Category: Theology

A reader writes:

A friend just sent me the following question and I’m not sure how to answer. I’m almost certain Aquinas or one of the Church fathers must have addressed this, but for various reasons I can’t find it right now. Can you help? Thanks.

Does God the Father feel pain?   If pain is a consequence of the fall, then is it possible for God to feel pain?  Did God the Father experience pain of a father watching his son be tortured and killed, or is the Creator immune from pain?  Pain exists because it it a component of the punishment He pronounced on a fallen creation.  Pain therefore is part of creation.  As the Creator is not creature, does he feel pain?  God the Son most certainly did.  Can God the Holy Spirit feel the pain of rejection?  I assume the Holy Spirit knows the pain of Christ’s suffering since He was within Christ at the time.  The Holy Spirit is also in us, and therefore one could assume that He can experience our pain as well.  But does God the Father – God the Creator – feel pain?

Pain can be understood in two ways: The sensation we experience when certain parts of our nervous system are stimulated and the physiological sensation of pain is produced–as when a person accidentally slams his hand in a door. We may call this physical pain.

This kind of pain is possible only for being that beings with nervous systems. Since the divine essence does not include a nervous system, this kind of pain is impossible for God apart from the acquisition of a second nature, as in the Incarnation. Thus only God the Son can experience physical pain, and then not in his divine nature.

Being omniscient, the other two Persons of the Trinity know about the Son’s experience of physical pain, but it does not cause them physical pain any more than my slamming my hand in a door causes you physical pain. You recognize that I am in physical pain, but that doesn’t put you in physical pain.

The second way in which pain may be conceived is as mental pain. For example, when a person experiences  painful emotions, such as sadness or anger. In living humans this is closely tied to the operation of the nervous system, and particularly the central nervous system (especially the brain), but it seems that it is also possible for humans to feel it without physical form–as in the case of damned souls that have not yet been resurrected.

This also seems to be possible for fallen angels, who are completely free of physical form. At least, Scripture speaks of their being tormended following the last day, and this torment must consist of something at least analogous to the mental anguish that we experience in this life.

Scripture also speaks of God experiencing sadness and anger, but Christian theology has historically understood this to be non-literal language.

God in his divine essence experiences infinite beatitude, and this beatitude would be marred if he experienced anguish in his divine essence. This is analogous to the way in which, once we are glorified in heaven, we will be aware of the fact that not all humans are saved, but it will not "ruin heaven for us."

Further, Catholic theologically has historically understood God as not containing passions. There are things in God that may be said to correspond to the passions, but he doesn’t experience them the same way that we do.

HERE’S AQUINAS ON THAT POINT.

God does have DELIGHT AND JOY and LOVE, but he doesn’t HATE anything. He is HAPPY, is HIS OWN HAPPINESS, and has the SUPREME FORM OF HAPPINESS.

In understanding these realities in God, we must recognize the vast difference between him and us and that these things aren’t the same in him as they are in us. For example, in the case of love, we love things by recognizing the good qualities someone has and being attracted to those good qualities. In God’s case, Aquinas would say, God’s love is not attracted to the good qualities someone already possesses. Instead, it is manifest in bestowing those good qualities on the person. His love is active, whereas our is reactive.

When it comes to things like sadness or anger on the part of God, these have been historically understood as signifying things in a different manner as well, not as things that are literally painful to God, marring his beatitude. Thus when Scripture speaks of God being grieved by men’s sins, it is understood that he recognizes the reality and severity of their sins, and when it speaks of him being angry, it is understood that bad consequences are visited on those who are sinning or that bad consequences would be visited on them or they are liable for bad consequences, even if something happens to stop those bad consequences from happening (e.g., someone making atonement or intercession that shields the sinner, as with Job and his sons and daughters or Moses and Israel or Jesus and the whole human race).

Ludwig Ott has more on this in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma if you have a copy of that.

A reader writes:

I am a Protestant who has recently been awakening to a newfound appreciation for the Catholic Church and her teaching.

For four or five years now my views have been solidly of the "full preterist" persuasion (heretical – yes, I know).  Lately I’ve distanced myself somewhat from these views. Here’s where I am now: I still cannot read the Biblical passages which explicitly refer to the return of the Lord as referring to a yet future event.  The Olivet Discourse, and much (though I would not say all) of the Apocalypse seem to me to be about events that were quickly closing in on the Apostolic church.  That said, I believe that we are definitely living "between the times" in that the kingdom of God is a present but mysterious reality which has yet to reach its fullness, and I believe that Christ is the bringer of this fullness.  I also believe that everyone (past/present/future) has been and/or will be judged according to there deeds, and that Christ is the bringer of this judgment.

So, now to the question(s).  What does it mean to confess with the Catholic Church that Christ will return?  Must it mean that I picture Him coming bodily on a cloud and doing certain things (I think a lot of Protestants have Him throwing fireballs at people)?  Or rather, in confessing this could I be confessing Him to be the future bringer of the fullness of the kingdom and judgment, but maintain an element of mystery as to how this will actually look (perhaps it will be bodily and on a cloud but like I said, I read no Biblical passages which make me think it MUST be this way).  What is the dogma of the Church on the meaning of "He will come again?"  I ask this question humbly and honestly because if my faith were to continue along the path it seems now to be on I would not want to be dishonest or less than genuine in anything that I confess (I mean, if you have to qualify the hell out of something can you really say you believe it?)

I want to thank the reader for his openness to Catholic thought and for his honesty and conscientiousness about wanting to make a sincere profession of faith and not deprive doctrines of their meaning via reinterpretation.

For those who may not be aware, "full preterism"–sometimes also referred to as "pantelism" (by its critics)–is, so I understand, the position that all biblical prophecy has already been fulfilled, including the Second Coming and the resurrection of the dead. Obviously, these would have had to have been fulfilled in ways that differ markedly from the way Christians have historically understood them. This position, being contrary to the Creed’s confession of both a future Second Coming and a future resurrection, is materially heretical. Consequently, I’m glad to hear that the reader has begun distancing himself from it.

Regarding passages like the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25) that deal with the Second Coming, I would urge the reader to consider this possibility: If you look at the passage in question, much of the material does indeed refer to events that occurred in the early Church and, to my mind, in the first century. This includes some of the passages speaking of a coming of Christ, but not to all of them. There is a distinction to be made between the various ways that Christ "comes" to his people (in blessing or in judgment; just as Scripture speaks of God "coming" to his people in these ways) and the final, definitive Second Coming.

The Olivet Discourse begins with Jesus predicting the destruction of the Temple and then the disciples ask him two things: (1) When will this happen? (2) What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?

What follows is a discourse in which Matthew organizes the prophetic teachings of Christ, including drawing together material that is found at various places in Luke. It seems to me that, in reflecting on this material, there is a marked difference between the material in chapter 24 and that in chapter 25.

The chapter 24 material is much more concrete and specific, whereas the material in chapter 25 is expressly parabolic, involving the parable of the ten virgins, the parable of the talents, and the parable of the sheep and the goats.

I would hypothesize that the material in chapter 24 answers the disciples first question–"When will these things (the destruction of the temple) be?"–and the material in chapter 25 deals with the Second Coming, which is by its nature an event that cannot be described in the kind of concrete terms that we find in chapter 24. It’s too far outside the realm of human experience, making it more suited to parabolic treatment.

Whether the reader finds this interpretation convincing is not essential, though. The Church does not mandate a particular interpretation of these texts. What it does insist on is that there is a future Second Coming that will involve a radical rupture in the present world order and usher in a new and eternal state.

A significant text which seems to bear on this future coming (as opposed to other, non-definitive "comings," such as a coming in judgment on Jerusalem in A.D. 70) is found in Acts 1:

6: So when they had come together,  they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to  Israel?"
7: He said to them, "It is not for you to know  times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. 
8:
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and
you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Sama’ria
and to the end of the earth."
9: And  when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up,  and a cloud took him out of their sight.
10: And while they  were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them  in white robes,
11:
and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This
Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way
as you saw him go into heaven."

      

This seems to indicate that Christ’s future, definitive coming will in one respect be an inverse of the Ascension. That is, just as Christ manifestly and bodily ascended into heaven, at his final and definitive coming he will manifestly and bodily descend from heaven. It is this manifest bodily descent that seems to mark the Second Coming in distinction from all other conceivable comings of Christ (e.g., coming in a vision, visiting blessing or judgment on a people without bodily descending from heaven, coming in the Eucharist in bodily but not manifest manner).

The fact that Christ will be reunited with us in a manifest and bodily fashion at the Second Coming does not mean that the event must be understood reductionistically, as it is sometimes understood in Fundamentalist circles, as if Jesus will return to the earth like an astronaut returning from space (but without the space capsule). The event will represent such a massive rupture with the present world order such that the laws of space and time as we presently understand them are likely to no longer apply.

For example, Scripture speaks of the day of judgment in ways that strongly suggest that the current rules of space and time will not apply. It is hard to imagine, for example, that Jesus will actually judge billions of people in a 24 hour period, reviewing their smallest deeds and making them publicly known to everyone ("what you have whispered in the ear will be shouted from the housetops"), literally dividing billions of people onto his right and left, etc. If we really do have a whole-life review and experience not only our own review and judgment but have awareness of the content of others’ reviews and judgments then this strongly suggests we will occupy a mode of existence that is so vastly different from our current experience that it can scarcely be conceived at present, and certainly the language used to describe it in Scripture must be handled with a significant degree of caution about the mystery that is being described.

Ultimately, the precise mechanics of the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the eternal order on the new heaven and the new earth must be left up to God. While we have indications of what aspects of these will be like, and while we know they will be bodily and future events, their precise constitution is something that we likely cannot even conceive at present, and the Church does not attempt to settle these matters in detail.

So I would say that much of what the reader is presently thinking is in line with Catholic thought. He acknowledges that there is a future and definitive aspect to these realities. What I would recommend that he contemplate (as he may already be doing) is that these realities will have a bodily dimension, even if it is a mode of bodily existence that presently exceeds our ability to imagine.

Hope this helps!

A reader writes:

Hello, I’m having trouble finding anyone who sells books by St. Aquinas in the original Latin. Do you know who sells them? Thanks.

I’m not aware of a bookseller specifically devoted to this, but here’s what I’d do:

1) If you’re looking for books that are in print, I’d check Amazon.com as my first stop. It might not have the ones you’re looking for, though, since books by Aquinas in Latin are likely to be by smaller, academic, or overseas publishers, and Amazon don’t always carry those. (Which is the publishers’ faults, not Amazon’s.)

2) If you’re looking for out of print books or used but in-print books, I’d contact THOMAS LOOME BOOKSELLERS and ask them what they have in stock.

On the other hand, if you don’t really need books by Aquinas in Latin but just texts by Aquinas in Latin, his whole corpus is available online and available for download.

FOR EXAMPLE, HERE.

Hope this helps!

A reader writes:

I would like a brief description each of the 9 choirs of angels.  Thanks you.

St. Thomas offers the best brief description of the nine choirs that I know of. It’s found in two articles in the Summa Theologiae: HERE and HERE.

You also might want to read Pseudo-Dionysius’s THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY, which was the work that kicked off the whole nine choirs business.

There’s a brief treatment of the subject in THE ARTICLE IN THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA.

And WIKIPEDIA’S ARTICLE may have some useful bits, but it’s got a bunch of unreliable junk mixed in, so be careful.

In fact, I’d urge caution regarding the whole idea of nine choirs of angels. This is a highly speculative way of classifying angels and is not part of Church teaching (you will note, for example, that it’s not mentioned in the Catechism). The foundations of it are also shaky, biblically. It rests on stitching together several different passages of Scripture and then making the assumptions that the things mentioned in them (1) are all angels and (2) are all different types of angels.

Both of these assumptions are open to challenge.

For example, I am not convinced that there is a difference in kind between an angel and an archangel. The term archangelos in Greek simply indicates a high ranking angel. Archangels may differ from ordinary angels in the same way that high ranking officials differ from low ranking officials or the way that high ranking military officers differ from low ranking military officers. In other words: The difference is one of rank, not of essence.

Indeed, that is what suggested by the very terms. "Angel" in the biblical languages simply means "messenger," with the understanding that the angels are the messengers one would find in God’s heavenly court, just as earthly kings have messengers in their courts. In earthly courts, some messengers may hold higher rank than others, but they’re all human beings. In the same way, the distinction between a messenger and a high-ranking messenger would seem to be one of rank rather than kind.

When we come to cherubim and seraphim, we’re on a little bit firmer ground. These at least look different when they appear in Scripture, though because of the way visionary experience works, I can’t rule out the possibility that there is one underlying class of beings behind both, and sometimes it manifests in a way that conveys one visionary impression and sometimes it manifests in a way that conveys another.

Even if we grant that seraphim and cherubim are different from each other, though, that doesn’t mean that they are distinct from the choir or choirs of angels and archangels. It might turn out that all angels are either seraphim or cherubim (that there isn’t another class). And it might turn out that there are high ranking angels (archangels) among both the seraphim and the cherubim.

So these classes may all co-penetrate each other. They may not be four distinct classes, contrary to assumption (2), above.

When we look at the other five classes–thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, virtues–we’re on even shakier ground because it isn’t clear from Scripture that these are angelic beings at all. These names are derived from three passages in St. Paul’s writings (I’ll stick the relevant names after the key terms where it isn’t obvious in the English translation):

[God] raised [Christ] from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the  heavenly places, far above all rule [principality] and authority [power] and power [virtue] and dominion, and above
every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which
is to come [Eph. 1:20-21].

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his  might.  Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be  able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 
For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the
principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this
present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the
heavenly places [Eph. 6:10-12].

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities [powers; it’s the same word in Greek as in the former passage: exousiai]– all things were created through him and for him [Col. 1:15-16].

It is not obvious in these passages that Paul is talking about distinct types of angels. That rests on a chain of assumptions that are open to challenge. It is not clear, for example, that he is thinking exclusively of the heavenly realm here. He may have earthly rulers in mind ("in heaven and on earth"), in which case some of these terms may be being used to describe humans. Even if we could identify which terms he’s thinking of as referring to spiritual things, he may not be thinking of angels but of Greco-Roman religious concepts that use the same terms (e.g., virtues like Piety were often worshipped as deities, and the Roman emperor and many other rulers were worshipped as well), with the message being that Christ is superior to all of these and that we struggle against them as Christians. Even if we could show that these terms all referred to angels, this still wouldn’t show that they are distinct classes of angels, any more than the fact that some humans could be described as principalities and some as powers wouldn’t mean that they weren’t all humans.

It strikes me as much more likely that Paul is speaking in a generalized way here, piling up near-synonyms that are intended to overlap–and overlap both the earthly and the heavenly spheres–in a way that makes it impossible to use this as a technical listing of different kinds of non-overlapping groups of angels that differ from each other in essence.

A reader writes:

I’ve been struggling with a question regarding prayer for some time now, and I’m not having much luck finding an answer. The qestion is this: what exactly are we praying for when we pray for someone else’s conversion & salvation – i.e., what exactly are we asking God to do?

The difficulty I’m having with this question stems from the following:

a) God will give sufficient grace to each person to enable him to get to heaven; and
b) God will not infringe on man’s free will and force him to accept the graces He offers.

Given the foregoing, it would seem (to me) to be illogical to pray for someone else’s conversion and salvation. Yet, we see St. Paul praying for the salvation of others in Rom 10:1.

Any help you can give me (or source to which you can point me) on this would be very much appreciated.

Several different resolutions to the dilemma you pose suggest themselves:

1) The Efficacious Grace solution:

According to the Thomistic point of view, while God gives sufficient grace to all for salvation, for a person to actually turn to God and be saved the person must be given a special kind of grace that is by its nature efficacious. Those who get this efficacious grace are saved, those who don’t, aren’t. The bestowal of efficacious grace is entirely a matter of God’s choice, and it accomplishes its goal of bringing a person to salvation without violating his free will.

A Thomistic solution to the dilemma thus might say that what we are doing in praying for someone’s salvation what we are asking God to do is to give that person efficacious grace–thus going beyond the sufficient grace he gives to all while (on the Thomistic understanding) not violating his free will.

Whether this solution works is dependent on whether it is possible to give someone a grace that intrinsically (by its nature) brings a person to salvation without violating free will. Non-Thomsits commonly dispute that this is possible.

2) The Middle Knowledge solution

Middle knowledge is a somewhat tricky concept (MORE HERE), but the basic idea is that God knows the truth of things that are not determined either by necessity or his own agency. Thus he knows what our free will decisions will be in all situations, including those we haven’t been put in. (The latter is a class known technically as free will counterfactuals).

If it’s true that God knows what we will freely choose to do in all possible situations then it would be possible for him to put us in the situation where we freely choose to act on the sufficient grace he has given us and thus achieve salvation.

On this account, what he would be doing in asking God to save someone would be asking him to put that person in a situation in which he knows that the person will freely choose to respond to sufficient grace.

There are at least two possible difficulties for this view. First, in order to engineer the situation in which person X freely chooses to respond to the offer of salvation, God might have to override the free will of other people–either on matters connected with salvation or with respect to neutral matters (e.g., causing me to choose to share the gospel with the person or causing me to choose to stay at a bus station long enough to meet the person and choose to share the gospel with him).

Or maybe he wouldn’t. He might be able to manipulate non-volitional nature such that he sets up a cascade of free will decisions among different people leading a particular individual to choose salvation, not violating the free will of anyone in the cascade. Since we don’t have a God’s-eye view of reality, we don’t know whether this would be a real difficulty for God or not.

Second, whether God has middle knowledge is disputed, the chief part of the dispute being whether this kind of knowledge is possible in situations that are not actual.

Note that middle knowledge solutions are commonly appealed to by Molinists, though they are not exclusive to Molinists.

3) The Easier Influence solution

On this theory we would be asking God to give a person more than just sufficient grace but less than the efficacious grace envisioned by Thomists.

While receiving sufficient grace means that a person receives enough grace to embrace salvation, it does not mean that it will be easy for him to do so. One could thus ask God to give him additional graces that influence him by making it easier for him to embrace salvation yet not override his free will.

For example, he might encounter an evangelist capable of giving an extra-clear and winning presentation of the gospel or he might be in a particularly good mood when he hears it or he might be shielded from evil influences while he’s considering the question of whether to embrace the offer of salvation.

It seems to me that, whatever else is the case, God ought to be able to do at least this solution, and thus we have at least one way of making sense of what we’re asking God to do when praying for the salvation of others.

4) The Redundant Prayers solution

It is, of course, possible to pray for things that God is going to do with or without our prayers. Thus I could pray for God to give a particular person sufficient grace to embrace salvation, even though (as an informed, theologically orthodox Catholic) I already know that he’s planning to do that.

This solution is certainly possible, but it raises the question of whether it’s a good use of our time to pray for things God is determined to do independent of our prayers and why God would set the example for us in Scripture of praying for the salvation of others. Why would he want us to pray redundantly?

5) The Extra Chance solution

It is Church teaching that God gives sufficient grace to a person at some point during his life, but it is not Church teaching that he does this on more than one occasion. We don’t know whether a person has sufficient grace for salvation at every point in his life or only at some points. (It is common teaching that the baptized who are in mortal sin always will always be given sufficient grace to repent before the end of their lives, but that teaching does not apply to the unbaptized.)

If somone has already had–and missed–whatever receptions of sufficient grace God would otherwise give him then praying for the person’s salvation might be construed as asking God to give him sufficient grace once more or even many more times–in other words, giving him extra chances.

6) The Whatever Possible solution

The above solutions represent theoretical answers to the question of what one might mean when asking God to grant salvation to someone. This solution is different: It represents something I suspect is more like what most people actually do mean in asking this.

Most people don’t have in mind the theoretical answers provided in the preceding solutions. They haven thought through the mechanics of how God giving salvation works in that kind of detail, they just want the person they’re praying for to be saved. So in praying for the person they would like God to do whatever is possible to help that person to be saved.

On this understanding, you don’t have to know which options are possible. There just has to be something that’s possible, and I suspect that at least some of the above explanations fall into that category (and probably others that my tiny human intellect isn’t even capable of comprehending). We can thus leave up to God what, in particular, is possible and just humbly request that he do it.

That’s how I tend to think of it when I pray for others.

A reader writes:

I was just wondering whether you were a Thomist,
Molinist, or neither. I understand that this is a
question that you might choose not to answer, as it
could lead to a pretty hairy blog post as a result,
but I was simply curious. I’ve been looking into both
schools of thought, and I wanted to know where you
stood.

For those who aren’t aware, Thomism and Molinism are the two best-known schools of Catholic thought regarding the subjects of predestination, grace, and free will. They are not the only two, however. If you look in Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, you’ll find additional schools listed.

At this point in my theological development, I’m not really either a Thomist or a Molinist. Originally, coming from conservative Presbyterianism, I had a strong predisposition towards Thomism. This led me to write A Tiptoe Through TULIP, to help illustrate the degree to which Calvinistic thought is compatible with Catholic thought. That piece explored how close one could get to Calvinism while remaining within the bounds of Catholic teaching. I have long wanted to write a companion piece exploring just how far away from Calvinism you could get and remain within the bounds of Catholic teaching as well, though I have not had the leisure to do so.

Currently I don’t have strong opinions regarding which of the permitted Catholic positions on the relevant issues are correct. I believe that predestination exists, for Scripture says that it does. The question in my mind is how predestination works. It may be the kind of strong predestination that St. Augustine and St. Thomas believed in or it may be one of the alternative understandings that have been advocated by other thinkers, such as those of the Molinist or other permitted Catholic schools.

I’m not entirely sure that we have been given the data needed to address every issue relating to this subject. Scripture and Tradition allow us to establish certain points, such as the absolute necessity of grace for anyone to be saved, but they may not allow us to fully exhaust the mystery that we are confronted with here, just as they allow us to establish certain points regarding the nature of God without exhausting the mystery that he is.

I am particularly suspicious of strategies that attempt to handle biblical language as if it did not contain a large amount of ambiguity. There is a tendency among many Calvinist authors to treat biblical language as if it is a lot less ambiguous than is really the case. For example, many of the key terms connected with salvation–"redemption," "justification," "sanctification," and even "salvation" itself–occur in Scripture with more than one meaning. This is not often appreciated in some circles. Also, it is often assumed that certain terms are synonyms, when in fact they may not be. These tendencies appear particularly in Calvinist writings, and in reading them one often gets the feeling that a system is being imposed on the data of the text rather than being derived from it.

To ultimately settle what I think about many of these matters, I’d have to conduct an extensive review of the biblical literature and how thought on this question has developed over time. Given the practical orientation of my work–which involves defending the liberty of opinion that Catholics have rather than trying to prove one particular school of thought correct–I have not had the occasion to do that research. Thus I’m better at explaining the boundaries of Catholic teaching and what particular biblical verses might mean than what school of thought (if any) is correct and what the relevant verses definitely do mean.

In other words, I try to be transparent to the Church: If the Church allows a variety of opinion on a particular point, I tend to leave matters as they are. There are more urgent priorities in research that I need to pursue than trying to settle my views on highly complex, highly debatable matters of this type. At some point I may have the leisure, or the personal motivation, to do a systematic review of this area, but thus far I have not.

A reader writes:

If Heaven is beyond time and space, and the Angels and Saints can hear our prayers as the book of Revelation shows, then are the prayers the saints hear ones that are made after their death?

Angels don’t have death, but yes, saints in heaven do hear prayers made after their deaths. Thus in A.D. 2006 I can pray to St. Paul, who died in the A.D. 60s. That doesn’t require heaven to be beyond time and space, though. Even if St. Paul is still fully within the flow of time, so that for him it’s also 2006, he can still hear the prayer as long as he has a way to perceive it.

The standard thought is that it is God who communicates to the saints the fact that someone is praying to them, so if I am in 2006 and St. Paul is in 2006, God can simply pass on my prayer to St. Paul. God, of course, is outside of time, but St. Paul doesn’t have to be for him to learn about my prayer long after his death.

If, because Heaven is beyond time and space, I could hear prayers from all times, then if I pray now, die and go to Heaven, will I be able to hear my own prayers that I made before I died?

Possibly. There are a few caveats, though:

1) While God is outside of time, it is not at all clear that human souls are outside of time. Or at least they are not outside of time in the same way that God is. God does not experience any sequentiality; he lives in an "eternal now" in which all of history happens at once (or, to put it more precisely, every moment in the history of the world is equally present to God).

Souls, however, clearly do experience sequentiality. There is the point at which they die, experience the particular judgment, are purified (if needed), and fully glorified, are restored to their bodies at the Resurrection, experience the general judgment, experience the eternal order, etc. Even if you want to say that this sequentiality doesn’t take place in time as we experience it (and I’m open to the proposition that it does take place in time as we experience it), you at least have to say that it takes place over something analogous to time that allows things to happen in sequence rather than all at once in an eternal now.

2) You don’t need to posit heaven being outside of time, though, in order to get your prayer request to your future, sainted self. As we mentioned, God is outside of time, and so if you are alive in 2006 and praying to yourself in heaven then God could tell you about that prayer in 2306, when you die and arrive in heaven (let’s assume that medical technology discovers something really fabulous that lets you live for more than three centuries).

3) It’s not clear that this would be necessary, however, since Scripture seems to indicate that we will have a whole-life review at some point–possibly at more than one point (i.e., both the particular and the general judgments) and we may have constant, continuous access to the events of our own lives in the form of memory (unimpeded by our brain’s faulty retrieval system). If that’s the case then, or whenever the whole-life review takes place, we could come across our former prayer request and be able to fulfill it.

4) On the other hand, there may be limits to what we can pray for on behalf of our former selves. One thing that it does not make sense for us to pray for is something that we know was not God’s will. For example, even today–with me still being alive–I could not ask God to make it so that I had never been born. I already know that it was God’s will for me to be born, and I cannot legitimately pray for something that I know to be contrary to God’s will.

(I could pray that God create an alternate timeline in which I was never born, but I cannot pray that I never existed in this timeline.)

Once we’re in heaven and have had our whole-life review and know everything that happened to us, we wouldn’t be able to pray that things turn out differently for us–at any particular moment of our lives–than they did, for to do so would be to pray contrary to God’s will for us.

5) We could, however, pray for things to turn out as they did. Since God is outside of time, I can ask him in 2306 to allow something to happen to me in 2006 that I know did happen to me in that year. In this case, I’m praying in harmony with God’s will–and such a prayer of mine in 2306 might (hypothetically) be a contributing factor to why God allowed the event to happen to me in 2006.

6) It is not clear, however, whether God would respond to this type of prayer. First, he might judge that the purpose of the Communion of the Saints is to build up the body of Christ by praying for each other. Praying for our own past selves might not be what he has in mind. For example, I’m not sure what God would think of me praying–now, in 2006–that he allow me to be born back in the 1960s.

In fact, I rather suspect that God might take a dim view of me making that request of him, at least while I’m in this life. Given that I already know what his will was on that matter, I suspect he would rather have me spending my time and energy praying for things where I don’t know his will–like my present needs or the needs of others.

In this life I have limited time and energy to devote to things, and God might well deem it more productive for me to devote my petitionary prayer to matters that are not yet settled from my temporal perspective. I might praise and thank him for allowing me to be born, but in terms of what I should be asking for, he might want me to ask that he bless me or my loved ones or the pope or the poor of the souls in purgatory or someone who I don’t already know it was his will to bless.

Here’s one way God might want us to handle things in prayer:

* If we know it’s his will, praise and thank him for it.
* If we don’t know if it’s his will, ask that he will grant the request if it’s his will.
* If we know it’s not his will, don’t ask him for it.

For our future selves, things that we know did happen to us would go in the first category and things that we know didn’t happen would go in the third. Once we’re in heaven, presumably nothing about our past lives would fall in the middle category. If that’s the case then praying for our past selves would not be in harmony with God’s will.

That’s assuming, of course, that God handles things according to the three categories mentioned above. He may not. As noted before, he might act on the prayers of our future selves in granting blessings to our present selves.

I’ve gotten a number of requests for comment on news stories that have been circulating recently regarding the possibility that the Church may repudiate the idea of limbo. As usual, the press has done its usual substellar job of reporting matters of religion, so here goes.

First, just in case there might be any doubt on this point, the limbo we’re talking about here is the limbo of the infants (Latin, limbus infantium or limbus purerorum), not the limbu of the fathers (limbus patrum). The latter is a different concept (which, incidentally, is not to be too hastily identified with purgatory).

The idea of the limbo of the infants arose out of reflections on (1) the New Testament’s clear teaching on the necessity of baptism for salvation and (2) the fact that many seemingly innocent people (babies, those who are severely and congenitally retarded, etc.) die without baptism and (3) the mercy and justice of God.

An early and influential attempt to address the question of what happens to children dying without baptism was formulated by St. Augustine, who held that–since baptism is necessary for salvation–children dying without it must be excluded from heaven. They thus do not receive the beatific vision of God. Further, since there are only two ultimate destinations for humans–heaven and hell–this meant that such children must end up in hell. However, because they do not have personal acts of sin, they would experience only the mildest of torments–those due to original sin only.

Later theologians rejected part of Augustine’s solution–namely, the part about the children suffering. It came to be held that exclusion from the beatific vision is what dying in original sin causes to happen, but that the positive suffering that only occurs if one has committed actual, personal sin. You won’t suffer in the afterlife in less you personally sinned, in other words. You’ll only be deprived of the supernatural happiness of being with God.

Further theological reflection noticed another possibility: If someone is neither in torment nor in supernatural beatitude then it is possible for them to experience a non-supernatural or natural beatitude. In other words, they could be happy–indeed, very, very happy–but without having the specific happiness of being able to see God as he is. (Kinda like we on earth can be very, very happy without having the beatific vision in this life.)

Theologians thus came to speculate that babies dying without baptism could experience a natural happiness.
The resulting picture would be a rather odd one–technically, the children would be in hell (excluded from the beatific vision) but they would have potentially tremendous happiness, just not the supernatural happiness of union with God. This idea would be very comforting to parents, though from what I can
tell this point always remained private theological speculation. I
haven’t been able to find any indication of it in magisterial texts.

In the fullness of time, the term "limbo" came to be associated with the resulting state. The term "limbo" is derived from a word meaning hem or fringe or border, and the idea that the infants in question would be in hell, but only on its hem or fringe or border–not where the real suffering goes on.

Various aspects of this found their way into magisterial texts, though I am unaware of any that has the full-orbed view of limbo-as-place-of-great-natural-happiness version. Generally there is a more reserved presentation that merely stresses the necessity of baptism for salvation, even for infants, but that such infants will not suffer on account of their lack of personal sins if they die without it.

A recent example of this kind of presentation may be found in Pius XII’s  Address to Italian Midwives, where he stated:

If what We have said up to now concerns the protection and care of natural life, much more so must it concern the supernatural life, which the newly born receives with Baptism. In the present economy there is no other way to communicate that life to the child who has not attained the use of reason. Above all, the state of grace is absolutely necessary at the moment of death. Without it salvation and supernatural happiness—the beatific vision of God—are impossible. An act of love is sufficient for the adult to obtain sanctifying grace and to supply the lack of baptism; to the still unborn or newly born this way is not open. . . . so it is easy to understand the great importance of providing for the baptism of the child deprived of complete reason who finds himself in grave danger or at death’s threshold.

Here the pontiff affirms that a child cannot make the kind of personal act of charity needed to obtain sanctifying grace apart from baptism and thus, according to the clear implication of the text, such children cannot experience the beatific vision. The pontiff does not go into the fact that such children will not suffer (other documents do that) or affirm the idea of their natural happiness, but he does make it clear that such children will not be saved (in the proper sense of the term of receiving the beatific vision).

That was Church teaching (doctrine). It was not, however, Church dogma, and for some time (centuries, actually), theologians had been entertaining possible ways by which salvation could be achieved for such infants. These often centered on the idea that such children might experience a form of baptism of blood or baptism of desire.

Another time we can go into the mechanics of how these theories work, but as the Church’s understanding of baptism of desire progressed in the 19th and 20th centuries, related to a greater emphasis on the universality of God’s salvific will, the idea of limbo began to fall out of favor. This was clearly happening by the mid-20th century, and it may even be why Pius XII didn’t go further than he did in articulating limbo in his address to the midwives.

In the 1960s the Second Vatican Council, using typically oblique language, seemed to affirm that God offers all individuals the possibility of salvation, even if it is in a mysterious way we cannot perceive or understand (Gaudium et Spes 22). One could argue that the Council was talking about people who attain the use of reason, but if it wasn’t–if it really meant that God gives a universal offer of salvation–then it would apply to infants dying without baptism as well.

The Council didn’t address this question explicitly, but in 1992 the Catechism of the Catholic Church did:

1261 As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them," allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.

This represents a clear shift in doctrine. In Pius XII’s day and before, private speculation had been permitted that there might be a way of salvation for such children, but official teaching was that this was not the case, as documented above. (The situation then was similar to the situation with respect to Feeneyites now: Official teaching is that it is possible for non-Catholics to be saved, but the Church still allows private speculation that this is not the case.) With the Catechism, we have a clear shift in what the magisterial texts are saying, so that now–instead of denying the possibility of salvation without baptism for such children–they are affirming at least the hope of it.

This doesn’t mean that limbo doesn’t exist, but it does mean that the Church is now actively pointing toward an alternative to limbo.

It also means that the Church’s official teaching has already changed on this point, so if you are encountering a press story that seems to imply that the Church still actively proclaims limbo and is considering whether to shift its position on limbo, the article is misleading. It has already shifted its position, as the above documents show.

That’s what folks in the business call "doctrinal development," and since it does not contradict prior infallible definitions (the Church has never infallibly defined that all children dying without baptism without exception are excluded from the beatific vision) it does not pose a challenge to the integrity of Catholic dogma.

An even more striking departure from prior teaching came in John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (section 99), where he wrote:

I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion. . . . The Father of mercies is ready to give
you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You will come to understand that nothing is definitively lost and you will also be able to ask forgiveness from your child, who is now living in the Lord.

This would seem to affirm the salvation of children dying without baptism–or at least those who died by abortion–but there’s something very strange about this passage, because when the official, Latin version came out in Acta Apostolicae Sedes, the passage had been rephrased so that it read:

I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion. . . . The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To the same Father and his mercy you can with sure hope entrust your child.

It would appear that the degree of departure from prior teaching in the original text was called to the attention of the pontiff, who then had the official Latin version altered. One would expect that the other versions of the text would be corrected in light of the Latin one and the prior text regarded as inauthentic, but I have seen individuals argue (I can’t see on what basis) that both texts enjoy official status.

However that may be, both do continue to circulate, and in fact both are present on the Vatican’s own web site (here’s the first, here’s the second).

The development of this area of theology led John Paul II in 2004 to ask the International Theological Commission to prepare a document discussing the fate of unbaptized children, with the clear expectation that the document would find a way to more fully articulate recent thought on the subject, without resorting to the concept of limbo. Here’s what he said:

The themes chosen for examination by the Commission during the coming years are of the greatest interest. First of all is the question of the fate of children who die without Baptism. This is not merely an isolated theological problem. A great many other fundamental topics are closely interwoven with it:  the universal salvific will of God, the one universal mediation of Jesus Christ, the role of the Church, the universal sacrament of salvation, the theology of the sacraments, the meaning of the doctrine on original sin…. It will be up to you to explore the "nexus" between all these mysteries with a view to offering a theological synthesis that will help to encourage consistent and enlightened pastoral practice [SOURCE].

The International Theological Commission, though run under the auspices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is an advisory body, and its documents do not have magisterial standing. What the pope was doing, in essence, was to ask a group of theological advisors to come up with a fuller way to articulate an alternative to limbo.

If the pope was pleased with the document they eventually came up with, he could order it to be published and, though it would not itself have magisterial status, it would serve as a pointer for future discussions of the topic and would likely shape future magisterial presentations of it.

John Paul II died in 2005, though, and His Awesomeness Joseph Ratzinger became His Most Awesomeness B16.

So what impact would that have on this question?

Back in the 1980s (see The Ratzinger Report), Cardinal Ratzinger had already expressed his personal opinion that the idea of limbo should be abandoned. Here’s what he said:

Limbo was never a defined truth of the faith. Personally – and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as Prefect of the Congregation – I would abandon it since it was only a theological hypothesis. It formed part of a secondary thesis in support of a truth which is absolutely of first significance for the faith, namely, the importance of baptism. …. One should not hesitate to give up the idea of ‘limbo’ if need be (and it is worth noting that the very theologians who proposed ‘limbo’ also said that parents could spare the child limbo by desiring its baptism and through prayer); but the concern behind it must not be surrendered. Baptism has never been a side issue for the faith; it is not now, nor will it ever be."

So there is little doubt that he would be favorable to the general direction of the document (early versions of which may have been prepared when he was still the head of the International Theological Commission).

But will he order the text published?

Part of me wonders about that, because since becoming pontiff he has had the idea of reconciling the SSPX with the Church as one of his priorities, and it seems to me that this effort could be harmed by the publication of the document, since many radical traditionalists are keen on the idea of limbo.

On the other hand, he may view the matter as of sufficient pastoral weight to go ahead and allow what he perceives as doctrinal development to proceed on this point, regardless of how it will be received in such quarters.

Further, according to John Allen,

A Vatican Information Service news release of Oct. 2 indicated that Pope Benedict has furnished "precise indications" to the commission, urging it "to overcome the traditional orientation" of Limbo [SOURCE].

Unfortunantly, I haven’t been able to find the original text of this news release on the VIS web site.

Last week the International Theological Commission (now headed by Cardinal Levada) had a big meeting (a "plenary session") in Rome in which they talked about the limbo matter, and this set off a lot of speculation in the media that an announcement might be imminent. It was widely thought that the document might be released or that B16 might address the matter in his homily at the Mass he celebrated on Friday for the ITC, but neither happened.

The accounts I’ve come across are mixed regarding whether the document is yet-to-be-drafted or has already been drafted but is now being tweaked. Presumably, they’ve drafted something–at least points for discussion–but the final document is still a ways off.

How far off?

Well, the ITC has discussion themes that it takes up in five-year blocks. The current block runs from 2004-2008 (which is why JP2 asked them to take up this question back in 2004). Presumably, the document will be finished and presented to the pope before 2008–quite possibly in 2007–but we’ll have to wait and see. Even then, there’s a possibility that B16 might not order it to be published, though my best guess at the moment is that he will.

MORE HERE.

AND HERE.

AND HERE.

One final prediction: If the document is published and if it starts to shape future magisterial statements on the subject then there is one provision in the current Code of Canon Law that may get revisited at some point in the future. Here it is:

Can. 868.

§2. An infant of Catholic parents or even of non-Catholic parents is baptized licitly in danger of death even against the will of the parents.

A reader writes:

Sorry to trouble you, however, you are the person that comes to my mind when I think of Purgatory.

Hmmm. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not. . . . Well, let’s press on. . . .

I’ve heard you mention that Purgatory is sort of a cleansing process that we would go through because we are all guilty of sin and nothing unclean can enter heaven.  We know saints have been sinners too, some very great sinners at one point in their life.  How can we assume they make it to heaven and why would they not have to have their souls cleansed by Purgatory?

I have run into Catholics who have advanced the opinion that the saints did not go through purgatory (because they didn’t need it), but I can find no Church teaching to back up that claim. As far as I can tell, it is quiet possible that individuals who are now saints did indeed go through purgatory.

This is not to say that everybody does. The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes:

1472 To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the "eternal punishment" of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the "temporal punishment" of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.

So it seems possible that some individuals are purified by the end of life such that they do not need to experience purgatory, and the saints would presumably be among the better candidates for that.

Nevertheles, I can find no Church teaching to back up the idea that anyone who ends up as a canonized saint by definition avoided purgatory. That strikes me as a pious belief, but not something that the Church teaches.

As to how one could reason that a canonized individual is now in heaven, there would seem to be two lines of reasoning by which one could do this.

First, one could infer it from the fact of the canonization itself, which is infallible. In making canonizations, popes use the formula

We declare and define that X is a saint.

(See the decree of canonization for Jose Maria Escriva for an example.)

If one takes the term "saint" in this context to mean "a person who is completely purified and in heaven" then the canonization itself would function as a guarantor of the fact that the individual is no longer in purgatory.

However, there is another basis, which precedes and prepares the way for canonization, and that is the verification of miracles performed through the individual’s intercession. These miracles are regarded as a sign that, in some sense, God wishes the individual to be known as a saint and thus can be taken as an indication that the individual is in heaven and no longer experiencing purification.

In keeping with my own inclination to be reserved about what can be asserted with confidence about the afterlife, how time works there, and similar matters, I would employ such arguments with a measure of caution, though those are the arguments that suggest themselves and that cohere with the historic sensus fidelium regarding the fact that canonized saints are already in heaven.

Note that the title of this blog post is ambiguous since the word "species" in English can be either singular or plural.

There’s a good reason for using such an ambiguous title.

A reader writes:

I had a Priest tell me that every angel is it’s own species rather than angels as a whole being a single species.  Where would he have got that?

Probably from Thomas Aquinas, for it’s a notable theme in the history of Catholic theology.

YOU CAN READ ONE OF AQUINAS’S DEFENSES OF IT HERE.

The reasoning Aquinas uses is based on his Aristotelian understanding of metaphysics, according to which (among other things) matter is regarded as "the principle of individuation"–the thing that allows two things to belong to the same species and yet be different from each other. Since angels don’t have matter, they thus can’t be the same species, for there would be nothing (no matter) to differentiate angels within a particular species.

(WARNING: Aquinas’ understanding of matter is obviously somewhat different than the modern one. Don’t assume that he’s using the word in the same way we would. His use of the word "form" is also different.)

Aquinas also has an argument that even if angels had matter they would still have to be of different species, which he explains in the above link.

Unfortunately, his reasoning on some points connected with this view is not entirely clear, and commentators have struggled to figure out some of what he means.

THIS ARTICLE TAKES NOTE OF SOME OF THE ISSUES.

I should point out that the reasoning Aquinas uses is tied to a particular theory of metaphysics in such a way that the Church does not require one to agree with his conclusion. The Church does not endorse any particular system of metaphysics, and some individuals (whether they are differentiated by matter or not) have liberty of opinion here. (His Most Awesomeness B16, for example, is known to generally favor approaching things from an Augustinian rather than a Thomistic perspective.)

Personally, I am open to Aquinas’s view on this but am not presently convinced by the reasoning he uses on this point. I tend to think that we just don’t know enough about how the supernatural world works to be able to say with confidence that, for example, there is no second principle of individuation that would allow there to be multiple angels within a given species.

Scripturre makes it clear that angels are all part of some common kind of being (otherwise they wouldn’t be referred to by the common name of "angel") and that there are multiple individuals within this kind. My own inclination is to note these facts and then not worry about whether this kind is a species or a genus or what have you. There may be multiple angelic species or only one. I’m not persuaded that we know enough about the supernatural world to settle this question, and so I’d prefer to stick with the data of revelation on this point and not try to get too definitive about what metaphysical theory best explains the data.

But that’s just me. You’re free to take whatever view you feel is best supported by the evidence.

Which on this point is how the Church would have it.