John K

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Easter III

To carnal men, the one rule of understanding is his ordinary experience; seeing is believing. What men are accustomed to see, that they credit; what they are not accustomed to see, that they deem incredible. But God often worketh wonders, (that is, things contrary to what we are accustomed,) because he is God. Every day many men are born that previously had no existence at all; and this is a greater miracle than that a few, who did exist, have been raised from the dead. Yet this wonder is not recognized as such; on the contrary, it is disregarded because man is accustomed to it. Christ rose again from the dead; that is a fact. He had a body: he took flesh, he hung upon the cross, he gave up the ghost; his flesh was laid in the tomb. After that, he shewed his flesh as alive again, he lived again in the flesh. Why wonder, why deny it? God wrought this.

-- St. Augustine, Sermon 147 de Tempore

posted by johnk at 1:09 PM

9 Comments:

  • That speaks to me, but I think to an unbeliever that will be unmasked as nothing more than a bit of sophistry. If you break the argument down logically it runs something like this

    Because A happens all the time in the face of non-A happening all the time
    Then B could happen even though non-A has always happened before.

    By Blogger Christopher, At 9:08 AM  

  • The point being that birth and resurrection are not the same thing.

    By Blogger Christopher, At 9:09 AM  

  • I don't quite follow the objection. St. A's point is that resurrection is no more miraculous than birth. Miracles are not violations of nature, as nature itself is miraculous. It's exactly Lewis' argument (or rather... an old argument that Lewis uses in his book).

    By Blogger johnk, At 10:40 AM  

  • I think resurrection is in some sense more miraculous or more supernatural, ie qualitatively different than birth. As different as A is to B. Birth is bringing life out of living things. Resurrection is bringing life out of dead things.

    By Blogger Christopher, At 11:11 AM  

  • So you disagree with St. Augustine. Therefore you're wrong. QED. Just don't start disagreeing with St. Thomas again, otherwise you'll be doubly wrong.

    By Blogger johnk, At 11:35 AM  

  • BTW, I needed "cotton bond" with watermarks and all. They wouldn't even accept your ultra-thick paper. University Archives is a fascist organization.

    By Blogger johnk, At 8:20 PM  

  • The inconsistency is entirely on the part of "carnal Men", for they vainly profess that "seeing is believing".

    By Blogger Anglicans Aweigh, At 10:50 PM  

  • Yea, and such a philosophy cannot account for the miraculous nature of life. The carnal man pretends that science can explain morality, rationality, love, etc. But these things are of a completely different order. In this sense, science really only provides a superficial description of life. Ultimately, it comes down to being in general. We are who we are and will continue to be only via an act of God, "in whom we live, move, and have our being".

    Allow me quote a little St. Thomas along these lines.

    "It sufficiently appears at the first glance, according to what precedes (A[1]), that to create can be the action of God alone. For the more universal effects must be reduced to the more universal and prior causes. Now among all effects the most universal is being itself: and hence it must be the proper effect of the first and most universal cause, and that is God... And above all it is absurd to suppose that a body can create, for no body acts except by touching or moving; and thus it requires in its action some pre-existing thing, which can be touched or moved, which is contrary to the very idea of creation."

    -- ST, 1st part, Q45

    By Blogger johnk, At 7:33 AM  

  • What's truly frightening is that the materialist grants your point while at the same time assuming that things like love, morality and even God Himself arise from ephemera as varied as chemical processes in the brain to group think. They seem not to care about the implications of such a stance; namely that all thought itself---let alone thinking about God, morality and the like---under that model becomes nothing more than an accident. This of course opens the door for the tyrrany of the strong over the weak, and the utter "abolition of man" as something distinct, unique and worth preserving as such. Scary stuff, but I still don't buy Augustine's argument. ;)

    By Blogger Christopher, At 9:47 AM  

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