The martyrology, the mystic, and the millennium

The traditional Roman martyrology gives the date of creation as 5,199BC.  This is not a date that anyone would come up with by using the Vulgate bible.  Hence St Bede, basing himself on the Vulgate, calculated the date as 3,592BC.  The date on the martyrology apparently derives from some version of the Septuagint, from which the Latin version of the bible anterior to the Vulgate derives.  Eusebius of Caesarea placed this date into his Chronicon, which was translated into Latin by St Jerome around AD 378.  See here for a reasonably learned study, which is however strangely lacking a footnote for the reference to Bede.

Ven. Mary of Agreda says that she was told by the Blessed Virgin that 5,199 was the date of creation.  Her superior or spiritual director, I forget which, told her to ask again, and Mary of Agreda says that she was again told plainly that this was the correct date.

There was a wide-spread belief in the early patristic period that the world as we know it would last 6,000 years, and that this would be followed by a thousand year reign of Christ and the saints.  This is inspired, among other things, by Apoc. 20:22 – “And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.”  I’ve given some examples here.

One cannot help being impressed by the fact that, starting from the date on the martyrology, six thousand years would bring us to AD 801, and that Charlemagne was crowned by the pope as the first holy Roman emperor on Christmas day 800.  Was not this a reign of Christ on earth?  Likewise, it is impressive that the holy empire was brought to an end a thousand years later by Napoleon who became first consul in 1799 and extinguished it over the next few years.

For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.

 

St Bede on the former cosmos

Now here It is clear that before the sin of man earth produced nothing harmful – no poisonous plant, no unfruitful tree. Since it is plainly said that every plant and all trees were given to men and to birds and to all the living creatures of the earth for food, it is clear that those birds did not live by stealing the food of weaker animals, nor did the wolf search out an ambush around the sheepfold, nor was the dust the serpent’s food, but all things in harmony feed upon the green plants and the fruits of the trees.

– St Bede, Commentary on Genesis (1:30)

 

Shall we see elves?

Aelianus once suggested to me that the principal difference between the elves and the men in Tolkien is not their nature but their end: the elves are directed by God to a merely natural end, whereas the men are directed to a supernatural end. This is why the elves are destined to remain in Arda, that is, on earth, since they can find there all that is necessary for them to achieve their goal, whereas men by ‘the gift of Iluvatar’, that is, by death, go elsewhere, the elves know not whither.

Savonarola suggested – though Bellarmine didn’t like it – that the inhabitants of Limbo would after the resurrection have dealings with the saints, sharing at least some of the same space and speaking to them.

Since those in Limbo have the same nature as the saints, but only attain a natural end, they would be after the resurrection rather similar to Tolkien’s elves. It is true that those in Limbo had a supernatural end insofar as they are members of the human race, but they were never personally proportioned to the beatific vision by receiving any actual grace, and so they would not experience any longing for it, or have any sense that their natural fulfilment was insufficient for them.

(Garrigou-Lagrange claims in various places that those in Limbo have a will that is averted from God as their supernatural end, and that by this fact that their will is also averted from God as their natural end. If this were true then their lot would seem to be very unpleasant, but I don’t know why he says it. Original sin implies an absence of charity in the will, but not a state of ‘having turned away from God’ in it.)

We can be tempted to imagine the inhabitants of Limbo after the resurrection as being like over-grown children, or like the adults on earth who have Down’s syndrome. But this would be quite wrong. Their intellects would function excellently, and their wills would love God with a natural love, and each other with noble friendship, and their emotions would be in complete harmony with reason. God might even give them certain natural gifts that the saints would not possess, such as the gift of writing beautiful poetry or singing beautiful songs in honour of creation. Or even if the saints could do the same, their would surely be a style of speech and song unique to those who live by nature alone, in a natural purity of heart, yet without desire of friendship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; just as the saints  have no desire, for example, to be higher in glory than they are, or to have been the redeemer of the world.

If we put, then, Aelianus’s and Savonarola’s suggestion together, we come up with the question of this post: shall we see elves?

 

The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

 

Oh Camellia sinensis!

Each time the kettle starts to hiss,

Oh praise Him! Alleluia!

Dihydrogen monoxide too,

Infuse their leaves the whole way through!

Oh praise Him! Oh praise Him!

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

 

All about Allah

Do Muslims worship God? This question has long troubled me and I can never settle it in my head. I am not talking about supernatural and acceptable worship. Clearly, they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity so are unable to offer acceptable worship to God. Nor am I talking about the natural virtue of religion. Strictly speaking there are no true moral virtues apart from Charity. I am talking about material acts of religion that would be formal acts of the acquired virtue of religion in a state of pure nature. Do Muslims perform such acts. Do they worship God?

I have come across three basic views on this:

1. No. Islam is Deist, a form of monotheistic paganism. Unlike the Jews their worship is not even naturally directed at the same entity as the true God adored by the Catholic faithful. They are idolaters.
2. Yes. Muslims know God through natural reason (see: Romans 1 & Vatican I) they direct their material acts of religion to Him. They ascribe to God incorrect attributes (e.g. having revealed himself to Mohammed) but they know Him as creator and worship Him as such.
3. Yes and no. The being who revealed himself to Mohammed is not God and acts of worship specified in this way are idolatrous. In the other hand Muslims are men like everyone else able to know the Creator by the light of human reason and when they worship the creator as such their incidental errors about His interventions in history do not transform their acts of worship into acts of idolatry.

There are good argument for all three. In regard to 1. this seems to be the testimony of a good many Muslim converts. They do not believe they worshiped God before they converted to Christianity. The Council of Florence seems to assume Muslims are to be placed in the ‘pagan’ column. Leo XIII and Pius XI in their formulae of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart seem to make the same assumption. In defence of 2. this seems to be the doctrine of Lumen Gentium 16 (although what theological note that has is obscure) and the opinion of at least some popes (including even St Gregory VII). Of course 3. seems easiest to defend and in some sense is probably the position of most adherents of 1. and 2. Unfortunately, in a way, it only bumps the problem down the road. For what would be the key factor determining whether one is worshiping the being who revealed himself to Mohammed or the Creator of the universe? This is the central enigma and the answer to it would seem to resolve the entire question. I find it hard to believe that Muslims if they discovered that the two were not one and the same would chose the former. If it were a marriage that would be enough to make the consent valid. I’m pretty sure the Mormons and the Gnostics don’t worship God. I’m not at all sure William Lane Craig does. The Muslims it seems to me ought to get the benefit of the doubt… but I ‘m not sure.

 

The Tony Stark of Philosophy

 

Evolution and Metaphysics

I have recently read ‘The Metaphysics of Evolution’ by Fr Chad Ripperger. Fr Ripperger is or was a professor of philosophy at the Fraternity of St Peter’s North American seminary and is clearly at home in the scholastic tradition. The title of his book or pamphlet is a misnomer, since it would be more accurately called ‘Metaphysics against Evolution’.

The book is technical but short and can be summarised in two main claims: atheistic evolution is impossible and theistic evolution is unreasonable.

Atheistic evolution is impossible, he argues, not simply because God necessarily exists, but more specifically because of the principle that ‘an effect cannot be more perfect than its cause’. Of course change of any kind is impossible without the first, unchanging cause, but evolution, that is, the improvement and enrichment of living beings, is impossible for the extra reason that things cannot bestow perfections which they do not themselves possess.

Theistic evolution, he argues, is unreasonable because it postulates a vast number of miracles where it is unnecessary to do so. This fact is often obscured, since theistic evolutionists are prone to talk about God ‘working through evolution’ as if evolution were a natural process, only one which God directed for His purposes. But it cannot be a natural process, since natures cannot bestow perfections which they do not possess, for example natures that lack sight cannot bestow this perfection upon their offspring. For God to bring about evolution, therefore, would mean for Him to override the natural powers of creatures at every step so that they would produce effects that it was beyond their natures to achieve. This would be to introduced a vast number of miracles whereby an amoeba would gradually turn into an elephant, or maybe a giraffe. It is far simpler to suppose that God simply created giraffes and elephants in the first place, which would not in fact be a miracle at all, since miracles pertain to the divine governance of nature, not to the original establishment of natures themselves.

 

Leo XIII on Darwinism

It is a scene itself worthy of a poem, or a painting. Leo, bishop of Rome, thirteenth of that name, now in the ninetieth year of his age, the fifty-seventh of his episcopacy, and the twenty second of his supreme pontificate,  looks out upon the world from his home or prison in Rome on the 31st December 1899. For decades now this old man, one of the wisest of our race, has striven to hold back the advance of antichrist by prayer and intelligence. As he looks back in sadness upon the nineteenth century and forward in trepidation upon the twentieth, his spirit is touched by some afflatus, and uniting his youthful learning to his long experience he composes an Alcaic poem, offering the world to its Saviour.

Notice these two stanzas:-

Auditis? effert impia conscius/ insanientis grex sapientiae; brutaeque naturae supremum/  nititur asseruisse numen.

Nostrae supernam gentis originem/  fastidit excors; dissociabilem,/  umbras inanes mente captans,/  stirpem hominum pecudumque miscet.

That is, ‘Hear ye? A guilty herd comes out with the godless things of a raving wisdom; it strives to establish the supreme divinity of brute nature. Foolishly it disdains the heavenly origin of our race; grasping at empty shadows it confuses the irreconcilable ancestry of men and of beasts.’

Though he doesn’t seem to have considered it opportune to condemn ex cathedra the idea of Adam’s body descending from a beast, Pope Leo clearly held it to be an idea belonging to the insane wisdom of this world.

 

The Consecration of Russia

Some time ago I had the privilege of meeting Hugh Owen. His father was Sir David Owen, the Secretary-General of International Planned Parenthood; he himself is a deeply spiritual Catholic convert with a large family who spends his spare time explaining the doctrine of creation as taught by the Fathers of the Church and later witnesses to tradition.

In conversation he mentioned the consecration of Russia, which we both think has not yet been accomplished as it is meant to be. He remarked that too often this consecration is presented as a mere response to the evil of atheistic materialism that has spread from Russia throughout the world; as if it were, in effect, an exorcism of Russia. Thus explained, it is not surprising that it should meet with little enthusiasm from Russians themselves, as no one wants to have his country regarded in the world as a sheer source of evil.

But, he continued, ‘consecration’ implies some good quality in the thing consecrated; a fitness to be offered to heaven. This is true whether we think of the consecration of nazirites in the Old Testament, or of Christian families to the Sacred Heart or of devout souls to the immaculate Heart. Russia has been the source of immense evil; yet, he thought from his own observations, it is still in a sense Holy Russia; there is a sense of Christian realities present within it, lacking from the apostate nations of the West. Its schism is another’s sin more than its own. It is a fit instrument (he thought) to be used by God, once consecrated by the Pope of Rome, for the salvation of the nations.