Mo' Dernity, Mo' Problems
Saturday, February 22, 2003
Theology and Sanity by Frank Sheed
A simple, readable overview of Catholic theology. A lot of it I'd already learned in conversations with Catholic friends, but some of it was new to me. Good stuff on the Trinity, on the distinction between imaginability and concievability, and on man as a unity of body and soul.
My only problem with the book was that Sheed seems to make too much of the argument from first cause - he claims that the existence of a first cause somehow implies an infinite and personal God. As far as I can tell, the argument from first cause cannot prove anything definate about the nature of the first cause.
Imaginability and Concievability
On this, Sheed points out that often people act as though there is no distinction between that which is imaginable and that which is concievable. People often assume that if they cannot imagine something, it therefore cannot exist. For example, if a person cannot come up with an image of how free-will works, they will sometimes falsely assume that free-will is impossible. The mind can imagine the cause and effect relations between neurons in the brain, but it cannot in the same way imagine the human person as a cause, since after all one cannot make a mental image of the human person. But the unimaginability of free-will does not imply that free-will is inconcievable.
Mind and Body
If you want to know what a rational animal is, study man; neither animality nor rationality will be the same when the two are wed: the marriage does strange things to both of them. Rationality functioning in union with a body is not just rationality, animality is so ennobled by its marraige with spirit that no mere animal would know what to do with it. The way to find all this is to meet man and think hard about the experience. (Page 377)
This statement is completely on the money, provided we define rationality to be something beyond simply logic and mathematics. As embodied creatures, we are forced to ask ourselves questions like, "Where should I live?" "Who should I sleep with?" "Should I bother to exercise?" and "Why did that guy give me that funny look?" In a disembodied world, our means of relating to others would be greatly impoverished. You could say, "I love you," but you couldn't buy roses for your wife, or offer soup to your sick child.
This is why I have trouble understanding why some people get excited about transhumanism. Basically, transhumanists want total technological control over the human body. They want to be able to jettison it at will (by uploading the brain onto a computer), or modify it (bigger muscles with no effort, 200 year lifespan). This is all fine and good, assuming that you believe that man is essentially rational, and only accidentally animal.
Nature/Persons distinction helps us understand the Trinity and Incarnation
St. Augustine took the words "person" and "being" to be mere placeholders, so that when we say that the Trinity is, "Three persons and one being," we really just mean, "three somethings and one something else." Sheed, however, believes the terms "person" and "nature" can give us a useful way into understanding the Trinity. He writes: "Nature answers the question what we are; person answer the question who we are" (Page 92). The person is the part of a rational being which choses to act through the nature. So in the case of the Trinity, we have three rational actors acting through a common nature. In the case of the Incarnation, we have one rational actor acting through two distinct natures.
Judge Christianity by its Saints
All that stream of truth and grace, flowing through every channel that Christ made to carry the flow to men's souls, does not go for nothing. But if we want to form to ourselves some notion of the richness of the stream, we must look not at the Catholics who make no use of it, nor even at good average Catholics, but at the saints. If you want to know how wet the rain is, do not judge by someone who went out into it with an umbrella. Most of us are like that in relation to the shower of the truth and life. We do not give ourselves to it wholly but set up all sorts of pathetic protections against the terrifying downrush of it. But the saints have gone out into it stripped. There, but for the resistance of the grace of God, goes every one of us. (Page 310)
Neato
The act itself is so easy, so effortless. And it gives a kind of reassurance to the battered and discouraged ego. For many a person it seems to mark the only time when he is acting as himself, doing what he chooses, expressing his personality, being someone, being at once himself and lifted above himself. It is only a seeming, of course. In fact, it means a further dispersal of man's powers, leaving him less and less master of himself. It rewards him little, but gets a terrible grip on blood and bone. (Page 392)
A simple, readable overview of Catholic theology. A lot of it I'd already learned in conversations with Catholic friends, but some of it was new to me. Good stuff on the Trinity, on the distinction between imaginability and concievability, and on man as a unity of body and soul.
My only problem with the book was that Sheed seems to make too much of the argument from first cause - he claims that the existence of a first cause somehow implies an infinite and personal God. As far as I can tell, the argument from first cause cannot prove anything definate about the nature of the first cause.
Imaginability and Concievability
On this, Sheed points out that often people act as though there is no distinction between that which is imaginable and that which is concievable. People often assume that if they cannot imagine something, it therefore cannot exist. For example, if a person cannot come up with an image of how free-will works, they will sometimes falsely assume that free-will is impossible. The mind can imagine the cause and effect relations between neurons in the brain, but it cannot in the same way imagine the human person as a cause, since after all one cannot make a mental image of the human person. But the unimaginability of free-will does not imply that free-will is inconcievable.
Mind and Body
If you want to know what a rational animal is, study man; neither animality nor rationality will be the same when the two are wed: the marriage does strange things to both of them. Rationality functioning in union with a body is not just rationality, animality is so ennobled by its marraige with spirit that no mere animal would know what to do with it. The way to find all this is to meet man and think hard about the experience. (Page 377)
This statement is completely on the money, provided we define rationality to be something beyond simply logic and mathematics. As embodied creatures, we are forced to ask ourselves questions like, "Where should I live?" "Who should I sleep with?" "Should I bother to exercise?" and "Why did that guy give me that funny look?" In a disembodied world, our means of relating to others would be greatly impoverished. You could say, "I love you," but you couldn't buy roses for your wife, or offer soup to your sick child.
This is why I have trouble understanding why some people get excited about transhumanism. Basically, transhumanists want total technological control over the human body. They want to be able to jettison it at will (by uploading the brain onto a computer), or modify it (bigger muscles with no effort, 200 year lifespan). This is all fine and good, assuming that you believe that man is essentially rational, and only accidentally animal.
Nature/Persons distinction helps us understand the Trinity and Incarnation
St. Augustine took the words "person" and "being" to be mere placeholders, so that when we say that the Trinity is, "Three persons and one being," we really just mean, "three somethings and one something else." Sheed, however, believes the terms "person" and "nature" can give us a useful way into understanding the Trinity. He writes: "Nature answers the question what we are; person answer the question who we are" (Page 92). The person is the part of a rational being which choses to act through the nature. So in the case of the Trinity, we have three rational actors acting through a common nature. In the case of the Incarnation, we have one rational actor acting through two distinct natures.
Judge Christianity by its Saints
All that stream of truth and grace, flowing through every channel that Christ made to carry the flow to men's souls, does not go for nothing. But if we want to form to ourselves some notion of the richness of the stream, we must look not at the Catholics who make no use of it, nor even at good average Catholics, but at the saints. If you want to know how wet the rain is, do not judge by someone who went out into it with an umbrella. Most of us are like that in relation to the shower of the truth and life. We do not give ourselves to it wholly but set up all sorts of pathetic protections against the terrifying downrush of it. But the saints have gone out into it stripped. There, but for the resistance of the grace of God, goes every one of us. (Page 310)
Neato
The act itself is so easy, so effortless. And it gives a kind of reassurance to the battered and discouraged ego. For many a person it seems to mark the only time when he is acting as himself, doing what he chooses, expressing his personality, being someone, being at once himself and lifted above himself. It is only a seeming, of course. In fact, it means a further dispersal of man's powers, leaving him less and less master of himself. It rewards him little, but gets a terrible grip on blood and bone. (Page 392)
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