writes in Summa Contra Gentiles III.145:

Those who sin against God are not only to be punished by their exclusion from perpetual happiness, but also by the experience of something painful.  Punishment should proportionally correspond to the fault... In the fault, however, the mind is not only turned away from the ultimate end, but is also improperly turned toward other things as ends.  So, the sinner is not only to be punished by being excluded from his end, but also by feeling injury from other things…
[I]f a man makes inordinate use of a means to the end, he may not only be deprived of the end, but may also incur some other injury.  This is exemplified in the inordinate eating of food, which not only fails to maintain strength, but also leads to sickness.  Now, the man who puts his end among created things does not use them as he should, namely, by relating them to his ultimate end.  So, he should not only be punished by losing happiness, but also by experiencing some injury from them.
Moreover, as good things are owed to those who act rightly, so bad things are due to those who act perversely.  But those who act rightly, at the end intended by them, receive perfection and joy.  So, on the contrary, this punishment is due to sinners, that from those things in which they set their end they receive affliction and injury.
Thus, as Aquinas had already stated in chapter 140:
[M]an exceeds the due degree of his measure when he prefers his own will to the divine will by satisfying it contrary to God’s ordering.  Now, this inequity is removed when, against his will, man is forced to suffer something in accord with divine ordering.  Therefore, it is necessary that human sins be given punishment of divine origin…
[B]y this we set aside the error of some people who assert that God does not punish.
End quote.  So, for Aquinas, it’s not just that the damned, due to the fixity of their wills after death (as described in my previous post on this subject) perpetually choose something less than God and thus perpetually miss out on what would make them happy.  It’s that they also suffer additional positive harms in addition to this loss, and that God ensures that this will happen.
This may sound hard to reconcile with God’s goodness.  But in fact, on the Thomistic account it follows from God’s goodness.  For inflicting on an unrepentant evildoer a punishment proportionate to his offense is a good thing, and the damned are precisely those who forever keep doing evil and refuse to repent, and thus merit perpetual punishment.  Hence God, in his goodness, inflicts that punishment. 
But if this is true, then why does hell seem to many people to be incompatible with God’s goodness?  There are several reasons.  First – and as no defender of hell can deny – the very idea of hell is, well, as scary as all hell.  So, since it is usually bad to enter into a scary situation or to put others into one, it can seem bad for God to send people to hell.  But of course, it is not in fact always and intrinsically bad to enter such a situation or to put others into one.  For example, it is scary to undergo major surgery, but sometimes it is nevertheless good to do so or good to recommend that others do so.  It is scary to go to war, but if the war is just it can nevertheless be good to go to war and to send others to fight it.  And so forth.  So, the fact that hell is scary does not by itself suffice to show that it is bad to send people to hell.
Second, when people approach this issue they very often miss the forest for the trees.  They get hung up on the question of whether this or that particular offense is really worthy of eternal punishment, or the question of whether this or that particular harm is something a good God would inflict perpetually.  Worse, they get hung up on some oversimplified account of how a certain offense might send you to hell, or on some crude caricature of what eternal punishment would be like.  They ask rhetorically: “How could a single act of stealing (or whatever) send you to hell?” or “How could a good God allow you perpetually to be stabbed with pitchforks as you roast over an open fire?” or the like, and then, confident that no good answer could be forthcoming, they conclude that the idea of hell per se is suspect.
In fact there are two sets of issues here which need to be kept distinct and addressed in the proper order: (1) Could there be an offense which is worthy of eternal punishment?  And (2) Is such-and-such a particular offense an offense of that kind, and if so, what specifically would be the character of the eternal punishment this particular offense merits?  To answer (2) we’d have to go case by case, and our answer would also presuppose an answer to (1).  To answer this more fundamental question (1) – and (1) is the only question I’m addressing in this post – it is best to put questions of sort (2) to the side for the moment.
A third reason many people think hell incompatible with God’s goodness is that they lack (what is from the Thomistic point of view) a sound understanding of the nature and purpose of punishment.  In particular, they fail to see why punishment in general is good, and hence, unsurprisingly, find it difficult to understand how this particular and especially harsh sort of punishment could be good.  Moreover, they also have (what from the Thomistic point of view are) false beliefs in light of which eternal punishment is bound to seem bad.  In the remainder of this post I want to develop these particular points.
Punishment is a good thing
In our forthcoming book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, Joseph Bessette and I have a lot to say about the nature and justification of punishment in general.  The reason is that many people go wrong on the question of capital punishment precisely because they focus too much on the “capital” aspect of the issue and not enough on the “punishment” aspect.  When you properly understand the nature and purpose of punishment in general, the appropriateness in some cases of capital punishment falls into place quite naturally and inevitably.  Now, the same thing is true of eternal punishment.  People focus too much on the “eternal” aspect of it and not enough on the “punishment” aspect.  When you understand the latter, the appropriateness in some cases of eternal punishment also falls into place naturally and inevitably.
I’m not going to repeat here everything we say in the book.  Suffice it for present purposes to address how pleasure and pain relate to good and bad behavior and to rewards and punishments for behavior.  Like everything else in Thomistic natural law theory, this can only properly be understood in light of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics – in particular, in light of the notions of a thing’s essence, the proper accidents or properties that flow from that essence, and natural teleology.
Aquinas argues that pleasure is not the same thing as happiness.  Happiness instead involves the realization of the ends toward which our nature or essence directs us.  Pleasure is, however, in his view a proper accident or property of happiness (in the technical Scholastic sense of the word “property”).  That is to say, it naturally flows or follows from happiness insofar as, in the normal case and in the long run, realizing our natural ends will be associated with a feeling of delight or well-being. 
Now, as with other proper accidents or properties, the manifestation of this one can be blocked.  Having four legs is a proper accident or property of dogs, but damage or genetic defect can prevent a dog from having four legs.  Similarly, circumstances or psychological harm can prevent someone from taking pleasure in the realization of the ends toward which he is naturally directed.  Nevertheless, in the normal case such pleasure or well-being will follow, just as in the normal case a dog will have four legs.  (That pleasure has this close relationship to happiness without being identical to it is, I think, why people both often confuse pleasure with happiness, but also -- as in many people’s reaction to Nozick’s “experience machine” example -- tend to reject the idea that pleasure-seeking alone can ever bring genuine happiness.  This reflects their inchoate sense that pleasure is not itself what makes us happy but is rather a byproduct of attaining the things that make us happy.)
Now, pain is, by the same token, a kind of proper accident of unhappiness in the sense of the failure to realize the ends toward which our nature directs us.  Aquinas’s example, in the passage quoted above, of the “sickness” that can follow from disordered eating, illustrates the point.  When we eat too much or eat things that are bad for us, we often feel bad as a result.  That’s a trivial example, but the principle applies in general to disordered desires and behavior, i.e. desires and behavior that are contrary to the realization of the ends toward which our nature directs us.  Such desires and behavior tend, either directly or through their effects, to lead to various painful or unpleasant consequences – a guilty conscience, a sense of dissatisfaction, feelings of frustration, anxiety, shame, humiliation, self-hatred, the contempt of others, and in some cases even illness and bodily suffering. 
Here too, though, this natural tendency can be frustrated.  The pain or unpleasantness that in the normal case and in the long run tend to follow from disordered desire and behavior can be blocked, and rational animals like us are especially good at finding clever ways to block it.  For example, we can hide our bad behavior so that others do not know of it and thus do not criticize or punish us for it.  We can take medical steps to block the bodily suffering that can result from some such behavior.  We can distract ourselves from feeling guilt, shame, or anxiety, by way of indulging in pleasure-seeking of various sorts.  We can construct rationalizations of our behavior, and explain away the shame and guilt we feel by attributing it to others’ unjust criticism of us.  We can, in other aspects of our lives, engage in morally good behavior and pretend that this minimizes or excuses our immoral behavior.  We can encourage others who have the same vices we do to share in these rationalizations, distractions, and subterfuges.  We can tell ourselves that since so many other people behave as we do and share our rationalizations, distractions, and subterfuges, they must not really be mere rationalizations, distractions, and subterfuges at all.  We can even make of the rationalization of immoral behavior itself a kind of quasi-moralistic cause, and generate in ourselves such a pleasant frisson of self-righteousness from this that it can seem that our indulgence in the evil behavior is good and those who criticize that behavior are the ones who are evil.  And so on. 
In all these ways, then, what is in fact unhappiness – the failure to realize the ends toward which our nature directs us – can be made less painful or unpleasant than it would otherwise tend to be, and can even be masked by distracting pleasures and thus falsely seem like happiness.
Now, given what has been said, happiness – which is, again, the realization of the ends set for us by nature – without pleasure or delight in this realization entails a kind of defect or dysfunction.  For pleasure or delight, as a proper accident of happiness, would naturally follow from it if everything were functioning as it should.  Aquinas, following Aristotle, thus holds that pleasure “perfects”the operation of our faculties as those faculties realize their natural ends.  Hence even though happiness is not the same thing as pleasure, perfect happiness necessarily requires pleasure or delight as a concomitant.  The reward of those who do what is right will, accordingly, involve pleasure or delight.  God will ensure that nothing prevents this in the afterlife, as it is sometimes prevented in this life.
By the same token, however, disordered desire and behavior – that which is contrary to the realization of our natural ends, and thus entails unhappiness – without painor unpleasantness also involves a kind of defect.  A life of evil behavior that is nevertheless more or less pleasant is just as dysfunctional as a life of good behavior that is nevertheless miserable, and both dysfunctions need to be remedied.  Just as good behavior naturally ought to be associated with pleasure, a feeling of well-being, etc., so too bad behavior naturally ought to be associated with pain and an absence of a feeling of well-being.  When the former correlation does not hold, things need to be made right by rewarding those who do what is good.  When the latter correlation does not hold, things need to be made right by punishing those who do what is bad.
And that is the essence of punishment: restoring the teleological relationship, ordained by nature, between evil behavior on the one hand and the unpleasantness or pain that is its proper accident on the other.  Punishing evil is thus like healing a wound, restoring a damaged painting, or fixing a leak.  It is a matter of repairing things, putting things back in order, making them how they are supposed to be.  And given the essentialist and teleological metaphysics that underlies the Thomistic natural law conception of morality, that cannot fail to be a good thing. 
Aquinas describes it as a matter of “restor[ing]… the equality of justice,” by which “he who has been too indulgent to his will, by transgressing God's commandments, suffers, either willingly or unwillingly, something contrary to what he would wish” (Summa Theologiae I-II.87.6).  Willing what is evil naturally tends to misery, but this natural tendency, like other natural tendencies, is sometimes unfulfilled.  When it is, the result is an inequality or imbalance, viz. between the evil act on the one hand and the pain or lack thereof actually suffered by the evildoer on the other.  Punishment is a matter of restoring this balance.
So, suppose someone wills to do some evil thing X, and that doing X or even just wanting to do it naturally tends to make the one who wills it feel guilty and ashamed of himself, tends to make others have contempt for him, and so forth.  But suppose also that this person is able to hide his evildoing, or to convince himself and/or others that doing X is not really evil, or in other ways to block the pain or unpleasantness that naturally tends to follow from willing to do X.  Then it would be the case that to put this situation right, this person should be prevented from blocking this outcome.  He should be made to feel the shame, contempt, etc. that would naturally be the concomitant of willing or doing X.  And he should be made to feel this as long as he refuses to stop doing X or to stop willing to do X.  (Of course, there is also the question of who has the authority to inflict such punishments, how exactly they ought to be carried out, what sorts of circumstances might mitigate the guilt and thus the punishment, etc.  But I’m not trying here to address all the issues that arise in the philosophy of punishment.  The example is simplified and schematic for purposes of illustration.) 
Suppose further, however, that this person perpetually refuses to stop willing to do X.  Then the unpleasantness he ought to be made to feel must also be perpetual.  But that is the situation of the person whose will is, upon death, fixed on evil, as described in my previous post on the subject of hell.  Since such a person perpetually wills evil, God ensures that he perpetually suffers the pain or unpleasantness that ought to be associated with that evil.  If, for example, this person perpetually wills X and willing X ought to be associated with shame and contempt, God ensures that the person perpetually suffers shame and contempt.  The damned person is not permitted to avoid or block this consequence the way he might have avoided it in this life -- by way of self-deceptive rationalization, distracting himself in pleasure-seeking, duping others about his true character, etc.
“Gee, but it seems so mean”
Much more could be said, but that suffices to make the point that the goodness of punishment, including eternal punishment, follows from the general background metaphysical assumptions the Thomist brings to bear on this subject, as on moral questions generally.  Part of the reason some find hell incompatible with God’s goodness, then, is that they don’t share a commitment to those metaphysical assumptions.  But I think there are other factors as well.
Ralph McInerny once wrote that when discussing capital punishment with students who were opposed to it, he came away with the impression that what they really had a problem with is punishment as such.  I think that at least to a considerable extent and with many people, the same thing is true of objections to the idea of hell.  And it seems to me that the source of the hostility to punishment, in both cases, is the deep and pervasive influence liberalism has had on modern sensibilities.
By “liberalism” I don’t just mean modern Democratic Party style liberalism, but the whole liberal tradition, broadly construed, from Hobbes and Locke down to Rawls and Nozick.  There are, of course, many differences, sometimes deep ones, between the various thinkers and political movements that have over the centuries been identified as liberal.  But a core idea that runs through the tradition is the thesis that authority rests on consent.  In its most extreme version, the idea would be that no one can be obliged to submit to any law or authority whatsoever unless he in some way consents to submitting to it.  Not every liberal would go this far.  For example, Locke holds that there is no political authority that is binding on us without our consent, but still allows that there is a deeper objective moral law that we are bound to submit to whether or not we consent to it.  Still, the tendency of liberal thought has been in the direction of an ever greater emphasis on what Kant called our “autonomy” or status as “self-legislators” even in the moral sphere. 
To be sure, Kant’s own application of this idea by no means led to lax moral conclusions.  For example, Kant’s support for capital punishment was if anything even morehardline than that of us old-fashioned Thomist natural law theorists.  But contemporary Kantian liberals have taken “autonomy” in a very different direction than Kant himself did.  In particular, they typically take it to entail all the usual elements of modern lifestyle liberalism (i.e. permissiveness vis-à-vis abortion, sexual morality, and so on).  And it is hard to see the modern autonomous liberal self, as contemporary liberals understand it, consenting to an austere moral order that entails everlasting punishment.
There is also the related liberal tendency to see punishment as in any case essentially a means of preserving social order, and perhaps also as a kind of therapy by which criminals can be made to reform, rather than as a way of making sure people get their just deserts in some metaphysical sense.  Retribution, that is to say, tends to drop out of the liberal account of punishment in favor of a focus on protection, deterrence, and rehabilitation alone.  Unsurprisingly, then, everlasting punishment seems pointless, given what the liberal regards as the point of punishment.  For why punish if there is no hope of rehabilitation nor any need to protect others or deter anyone?
Traditional natural law theory, of course, rejects both of these key liberal assumptions.  It holds that the binding character of the moral law – including the imperative to punish the guilty -- not only in no way rests on our consent to it, but is rooted in the deepest metaphysical facts about the world.  And it holds that securing retributive justice is not only a legitimate purpose of punishment, but is the primary purpose of punishment. 
So, someone whose moral sensibilities have been deeply molded by traditional natural law theory is likely to judge that the idea of hell, however disturbing, makes moral and metaphysical sense.  By contrast, someone whose moral sensibilities have been deeply molded by modern liberalism is more likely to regard the idea of hell as completely senseless. 
A further relevant element in contemporary liberalism is its deep egalitarianism.  The contemporary liberal is always going on about widening the circle of inclusion, leaving no one behind, etc.  The idea of hell, by contrast, is precisely about exclusion and leaving some behind forever – indeed, even taking delight in their perpetual exclusion.  The human race is on this view destined for what C. S. Lewis famously called a Great Divorce, not a Great Group Hug. 
Still, there is a sing along:  OK, Squirrel Nut Zippers, preach it!

The pre-existence of the soul

Our visit to hell hasn’t ended.  (How could it?)  More on the subject of damnation in a forthcoming follow-up post.  But first, a brief look at another topic which, it seems to me, is illuminated by the considerations raised in that previous post.  Can the soul exist prior to the existence of the body of which it is the soul?  Plato thought so.  Aquinas thought otherwise.  In Summa Contra Gentiles II.83-84 he presents a battery of arguments to the effect that the soul begins to exist only when the body does.The metaphysically crucial idea here, of course, is the Aristotelian thesis that the human soul is the substantial form of the living human body.  (See sections 9 and 10 of SCG Book II, Chapter 83, linked to above.)  More precisely, it is the substantial form of a substance which has both corporeal faculties (as other animals do) and incorporeal faculties (as angels do).  Because the corporeal faculties do not exhaust this substance, it can carry on in an incomplete state after the corporeal faculties are lost at death.  Because the corporeal faculties are possessed by the substance in its normal state, however, it would seem that the soul comes into being only when the entire substance in its normal state comes into being, which means when the body comes into being. 

The way Aquinas develops the point is to argue, first, that a perfect specimen of a thing is metaphysically prior to the imperfect specimen.  (Cf. section 11)  Hence the entire human substance – corporeal and incorporeal aspects together – is prior to the incomplete substance which would be the substance reduced to its incorporeal aspects alone, viz. the soul as it persists beyond death.  So, it would seem from that that the soul comes into being only with the body.  Aquinas also adds (in sections 34-36) that since matter is, on the Thomistic view, what individuates souls, a new soul must only come into being when its associated body does.
It is at least arguable that these considerations are not decisive.  In Real Essentialism , David Oderberg briefly and tentatively suggests that it might be the case that the soul’s existence and identity conditions might be met even if it pre-exists its body, as long as it will be at some future date associated with that body.  (See note 25 at p. 293.  He had earlier made the same point in his article “Hylemorphic Dualism,” at note 47.)
However one comes down on that issue, however, there is another Thomistic consideration which seems to show that whether or not it is possible for human souls to pre-exist their bodies, they do not in fact do so – a consideration deriving from the arguments surveyed in my recent post on damnation (linked to above).  According to those arguments, a completely incorporeal thing immediately and irreversibly chooses, as its ultimate end, either God or something less than God.  That is why an angel is either saved or damned immediately upon its creation, and a human soul is either saved or damned immediately upon death.  And in the case of the human soul, this choice cannot be altered even when it is rejoined to its body.
So, suppose a human soul pre-existed its body.  Then – being free of any corporeality -- it would, just like an angel, immediately choose either God or something less than God as its ultimate good, and this choice would be irreversible.  But in that case, that soul would be unable to reverse this choice one way or the other even once it is conjoined to its body for the first time.  So, if our souls pre-existed our bodies, we would be unable to make such a choice.  Everyone would already unalterably have chosen either God or something less than God, and thus already be either saved or damned.  But that is not the case.  We are still able to choose either God or something less than him, as is evident both from ordinary experience and from Christian doctrine, which calls on all human beings to repent while they still have time to do so.  Hence our souls must not pre-exist our bodies.

Can schadenfreude be virtuous?

Bill Vallicella asks: Is there a righteous form of schadenfreude?  The Angelic Doctor appears to answer in the affirmative.  Speaking of the knowledge that the blessed in heaven have of the damned, Aquinas famously says:
It is written (Psalm 57:11): “The just shall rejoice when he shall see the revenge”…
Therefore the blessed will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked…A thing may be a matter of rejoicing in two ways.  First directly, when one rejoices in a thing as such: and thus the saints will not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked.  Secondly, indirectly, by reason namely of something annexed to it: and in this way the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy.  And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.

End quote.  So, the idea is this: On the one hand, the suffering of a person is not as such something to rejoice in, for suffering, considered just by itself, is an evil and, as Aquinas goes on to say, “to rejoice in another's evil as such belongs to hatred.”  However, there can be something “annexed” to the suffering which is a cause for rejoicing.  For example, if we are able to develop a virtue like patience by way of suffering, thatis something to rejoice in, and thus in an indirectway the suffering can in that case legitimately be a cause of rejoicing.  But another sort of thing which can be annexed to a person’s suffering is justice, as when a person suffers some harm as a deserved punishment.  And someone’s getting his just deserts is in Aquinas’s view something to rejoice in.  Hence, Aquinas concludes, in an indirectway the suffering of the wicked can be something to rejoice in.
This is in Aquinas’s view true even when the suffering is eternal, if that is what is deserved.  Indeed, he judges that the joy of the blessed would be incomplete without knowledge of the infliction of these just deserts:
Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.
Now, that’s schadenfreude, big league.
Putting the question of hell to one side, though, we can note that if schadenfreude can be legitimate even in that case, then a fortiori it can be legitimate in the case of lesser instances of someone getting his just deserts, in this life rather than the afterlife.  For example – and to take the case Bill has in mind -- suppose someone’s suffering is a consequence of anti-Catholic bigotry, brazen corruption, unbearable smugness, a sense of entitlement, groupthink, and in general from hubris virtually begging nemesis to pay a visit.  When you’re really asking for it, you can’t blame others for enjoying seeing you get it. 

Swindal on Neo-Scholastic Essays

In the latest issue of the International Philosophical Quarterly, Prof. James Swindal kindly reviews my book Neo-Scholastic Essays .  From the review:
Feser… is thoroughly steeped both in analytic philosophy and Scholastic thought…
[T]his review touches on only a few aspects of Feser’s extensive achievement and the many arguments he deftly crafts and cogently defends.  He furnishes substantial hope for a further productive, and neither dogmatic nor defensive, dialogue between Thomism and analytic philosophy.  Success in moving this dialogue forward requires scholars, precisely like him, who [have] a deep familiarity with and respect for both traditions.
Prof. Swindal also raises a couple of criticisms, particularly of my essay “Being, the Good, and the Guise of the Good.”  In that essay I note that from the point of view of Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law theory, knowing what is good for us requires taking an objective or “third-person” point of view on ourselves rather than a subjective or “first-person” point of view.  Swindal comments:
It is somewhat surprising… that [Feser] uses first and third, but not a second, person points of view in his metaethical analysis.  The second person point of view is arguably more fully metaphysically adaptable to what is the ontology of genuinely rational and personal relationships: relationships assumed to be the ground and aim of ethical assessment.
and in a pair of footnotes adds:
As developed by speech act theorists, such as Bühler, Austin, Searle, and Habermas, a second person paradigm posits what is effectively the ethical realm: the good of intersubjective actions and communication…
In Aquinas, moreover, what is effectively one’s unitive love directed to another person, from a second person perspective, also “turns back” towards the first person in a self-relationship of love of self.
Later in the review Swindal connects this “second-person” perspective with personalism.  His criticism, then, seems to be that my position is deficient insofar as it neglects the personalist and “second-person” aspects of the human good.
It seems to me, though, that Swindal’s objection is misdirected because it misses the specific point I was actually addressing in the passage in question.  We need to distinguish the following two questions:
1. Is what is good for us best known by way of the individual subject’s introspective knowledge of the desires he actually happens to have, the structure of practical reason, etc., or rather by way of metaphysical-cum-biological knowledge of what is true of human beings as a species?
2. What precisely is the content of what is good for us, and, specifically, how central are relationships with others constitutive of what is good for us?
The considerations Prof. Swindal raises are, it seems to me, relevant to 2 rather than to 1.  But it is 1 rather than 2 that I was addressing in the passage he is commenting on.
Part of my essay “Being, the Good, and the Guise of the Good” is devoted to responding to David Velleman’s influential objection to the Thomist view that all action aims at the good.  Swindal also takes issue with something I say in this part of the paper.  Velleman argues that what we desire when acting is not the good but the attainable.  One problem with this suggestion, as I point out in the essay, is that being attainable is at most a necessary condition of our desiring something, but not a sufficient condition, since something might be attainable without our desiring it.  (For example, the stick sitting on the lawn outside is attainable – it would be very easy for me to go pick it up – but I have no desire at all to go get it.)  Hence in order to refute the Thomist view, Velleman would have to explain what further condition must be added to attainability in order to make of something an object of desire, where this further condition does not (lest Velleman undermine his own position) either explicitly or implicitly make reference to the good.
Commenting on this point, Swindal says:
[Feser] thus suggests that something about “the good” remains objective beyond attainment and is unable to be captured by it.  But he does not specify what this value beyond attainment is.  In other words, he maintains (a) that there is a gap between attainability and the good and (b) that non-ultimate ends themselves have some kind of status other than the final good and yet are distinct from attainable means.  Neither of these seems fully consistent with Scholastic accounts of the distinction between means and ends wherein subordinate ends are attained only relative to higher achievable ends (though ends attainable not necessarily in this life but in beatitude).  The transcendence of the good is not that it remains beyond attainment, but precisely that it is not notionally but really identical with what is.
I’m not sure that I understand the criticism here, but it seems that Swindal is interpreting me as claiming that the good is beyond attainment.  If so, he is mistaken, because I never said, and would not say, any such thing.  The point I was making in the passage he is responding to had to do with the nature of desire, not the nature of the good.  In particular, what I said is that in order for us to desire X, it is not enough that X be attainable.  There must be some further aspect to X that makes it desirable.  There is nothing in that claim by itself that says anything at all about the good, much less that the good is unattainable.  Furthermore, even if I had been talking about the good, to say “There is more to being good than being attainable” does not entail “The good is unattainable.”
Or is Swindal merely saying that, if I hold that there is more to the good than being attainable, I need to specify exactly what this further aspect is?  If so, then there are two problems with this objection.  First, and again, in the passage he is responding to I was not addressing the nature of the good but rather the nature of desire.  Second, and in any case, in the rest of the essay, I do say what the nature of the good consists in -- namely the actualization of the potentialities which a thing must realize in order to flourish as the kind of thing it is.
Finally, a couple of somewhat minor points.  Commenting on my essay “The Road from Atheism,” Swindal writes:
Raised Catholic, Feser tells us that he later rejected his faith on intellectual grounds.  The initial impetus for his doubt came, in large measure, from the problem of evil.  He canvassed Nietzsche, Kaufmann, and the New Atheist literature that refuted arguments for belief in God.  His return to the Catholic faith came not through a fideist route that would abandon the need for a rational account of God altogether, but was rather based on a careful reconsideration of several atheist arguments.
This is odd.  First, contrary to Swindal’s claim that “the initial impetus for his doubt came, in large measure, from the problem of evil,” what I actually said in the essay was:
The argument from evil was never the main rationale for my atheism; indeed, the problem of suffering has only gotten really interesting to me since I returned to the Catholic Church… To be sure, like any other atheist I might have cited the problem of suffering when rattling off the reasons why theism couldn’t be true, but it wasn’t what primarily impressed me philosophically. 
Second, Swindal gives the impression that the New Atheism played a role in my temporarily leaving the Catholic Church and becoming an atheist.  In fact I became an atheist in the early 1990s and (as I explicitly note in the essay) returned to the Catholic Church in late 2001, years before the rise of the New Atheist movement.
But as I say, those are relatively minor points.  I thank Prof. Swindal for his kind words about the book.