Dave Armstrong's Blog, page 54

Brief Exchange With a Lutheran (Nathan) on Luther's Revolt and Fundamental Differences of Perspective Regarding the So-Called Protestant "Reformation"

 This very friendly yet intense discussion took place on my blog, in the combox for my post (with quite a provocative title!), Martin Luther in His Pseudo-Prophetic, Hyper-Infallible, "Super-Pope" Mode (Shocking Examples). Ben, a regular on my blog, makes some excellent comments in the combox, too, with several interesting links. Be sure to check those out, too, as a second reply to Nathan. Nathan's words will be in blue. Words of mine cited from the above paper will be in red.
Nathan's website is called Theology Like a Child .
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"He actually believes these things."

I actually believe these things as well. And so should you. Seriously. : )

Really, when Luther speaks this way, it is within the context of defending doctrines of Scripture over against the doctrines of the church or canon law. The pope claimed to be right because he was pope (and maybe because he was the ruler of a massive enterprise). Luther claimed to be right because of Scripture.

He actually thought the Scriptures were clear enough and that their core message was obvious enough for everyone to see.

The nerve.

Yes, I actually believe this. I think it is true. Luther was much like the OT prophets. Where in RC doctrine is the existence for such prophets - such "out of the church mainstream" people - dealt with?

So you actually defend all of these ridiculous sayings of his?

Where in RC doctrine is the existence for such prophets - such "out of the church mainstream" people - dealt with?

We have saints who are extraordinary and who rebuked popes at times: folks like St. Catherine of Siena, St. Dominic, and St. Francis of Assisi. But they didn't talk like Luther. They might rebuke a particular error, but they don't say that they have all truth, and everyone else for 1500 years was a dumbbell except them, and run down the Church, etc.

So you might say we have a prophetic tradition without the ludicrous excess that is so obviously apparent in Luther.

Yes, for the most part I defend his statements. If he actually said that "everyone else for 1500 years was a dumbbell" up to him, I'd disagree with him.

We have saints who are extraordinary and who rebuked popes at times: folks like St. Catherine of Siena, St. Dominic, and St. Francis. But they didn't talk like Luther. They might rebuke a particular error....

On issues of faith or morals? As Luther pointed out, the issue was the doctrine. Likewise, in the Old Testament, people embraced false doctrines. Behavior was not really the issue for Luther, belief was. I'd like to know more about the prophets in the RCC who confronted the teachings (not behavior) of the mainstream church and still continued to be recognized by the church. I confess I do not know as much about this as I should, but from what little I have been able to gather, there aren't any. Maybe I am wrong.

Thanks again for your blog. Appreciate your desire to delve into these issues. 

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Simple Christians would have always understood such clear words (like Romans 5:1 for example), and the Church Fathers, if pressed, almost certainly would have come to see the light had they been pressed more by blatant heresies to do so (as Augustine was). In any case, very few of their writings show evidence of ideas that would explicitly mitigate justification by faith alone.

So yes. Intellectuals often create systematic frameworks which overcome the clear meaning of simple statements that even children can understand. It happens all the time.

Luther was right. People, even sincere Christians, simply suppress the truth to this or that degree (this has to do with the sinner/saint thing as well, also rejected by the RCC in spite of the clear meaning of Romans 3 and 7)

I hope Dave can answer my question. I will state my point again: the RCC has no room for prophets who would call the church away from false teachings.

You can see more about how I think (roughly) by reading this paper, which is one of the better ones out there.

The Church is protected from such false (dogmatic, binding) teachings in the first place. That is what the infallibility of the Church means. Those who rebuked popes did so when they were going against clear moral stands; were being hypocrites or wimps.

In the case of Pope John XXII (1249-1334), though, he temporarily denied (unofficially) the Beatific Vision, and there was a spontaneous reaction against him from laypeople. He denied what had been held.

With Luther it is entirely otherwise. He comes around and starts denying at least 50 received doctrines and practices (as I have documented from his pre-1521 works alone).

That's not reform: it is full-fledged rebellion and revolution: such that no institution would ever, and should never, sanction.

If I went to your Lutheran church (or whatever you are) and stated that I had a special commission from God, standing on Scripture and plain reason, and that you had 61 teachings that were false and must immediately change, I would not only not be heard or taken seriously, but would be thrown out on my ear as a nut and fruitcake.

Yet we're supposed to accept as self-evident that Luther was right, and 1500 years of Catholic Apostolic Tradition wrong. It's no different. It's not even reasonable to do such a thing, even before we get to individual theological issues.

Thanks for the engagement. I appreciate the conviction with which you write even though I think it is misled.
I do wish I had more time to continue the discussion, but I don't. I will simply make a couple brief comments and allow you to have the last word (if you please).

Dave, I would be interested in knowing the 50 or 61 things that Luther denied that had been held for 1500 years (though that sounds extremely silly to me). Please provide the link if please.

In my mind, Luther clearly did not have rebellion in mind, but was a faithful son of the Church. Further, I do not think the "Catholic Apostolic Tradition" was nearly as monolithic as you say.

I think I am confirmed in my claim by your saying the infallibility of the Church protects it from false [dogmatic, binding] teachings in the first place. Indeed, in the RCC and EO conceptions of the Church there is no room for the idea that false teachings could ever be proclaimed in the highest levels of the church. I look at the O.T. and the N.T. (see the Pharisees, who sit in Moses' seat, rejecting those teachings brought by John and Jesus) and see all the confirmation I need for the Lutheran view. Not that there is no hope - the Holy Scriptures, recognized widely from the very beginning by faithful believers everywhere, do indeed guide us into all truth.

Best regards,
Nathan 
Thanks for your civility and your conviction as well. Here is a link to my "extremely silly" yet (unfortunately) stubbornly factual account:

50 Ways In Which Luther Had Departed From Catholic Orthodoxy or Established Practice by 1520 (and Why He Was Excommunicated)

Related papers:

Dialogue: Why Was Martin Luther Excommunicated? / Questions Concerning Luther's Expressed Obedience to the Pope's Decision Regarding His Orthodoxy

Was Corruption in the Medieval Papacy the Primary Cause of the Protestant Revolt?

Luther Was Not a Revolutionary?! Huh?!
Catholic Response to the Movie Luther (2003): "Good to Hear Both Sides of the Story"

Lutheran-Catholic Group Dialogue #2: The Nature of the True Church and Authoritative Christian Tradition / Questions on Institutional Separation

Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue #4: "Tragic Necessity" of Reform / Indulgences / Nominalism / Causes of Schism / Luther on "Papists" / Fathers' Authority

I look at the O.T. and the N.T. (see the Pharisees, who sit in Moses' seat, rejecting those teachings brought by John and Jesus) and see all the confirmation I need for the Lutheran view.

It's precisely the opposite of the way you are portraying it. Jesus was not against Pharisaism per se, but against hypocrisy in particular Pharisees: a far different thing. He Himself followed Pharisaical traditions, and Paul called himself a Pharisee twice (after his conversion).

Jesus didn't reject their teaching authority at all: quite the contrary. He stated, "practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice." (Matthew 23:3, RSV)

It was a rebuke for hypocrisy; not false teaching (having just upheld their continuing authority on the basis of Moses' Seat, which is an extrabiblical tradition, not in the OT). It was exactly analogous to Paul's rebuke of Peter in Galatians for hypocrisy. They agreed in principle, but Peter was acting hypocritically.

As so often with Protestants arguing against Catholicism, you are simply reading your prior beliefs into the text, but as we see, you have distorted the meaning entirely. Therefore, your analogy to Lutheranism over against Catholic tradition and Church authority fails miserably. This text doesn't support it at all.

Catholic Refutation of J. A. Wylie's Essay on Papal Infallibility (Paul Folbrecht)

Dave: Be sure to visit Paul's excellent blog, A Catholic Thinker .

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This is my rebuttal to Rev. J.A. Wylie's essay on Infallibility, part of his Dogmas of the Papacy series.  (Though long deceased, Rev. Wylie's award-winning essays continue to be favorites in the Baptist/"Bible Christian" community.)
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Rev. Wylie's essays are better than the average in anti-Catholic polemics [1].  The World Wide Web as well as published literary works contain no shortage of the worst kind of anti-Catholic nonsense, containing the most amazing levels of ignorance of not just Catholicism but history, Scripture, and logic.  Wylie's essays are better than much of that, but they are still bad, in terms of getting the basic facts of what the Church teaches, and why, correct.  They also contain substantial logical errors and reveal ignorance of both Scripture and of the history of Christianity, especially the early Church.  Due to these things, the conclusions he reaches are very much erroneous.


Scripture and The Canon of Scripture

Before considering what this essay has to say about the subject of the Catholic doctrine of Infallibility, we need to discuss the author's comments about Scripture, which he makes casually as if there is no doubt whatsoever about them and nothing at all deeper to the story.

Wylie contrasts the authority of Scripture with that of the Church (a false dichotomy).  His first logical error is his assumption that these are mutually exclusive, but, more pertinently, he completely fails to consider the origins of his Bible, something non-Catholics are extremely wont to do – and with good reason.  Wylie does not consider this (or at least does not treat it) because to do so would turn his entire argument against "infallibility" on his head.

Every book of inspired Scripture was theoretically immutable when it was initially written.  (I say "theoretically" because we do not possess perfect copies – by one estimate there are approximately 200,000 textual variations total in the Old and New Testament source documents that humanity possesses.)  All Scripture is also inerrant (not just in faith and morals, but in any subject it intends to teach) as God is Its primary author.  For more of what the Catholic Church teaches regarding Holy Scripture, see the Catechism. 

But here is the meat of Wylie's problem: why does he trust his canon of Scripture?  Where did it come from?  The plain and simple fact is that the canon was defined by the Church in her ecumenical councils, and if Wylie asserts, as he surely does (and as every Protestant I'm familiar with does) that the Church is never infallible in Her actions (and indeed is never even authoritative!) then his complete trust in his Bible is sorely misplaced.

I'm not going to go too deeply into the tangent of the canon here; I'll offer only a few basic facts so that those unfamiliar with the history can see the magnitude of the error in Wylie's reasoning.  As late as the early 200s, more than a century and a half past the Resurrection, after many thousands of Christians had given their lives in martyrdom, much of the canon was essentially settled (meaning it was considered Scripture by every major church) but there was still serious disagreement on a number of books: James, Jude, 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, and Revelation at the least.  

And, of course, there were at least a dozen books that did not make the canon considered Scripture in certain areas: 1 Clement (the fourth Pope's letter to the Corinthians, ~95 AD), the Didache, the Gospels of the Hebrews, Egyptians, Mattathias, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Preaching of Peter, the Revelation of Peter, the Protoevangelium of James, Acts of James, Acts of Paul, and the Shepherd of Hermas.  For instance, the canon used by the Church in Egypt (as given by Clement of Alexandria) included all of these in addition to the four canonical Gospels and most other books of the New Testament.  [None of these books contain material judged heretical, but neither were any of them ultimately ruled to be divinely inspired.]

The books that comprise the New Testament that all Christians have acknowledged since the fourth century may have been first given by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in a letter of 367.  They were also listed by the Council of Rome, in 382, which was ratified by Pope Damascus I (although there is some dispute in this), and were repeated at the local councils of Hippo and Carthage in the last decade of the fourth century [2].  Finally, more than a thousand years later, at the Council of Trent, a full ecumenical council with Papal ratification, the canon was solemnly defined.

[Protestant attempts to assert that the canon is self-attesting and was decided without the action of men strain credulity far past the breaking point [3].  However, the fact men were involved in the definition of the canon should not be so unpalatable to them.  Surely, all must acknowledge that men were involved in the writing of the Scriptures; though the Holy Spirit is their primary author, He worked through men who did impart their "signature" to the texts in various ways.  The Holy Spirit worked through His Church to define the canon of Scripture exactly as He worked through It to write the Scriptures; to recoil from this notion is to miss entirely the full effects of the Incarnation.  As the Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem noted with regard to what they decided, "it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us".]

Much more could be said about this subject but that will suffice for our purposes here.  Wylie cannot have it both ways: either ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church in union with the See of Peter (more on these requirements below) are endowed with the God-given charism of infallibility in faith and morals or he has no guarantee that his Bible is inerrant and complete. A Book with a fallible canon is no infallible Book.  This is a very simple logical structure and it is ironclad.


The Catholic Doctrine of Infallibility

It probably makes sense to say a few words about what infallibility is not since there are so many non-Catholics with completely incorrect beliefs about the subject.  Infallibility does not mean impeccability or omniscience; it has nothing to do with not sinning and nothing to do with having all possible knowledge.  A pope (as stated in detail below) enjoys the charism of infallibility only under certain (very restrictive) conditions; he must be giving a teaching on faith and morals in an official capacity and whilst intending it to be binding upon the entire Body of Christ.  Likewise, a council of the Church is considered infallible in its decisions only when it is a true ecumenical (general) council of the entire Universal [Catholic] Church teaching in harmony with the See of Peter.         

To explain the Church's teaching, the place to start is the Catechism:

889 In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a "supernatural sense of faith" the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith."417

890 The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. The exercise of this charism takes several forms:

891 "The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals. The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium," above all in an Ecumenical Council. 418 When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine "for belief as being divinely revealed," 419 and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions "must be adhered to with the obedience of faith." 420 This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself. 421

892 Divine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, and, in a particular way, to the bishop of Rome, pastor of the whole Church, when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a "definitive manner," they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful "are to adhere to it with religious assent" 422 which, though distinct from the assent of faith, is nonetheless an extension of it.

I will now demonstrate that these teachings have a firm basis in Scripture and (contrary to the silly assertion of Wylie's paper) were believed and professed in rudimentary form at least by the Church from Her very beginnings, long before a "full thousand years after Christ and his apostles" had passed.

I will now examine some of the passages of the New Testament that are related to the Church's protection from error; these are passages that any competent Catholic apologist would reference. 

Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. [17] And Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. [18] And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. [19] And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. (Matthew 16:16-19)

Later, the power of binding and loosing is extended to all of the apostles:

And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. [17] And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican. [18] Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven. (Matthew 18:16-18)

A careful reader should see from these passages alone that the Church simply must enjoy some sort of divine protection from error – that is, infallibility.  Christ here promises that God Himself will endorse the Church's teachings, and God cannot endorse error - can He?

Robert Sungenis, in The Precedent for Infallibility, notes that in the original Greek the tense of the "binding" and "loosing" "shows that a binding occurs in heaven either prior to or simultaneous with the binding performed on earth. In addition, the Greek verb is in the passive voice which indicates that heaven is receiving the binding, not initiating it."

Then there is Luke 10:16:

He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.

The literal and direct meaning here is that those who hear the Apostles hear Christ Himself.  We can intimate from the text of Scripture itself [4] that what Christ says to His Apostles applies to the successors they ordained as well; we will also speak to this briefly below.

But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth. (John 16:13)

The Holy Spirit will teach "all truth" to His Church; likewise, 14:26 states that the Holy Spirit will teach the Church "all things".  We know this implies truth with come to the Apostles' successors as well, since John 14:16 says the Paraclete will abide with the Church "forever".  Also, Christ told the Apostles that they were not given all truth initially, but that there were things that would come later.

We see that Christ clearly promises that the Holy Spirit will be with the Church (he is speaking, again, to the leaders of His Church, not to disciples in general) forever.  The "Gates of Hell" shall not prevail against this Church; if Hell itself attacks It than It is a divine institution by nature.  Such a divine creation of the Savior Himself could not teach error in Its official capacity or His promises are null – broken.

And of course we must mention 1 Tim 3:15, Paul's famous statement about the Church:

"The church of the living God is the pillar and foundation of the truth."

Here we have told to us as plainly as possible where the buck stops.  It is not the Bible – a creation of the Church – that is the very "foundation of truth", but the Church that gave us that Bible.

Kittle's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (a Protestant work) explains this passage as follows: "A Church is established which protects and defends the truth against the confusion of myths. It gives the faith and thinking of individuals a sure ground in confession. No longer God alone, but also the Church of God, now guarantees the permanence of the aletheia [truth]. The steadfastness of faith has now become loyalty to the Church and the confession."  Clearly "protects and defends the truth" and "guarantees the permanence of the truth" suggest the charism of infallibility at least in some form.  How is the Church the very foundation of truth if it has no guaranteed ability to not teach error?  We see how many Scriptural passages there are that demand such a divine protection for the Church.

Related to this, we have examples in Scripture of people making infallible statements, and we see that this is not even necessarily related to a person's personal sanctity, but rather their office:

But one of them, named Caiphas, being the high priest that year, said to them: You know nothing. [50] Neither do you consider that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. [51] And this he spoke not of himself: but being the high priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation. (John 11:49-51)

Jesus saith to them: But whom do you say that I am? [16] Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. [17] And Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 16:15-17)

Jesus even tells us how Peter was given this knowledge about His true identity: God Himself gave the knowledge to him directly.  And so now we know how a fallible, sinful man is able to accurately transmit an infallible teaching from God!

And then there is, again, the Council of Jerusalem as described in Acts, where the leaders of Church decided issues pressing upon them at the time [5], on their own authority, yet implicitly knowing that the Spirit infused His Church and would keep Her from error: "For it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us".

Thus, we see that the notion of the Church that Jesus Christ founded has a divine protection from teaching error follows quite directly from the text of the New Testament, and the fact that it struck Rev. Wylie as such a curious and downright nutty notion raises doubts about the good Reverend rather than this teaching or of Scripture.  Indeed, when we examine the attitude of the Church towards this teaching from Her earliest days, and contrast them with what Wylie has to say about that, we will see that his knowledge of Christian history is seriously lacking as well.

Let us look at a small selection of quotes from early Church Fathers regarding the nature of the Church and Her mission of truth – of infallibility:

…the preaching of the Church is everywhere consistent, and continues in an even course, and receives testimony from the prophets, the apostles, and all the disciples… For in the Church, it is said, God hath set apostles, prophets, teachers, and all the other means through which the Spirit works; of which all those are not partakers who do not join themselves to the Church, but defraud themselves of life through their perverse opinions and infamous behavior. For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace; but the Spirit is truth.

(Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 180 AD)

But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world, and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition.

(Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 180 AD)

But we who hope for the Son of God are persecuted and trodden down by those unbelievers. For the wings of the vessels are the churches; and the sea is the world, in which the Church is set, like a ship tossed in the deep, but not destroyed; for she has with her the skilled Pilot, Christ. And she bears in her midst also the trophy (which is erected) over death; for she carries with her the cross of the Lord…As the wind the Spirit from heaven is present, by whom those who believe are sealed: she has also anchors of iron accompanying her, viz., the holy commandments of Christ Himself, which are strong as iron. She has also mariners on the right and on the left, assessors like the holy angels, by whom the Church is always governed and defended.

 (Hippolytus, Christ and Anti-Christ, 200 AD)

But I shall pray the Spirit of Christ to wing me to my Jerusalem. For the Stoics say that heaven is properly a city, but places here on earth are not cities; for they are called so, but are not. For a city is an important thing, and the people a decorous body, and a multitude of men regulated by law as the church by the word - a city on earth impregnable - free from tyranny; a product of the divine will on earth as in heaven.

(Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 202 AD)

And Peter, on whom the Church of Christ is built, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail...

(Origen, On John, 232 AD)

For the rock is inaccessible to the serpent, and it is stronger than the gates of Hades which are opposing it, so that because of its strength the gates of Hades do not prevail against it; but the church, as a building of Christ who built His own house wisely upon the rock, is incapable of admitting the gates of Hades which prevail against every man who is outside the rock and the church, but have no power against it.

(Origen, On Matthew, 244 AD)

Would heretics dare to come to the very seat of Peter whence Apostolic faith is derived and whither no errors can come?

(Cyprian of Carthage, 256 AD) Would they, indeed?

This is only a very small sampling of quotes from the Church Fathers.  In reading the Fathers in their entirety, it cannot be missed that they generally believed that the Church was a divine Institution possessing divine characteristics such as the inability to teach error – which should not be at all surprising given that Scripture teaches that clearly as well. 

Unprofessional non-Catholic polemicists frequently quote early Fathers in disingenuous (or just ignorant) ways.  For example, one may find a quote from a Father interpreting the "Rock" of Matthew 16:18 as Peter's faith rather than Peter.  However, when this is the case, it is also the case that not only is there no evidence that the given Father did not also see the Rock as Peter himself (given the clear Greek, the fact that Peter was renamed Rock, and the clear testimony of the Church from the earliest times), in almost all cases we have another quote from the very same Father interpreting Rock as Peter himself – it is not an either/or proposition. 

I am not aware of any Church Fathers who did not believe in the absolute authority and indefectibility (another word for infallibility) of the Church – even though individual Fathers could and sometimes did err in other matters (although all would and did submit to the Church's decision if and when the Church came to a formal decision on the question).

[One of the critical misunderstandings that is very common among (at least the less professional) anti-Catholic apologists concerns the development of doctrine.

All Christian teachings (that is, all Catholic teachings) have as their source Christ and the Apostles: all were present in at least some form in the Deposit of Faith, public revelation, which ceased with the death of the last Apostle (John).  However, it is clear from the history of the early Church and from Scripture as well that the Church's understandings of these teachings increased with time – the teachings do not change, but the Church's ability to articulate and understand them more completely grows.  (And this is ultimately the province of the Spirit – were told the Spirit would guide the Church into all truth – that's a process unfolding over time.  Likewise, Christ likened the Church to a growing mustard seed – it would not only grow drastically in size but also change its external form drastically.)

We see this development of doctrine at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts, where the Apostles conclude that the majority of the Mosaic Law is not binding upon Christians.  We see it throughout the history of the early Church as the most core doctrines of Christianity (the nature of Christ and the Holy Trinity) are developed until they are finally formalized (at the Council of Nicea in 325).  The teachings existed from the beginning in some form – all orthodox Christians knew and believed that Jesus Christ was God Incarnate from the moment the Gospel was preached publicly – yet the deep meanings and nuances of such an awesome divine Mystery do not come immediately.  Nor are we in a position to demand that they should have.]

As we will see below, Wylie's treatment of a quote from St. Augustine is either based in serious ignorance or is dishonest.


Misrepresentation of Catholic Teaching and Catholic Arguments

Wylie's paper is quite full of ignorance about the Catholic doctrine he's addressing as well as the proofs that the Church brings forth in support of them, including the testimony of the Church. 

Let's start with this: 

But Romanists hold that it is not in the words, but in the sense of these passages that the proof lies; and that of that sense the Church is the infallible interpreter. They hold that the Scripture is so obscure, that we can know nothing of what it teaches on any point whatever, but by the interpretation of the Church. It was the saying of one of their distinguished men, Mr. Stapelton, 'that even the Divinity of Christ and of God did depend upon the Pope'.

I've never known any "Romanist" who held that it is "not in the words" of these passages where the proof lies!  What "Romanists" is the reverend referring to here?  Did it occur to Rev. Wylie to perhaps direct his inquiries to official sources of Church teaching rather than random individuals?  Further, he did not even consider the most important Scriptural passages – the ones the Church refers to and the ones that any competent Catholic apologist refers to.  (He mentions his treatment of other passages, but evidently doesn't seem them as related enough to the topic of Church infallibility to even so much as state them here.)

Then we have "They hold that the Scripture is so obscure, that we can know nothing of what it teaches on any point whatever."  Is there a reason that the Reverend does not actually cite the "Church teaching" he's "refuting"?  Could it be because it doesn't exist?  Is Rev. Wylie not aware of what the Church really teaches regarding Scripture and Infallibility?  Could he not have quoted the catechism of his day, or the actual pronouncements of popes and councils on these subjects?  Is it that he's ignorant of the actual teachings, or that he prefers to speak to the teachings he wished existed instead of the ones that do?

In fact, none of what he stated here is true: The Church does not teaching anything close to Scripture being "so obscure" that "we can know nothing of what it teaches on any point whatever".  Even if he is exaggerating for effect the statement is still ridiculous.  Of course, he could not and does not quote any Church teaching remotely close to his bizarre (yet common) distortion.  Any Catholic who attends Mass daily for a period of about three years will have essentially the entire Bible read to him.  

As for individual study, the Church teaches that Scripture is edifying for the soul and helpful for the spiritual life of any Christian but has indeed sought throughout the centuries to ensure that Christians approach the sacred texts intelligently and humbly, for, as It teaches, "no prophecy is a matter of personal interpretation".  While much of Scripture is readily intelligible by people of average education and background (although I could give many stunning example of just such people giving the most strangely erroneous interpretations of simple passages, even by Protestant standards), as the Scripture also says, some of it is indeed "hard to understand".  Some of it is "hard to understand" even for scholars reading the original Hebrew or Greek text with deep knowledge of the originating cultures and deep spirituality – what of the common man?  

What has been the result of "every man for himself" Scripture interpretation for the last 400+ years (this was not even possible for the first 75% of Christian history, before the printing press)?  The result, as Catholics are indeed fond of pointing out but quite justified in doing so, are dozens or hundreds of major sects and denominations (they are the same thing) and literally tens of thousands of minor ones, all of them disagreeing with each other on something but all of them claiming quite firmly that their teachings are based on the Bible.

"This is a demand that we should lay aside the Bible, as a book utterly useless as a revelation of the Divine will, and that we should accept the Church as an infallible guide."  Again he demonstrates his ignorance (willful?) of what the Church really teaching by continuing with his either/or Scripture/Church false dichotomy.  Wylie may have preferred to believe that the Church "demanded that we lay aside the Bible" but that is nothing but pure ignorance of actual Catholic teaching speaking.  Again, the Church holds that Holy Scripture is inerrant; it is the written Word of God.  One who really and fully respects Scripture will also respect what it has to say about the Church.  A person who reads and understands all of Scripture taken as a whole will see how thoroughly Catholic it is, and how Wylie's illogical assertions about the Church vs. Scripture are not at all what Scripture really teaches [6]. 

That the Catholic Church says the things that Rev. Wylie wished She did about Scripture is an enduring part of that Deep Protestant Mythology – that collection of distortions and outright falsehoods that keep the majority of non-Catholics from ever honestly considering the Catholic Church, which history clearly demonstrates is indeed the actual visible, hierarchical Church that Jesus Christ founded.

Regarding the last sentence of the quote above: I've no idea who "Mr. Stapelton" is, and actually what he has to say regarding Catholicism is quite irrelevant unless we also establish that what he says is really what the Church teaches.  It clearly makes no sense to assert that a truth depends on someone recognizing it.  Infallibility even in the general sense refers to recognizing or teaching truth, not in defining it.  (In defense of Mr. Stapelton, it does seem more likely that Wylie misunderstood what he had to say rather than that he misspoke so grossly.)

So we see that Rev. Wylie has packed this very short quote with a savage distortion of actual Church teaching on more than one subject.

Wylie then declares "the seat or locality of that infallibility remains to this hour undecided".  Unbeknownst to Mr. Wylie, perhaps, but hardly "undecided", for Christ decided that question when He founded His Church on he whom He renamed "Rock" [7].  And as clear is the entire record of the Church, from the earliest records we have: Peter and his successors are the heads of the Church on earth; the Apostles and their successors share in the leadership; as every body needs a head, the Church has one, in Heaven, eternally, and also one here on earth whom that eternal Head has put in place.

For Wylie to deny the primacy of Peter is one thing, but for him to pretend (for his purposes here) that Catholics don't teach it simply disingenuous.  Now, of course infallibility and primacy are not "the same thing", but it ought to be pretty clear they are likely related at the outset.  And they are, and the Church has always taught this, implicitly and explicitly.  Remember that quote from Cyprian from 256, almost a century before the doctrine of the Hypostatic Union (Christ's Two Natures – God and Man – one of the most critical, basic doctrines of Christianity that virtually all non-Catholics accept) was defined: "Would heretics dare to come to the very seat of Peter whence Apostolic faith is derived and whither no errors can come?"

Is it clear that Cyprian not only believed that the Infallibility of the Church rested in the Chair of Peter, but that he simply took this for granted, as something every Christian then believed? 

Wylie's numerous incorrect statements belie not a disagreement with Catholicism but serious lack of understanding of it, including a severe ignorance of the early Church.

Another seriously deficient statement: "Infallibility was never heard of in the world till a full thousand years after Christ and his apostles."  We know at this point that is very far from true, but here are a few more resources:

http://www.scripturecatholic.com/the_church.html
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/primacy_of_peter.html
http://www.catholic.com/library/Origins_of_Peter_as_Pope.asp
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2000/0002fea2.asp

And another horrid misreading (or deliberate distortion) of history: 

'I ought not to adduce the Council of Nice,' says St. Augustine, 'nor ought you to adduce the Council of Ariminum, for I am not bound by the authority of the one, nor are you bound by the authority of the other. Let the question be determined by the authority of the Scriptures, which are witnesses peculiar to neither of us, but common to both. Thus this father rejects the authority of fathers, councils, and churches, and appeals to the Scriptures alone.

Well, that settles the question about Augustine, doesn't it?  For someone who has not actually read any work of St. Augustine's (and, again, has no real understanding of the early Church), perhaps.

Perhaps we should consider a couple other quotes from St. Augustine before trying to get to the real meaning of the above.  There is this famous one: "Rome has spoken; the case is closed."

Do we perceive any support for the authority of the Church there?  Or for the primacy of the See of Peter?  Even Infallibility, perhaps?  And then we have this:

For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So when those on whose authority I have consented to believe in the gospel tell me not to believe in Manichaeus, how can I but consent? Take your choice. If you say, Believe the Catholics: their advice to me is to put no faith in you; so that, believing them, I am precluded from believing you;-If you say, Do not believe the Catholics: you cannot fairly use the gospel in bringing me to faith in Manichaeus; for it was at the command of the Catholics that I believed the gospel.

In fact, the councils that Augustine was referring to in the passage quoted by Rev. Wylie were local councils [8].  It has been understood since the beginning of the Church that only general (universal) councils ratified by the supreme pontiff are binding upon all the faithful (and thus infallible); Augustine was merely pointing out the simple fact that each man was not bound by the decision of the other's local council – neither made any claim as to divine protection from error.

Wylie also advances the contention that the Catholic Church merely assumes that Infallibility must exist [in some sense]; he says: 

From the great variety of interpretations to which the Scriptures are liable, such a living tribunal, say the Romanists, is necessary; and because it is necessary, therefore it is. Was there ever a more glaring non sequitur? If Romanists wish to establish the infallibility of the Church of Rome by fair reasoning, there is only one way in which they can proceed: they must begin the argument on ground common to both parties. What is that ground? It is not the infallibility, because Protestants deny that. It is the holy Scriptures, the inspiration and infallibility of which both parties admit. The Romanist cannot refuse an appeal to the Bible, because he admits it to be the Word of God. He is bound by clear and direct proofs drawn from thence to prove the infallibility of his Church, before he can ask a Protestant to receive it. But the texts advanced from the Bible, taken in their obvious and literal import, do not prove the infallibility of the Church…

As we have seen, by no means does the Church simply declare that "because [infallibility] is necessary, therefore it is" – such is only the author's impression due to his ignorance of the subject.  (It is interesting, though, that he doesn't discuss this logical necessity – he makes no attempt to show it false.  He's right; the fact that Christ's Church is capable of teaching without error is logically necessary, but that is hardly the entire proof of it.)

As we have seen, the "Romanists" by no means "refuse an appeal to the Bible" – the Scriptural support is very strong indeed.  Wylie rejects it (the subset that he even appears to consider, that is).  He insists that his interpretations are the correct ones – such is the way of the un-Biblical doctrines of sola scriptura and private interpretation.  But Wylie not only does not read these passages in their "obvious and literal" senses, his interpretation is about as diametrically opposed to that of the entire body of writing from the early Church bishops, priests, and deacons that we have as is possible.  In that and in the Scriptures Themselves lies the proof of Wylie's errors.

[It is interesting that Wylie (condescendingly) suggests that the authority the Catholic Church proposes is logically circular, when actually it is, rather, spiral and it is the sola-scripture believing Protestant that cannot escape circular logic in defending the authority of Scripture – for he bases it, by definition, solely on Scripture.

The Catholic spiral goes like this:

1) Scripture is historically accurate (premise).

2) Scripture says that Christ established a divine Church possessing the charism of Infallibility.

3) The Scriptures are inspired because the Church says so.

Take it or leave it, but, properly understood, this is not circular logic; the conclusion is in no way stated or assumed by the premise.]

I'll just touch briefly upon a few of Wylie's ancillary statements and assertions. 

He claims that Catholics believe that only the pope is "possessed of sound senses".  Wylie fumbles around Catholicism like an ape beating the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Being possessed of sound senses and being protected by the Holy Spirit from promulgating an official teaching in faith or morals that is erroneous are very different things indeed!  (In fact, of course, such statements reek much more of prejudice than simple ignorance.)

And, lastly, there is Wylie's amazing complaint (or argument?) that "not one in ten" believes the Catholic Church's teachings regarding infallibility!  Well, that's certainly worthy and logical ammunition against this doctrine, is it not?  What portion of people were there who believed the Earth was round in the 10th century?  What proportion of the people of the Rome in the 2nd century accepted the truths of Christianity (which virtually all were familiar with)?  The truth of a proposition or teaching has nothing whatever to do with how many people in a certain setting or time, place, or culture accept it.

There are a number of other statements I could speak to – in fact, the document is filled with errors from start to finish.  In the interests of reasonable brevity I'll stop there.


Conclusion

Wylie's attacks on the doctrine of Infallibility come from both ignorance of the doctrine and its basis but also from a seemingly unrealistic and petulant demand for complete and total clarity – a twisting of the Holy Spirit's arm, if you will.  Such demands do remind me of similar exasperated requests from atheists and agnostics for God to simply make Himself known "clearly" to them by writing in the sky or some such thing.  (Of course, I declare that God has made Himself perfectly clear to those who search honestly and thoroughly, and I declare the same thing about every official teaching of the Catholic Church.)

Almost all non-Catholic Christians accept teachings and decisions of early Catholic councils such as the New Testament canon, the Hypostatic Union, and the Trinity – but frequently their acceptance stops thereabouts.  Why?  The fact is that there is no sensible answer to that question.  If the Church was not able to define the canon to inspired books and only inspired books, their Bibles, based on that canon, are not trustworthy – their base of authority has to be the Church whether this is realized it or not. 

Another fact is that there is stunning practical evidence for the Church's claim to be able to teach without error in the fact that Her huge body of official teachings is so incredibly consistent over a period of 20 centuries.  Of course, claims of "new" Catholic teachings abound, but, again, these spring from ignorance – most typically a mistaking of the formalization of a teaching with its origination.  (And so we can read on any number of fundamentalist websites how Papal Infallibility was "invented" in 1870 when it was finally formalized, though we have just seen that the teaching has always been with the Church.)

That mustard seed is indeed a Living Thing, led in a sense by men on earth yet guided by Her spouse, Jesus Christ.

In fact, we have 20 centuries of teachings of popes and councils, as well as condemnations - anathemas upon anathemas – and yet the best that [knowledgeable] critics can come up with is two or three cases of alleged changing of infallible teaching out of the thousands or tens of thousands of such pronouncements.  (Yet another gross misunderstanding is mistaking matters of discipline – such as clerical celibacy – with faith or morals.  Matters of discipline are prudential and not bound to immutable Truth.)

It should also be pointed out that it is essentially necessary for non-Catholics (who are committed to remaining non-Catholics) to reject the notion that the Church does not teach error, out of hand: to acknowledge it would be tantamount to accepting all the claims of the Catholic Church and morally obligating oneself to join that Church.  Further, the Protestant understanding of "church" as only an invisible entity (something, of course, completely at odds with the historical Church of the New Testament, which is very much visible) obviously precludes such a teaching: How can an invisible church really teach anything, officially, with or without error?

But, the Church that Christ founded is indeed visible, then and now: visible and hierarchical, with a visible earthly head, and visible teachings.  It is only such a visible Church that can actually be the "pillar and foundation of truth" that the Bible calls It.


Sources

Catholic Answers Online
John Salza, The Biblical Basis for the Papacy
Robert Sungenis, The Precedent for Infallibility

[1] The phrase "Anti-Catholic" is not meant to convey anything other than material that disputes the doctrines, practices, and history of the Catholic Church.

[2] Some less-than-professional and less-than-credible modern Protestant apologists have tried to assert that the set of books defined at Hippo and Carthage is not the same as that of Trent – this is based on confusion surrounding the naming and "packaging" of the books of Ezra, which can be a slightly confusing topic – however, when the relatively simple facts are known, it is clear that  there is no case whatsoever.  See http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=137641 and http://cathapol.blogspot.com/2007/04/canon-catholic-response-to-webster.html for example.  Furthermore,  these men are unable to see that if they were correct on that question it would do nothing at all for their argument against Catholic authority: the canon was not officially closed until it was dogmatically defined at Trent.  If what they assert were true they would succeed only in demonstrating that the canon is far from self-attesting.

[3] See http://www.catholicthinker.net/sola-scriptura/, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03274....

[4] http://www.catholicthinker.net/th-sou...

[5] Note that not only did the Apostles not rely on a "sola scriptura" mindset, but they decided the opposite of what such a mindset would have led them to.

[6] See http://www.scripturecatholic.com/the_church.html, http://www.scripturecatholic.com/scripture_alone.html, and http://www.scripturecatholic.com/oral....

[7] See http://www.catholicthinker.net/peter-the-papacy/.  Also note that all serious modern Protestant apologists acknowledge that Peter is the Rock: http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1998...

[8] Many thanks to Mark Shea for his assistance on this passage.


Copyright (c) 2009-2011 The Catholic Thinker 
Email: the.catholic.thinker.dude@gmail.com

How "Creation" Implies God (Dr. Dennis Bonnette)

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[ source ] 

Dr. Dennis Bonnette, retired at the end of 2003 as a Full Professor of Philosophy at Niagara University in Lewiston, New York. His website is called Origin of the Human Species . I have his personal permission to reprint this article.
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This article was first published in Faith and Reason, 11:3-4 (1985), 250-63. Permission to print kindly granted by Christendom Educational Corporation, Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia, 22630. 

Editor's note: As the "big bang theory" continues to grow in acceptance among the scientific community, the question of creation has again come under scrutiny. In this article, Dr. Bonnette studies the explanation given by "scientific materialists" as to the origin of the universe. Building upon St. Thomas Aquinas, he seeks to demonstrate that creation or even the simple existence of any being involves the presence of an act (esse) which demands an infinite power "outside of nothingness".   
The Background to the Problem 
There is nothing very new about the thesis of this article - for many proofs that God is Creator of all finite things have already been attempted - often with great success. Moreover, we know as an article of Catholic faith that the existence of God can be known with certainty by the light of natural human reason.1 Yet, what may be somewhat novel about this article is not its intent, but rather that it will attempt to prove God's existence by means of a series of diverse considerations about the very meaning of the term 'creation'. Moreover, it shall examine certain presumptions about creation which have been made by atheists, i.e., by those who deny the very conclusion which is presently being sought. 
Now it belongs to the very essence of any self-respecting atheist to deny that the world is created by God. And yet, this very observation. namely, that the atheist feels called upon to deny the reality of creation. is itself significant - so much so, that this curiously universal reaction of atheism shall serve as the very point of departure for our investigation. 
Astronomer Robert Jastrow has commented upon the strange situation now confronting his fellow astronomers (many of whom appear to be scientific materialists). Jastrow observes, "… I am fascinated by some strange developments going on in astronomy - partly because of their religious implications and partly because of the peculiar reactions of my colleagues."2
Jastrow proceeds to explain the enigma confronted by modem scientists:  

The essence of the strange developments is that the Universe had, in some sense, a beginning - that it began at a certain moment in time, and under circumstances that seem to make it impossible - not just now - but ever-to find out what force or forces brought the world into being at that moment.... the astronomical evidence proves that the Universe was created twenty billion years ago in a fiery explosion, and in the searing heat of that first moment, all the evidence needed for a scientific study of the cause of the great explosion was melted down and destroyed.3  

For centuries, atheistic materialists had blandly assumed the eternity of the world while denigrating the peculiarly Judeo-Christian belief of creation in time as a vestige of religious mythology. Science seemed squarely in the atheist's comer until the recent advent of the Big Bang theory - a theory whose scientific underpinnings now seem to grow increasingly secure.4 Small wonder, then, the "peculiar reactions" of many astronomers, as noted' by Jastrow! What he refers to are the efforts made by many of his fellow scientists to ignore and refute the mounting evidence in favor of the Big Bang.  
Jastrow describes the situation thus:  

Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind - supposedly a very objective mind - when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases.5  

The reactions to the possibility of a Big Bang began shortly after World War I-and from a rather surprising quarter:  

Around this time, signs of irritation began to appear among the scientists. Einstein was the first to complain. He was disturbed by the idea of a Universe that blows up, because it implied that the world had a beginning. 6  

It is not here suggested that Einstein and all others who opposed the Big Bang theory were atheists. Certainly, Einstein himself appears to have embraced the conception of God propounded by Spinoza.7
And yet, conversely, it is manifestly evident that scientific materialists would be in the forefront of those astronomers who would feel uncomfortable in the face of a new theory which seemed to challenge their most fundamental convictions. While it is not suggested that the physical theory of the Big Bang necessarily implies the theological doctrine of creation, nonetheless it is quite understandable that even the appearance of such an implication should cause more than a ripple of resistance among those both philosophically and scientifically indisposed to the notion of creation in time. Yet, we shall see that our concern in this paper will extend to a much broader notion of creation - a notion not restricted merely to that of "having a beginning in time."  The Problem 
The central question which this article seeks to address is simply the age old puzzle: "Why does anything exist at all?"8 The believer immediately responds with a simple affirmation of his faith: "Things exist because God exists to make them." But the atheist is driven to the logical alternative of insisting on the aseity of the Universe: "Things simply explain their own existence; their very fact of existing is its own explanation. Moreover, the Universe has always existed in some form or other, and hence, needs no God to have created it." Some atheists and agnostics attack the principle of explanation itself, suggesting that not everything may need a sufficient reason or that, perhaps, the principle is limited in scope to the observable phenomena. 
Examples of these positions are not difficult to find. The problem as to why things exist at all is clearly posed by Kai Nielsen (who is himself an atheist):  

Indeed, "Why is there anything at all?" is an odd question, but in certain philosophical and perhaps even religious moods it is natural to ask: Why is it that any of the things that make up the universe actually exist? They do, of course, but why is this so? There might have been nothing at all!9  

Or again, as F.E. Copleston put it in his famous 1948 British Broadcasting Corporation debate with Bertrand Russell:  

Well, I can't see how you can rule out the legitimacy of asking the question how the total, or anything at all comes to be there. Why something rather than nothing, that is the question?10 

John Hospers puts succinctly the theistic response (not that he holds it himself) to the given existence of the world:  

Why, indeed, does any universe at all exist - why is there a universe at all rather than simply nothing? For this you have no explanation at all. But I do. I hold that there is a necessary being, God, and that since he exists necessarily all contingent existents (and that includes everything in the universe) owe their existence to this necessary being and are explained by the fact that this necessary being exists.11  

But in a contrary response to this same most basic question, as Roy Wood Sellars puts it," ... the modem materialist stresses the aseity as against the contingence notion of creationalism."12  The meaning for the materialist of this "aseity" is put with clarity by Nielsen: " ... all other realities, if such there be, depend for their existence on these physical realities, but these physical realities do not depend on any other realities for their own existence."13
Hospers elucidates in his own manner the claim that the universe simply explains itself and needs no further explanation:  

... this is just a "brute fact" - the universe has such-and-such laws, and if those are ultimate (underived), we can't derive them from any other ones ... .If we have once arrived at a basic or underived law (not that we ever know that we have), then it is self-contradictory to ask for an explanation of it.14  

What Hospers means here is that the ultimate laws of the universe, by definition as ultimate, require no further explanation. They are self-explanatory.
Again, Anthony Flew challenges the position that God is any greater an intelligible explanation of the universe that is the universe itself:  

No reason whatever has yet been given for considering that God would be an inherently more intelligible ultimate that - say - the most fundamental laws of energy and stuff; much less for postulating the actual existence of such a further and extraordinary entity, instead of somehow contenting yourself with the alternative idea that the world we know is - in the vertical dimension-not dependent on anything else, and that it is also, in some state or other, probably eternal and without beginning.15  

The atheistic alternative explanation to claiming that the universe is its own explanation, is the claim that not everything needs an explanation. That is to say, the principle of sufficient reason itself is attacked. Again Nielsen puts the case succinctly:  

It would only follow that there is a necessary being if it were true that there is a complete explanation that would give us an adequate explanation of why anything exists at all. Why should we assume or even believe that we actually have such an explanation?  

It is certainly very natural to reject the principle of sufficient reason and to say that it has not been established that there must be or even that there is (if only we could discover it) an explanation for everything. Some events or states of affairs may never be explained. There may even be some things that are inexplicable.16  

Now it is not the intended task of this paper to reiterate and refute the monumental errors of idealism and process philosophy which provide the most substantive attacks on the principles of sufficient reason and causality. Those who sincerely seek the most exhaustive and convincing defense of these principles are referred to Garrigou-Lagrange's classical treatment in the latter part of the first volume of God: His Existence and Nature.17  Suffice it for our purpose to point out that it seems a bit hypocritical that scientific materialists should ultimately retreat behind a denial of rational principles when it is they who dare to mock all others as being "irrational" and "unscientific." It is indeed curious that those who demand a scientific explanation for everything should, in this singular instance, fail to see the need for any explanation whatever! One cannot but compare such selective abandonment of rational principles to the curious biological doctrine that spontaneous generation never occurs except, of course, when the evolutionist has need of it in order to initiate evolution itself!
In the end, the consensus of atheists and theists who address the basic question of existence, as well as the dictates of right reason, present the following stark alternatives: Either God (the Infinite Being) exists, or else, the world (all finite being) explains itself, or else, not all things have full explanations. It is our contention that the latter two alternates are not only absurd, but impossible. 
"Creation" as Expression of Infinite Power
Thus we see that, for those scientific materialists who do not opt for the intellectually suicidal denial of reason, the universe must be conceived as self-existent. Moreover, these atheistic materialists clearly accept the metaphysical principle that " ... from nothing, nothing comes to be, "18 since they universally deny that the cosmos had an absolute beginning in time. Thereby they implicitly acknowledge that a universe which just "pops into" existence (out of no pre-existent state) is not only absurd, but impossible. 
While it is evident that the natural intuition of the laws of being would require every intellect to affirm that being (the world) can only come from pre-existent being (a prior state of the world, or God), why is it the case that the reason of virtually every man, theist and atheist alike, sees in the notion of instantaneous creation of the world (ex nihilo et utens nihilo) the exclusive mark of divinity itself? With but a modicum of metaphysical reflection, the human mind - theist and atheist alike - grasps that the act of creation is intelligible only as an expression of power, infinite power. And it is precisely this manifestation of power without measure which commands intellectual assent to the existence of God (in the traditional meaning of the term) as the sole adequate explanation or foundation for such power.19 The average person who considers the matter will express the insight as follows: "To make something out of nothing can only be the act of an infinitely powerful being, God." The professional theologian or philosopher will render this insight with greater precision by saying: "That something should come to be while presupposing no pre-existent matter or subject requires the infinite power of God." In each case what is affirmed is the absolute need for unlimited power as the only adequate explanation for the universe beginning to be in time. Yet the question remains, "How can we be so certain that the 'popping into existence' of the world requires the existence of an all-powerful God?" Is this inference simply the product of a primordial insight or intuition which is, at root, rationally indefensible? Are we ultimately reduced to a form of fideism here? 
Suffice it to note that, if this be fideism, the atheist must suffer it as well - given his absolute denial that creation in time is possible!  
Why Creation Requires Infinite Power 
While there appears to exist a nearly universal intuitive recognition that the act of creating requires the infinite power of a Supreme Being, the attempt to give intellectual justification to this primordial insight is fraught with difficulty. For even if one grants that the existence of the world had an absolute beginning in time and that this beginning must have an adequate explanation, it is not at once clear precisely why this phenomenon requires an infinitely powerful cause. 
Is it because being infinitely transcends non-being? But then, the being of the world is itself only finite.20 Perhaps, alternatively, one should focus upon the fact that between non-being and being there is no middle ground. Hence the act which transcends this "gap" between non-being and being must be considered as literally immeasurable. Yet, no reputable thinker would dare to refer to a real relation between non-being and being - since a real relation always requires two real terms, and non-being is not real.21 Hence, the metaphors about "transcending an infinite gap" from non-being to being begin to sound suspiciously poetic or mystical. 
It is necessary to turn to the Common Doctor of the Church for illumination of a precise, scientific conception of exactly why creation requires infinite power. The following is neither poetry nor mysticism:  

It must be said that the power of the maker is measured not only from the substance of the thing made but also from the way of its making; for a greater heat not only heats more, but also heats more swiftly. Thus, although to create some finite effect does not demonstrate infinite power, nevertheless to create it from nothing does demonstrate infinite power.... For if a greater power is required in the agent insofar as the potency is more remote from the act, it must be that the power of an agent (which produces) from no presupposed potency, such as a creating agent does, would be infinite; because there is no proportion of no potency to some potency, as is presupposed by the power of a natural agent, just as there is no proportion of non-being to being.22  

The principle which St. Thomas employs here is laid down when he says, " ... a greater power is required in the agent insofar as the potency is more remote from the act… " For as power means the ability to produce being or to act, its measure is taken not merely from the effect produced but also from the proportion between what is presupposed by the agent in order to produce the effect and the effect produced. Thus, to make a chicken from pre-existing chickens requires a certain measure of power. But to produce a chicken from merely vegetative life would require even greater power; and to produce a chicken from non-living matter yet greater power. But to produce a chicken while presupposing no pre-existent matter at all clearly would require immeasurably greater power. It is immeasurable, as St. Thomas points out, precisely because" ... there is no proportion of non-being to being." 
Note that this argument does not rest upon an attempt to measure any supposed infinite relation between non-being and being. Rather, it is precisely the absolute lack of any relation whatever between non-being and being which demands an infinite power to create. For it is precisely the proportion of the potency to act which is measurable. The greater the distance (not physical distance, but remoteness or distinction in existence) between the potentiality and its act, the greater the power needed to actualize that potency. But such a proportion between some presupposed potentiality and its act is always measurable (in some sense), and therefore, is finite - since it is of the essence of the measurable to be finite and since a thing is measured only by its limits. But where there is no proportion, as between non-being and being, there can be no measure, and thus, no limit.23 The power required in that case knows no measure and no limit. It is therefore infinite. 
Thus we have the rational explanation for the universal metaphysical intuition that it would require infinite power to create ex nihilo.  
The True Meaning of "Creation" 
If it were necessary to prove creation of the world in time in order to demonstrate the existence of God, it appears that such a task could never be accomplished by unaided natural reason. For even the most famous Christian apologist for God's existence, St. Thomas Aquinas, concedes that reason alone cannot prove creation in time: it is simply an article of Catholic faith which is neither contrary to, nor demonstrable by, natural reason.24
In fact, according to St. Thomas, the world could well have existed from all eternity - and yet it would still be a creature of God.25 One of his famous Five Ways to prove God's existence, the Third Way, presupposes this very possibility in the logic of its argumentation.26 Thus, our belief in creation in time is just that - a matter of reasonable Christian belief.  The point of all this is simply to observe that, for St. Thomas, the notion of creation is quite distinct from the notion of beginning in time. After all, on the very supposition of an eternally existent God, could one deny the possibility that such a Being may have been creating the world from all eternity? And would not such a world be a creature in virtue of its being an effect of God despite its beginningless duration? In such a case, creation would be an ongoing production of the being of the world by God-with absolutely no reference to a beginning in time. 
Moreover, grant that God did create the world in time. What then would be the relationship of the world to God in the next instant after the moment of creation? Or the next day, or year, or twenty billion years? Could God cease causing the world and yet the world continue to exist? Certainly not. For, as St. Thomas observes, "With the cause ceasing, the effect ceases." Creation must not be conceived as a once and for all time act. God must continue to create, or else, the cosmos would at once fall back into the nothingness from which it came.28 St. Thomas refers to this continued act of creation as "conservation."29  In other words, a proper understanding of the term "creation" is conceptually distinct from the notion of "beginning in time." For St. Thomas, the world is created, not because it began in time, but because of its radical dependence on the Supreme Being during every moment of its existence - past, present, or future. 
We are thus left with three alternatives regarding the existence of the world: Either it came to be in time - thereby requiring an infinitely powerful Creator, or else, it has existed from all eternity as the created effect of that Creator, or else, it has existed from all eternity without the causation of such a Creator. 
On the first two suppositions, the existence of an infinitely powerful God is at once granted and this investigation is ended. But it is the third alternative which now requires closer scrutiny. 
For the existence of the world is itself an act whose being demands some explanation. Existence is an act. It is the very first act of any substance.30 And no substance is explained unless and until its substantial existence has been accounted for. Thus we may properly inquire as to the explanation of the existence of this finite world in which we find ourselves.
When we inquire as to the explanation or sufficient reason for a supposedly uncaused finite universe, it becomes at once clear that the need for some foundation in an infinitely powerful being is not escaped. For, just as there is no pre-existing potency for such a world which is created in time, so too, there is no pre-existing potency against which to measure the actually existing universe even if it has always existed (as atheists insist). Hence, its existential foundation, even if this not be conceived a cause outside its own being, must manifest a power which knows no measure, i.e., it is infinite. 
To put the matter in other terms, the power required to explain a being (or beings) is not dependent on whether that being is an effect (whether or not such effect happens to be produced in time). Rather, such power must be measured in terms of its being the reason why there is being rather than non-being. And, as St. Thomas points out, " ... there is no proportion of non-being to being."31 Hence, the power requisite to explain the existence of the cosmos knows no measure - whether it began in time or not. Immeasurable or infinite power is needed to explain any existence at all - of anything. 
But the world is clearly finite - since space and time are the limiting modes of material existence.32 And since the finite clearly cannot contain the infinite power needed to explain its own existence it is evident that an infinite Being must exist.  
Some Final Reflections 
It may well be suspected that the foregoing demonstration of God's existence is simply a variation of St. Thomas' Third Way of the Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, c., or else, perhaps, the argument which many have abstracted from his proof for God's eternity which is presented in the Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 15. Yet it should at once be evident that neither of these demonstrations proceed from the same starting point as the present analysis. For both of the aforementioned texts of St. Thomas take as their initial data the existence of things which are possible to be or not to be.33 But the present argument proceeds neither from the possibility nor from the necessity of the world - merely from its existence and from the need for a sufficient reason for said existence. If it were possible for the world to be its own reason for existing, then there would be no need to posit the existence of a transcendent God. It is only when it is shown that the existence of anything at all requires infinite power that it becomes evident that the finite cosmos necessarily requires an Infinitely Powerful Being as the only adequate explanation of its existence. Hence, the present argument proceeds, not from the possible, as such, but from an analysis of the creative power implicit in any being whatever - whether it be possible or necessary, finite or infinite. It is the factual existence of things which is at issue here, not their indifference to existence.
 But it is precisely that indifference to existence manifested by the possibles which St. Thomas uses to prove their causal dependence. As he puts it in the context of the Contra Gentiles:  

Everything however which is possible to exist has a cause, since it is from itself equally (related) to two (contraries), namely, existence and non-existence. (Therefore) it must be, if it appropriates to itself existence, that this is from some cause.34  

Again, the same point is made in the Third Way when St. Thomas insists that " ... that which is not does not begin to be, except through something which exists."35  In both these cases, again, St. Thomas reveals the causal dependence of the possibles. But the present proof seeks not to reveal causal dependence except as incidental to the need for infinite power as the sole adequate foundation for all existents. Perhaps the point of this could be more adequately expressed by saying that God Himself, Who is absolutely uncaused, nonetheless requires infinite power in order to render His own existence intelligible. That is why St. Thomas' task in the aforementioned contexts differs from that of the present article. 
In conclusion, the intellectual exploration completed in this article entails the following central points: 
First, it was established that there exists, either explicitly or implicitly, among theists and atheists alike, a universal intellectual recognition that the theological notion of an absolute beginning in time of the world entails a creatio ex nihilo whose sole adequate explanation would be an Infinitely Powerful Being, or God in the traditional sense of the term. 
Second, the concept of "creation" itself was scrutinized in such fashion as to reveal that it may be properly abstracted from any notion of "beginning in time" -thereby demonstrating that the mere existence of any being whatsoever entails the presence of an act (esse) which requires infinite power to be posited "outside of nothingness." (The central metaphysical task of this article has been to establish the philosophically scientific validity of this second step.) 
Third and lastly, it was seen that such infinite power clearly cannot reside in any finite being and that, therefore, it is absolutely necessary to admit the existence of an Infinitely Powerful Creator as the sole adequate explanation of the finite world.36  

Notes

1. See Denzinger's Enchiridion Symbolorum, n. 1806. 
2 Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1978), p. 11. 
3 Ibid., pp. 11-12. Scientists today pursue the vision of Grand Unified Theories which attempt to unify the fundamental forces of nature as different aspects of the same force. Senior physicist in the Argonne National Laboratory's High Energy Physics Division, David S. Ayres, remarks that the "Grand Unified Theories offer detailed insight into the processes which occurred at the instant of creation-the firey 'big bang' of twenty billion years ago." Argonne News, May/June, 1984, pp. 8-9. 
4 See ibid., pp. 14-16. The 1965 discovery of the apparently vestigial fireball radiation of the Big Bang by Amo Penzias and Robert Wilson of the Bell Laboratories has left the theory, at the present time, with "no competitors" according to Jastrow. 
5 Ibid., p. 16. 
6 Ibid., p. 27. Such aprioristic reactions by the scientific community are at least somewhat akin to the academic "witch-hunt" conducted by presumably "objective" scientists against the "outrageous" theories proposed by Immanuel Velikovsky. So irrational and bitter was the reaction in this latter case that it elicited extensive analysis by behavioral scientists. See The Velikovsky Affair: The Warfare of Science and Scientism, ed. by Alfred de Grazia (New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1966). 
7 Ibid., p. 28. 
8 In one of human intellectual history's less ingenuous moments, Karl Marx simply refuses to grant intellectual legitimacy to any question put to the very existence of the world. He labels such inquiry" ... perverse ... " since it implies" ... the inessentiality of nature and of man .... " Marx insists that for socialism " ... the real existence of man and nature has become practical, sensuous and perceptible ... " and hence such a question " ... has become impossible in practice." See Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1961), pp. 112-114. 
9 Kai Nielsen, Reason and Practice: A Modern Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1971), p. 180. 
10 "A Debate on the Existence of God: Bertrand Russell and F.E. Copleston" as reprinted in The Existence of God, edited by John Hick (London: The Macmillan Company, 1964), p. 175. 
11. John Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, 2nd edition (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1967), p. 440. 
12 "The New Materialism" by Roy Wood Sellars as found in A History of Philosophical Systems, edited by Vergilius Ferm (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1950), Ch. 33, p. 425. 
13 Kai Neilsen, op. cit., p. 334. 
14 John Hospers, op. cit., p. 442. 
15 Anthony Flew, God: A Critical Enquiry (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1984), p. 96. 
16 Kai Neilsen, op. cit., p. 18!. 
17 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and His Nature (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1934), p. 181-194. 
18 "… ex nihilo nihil fit. ... " St. Thomas Aquinas, In I Phys., 14, n. 2. Marietti ed. 
19 In point of fact, in God His very essence is identical with His infinite power by reason of the divine simplicity. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 3, a.7. 
20 See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 7, aa. 2, 3 and 4. 
21 See ibid., q. 13, a. 7, c. Here St. Thomas refers to the merely logical character of the " ... relations which are between being and non-being, which reason forms, insofar as it apprehends non-being as a certain extreme." " ... relationibus quae sunt inter ens et non ens, quas format ratio, inquantum apprehendit non ens ut quoddam extremum." Ottawa ed. See also Bernard Wuellner, S.l., Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1956). 
22 "Dicendum quod virtus facientis non solum consideratur ex substantia facti, sed etiam ex modo faciendi; maior enim calor non solum magis, sed etiam citius calefacit. Quamvis igitur creare aliquem effectum finitum non demonstret potentiam infinitam, tamen creare ipsum ex nihilo demonstrat potentiam infinitam .... Si enim tanto maior virtus requiritur in agente, quanta potentia est magis remota ab actu, oportett quod virtus agentis ex nulla praesupposita potentia, quale agens est creans. sit infinita; quia nulla proportio est nullius potentiae ad aliquam potentiam, quam praesupponit virtus agentis naturalis, sicut non entis ad ens." Ibid., q. 45, a. 5, ad 3 .. Ottawa ed. 
23 Note well that St. Thomas does not argue from the remoteness of the potency from the act in the case of creation. Rather, he considers the ..... proportion of no potency to some potency ... " - for a creating agent presupposes no potency whereas a natural agent always presupposes some potency. He observes that there exists no such proportion just as... there is no proportion of non-being to being." A fortiori, the remoteness of no potency to the act of already created being becomes even more immeasurable (if that were possible). 
24 See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 46, aa. I, 2, and 3; De Potentia Dei, q. 3, aa. 14 and 17. See also, On the Eternity of the World, translated by Cyril Vollert, S.J. (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1964), pp. 2-73. 
25 See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 46, a. 2, ad. I. See also, Etienne Gilson, The Elements of Christian Philosophy (New York and Toronto: The New American Library, 1963), p. 214. 
26 See Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, translated by L.K. Shook (New York: Random House, 1956), pp. 69-70. See also St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 13, where St. Thomas insists ï.... that the most efficacious way to prove God to exist is not on the supposition of the newness of the world but rather on the supposition of the eternity of the world."  ".... quod via efficacissima ad probandum Deum esse, est ex suppositione novitatis mundi, non autem sic, ex suppostitione aeternitatis mundis .... " Leonine ed. 
27 "Cessante causa, cess at effectus." St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 96, a. 3, ob. 3. Ottawa ed. Also, in the Second Way of his famous Five Ways to prove God's existence, St. Thomas insists that  "... removing however the cause, the effect is removed .... "  " …remota autem causa, removetur effectus .... " Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, c. Ottawa ed. 
28 See ibid., q. 104, a. I. 
29 "It must be said that the conservation of things by God is not through some new action, but through a continuation of that action by which He gives existence, which action is indeed without motion and time." "Dicendum quod conservatio rerum a Deo non est per aliquam novam actionem, sed per continuationem actionis qua dat esse, quae quidem actio est sine motu et tempore." Summa Theologiae, I, q. 104, a. I, ad 4. Ottawa ed. 
30 See ibid., q. 4, a. I, ad 3. See also, Etienne Gilson, op. cit., p. 134. 
31 Ibid., q. 45, a. 5, ad 3. 
32 See note 19 above. 
33 For an analysis and comparison of the starting points and development of these two arguments by St. Thomas see my monograph, Aquinas' Proofs for God's Existence (The Hague: Martinus-Nijhoff, 1972), p. 129 ff. 
34 "Omne autem quod est possibile esse, causam habet; quia quum de se aequaliter se habeat ad duo, scilicet esse et non-esse, oportet, si ei approprietur esse, quod hoc sit ex aliqua causa." Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 15. Leonine ed. 
35 "... quod non est, non incipit esse nisi per aliquid quod est." Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, c. Ottawa ed. 
36 The notion of "explanation" does not necessarily denote exterior causality. Note that, while every being requires a sufficient reason, only those beings whose sufficient reason for existing is not totally within themselves would require an extrinsic sufficient reason or cause.  
 
 

The Philosophical Impossibility of Darwinian Naturalistic Evolution (Dr. Dennis Bonnette)

 Charles Darwin
Dr. Dennis Bonnette, retired at the end of 2003 as a Full Professor of Philosophy at Niagara University in Lewiston, New York. His website is called Origin of the Human Species . I have his personal permission to reprint this article.
* * * * *
This article was first published in Faith and Reason, 33:1-4, (2008), 55-67. Permission to print kindly granted by Christendom Educational Corporation, Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia, 22630.

Some two decades ago, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger maintained that scientific evidence pointed to some sort of biological evolution. In a homily, he declared, "Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth." [1] Still, "mounting support" is not objective certitude, and "some theory of evolution" does not depict its exact form.
In my book Origin of the Human Species, I conclude that we may never know whether the biological theory of human or general evolution is natural scientific fact. [2] I maintain this because of (1) the complexity of the issues raised, (2) evolution's unscientific unfalsifiability, and (3) the inherent limitations of natural scientific knowledge, especially when dealing with factual events hidden deeply in the recesses of prehistoric time. Indeed, Pope Benedict XVI has aptly pointed out that there is no way to prove or disprove experimentally that evolution actually occurred over immense past ages.
A 1998 survey of the National Association of Scientists found that only ten percent of its members believed in God or immortality, with the number being only five percent among biologists. [3] Most natural scientists, especially biologists, today embrace Darwinian evolutionary theory, which claims to explain life's origin and development without divine intervention. Still, some scientists continue to challenge such Darwinian presumptions, attacking naturalistic explanations and the claimed "fact of evolution" itself. Philosopher Larry Azar documents how, while leading evolutionists agree about the "fact of evolution," they often contradict each other concerning proposed mechanisms whereby this "fact" took place. [4] Still, given the genetic evidence that all forms of life appear somehow related, Darwinists remain undaunted in defending their naturalistic claims.
Traditional metaphysicians know that God exists, and that naturalism is simply an intellectually unfounded presumption of "pure" Darwinism. The First Vatican Council defined that God's existence can be known with certainty, by the light of unaided human reason from created things. [5] Observing created effects leads the mind inexorably back to the Uncreated Cause, God. St. Thomas Aquinas' famous Five Ways are the classic expression of this intellective process. [6] Properly understood, these rational approaches to God remain irrefutable, despite the misunderstandings of David Hume and a host of modern skeptics. [7] Whether the Cosmos began in time or not, God's existence remains the sole adequate explanation for its very existence. Darwinists and scientific creationists debate cosmological and biological evolution as if the outcome determines God's existence. Yet, metaphysicians know this current intellectual combat is utterly irrelevant to the question of God's existence. They know that any supposed evolutionary process presupposes God's ongoing ontological support for the Universe itself and for all the chemical and biological mechanisms evolution may entail. Still, notwithstanding this rationally necessary transcendent metaphysical framework, otherwise seemingly naturalistic explanations of biological evolution may still be evaluated for intrinsic adequacy.
Benedict XVI is also reported to have adopted the distinction between "micro-" and "macro-evolution," as early as the 1980s, with acceptance of micro-evolution, but skepticism about macro-evolution. [8] Micro-evolution is evolution within the same species, whereas macro-evolution is evolution from one species to a new and distinct species. This begs the question, if evolution means transforming from one species to another species, what is a "species?" Darwin was utterly confused by the question, since he desperately needed the concept of species to support his claimed "origin of species," but conceived of evolution in terms of endless mere variations in accidental qualities -- thereby undercutting the essential differences needed to render species distinct. [9] His more recent disciples do no better. While some still insist on the extra-mental reality of species, the logical default position of mainstream evolutionists is nominalism, according to which "species" do not really exist, but are merely names we give to describe mid-ranges of ever-blending series of unique individuals. Even the "punctuated equilibrium" hypothesis advocated by Niles Eldredge and Steven J. Gould does not embrace Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster's" instant formation, but merely accelerates the transformation process by reducing it to thousands or even hundreds of years -- far too rapid to be observed in the fossil record, but still gradualistic in nature.
Whether expressed in terms of cladistics, morphology, or reproductive isolation, the modern biological species concepts all share the same essential defect: they fail to detect essential differences between individuals in diverse "species." All differences are expressed in terms of sensible accidents, such as configuration of spines, presence or absence of a backbone, ability to reproduce and produce fertile offspring, and so forth. Biological species concepts fail to express essential differences between species -- thus undercutting the whole notion of true evolution from one species to another really distinct species. Biologist Ernst Mayr maintains that it is necessary to get past empirical terms, such as "phenotypic, morphological, genetic, phylogenetic, or biological" in order to get to the "underlying philosophical concepts." [10]
The philosophical natural species concept is based on the reality of a metaphysical essence which is undetectable by modern biologists. Penetrating beyond sensible accidents, the philosophical natural species expresses essential properties (per se accidents), which are either present or absent. Living things are different from non-living, not merely in degree, but in kind. Animals possess sentient powers absent in vegetables. Human beings possess intellect and will lacking in merely sentient organisms. Since their essential properties differ, human beings, brute animals, and plants differ according to natural species and specific essence. [11]
Evolutionists and anti-evolutionists alike accept intra-specific evolution or micro-evolution, such as the bacteria that grow resistant to antibiotics or the English peppered moths that changed colors during the industrial revolution. But anti-evolutionists absolutely deny that inter-specific evolution or macro-evolution occurs, such as the fishes evolving into land animals. [12] What confuses the issue is that these same anti-evolutionists usually adopt biological species concepts. This leads them to fight the battle in terms of attacking what might be merely variations within the same philosophical natural species. People do not easily conceive that a dog and an elephant actually belong to the same philosophical natural species because they share the same sentient powers even though their biological organization appears markedly diverse. 
Darwinian evolution's real test rests in its claim to climb the ladder of natural perfections through interaction of unaided matter. That is to say, can matter give rise to life, then to vegetative life, then to sentient life, and then to intellective life -- all by itself? Does unaided evolution possess this self-perfecting capability? Or, does this process violate the basic metaphysical principle that the lower cannot give rise to the higher? In Origin of the Human Species, I suggest that unaided material evolution might be possible, at least up to the appearance of true man, whose spiritual intellective soul demands creative intervention by God. [13] Now I propose to show that even the initial stages of evolution from lower to higher natural philosophical species cannot be explained adequately merely in terms of purely physical agents. (I include the transition from non-life to life in the broad notion of "evolution," since materialists presume this process, called "abiogenesis," also happens naturalistically.)
Using the method of natural philosophy, biologist Thomas J. Kaiser has recently argued that every organism has an essence that governs reproduction so that the parent organism makes use of mutated DNA solely to produce variations within its own species, never to produce a new species. [14] He explains how all purely natural reproduction entails a biological process which assures that the same form must be found in the offspring: "All generation in the sense proper to the living involves the separation of a part that participates in the life and therefore, the species of the parent. Generation simply involves the production of a new individual analogous to separating timber from timber. In other words, life does not begin at conception, a new individual life does." [15] In the case of sexual reproduction of subhuman animals, the ovum appears to need the sperm to remove an impediment to full development, but the moment the ovum is separated from the mother, it becomes a new individual of the same form and species as the mother. If mutations are used by the offspring at all, either they will bring about accidental differences in the same species, or be harmful to the species. There is no purely natural way for the form of a new species to be educed.
While Kaiser offers a significant demonstration against Darwinian evolution, I propose a somewhat different approach. Relying less on empirical biological science, I too employ the metaphysical principles of St. Thomas Aquinas -- and application of the hylemorphic (matter-form) doctrine of Aristotle. These are not outdated hypotheses, but rather the only rational explanation of how things can exist in the form of species at all. And "form" is what such things are all about. If things above the atomic level actually exist, some real metaphysical principle must account for them existing as single, unified, real beings of such and such nature. Unless form is present to unify and specify the type of being that exists, all reality would ultimately reduce to the world of atomism in which "things" are not really things at all, but merely conveniently named "piles" of atoms existing in a temporary state of equilibrium. Neither cabbages nor kings would actually exist.
Without forms which distinguish them, species cannot be distinguished -- and evolution becomes impossible. Form plays several critical roles: (1) it makes a thing one thing, a substantial unity, (2) it determines a thing's nature and places it into its species, (3) it gives existence to the substance as "this" thing, and (4) it actively determines matter as to its specificity. This last role is critical in understanding why unaided natural inter-specific evolution is impossible.
In Origin of the Human Species, I examine whether merely material reorganization might account for the appearance of new and higher things: life from non-life, animal life from vegetative life, human life from animal life. I cite Australian philosopher and theologian Austin M. Woodbury who maintains that such changes are not possible, since "an effect cannot be higher than its cause, and every agent produces a like unto itself." [16] Thus, inter-specific evolution would appear impossible for two reasons: (1) because the effect (a new and higher form) cannot come from an insufficient cause (the prior and lower form), and (2) an agent in a given species tends only to the production of effects that remain within that same natural species. For both reasons, non-living agents cannot produce living effects, non-sentient organisms cannot give rise to sentient ones, and non-intellective primates cannot give rise to intellective ones. 
Still, it may be argued that new and higher forms might arise through per accidens causality. Chance interactions of lower agents might result in such reorganization of matter as to befit actualization by higher forms. Philosopher John N. Deely argues that abiogenesis entails no violation of the principle of causality and that no need exists for special divine "concursus (still less intervention)." [17] He argues that inter-specific evolution is possible because it entails, not univocal causation (in which the cause must always be proportionate to its effect), but equivocal causation (in which the cause "need not be proportioned to its effect except per accidens"). [18] Deely's insight is this: "The principle is the involution and mutual activation of the causes: causae ad invicem sunt causae." [19] Thus reciprocal causality might entail chance events resulting in genuine transformism. Philosopher Jacques Maritain explains the classical notion of chance as events occurring from the "intersection of causal chains," which produce an effect outside the natural finality of the interacting agents. [20] While the activities and end of a specific agent cannot exceed its nature except by a miracle, chance interactions of multiple agents might thus effect new forms present in none of the interacting agents.
This scenario fits the general thesis proposed by evolutionists. Non-living matter might so interact as to produce primitive organisms. Genetic mutations in organisms caused by environmental and other natural factors might cause normal generative processes to produce new genetic material resulting in new species. As a philosopher, the exact mechanisms entailed, and even their scientific feasibility, do not concern me. That is left to the ongoing scientific discussion. My concern is whether this proposed philosophical explanation for abiogenesis and transformism is valid. Closer examination reveals it is not.
Woodbury's objections to inter-specific evolution go beyond noting that lower forms cannot give rise to higher ones. He argues that changes in matter alone are not sufficient because form, specifically substantial form, plays a special role in the coming-to-be of new and higher natural species. Since form determines the entire organism to its proper species, form also places the matter into its species, that is to say, makes it fitting for this particular kind of form. Aquinas points out that "matter must be proportionate to form." [21] Thus it would be impossible to have essentially distinct forms without any real difference in the organization of the matter. Woodbury maintains that only the final disposition of the matter occasions the eduction of a new substantial form. That is to say, the new and higher form of living substance becomes possible only at the exact moment in which the organization of the matter is perfectly and completely proportioned to that new form. But, he maintains, "The ultimate disposition [of the matter] is never together with the form which is corrupted, but is together with that which is generated." [22]
This crucial insight means that the material organization needed for the new and higher form is never present until that new form itself is present. But it is form which is the active principle in the hylemorphic (matter-form) composite, whereas matter is the potential, or passive, principle. This means that form places matter into its proper species, and not vice versa. Matter is related to form as potency is to act. Aquinas maintains, "Since it is receptive to act, potency must be proportioned to that act." [23] Matter, as the potential principle, is receptive to form, which is the active principle. [24] Hence, matter's ultimate disposition must be determined by the new and higher form. Without that new form simultaneously existing, the ultimate disposition of the matter will never be present to fit that new form. As the active principle in determining which species the matter befits, form possesses ontological priority in determining the final organization of the matter which befits that new and higher species. Thus, the prior, or intermediate, or even penultimate disposition of the matter cannot account for the ultimate organization of the matter. The new form alone plays that role. Since (1) the prior less perfect form cannot account for the coming-to-be of the posterior more perfect form, and since (2) no prior state of matter can account for the new form's eduction, it necessarily follows that some agency outside all the natural material causes at work must explain that new form. In a word, natural evolutionary processes alone cannot adequately explain new and successively higher philosophical natural species. Naturalistic evolution is metaphysically impossible.
At this point, those more versed in natural science than in Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy are doubtless incredulous that philosophers could be so naïve about the proper role that mutations play in explaining the appearance of new and higher organisms. As Kaiser points out, to most natural scientists today, the DNA and genes alone determine the species of an organism. [25]  Thus mutations alone would suffice to explain transformism.  On the contrary, (1) this is not a natural scientific analysis, but one of philosophical science, and (2) unless one reverts to some sort of crypto-atomism, the role of form in the production of new organisms dictates Woodbury's inference.
It matters not whether natural scientists can discern when genes or DNA or even more precise determinations of material organization necessary for a given natural species are present. What matters is that by the time such material organization is present it is already being specified by the appropriate substantial form. The question then is whether matter's disposition is responsible for the presence of that new form, or form's presence is responsible for that matter's ultimate disposition. Natural scientists think that proper material organization alone is what constitutes new species, and hence, assume that material changes alone can explain them. They reveal inherently materialistic philosophical presuppositions. Unless one is a crypto-atomist, the reality of things above the atomic level demands some sort of matter-form composition in which form dominates and specifies material organization -- so that it is the new form that accounts for the material organization that natural science discerns. The only philosophically adequate explanation is that it is the new form which is responsible for the ultimate material organization -- not the reverse.
Cartesian dualism dominates many people's thought. For example, they think that a human soul could just be added to a subhuman primate to produce a human being. But, then, man would not be one being, but a composite of two things: (1) a human form (soul) and (2) an atomic organization somehow suited to sentient activities. On the contrary, Aristotelian hylemorphic doctrine preserves the existential unity of things, especially of man himself. We are one being, one substance. Form and matter compose a single unified living thing. Form actively dominates and organizes matter so as to render it perfectly fitted to the species to which the organism belongs. This means that man's matter is not simply "animal matter" with a human form, but human matter because it has a human form. Because man has a human form, he is capable of intellective and volitional activities supported by his specifically human material organization.
We have no way of ascertaining the exact material organization needed for actuation by a given form. But we know, for example, that the formal organization of a human being is different from that of a merely sentient organism, or else, that sentient organism would be a human being. Gross morphology is not a reliable indicator of matter's fittingness for a given form. A human corpse's macro-organization may appear more fitted to human life than that of a human zygote, but its micro-organization is not. Since forms of diverse species are really diverse, they must make a real difference in the matter of those species. Hence, the matter of the lower species cannot be the same as the matter of a higher species. Even the penultimate matter of the prior, lower species is not suited to the form of a higher species. Only when the new form appears does matter's "micro-organization" become fitted to the higher species. While natural science might even be able to detect that matter suddenly appears appropriate to the new, higher species, by that moment in time the new form is already present. But where does the new form come from? From the previous material conditions? No, because they were not fitted to the new form. From the previous form? No, because the lower cannot give rise to the higher. From the new organization of the matter? But that matter receives its new organization from the new form! Whence, then, the new form?
To argue that the matter is the same before and after such a change is to fail to heed the necessary fittingness of matter to form, and the dominance of matter by its form. To say that evolution reorganizes the matter and that, thereby, the new form is educed, is to put the cart before the horse -- since it is the new form which is responsible for determining the matter as proper to a new specific type of living organism, and not the reverse. Solely the new and higher form's appearance enables matter to achieve its proper organization for this new species. But, the prior material organization and form cannot account for the appearance of the new form. Evolutionary material processes alone cannot account for new and higher natural philosophical species.
This philosophical conclusion is compatible with methodological naturalism in natural science, which remains free to seek natural reasons for genetic changes. Natural scientists may propose mechanisms claiming to bridge even inter-specific evolution to new philosophical natural species.  But competent metaphysicians will know such mechanisms are not the entire story. Genuine transformism from lower to higher natural species requires preternatural intervention, though such intervention need not be discernible to natural scientists.
Since natural agents alone cannot account for the coming-to-be of life forms, or of higher life forms from lower ones, merely discovering physical conditions suitable for life does not warrant empirical scientists' nearly universal assumption that life abounds throughout the cosmos. If such does occur, preternatural agency must intervene in every instance. Proper understanding of Aquinas' First Way of proving God exists reveals that God constantly acts in the natural world so as to explain the coming-to-be of all things subject to change. [26] Divine providence might ordain that life in many forms fills the universe. Yet, His ways are inscrutable. Short of their actual encounter, no scientific evidence or speculation entails that such life must be found. We shall only know that we are not alone when we actually first meet our extraterrestrial neighbors -- even microbial ones. Even so, Darwinian naturalism will not adequately explain why they are there.
END NOTES
[1] In the Beginning…: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), paragraph 63.
[2] Dennis Bonnette, Origin of the Human Species (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, second edition, 2003, 2007), p. 210.
[3] Gregory W. Graffin and William B. Provine, "Evolution, Religion and Free Will," American Scientist, 95:4 (July-August 2007): 294-7.
[4] Larry Azar, Evolution and Other Fairy Tales (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2005), pp. 356-69.
[5] Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum, 1806.
[6] Summa theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3.
[7] Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's book God: His Existence and His Nature (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1939) remains the classical exposition of the Quinque Viae, fully treating their metaphysical presuppositions and exhaustively refuting David Hume, Immanuel Kant, various process philosophers and their like. My book Aquinas' Proofs for God's Existence (The Hague: Martinus-Nijhoff, 1972) defends the impossibility of infinite regress of proper causes, a key premise of the Five Ways. 
[8] John L. Allen, Jr., "Benedict's Evolving Thought on Evolution," National Catholic Reporter, 42:39 (September 8, 2006): 5.
[9] Azar, Evolution and Other Fairy Tales, pp. 168-72.
[10] Mayr, The Species Problem (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1957), p. 17.
[11] Bonnette, Origin of the Human Species, pp. 27-39.
[12] Ibid, pp. 6-7.
[13] Ibid., pp. 41-63,107-10.
[14] Thomas J. Kaiser, "Whether Darwinian Evolution Is Possible," The Aquinas Review, 13 (2006): 1-35.
[15] Ibid., p. 24.
[16] Austin M. Woodbury, Philosophical Psychology (Sydney, N.S.W.: Aquinas Academy, unpublished manuscript, 1945), p. 59.
[17] John N. Deely, The Philosophical Dimensions of the Origin of Species (Chicago: Institute for Philosophical Research, 1969), pp. 324-5.
[18] Ibid., p. 324.
[19] Ibid., p.321.
[20] Jacques Maritain, Preface to Metaphysics (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1939), pp. 141-51.
[21] Summa theologiae, I, q. 76, a. 5, ob. 1.
[22] Austin M. Woodbury, Cosmology (Sydney, N.S.W.: Aquinas Academy, unpublished manuscript, 1949), p. 68.
[23] Summa theologiae, I., q. 75, a. 5, ad 1.
[24] "First, he [Aristotle] explains that the form is substance to a greater degree than the composite....Third, he shows that the form and the composite are substance to a greater degree than matter.... He accordingly says, first, 'that the specifying principle,' that is the form, is prior to matter. For matter is a potential being, and the specifying principle is its actuality; and actuality is prior to potentiality in nature. And absolutely speaking it [form] is prior in time because the potential is brought to actuality only by means of something actual....Hence it is clear that form is prior to matter, and that it is also a being to a greater degree than matter....Hence form must be being to a greater degree than matter." In VII Meta., 2, n. 1278. St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, John P. Rowan, trans. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1961), Library of Living Catholic Thought, Vol. 11, p. 498.
[25] Kaiser, "Whether Darwinian Evolution Is Possible," p. 25.
[26] Summa theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3.; See Dennis Bonnette, "A Variation on the First Way of St. Thomas Aquinas," Faith & Reason, 8:1 (Spring 1982): 34-56.

Catholic Lay Apologetics: a Long and Noble "Magisterially Approved" History Despite the Fantastically Ignorant and Ubiquitous Charges of Anti-Catholic Critics

 G. K. Chesterton: lay apologist with no theological education and no college degree (and the most successful Catholic apologist of the 20th century)

Presbyterian polemicist Tim Enloe: If one wants to understand the origins and impulses of the lay Catholic theological-apologetical world, one need look no farther than Hatch's The Democratization of American Christianity. (1-20-11)

Reformed trash-talker TAO (The Anonymous One): But in practice, that top-down management Rome provides allows loose cannons like Armstrong to do what they do, even when what they do is technically in violation of canon law. (7-31-11)

Anti-Catholic sophist Matthew D. Schultz: The lay-Catholic convert industry, of which the lay-Catholic blogosphere is a definitive part, merely represents a conservative sociological trend. (1-20-11)

. . . the general distance between lay-Catholic blogosphere apologetics and the teachings of the Magisterium, all of which plays into the former being a sociological movement with neither authority nor relevance.(1-21-11)

The lay Catholic blogosphere represents little more than a diminutive, American, theologically conservative movement of (comparatively) wealthy individuals. (1-21-11)

Reformed blowhard John Bugay:  . . . the Roman Catholics are pronouncing on what "Magisterial teaching" actually is, what Roman Catholic doctrine is, and they are doing so in the non-authorized, and even backward way that Matthew is describing. . . . They are NOT reliable expositors of Magisterial teaching. So long as any of these self-appointed apologists attempt to say what Roman Catholic doctrine is, Matthew's assessment is dead-on. (1-21-11)

Avery Cardinal Dulles (whom Schultz, above, cited at length in a futile effort to disparage lay apologetics) noted the high importance historically, of lay Catholic apologists:

Who are the finest Christian apologists of the past two thousand years? Why?

A great apologist must be a firm believer, a profound thinker, a sensitive guide to the perplexed, and a clear and eloquent writer. In my book I devote particular attention to St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal, and John Henry Newman, all of whom were conspicuous for these qualities.

In the twentieth century the most successful apologists may have been G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, who were not professional theologians but highly talented and popular authors who had undergone personal conversions, the one to Catholicism, the other to be more general form of Christian orthodoxy. 

("The History and Purpose of Apologetics," interview by Carl E. Olson) 

Three of the six examples that Cardinal Dulles gave of the "finest" and "most successful" apologists, were non-ordained laymen (Pascal [of Pensées fame], Chesterton, and Lewis), and as he noted, Chesterton and Lewis were not even formally trained theologically. Chesterton didn't even obtain a college degree of any sort. Frank Sheed (layman) was another important Catholic apologist in the 20th century.


Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman noted how lay apologists actually dominated the field in the early Church, and also continued to be prominent in his own 19th century, as they obviously are also in our own time (Kreeft, Howard, Hahn, Muggeridge, Keating, Madrid, Akin, Ray, Shea, Staples, Martignoni et al).

Theologians inculcate the matter, and determine the details of that Revelation; they view it from within; philosophers view it from without, and this external view may be called the Philosophy of Religion, and the office of delineating it externally is most gracefully performed by laymen. In the first age laymen were most commonly the Apologists. Such were Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Aristides, Hermias, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Lactantius. In like manner in this age some of the most prominent defences of the Church are from laymen: as De Maistre, Chateaubriand, Nicolas, Montalembert, and others. 
(The Idea of a University, Part II, ch. 4, sec. 4: "General Religious Knowledge," 1856)

Some other examples of prominent lay apologists are Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam (1813-1853), Guy Lefèvre de la Boderie (1541-1598), and Justus Baronius Calvinus (1570- after 1606),
As anyone can see, the historical facts are quite a bit different from the ridiculously distorted scenario presented by the loudest-mouthed anti-Catholic zealots on the Internet today, who know almost nothing concerning what they deign to endlessly pontificate on (the history of Catholic apologetics and very prominent and pronounced lay participation in it).
Related Reading
The Early Apologists (Coptic Orthodox Church Network)

Anti-Catholic TAO Sez I am a "Loose Cannon" Who is "in Violation of Canon Law" and Needs to be Shut Up by "Rome"

 
We may call this fascinating new anti-Catholic tactic the "Cannon-Canon Approach."

Add this to the collection of ridiculous "arguments" from the inveterate slanderer TAO ("the Anonymous One" aka "Turretinfan"): a guy who is so paranoid about his identity that he actually wears a covering over his head in public debates:

You will notice that it is Mr. Armstrong's method that gets him in trouble quite often.

But Rome is not shutting him up. One of the selling points of Rome is, in theory, it's top-down management style. But in practice, that top-down management Rome provides allows loose cannons like Armstrong to do what they do, even when what they do is technically in violation of canon law.

(on the Cryablogue site, 7-31-11)

The canon law charge is so utterly absurd I won't spend any time on it. I suspect (knowing TAO) that he has in mind some nonsense (that comrade Steve Hays has often expressed) about Catholic laymen supposedly not being authorized to defend Holy Mother Church -- even though the magisterium of the Church has not only made it clear that lay apologetics and evangelism are perfectly allowable, but also highly encourages them:

Apologetics and Lay Apostolates: Express Approval and Strong Encouragement From Popes Paul VI and John Paul II
Catholic Church Teaching on Internet Evangelism, Catechesis, and Apologetics: Excerpts (edited by Dave Armstrong)
Bishops' Support of Lay Catholic Apologetics: Refutation of Tim Enloe and His Anti-Catholic Cronies' Ridiculously False Contentions

***

Is Dinesh D'Souza a "High Profile" Fallen-Away Catholic? (vs. Steve Hays)

 
Anti-Catholic Reformed Protestant polemicist Steve Hays thought that he scored a big zinger against Catholics. He wrote:

Catholics like to hype high-profile conversions or reversions to Rome. But someone traffic [sic] in the opposite direction doesn't get quite the same press.

(Turning from Rome, 7-29-11)

He then cited an article D'Souza wrote (dated 8-31-10), explaining that he was not a Catholic. The trouble is the definition of "high profile." I agree that D'Souza is a prominent conservative writer and general Christian apologist. But a "high profile conversion or reversion" is generally regarded as a person who was solidly in the Protestant or Catholic camp and then moved to another. If a person was never truly a zealous partisan of his or her former communion, I fail to see how this is a "high profile" deconversion, no matter how prominent the person may otherwise be, because the key factor is not the successes of their career or how great their occupational fame, but rather, the religious and theological factors in particular.

Thus, Hays' point is fundamentally flawed. Here I am writing about a person he thinks represents some hugely significant "victory" for evangelical Protestantism over against Catholicism (whereas he thinks Catholics don't and won't do so). He's wrong about that. Nor is this the first time I have (as an apologist and convert myself, and student of such things) treated deconversion. I wrote about Bill Cork (Adventist-to-Catholic-to Adventist) two times (one / two). I showed there that he hadn't really firmly grounded himself in Catholicism.

Our task as Catholic apologists is to show (in these instances) that inadequate reasoning was brought to bear in forsaking of the Catholic Church, or that there was no firm commitment to begin with. I think I did that in Cork's case, and shall do so in D'Souza's in a moment. I've also critiqued many stories of atheist deconversion out of Christianity in general, showing each time, I believe, that the reasons were inadequate or fallacious.

And I have responded to ridiculous attacks on Catholic converts (such as Francis Beckwith or former Anglican, Fr. Al Kimel), that try to run down the person involved and attack their integrity and/or their previous knowledge. I've been the recipient of many such attacks, myself (uniformly wrongheaded and usually weighed-down by the most ludicrous errors of simple fact, or absurd attempts at mind- and heart-reading).

But back to D'Souza. Why would I deny that he was a "high profile Catholic"? I do so based on his own report in the very article that Hays sent his readers to. He was never firmly in the Catholic camp to begin with (thus his departure is of no very large significance at all, in terms of an anti-Catholic or contra-Catholic apologetic or confirmation). No one need take my word for it. He says it plainly himself, after protesting that the very inquiries about his religious status constituted a "bizarre question" and a "strange business." Near the end of the article, he describes it as "largely a non-issue."

Well, I think devoted partisans of either side think it is a very important question and business and issue (as Francis Beckwith himself noted in a critique article of D'Souza). The fact that D'Souza does not, plausibly gives some indication, I think, of his less than total commitment to theological maters of great importance. Otherwise, why speak in those denigratory terms? He wasn't even "fully committed" to his newfound evangelicalism until after seven years attending church with his wife (suggesting that his prior Catholic commitment was not all that profound, either). Here are his words (my bolding):

. . . he quoted from a profile on me that Rosey Grier did in his book All-American Heroes: Multicultural Success Stories. Greer [sic] quoted me as saying that I was a Catholic but not a very good one. What the Chronicle writer failed to notice is that the Greer quotation was from the late 1980s—long before I became a born-again Christian.. . .

I was raised Catholic in India. That's because I come from Goa, where the Portuguese missionaries arrived starting in the sixteenth century. My ancestors converted to Catholicism. My family was conventionally Catholic, but not very devout. Later in his life, my father became a charismatic Catholic. I also attended Jesuit school in Mumbai and was exposed to the Catholic intellectual tradition. While I was lukewarm in my Catholic practice, I continued to draw on this tradition in my early career as a writer. The vast majority of my work, however, has been secular.

Why, then, would Hays, in his infinite wisdom, think that this case has any bearing on relative truth claims one way or the other? It is simply another example, out of millions, of a Catholic who neither fully practiced nor understood his faith, going somewhere else (from the looks of it, mainly due to his wife). D'Souza said it himself.

Moreover, on his own More About Dinesh D'Souza page (from Rosey Grier's book of 1992), he stated that he was a "believing Catholic but a poorly practicing one." That was three years before he started regularly attending evangelical churches. This is no exemplar of Catholic orthodoxy or practice.  Yet I am to believe that he is a "high profile" Catholic? He was not at all. I can't find any indication whatever (by his own report) that he was.

In a 2009 interview by Stan Guthrie (BreakPoint, November 12 and 19, 2009), D'Souza verifies yet again what is seen above (my bolding again):

I was raised Catholic in Bombay, India. The Portuguese missionaries came to India starting in the 16th century. Somewhere along the line, they seem to have located one of my ancestors and brought him to Christianity, possibly by whopping him over the head. It was the age of the Portuguese Inquisition. Hey, I'm glad it happened, although I'm not sure my hapless ancestor would agree. Even so I sometimes say I was raised with "crayon Christianity."

This is a simplified Christianity, and too many of us learn this from our parents and never outgrow it. We never develop a mature Christianity that can withstand the assaults of secular culture. I married an evangelical Christian in 1992, and after our daughter was born in 1995, we started attending a nondenominational church in the Washington D.C. area. But my faith remained lukewarm, wounded, you might say, by the influences of secular culture. Only when we moved to California did we start attending a Calvary Chapel church, and I found people who took their Christianity very seriously and whose faith shaped their whole life. This also began to happen with me. Basically I went from being a crayon Christian and a lukewarm Christian to being a mature and passionate Christian.

I rest my case. Now we can all be entertained by Hay's inevitable sophistical spin. Somehow under his magical abilities of obscurantism D'Souza shall be transformed into (formerly) a devout, fully observant Catholic, and one who should trouble us, as if his departure casts doubt on Catholic truth claims in any way, shape, or form.

Typical "Science vs. Catholicism" Criticisms (and Myths) from an Agnostic Scientist Refuted

Antoine Lavoisier: the Father of Chemistry (1743-1794). Here is the real "martyr for science": not Galileo or the rank heretic Bruno. Galileo was sentenced to comfortable house arrest by a Catholic tribunal. Lavoisier was not nearly so lucky: he got his head cut off by the "enlightened" atheist French revolutionaries (five other scientists were killed as well). Why, then, do we never hear about that?
I have received permission to post the words (but not the name) of an agnostic scientist who is a friend of a friend of mine.  He wrote:

Please do not post with my name. I did not put any time into this, and was not intending to get into a scholarly debate with your friend. So would not want it to be considered as my "scholarly work" since it is not my area and I do not have time to read his book. Your friend obviously has a lot more time for this than I do. I am a scientist, not a philosopher of science (even though I have a doctor of philosophy). Rather than debate me, he should be debating someone who does research in this area. . . .

He can post [my words] if he wants without a name, but in my view he should not present me as some expert on the philosophy or history of science. I'm not. I'm a scientist with some opinions. If he is a scholar on the subject and wants scholarly debate, he should be engaging someone like Richard Dawkins.

Our mutual friend sent me a link to a video forwarded by the scientist, called Science Saved My Soul. That about summed up the situation for me, before I saw any particular objections. This is the error known as "scientism." Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman described it as follows:

I am not denying, I am granting, I am assuming, that there is reason and truth in the "leading ideas," as they are called, and "large views" of scientific men; I only say that, though they speak truth, they do not speak the whole truth; that they speak a narrow truth, and think it a broad truth; that their deductions must be compared with other truths, which are acknowledged to be truths, in order to verify, complete, and correct them. They say what is true, exceptis excipiendis; what is true, but requires guarding; true, but must not be ridden too hard, or made what is called a hobby; true, but not the measure of all things; true, but if thus inordinately, extravagantly, ruinously carried out, in spite of other sciences, in spite of Theology, sure to become but a great bubble, and to burst.

(The Idea of a University, Part I, Discourse 4: "Bearing of Other Branches of Knowledge on Theology," 1852)

They scorn any process of inquiry not founded on experiment; the Mathematics indeed they endure, because that science deals with ideas, not with facts, and leads to conclusions hypothetical rather than real; "Metaphysics" they even use as a by-word of reproach; and Ethics they admit only on condition that it gives up conscience as its scientific ground, and bases itself on tangible utility: but as to Theology, they cannot deal with it, they cannot master it, and so they simply outlaw it and ignore it.

(The Idea of a University, Part I, Discourse 9: "Duties of the Church Towards Knowledge," 1852)

But science is not possible without theistic premises. Hence, I sent our scientist friend my book (as a PDF): Science and Christianity: Close Partners or Mortal Enemies? I also recommended many related articles on my Philosophy, Science, and Christianity and Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism web pages. This led to the following reply (a few typos corrected):

So I've skimmed. I get the message that science is strongly rooted in religion. I don't argue this at all. In the past, everything was done in the church, it's where education and research was carried out. Plus everyone at least pretended to be christian for fear of being burned at the stake or flogged. But history is full of examples where science progressed "despite" religion. Recall the Dark Ages for example. Galileo was sentenced to life in prison for establishing the truth using the scientific method. The Catholic church stood behind the biggest failed hypothesis of all time for 13 centuries. Ptolomy's view of the solar system established in the 1st century AD had the Earth at the center of the solar system. The church refused to question this because it was in total agreement with the bible which said the Earth was stationary (which of course is incorrect). 13 centuries later Copernicus finally challenged this theory and put the sun at the center and and the Earth orbiting the sun. Several of Coperincus' supporters were burned at the stake by the Catholic church (Copernicus died of natural causes before he himself could be burned at the stake) for getting behind what was eventually shown to be absolutely correct. So yeah, religion helped get science going, but has been holding it back.
I responded in turn: not in extreme depth or supreme, but merely with a "fired-off" reply (as I was busy today doing other things) [additional material added presently in brackets]:

* * *
Obviously, your friend hasn't read my book yet.

I've never heard of Copernicus' supporters being burned at the stake. I demand (please convey to him) to see documentation of this. I don't believe it.

[Possibly, our friend is referring to Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), but the problem is that he was not condemned primarily, or even remotely (if at all), for heliocentrism, but rather, for a host of heresies, including  pantheism (all is God), erroneous opinions about the Trinity, Christ's divinity, and His incarnation, denial of transubstantiation, the perpetual virginity of Mary, creation, and the last judgment, and belief in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into non-humans, along with various forms of magic and divination. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ("Nicolaus Copernicus") concurs:

Pope Clement VII (r. 1523–1534) had reacted favorably to a talk about Copernicus's theories, rewarding the speaker with a rare manuscript. There is no indication of how Pope Paul III, to whom On the Revolutions was dedicated reacted; however, a trusted advisor, Bartolomeo Spina of Pisa (1474–1546) intended to condemn it but fell ill and died before his plan was carried out (see Rosen, 1975). Thus, in 1600 there was no official Catholic position on the Copernican system, and it was certainly not a heresy. When Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was burned at the stake as a heretic, it had nothing to do with his writings in support of Copernican cosmology, and this is clearly shown in Finocchiaro's reconstruction of the accusations against Bruno (see also Blumenberg's part 3, chapter 5, titled "Not a Martyr for Copernicanism: Giordano Bruno").

Blumenberg, H., 1987, The Genesis of the Copernican World, trans. R.M. Wallace, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Finocchiaro, M.A., 2002, "Philosophy versus Religion and Science versus Religion: the Trials of Bruno and Galileo," [pp.] 51–96 in [Hilary] Gatti (ed.), 2002, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of theRenaissance, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Likewise, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1908), in its article on Bruno, states:

Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological errors, among which were the following: that Christ was not God but merely an unusually skillful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc.

But our agnostic scientist friend wrote:

That he is not aware of the persecution of Copernicus supporters is interesting. I will help him by looking up the reference. It was in a text book I used for a class once - which doesn't in itself make it right, but better than internet as a source.
Fine; if he refers to Bruno, it is now shown that it is a mistaken inference to say he was killed because of Copernicanism.  But he maintained (my italics) that "Several of Coperincus' [sic] supporters were burned at the stake by the Catholic church." Very well, then, bring on these other unfortunate candidates. I am not saying no one was ever burned, but I am unaware of their being burned for heliocentrism or Copernicanism. If they were, they were, but it has to be documented. Blumenberg and Finocchiaro are scholars familiar with the specific subject matter. That is solid substantiation: at least for Bruno.]

Secondly, the relation of science and religion is not just "past" but extends to the current time, with a sizable percentage of scientists still professing belief in God, and great scientists right up to our time professed theists or otherwise religious.

[as I showed in my book: listing 31 scientists from 1900-1950 who were theists (e.g., Planck, Eddington, and Lemaître) or otherwise religious and not materialists (e.g., Einstein) ].

Galileo was not sentenced to life in prison, but to an extremely mild house arrest: most of the time living in houses that were palaces of high officials.

[I have noted (first draft for a portion -- pp. 30-31 -- of my book, The One-Minute Apologist ):

In 1633 Galileo was "incarcerated" in the palace of Niccolini, the ambassador to the Vatican from Tuscany, who admired Galileo, spent five months with Archbishop Piccolomini in Siena, and then lived in comfortable environments with friends for the rest of his life (though technically under "house arrest"). No evidence exists to prove that he was ever actually subjected to torture or deliberately blinded (he lost his sight in 1637). ]

His polemical use of "dark ages" is the usual agnostic misunderstanding. It is not synonymous with the "middle ages" but for historians, the period of the late first millennium when the barbarians were in the ascendancy and classical learning was in danger. It was precisely the Church that preserved classical literature and culture, over against these non-Christian barbarians. Yet modern secularists have managed to perpetuate a myth that it was the very opposite of that. Gross ignorance there . . .

[see, e.g.,  Encyclopaedia Brittanica online ("Dark Ages"):

the early medieval period of western European history. Specifically, the term refers to the time (476–800) when there was no Roman (or Holy Roman) emperor in the West; or, more generally, to the period between about 500 and 1000, which was marked by frequent warfare and a virtual disappearance of urban life. It is now rarely used by historians because of the value judgment it implies.]

Anyone can make mistakes in science. That is not exclusive to Catholics in the Middle Ages or earlier. Galileo, Kepler, Newton and other scientists were neck-deep in astrology and the occult. Galileo made several errors in his cosmology and notions of scientific hypothesis; in some cases being corrected by St. Robert Bellarmine.

If we want persecution of scientists, as late as the late 18th century, I would recommend that your friend study up on the so-called French "Enlightenment" and particularly the case of the great chemist Lavoisier, who was (along with several other prominent scientists) murdered (head lopped off, of course) by the state (far beyond anything that happened to Galileo).

[These other scientist-martyrs to the "goddess of reason" were: Philippe-Frédéric de Dietrich (1748-1793), Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-1794), Jean Baptiste Gaspard Bochart de Saron (1730-1794), Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721-1794), and Félix Vicq d'Azyr (1746-1794) ]

The Oslo Massacre and the Irrationally Subjective Application of "Symbolic" Evil Acts in Order to Draw Unwarranted and Unjust Conclusions

 I wrote the following in a personal letter today; thought I'd share it with you (with a few little additions, as I read it over):
What frosts me about things like this is the fundamental irrationality of taking one act as if it supposedly "proves" something about huge groups of people. Obviously it doesn't at all. Such a mentality exhibits the classic sweeping, stereotypical hallmark of prejudicial or bigoted thought. We live in an age of subjectivism and opposition to solid logical, coherent thought. So now Christians are to be characterized as mass murderers because of Oslo fanatic Anders Behring Breivik (just like Hitler was supposedly a good Catholic and Stalin, Eastern Orthodox)? The guy is a neo-Nazi fascist!

Likewise,  there were attempts to characterize Christians or particularly politically conservative ones, as terrorists, after Timothy McVeigh and that lunatic in Arizona (Jared Loughner). It doesn't work. None of these evil murderers remotely fit into the objective profile of the groups that are lambasted as a result of them. Even if they did, it would prove exactly nothing, as to whole groups, anyway. It simply doesn't follow. Sheer evil of such a profound level is sui generis ("one of a kind") anyway. It makes little sense to try to place a heartless, soul-dead monster like that within any larger human group of more or less "normal" people (fallen though we all are).

So many people, despite these rather obvious considerations, base opinions on famous and notorious "public" acts that become highly "symbolic" to them. Hence, when Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered in 1968 (I visited the spot where it happened, in 2009, along with several other notable King sites: his house, church, the place of his last speech), it was taken as proof that America remained fundamentally racist at its core; even institutionally or "systemically" so. It proved no such thing; all it "proved" was the fact that one racist who hated Dr. King managed to kill him. There are always some racists around. The dispute is how many they are and whether it is the norm and consensus in any given society.

But the entire civil rights movement came to a halt for several years; even the great soul music out of Memphis died a quick death, as a result. Steve Cropper, the white guitarist at Stax studios in Memphis, who had played on and written and produced so many of those songs, has noted how he was treated with hostility in the studio after King's murder, as if he had anything to do with it. One readily understands the overwhelming grief and despair, as a result of a great leader having been cut down (America had gone through JFK, after all), but there has to be some limit to applying the natural negative emotional reaction to those who were disconnected in every immediate sense except for the mere coincidence of a skin color.

Then when Obama was elected, America supposedly "proved" it wasn't racist anymore. I think his election did positively indicate less racism in our country, but racists and racism  had long since been rightly marginalized and demonized, according to any serious polling data for the previous 30 years at least. Yet the symbolic phenomenon of Obama's election supposedly "proved" a sudden sea change. Now that many are opposing his policies (not his skin color!), unfortunately we're back to the obligatory "groupthink" charges of racism again. To make a strong protest against any of his policies is to be a racist. I guess, then, the country still suffers from the annoying tendency of the race card being played at every opportunity, no matter how irrelevant it is. I am sick to death of it.

If we are truly colorblind, we criticize people of color precisely because race is no longer an issue, and they are treated the same: both in a positive sense and a negative sense of criticism of their governing policy or whatever else is the topic at hand. We (i.e., us white folks) don't -- or shouldn't -- treat African-Americans with kid gloves out of a perverse application of "corporate white guilt" when it is irrelevant. That is what is patronizing and condescending: as if they wouldn't be able to take criticism because of being so inferior and ill-equipped.

President Obama is a politician, period; thus open to critique like any other politician. If proof that white America has gotten past skin color was needed, it was amply provided in 2008: so much so that Jesse Jackson openly cried in Chicago on election night. It meant something very significant. But formerly widely racist white America hadn't changed overnight. It was a long process.

I've been an avid student of race relations as a native Detroiter and sociology major, for over 40 years: since the Detroit Riots of 1967.

The problem is this sort of thoroughly subjective thinking, which is detached from serious analytical, properly reflective thought. I posted on my Facebook page a link to a great article about the Norway massacre by Chuck Colson. He is rational, and shows that rejection of Christianity is no answer, and will exacerbate the problem, not resolve it. But people are sheep . . .All we can do is try to keep important societal conversations on a rational plane, influenced by our own Christian viewpoints. And it is not rational to make conclusions about groups of many millions of people, based on the evil acts of one psychopath.

Related Reading
The Character Assassination of Robert Spencer (David Horowitz)

Norway Attacks: 'Breivik Acted Alone' (BBC News Europe)

Spencer vs. Alan Colmes on Norway Smears (video clip)

Frank Turk and Phil Johnson Reply to My Critique With Christlike Examples of Charity and Reason / James White's January 2001 Resolution to Avoid All Interaction With Me (!!)

[ source ]
For background, see my previous paper of today: "Thank God We Are Not Like Dave Armstrong": Frank Turk's Critique of Protestant Apologist Behavior and Blindness to James White's Manifest Outrages. See also the combox of that paper, where I recorded additional comments that I made in the combox of Frank's post. Below I post the almost literally foaming-at-the-mouth insults of blogmaster Phil Johnson (words in green) and Frank Turk (words in blue). It's incredible, even by already rock-bottom anti-Catholic standards.

I find it especially sad that Turk has decided to ratchet up his anti-Catholic vitriol, even after I sincerely remarked in my paper (amidst criticisms) that I thought he had toned down his negative rhetoric considerably over the last several years, and that I didn't think his anti-Catholic posts were "personal". Now he's back to the old Frank, I reckon. He simply couldn't resist after evil, wicked boogeyman Dave Armstrong showed up in his vicinity. The reader may decide if their tone and substance are befitting of a Christian man of God setting out to share and defend his Christian faith, or not.

My own view ought to be very clear by now: I think it stinks to high heaven, and is an absolute disgrace to both Christianity and to the apologetic endeavor that I passionately love and have devoted my life to. And the saddest thing at all is that in all likelihood no fellow Protestant will speak up and condemn their atrocious behavior in this thread. No one will see (or state publicly, at any rate) that it is wrong. That's how low the anti-Catholic Internet apologetic world has sunk (if it was ever any different). If someone does have the guts and Christian conscience to do that, I will be most happy to note it here for posterity.

To Pyro-reader regulars: in Davespeak, "real discussion" is a monologue by Dave Armstrong in which we all sit at his feet in rapt admiration.

Nice to see you, Dave. You're welcome to post on-topic comments here. But be forewarned: the regulars here don't pull their punches. Many narcissists with fragile psyches have already been wounded in the melee.

Take care.
(3:01 PM PST, 7-27-11)

Right. I guess that is why I have posted online over 650 dialogues. All one-way stuff, right Phil? I rarely ever do lectures: obviously so I can get all this rapt admiration that Frank obviously has for James White. :-)

I didn't expect it to be a lovefest if I dared to comment here, but I was naive enough to hold out some remote hope for the distant semblance of an actual rational discussion. When will I ever learn?


(3:27 PM, 7-27-11)


DAVE!

DAVE ARMSTRONNG!

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Hey -- I thought you swore off interacting with me AND Dr. White A LONG TIME AGO?!? Didn't you swear that off because we're evil or some other idiotic notion? let me find that link ... I seem to remember that your love of free speech ended poorly at CARM, and then again at my blog, and then again interacting with Dr. White, and then again intercating [sic] with TQ. You love free speech until it turns out to eat you alive.

I have been given advice, Dave, to pop off your comments here because, let's face it: highlighting your blog here is the best advertisement you'll get this decade, and as I have already said, who wants to proliferate the soft-core apologetic porn out there? Who does that benefit?

I encourage the readers to ignore Dave for their own good, and for Dave's own good. If you do read his comments, I forgive you, but remember this: there are some things you cannot unsee.

Be careful little eyes what you see.

(3:13 PM, 7-27-11)


For the record: you are the very essence of a lousy apologist, Dave. You are a nincompoop. You are not just a clown but you are a veritable clown car of intellectual hijinx which pulls up when it pleases, unloads everything from the [metaphorically-speaking] tiny dog with the point hat to the traffic cop with the faulty suspenders, and then expects to be taken seriously -- in fact, you are insulted when you are not taken seriously after parading your assortment of gags out for public inspection.

[oh yes: here's that link about you swearing off interacting with James White. I call that the wedding cake clown -- the one that's half groom and half bride, depending on which side you're looking at.] 

So what is it you want to talk about, pray tell? Besides you, I mean? What can we do for you?
(3:28 PM, 7-27-11)


* * * 
Yes, under deliberate provocation and in exasperation one day I used words (over ten years ago now) that went too far, in saying that I was sick and tired of anti-Catholic nonsense and would never talk to or mention James White and Tim Enloe at all, ever again. But I made no "vow" -- as has been maintained since by many anti-Catholics. I didn't "swear" that I would never do so, or make an oath, etc.

It was a resolution (I specifically used the word "resolve" several times) that I later modified after reflection. I wrote, "I resolve to neither interact with, nor to even mention at all, James White and Tim Enloe" and that "I am through with debating all anti-Catholics." What I have been doing for the past four years is avoiding all theological debate with anti-Catholics, as a matter of principle and time-management; not all discussion whatever.

I made one temporary exception in the case of Jason Engwer, when he was going after a friend of mine who was wavering in his Catholic faith. The nature of my present position on the matter  has been distorted time and again, too (no matter how much I have clarified), and used as a pretext for idiotic mockery. Of course, it is ignored that James White has stated several times that he would utterly ignore me, and then went back on it and interacted with my writing yet again: including two additional challenges to oral debate (three total, in 1995, 2001, and 2007: all consistently refused because I think it is an inferior medium to written debate).

Tim Enloe has done the same.  In fact, in 2001, after I refused to do an oral debate with White, he went on and on in a letter about how we should completely ignore each other henceforth (see below). He certainly didn't follow his own advice. Anyone can search my name on his blog to see how many papers he has written about me since 2001.

Bishop White challenged me to oral debate in 2001, precisely because it was following his poor performance in our lone live chat debate (12-29-00) in his chat room (mostly centering on Mariology) -- having previously fled for the hills in our initial written 1995 debate by postal mail: leaving my previous 36-page reply completely unanswered, as it has remained for 16 years. I have posted that ever since, and White never has: quite odd if he in fact prevailed in the debate. He had (here's a note of trivia) bailed out Tim Enloe, who had thrown in the towel in the middle of his performance, having refused to abide by our carefully negotiated prearranged conditions.

The fact of the matter, then (the side of the story that is never ever heard in certain quarters), is that James White virtually begged me in letters dated 11-12 January 2001, to avoid any personal interaction with him henceforth. This was over two months before my "resolution" that has mockingly been thrown in my face ever since by anti-Catholics, including White himself.

It's all documented in an old paper of mine entitled, Case Study in Anti-Catholic Bigotry and Condescension: Dr. James White Rejects Personal Reconciliation and Continues to Pour Forth Insults, Yet Simultaneously Pushes for an Oral Debate; no longer on my blog but available at Internet Archive. After I refused to debate him on his webcast or in live oral debate, he pouted, took his bat and ball and went home, in these words:

Again, nothing new here....I discovered this years ago when you first contacted me, which was exactly why I have done everything I could to avoid further contact with you. . . . 


I'll tell ya what: we have a tentative agreement with someone for the 2002 Long Island Debate.  If that falls through, how about you free up some time and face me in public? . . . 

I detest inconsistency  and deception.  I detest surface-level assertions and the misuse of facts. That is why you and I don't get along. I'm not impressed by rhetoric and bluster and verbosity.  There are many who are, I'm not one of them.  I have a deep-seated dislike of those who make a show of  knowledge for the sake of something other than the truth itself. . . . 

Will you defend  what you have written on our webcast or not?  Yes or no? . . .
  [My reply at the time: "No. My challenge to do some sort of writing debate stands, as it has since mid-1995. You have admitted that basically you think I am dumb and without substance. So why do you want to interact with me? Is it the common tactic of Protestants loving to talk to dumb Catholics, so their view can look better?"]
I have done all I could since then in light of certain aspects of your behavior to avoid interaction like the plague. My website contains nothing about you for that very reason. . . . So I apologize for even considering the idea of having any contact.  As they seem to say amongst  the young people today, "My bad." . . .

I have to often remind myself that it is not my duty to rebut every false argument.  I used to think it was, when I was a younger man.  I no longer think that way, though at times I succumb to the temptation to try, in some measure, to do what I should not. I have to trust God's Spirit to lead His people as He sees fit.  I have had a number of folks contact me about your posting of my letters and actually warn me against "casting pearls before swine" in doing what I am doing even now.  I had three people say to me this morning, "You are wasting your time."  I will have to accept their counsel after this response. 

Mr. Armstrong, I have no interest, whatsoever, in continuing this with you.  I don't like you, and I don't believe you like me. Until a few weeks ago I had followed the path of wisdom and avoided every entanglement with you. I erred in moving from that path. You will undoubtedly claim "victory" and shout loud and long about my supposed inability to respond to your "tightly reasoned" arguments.  So be it. 

I know different, and what's more, I think, somewhere down inside, you do too. Continuing to attempt to reason with you is likewise foolish: if you write an angry e-mail, like yesterday, and I reply to it, the next day you'll use the calm, rational response, and upbraid me for being nasty.  No matter what I do, the end is the same.  I knew this years ago.  My memory must be failing or something for even making the attempt.  

I'm going to ask you to join me in promising to stay as far away from each other as possible.  I'm not asking you to not respond on your own website to what I write or doing whatever you want to do when speaking, etc.  I am talking about personal interaction.  Stay out of #prosapologian.  Don't write to me.  Don't ask to do dialogues, debates, or anything else.  You just do your thing, and I'll do mine. OK?

Note again that this was written on 11-12 January 2001. My letter where I said I was through interacting with White was dated 14 March 2001. White reproduced it in its entirety on his blog in order to mock me, on 6 April 2007, and now Frank Turk links to that today, in his attempt to show that I am a hypocrite and a coward; wanting to run from debate with James White and others. Why, then, is White's own resolution of two months earlier ignored? Why is he not regarded as a coward for refusing extended, multi-round written debate with me for now more than 16 years, and not regarded as a hypocrite for going back on his January 2001 "word" to avoid all personal interaction with me henceforth (since my critics insist on branding me with both labels and worse)?  

* * *
[Reply to Frank Turk] I made my lengthy reply. Did you not see it? If you did, why do you ask what I want to talk about, as if you were in some other world, unaware of the happenings around you?

(4:08 PM, 7-27-11)