Saturday, July 30, 2005
The Casuist
Paul Denton takes on The Ethicist, and rightly so. I think the latter's existence is a sad, sad thing: he just spouts off opinions without giving people any deeper insight into the moral life, and dares to call it ethics despite the fact that sometimes his opinions are very dubious indeed (he has at various times encouraged people to lie and cheat and act vengefully, his arguments are frequently pathetically bad, and his attitude to his position, as expressed in interviews and the like, is simply irresponsible). He is, in short, paid to be a hack.
Hanique, Part II
(Part I)
When I returned home I continued to be haunted by the events at the conference; so I did what any academic would do under such circumstances. I went to the library and began wading through books.
For days I researched fruitlessly, poring over tome after tome in a futile attempt to find traces of this Bl. Catharine of Hanique. I did find three small bits of evidence in an author named Daniel Livingston Montgomery. The first was a fragment from a Latin poem (author, unidentified; date, unidentified; provenance, the margin of an unidentified manuscript) that mentioned the phrase, radix Hanicae. The second was the identification of Bl. Catharine of Hanique's feast-day as May 9. The third was the attribution to her of the following statement:
But, as I am sure you can see, it is all no good. The passage is not from Catharine of Hanique at all; it is from Chateaubriand. May 9 is the holiday of St. Catharine of Bologna, and no liturgical calendar gives any day at all for Catharine of Hanique. I know nothing further about the Latin phrase; even assuming it is not mere fiction, I have no real context within which to place it. Three minor bits of evidence, three dead ends.
I did, however, make an interesting discovery on the side: none of the liturgical calendars I had consulted mentioned the feast-day of St. Catharine of Boulagnon, either. The day I had usually heard given was the solemnity of another St. Catharine, St. Catharine of Alexandria.
Sitting back, I puzzled over this new and unexpected problem. Who was this Catharine who kept stealing what belonged to other Catharines? And how had such an obvious error such as that of her feast-day go unnoticed for so long?
I did not have long to think, however, for my peace was soon disturbed by two thugs bursting into the room. I recognized them as a professor of mathematics and a professor of biology.
"Well, Dan," said the professor of mathematics, "it's time for your appointment."
"I am busy," I replied.
"Now, Dan," said the professor of biology, "let's not do this the hard way."
Sighing, I rose, and, flanked by the Dean's minions, walked to the Dean's office.
When I entered, the short, arid-looking man who was the Dean rose and said, "Good morning, Dr. Montgomery. I trust you are feeling well today."
Part III of the short story Hanique will follow soon!
When I returned home I continued to be haunted by the events at the conference; so I did what any academic would do under such circumstances. I went to the library and began wading through books.
For days I researched fruitlessly, poring over tome after tome in a futile attempt to find traces of this Bl. Catharine of Hanique. I did find three small bits of evidence in an author named Daniel Livingston Montgomery. The first was a fragment from a Latin poem (author, unidentified; date, unidentified; provenance, the margin of an unidentified manuscript) that mentioned the phrase, radix Hanicae. The second was the identification of Bl. Catharine of Hanique's feast-day as May 9. The third was the attribution to her of the following statement:
En mathématique on ne doit regarder que le principe, en morale que la conséquence. L' une est une vérité simple, l' autre une vérité complexe.
But, as I am sure you can see, it is all no good. The passage is not from Catharine of Hanique at all; it is from Chateaubriand. May 9 is the holiday of St. Catharine of Bologna, and no liturgical calendar gives any day at all for Catharine of Hanique. I know nothing further about the Latin phrase; even assuming it is not mere fiction, I have no real context within which to place it. Three minor bits of evidence, three dead ends.
I did, however, make an interesting discovery on the side: none of the liturgical calendars I had consulted mentioned the feast-day of St. Catharine of Boulagnon, either. The day I had usually heard given was the solemnity of another St. Catharine, St. Catharine of Alexandria.
Sitting back, I puzzled over this new and unexpected problem. Who was this Catharine who kept stealing what belonged to other Catharines? And how had such an obvious error such as that of her feast-day go unnoticed for so long?
I did not have long to think, however, for my peace was soon disturbed by two thugs bursting into the room. I recognized them as a professor of mathematics and a professor of biology.
"Well, Dan," said the professor of mathematics, "it's time for your appointment."
"I am busy," I replied.
"Now, Dan," said the professor of biology, "let's not do this the hard way."
Sighing, I rose, and, flanked by the Dean's minions, walked to the Dean's office.
When I entered, the short, arid-looking man who was the Dean rose and said, "Good morning, Dr. Montgomery. I trust you are feeling well today."
Part III of the short story Hanique will follow soon!
Friday, July 29, 2005
Linkable Legibles
* Timothy Sandefar at "Positive Liberty" discusses the politics of Adama's arrest of President Roslin on Battlestar Galactica. For the background see the links at the Unofficial Battlestar Galactica Blog.
* Ben Witherington has a good post on conscience and 1 John. The analysis of conscience that comes out of it actually sounds rather Thomistic. Also worth reading: a post on the Johannine Epistles and the criteria to be used in evaluating religious experience.
* Shieva Kleinschmidt at "Emiratio" has a post on the proper analysis of hope -- a great topic, and one that has recently come to interest me a great deal. (I have come to think, for instance, that Kant's rational hope is actually not hope but what Shieva calls desire -- that is, it is a rational wish, and what makes it rational is that (a) you have some rational need to think that something like it is true; and (b) you have no reason to think it impossible. This is a bit different from hope in a more proper sense, which, as I say in the comments to Shieva's post, I think involves the following two elements: (a) concession that the hoped-for might not, or need not, happen; (b) acceptance that the hoped-for at least might have a real chance of happening despite that.)
* Orin Kerr at "The Volokh Conspiracy" has a summary of the events of the Scopes trial. Most of it I already knew, but I hadn't known some of the more technical legal points, and I hadn't realized that Darrow pushed the ACLU off to the side.
* William Vallicella at "The Maverick Philosopher" has a good post on a difficulty with hacceity properties. For the philosophical background to this issue, see Richard Cross's useful article on Medieval Theories of Haecceity in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
* At "Melbourne Philosopher," Josh considers the question, Can literature present an argument? I think it depends on what you mean by an argument. I'm a rationalist about poetics, in the sense that I think that a major part of what is going on in literature is the presentation of a particular type of inference. This is a medieval view, which sees literature as a form of moral logic. The medievals (in particular the Muslim medievals, who developed the point rather extensively) divided logic,a s the study of inference, into a number of fields, each of which was intended to evoke a distinctive kind of psychological result. Thus demonstrative inference concludes in knowledge (scientia); dialectical inference concludes in probable assent (belief); rhetorical inference concludes in persuaded opinion; and poetic inference concludes in an imaginative representation. What a work of literature is doing, in effect, is guiding your reasoning-process as you imaginatively represent something to yourself. And this guidance (unlike that of sophistry) is truth-relevant, because the similitude created can be a good one. (This isn't all there is to it; I haven't discussed what makes it a moral, i.e., ethico-political, logic, namely, positive and negative evaluation. And there is the further issue of Aquinas's view that poetics is an inventive logic, i.e., it involves discovery.) So, if one takes 'argument' simply in the sense of 'guide for inference' or even 'inference' itself, literature not only presents argument, it is an argument. But if one restricts 'argument' to the sort of thing one finds in demonstration, dialectics, and sophistry, then it clearly doesn't; if it's an argument, it is a distinctive kind of argument. Josh's point that literature can lead up to the formulation of a premise for these kinds of argument is a good one, though (and would be, I think, the way in which literature is an inventive logic).
* I like Irshad Manji quite a bit, but she's certainly wrong here (HT: B&W):
Well, I hope no one gets deathly passionate over tuition subsidies and a summer job, since Canada would then be set to become the most violent place on earth; but secular society does have a good (or, rather, bad) track record when it comes to generating deathly passion. People need to remember that there have been terrorists before, and they have been of all stripes. Some have been atheists (and I know some people have difficulty accepting it, but it is true), some have been slightly religious. It's difficult judgment call to make to determine whether others are very religious or merely slightly religious people who have become desperate (most Islamists seem to me to be the latter: they have despaired of waiting for Allah to do what they demand that he do, so they've decided they need to help the Almighty out). But I'm willing to accept that very religious terrorists exist. A more plausible common link among these cases than religion is politics. Groups that stay out of politics ipso facto stay out of terrorism; likewise, groups that are involved in politics but see themselves as involved in a system they can work (even if they are very critical of it) have no incentive to be terrorists. When people see their participation in a political system as pointless and futile and valueless, then they begin to become dangerous. Out of the sense of futility arising in a system that seems immoral comes the acceptance of extreme measures, and the covering of them with moral rhetoric.
It's also very odd to consider Spong, the converted fundamentalist who is now a fundamentalist in reverse, a religious moderate.
-> This has nothing to do with either links or weblogs, but if you are ever in Toronto the best place to get a burrito is Burrito Boyz (120 Peter Street, between Adelaide and Richmond). I had my first today, and thought, "Holy Moly! Why didn't anyone tell me?" Top-notch, and surprisingly inexpensive. The service isn't all that great, though -- they are far too busy for their resources, and some of the poor girls behind the counter looked in danger of falling down dead from exhaustion. From what I understand, they have been looking to expand for some time, but they're still in this tiny lower-level place (I almost missed it the first time I walked by it because I was looking at the upper level).
UPDATE: An interesting post on Man as the image of God in Islam, with special reference to Ibn 'Arabi, at "A Visionary's Reflections".
UPDATE 2: John Cottingham reviews Erik J. Wielenberg's Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe at NDPR. (HT: Ektopos).
* Ben Witherington has a good post on conscience and 1 John. The analysis of conscience that comes out of it actually sounds rather Thomistic. Also worth reading: a post on the Johannine Epistles and the criteria to be used in evaluating religious experience.
* Shieva Kleinschmidt at "Emiratio" has a post on the proper analysis of hope -- a great topic, and one that has recently come to interest me a great deal. (I have come to think, for instance, that Kant's rational hope is actually not hope but what Shieva calls desire -- that is, it is a rational wish, and what makes it rational is that (a) you have some rational need to think that something like it is true; and (b) you have no reason to think it impossible. This is a bit different from hope in a more proper sense, which, as I say in the comments to Shieva's post, I think involves the following two elements: (a) concession that the hoped-for might not, or need not, happen; (b) acceptance that the hoped-for at least might have a real chance of happening despite that.)
* Orin Kerr at "The Volokh Conspiracy" has a summary of the events of the Scopes trial. Most of it I already knew, but I hadn't known some of the more technical legal points, and I hadn't realized that Darrow pushed the ACLU off to the side.
* William Vallicella at "The Maverick Philosopher" has a good post on a difficulty with hacceity properties. For the philosophical background to this issue, see Richard Cross's useful article on Medieval Theories of Haecceity in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
* At "Melbourne Philosopher," Josh considers the question, Can literature present an argument? I think it depends on what you mean by an argument. I'm a rationalist about poetics, in the sense that I think that a major part of what is going on in literature is the presentation of a particular type of inference. This is a medieval view, which sees literature as a form of moral logic. The medievals (in particular the Muslim medievals, who developed the point rather extensively) divided logic,a s the study of inference, into a number of fields, each of which was intended to evoke a distinctive kind of psychological result. Thus demonstrative inference concludes in knowledge (scientia); dialectical inference concludes in probable assent (belief); rhetorical inference concludes in persuaded opinion; and poetic inference concludes in an imaginative representation. What a work of literature is doing, in effect, is guiding your reasoning-process as you imaginatively represent something to yourself. And this guidance (unlike that of sophistry) is truth-relevant, because the similitude created can be a good one. (This isn't all there is to it; I haven't discussed what makes it a moral, i.e., ethico-political, logic, namely, positive and negative evaluation. And there is the further issue of Aquinas's view that poetics is an inventive logic, i.e., it involves discovery.) So, if one takes 'argument' simply in the sense of 'guide for inference' or even 'inference' itself, literature not only presents argument, it is an argument. But if one restricts 'argument' to the sort of thing one finds in demonstration, dialectics, and sophistry, then it clearly doesn't; if it's an argument, it is a distinctive kind of argument. Josh's point that literature can lead up to the formulation of a premise for these kinds of argument is a good one, though (and would be, I think, the way in which literature is an inventive logic).
* I like Irshad Manji quite a bit, but she's certainly wrong here (HT: B&W):
To blow yourself up, you need conviction. Secular society doesn't compete well on this score. Who gets deathly passionate over tuition subsidies and a summer job?
Well, I hope no one gets deathly passionate over tuition subsidies and a summer job, since Canada would then be set to become the most violent place on earth; but secular society does have a good (or, rather, bad) track record when it comes to generating deathly passion. People need to remember that there have been terrorists before, and they have been of all stripes. Some have been atheists (and I know some people have difficulty accepting it, but it is true), some have been slightly religious. It's difficult judgment call to make to determine whether others are very religious or merely slightly religious people who have become desperate (most Islamists seem to me to be the latter: they have despaired of waiting for Allah to do what they demand that he do, so they've decided they need to help the Almighty out). But I'm willing to accept that very religious terrorists exist. A more plausible common link among these cases than religion is politics. Groups that stay out of politics ipso facto stay out of terrorism; likewise, groups that are involved in politics but see themselves as involved in a system they can work (even if they are very critical of it) have no incentive to be terrorists. When people see their participation in a political system as pointless and futile and valueless, then they begin to become dangerous. Out of the sense of futility arising in a system that seems immoral comes the acceptance of extreme measures, and the covering of them with moral rhetoric.
It's also very odd to consider Spong, the converted fundamentalist who is now a fundamentalist in reverse, a religious moderate.
-> This has nothing to do with either links or weblogs, but if you are ever in Toronto the best place to get a burrito is Burrito Boyz (120 Peter Street, between Adelaide and Richmond). I had my first today, and thought, "Holy Moly! Why didn't anyone tell me?" Top-notch, and surprisingly inexpensive. The service isn't all that great, though -- they are far too busy for their resources, and some of the poor girls behind the counter looked in danger of falling down dead from exhaustion. From what I understand, they have been looking to expand for some time, but they're still in this tiny lower-level place (I almost missed it the first time I walked by it because I was looking at the upper level).
UPDATE: An interesting post on Man as the image of God in Islam, with special reference to Ibn 'Arabi, at "A Visionary's Reflections".
UPDATE 2: John Cottingham reviews Erik J. Wielenberg's Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe at NDPR. (HT: Ektopos).
Steno on the Study of Nature
Gathering notes, I came across this interesting early passage:
This is from a very early manuscript, usually called the Chaos-manuscript, which are notes that Steno jotted down as a student. While it would be too much to demand that people make the discoveries by themselves, Steno is clearly going for a more moderate position, in which people should try to be familiar with the way things actually work, rather than merely with how someone says they do. (I've recently had a sci-fi short story buzzing around in the back of my mind which might take the first sentence as its epigraph.)
One sins against the majesty of God by being unwilling to look into nature's own works and contenting oneself with reading the works of others; in this way by being unwilling to look for oneself one forms and creates for oneself various fanciful notions and does not only miss the enjoyment of looking into God's wonders, but also wastes the time which should be spent on necessities and to the benefit of one's neighbour, asserting many things which are unworthy of God. Such are these scholastics, such are most philosophers, and those who devote their whole lives to the study of logic. Time is not to be spent on explaining and defending these opinions, indeed scarcely on examining them, and one must not boldly and impetuously assign anything to art on the basis of observing a single thing. From now on I shall spend my time, not on meditations, but solely in investigation, experience, and the recording of natural objects and the reports of the ancients on the observation of such things, as well as in testing out these reports, if that be possible.
[Chaos N 59, quoted in Troels Kardel, Steno, Danish National Library of Science and Medicine, Copenhagen, 1994: p. 16]
This is from a very early manuscript, usually called the Chaos-manuscript, which are notes that Steno jotted down as a student. While it would be too much to demand that people make the discoveries by themselves, Steno is clearly going for a more moderate position, in which people should try to be familiar with the way things actually work, rather than merely with how someone says they do. (I've recently had a sci-fi short story buzzing around in the back of my mind which might take the first sentence as its epigraph.)
Olaf Stapledon
 | I am:Olaf StapledonStanding outside the science fiction "field", he wrote fictional explorations of the futures of whole species and galaxies. |
(HT: Flos Carmeli)
Interesting; Stapledon, of course, is the philosopher who wrote Last and First Men and Star Maker; C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy (particularly Out of the Silent Planet) is a sharp criticism of the sort of attitude toward science and humanity taken in those works. Stapledon, whose academic work in philosophy had virtually no impact, had, through his 'philosophical romances' an immense impact on science fiction, practically inventing whole sci-fi tropes that have since become commonplace: galactic empires, genetically engineered species, and so forth.
Many of his out-of-print works are online, e.g.:
Philosophy and Living (1939)
A Modern Theory of Ethics
A Modern Magician is a short story about a psychokinetic who kills things in order to impress his girlfriend.
Two Poem Drafts
The Bacchae
When the god of wine and revel
made dizzy the city's prince,
the omens darkly muttered
like some strange malevolence.
But the king kept to his folly;
he was slain by the godly bull,
and carried home in his mother's arms.
Amen: the gods are cruel.
You are proud in your ways, O mortals.
Better it would be to mourn,
for you are marched through Theban streets
to where the calves are torn.
You are vain with the vain cosmetics
with which you adorn your soul;
and as you boast of your civic order,
your destruction is your goal.
You speak the name of Justice?
Justice walks with a sword
to slit the throats of mortals,
a fate no charm can ward.
And when your life is over,
when we see the path you've trod,
we will see not your boasted glory,
but the mocking of the god.
The Journey
Before I come to be
I have many miles to go
through fetid swamps of illness,
through rain and drifting snow.
I walk alone this journey,
for all must walk alone
through vales of deathly shadow
and of darkly dreaming stone.
Yet never am I lonely;
for death is in the air.
He touches every living soul
with the fate of mortal care.
I look before and behind me;
but I am lost in swirling mists
and my soul is dragged toward darkness
by the chains around my wrists.
But I walk, and my walk is steady,
I am calm with an inner peace,
and I do not rush on this highway
to the point where all troubles cease.
I am cool with the snows of heaven;
I am warm with the sun of light;
I am ascended like immortals
and gifted with their sight.
The vision deep within me
unfolds like a child's game
and when it is all opened
Renewed shall be my name.
As the clumsy caterpillar
when he weaves his soft cocoon,
I will burst out with shining wings
more brilliant than the moon.
As the light through purest crystal
becomes a rainbow freshly born,
I will change for brilliant colors
this darkness I have worn.
All my life I have been falling
like a wind-ripped snowy flake;
and when I hit the bottom,
from these dreams I will awake.
But long is this weary journey
through the thorn and sickening slime
until the day I am replenished
in the fullness of my time.
When the god of wine and revel
made dizzy the city's prince,
the omens darkly muttered
like some strange malevolence.
But the king kept to his folly;
he was slain by the godly bull,
and carried home in his mother's arms.
Amen: the gods are cruel.
You are proud in your ways, O mortals.
Better it would be to mourn,
for you are marched through Theban streets
to where the calves are torn.
You are vain with the vain cosmetics
with which you adorn your soul;
and as you boast of your civic order,
your destruction is your goal.
You speak the name of Justice?
Justice walks with a sword
to slit the throats of mortals,
a fate no charm can ward.
And when your life is over,
when we see the path you've trod,
we will see not your boasted glory,
but the mocking of the god.
The Journey
Before I come to be
I have many miles to go
through fetid swamps of illness,
through rain and drifting snow.
I walk alone this journey,
for all must walk alone
through vales of deathly shadow
and of darkly dreaming stone.
Yet never am I lonely;
for death is in the air.
He touches every living soul
with the fate of mortal care.
I look before and behind me;
but I am lost in swirling mists
and my soul is dragged toward darkness
by the chains around my wrists.
But I walk, and my walk is steady,
I am calm with an inner peace,
and I do not rush on this highway
to the point where all troubles cease.
I am cool with the snows of heaven;
I am warm with the sun of light;
I am ascended like immortals
and gifted with their sight.
The vision deep within me
unfolds like a child's game
and when it is all opened
Renewed shall be my name.
As the clumsy caterpillar
when he weaves his soft cocoon,
I will burst out with shining wings
more brilliant than the moon.
As the light through purest crystal
becomes a rainbow freshly born,
I will change for brilliant colors
this darkness I have worn.
All my life I have been falling
like a wind-ripped snowy flake;
and when I hit the bottom,
from these dreams I will awake.
But long is this weary journey
through the thorn and sickening slime
until the day I am replenished
in the fullness of my time.
The Flame of Everlasting Love
There was a mortal, who is now above
In the mid glory: he, when near to die,
Was given communion with the Crucified,—
Such, that the Master's very wounds were stamp'd
Upon his flesh; and, from the agony
Which thrill'd through body and soul in that embrace,
Learn that the flame of the Everlasting Love
Doth burn ere it transform ...
From The Dream of Gerontius, by J. H. Newman. As you may know, Newman's poem was made into an oratorio by Elgar. The Libretto of the work is about half the size of Newman's poem, so a lot had to be cut out; but it still contains the above section.
The Dream of Gerontius is a poem about death and purgatory. Newman has an interesting chararization of purgatorial suffering:
When then—if such thy lot—thou seest thy Judge,
The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart
All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.
Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him,
And feel as though thou couldst but pity Him,
That one so sweet should e'er have placed Himself
At disadvantage such, as to be used
So vilely by a being so vile as thee.
There is a pleading in His pensive eyes
Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.
And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though
Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinn'd, {360}
As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire
To slink away, and hide thee from His sight:
And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell
Within the beauty of His countenance.
And these two pains, so counter and so keen,—
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him,—
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.
Note that Newman doesn't give sin as the direct reason for purgatorial suffering. Rather, it's an indirect cause. The Soul before God is pierced by the vision, and intensely feels (1) a longing for God as the Soul's chief good; and (2) a feeling of unworthiness because of prior sin, since, even though the prior sin was forgiven, it still occurred and was a vile action against Divine Love. Thus the point of purgatory, at least as expressed here, is not that the Soul may work through the guilt of sin, but that the Soul may work through the shame of having sinned; not that that the Soul may be made worthy to stand before God, but that it may have a less fragile sense of its own worth before God; not that the Soul may be forgiven, but that the Soul may bear the weight of having been forgiven; not that it may be loved by God, but that it may bear the intensity of the flame of God's love.
The issue of Purgatory was an important (albeit not primary) issue for Newman; he discussed it prior to his conversion in Tract 79, and Purgatory comes up again in Tract 90, which discusses the rejection of Purgatory in the Thirty-Nine Articles. He criticizes the conception of Purgatory as a painful prison both in Tract 79 and in the Parochial Sermon on the Intermediate State; in the latter he rejects it as contrary to Scripture. However, this is not an absolute rejection of a doctrine of Purgatory, but only of that particular view of it, since the same sermon is an argument that the Saints before the Resurrection are in " state of repose, rest, security; but again a state more like paradise than heaven—that is, a state which comes short of the glory which shall be revealed in us after the Resurrection, a state of waiting, meditation, hope, in which what has been sown on earth may be matured and completed." After his conversion he has an early sermon on Purgatory, the notes of which describe it as a state of "being hungry [i.e., for God], like the feeling of sinking—fainting to the body" -- this we saw above in the first pain.
In any case, I thought of all this because the Diet of Bookworms recently did a set of reviews on Martindale's book about C. S. Lewis's views of the afterlife (HT: Rebecca Writes, who should be listed but isn't yet), and C. S. Lewis has a very Newmanian view of Purgatory. David Wayne at "Jollyblogger" had brought this up as an issue in his review:
Which I think is a fair enough criticism of most doctrines of Purgatory; but which I am not sure actually works against Lewis. I think we have to ask, "preparation for what?" On Newman's view, for instance, the preparation is for the Soul's sake, and is due to the fact that purgatorial pain is automatic and psychological: the Soul longs to be with God, and even knows that it is forgiven, but nonetheless needs to work out the shame of having sinned against so glorious and so merciful a God. Longing to be with God, it nonetheless feels the need to hide from Him, and the pain of purgatory is the working-out of this psychological conflict as we stand before God. Christ's sacrifice is all the preparation needed to come before God as a saint, sinless and free; but psychologically, Newman thinks, many such souls, no longer in sin, will still need to work out the self-shame that comes with having sinned. Having begun union with God through Christ, many souls need a state of discipline to prepare for greater union with God. Lewis is more vague, but, unless I'm forgetting some salient passage, it seems to me that his view is in the same ballpark. So, at the very least, there's considerable potential complexity here. (I haven't read the Martindale book, so perhaps Martindale's critique takes such complexity into account; the above wasn't intended as much of a critique -- as I said, this is just what I thought of on reading the reviews and descriptions of the book.)
In the mid glory: he, when near to die,
Was given communion with the Crucified,—
Such, that the Master's very wounds were stamp'd
Upon his flesh; and, from the agony
Which thrill'd through body and soul in that embrace,
Learn that the flame of the Everlasting Love
Doth burn ere it transform ...
From The Dream of Gerontius, by J. H. Newman. As you may know, Newman's poem was made into an oratorio by Elgar. The Libretto of the work is about half the size of Newman's poem, so a lot had to be cut out; but it still contains the above section.
The Dream of Gerontius is a poem about death and purgatory. Newman has an interesting chararization of purgatorial suffering:
When then—if such thy lot—thou seest thy Judge,
The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart
All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.
Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him,
And feel as though thou couldst but pity Him,
That one so sweet should e'er have placed Himself
At disadvantage such, as to be used
So vilely by a being so vile as thee.
There is a pleading in His pensive eyes
Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.
And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though
Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinn'd, {360}
As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire
To slink away, and hide thee from His sight:
And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell
Within the beauty of His countenance.
And these two pains, so counter and so keen,—
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him,—
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.
Note that Newman doesn't give sin as the direct reason for purgatorial suffering. Rather, it's an indirect cause. The Soul before God is pierced by the vision, and intensely feels (1) a longing for God as the Soul's chief good; and (2) a feeling of unworthiness because of prior sin, since, even though the prior sin was forgiven, it still occurred and was a vile action against Divine Love. Thus the point of purgatory, at least as expressed here, is not that the Soul may work through the guilt of sin, but that the Soul may work through the shame of having sinned; not that that the Soul may be made worthy to stand before God, but that it may have a less fragile sense of its own worth before God; not that the Soul may be forgiven, but that the Soul may bear the weight of having been forgiven; not that it may be loved by God, but that it may bear the intensity of the flame of God's love.
The issue of Purgatory was an important (albeit not primary) issue for Newman; he discussed it prior to his conversion in Tract 79, and Purgatory comes up again in Tract 90, which discusses the rejection of Purgatory in the Thirty-Nine Articles. He criticizes the conception of Purgatory as a painful prison both in Tract 79 and in the Parochial Sermon on the Intermediate State; in the latter he rejects it as contrary to Scripture. However, this is not an absolute rejection of a doctrine of Purgatory, but only of that particular view of it, since the same sermon is an argument that the Saints before the Resurrection are in " state of repose, rest, security; but again a state more like paradise than heaven—that is, a state which comes short of the glory which shall be revealed in us after the Resurrection, a state of waiting, meditation, hope, in which what has been sown on earth may be matured and completed." After his conversion he has an early sermon on Purgatory, the notes of which describe it as a state of "being hungry [i.e., for God], like the feeling of sinking—fainting to the body" -- this we saw above in the first pain.
In any case, I thought of all this because the Diet of Bookworms recently did a set of reviews on Martindale's book about C. S. Lewis's views of the afterlife (HT: Rebecca Writes, who should be listed but isn't yet), and C. S. Lewis has a very Newmanian view of Purgatory. David Wayne at "Jollyblogger" had brought this up as an issue in his review:
Another troublesome aspect of Lewis's view on the hereafter is his view of purgatory. Again, Martindale does a yeoman's job of showing how Lewis viewed Christ's work as sufficient to save us from our sins, so that purgatory is not an addendum to the sufferings of Christ. For Lewis purgatory is not so much a place of punishment as of preparation. Still, he is in error in this view because Christ's atoning sacrifice is all the preparation we need.
Which I think is a fair enough criticism of most doctrines of Purgatory; but which I am not sure actually works against Lewis. I think we have to ask, "preparation for what?" On Newman's view, for instance, the preparation is for the Soul's sake, and is due to the fact that purgatorial pain is automatic and psychological: the Soul longs to be with God, and even knows that it is forgiven, but nonetheless needs to work out the shame of having sinned against so glorious and so merciful a God. Longing to be with God, it nonetheless feels the need to hide from Him, and the pain of purgatory is the working-out of this psychological conflict as we stand before God. Christ's sacrifice is all the preparation needed to come before God as a saint, sinless and free; but psychologically, Newman thinks, many such souls, no longer in sin, will still need to work out the self-shame that comes with having sinned. Having begun union with God through Christ, many souls need a state of discipline to prepare for greater union with God. Lewis is more vague, but, unless I'm forgetting some salient passage, it seems to me that his view is in the same ballpark. So, at the very least, there's considerable potential complexity here. (I haven't read the Martindale book, so perhaps Martindale's critique takes such complexity into account; the above wasn't intended as much of a critique -- as I said, this is just what I thought of on reading the reviews and descriptions of the book.)
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