Notes Explanation Post Permalink and Comments Home Page Notes taken from this talk:Jesus' first appearance at Christmas is made possible by Our Lady Jesus makes all things possible. We should offer our gifts like 3 wise men in adoring thanks for the possibility of contemplating the way, the truth and the life, of God become visible to us and accessible to our love. This relates to Scotus' understanding of thought, which always begins with phenomena or appearances. Phenomena are not imaginary, but do really exist apart from, or prior to any thought of ours. That we are sometimes mistaken about their meaning does not change the truth of this assumption about their prior objectivity in general. What we see, feel and touch is real and hence what are really able to know and enjoy what appearances disclose. When our God and Savior appeared to us, then it becomes possible to behold Him and adore and love Him, viz., not only to know, but also to be wise. What is the relation between science and wisdom? Today many persons think wisdom is radically identical with proficiency in modern, experimental, mathematized science. If you have no degree in science in this sense, you do not have knowledge worthy of credibility. Science is the primary exemplar, the type of what all knowledge must be to be authentically such. Science, however, is the fruit of our intellectual activity Wisdom, instead, is a given and thus is not so much our activity, as it is first the impact of truth on us when we lovingly and humbly contemplate the truth, ultimately the Truth that is God, that has become visible at Bethlehem. Genuine philosophy is first based on this, rather than on “science” Modern theology of the bad type subjects all catholic teaching and miracles to analysis by the scientific process, examines Jesus to discover and verify any sign of personal identity, and Mary to verify her Virginity. And if these can be explained scientifically or naturally, then the "miracles” are considered intelligible and possible. Even Catholic theologians fall into this trap when they make the possibility of miracles and the supernatural depend on the degree to which they can be explained "scientifically". But a miracle is not a miracle, when it can be explained. When a miracle can be explained scientifically, it is not a miracle, but a natural event. Thus, there is a confusion in the modern mind between miracle and natural event. But true theology and thinking such as of the great Catholic thinkers like Scotus take humble contemplation as the beginning. They recognize that there are other sources of knowledge besides empirical science, and that the absence of scientific explanation is not the equivalent of absence of any knowledge at all, e.g., of metaphysics, or still more of faith. When we begin with contemplation rather than scientific analysis, then we find that all searching for the truth are metaphysicians, with or without degrees, that we go beyond the merely physical, and into the realm of the spiritual and eternal. Many believe John Duns Scotus is the author of the modern mess of skepticism and scientific disbelief, which says "I can only believe what I can analyze" Quite the contrary, Scotus believed contemplation is the starting point of all thought, however complex the procedures surrounding it, such as the scientific, and that without this contemplative element, no other form of science can be justified as realistic. If we refuse to contemplate being and love the good, then we cease to be Catholic thinkers This is the difference between Christian and merely secular thinking and with this we can see exactly why the Christian approach is superior and fully humane. When we reflect on the two doctrines of Scotus, the Absolute Primacy of Christ and the philosophical, metaphysical equivalent univocal being, with its two intrinsic modes finite and infinite, then we come to see how remarkably the notion of being as univocal reflects the Catholic Doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ where two natures, one infinite and one finite, exist in one divine person. Animals differ from men in that animals can neither sin, nor praise, nor be happy. They can only be content. We instead can be happy or blessed, provided we do not sin and that we seek above and before all things to know and love God, If we don't contemplate and adore like the magi and shepherds and especially like Joseph and Mary, then we too cannot be happy. Mary Immaculate, our Mother and Teacher sustains us, makes it possible for us to see Jesus and so know, love and serve Him to be happy with him for ever. Ave Maria! Notes Explanation Post Permalink and Comments Home Page Top Explanatory Notes:This is then a key to some of our current problems in International relations. Secularists in the west say that all human thought is autonomous from God and Church or at least it ought to be in order to be true thought. And thus faith is fully opposed to true thought. True thought, science, is our only hope in the world, the source of all Enlightenment; thus Faith is opposed to all that is good. The religious fundamentalists on the other hand say that God directly causes all faith with no help from man. This is the logical conclusion of the God Alone doctrine shared by Protestants and Muslims alike. In a sense the Fundamentalists and the Secularists agree, faith and reason are opposed. Pope Benedict pointed out this agreement in his Regensberg address. But, of course this merely indicates the source of their disagreement, for the East and West take opposing sides on this false dichotomy. The Pope goes on and notes the long-standing Catholic doctrine that faith is primarily an intellectual virtue. It is knowledge just as much as ‘science' and therefore cannot be fundamentally opposed to science because God is the source of both creation (and therefore natural knowledge) and the Bible and thus faith. The opposition between faith and knowledge is therefore a false dichotomy. Faith is the intellect raised to the higher degree by the grace of God. And thus the Catholic doctrine represents the solution for this stand off. The Catholic middle ground, then, is that there is something divine in knowledge and something natural in faith, even if knowledge is primarily natural and faith is primarily supernatural. Scotus foresaw all these difficulties in his time, in fact, they were being debated in a more seminal form even then. To the question how the human intellect and God interact to produce either faith or knowledge without negating human autonomy he gives his doctrines of Univocal Being and the Absolute Primacy of Christ. Scotus' doctrine of Univocal Being, as the primary object apprehended by the mind, combines both these extremes into one constructive middle ground. For his concept of being as univocal and so permitting a basis for recognizing the genuine analogy: likeness as well a dissimilarity between creature and Creator, is that common ground between God and Man. These are the intrinsic modes that Fr. Peter mentions: finite and infinite. The one thing that you can say univocally about both God and man is that they are both beings, they are not non-beings. And since this basic concept of the presence of a being is the first thing we apprehend on the appearance or perception of any object, something we do instantaneously, that flash of recognition of beings or things in what we see, then this is that link between man's intellect and other creatures and God, not only the basis of science of any kind, but also of faith. It has a divine quality in that it happens instantly rather than through a process, surrounding all scientific and conceptual knowledge as this develops in our mind. It is what makes it unnecessary to “escape” one's mind, of which the philosophers from Descartes onward were all attempting, and have been so unsuccessful at achieving, because whoever fails to begin with this contemplation of "being", and still better the Word Incarnate, will be forever imprisoned. This wisdom rather is an “inscape”, as others like the English poet, Fr. Hopkins, have put it, because it is the outside world coming into our mind with an intuitive character ensuring certainty. And this is the key to true wisdom, which involves both human and divine activity. Further, Fr. Peter makes a connection between this doctrine of univocal being and Scotus' other more theological doctrine of the Absolute Primacy of Christ. This doctrine states that God created the world in order to bring about the Incarnation (as opposed to the doctrine that holds that the Incarnation occurs only because of man's sin.) Univocal being reflects analogously the Absolute Primacy of Christ because the Son Incarnate has two natures, divine and human, united in one divine person, a reflection of which is seen in the infinite and finite modes inherent in univocal being. But, the resemblance goes further. Just as univocal being is the basis of our understanding in the natural order, so the Absolute Primacy of Christ is the reason we find all the treasures of wisdom and understanding in the Heart of Jesus, because it is for the sake of the Incarnation that the world was created and then redeemed. Thus, the intelligibility of the world, especially the human world, is ultimately rooted in the Incarnation. Without a knowledge of Jesus, or worse with a repudiation of Jesus, there can be neither wisdom nor blessedness, nor peace. Further, it is through Jesus, the Son of God the Father that we come to know the Father, source of all blessings. Thus, Christ as the one Teacher of all becomes the source of our knowledge of God, viz., of theology, and he also is our Master on the way to attaining that full wisdom, a search in part conducted with our native powers of understanding, but only completed with the light of faith and then of glory. In the fuller sense at the theological level of faith, Christ expressly is our Teacher and Guide in the search and love of wisdom, whereas in a veiled fashion, under the guise of univocal being He exercises a similar role. Ave Maria! |