At Last

I have just learnt that I have successfully completed my last unit of study toward a Master of Theological Studies; God willing, once the necessary paperwork is completed, the degree will be officially conferred next year. Another framed certificate to add to those handing on the study wall...

At last, I am now as well qualified in my chosen field as my dear sister, and mother, in theirs; though I have yet to go a step further, and gain a doctorate as my aunt has done, not to mention the same achieved recently by my old friend, Robert.

If and when I can accrue the necessary funds, I do hope to emulate them...

All glory be to God, Who enlightens the mind; what a gift is Faith!  And, under God, I must thank my lecturers, and all the authors whose writings have instructed me, not to mention the Saints.

Retribuere dignare, Domine, omnibus nobis bona facientibus, propter nomen tuum, vitam æternam. Amen.

The Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology

At the outset, it must be confessed the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology is no compedium of pure Catholic doctrine agreeable to that of the whole Church: too much opposition to Roman claims is present, scattered here and there within the works of those twenty divines collected within the LACT (to say nothing of those complete treatises directly opposing the Papacy and so forth).

However, this great nineteenth-century collection, by republishing the writings of so many Caroline Divines (though including also some who flourished earlier, and others later), played an important part in the wider Anglican ressourcement that transpired at the time of the Oxford Movement, even though the theology expressed within is not wholly in accord with more modern Anglo-Catholicism, let alone Anglo-Papalism.

Given these caveats, it is understandable that, of the 158 post-biblical readings contained in the new Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham, only 16 are drawn from Anglicans included in the LACT: Andrewes (6), Beveridge (2), Frank (3), Laud (1), Pearson (3) and Wilson (1).  These six authors alone are utilised; the other fourteen are not (Bramhall, Bull, Cosin, Crakanthorp, Forbes, Gunning, Hammond, Hickes, Johnson, L’Estrange, Marshall, Nicholson, Overall and Thorndike).  It would be interesting to look further into the criteria whereby passages have been chosen from some, but not others, for use in the Customary.

Aspirations for the Year of Faith

Recently, the Pope decreed that a Year of Faith be held, to begin on the 11th of October 2012, and to end on the last Sunday before Advent 2013.  This is excellent and most necessary: for "the just man liveth by faith" (Rom. i, 17).  Christ commands us "Have ye faith in God" (St Mark xi, 22) – and He bids us have a salutary fear lest we lose hold of our Most Holy Faith, by posing to each of us the question, "When the Son of Man cometh, thinkest thou that He will find faith on earth?" (St Luke xviii, 8)

"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Heb. xi, 1) Divine and supernatural faith is an intellectual virtue infused into our souls at baptism, enabling us to believe in truths beyond the unaided mind of man, such as the Triune nature of God.  As we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews a little further on, "without faith it is impossible to please God" and indeed "he that cometh to God must believe that He exists, and is a Rewarder to them that seek Him" (xi, 6).  For this reason, the truths necessary to salvation are summarized as belief in God (frequently extended to include belief in God as Trinity and in the Incarnation of the Second Person thereof, not to mention His Resurrection) and as belief in a future state wherein God will reward the good and punish the bad; as the Apostles' Creed puts it, Credo in Deum... venturus est judicare ("I believe in God... He shall come to judge...").  Faith in these two points may be declared in aspirations taken from Holy Writ:

Credo Filium Dei esse Jesum Christum. (Acts viii, 37b)

(I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.)

Credo videre bona Domini in terra viventium. (Ps 26, 13)

(I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.)

Of course, the latter point – belief in God as the Rewarder of each according to his just deserts – implies acceptance of moral responsibility for one's actions: as the Beloved Disciple teaches, "this is His commandment: that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ; and that we love each other, as He has commanded us." (I John iii, 23)  To believe in Christ is to acknowledge Him as the Incarnate Son of God, implying adhesion to Trinitarian belief; to love as He commanded is to keep the Commandments, the Ten summed up in the Two and the New.

But, without neglecting the greatest of the theological virtues, the focus of the Year of Faith is upon faith, faith believing in hope, working through love.  The temptation of a doubting disbelieving age, a proud Pelagian age, is to discard faith and speak only of a sentimentalized love far removed from supernatural charity; this is to be roundly opposed, as Our Lord Himself reminded us, as quoted above, lest being without faith we be lost forever.  Whatever people may wish to believe, we are not told by Truth, "Love will save you" but "He who believes and is baptized, the same shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be condemned" (St Mark xvi, 16).

The Sacred Liturgy places before us each year (EF: 13th Sunday after Pentecost; OF: 30th Sunday per annum) this prayer for all three theological virtues, and the grace to obey the commandments and so obtain what God promises:

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, da nobis fidei, spei et caritatis augmentum, et ut mereamur assequi quod promittis, fac nos amare quod præcipis. Per...

Almighty ever-living God, increase our faith, hope and charity, and make us love what you command, so that we may merit what you promise. Through...

It is a precious thing to make an Act of Faith, a declaration of one's belief, in whatsoever words answer to its object and content, as Benedict XIV long ago encouraged all the faithful to do, that they strengthen their grasp of and persevere in the Faith once delivered to the Saints.  I learnt, and still repeat, the short Act "O my God, I believe in Thee, and in all that Thy Holy Church teacheth, for Thou hast said it, and Thy word is true." — for God, being all-perfect, can neither deceive nor be deceived; and He has disseminated knowledge of His saving truth through all the world.  Longer, more explicit declarations of one's faith in the Trinity and in Christ our Redeemer become more and more Creed-like; while, after Communion, the Adoro te devote is a most appropriate Act of Faith, as consideration of its words will demonstrate.

Of course, to recite and to pray with attention, devotion and care the words of one of the very Creeds themselves is to make such an Act indeed: at Mass, we sing or say Credo in unum Deum, praying the Nicene (well, strictly speaking the Nicæno-Constantinopolitan) or "Mass" Creed, and would that we confidently know the words and meaning thereof in Latin and English at the least; in one's devotions, and in older forms of the Office, the Apostles' Creed, Credo in Deum, the ancient Baptismal Creed of the Roman Church, is customarily used, and again, to meditate on and turn over its words in the heart is to make a good act of faith.  On Trinity Sunday at Prime, and more often according to one's piety, the Athanasian Creed, Quicumque vult, is right and proper to be prayed.  And the Tridentine Profession of Faith, or Paul VI's Credo of the People of God, are more extensive declarations of belief worthy of meditation.

Especially when undergoing trials and temptations, to keep hold on the anchor of faith is vital, just as St Thérèse of Lisieux endured a terrible temptation toward atheism and self-murder during her descent through illness toward death.  As a wise Dominican said, if we lose our faith, so to speak, the last thing we should do is stop saying our prayers and going to Mass – that is when we most need to lay hold of things divine, to cry mercy, acknowledging our utter destitution, when all seems black.

But to end with some suitable aspirations for the coming Year of Faith, and indeed for all our lives as we, please God, "walk by faith and not by sight", one can raise heart and mind to the Lord, crying out:

Credo, Domine! (St John ix, 38a)

(I believe, Lord!)

[Domine,] Adauge nobis fidem! (St Luke xvii, 5b)

([Lord,] increase our faith!)

Credo, Domine; adjuva incredulitatem meam. (St Mark ix, 23b)

(Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.)

Credo Domine, sed credam firmius. (Pope Clement XI)

(I believe, Lord, but may I believe more firmly.)

O Lord, preserve to us the Faith.

Nichols on Bulgakov on the Trihypostatic Divine Life

With quite some difficulty, for to comprehend the content, however lucidly put, is intellectually demanding, I have been reading Aidan Nichol’s book about the theology of the Russian Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944).  In doing so, I feel a little like St Jerome reading Rufinus’ presentation of the thoughts of Origen – without the sad breakdown of friendship consequent upon that, I hasten to add! for I was greatly pleased to meet the easily approachable and utterly unpretentious Fr Aidan some years ago, a man who carries his great learning with unassuming humility – since the somewhat unusual sophiological ideas of Bulgakov, even when presented most irenically, do sound more than a bit unorthodox to this rather rigid amateur theologian-cum-heresy-hunter.  

That said, this volume is a marvellously just and charitable presentation of the deep and difficult work of Bulgakov, a writer whom I have often wished to understand better with the aid of a sure and reliable guide: and in Fr Aidan, my prayer has been answered.  To shew how ecumenically his presentation has been received, his tome contains a Foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury (no mean Patristic scholar and theologian, howsoever some of his pronouncements on morals and ecclesiology may be viewed by Catholics) and a Preface by the noted Orthodox prelate, Bishop Kallistos Ware.  

For Trinity Sunday, I present some apposite extracts:

Who and what?

Th greatest of the names for God in the Old Testament is surely that found in the Book of Exodus, 3:14.  The Lord reveals his name to Moses as ‘I am He who is’.  Bulgakov begins his theology of the triune God from here.  As he points out, this divine name already implies that God is both a personal subject – ‘I am He’ – and has an objective nature – ‘who is’.  The distinction between being a subject, a ‘who’, and having a nature, a ‘what’, is of course something we are highly familiar with… In the Church’s tradition, the Tradition of the Fathers and the early Councils, we are told that the divine personality is three ‘hypostases’, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But we are also told that the divine personality has a single, unique nature, shared by no one else.  In God there is one being or nature – in Greek, the main language of the Fathers, one ousia.  In his single unique nature, God is the personal subject of a tri-hypostatic life.

…

The trihypostatic divine life

… Bulgakov wants to say something more about the three persons in God.  … he wants to introduce his theology of the three persons who are nonetheless one single personal being, our divine Creator.  The Lord God is supremely personal because he unites in himself all the modes in which the personal principle can find expression.  Not only ‘I’ but ‘thou’ or ‘you’ in the singular, and ‘he’, ‘we’ and’you’ in the plural.  The Father, for example, can say ‘I’ about himself, and ‘thou’ to, for instance, the Son.  And he can say ‘he’ of, for example, the Holy Spirit.  Then again, the Father and the Son can say ‘we’ together or the Father can say ‘you’ to the Son and the Spirit.  And this would work as well for any of the divine Three.  God is thus the fullness of personal awareness, a single personality in three mutually related centres.  From all eternity, he affirms himself in a Trinitarian fashion, which is to say not as a ‘unipersonal “I”’ but by the affirmation of each hypostasis in the others.  The divine personality realizes itself as the ‘source of self-renouncing love, entering into ecstasy [goes out of itself to find itself again] in another “I”’.

— Aidan Nichols, O.P., Wisdom from Above: A Primer in the Theology of Father Sergei Bulgakov (Leominster: Gracewing, 2005) 11 and 17.

The Principle of Predilection

Having consulted Garrigou-Lagrange (the "Sacred Monster" of strict Thomism), I think it useful to again mention Aquinas' principle of predilection: "Since God's love is the cause of goodness in things, no one thing would be better than another if God did not will greater good for one than for another" (Summa Theologiæ, I, xx, 3).

Note that this principle follows as a corollary from the general thesis that God's love is the cause of goodness in things: for God does not love things because they are good, no; His love is not passive but active, hence if He love a thing, it is made good.  This principle applies in every order, natural and supernatural.  In regard to things supernatural, we have the Apostle's rhetorical question - "What hast thou that thou hast not received?" (I Cor. iv, 7).