Below is an insightful commentary on the importance and power of collective social construction in the notion of gender and "reality."
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Lately, there has been no shortage of commentators eager to discuss Caitlyn Jenner’s recent Vanity Fairy cover (featured above). In the public eye, Jenner has been a famous male athlete-turned reality show husband-turned transgender femme fatale, and this series of transformations has inspired plenty of ogling. Conservative outlets seem to decry the former Bruce’s sex change as something bewildering and strange (if not disgusting and unnatural), while more progressive ones praise her as a heroine who has had the courage to publicly reveal her “true self.”
But in the midst of the back and forth over the acceptability of Jenner’s identity change have been several other voices who recognize that for all the talk of liberation, Jenner’s female identity means that she’s now subjected to new restrictions that she likely did not experience before making her sex change public. While her athletic prowess and strength were conversation points when she identified as a man, as a woman her appearance is now center-stage. Her body has been scrutinized to ensure it matches unreachable beauty standards, down to her tight, restrictive clothing and made-up face. The public chatter surrounding Jenner has thus largely focused on the degree to which she has accomplished the physical markers of proper womanhood down to every last, painful detail. No matter whether one thinks Jenner “really is” a woman – an authenticity debate with an endless variety of twists and turns – what is perhaps more intriguing here is that she is absolutely being treated like one.
For those of us interested in the politics of identity there is yet another implication, for what Jenner’s case reveals is the fact that while we may perceive ourselves to be self-determining agents exercising our free will in shaping our own destinies, we can only do this to the degree that we are socially legible beings. In other words, the public’s intense voyeuristic interest in Jenner would hardly be satiated with a photo of her donning a baggy tee-shirt and sweatpants. Had she worn such attire, I suspect her sex change would have been pronounced a failure in the minds of many. While Jenner may thus have physically initiated the act of a sex change herself, the lingering irony is that the sex change was also imposed back upon her by a public that expects her to symbolically bear the burden of sexual proof in order to achieve the privilege of a specific social categorization, “woman.”
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Source: Leslie Smith, "Whose Sex Change Was It?: Caitlyn Jenner and the Boundaries of Public Identity," Culture on the Edge blog, June 5, 2015, accessed June 5, 2015, http://edge.ua.edu/leslie-dorrough-smith/whose-sex-change-was-it-caitlyn-jenner-and-the-ironies-of-public-controversy/.
Friday, June 5, 2015
St. Bernard on the Final Struggle of the Church
[405] 14. Consider, then, the primitive Church, and see if it was not pervaded and most fiercely assailed by the "terror of the night." For then surely it was night, when everyone who slew the saints thought he was doing a service to God. But when this temptation had been overcome and the tempest had passed over, the Church appeared [406] in glory, and, according to the promise made to it, soon occupied the place of pre-eminence in the world. Then the enemy, enraged by his previous disappointment, cunningly exchanged the "terror of the night" for the "arrow that flieth in the day," and with it, as St. Paul speaks, wounded "some of the Church." For there arose vain men, who hungered after earthly glory and sought to make a name for themselves. Going forth from the Christian body, they began to afflict their holy mother by teaching diverse and perverse doctrines. But this second plague found a remedy in the wisdom of the doctors, as did the first in the patience of the martyrs.
15. The present generation, my brethren, is, through the mercy of God, free from both of these dangers. But it is manifestly corrupted by the "business that walketh about in the dark." Woe to this generation by reason of the leaven of the Pharisees! I mean, because of its hypocrisy, if indeed that ought to be called hypocrisy which is now too prevalent to lie concealed and too impudent to seek concealment. To-day the foul disease has spread itself throughout the whole body of Christ's mystical Bride, the more incurable in proportion as it is widely extended, and the more deadly the more deeply it penetrates. Were one to rise up against holy mother Church, teaching open heresy, he would be cut off like an infected member, and cast forth to rot. Were a persecuting enemy to appear against her, she might perhaps hide herself from his violence. But now whom shall she cast forth, and from whom shall she hide herself? All are her friends and nevertheless all are her enemies. All are her children and, at the same time, all are her adversaries. All are her domestics, yet none [407] give her peace. All are her neighbours [sic], whilst all seek the things that are their own. They are Christ's ministers, but they serve Antichrist. Honoured [sic] with the goods of the Lord, they refuse to render due honour to the Lord. Hence that worldly ornamentation which daily meets our eyes, that showy style of dress, more befitting a stage-player than a Christian cleric, that splendour [sic] of appointment which even kings might envy. Hence the gold mountings on bridles, saddles, and spurs; for such trappings are more carefully embellished than the altars of God. Hence the splended tables, furnished with costly plate and delicate viands. Hence the "drunkenness and revellings" [sic]. Hence the music of the harp and the lyre and the flute. Hencce the brimming winepresses, and the "storehouses full, flowing out of this into that." Hence the phials of sweet perfumes. Hence the well-filled coffers. It is for the sake of such things that they desire to be, and do actually become provosts of churches, deans, archdeacons, bishops, archbishops. For these dignities are not now bestowed upon merit, but are given to that "business that walketh about in the dark," namely, to ambition.
16. It was said of old, and now we see the fulfillment of the prediction, "Behold in peace is my bitterness most bitter" (Is. 38:17). Bitter was the bitterness of holy mother Church in the early ages whilst the martyrs were being slaughtered; it was more bitter during her struggle with heresy; but it is now become most bitter owing to the corrupt morals of her own children. These she can neither drive away nor flee from, so powerful have they grown, and "they are multiplied beyond number" (Gen. 22:17; Heb. 6:14). She is now attacked by an internal and incurable distemper [408], and therefore "in peace is her bitterness most bitter." But in what peace? There is peace and there is no peace. There is peace from infidels and peace from heretics, but she has no peace from her children. "I have brought up children and exalted them, but they have despised me" (Is. 1:2). Such is her plaintive cry in our day. "They have heaped contempt and dishonour [sic] on me by their shameful lives, by their shameful love of lucre [i.e. money], by their shameful traffic, by their devotion to the 'business that walketh about in the dark.'" It only remains now for the "noon-day devil" to make his appearance in order to seduce, if he can, the remnant who still abide in Christ, persevering in their simplicity. For he has already swallowed up the "rivers" of the wise and the "torrents" of the powerful, "and he trusteth that the Jordan—that is to say, the simple and humble children of the Church—may run into his mouth." This is Antichrist [1] who simulates the day, yeah, and the Meridian, "and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped" [sic]. Him may the Lord Jesus slay "with the Spirit of His Mouth and with the brightness of His coming," as the truth and never-fading Meridian, the Bridgroom and Advocate of the Church, Who is over all things, God be blessed for ever. Amen.
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Footnotes:
1. From the translator: It may be of interest to observe that in St. Bernard's own day the coming of Antichrist was believed to be at hand. St. Norbert, Founder of the Premonstratensians, claimed to have received a revelation to that effect. He was visited by the Abbot of Clairvaux, who has left us an account of the interview in his 56th Epistle: "He declared that he knew for certain that Antichrist was to be revealed in the present generation and that he himself would live to see a general persecution. Still I was not convinced."
---
Source: St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles, trans. by a priest of Mount Melleray (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, Limited, 1920), 405–408, Sermon 33: "On the Three Objects of the Devout Soul's Quest, On the Mystical Meridian, and the Four Kinds of Temptation" or "Ends to Be Pursued—The Mystical Noontide; Temptations to Be Avoided," nn. 14–16.
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For the last temptations of the Church, St. Bernard seems to give no indication of a solution except Christ's own second coming as when he says, "Him [i.e. the devil or Antichrist] may the Lord Jesus slay 'with the Spirit of His Mouth and the with the brightness of His coming'."
15. The present generation, my brethren, is, through the mercy of God, free from both of these dangers. But it is manifestly corrupted by the "business that walketh about in the dark." Woe to this generation by reason of the leaven of the Pharisees! I mean, because of its hypocrisy, if indeed that ought to be called hypocrisy which is now too prevalent to lie concealed and too impudent to seek concealment. To-day the foul disease has spread itself throughout the whole body of Christ's mystical Bride, the more incurable in proportion as it is widely extended, and the more deadly the more deeply it penetrates. Were one to rise up against holy mother Church, teaching open heresy, he would be cut off like an infected member, and cast forth to rot. Were a persecuting enemy to appear against her, she might perhaps hide herself from his violence. But now whom shall she cast forth, and from whom shall she hide herself? All are her friends and nevertheless all are her enemies. All are her children and, at the same time, all are her adversaries. All are her domestics, yet none [407] give her peace. All are her neighbours [sic], whilst all seek the things that are their own. They are Christ's ministers, but they serve Antichrist. Honoured [sic] with the goods of the Lord, they refuse to render due honour to the Lord. Hence that worldly ornamentation which daily meets our eyes, that showy style of dress, more befitting a stage-player than a Christian cleric, that splendour [sic] of appointment which even kings might envy. Hence the gold mountings on bridles, saddles, and spurs; for such trappings are more carefully embellished than the altars of God. Hence the splended tables, furnished with costly plate and delicate viands. Hence the "drunkenness and revellings" [sic]. Hence the music of the harp and the lyre and the flute. Hencce the brimming winepresses, and the "storehouses full, flowing out of this into that." Hence the phials of sweet perfumes. Hence the well-filled coffers. It is for the sake of such things that they desire to be, and do actually become provosts of churches, deans, archdeacons, bishops, archbishops. For these dignities are not now bestowed upon merit, but are given to that "business that walketh about in the dark," namely, to ambition.
16. It was said of old, and now we see the fulfillment of the prediction, "Behold in peace is my bitterness most bitter" (Is. 38:17). Bitter was the bitterness of holy mother Church in the early ages whilst the martyrs were being slaughtered; it was more bitter during her struggle with heresy; but it is now become most bitter owing to the corrupt morals of her own children. These she can neither drive away nor flee from, so powerful have they grown, and "they are multiplied beyond number" (Gen. 22:17; Heb. 6:14). She is now attacked by an internal and incurable distemper [408], and therefore "in peace is her bitterness most bitter." But in what peace? There is peace and there is no peace. There is peace from infidels and peace from heretics, but she has no peace from her children. "I have brought up children and exalted them, but they have despised me" (Is. 1:2). Such is her plaintive cry in our day. "They have heaped contempt and dishonour [sic] on me by their shameful lives, by their shameful love of lucre [i.e. money], by their shameful traffic, by their devotion to the 'business that walketh about in the dark.'" It only remains now for the "noon-day devil" to make his appearance in order to seduce, if he can, the remnant who still abide in Christ, persevering in their simplicity. For he has already swallowed up the "rivers" of the wise and the "torrents" of the powerful, "and he trusteth that the Jordan—that is to say, the simple and humble children of the Church—may run into his mouth." This is Antichrist [1] who simulates the day, yeah, and the Meridian, "and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped" [sic]. Him may the Lord Jesus slay "with the Spirit of His Mouth and with the brightness of His coming," as the truth and never-fading Meridian, the Bridgroom and Advocate of the Church, Who is over all things, God be blessed for ever. Amen.
---
Footnotes:
1. From the translator: It may be of interest to observe that in St. Bernard's own day the coming of Antichrist was believed to be at hand. St. Norbert, Founder of the Premonstratensians, claimed to have received a revelation to that effect. He was visited by the Abbot of Clairvaux, who has left us an account of the interview in his 56th Epistle: "He declared that he knew for certain that Antichrist was to be revealed in the present generation and that he himself would live to see a general persecution. Still I was not convinced."
---
Source: St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles, trans. by a priest of Mount Melleray (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, Limited, 1920), 405–408, Sermon 33: "On the Three Objects of the Devout Soul's Quest, On the Mystical Meridian, and the Four Kinds of Temptation" or "Ends to Be Pursued—The Mystical Noontide; Temptations to Be Avoided," nn. 14–16.
---
For the last temptations of the Church, St. Bernard seems to give no indication of a solution except Christ's own second coming as when he says, "Him [i.e. the devil or Antichrist] may the Lord Jesus slay 'with the Spirit of His Mouth and the with the brightness of His coming'."
Repost: "Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire"
But I also admit a creative appetite to destabilize what we identify
as erotic in contemporary society and to invite the reader to consider
that our erotic arousal may not be as natural or innate as we think it
is. That far from being the liberation we proclaim it to be, it is more
socially proscribed than we care to admit. Moreover, many the tropes we
identify erotically transgressive are often centered around nostalgic
themes of past prohibitions; thus making them socially ‘safe’. [...]
Indeed Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Barthe’s formulation of thedifference
between texts of pleasure and texts of bliss (or jouissance) seem like
an almost too obvious, too simplistic ‘fit’ for creative writing in the
erotica genre. And yet, the vast majority of erotic fiction available
accepts, employs and perpetuates normative erotic signification. There
is little recognition or interrogation of the fact that we, as subjects
in the Symbolic world, are unconsciously adopting the desire of the
Other as our own, including the explicitly erotic desire of the Other.
Our world is inundated in pornographic memes that act as
‘erotosignifiers’ – incredibly effective triggers for things we believe
we must, as normal erotic beings, desire. But these very erotosignifiers
are the ones that most efficiently serve to maintain conformity and
reinforce structures of hegemonic control over the erotic via, as Zizek
has described it, “the Law’s obscene supplement” (The Parallax View
366). For all our mainstream culture’s disavowal of mindless hedonism,
sexual objectification, decontextualization, etc., these disingenuously
disavowed, but implicitly employed erotosignifiers serve contemporary
power structures in myriad ways. They provide a libidinal valve for the
enormous pressure of the socially responsible humans we are enjoined to
be. They rationalize our concepts of eroticism, in terms of gender
designations and roles, heteronormativity, socially validated forms of
sexual expression. Finally, train us to a commoditized understanding of
our drives, our identities and our intersubjective relations.
According to Bruce Fink, one of the central jobs of the Lacanian analyst in clinical practice is to get the analysand to become curious about their desires and the structure of their fantasies, to begin to question and critically consider how much of their desire is, in reality, the desire of the Other. (52-53)
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Source: Madeleine Morris, "Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire," Investigations into Reading and Writing Erotic Fiction blog, June 5, 2015, accessed June 5, 2015, http://www.remittancegirl.org/2015/06/05/creative-incursions-into-the-mine-of-fictional-desire/.
Indeed Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Barthe’s formulation of the
According to Bruce Fink, one of the central jobs of the Lacanian analyst in clinical practice is to get the analysand to become curious about their desires and the structure of their fantasies, to begin to question and critically consider how much of their desire is, in reality, the desire of the Other. (52-53)
---
Source: Madeleine Morris, "Creative Incursions into the Mine of Fictional Desire," Investigations into Reading and Writing Erotic Fiction blog, June 5, 2015, accessed June 5, 2015, http://www.remittancegirl.org/2015/06/05/creative-incursions-into-the-mine-of-fictional-desire/.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Repost: Steven Shaviro, "Speculative Realism – A Primer"
[Introduction to the article]
A conference held at Goldsmiths College in 2007 is regarded as the founding moment of Speculative Realism; its earliest protagonists were Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux. [...]
One salient point of agreement between these positions is the recourse to, or revision of, Kantian thought. They argue that the primacy of epistemology over ontology that has dominated philosophy since Kant leaves it stuck in perpetual scrutiny of the conditions of thinking. The Speculative Realists, by contrast, assume that the world is independent in some way of our conceptualizations of it. The very fact that the “thing in itself” is unknowable, as Kant declared, is supposed to make it suitable as an object of speculation. An operation Shaviro describes as a leap into fundamental uncertainty.
[The article itself]
A conference held at Goldsmiths College in 2007 is regarded as the founding moment of Speculative Realism; its earliest protagonists were Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux. [...]
One salient point of agreement between these positions is the recourse to, or revision of, Kantian thought. They argue that the primacy of epistemology over ontology that has dominated philosophy since Kant leaves it stuck in perpetual scrutiny of the conditions of thinking. The Speculative Realists, by contrast, assume that the world is independent in some way of our conceptualizations of it. The very fact that the “thing in itself” is unknowable, as Kant declared, is supposed to make it suitable as an object of speculation. An operation Shaviro describes as a leap into fundamental uncertainty.
[The article itself]
Modern Western philosophy – at least since Immanuel Kant
published his “Critique of Pure Reason” in 1781 – has tended to
privilege epistemology over ontology. Ontology is concerned with the
nature of being, with defining, on the most basic level, what is. Epistemology, in contrast, is concerned with how we know whatever
it is that we know. It scrutinizes the grounds and limits of our
ability to know the world. To say that epistemology must come before
ontology is simply to point out that, in order to make assertions about
what the world is like, we must be able to give grounds for these
assertions, to explain how we can know that they are true. Kant observed
that the philosophy of his time was unable to provide such grounds.
Either it was dogmatic, claiming to discover metaphysical
necessity by pure logical deduction, untethered to observation or
empirical evidence; or else it was sceptical, grounded in
empirical facts and in subjective experience, but unable to generalize
beyond these particular facts and that immediate experience. Against
both of these tendencies, Kant insisted that philosophy must start by
scrutinizing, and thereby accounting for, its own foundations. If it
failed to do this, and instead launched directly into metaphysical
speculation, then only nonsense would result. For Kant, and for most
philosophers ever since, we can only claim to know something (rather than just believing something blindly) when we can explain how we have come to know it, and what justifies our claims that it is true.
In principle, this priority of epistemology over ontology
seems unexceptionable. But in practice, it has become quite problematic.
For it means that we end up talking not about things in the world that
we encounter, but rather about our own process of encountering them.
Kant insists that “things in themselves” are unknowable; all we can
really be sure of is phenomena – how things appear to us.
In the centuries since Kant, this has become a sort of common sense.
Today we take it for granted that we can never see things as they really
are, because we can never escape the distorting lenses of our own
impositions on the world. Today, these impositions have gone beyond
Kant’s categories to include such things as language, our particular
cognitive mechanisms, and our cultural biases and ideologies.
Epistemological reflection is important, because it makes
us aware of our own prejudices and otherwise unquestioned assumptions.
But at the same time, ironically, such reflection makes it nearly
impossible for us to escape from these biases and assumptions. We are
trapped inside our own perspectives, unable to take a view from any
where else. Now, it is indeed important and necessary for us to worry
about the danger of making over everything – other people, other living
entities, and other things in the universe – in our own image. But the
price we pay for averting this danger is that we end up speaking only
about, and only to, ourselves. When this process is pushed far enough,
we come to believe that the world is just an arbitrary social or
linguistic construction, that it consists only of what we ourselves have
put into it. For the late-twentieth-century postmodern philosophy of
thinkers such as Richard Rorty, and, in a more subtle/complex way,
Jacques Derrida, there is no way to escape from this straighjacket: All
we can do is point it out, and deplore it. We can never get beyond
ourselves, so as to encounter something genuinely different.
The twenty-first-century revival of philosophical
speculation is an effort to break free of this dilemma. It seeks to undo
the Kantian privileging of epistemology – but it does this for very
Kantian reasons. Kant’s own promotion of epistemology, and his ban on
metaphysical speculation, came out of his effort to avoid both the
Scylla of dogmatic rationalism, and the Charybdis of empiricist
scepticism. The current inversion of Kant, with its demotion of
epistemology, comes out of a similarly inspired effort to avoid both the
Scylla of blind logocentrism and ethnocentrism, and the Charybdis of
infinite deconstruction and auto critique. Kant denounced speculation
because it overstepped the bounds of all possible knowledge. For today’s
new speculative thinkers, in contrast, speculation is necessary
precisely because of the limits of knowledge. There is so much
that is real, but that we cannot ever possibly know.
Twenty-first-century speculation begins where our solid knowledge ends.
Far from making dogmatic claims, this new form of speculation
paradoxically explores the space of the ungraspable, and the time of the
unpredictable.
In 2007, four philosophers presented their work at
Goldsmiths in London under the banner of Speculative Realism: Quentin
Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Ray Brassier, and Iain Hamilton Grant. They
partly knew each other and each other’s work. While they have
occasionally been perceived as a relatively homogenous group, several of
them have since renounced the rubric of Speculative Realism; and
indeed, the differences among these thinkers are so great that they
cannot be said to comprise a single philosophical school. Yet, the label
of Speculative Realism is still useful, to indicate that these thinkers
at least share an important starting point. In Harman’s words, “all it
takes to be a speculative realist is to be opposed to ‘correlationism’,
Meillassoux’s term for the sort of philosophy (still dominant today)
that bases all philosophy on the mutual interplay of human and world.”
Speculative Realism insists upon the independence of the
world, and of things in the world, from our own conceptualizations of
them. It rejects the Kantian thesis that the order of the world depends
upon the way that our minds (or our languages, or our cultures) work to
structure it. And it also rejects the phenomenological assumption of a
primordial reciprocity or correspondence between self and world, or
subject and object, or knower and known. Reality is far weirder than we
are able to imagine. Things never conform to the ideas that we have
about them; there is always something more to them than what we are able
to grasp. The world does not fit into our own cognitive paradigms and
narrative modes of explanation. “Man” is not the measure of all things. This is why speculation is necessary. We must speculate,
to escape from our inveterate anthropocentrism and take seriously the
existence of a fundamentally alien, nonhuman world.
There is not one predetermined form of speculation. [...] There is no formula to guide the process of
such speculation. Each of the speculative realist thinkers proposes a
different way to speculate about the world, as it exists unknowably
apart from us.
Ray Brassier, in his book “Nihil Unbound”, doesn’t
altogether reject Kant’s epistemological concerns, his insistence upon
categories and regulative ideals – or what today we would more likely
call norms of rationality – that govern the ways in which we can
legitimately talk about the world. But Brassier goes beyond Kant, and
engages in a form of radical speculation, when he detaches these norms
from Kant’s implicitly human-centered focus. For Brassier, Kant’s
categories, such as causality, are not structures that our own minds
impose upon the world, in order to give it some intelligible order.
Rather, these methods and assumptions are forced upon us from
outside, as we seek to approach things that are alien and opaque to our
minds. Rationality is terrifyingly inhuman. Physical science allows us
to conceptualize a world that is not in any sense made to our measure.
But the scientific project can never be complete or final, as the world
is ultimately non-conceptual and unconceptualizable. Our ideas of things
can never match up to the things themselves. For Kant, this meant that
we were relegated to – but also safely grounded within – the realm of
phenomena, or mere appearances. But for Brassier, as we incessantly
approach (but never finally reach) things in themselves, we are divested
of everything that we used to take for granted. The cosmos is radically
blank and indifferent, once it has been stripped of all the meanings,
values, and narratives that we have vainly striven to impose upon it.
Our comforting presuppositions are dissolved, and only ungrounded
speculation is left to us.
In his important book “Après la finitude”, Quentin
Meillassoux, who was a student of Alain Badiou in Paris, turns Kant
inside out and renews the need for the sort of ontological speculation
that Kant rejected, in an entirely different way from Brassier.
Meillassoux opens a frontal assault upon the “correlationist”
assumptions of Kantianism and phenomenology. He insists upon what he
calls ancestrality: The indubitable existence of the universe
prior to humanity, or to any form of life, and thereby prior to any
possibility of being observed, interpreted, or evaluated. Kant
establishes “transcendental conditions of experience,” which must
logically precede (because they are always already presupposed by) any
form of existence whatsoever. But Meillassoux argues that these
conditions themselves could only have come into existence at some point
in the history of the world; before their emergence, the universe
already existed, but was not in any sense of the term “given” to us or
organized according to our categories. In other words, the correlation
between mind and world established by Kant is itself contingent, rather
than necessary. And from this insight, Meillassoux further deduces that radical contingency is
the one and only universal necessity. It is absolutely necessary, he
says, that the world has the capacity to be other than it currently is.
Things can happen for no reason whatsoever. Even socalled [sic] “laws of
nature” may arbitrarily change or disappear. In this way, Meillassoux
claims to discover truth by means of speculation – or better, to
establish the truth of speculation. Where Kant said that “things
in themselves” were unknowable because of the limitations of our own
powers of understanding, Meillassoux says rather that this unknowability
is itself a positive characteristic of things in themselves – and that
we can know this to be the case with absolute certainty.
Graham Harman’s version of Speculative Realism, which he calls object-oriented ontology,
takes yet another approach to the being of things apart from us,
referring to thinkers such as Bruno Latour and Manuel De Landa. In a
number of speculative works, including “Guerilla Metaphysics” and “The
Quadruple Object”, Harman revises Kant, and reintroduces the need for
speculation, by both extending and exploding one of Kant’s most basic
claims. Where Kant says that we can not know things in themselves
because we can only experience them in terms of the frameworks that we
ourselves impose upon them, Harman generalizes this situation to all
entities in the cosmos. It is not just human beings, or rational beings,
who apprehend the world in particular, limited ways. The world contains
a multitude of objects, and none of these objects has access to any
other object (or even to itself) in more than a superficial manner. For
Harman, Kant is right when he insists upon finitude, or the
unsurpassable limits of our knowledge. But Kant is wrong when he claims
to establish human-centered structures that are complete and certain, at
least within those limits. We don’t impose conditions upon the world,
so much as we are trapped within our own limited ability to make sense
of the world. Kant says that we must not speculate about things that we
cannot know. Harman replies that, precisely because we cannot know
things in themselves, the only thing that is left to us is to speculate.
We cannot grasp objects cognitively; but we can allude to
objects through metaphor and other aesthetic practices. In this way we
can cherish things, even though we do not fully understand them. And
such is the route of speculation: “the real is something that cannot be
known, only loved.”
Iain Hamilton Grant, who, like Brassier, was a student of
Nick Land, presents still another version of speculation in his
“Philosophies of Nature After Schelling”. In Kant’s own philosophy, the
“transcendental conditions of experience” are pre-existing structures to
which all cognition must and needs to conform. But Grant, following the
post-Kantian philosopher Friedrich Schelling, insists that these
structures themselves cannot be taken as simply given, but need to be
generated in some way. The transcendental – that which comes before all
experience, and establishes the conditions for experience – must itself
be an ongoing process, rather than just a static product. For Grant as
for Schelling, therefore, the “transcendental” can only be identified
with the infinite, ongoing productivity of nature itself – rather than
with the finite human mind, which is just one product of nature.
Speculation is necessary, for all these thinkers, because it is the only
way in which we can seek to trace the forces, powers, and events that
generate our bodies and minds, but that remain forever beyond our minds’
and bodies’ grasp.
In sum, the speculative realists all find ways to
circumvent Kant’s prohibition of metaphysical speculation. They work to
resist the anthropocentrism that results from Kant’s privileging of
epistemology over ontology. For Meillassoux and for Brassier, the way to
overcome the constraints of Kantian epistemology is to realize that the
limitations upon possible knowledge discovered by Kant are not
inscribed within our own cognitive faculties, so much as they are
already features of things in themselves, which are irreducibly
contingent (Meillassoux) or non-conceptual (Brassier). For Harman and
for Grant, meanwhile, the privilege accorded to human cognition must
itself be put into question. Human perception and understanding are less
special than we generally believe; for they belong to a much broader
spectrum of processes of relation and causal influence. What I do when I
contemplate a ball of cotton is not far different from what dye does
when it colors a ball of cotton, or for that matter from what fire does
when it burns a ball of cotton. For Harman, these are all instances of
“vicarious contact” between distinctly separate entities. And for Grant,
they are all transformations that are driven by, but that also halt and
reify, the incessant productivity of Nature. Epistemology cannot be
given priority, because understanding and knowing are themselves caught
up within larger movements for which they cannot themselves account. All
these thinkers take up speculation, not as a way to discover higher
“dogmatic” truths, but rather as a way to explore what Meillassoux calls
the “Great Outdoors” of existence, a realm far too vast and weird, and
radically uncertain, to be subsumed by our own values and norms.
---
Source: Steven Shaviro, "Speculative Realism – A Primer," Terremoto 2 (June 1, 2015), accessed June 6, 2015, http://terremoto.mx/article/speculative-realism-a-primer/.
Source: Steven Shaviro, "Speculative Realism – A Primer," Terremoto 2 (June 1, 2015), accessed June 6, 2015, http://terremoto.mx/article/speculative-realism-a-primer/.
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange on the Practical Consequences of Efficacious Grace
[95] St. Thomas [...] grasped the depth and the height of our Lord's words: "Without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5), and of St. Paul's words: "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will" (Phil. 2:13). "For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received?" (Cf. 1 Cor. 4:7). In the work of salvation we cannot distinguish any part that is exclusively ours; all comes from God, even our free co-operation, which efficacious grace gently and mightily stirs up in us and confirms.
This grace, which is always followed by its effect, is refused to us, as we said, only if we resist the divine, auxilium praeveniens, sufficient grace, in which the efficacious help is already offered us, as fruit is in the flower. If we destroy the flower, we shall never see the fruit, which the influence of the sun and of the nourishment of the earth would have produced. [...] [Man] is sufficiently assisted by God so that he falls only through his own fault, which thus deprives him of a new help. This is the great mystery of grace. [1]
[96] [...] All that is good in us, naturally or supernaturally, has its origin in the Author of all good. Sin alone cannot come from Him, and the Lord allows it to happen only because He is sufficiently powerful and good to draw from it a greater good, the manifestation of His mercy or justice. [...]
[This] doctrine should lead those who understand it well to profound humility, to almost continual interior prayer, to the perfection of the theological virtues and of the corresponding gifts of the Holy Ghost. [...]
This doctrine leads first of all to profound humility. According [97] to this doctrine man has as his own, as something coming exclusively from himself, only his sin, as the Council of Orange declared (Canon 22: "No one has anything of his own except his deceitfulness and his sin." Denzinger, no. 195). He never performs any natural good act without the natural aid of God, or any supernatural good act without a grace which solicits or attracts him, and also efficaciously moves him to the salutary act. As St. Paul says: "Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God" (Cf. 2 Cor. 3:5).
Even holy souls that have reached a high degree of charity are always in need of an actual grace in order to merit, to advance, to avoid sin, and to persevere in goodness (Cf. Summa Th. 1a2ae.109.2, 8-10). [...] After striving greatly, they should admit: "We are unprofitable servants" (Lk 17:10), for the Lord might have chosen others who would have served Him much better. In all truth we should say, according to the teaching of St. Thomas, that there is no sin committed by another man which I might not commit in the same circumstances by reason of the infirmity of my free will, and of my own weakness [....] And if actually I have not fallen, if I have persevered, this is doubtless because I worked and struggled, but without divine grace I should have done nothing (Cf. Del Prado, De gratia, III, 151). "Not to us, O Lord, not to us; but to Thy name give glory" (Ps 113:1); [...] "Thou hast redeemed us [98] to God, in Thy blood" (Apoc. 5:9). "If I have not perished, it is because of Thy mercy" (Lam. 3:22). "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. 30:6; Lk 23:46). "This," says St. Augustine, "is what must be believed and said in all piety and truth, so that our confession may be humble and suppliant, and that all may be attributed to God" (De dono perseverantiae, chap. 13). Such is true humility. "Or what has thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?" (Cf. 1 Cor. 4:7).
The saints, considering their own failures, say to themselves that if such and such a criminal had received all the graces the Lord bestowed on them, he would perhaps have been less unfaithful than they. The sight of the gratuity of the divine predilections confirms them in humility. They recall our Lord's words: "You have not chosen Me: but I have chosen you."
This doctrine leads also to continual intimate prayer, to profound thanksgiving, to the prayer of contemplation.
It leads to intimate prayer; for this is a very secret grace that must be asked. We must ask not only the grace which solicits and excites the soul to good but also that grace which makes us will it, which makes us persevere, which reaches the depths of our heart and of our free will; that grace which moves us in these depths, so that we may be delivered from the concupiscence of the flesh and the eyes, and from the pride of life. God alone saves and snatches us from these enemies of our salvation. At the same time He does not wound our liberty, but establishes it by delivering us from the captivity of these things of earth.
Thus Scripture teaches us to pray: "Have pity on me, O Lord, according to Thine infinite mercy. Be propitious to a sinner. Help my unbelief. Create a clean heart in me, and [99] renew a right spirit within me. Convert me, O Lord, make me return to Thee, and I shall return (Lam. 5:21). Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Give me Thy sweet and mighty grace in order that I may truly accomplish Thy holy will. As St. Augustine says: "Lord, give what Thou dost command, and command what Thou pleasest."
Thus again the Church prays in the Missal: "Lord, direct toward Thyself our rebellious wills; grant that unbelievers, who are unwilling to believe, may have a will to believe. Apply our hearts to good works. Give us good will. Convert us and draw us strongly to Thyself. Take from us our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, a docile and pure heart. Change our wills and incline them toward what is good."
Such is the holy confidence of the prayer of the Church because she is sure that God is not powerless to convert the most hardened sinners. What should a priest do who cannot succeed in converting a dying sinner? Persuaded that God can convert this guilty will, above all the priest will pray. If, on the contrary, he imagines that God holds this will only from without, buy circumstances, good thoughts, good inspirations, which remain external to the consent to salutary goodness, will not the priest himself delay too long in the use of superficial means? Will his prayer possess that holy boldness which we admire in the saints, and which rests on their faith in the potent efficacy of grace?
Likewise prayer should be, in a sense, continual, since our soul needs a new, actual efficacious grace for every salutary act, for each new merit. With this in mind, we clearly see the profound meaning of our Lord's words: "We ought always to pray, and not to faith" (Lk 18:1). This truth is fully realized only in the mystical life, in which prayer truly becomes, as the fathers say, "the breath of the soul," which hardly ceases any [100] more than than that of the body. The soul constantly desires grace, which is like a vivifying breath renewing it and making it produce constantly new acts of love of God.
Such ought to be the prayer of petition. And we ought also to thank God for all our good actions, since without Him we could have done nothing. This is what makes St. Paul say: "Pray without ceasing. In all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you all" (Cf. 1 Thess. 5:17–18). "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God and the Father" (Eph. 5:19–20).
This doctrine of the intrinsic efficacy of grace leads also directly to the prayer of contemplation, which considers chiefly the profound action of God in us to mortify and to vivify, and which is expressed by the fiat of perfect abandonment. In contemplation we see realized in the intimate depths of souls the words of Scripture: "Thou are great, O Lord, forever.... For Thou scourgest, and Thou savest: Thou leadest down to hell, and bringest up again" (Tob. 13:2). "Thy word, O Lord, which healeth all things" (Wis. 16:12). To utter a perfect fiat to this intense and hidden work of grace in us, even when it crucifies and seems to destroy all, is the most secret but also the most fruitful co-operation in God's greatest work. It is the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane and that of the blessed Virgin at the foot of the cross.
Lastly, this doctrine reminds us that even for prayer efficacious grace is necessary. "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit Himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings. And He that searcheth the hearts, knoweth what the Spirit desireth; because He asketh for the saints [101] according to God" (Rom. 8:26–27). This mystery is verified especially in the mystical union, often obscure and painful, in which the soul learns by experience what great need we have of grace in order to pray, as also to do good. But, says St. John of the Cross (The Dark Night, Bk. II, chap. 20), souls that have reached a certain degree of union "obtain from God all that they feel inspired to ask of Him, according to the words of David, 'Delight in the Lord, and He will give thee the request of thy heart'" (Ps. 36:4). Moreover, every humble, confident, persevering prayer by which we ask what is necessary or useful for our salvation is infallibly efficacious, because our Lord uttered such a promise and because God Himself caused this petition to well up in our hearts. Resolved from all eternity to grant us His benefactions, He leads us to ask them of Him.
This doctrine of the powerful efficacy of grace leads finally to great heights in the practice of the theological virtues. This it does because it is intimately bound up with the sublime mystery of predestination, the grandeur of which it fully preserves. St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, tells us: "And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be saints. For whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son; that He might be the first-born amongst many brethren. And whom He predestinated, them He also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who is against us?" (Rom. 8:28–31). St. Paul teaches the same doctrine in the Epistle to the Ephesians. [2]
[102] St. Augustine [3] and St. Thomas [4] have explained these words of St. Paul without lessening their real meaning. Bossuet, their disciple, sums them up with his usual mastery by saying: "I do not deny the goodness of God toward all men, or the means which in His general providence He offers them for their eternal salvation. The Lord does not will that any should perish, but that all should return to penance (cf. II Pet. 3:9). But however great His designs may be on everyone, He fixes a certain particular gaze of preference on a number that is known to Him. All those on whom He gazes in this way, weep for their sins and are converted in their time. That is why Peter burst into tears when our Lord looked at him benignly. Peter's repentance was the result of the prayer which Christ had offered for the stability of his faith; for it was necessary, first of all, to rekindle his faith, and then to strengthen it that it might endure to the end. The same is true of all those whom His Father has given Him in a special manner. Of these He said: 'All that the Father giveth to Me shall come to Me.... Now this is the will of the Father who sent me: that of all that He hath given Me, I should lose nothing; but should raise it up again in the last day' (John 6:37, 39).
"And why does He make us penetrate these sublime truths? Is it to trouble us, to alarm us, to cast us into despair, [103] to disturb us and make us question whether or not we are of the elect? Far be it from us to indulge in such thoughts, which would make us penetrate the secret counsels of God, explore, so to speak, even into His bosom, and sound the profound abyss of His eternal decrees. The design of our Savior is that, contemplating this secret gaze which He fixes on those whom He knows and whom His Father has given Him by a certain choice, and recognizing that He can lead them to their eternal salvation by means which do not fail, we should thus learn first of all to ask for these means, to unite ourselves to His prayer, to say with Him: 'Deliver us from evil' (Matt. 6:13); for, in the words of the Church: 'Do not permit us to be separated from Thee. If our will seeks to escape, do not permit it to do so; keep it in Thy hands, change it, and bring it back to Thee'" (Bossuet, Méditations sur l'Évangile, part, II, 72nd day).
This prayer assumes its full value in the plenitude of the life of faith, which is the mystical life; faith, as practical as sublime, in the wisdom of God, in the holiness of His good pleasure, in His omnipotence, in His sovereign dominion, in the infinite value of the merits of Jesus Christ, and in the infallible efficacy of His prayer.
Faith in the wisdom of God: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways! ... Or who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made Him? For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory forever. Amen" (Rom. 11:33–36).
Faith in the holiness of the divine good pleasure. "I confess to Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Father; for so hath it seemed good in Thy sight" (Matt. 11:25–26). Jesus spoke in the same manner [104] to the Pharisees: "Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to Me, except the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him; and I will raise him up in the last day" (John 6:43–44).
Faith in the divine omnipotence. God can convert the most hardened sinners. "The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: withersoever He will He shall turn it" (Prov. 21:1). "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will" (Phil. 2:13). "My sheep hear My voice; and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them life everlasting; and they shall not perish forever, and no man shall pluck them out of My hand. That which My Father hath given Me, is greater than all; and no one can snatch them out of the hand of My Father. I and the Father are one" (John 10:27–30).
Faith in the sovereign dominion of the Creator. "Behold as clay is in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hands, O house of Israel" (Jer. 18:6). "Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction, that He might show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He hath prepared unto glory?" (Rom. 9:21–23).
Faith in the infinite value of the merits and of the prayer of Jesus. "The Father loveth the Son: and He hath given all things into His hands" (John 3:35). "Amen, amen I say unto you: He that believeth in Me, hath everlasting life" (John 6:47). "I have manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou hast given Me out of the world. Thine they were, and to Me Thou gavest them; [105] and they have kept Thy word.... I pray for them.... Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given Me; that they may be one, as We also are.... While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name. Those whom Thou gavest Me have I kept; and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, and the Scripture may be fulfilled.... I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from evil.... And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in Me.... Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me; that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world" (John 17:6, 9, 11, 12, 15, 20, 24).
This act of serene and invincible faith in the infinite merits of Christ ravishes the heart of God, who at times allows everything to seem outwardly lost, that He may give His children the opportunity to prove their faith in Him by such an act.
This doctrine of grace leads us also to an entirely supernatural hope composed of confidence in the divine mercy and abandonment to it. The formal motive of hope is, in fact, the infinitely helpful divine mercy (Deus auxilians). That this virtue of hope may be divine and theological, we must hope in God and not in the power of our free will. "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool; but he that walketh wisely, he shall be saved" (Prov. 28:26). Considering our weakness, we must "with fear and trembling work out our salvation" (Phil. 2:12), and "he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall" (see I Cor. 10:12). But, considering God's infinitely helpful goodness, we must say to Him: "In Thee, O my God, I put my trust; let me not be ashamed" (Ps. 24:2). "Into Thy hands I commend my [106] spirit" (Ps. 30:6). "O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet; blessed is the man that hopeth in Him" (Ps. 33:9). "Preserve me, O Lord, for I have put my trust in Thee" (Ps. 15:1). "In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded" (Ps. 30:2). "Behold, God is my savior, I will deal confidently, and will not fear: because the Lord is my strength, and my praise, and He is become my salvation" (Is. 12:2). "I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4:13).
Such is the abandonment which Christ wishes us to learn. It has no quietism in it, as Bossuet so well explains. He says: "We must abandon ourselves to the divine goodness. This does not mean that we need not act and work, or that, in opposition to God's command, we may yield to unconcern or to rash thoughts. Rather, while acting to the best of our ability, we must above all abandon ourselves to God alone for time and for eternity....
"A proud man fears that his salvation will be uncertain unless he keeps it in his own hand, but he is deceived. Can I rely on myself? I feel that my will escapes me at every moment. If Thou, O Lord, didst wish to make me the sole master of my fate, I should decline a power so dangerous to my weakness. Let no one tell me that this doctrine of grace and preference leads good souls to despair. How mad for me to think I can be reassured by being hurled back on myself and delivered up to my inconstancy! To this, O my God, I do not consent. I find assurance only in abandoning myself to Thee. And in this abandonment I find even greater trust, for those to whom Thou dost give this confidence in entire abandonment, receive in this gentle impulse the best mark we can have on earth of Thy goodness. Increase this desire in me; and by this means [107] put into my heart the blessed hope of being at last among the chosen number.... Heal me and I shall be healed; convert me and I shall be converted" (Bossuet, Médit. sur l'Évangile, Pt. III, 72nd day).
In the painful, passive purifications of the spirit, souls are often tempted against hope and are troubled about the mystery of predestination. In this temptation all created helps fail them, and they must hope heroically against all hope for this single, pure reason, namely, that God is infinitely helpful and does not abandon the just unless they desert Him, that He does not let them be tempted beyond their strength aided by grace, that He sustains them by His all-powerful goodness, as He said to St. Paul: "My grace is sufficient for the; for power is made perfect in infirmity." "Gladly, therefore," says the great Apostle, "will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am week, then am I powerful" (See. 2 Cor. 12:9, 10).
We ought in great difficulties to think of this formal motive of hope: God our helper; for He comes efficaciously to our assistance by the grace that urges us to the practice of goodness, and in a gentle and powerful way causes it to be accomplished (cf. Catechism of the Council of Trent, chap. 45, "On temptation"). "But the salvation of the just is from the Lord, and He is their protector in the time of trouble. And the Lord will help them and deliver them: and He will rescue them from the wicked, and save them, because they have hoped in Him" (Ps. 36:39f).
Lastly, this doctrine of the efficacy of grace confirms our charity toward God and souls. This charity is a friendship based on God's communication to us of the divine life through grace. Therefore the more intimate and efficacious the grace which is given us, the more we should love God and correspond [108] to His love. "Not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us" (See 1 John 4:10). The Master Himself said to His Apostles: "You have not chosen Me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit: and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My name He may give it you" (John 15:16). And in the exercise of the apostolate, because he believed in the potent efficacy of grace, St. Paul wrote: "Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulations? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword? ... But in all these things we overcome, because of Him that hath loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present ... nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:35, 37–39). [...]
No power is gentler than the infallibly efficacious grace of God. It diffuses itself gently in the soul which begins to will; the more the soul wills and the greater its thirst for God, the more it will be enriched. When God becomes more exacting and wishes pure crystal where there has been only sin, then He will give His grace in abundance that the soul may correspond [109] to His demands: "I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). The purified soul ends by praising the power of God: "The right hand of the Lord hath wrought strength. I shall not die, but live: and shall declare the works of the Lord" (Ps. 117:17). [...]
St. Bernard says: "Grace is necessary to salvation, free will is equally so; but grace in order to give salvation, free will in order to receive it.... Therefore we should not attribute part of the good work to grace, and part to free will. It is performed in its entirety by the common and inseparable action of both; entirely by grace, entirely by free will, but springing completely from the first in the second" (De gratia et libero arbitrio, chaps. 1 and 14.).
St. Bonaventure is of the same opinion: "Devout souls do not seek to attribute to themselves in the work of salvation some part that does not come from God. They recognize that all issues from divine grace" (See II Sent., dist. 26, q. 2).
Tauler speaks of the efficacy of grace as St. Thomas does.
In The Imitation of Christ we read: "Never esteem thyself to be anything because of thy good works.... Of thyself thou always tendest to nothing: speedily art thou cast down, speedily overcome, speedily disordered, speedily undone. Thou hast not whereof to glory, but many things for which thou oughtest to account thyself vile; for thou art much weaker than thou art able to comprehend." "For I am nothing and I knew it not. IF I be left to myself, behold I become nothing but mere weakness; but if Thou for an instant look upon me, I am forthwith made strong, and am filled with new joy." "From Me, as from a living fountain, the small and the great, the poor and the rich, do draw the water of life; and [110] they that willingly and freely server Me, shall receive grace for grace.... Thou oughtest, therefore, to ascribe nothing to thyself, nor attribute goodness unto any man, but give all unto God, without whom man hath nothing. I have given thee all, and My will is to have all again.... This is the truth whereby vainglory is put to flight, and if heavenly grace enter in and true charity, there will be no envy or narrowness of heart, neither will self-love busy itself. For divine charity overcometh all things and enlargeth all the powers of the soul" (Bk. IV, chap. 4, no. 2; chap. 8, no. 1). [...]
[St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross say the same doctrine.] [111]
St. Francis de Sales states this doctrine in the following terms: "The chains of grace are so powerful, and yet so sweet, that though they attract our heart, they do not shackle our freedom.... Our yielding to the impulse of grace is much [112] more the effect of grace than of our will, and resistance to its inspirations is to be attributed to our will alone.... 'If thou didst know the gift of God'" (Treatise on the Love of God, Bk. II, chap. 12) [5, 6]. [...]
All the difficulties of the mystery of grace are solved practically by humility. Bossuet says: "Behold a terrible danger for human pride. Man says in his heart: I have my free will. God made me free, and I wish to make myself just.... In my free will, which I cannot harmonize with this abandonment to grace, I wish to find something to cling to. Proud foe, do you wish to reconcile these things, or rather to believe that God reconciles them? He reconciles them in the way He wishes, without releasing you from your action and without ceasing to demand that you attribute to Him all the work of your salvation, for He is the Savior, and He said: 'I am the Lord; and there is no savior besides Me' (Is. 43:11). Believe firmly that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and all difficulties will vanish" (Bossuet, Elévations sur les mystères, 18th week, 15th elevation).
[...] This great doctrine [...] [113] manifestly turns souls toward the loftiest mystical union, which is none other than the fulness of the life of faith.
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Footnotes:
1. [...] It is God who anticipates us by His grace when He justifies us, and it is we who are the first to abandon Him when we lose divine grace: "God will not desert the justified, unless He is first deserted by them" (Council of Trent, Sess. VI, chap. 2).
2. St. Paul also says in the Epistle to the Ephesians, 1:3–6, 11–12: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with spiritual blessings, in heavenly places, in Christ: as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity. Who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto Himself: according to the purpose of His will: unto the praise of the glory of His grace, in which He hath graced us in His beloved Son.... In whom we also are called by lot, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things according to the counsel of His will. That we may be unto the praise of His glory, we who before hoped in Christ."
3. De praedestinatione sanctorum, chaps. 3, 6–11, 14, 15, 17; De dono perseverantiae, chaps. 1, 6, 7, 12, 16–20, 23; De correptione et gratia, chaps. 9, 12, 13, 14. See also on these texts, Del Prado, De gratia et libero arbitrio, III, 555–564; II, 67–81, 259; and Bossuet, Défense de la tradition, Bk. XII, chaps. 13–20.
4. In Ep. ad Rom. 8:28; In Ep. ad Ephes., I, nos. 5; Summa Th., Ia, q. 23.
5. The author says in the same chapter: "Grace is so gracious and so graciously seizes on our hearts to draw them, that it in no way offends the liberty of our will; it touches powerfully but yet so delicately the springs of our spirit that our free will suffers no violence from it."
6. Father Grou, S.J. (MAximes spirituelles, 2d maxim) writes as do the most faithful disciples of St. Thomas: "Grace alone can free us from the slavery of sin and assure us true liberty; whence it follows that the more the will subjects itself to grace , the more it will do all that depends on it to become absolutely, fully, and constnatly dependent, the more free it will be.... Thus for the will all consists in putting itself in the hands of God, in using its own activity only to become more dependent on Him.... Is not our salvation incomparably more certain in God's hands than in our own? And fundamentally what can we do to save ourselves except what God enables us to do?"
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Source: Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation, trans. by M. Timothea Doyle (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2003), 95–113.
This grace, which is always followed by its effect, is refused to us, as we said, only if we resist the divine, auxilium praeveniens, sufficient grace, in which the efficacious help is already offered us, as fruit is in the flower. If we destroy the flower, we shall never see the fruit, which the influence of the sun and of the nourishment of the earth would have produced. [...] [Man] is sufficiently assisted by God so that he falls only through his own fault, which thus deprives him of a new help. This is the great mystery of grace. [1]
[96] [...] All that is good in us, naturally or supernaturally, has its origin in the Author of all good. Sin alone cannot come from Him, and the Lord allows it to happen only because He is sufficiently powerful and good to draw from it a greater good, the manifestation of His mercy or justice. [...]
[This] doctrine should lead those who understand it well to profound humility, to almost continual interior prayer, to the perfection of the theological virtues and of the corresponding gifts of the Holy Ghost. [...]
This doctrine leads first of all to profound humility. According [97] to this doctrine man has as his own, as something coming exclusively from himself, only his sin, as the Council of Orange declared (Canon 22: "No one has anything of his own except his deceitfulness and his sin." Denzinger, no. 195). He never performs any natural good act without the natural aid of God, or any supernatural good act without a grace which solicits or attracts him, and also efficaciously moves him to the salutary act. As St. Paul says: "Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God" (Cf. 2 Cor. 3:5).
Even holy souls that have reached a high degree of charity are always in need of an actual grace in order to merit, to advance, to avoid sin, and to persevere in goodness (Cf. Summa Th. 1a2ae.109.2, 8-10). [...] After striving greatly, they should admit: "We are unprofitable servants" (Lk 17:10), for the Lord might have chosen others who would have served Him much better. In all truth we should say, according to the teaching of St. Thomas, that there is no sin committed by another man which I might not commit in the same circumstances by reason of the infirmity of my free will, and of my own weakness [....] And if actually I have not fallen, if I have persevered, this is doubtless because I worked and struggled, but without divine grace I should have done nothing (Cf. Del Prado, De gratia, III, 151). "Not to us, O Lord, not to us; but to Thy name give glory" (Ps 113:1); [...] "Thou hast redeemed us [98] to God, in Thy blood" (Apoc. 5:9). "If I have not perished, it is because of Thy mercy" (Lam. 3:22). "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. 30:6; Lk 23:46). "This," says St. Augustine, "is what must be believed and said in all piety and truth, so that our confession may be humble and suppliant, and that all may be attributed to God" (De dono perseverantiae, chap. 13). Such is true humility. "Or what has thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?" (Cf. 1 Cor. 4:7).
The saints, considering their own failures, say to themselves that if such and such a criminal had received all the graces the Lord bestowed on them, he would perhaps have been less unfaithful than they. The sight of the gratuity of the divine predilections confirms them in humility. They recall our Lord's words: "You have not chosen Me: but I have chosen you."
This doctrine leads also to continual intimate prayer, to profound thanksgiving, to the prayer of contemplation.
It leads to intimate prayer; for this is a very secret grace that must be asked. We must ask not only the grace which solicits and excites the soul to good but also that grace which makes us will it, which makes us persevere, which reaches the depths of our heart and of our free will; that grace which moves us in these depths, so that we may be delivered from the concupiscence of the flesh and the eyes, and from the pride of life. God alone saves and snatches us from these enemies of our salvation. At the same time He does not wound our liberty, but establishes it by delivering us from the captivity of these things of earth.
Thus Scripture teaches us to pray: "Have pity on me, O Lord, according to Thine infinite mercy. Be propitious to a sinner. Help my unbelief. Create a clean heart in me, and [99] renew a right spirit within me. Convert me, O Lord, make me return to Thee, and I shall return (Lam. 5:21). Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Give me Thy sweet and mighty grace in order that I may truly accomplish Thy holy will. As St. Augustine says: "Lord, give what Thou dost command, and command what Thou pleasest."
Thus again the Church prays in the Missal: "Lord, direct toward Thyself our rebellious wills; grant that unbelievers, who are unwilling to believe, may have a will to believe. Apply our hearts to good works. Give us good will. Convert us and draw us strongly to Thyself. Take from us our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, a docile and pure heart. Change our wills and incline them toward what is good."
Such is the holy confidence of the prayer of the Church because she is sure that God is not powerless to convert the most hardened sinners. What should a priest do who cannot succeed in converting a dying sinner? Persuaded that God can convert this guilty will, above all the priest will pray. If, on the contrary, he imagines that God holds this will only from without, buy circumstances, good thoughts, good inspirations, which remain external to the consent to salutary goodness, will not the priest himself delay too long in the use of superficial means? Will his prayer possess that holy boldness which we admire in the saints, and which rests on their faith in the potent efficacy of grace?
Likewise prayer should be, in a sense, continual, since our soul needs a new, actual efficacious grace for every salutary act, for each new merit. With this in mind, we clearly see the profound meaning of our Lord's words: "We ought always to pray, and not to faith" (Lk 18:1). This truth is fully realized only in the mystical life, in which prayer truly becomes, as the fathers say, "the breath of the soul," which hardly ceases any [100] more than than that of the body. The soul constantly desires grace, which is like a vivifying breath renewing it and making it produce constantly new acts of love of God.
Such ought to be the prayer of petition. And we ought also to thank God for all our good actions, since without Him we could have done nothing. This is what makes St. Paul say: "Pray without ceasing. In all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you all" (Cf. 1 Thess. 5:17–18). "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God and the Father" (Eph. 5:19–20).
This doctrine of the intrinsic efficacy of grace leads also directly to the prayer of contemplation, which considers chiefly the profound action of God in us to mortify and to vivify, and which is expressed by the fiat of perfect abandonment. In contemplation we see realized in the intimate depths of souls the words of Scripture: "Thou are great, O Lord, forever.... For Thou scourgest, and Thou savest: Thou leadest down to hell, and bringest up again" (Tob. 13:2). "Thy word, O Lord, which healeth all things" (Wis. 16:12). To utter a perfect fiat to this intense and hidden work of grace in us, even when it crucifies and seems to destroy all, is the most secret but also the most fruitful co-operation in God's greatest work. It is the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane and that of the blessed Virgin at the foot of the cross.
Lastly, this doctrine reminds us that even for prayer efficacious grace is necessary. "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit Himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings. And He that searcheth the hearts, knoweth what the Spirit desireth; because He asketh for the saints [101] according to God" (Rom. 8:26–27). This mystery is verified especially in the mystical union, often obscure and painful, in which the soul learns by experience what great need we have of grace in order to pray, as also to do good. But, says St. John of the Cross (The Dark Night, Bk. II, chap. 20), souls that have reached a certain degree of union "obtain from God all that they feel inspired to ask of Him, according to the words of David, 'Delight in the Lord, and He will give thee the request of thy heart'" (Ps. 36:4). Moreover, every humble, confident, persevering prayer by which we ask what is necessary or useful for our salvation is infallibly efficacious, because our Lord uttered such a promise and because God Himself caused this petition to well up in our hearts. Resolved from all eternity to grant us His benefactions, He leads us to ask them of Him.
This doctrine of the powerful efficacy of grace leads finally to great heights in the practice of the theological virtues. This it does because it is intimately bound up with the sublime mystery of predestination, the grandeur of which it fully preserves. St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, tells us: "And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be saints. For whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son; that He might be the first-born amongst many brethren. And whom He predestinated, them He also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who is against us?" (Rom. 8:28–31). St. Paul teaches the same doctrine in the Epistle to the Ephesians. [2]
[102] St. Augustine [3] and St. Thomas [4] have explained these words of St. Paul without lessening their real meaning. Bossuet, their disciple, sums them up with his usual mastery by saying: "I do not deny the goodness of God toward all men, or the means which in His general providence He offers them for their eternal salvation. The Lord does not will that any should perish, but that all should return to penance (cf. II Pet. 3:9). But however great His designs may be on everyone, He fixes a certain particular gaze of preference on a number that is known to Him. All those on whom He gazes in this way, weep for their sins and are converted in their time. That is why Peter burst into tears when our Lord looked at him benignly. Peter's repentance was the result of the prayer which Christ had offered for the stability of his faith; for it was necessary, first of all, to rekindle his faith, and then to strengthen it that it might endure to the end. The same is true of all those whom His Father has given Him in a special manner. Of these He said: 'All that the Father giveth to Me shall come to Me.... Now this is the will of the Father who sent me: that of all that He hath given Me, I should lose nothing; but should raise it up again in the last day' (John 6:37, 39).
"And why does He make us penetrate these sublime truths? Is it to trouble us, to alarm us, to cast us into despair, [103] to disturb us and make us question whether or not we are of the elect? Far be it from us to indulge in such thoughts, which would make us penetrate the secret counsels of God, explore, so to speak, even into His bosom, and sound the profound abyss of His eternal decrees. The design of our Savior is that, contemplating this secret gaze which He fixes on those whom He knows and whom His Father has given Him by a certain choice, and recognizing that He can lead them to their eternal salvation by means which do not fail, we should thus learn first of all to ask for these means, to unite ourselves to His prayer, to say with Him: 'Deliver us from evil' (Matt. 6:13); for, in the words of the Church: 'Do not permit us to be separated from Thee. If our will seeks to escape, do not permit it to do so; keep it in Thy hands, change it, and bring it back to Thee'" (Bossuet, Méditations sur l'Évangile, part, II, 72nd day).
This prayer assumes its full value in the plenitude of the life of faith, which is the mystical life; faith, as practical as sublime, in the wisdom of God, in the holiness of His good pleasure, in His omnipotence, in His sovereign dominion, in the infinite value of the merits of Jesus Christ, and in the infallible efficacy of His prayer.
Faith in the wisdom of God: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways! ... Or who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made Him? For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory forever. Amen" (Rom. 11:33–36).
Faith in the holiness of the divine good pleasure. "I confess to Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Father; for so hath it seemed good in Thy sight" (Matt. 11:25–26). Jesus spoke in the same manner [104] to the Pharisees: "Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to Me, except the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him; and I will raise him up in the last day" (John 6:43–44).
Faith in the divine omnipotence. God can convert the most hardened sinners. "The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: withersoever He will He shall turn it" (Prov. 21:1). "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will" (Phil. 2:13). "My sheep hear My voice; and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them life everlasting; and they shall not perish forever, and no man shall pluck them out of My hand. That which My Father hath given Me, is greater than all; and no one can snatch them out of the hand of My Father. I and the Father are one" (John 10:27–30).
Faith in the sovereign dominion of the Creator. "Behold as clay is in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hands, O house of Israel" (Jer. 18:6). "Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction, that He might show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He hath prepared unto glory?" (Rom. 9:21–23).
Faith in the infinite value of the merits and of the prayer of Jesus. "The Father loveth the Son: and He hath given all things into His hands" (John 3:35). "Amen, amen I say unto you: He that believeth in Me, hath everlasting life" (John 6:47). "I have manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou hast given Me out of the world. Thine they were, and to Me Thou gavest them; [105] and they have kept Thy word.... I pray for them.... Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given Me; that they may be one, as We also are.... While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name. Those whom Thou gavest Me have I kept; and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, and the Scripture may be fulfilled.... I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from evil.... And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in Me.... Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me; that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world" (John 17:6, 9, 11, 12, 15, 20, 24).
This act of serene and invincible faith in the infinite merits of Christ ravishes the heart of God, who at times allows everything to seem outwardly lost, that He may give His children the opportunity to prove their faith in Him by such an act.
This doctrine of grace leads us also to an entirely supernatural hope composed of confidence in the divine mercy and abandonment to it. The formal motive of hope is, in fact, the infinitely helpful divine mercy (Deus auxilians). That this virtue of hope may be divine and theological, we must hope in God and not in the power of our free will. "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool; but he that walketh wisely, he shall be saved" (Prov. 28:26). Considering our weakness, we must "with fear and trembling work out our salvation" (Phil. 2:12), and "he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall" (see I Cor. 10:12). But, considering God's infinitely helpful goodness, we must say to Him: "In Thee, O my God, I put my trust; let me not be ashamed" (Ps. 24:2). "Into Thy hands I commend my [106] spirit" (Ps. 30:6). "O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet; blessed is the man that hopeth in Him" (Ps. 33:9). "Preserve me, O Lord, for I have put my trust in Thee" (Ps. 15:1). "In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded" (Ps. 30:2). "Behold, God is my savior, I will deal confidently, and will not fear: because the Lord is my strength, and my praise, and He is become my salvation" (Is. 12:2). "I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4:13).
Such is the abandonment which Christ wishes us to learn. It has no quietism in it, as Bossuet so well explains. He says: "We must abandon ourselves to the divine goodness. This does not mean that we need not act and work, or that, in opposition to God's command, we may yield to unconcern or to rash thoughts. Rather, while acting to the best of our ability, we must above all abandon ourselves to God alone for time and for eternity....
"A proud man fears that his salvation will be uncertain unless he keeps it in his own hand, but he is deceived. Can I rely on myself? I feel that my will escapes me at every moment. If Thou, O Lord, didst wish to make me the sole master of my fate, I should decline a power so dangerous to my weakness. Let no one tell me that this doctrine of grace and preference leads good souls to despair. How mad for me to think I can be reassured by being hurled back on myself and delivered up to my inconstancy! To this, O my God, I do not consent. I find assurance only in abandoning myself to Thee. And in this abandonment I find even greater trust, for those to whom Thou dost give this confidence in entire abandonment, receive in this gentle impulse the best mark we can have on earth of Thy goodness. Increase this desire in me; and by this means [107] put into my heart the blessed hope of being at last among the chosen number.... Heal me and I shall be healed; convert me and I shall be converted" (Bossuet, Médit. sur l'Évangile, Pt. III, 72nd day).
In the painful, passive purifications of the spirit, souls are often tempted against hope and are troubled about the mystery of predestination. In this temptation all created helps fail them, and they must hope heroically against all hope for this single, pure reason, namely, that God is infinitely helpful and does not abandon the just unless they desert Him, that He does not let them be tempted beyond their strength aided by grace, that He sustains them by His all-powerful goodness, as He said to St. Paul: "My grace is sufficient for the; for power is made perfect in infirmity." "Gladly, therefore," says the great Apostle, "will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am week, then am I powerful" (See. 2 Cor. 12:9, 10).
We ought in great difficulties to think of this formal motive of hope: God our helper; for He comes efficaciously to our assistance by the grace that urges us to the practice of goodness, and in a gentle and powerful way causes it to be accomplished (cf. Catechism of the Council of Trent, chap. 45, "On temptation"). "But the salvation of the just is from the Lord, and He is their protector in the time of trouble. And the Lord will help them and deliver them: and He will rescue them from the wicked, and save them, because they have hoped in Him" (Ps. 36:39f).
Lastly, this doctrine of the efficacy of grace confirms our charity toward God and souls. This charity is a friendship based on God's communication to us of the divine life through grace. Therefore the more intimate and efficacious the grace which is given us, the more we should love God and correspond [108] to His love. "Not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us" (See 1 John 4:10). The Master Himself said to His Apostles: "You have not chosen Me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit: and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My name He may give it you" (John 15:16). And in the exercise of the apostolate, because he believed in the potent efficacy of grace, St. Paul wrote: "Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulations? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword? ... But in all these things we overcome, because of Him that hath loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present ... nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:35, 37–39). [...]
No power is gentler than the infallibly efficacious grace of God. It diffuses itself gently in the soul which begins to will; the more the soul wills and the greater its thirst for God, the more it will be enriched. When God becomes more exacting and wishes pure crystal where there has been only sin, then He will give His grace in abundance that the soul may correspond [109] to His demands: "I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). The purified soul ends by praising the power of God: "The right hand of the Lord hath wrought strength. I shall not die, but live: and shall declare the works of the Lord" (Ps. 117:17). [...]
St. Bernard says: "Grace is necessary to salvation, free will is equally so; but grace in order to give salvation, free will in order to receive it.... Therefore we should not attribute part of the good work to grace, and part to free will. It is performed in its entirety by the common and inseparable action of both; entirely by grace, entirely by free will, but springing completely from the first in the second" (De gratia et libero arbitrio, chaps. 1 and 14.).
St. Bonaventure is of the same opinion: "Devout souls do not seek to attribute to themselves in the work of salvation some part that does not come from God. They recognize that all issues from divine grace" (See II Sent., dist. 26, q. 2).
Tauler speaks of the efficacy of grace as St. Thomas does.
In The Imitation of Christ we read: "Never esteem thyself to be anything because of thy good works.... Of thyself thou always tendest to nothing: speedily art thou cast down, speedily overcome, speedily disordered, speedily undone. Thou hast not whereof to glory, but many things for which thou oughtest to account thyself vile; for thou art much weaker than thou art able to comprehend." "For I am nothing and I knew it not. IF I be left to myself, behold I become nothing but mere weakness; but if Thou for an instant look upon me, I am forthwith made strong, and am filled with new joy." "From Me, as from a living fountain, the small and the great, the poor and the rich, do draw the water of life; and [110] they that willingly and freely server Me, shall receive grace for grace.... Thou oughtest, therefore, to ascribe nothing to thyself, nor attribute goodness unto any man, but give all unto God, without whom man hath nothing. I have given thee all, and My will is to have all again.... This is the truth whereby vainglory is put to flight, and if heavenly grace enter in and true charity, there will be no envy or narrowness of heart, neither will self-love busy itself. For divine charity overcometh all things and enlargeth all the powers of the soul" (Bk. IV, chap. 4, no. 2; chap. 8, no. 1). [...]
[St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross say the same doctrine.] [111]
St. Francis de Sales states this doctrine in the following terms: "The chains of grace are so powerful, and yet so sweet, that though they attract our heart, they do not shackle our freedom.... Our yielding to the impulse of grace is much [112] more the effect of grace than of our will, and resistance to its inspirations is to be attributed to our will alone.... 'If thou didst know the gift of God'" (Treatise on the Love of God, Bk. II, chap. 12) [5, 6]. [...]
All the difficulties of the mystery of grace are solved practically by humility. Bossuet says: "Behold a terrible danger for human pride. Man says in his heart: I have my free will. God made me free, and I wish to make myself just.... In my free will, which I cannot harmonize with this abandonment to grace, I wish to find something to cling to. Proud foe, do you wish to reconcile these things, or rather to believe that God reconciles them? He reconciles them in the way He wishes, without releasing you from your action and without ceasing to demand that you attribute to Him all the work of your salvation, for He is the Savior, and He said: 'I am the Lord; and there is no savior besides Me' (Is. 43:11). Believe firmly that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and all difficulties will vanish" (Bossuet, Elévations sur les mystères, 18th week, 15th elevation).
[...] This great doctrine [...] [113] manifestly turns souls toward the loftiest mystical union, which is none other than the fulness of the life of faith.
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Footnotes:
1. [...] It is God who anticipates us by His grace when He justifies us, and it is we who are the first to abandon Him when we lose divine grace: "God will not desert the justified, unless He is first deserted by them" (Council of Trent, Sess. VI, chap. 2).
2. St. Paul also says in the Epistle to the Ephesians, 1:3–6, 11–12: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with spiritual blessings, in heavenly places, in Christ: as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity. Who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto Himself: according to the purpose of His will: unto the praise of the glory of His grace, in which He hath graced us in His beloved Son.... In whom we also are called by lot, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things according to the counsel of His will. That we may be unto the praise of His glory, we who before hoped in Christ."
3. De praedestinatione sanctorum, chaps. 3, 6–11, 14, 15, 17; De dono perseverantiae, chaps. 1, 6, 7, 12, 16–20, 23; De correptione et gratia, chaps. 9, 12, 13, 14. See also on these texts, Del Prado, De gratia et libero arbitrio, III, 555–564; II, 67–81, 259; and Bossuet, Défense de la tradition, Bk. XII, chaps. 13–20.
4. In Ep. ad Rom. 8:28; In Ep. ad Ephes., I, nos. 5; Summa Th., Ia, q. 23.
5. The author says in the same chapter: "Grace is so gracious and so graciously seizes on our hearts to draw them, that it in no way offends the liberty of our will; it touches powerfully but yet so delicately the springs of our spirit that our free will suffers no violence from it."
6. Father Grou, S.J. (MAximes spirituelles, 2d maxim) writes as do the most faithful disciples of St. Thomas: "Grace alone can free us from the slavery of sin and assure us true liberty; whence it follows that the more the will subjects itself to grace , the more it will do all that depends on it to become absolutely, fully, and constnatly dependent, the more free it will be.... Thus for the will all consists in putting itself in the hands of God, in using its own activity only to become more dependent on Him.... Is not our salvation incomparably more certain in God's hands than in our own? And fundamentally what can we do to save ourselves except what God enables us to do?"
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Source: Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation, trans. by M. Timothea Doyle (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2003), 95–113.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
How to Concretely Spread Traditional Catholicism
Adapted from Vox Clamantis [Tracy Tucciarone], June 3, 2015 (9:30 p.m.), comment on
Michael Levanduski, "Head of Vatican Liturgical Office Says Pope Francis
Urged Him to Continue Work o [sic]," Fish Eaters Traditional Catholic Forum, June 3, 2015, http://www.fisheaters.com/forums/index.php?topic=3468202.msg34004505#msg34004505.
1. Establish the Latin Mass at your parish. Consult this very helpful page from Fisheaters.com: "How to Establish the Traditional Mass in your Parish"
2. Speak to friends and family about the importance of traditional Catholicism a much as possible without being creepy or overbearing, of course.
3. Give financial support only to parishes, fraternities, and seminaries that directly support and spread traditional Catholicism.
4. Put advertisements up for the Latin Mass, the Sacraments in the older right, and resources on telephone posts and other public areas, especially in local parishes. Prepare flyers to hand out.
5. Lead RCIA programs and introduce neophytes and catechumens to traditional Catholicism.
6. Bring in orthodox, traditional priests to lead an old-fashioned mission in a parish.
7. Start website and blogs or send friends/family to existing sites.
8. Get academic degrees, write books and articles from the Catholic perspective (or at least incorporating traditional theology or philosophy where relevant), teach, obtain tenure, and introduce traditional Catholicism into academia.
9. Write movie and book reviews from a traditional Catholic perspective.
10. Respond to anti-Catholic bigotry in a winsome manner. Learn how to be an effective apologist by mastering critical thinking abilities, obtaining knowledge, and developing personal character, integrity, and sanctity. For resources on critical thinking and how to interact well, look at these Protestant resources, for example: http://www.str.org/, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/.
11. Write your own movie screenplays, books, and short stories founded in a Catholic worldview. Introduce beautiful art into culture.
12. Make smart, interesting videos for video websites like YouTube or Vimeo. These videos can be excellent vehicles for apologetics not only for traditional Catholicism specifically but the Catholic faith in general, responding to secularists "with class, style, brains, and humor."
13. Pray in public: Rosary, before meals, cross yourself in front of a church, a graveyard, when you hear a siren. Bow your head at Jesus' name.
1. Establish the Latin Mass at your parish. Consult this very helpful page from Fisheaters.com: "How to Establish the Traditional Mass in your Parish"
2. Speak to friends and family about the importance of traditional Catholicism a much as possible without being creepy or overbearing, of course.
3. Give financial support only to parishes, fraternities, and seminaries that directly support and spread traditional Catholicism.
4. Put advertisements up for the Latin Mass, the Sacraments in the older right, and resources on telephone posts and other public areas, especially in local parishes. Prepare flyers to hand out.
5. Lead RCIA programs and introduce neophytes and catechumens to traditional Catholicism.
6. Bring in orthodox, traditional priests to lead an old-fashioned mission in a parish.
7. Start website and blogs or send friends/family to existing sites.
8. Get academic degrees, write books and articles from the Catholic perspective (or at least incorporating traditional theology or philosophy where relevant), teach, obtain tenure, and introduce traditional Catholicism into academia.
9. Write movie and book reviews from a traditional Catholic perspective.
10. Respond to anti-Catholic bigotry in a winsome manner. Learn how to be an effective apologist by mastering critical thinking abilities, obtaining knowledge, and developing personal character, integrity, and sanctity. For resources on critical thinking and how to interact well, look at these Protestant resources, for example: http://www.str.org/, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/.
11. Write your own movie screenplays, books, and short stories founded in a Catholic worldview. Introduce beautiful art into culture.
12. Make smart, interesting videos for video websites like YouTube or Vimeo. These videos can be excellent vehicles for apologetics not only for traditional Catholicism specifically but the Catholic faith in general, responding to secularists "with class, style, brains, and humor."
13. Pray in public: Rosary, before meals, cross yourself in front of a church, a graveyard, when you hear a siren. Bow your head at Jesus' name.
Monday, June 1, 2015
A Revised, Semiotic Definition of Technology - Take 1
I wrote in "The Disconnected Connecting Self" (https://www.academia.edu/12172637/The_Disconnected_Connecting_Self) that technology may be defined as "a constructed (Not necessarily a tangible, physical construct; it may also be a mental construct, e.g. latitude and longitude lines) extension of humanity’s semiotic capacity to recognize and model the difference between subject and object" (2). But this definition seems too broad because of the ambiguous use of "constructed."
All objective reality, all experiential reality, is constructed according to the biological mechanism of the cognizant animal and then, for humans, further by the social structures that surround us. Hence we speak of social constructions but wouldn't necessarily call these technologies. Within this Umwelt, we may often have moments in which we recognize the difference between the objective and subjective reality of any particular object we are encountering, and this same capacity may model the difference between those two features through, for example, an exercise of the imagination. But surely, the products of our imagination do not count as technology. Imagined products may be the starting point for some particular technology, but otherwise the above definition includes the totality of the imagination.
Interestingly, some may want to call fiction a technology, but fiction in its produced form and not its seminal form in the imagination. Thus, fiction books and TV shows are technologies. Explanatory metanarratives that may take some shape in the imagination may also be a technology. But at this point, one wonders if the analogical use of technology is being stretched too thin.
A possible revised definition: technology is a produced application, whether physical or mental, of the human semiotic capacity in order to model some feature of subjective reality through a certain objective exaptation of that subjectivity.
This exchange of construction with produced application places technology within the traditional, Scholastic realm of the arts, that which is produced. Further, a general purpose is introduced: a modelling of some feature of subjectivity through exaptation, the "application of evolutionary adaptations to new ends beyond that one or ones in terms of which the adaptations originally emerged" (John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding [2001], 11). Thus technology is not simply the whimsical product of imagination, a random modelling of subjectivity for productive purpose; technology must be an art, a production that deliberately models some feature of subjectivity.
All objective reality, all experiential reality, is constructed according to the biological mechanism of the cognizant animal and then, for humans, further by the social structures that surround us. Hence we speak of social constructions but wouldn't necessarily call these technologies. Within this Umwelt, we may often have moments in which we recognize the difference between the objective and subjective reality of any particular object we are encountering, and this same capacity may model the difference between those two features through, for example, an exercise of the imagination. But surely, the products of our imagination do not count as technology. Imagined products may be the starting point for some particular technology, but otherwise the above definition includes the totality of the imagination.
Interestingly, some may want to call fiction a technology, but fiction in its produced form and not its seminal form in the imagination. Thus, fiction books and TV shows are technologies. Explanatory metanarratives that may take some shape in the imagination may also be a technology. But at this point, one wonders if the analogical use of technology is being stretched too thin.
A possible revised definition: technology is a produced application, whether physical or mental, of the human semiotic capacity in order to model some feature of subjective reality through a certain objective exaptation of that subjectivity.
This exchange of construction with produced application places technology within the traditional, Scholastic realm of the arts, that which is produced. Further, a general purpose is introduced: a modelling of some feature of subjectivity through exaptation, the "application of evolutionary adaptations to new ends beyond that one or ones in terms of which the adaptations originally emerged" (John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding [2001], 11). Thus technology is not simply the whimsical product of imagination, a random modelling of subjectivity for productive purpose; technology must be an art, a production that deliberately models some feature of subjectivity.
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