We had a particularly interesting question the other day on Catholic Answers Live, so I thought I'd snip it and post it on the blog.
HERE 'TIS.
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Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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I guess a follow up question would be: “Should I be praying to myself?”. I picture a strange new type of self devotion where one has a statue made of oneself and then begins a novena for our own intercession. It would even be quite a money maker to start selling off relics of myself (except for that pesky simony thing). Could I pick my own feast day?
Along this line of question; Since God is timeless, can my prayers for someone who died long before I was born be effective for that person? could our prayers for those in the past help get them to heaven? This is not a purgatory question.
“Along this line of question; Since God is timeless, can my prayers for someone who died long before I was born be effective for that person? could our prayers for those in the past help get them to heaven? This is not a purgatory question.”
Yes.
It certainly was exactly what Padre Pio cited for his praying for his grandfather, if memory serves me.
For anyone who is recovering from suspended animation and has a lot of time with nothing to do, there are several articles that are germane to this type of quasi-circular discussion:
Self-reference and Paradox
The Aczel Anti-foundational Axiom
I can’t listen to the broadcast because I am at work, but the question is interesting, because, suppose you asked for your own intersession and you say no?
To intercede (origin in about 1570 A. D.) comes from, the Latin intercdere, to intervene : inter-, inter- + cdere, to go; see ked- in Indo-European roots [definition taken from the FreeDictionary and Merriam-Webster Dictionary, both online], which literally means to go between two parties. You need three parties for a complete intercession: a transmitter (the go-between), a receiver (who fulfills the request), and a point of origin (desire).
Just as one can speak for oneself in a court of law, one may pray for oneself. Asking oneself to speak for oneself in a court of law is a bit odd, because one can get an infinite regression: I ask myself to speak for me, and the self I asked to speak for me asks himself to speak for himself so that he can speak for me, and that self asks himself to speak for himself so that he can speak for the self who asked that that the self speak for me. That type of asking can never be completed and so never can be made.
Asking others to help you to pray is like having a co-counsel and avoids this problem.
The real problem, here, is with the nature of the word, “ask”. To ask is to seek something one does not have, but if one asks for something that one does not have from one who does not have it, then one cannot get it, but the nature of asking implies an a priori reason to believe that the other person does have what one needs. You cannot simultaneously have and not have, if there is a singular object involved. Thus, the question is ill-posed.
One may imagine another person who happens to be you interceding for you, but this leads to the old subject-object paradox. There are many complicated resolutions to this, none of which is entirely satisfactory. Does a circular loop collapse to the original object? How does time play into this?
Welcome to Schroedinger Cat country.
Does not the argument that we can efficaciously pray for those who are already dead run counter to the logic that the “prayers for the dead” in 2 Maccabees chapter 12 demonstrates the existence of purgatory?
I thought that the prayers for the dead in Maccabees would only make sense if there were a purgatory, since those in heaven don’t need our prayers and those in hell couldn’t benefit from them. If we can pray for the dead in order that they retroactively be given grace sufficient for salvation, then the necessity of the existence of purgatory is negated, IMHO. Thoughts?
“If we can pray for the dead in order that they retroactively be given grace sufficient for salvation, then the necessity of the existence of purgatory is negated, IMHO. Thoughts?”
I think the retroactivity of prayer does not exist in a timeless God. We are the ones subject to time, probably as a result of original sin, since bodily death resulted from it along with our separation from God. Perhaps our prayers assist our entry into purgatory as well. I will be “happy” to make the cut for purgatory and welcome all the prayers I can have on my behalf.
Remember, it is taught by the Church that death has no power over one who belongs to Christ and has been purchased by His Blood. What comes to mind is one who receives forgiveness after a life of unrepentance and wrongdoing who repents without a chance to restore what they could have if there was time before their body died. Perhaps this “place of perfecting” is where/how they/we are held to account, where “the last penny is paid”, so that they/we are properly disposed to be with/in God.
I cannot listen to the link. 🙁 I use Linux at home (the geek’s OS of choice) and the audio freezes after about five seconds. Can someone summarize what it says?
The Chicken (who is thankfully, not a turkey, this week)
Masked Chicken, me too. From what is posted here, though, I am concerned that people are confusing the fact that God operates outside of time with the claim that we can do so. I remember reading somewhere, and I admit, I forget where, that one should not pray for, for example, the canonization of Thomas More, (on ANY theory) because we creatures locked in time already know the outcome, etc. Likewise, one does not pray that St. Peter remain firm in faith during his crucifixtion, or that Paul be frered from prison, and so on.
Dear Dr. Peters
This idea of retroactive-in-time prayers sounds very strange to me too. I think it would be like driving a car looking only to the rear-view mirrors; it could encourage one to concentrate on what’s behind and forget about the present and the future.
As for the Catholic Answers LIVE episode, I’m afraid it will take a couple of months until I can know what it contains, since I’m several months behind on the shows.
If we can pray for the dead in order that they retroactively be given grace sufficient for salvation, then the necessity of the existence of purgatory is negated, IMHO. Thoughts?
Why would it? The Grace necessary for salvation, and Purgatory, are two entirely different things. A person who is saved by Grace may still require the purification of Purgatory before being able to enter Heaven. In fact, by all accounts that’s how it happens in all but the most extraordinary cases (e.g., the greatest of the saints).
So if I were to pray for Adolf Hitler, for example, that he would have been saved in the final fractions of time before he died, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t still need to go through Purgatory.
I think your question is more pertinent to the use of the passage from Maccabees as a proof of Purgatory. If the men could have been praying for the salvation for those soldiers, then they are no longer necessarily praying for their purification and so the passage doesn’t necessitate Purgatory.
The answer to this would simply be that the passage from Maccabees is not required for their to be a Purgatory. There are plenty of other Biblical passages to attest to the existence of Purgatory, and in fact the ultimate authority backing up the existence is not even a Scripture passage at all, but the Church. Even were there no passages of Scripture to “prove” Purgatory’s existence, what really matters is that the Church teaches of it. That’s enough, in the presence or absence of any Scriptural passages which can be taken to support it.
So the men in Maccabees could be taken to be praying for either salvation or purification. Or, perhaps they were simply praying for the dead, knowing it a good thing to do, without any specific intention, and the actual effects – whether the salvation or the purification of those deceased – was determined by God.
My thoughts on the issue that Dr. Peters (and perhaps the Chicken) seems to be addressing:
Certainly, God is timeless, whereas we are not, and we must not confuse them. The question is, is praying “retroactively” really confusing our place? I don’t think it is. If I were to pray for someone’s salvation after that person has died, then I see no reason why God cannot hear my prayer for that person and apply it to him before his death. I think the key is that I don’t know what happened.
For example, praying for St. Peter’s salvation would be a poor choice, because I already know that he achieved it. Praying for the safety of the Apollo 13 astronauts would also seem to be a poor choice: I know the outcome. I am bound into time, and so the past is not going to change. However, given something that has happened in the past about which nobody knows – for example, the salvation of Adolf Hitler – why can that not be affected by my prayers?
I have a sort of policy that I follow which relates to this idea. We all have times in our lives where we are for one reason or another – work, sleep, or otherwise – kept out of the loop regarding something for a few hours. Now sometimes, when I’m in that position and about to check on something, I will stop and be certain to pray about it before I check. My thinking in this is that if I pray without knowing the outcome, my prayer can be efficacious, whereas if I know that something has happened, my prayer cannot change that.
Now someone might criticize that and say that it somehow either treats the world as dependent upon myself or as though the rest of the world (apart from myself) is somehow less than real, maybe only an image in my mind, or some other nonsense. I understand that point of view, but I don’t think those are the only ways to look at it.
Dear Dr. Peters,
You wrote:
Masked Chicken, me too.
Does that mean you can’t listen to the broadcast or you are glad you are not a turkey 🙂
Shane,
You wrote:
My thinking in this is that if I pray without knowing the outcome, my prayer can be efficacious, whereas if I know that something has happened, my prayer cannot change that.
This is the Schroedinger’s Cat paradox. If knowledge affected outcome, then who determined the outcome? You? The original event? In Schroedinger’s Cat case, the cat was in a superposition of states until observed. This is not possible for people because it would be the equivalent of dividing the soul into two parts and that is against the Faith.
A related approach would recognize that the soul is an entity that has a beginning, but no end. You cannot pray for yourself before you were born or can you? Could you retroactively pray that things turn out exactly as they have? That would seem to be a type of prayer that is always answered, but a prayer that is always answered does not belong to the Faith, since this would bind God.
So, one point against asking for a priori prayer (prayer directed to the past) is that God’s will (absolute or permissive) has already been manifested. God never changes his mind about past things, only about present and future events. Thus, a prayer directed to the past is an attempt to alter God’s will which time has already revealed. This is a sin, in particular, the sin of superstition, because one is attempting to alter nature by means that do not belong to God, since God’s will is already settled with regards to past events.
Also, the past is the springboard to the future and if God has a plan in mind that allows for a permissive evil (such as, say, Original Sin), then praying against this is really trying to alter a plan that someone else might be trying to preserve in the present. For example, let’s take a horrible example: a couple loses their baby (it is stillborn, say). To pray that God change the past so that the baby live might be attempting to interfere with God’s permission for this evil to happen and God allowed it because he knows that in coming to terms with the loss, the couple’s marriage will be strengthened by their prayer in this situation, whereas, without the loss, the couple would have drifted apart and divorced with a child between them.
I am almost tempted to say that one cannot improve on the present, except by changing the future. Grace builds on nature and man and nature can only affected in the present and this can be used to alter the future. It would seem that grace would honor that restriction in man’s nature.
Also, what would be the point of mercy if one could simply pray that something never happened?
The original question seemed to be if one could ask intercession of oneself. This is a somewhat different problem in that, unlike praying for the past, in which one splits the past and the present and possibly brings them into confrontation. in this case, one seeks to split space (creating two identical people) and I imagine a confrontation also exists, partially because there would then be two souls and partially because the two, “selves,” might not agree.
In any case, can one ask oneself for intercession? I am tentatively inclined to say, no, if the person asking for the intercession is also the person being asked for intercession, because this would seem to imply splitting the soul in two. Only one soul per person. There are situations that can mimic this, such as talking to yourself, but this is not a case of subject-object coexisting, which is what asking for your own intercession would imply.
The Chicken
Chicken: suppose you asked for your own intersession and you say no?
Me: HeHe. Actually that sounds like something that would make me laugh up there.
Me: Can I have…?
Saint Me: NO !
Dear Chicken,
I was finally able to find time to listen to the audio piece. I too am in the situation of not being able to listen at work and of having only GNU/Linux machines at home. On Debian unstable (which is what I put onto all of my machines, at work and at home :^), I was able to listen to the whole thing with no problem.
By the way, although it feels awfully presumptive of me to ask my future self for aid, it seems to me impossible to rule out completely that God might allow one’s heavenly self to be tied at least in some subtle and non-obvious way to one’s progress in this fallen world.
I can’t listen to the broadcast because I am at work…
And that’s a problem how? <;-).>
Anyway it seems to me that to consider this question is to have too much time on your hands…
Suppose you are on Einstein’s train approching the speed of light.(Obviously, not Amtrack!) As time slows for you, could you pray to someone not on the train as the would be outside your time in a relative future? Or couuld you answer your own prayer once you get off the train?
If with the assistance of Scotty, you prayed before you entered the transporter and dematerialized yourself (remembering to put the transporter into diagnostic mode so you patten wouldn’t degrade in the buffer!)and then, when you were rematerialized in the future, what would be the effect on the prayer? Could you pray to the future rematerialized you? Could you answer? If, as Jimmy thinks, the transporter process kills the original you, could the rematerialized you pray for the oringinal you in Purgatory? Or did the diagnostic mode prevent the killing of the original you?
Brian
I think people watch way to much science fiction. Time is monotonically increasing, thus it is impossible to go into the past. Even in heaven we will be finite beings that are bound by some sort of time. So the whole discussion is fanciful thinking instead of precise Theology!
Catholic teaching says that we will have a body when we are in heaven. A body is composed of physical dimensions, momentum, and time. Physicists like to model this via 7 dimensions( 3 for dimension, 3 for momentum, and one for time). So if we are speculating, it seems to me we will be composed of heavenly particles subjected to some type of heavenly wave equation. For God is Spirit( a type of light) and body( Jesus and Eucharist). Therefore a heavenly wave equation can not exist without some element of time.
Furthermore these apparent paradoxes are no different than Zeno’s paradox . For the physicists the Ensemble explanation is used to resolve the dreaded Schroedingers Cat paradox. Similarly physics has many such paradoxes. One of the most famous is the following: Can a particle have a temperature in a universe that only contains one particle?
Dear Dr.Cmbe,
You wrote:
Even in heaven we will be finite beings that are bound by some sort of time.
Actually, until we have resurrected, glorious bodies, our spirits will cover all of space and be transtemporal.
You also wrote:
For the physicists the Ensemble explanation is used to resolve the dreaded Schroedingers Cat paradox
I am not sure I understand what you mean by an ensemble explanation? Please, explain. Schroedinger’s Cat is about quantum superposed states. The current explanation for the collapse of the wave function that leads to only one cat in the box is called quantum decoherence.
You also wrote:
Therefore a heavenly wave equation can not exist without some element of time.
A wave only needs time if change is involved. There is no change in heaven. It would be like the stationary-state Schroedinger equation.
You also wrote:
Time is monotonically increasing…
Actually, below the Heisenberg uncertainly limit, time appears to have no directionality.
You also wrote:
Can a particle have a temperature in a universe that only contains one particle?
For temperature as it is normally defined (the time average of energy of motion of particles), no. There are some statistical temperatures that one can be used that apply to specific aspects of the particles energy. The really interesting question is: can the particle radiate heat?
Thanks Dr. Cmbe for the really interesting comments. I agree that people have absorbed a lot of science fictional science.
Thomas wrote:
On Debian unstable (which is what I put onto all of my machines, at work and at home :^), I was able to listen to the whole thing with no problem.
What software were you using, because Ubuntu can compile .deb packages?
You also wrote:
…it seems to me impossible to rule out completely that God might allow one’s heavenly self to be tied at least in some subtle and non-obvious way to one’s progress in this fallen world.
This seems to me to be pretty close to the Calvinists notion that one’s salvation is already predestined and that things like answers to prayer and other signs indicate that one is truly saved. To be truly saved, one must already be in heaven, so this would be an indication that at some future moment, you will be. This could lead to presumption. Is there a real ontological difference between here and heaven. If so, how does this enter into the picture?
The Chicken
Dear Thomas,
I almost forgot…what did the audio say!!?
Also, were you, by any chance using a proprietary codec to play the audio? In the US, some of the codeces require monetary payments. I can’t watch dvd’s on Linux using any of the standard packages because of this. Although the codeces are available for people in other countries not governed by US patent laws, I can’t use the libdvdcss codec, for instance to watch dvd’s because it is a proprietary codec.
I could spend money for PowerDVD which just came out with a package for Linux, but that would be no fun.
The Chicken
I thought that man has the free agency to pray for anything that he wants. If it is towards a noble or virtuous cause it will be counted towards him for a blessing for having acted selflessly.
However, the role of an intercessory or intermediary implies a two-way context. What if we pray on someone’s behalf and get back the answer that person will not be forgiven unless some pennance is performed on the behalf of that person?
Also if there is no answer back from the other side how do we know if our intercessory prayer (or other act of contrition) was acceptable or just a waste of time?
In the audio, Jimmy said that it would be possible if the saints are outside time in the same way God is– but he thinks that based on Scripture, they experience some kind of sequentiality that probably precludes praying to oneself.
Personally, I am confused by the idea of praying about things that happened in the past. It seems to me that it would create the same kinds of theoretical difficulties about the nature of reality that time travel would. I mean, the way we usually think about the past is that either event A occurred or it didn’t (whether we know it or not). So if we’re praying for the opposite outcome, we’re asking God to change the past– and how can this not also fail to change the present in some respects? This leads to all kinds of weirdness.
For instance, suppose that no one knows whether Mr. Smith, who lived in the 19th century, ever committed adultery. And suppose that I pray that he did not. But suppose that (in my pre-prayer world) he actually did commit adultery, and that his adulterous relationship give rise to a line of descendants who made some important inventions, helped negotiate a treaty or two, and prevented several crimes.
So what happens? Well, God doesn’t have to grant my prayer, of course. But if He never grants such prayers, then there’s no reason to say them. On the other hand, if He grants it, then at that instant the entire timeline will be dramatically rearranged. That whole line of people will never have existed; their inventions will never have been discovered (or have been discovered later in time), nor their treaties negotiated the same way, or the crimes prevented. Once we start taking into account the fact that there might be thousands or millions or billions of prayers to change the “past,” we have to recognize that if God is granting any non-negligible number of those prayers, then the past, present and future are continuously being jumbled up and shifted around.
I guess the point that I’m making is that the efficacy of prayer for past events, if there is any, would require a very complicated explanation, either in physics (multiple timelines, or parallel universes, or something similar far beyond my knowledge), or in theology (to explain how, if there’s only one timeline in continuous flux along its entire length, individual human beings can pop into and out of existence all the time), or both. I’m not saying those things are impossible, but just that it’s such a complicated topic that the safest answer as to whether we can pray for the past is probably: “I don’t know, but I don’t understand how it would be possible.”
Of course, this is in response to the questions that came up in the comments, and not really to the question Jimmy was answering.
FWIW, though, I agree that without some kind of heavenly temporal medium, the notion of us having “bodies” in heaven becomes more metaphorical than orthodoxy can tolerate. If there’s no time of any sort in heaven, then wouldn’t the glorified human body be incapable of physical movement? And, really, what kind of a body is that?
Dear nn49,
If the man from the 19 century committed adultery and died, then your prayer that he not commit adultery would indicate that that sin would not, then, be on his soul when he died. A sin cannot both be on a soul and not be on a soul. One cannot change the reality of the soul after death and judgment. It is appointed for a man to die once. In order to change the state of that soul, he would have to be brought back to life and die again. Unless God were willing to suspend judgment until all of the future-to-past prayers had been answered (which would result in the man possibly dying and coming back to life until the end of time with ever different final states of his soul) this man has one life and one death.
Now, if the universe splits into other universes because of prayer, that is a different matter, but this would still create multiple similar copies of people in heaven or even multiple heavens.
I don’t think salvation could have been offered to the first-century Jews if they had to wade through all of this.
Suppose two people pray for the opposite thing to happen in the past. Who “wins”?
There does not have to be a form of temporal succession in heaven as Jimmy postulates. It is sufficient that there be one on earth and a merely continual presence in heaven. This would be enough to give the illusion of a temporal succession in heaven, because even though their state doesn’t change (post-purgatory, which is a different problem because a type of time may be involved there), our perception of how they relate to us does change and this gives us a feeling of temporal succession on their part, even though, technically speaking, it is on our part.
I realize that certain passages of scripture, particularly the apocalyptic literature, speaks of a succession of events in heaven. This may indicate a type of time or it might indicate a single state that the observer in scripture could only explain in an expanded time sense from his perspective (similar to the above). We simply do not know.
Again, this whole question, if it were originally, “Can I ask for my own intercession from heaven,” strikes me as an exercise in the sin of presumption, since no on knows their final disposition unless by an act of grace. Asking yourself for intercession while alive is a different question which several posters, including myself, have looked at, above.
The Chicken
P. S. Happy Thanksgiving, from the “other” bird meat
Dear nn489,
You wrote: I mean, the way we usually think about the past is that either event A occurred or it didn’t (whether we know it or not).
Even if
(a) one were to assume that quantum mechanics is a right description of nature and even if
(b) one were further to assume that the multiple possibilities of a past event in some circumstances are not determined until a person makes an observation (or perhaps offers a certain prayer),
then any persons involved in the event itself would presumably by their observation of it have made perfectly determined the nature of the event. Therefore, at least insofar as one considers offering a prayer on behalf of a person involved in the occasion of a past event, one might be dissuaded, for the past event would seem to be determined in the past.
I suppose, that, on this theory, one might better pray that a completely unobserved event in the past unfolded a certain way. In this case, there is, perhaps in principle, a chance that the event is still in a superposition of possibilities, or, at the very least, that God in his omnipotence could somehow change the past in this particular instance without modifying what anyone else in the future of that event would have experienced until the moment at which the prayer is offered.
Of course, according to special and general relativity, observers in different reference frames may disagree about the ordering of the same events in time. For example, one observer might see two events as simultaneous and another observer might see them as occurring at different times. Would it make sense for one observer to pray for the outcome of a future event even if one knew of another observer in whose frame that same event might already have been observed?
I am the guy in the audio asking the original question of Jimmy. When the question came to me I immediately thought that this was one for Jimmy, since he loves these weird philosophical questions that can be answered in an orthodox way. I was impressed with how he handled the question.
I think folks in the comments here have strayed pretty far off the topic – I was not trying to imply that you can pray to change things in the past. Even if you are praying for Adolph Hitler, what you are really praying for is his soul in Purgatory (assuming he made it) or that God granted him the grace to achieve purgatory at the moment of his death – in other words I don’t think anyone is praying for his conversion in 1943, and therefore somehow changing the outcome of WWII.
For those who cannot listen to the audio, I asked Jimmy if I could ask my future saintly-self (obviously an amazing leap of ego if one were to do that – this is a theoretical question!) to intercede with God for me, and even more interestingly, does my theoretical saintly-self “see” me in my earthly existence right now? That is the aspect I found most interesting to discuss. Jimmy, as noted above, stated that he was skeptical of the notion, but did not discard it out of hand. Obviously he found the idea interesting enough to bring up on the blog!
+J.M.J+
Can we ask for our own intercession?
Well, we can pray for ourselves – for our own needs. That’s not the same as intercession, though, which is done on behalf of another. Ask oneself for ones own intercession is basically talking to yourself, only more pointless. Just pray for your needs; you don’t have to ask yourself for permission to do that.
The question for some reason reminds me of the Protestant who attempted to argue against the Rosary by saying, “Jesus never prayed the Rosary.” Well, why would He have? He wouldn’t have prayed to His own Mother, because He is greater than her, and He wouldn’t have prayed the Our Father since He had no trespasses to be forgiven. The argument doesn’t prove anything, anyway – Jesus also didn’t carry around a pocket New Testament, does that mean Christians shouldn’t carry one either? Neither the Rosary nor the NT existed at the time.
In Jesu et Maria,
Jimmy. just a brief note on Thanksgiving to thank you for all you do. God bless.
There is an element of presumption in the idea of asking for one’s own intercession that makes me uncomfortable.
Presumption is a sin against Hope.
Isn’t there an “element” of “presumption” in having hope in the first place.
Is that “hope” in the mercy of God, what Catholics have? Doesn’t that imply the “presumption” of the availability of that mercy?
Not looking to argue, just thinking.
I have left the Catholic Church, which I love, but have not abandoned my “presumption” in the mercy of God, because I have
hope in Him even if it is only a thread of hope.
Dear Maypo (Matt-in-Indy),
You wrote:
I think folks in the comments here have strayed pretty far off the topic – I was not trying to imply that you can pray to change things in the past.
Unfortunately, since it was difficult for some people to listen to the audio (why, oh, why, can’t they put out a non-proprietary version?), all some of us (me, me…) had to go on was the title, which was a little difficult to interpret.
Of course, since, presumably, you love yourself, if you are already in heaven (a difficult point, by the way to deal with from an apologetical standpoint, because it confuses so many people who think they are, “saved,”) wouldn’t the intercession be automatic, since of course, at that point, you already know if the intercession were necessary in the first place? I guess the question really answers itself. If you needed the intercession to get to heaven, you would have the intercession, since you did get to heaven.
This gets into the difference between sufficient and efficacious grace. If you need your own intercession to get to heaven, but you are in heaven, then you will be given the grace to ask for it efficaciously, if it is necessary to ask for it, but in any case, you will at least certainly receive the grace of the intercession, whether you had to ask for it, or not, if it is necessary to receive it .
I was telling myself, only yesterday, that self-referential statements are part of my research and mine too.
By the way, Matt…welcome to the blog-neighborhood. Feel free to set a spell and bump heads with the other assorted blog posters (not that we are on a poster or should be) at JA.org. The blog is a friendly place, for the most part, except on Friday nights at 11:32 pm, when we all go out for pizza and let the Invisibles have control. Never enter the combox at 11:32 pm on a Friday night. You have been warned. I used to be a normal-looking guy, but tried posting once at that hour and now, look at me…
Oh, incidentally, I think I have found out why I can’t get a date on Friday nights. 🙂
The Chicken
Dear Karl,
You wrote:
Isn’t there an “element” of “presumption” in having hope in the first place.
Is that “hope” in the mercy of God, what Catholics have? Doesn’t that imply the “presumption” of the availability of that mercy?
No. The word, “presumption”, has several meanings. In theology, presumption does not mean, “an allowable presupposing assumption,” as it does in normal speech. In theology it means the following (from the on-line Catholic Encyclopedia):
(Latin praesumere, “to take before”, “to take for granted”).
Presumption is here considered as a vice opposed to the theological virtue of hope. It may also be regarded as a product of pride. It may be defined as the condition of a soul which, because of a badly regulated reliance on God’s mercy and power, hopes for salvation without doing anything to deserve it, or for pardon of his sins without repenting of them. Presumption is said to offend against hope by excess, as despair by defect. It will be obvious, however, to one who ponders what is meant by hope, that this statement is not exact. There is only a certain analogy which justifies it. As a matter of fact we could not hope too much, assuming that it is really the supernatural habit which is in question.
Suarez (“De spe”, disp. 2a, sect. 3, n. 2) enumerates five ways in which one may be guilty of presumption, as follows:
1. by hoping to obtain by one’s natural powers, unaided, what is definitely supernatural, viz. eternal bliss or the recovery of God’s friendship after grievous sin (this would involve a Pelagian frame of mind);
2. a person might look to have his sins forgiven without adequate penance (this, likewise, if it were based on a seriously entertained conviction, would seem to carry with it the taint of heresy);
3. a man might expect some special assistance from Almighty God for the perpetration of crime (this would be blasphemous as well as presumptuous);
4. one might aspire to certain extraordinary supernatural excellencies, but without any conformity to the determinations of God’s providence. Thus one might aspire to equal in blessedness the Mother of God;
5. finally, there is the transgression of those who, whilst they continue to lead a life of sin, are as confident of a happy issue as if they had not lost their baptismal innocence.
People may have hope in the mercy of God, but they may not presume on the mercy of God. Do you see the difference? Hope is the virtue that tell people that the mercy is obtainable. Presumption is a form of pride that tells them they will obtain it without regard for any conditions God may have placed on receiving it, such as contrition. Presumption, theologically, is the vice that makes God’s mercy into a blank check with your name already on it. It say that you can sin boldly and then go to confession because you know God just loves to forgive. It is a child trying to “play” its parent.
The chicken
I seem to have dropped a lot of esses in my last entry. Here are a few extra to make up for them:
sssssssss
The Chicken
Dear Karl,
Please, forgive me for making one other comment. You wrote:
I have left the Catholic Church, which I love, but have not abandoned my “presumption” in the mercy of God, because I have
hope in Him even if it is only a thread of hope.
Since one usually leaves something or someone one loves in hopes of obtaining something better and since there is nothing better than the Catholic Church, then I do not understand your comment. Either you love the Church and must return (THAT might be a real act of hope) or you do not love the Catholic Church and need to understand her better that you might grow to love her.
No one ever got closer to God by leaving the Church, although they may have gotten closer to God by leaving some of the men and situations within the Church. Make sure you understand the difference.
The Chicken
Wow…five posts in a row.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
The Chicken
Karl,
I guess we have a lot of tortured intellectuals on this site – present company included! Let me say from personal experience that it can be quite a challenge to find a good Catholic church. Often I question if the older priest are even orthodox in their belief. However the younger priests seem much more orthodox – maybe the Protestants have whipped us into shape! Nevertheless,I prefer attending Opus Dei churches. So please do not despair!
Dear Chicken,
I see and thanks. I meant my working understanding of presumption not the theological presumption.
Dear cmbe,
I am NOT a tortured intellectual. Tortured, yes; intellectual, not by the standards of I have seen here, not even novice would suffice to describe me.
The Church is a mess and I am aware it has been throughout history, but I did not live then. Nor do I want to move this thread away from its intent. So, thank you. I never mind well intended comments.
Chicken,
Thanks for the kind welcome. I have read Jimmy’s blog (and lurked around the comments as well) for years. Just never strongly felt the need to contribute. I struggle with the sin of Pride more than anything and therefore try not to post very often on any of the blogs I read. Otherwise I know I will post just to “hear” myself talk. Sinning in the real world is hard enough to overcome without adding a bunch of virtual sins as well. 😉
Matt
Dear Maypo,
You wrote:
I struggle with the sin of Pride more than anything and therefore try not to post very often on any of the blogs I read. Otherwise I know I will post just to “hear” myself talk. Sinning in the real world is hard enough to overcome without adding a bunch of virtual sins as well. 😉
Yes, this is something that has prompted me to issue numerous apologies since I have been posting, here. Sometime, I wonder if the (possible, but not always) good that I try to do here is worth the risk. I have been thinking that I talk too much about areas I know too little about.
I love to ask questions, but I should be more circumspect in offering answers. In fact, I seem to have been posting way too much in the last few days, although, granted, the topics became something more for specialists in science than for the regular posters normally encounter, what with the exoplanet post and all.
Some people think by talking out loud and thinking through ideas, especially with others. Our office at work can be pretty rowdy, at times, and I tend to be one of the more frequent speakers. When I first started working, however, I mostly avoided people. Which is better? Well, I did tend to get more work done back then, but at least, now, I am reminded of when paydays are 🙂
Still, the temptation to pride is something I am always worried about, as well. The easy access to information on the Internet probably feeds this. At least with Thanksgiving, my larger than normal amounts of posting gave people something to read while their turkeys were being digested, since I am sort of like the lone doctor who volunteers to work on Thanksgiving so that others can be at home with their families. I think I’ll go back to posting only five times a day 🙂
The Chicken
Looks like we drove this topic into the ground – further evidence of the poor catechesis of the average Catholic. Unfortunately most parishes are poorly equipped in giving good strong meat, forcing ‘Joe Catholic’ to create his own doctrine.
As Hosea 4:6 says,’My people perish for lack of knowledge’
Therefore, I argue that the vast majority of people don’t even know what true humility is. Self depreciation is one of the highest forms of pride. Humility is the power of using controlled strength not weakness.
From God’s eternal point of view, there isn’t any outcome that’s finished “before” He hears your prayer. He hears all prayers and knows all events that ever will occur at exactly the same time (so to speak).
Since you in Purgatory, or you in Heaven, would also be existing in eternity, there’s also no “before” involved.
Since nobody can ask anyone’s intercession or pray for anybody without God first providing the grace and urge to pray, and since further no holy soul in Purgatory or Heaven can know about your prayer or pray for you except through Christ, there is no conflict whatsoever in asking for the intercession of Saint Me.
Of course, it’s possible that Jesus will laugh at you a lot and draw funny pictures in the dust.
Dear Dr. Cmbe,
You wrote:
Unfortunately most parishes are poorly equipped in giving good strong meat, forcing ‘Joe Catholic’ to create his own doctrine.
As Hosea 4:6 says,’My people perish for lack of knowledge’
To what are you. specifically, referring? The initial question addressed in this post was pretty speculative and as far as I know, there is no clear answer in either Scripture or Catholic Tradition. Providing tentative answers (which I think it could be taken for granted that most respondents were doing) is about the best anyone could do.
I do agree that many Catholics are poorly catechized these days, however, and they do make up interpretations of doctrines that suit their own desires. This is one area where the laity need to be better trained so as to help better inform the general public and other poorly-formed Catholics. This is one reason for the rise of the New Apologetics Movement, of which Catholic Answers, for example, is a part.
You also wrote:
Therefore, I argue that the vast majority of people don’t even know what true humility is. Self depreciation is one of the highest forms of pride. Humility is the power of using controlled strength not weakness.
The definition you gave:
Humility is the power of using controlled strength not weakness.
has no precedent of which I am aware in Christian literature. Could you cite a source? Here, is St. Thomas Aquinas treatment.
Your definition is related to the beatitude of meekness, however, and this is related to humility, but not exactly the same.
The Chicken
I am very uncomfortable with the idea of praying to “Saint Me”, and not just on grounds of presumption. While I suspect (I don’t think any of us can do more than ‘suspect’) that the saints in Heaven experience some sort of time, I don’t know what relation if any it would have to the time we experience here and now. In any case, if “Saint Me” in some sense is already “there” to be prayed to, how can he be the same person as me? Where’s the continuity?
On the separate issue of praying about past events, I submit that Schroedinger’s Cat is entirely irrelevant. Were I to try to pray about some past event, the outcome of which is known to me, I would be attempting the psychologically impossible and probably also sinning, as God’s will (permissive, at least) has been manifested to me.
This has nothing to do with me somehow determining the event by my knowledge of it. My knowledge does not determine reality; but it does factor into what I do and what I can lawfully do.
Let me illustrate the point by taking the time element out. If I were to receive a private revelation that some deceased individual was definitely in Hell (or in Heaven, for that matter!), it would be very wrong for me to pray for that person – God’s judgment has already been enacted. But in the absence of such a private revelation it assuredly is not wrong, but quite the contrary.
My knowledge is obviously not determining the state of the person’s soul; it is determining whether what I’m doing is genuine prayer or blasphemy.
In the same way, it would be the height of folly for me to pray that Hitler be converted in 1943. I know this didn’t happen. But it isn’t wrong for me to pray that Hitler repented in the moment before his death. I don’t know this didn’t happen, and thus I don’t see why it can’t be an appropriate matter for prayer. God does “already” know whether or not Hitler repented, of course, but then He knew it “before” Hitler was even born.
If I were to pray for Hitler’s salvation mistakenly (I hope this is not the case), I don’t see the harm. It isn’t wrong to pray for the soul of a deceased person who is, in fact but unbeknownst to us, in Heaven or Hell; St. Thomas even says that my prayer will benefit some other soul in Purgatory. I fail to see how prayers for people in the past are any different, given that God transcends time as much as He does space.
Finally, I would like to point out that the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics is far too commonly conflated with the theory itself, even in textbooks. We do not “know” that wavefunctions collapse; we know that a particular set of equations predicts experimental results very well, and collapsing wavefunctions are simply one way among many of trying to make sense of the equations. Excellent discussion here, along with an interesting alternative interpretation: http://www.npl.washington.edu/TI/
Forgot to add two things: I’m indebted for much of my post to C. S. Lewis’s discussion of this topic in _Miracles_.
And though I think it is possible to pray for what happened in the past, I feel queasy about deliberately trying not to find out what happened in order to pray about it. That has an anxious, manipulative, superstitious feeling about it that I mistrust. “I knew you that you were a hard man, harvesting what you did not sow and reaping what you did not plant…”