Happiness or meaningfulness?

 The most deep-seated American misunderstanding of religion is the presumption that the purpose of religion is to produce happiness. The primary function of religion is not to generate happiness but to construct meaning. Human beings can endure the most intense suffering with resolve and confidence as long as they believe their distress has a place in a larger context of meaning.
The threat of meaninglessness is deeper than the threat of pain, suffering, and guilt. When a system of meaning is threatened, the problem of evil is not primarily how to fathom and thereby endure particular experiences of suffering with equanimity but whether understanding and meaning are possible at all in the face of the apparent irrationality of the suffering.
Tyron L. Inbody, The Transforming God p.16 (Westminster John Knox Press 1997)

We can't live by philosophy alone.

 We need the critters to remind us of our affinity with them.

Manifesto. I am all in with this line of thinking.

 Why I am a universalist Part 3   Richard Beck
Punishment, to be moral and just, must be finite.

Rehabilitative punishment, as when I punish my sons or make hard choices regarding student behavior in my classrooms, is aimed at rehabilitating moral character. Thus, I use pain to help make the person aspire to greater levels of holiness (i.e., conforming to the image of Jesus). I call this teleological pain/punishment (i.e., goal-directed pain), pain as an means to an end and not an end in itself.

Thus, many universalists endorse a robust vision of punishment and hell. However, to maintain their commitment to God's goodness, they view Hell as teleological punishment aimed at rehabilitation. Hell, therefore, like a parent's punishment, is a gift, a hard and difficult gift, but a gift nonetheless. For only through rehabilitation can the person be reconciled to God. We can call this the teleological vision of Hell.

This view of Hell generally aligns with notions of utilitarianism. But there are other views of punishment. Specifically, most people counter universalists with notions of justice.

Specifically, the argument runs like this: God punishes, not to rehabilitate (although he may do this at times), but because it satisfies his sense of justice. Thus, when the American justice system executes a criminal it does so not to rehabiliate the criminal but to satisfy justice. We can call this vision the justice vision of Hell. Thus, according to the justice vision of Hell, when God condemns people to Hell for all eternity he does so to satisfy his sense of justice as a response to a sinful and unrepentant humanity.

There are, however, two problems with the justice vision of Hell.

First, for justice to prevail the punishment must be proportional to the offense. If you are caught going over the speed limit by 1 MPH and are arrested and sentenced to death we would say that this was unjust. Even if you were fined $100,000 we would say this was unjust. In short, justice demands that punishment be proportional to the offense.

Before modern legal codes and modern economies (where monetary amounts could be attached to subjective states such as "pain and suffering") this idea of punishment/offense proportionality was captured by the rule of lex talens, the famous "eye for an eye" formulation:

    Leviticus 24: 17-22
    If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone's animal must make restitution—life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death. You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.

Lex talens seems barbaric to our modern sensibilities. But the genius of the idea was that it provided a rough heuristic to make just decisions. Specifically, it ensured punishment/offense proportionality, a critical criterion for justice. And this proportionality was crucial to keep punishments bounded, circumscribed, and finite.

So now we see one problem with the justice vision of Hell: It violates a basic criterion of justice. By giving an infinitely agonizing experience of pain for an infinite duration for crimes/offenses of finite scope and harm we have an unjust God. Schematically:

    Infinite punishment > finite offense = Unjust

And we know this intuitively. You'd move out of a country that executed jay-walkers. A country that did this would seem like a country run by Saddam Hussein, not the God of Jesus.

In short, the justice view of Hell is untenable by failing to deliver on its core criterion: Justice. Justice via Hell can only be reconciled to a vision of a good God if the punishment is finite and bounded. And this is just the vision the universalist holds to. In then end, only the universalist believes in a just God.

But beyond justice, God is loving through and through. God's justice is not his defining characteristic. His defining characteristic is love, compassion, and forgiveness. So, to imitate God, we are not governed by justice and lex talens as we move through the world. Listen to Jesus on this subject:

    Matthew 5: 38-48
    You have heard that it was said, "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth." But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

    You have heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

On the face of it, it seems crazy to assume that Christians are called to be more loving than God himself. That we eschew lex talens, but God will not. That we will forgive, but God will not. That we love our enemies, but God will not love his. True, God does have moral obligations to both his creation and himself. Particularly, God will stand up for victims. His love and justice compels him to to this. But, as we have just seen, and hinted at by Jesus in Matthew 5, God's love and justice are of a piece. Universalists argue that the biblical witness helps reconcile these two tensions in the vision of parental love. And as stated earlier, parental love and punishment are teleological: Hell as gift, as a form of "tough love" or "natural consequence" aimed at the rehabilitation of moral character.

The second problem with the justice view of Hell is its image of God. The view of God behind the justice view of Hell is, as I said in my prior post in this series, of a schizophrenic God where his love and justice are competing forces within him. For example, God's loving Fatherhood desires the salvation of all his children. God loves his children passionately. Unfortunately (!), God is also just. In the end, God's justice demands that his loving pursuit must cease while his justice takes over and demands bloody (literally!) satisfaction.

The idea behind this schizophrenic vision, where God's love and justice are in tension, is penal substitutionary atonement. The idea is that Jesus' sacrifice enables God to reconcile the competing demands of his love and justice. God's justice demands bloody satisfaction. But God's loves sends Jesus to death in our place. Thus, in Jesus, the requirements of love and justice are mutually satisfied.

But there are deep problems with penal substitutionary atonement. Penal substitutionary atonement attempts to reconcile the vision of God as Loving Parent with God as Righteous Judge. That is, penal substitutionary atonement attempts to create a kind of binocular vision, with one lens being God's love (i.e., the sacrifice of Jesus) and the other lens being God's justice (i.e., the demand of death to "pay" for sins). Penal substitutionary atonement asks that we focus on the cross with these binocular lenses, thus resolving the tension between love and justice.

But the view through these glasses is abominable. The lenses do not focus or resolve. Rather, they distort and confuse. And what you see with those lenses, even when looking at the cross, is grotesque.

Let me be clearer. Penal substitutionary atonement asks me to look at the cross, through one lens, as a demonstration of God's Parental Love for me. Yet, at the same time, through the other lens, I am also to see God as a Righteous Judge. But those two visions do not reinforce each other. They don't allow for the lenses to resolve and focus the image before me. Rather, the two images undermine each other. For example, penal substitutionary atonement asks me to accept that God is this kind of parent: He's a warm loving parent until I make my first mistake. After that infraction he demands that I should be killed. He demands this because he's not just a parent, he is also a holy and righteous judge.

What kind of parent is this? A good parent? Surely not. It is a demonic parent. That's what penal substitutionary atonement does, it turns God into a grotesque, counterfeit "parent." What parent demands the death of their child for minor (or even major) moral failures? Are humans parents more loving than our Heavenly Father? Surely not. Yet this is the vision most Christians subscribe to.

The only coherent way to resolve this dilemma is to hold strongly to the vision of God as Loving Parent. That is, God's justice is not opposed to God's love, demanding something of God's love it cannot give alone. Rather, God's justice and the punishment it demands must flow from God's love. Succinctly, it is because God loves us that he punishes us.

In short, only a teleological/parental vision of punishment is able to reconcile God's love and justice. And the bible amply testifies to this vision, where God inflicts pain or suffering in order to redeem and purify. Given that this is the only coherent theological vision of Divine punishment, one with ample biblical witness, it seems reasonable that all biblical visions of Hell and punishment be read through that lens. That is, all biblical visions of Hell must be seen as teleological and finite, aimed at the purification of the sinner.

Two question present themselves at this point. First, why are not the biblical writers clearer on this point? Why is this teaching not more explicit in Scripture? Well, many core Christian doctrines are not clearly witnessed to in Scripture. Although they seem obvious to us now, the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity are not explicit in Scripture. They are generally hinted at, but these teachings are by no means OBVIOUS. In the same way, I argue, the doctrine of universal salvation is also hinted at in Scripture. That is, many of the deep revelations of God were just not very clear to to the New Testament writers. These were "mysteries" and the writers confessed to "looking through a glass dimly." They were only dimly grasping the reality they had been exposed to. I believe that universal reconciliation was something they glimpsed (Paul certainly did) but did not fully grasp. Thus, all we have in the bible are these hints and partial glimpses. We are left with the task to see where the finger was pointing toward.

A second question is this: How will this teleological vision of Hell work? What will God be doing with people in Hell to cause them to repent and turn to him? I don't know the answer to this, but here is my best guess. I think it will happen in a way analogous to what happened to the Prodigal Son. That is, after death we will be exposed to the "natural consequence" of our sinful life. Just as the father allowed his prodigal son to waste his life in loose living. But after a season, the wages of sin will exact its toll. We will, as the prodigal son did, "come to our senses" and repent. We will return home, and freely so. No coercion will be required, just the natural outcome of a sinful life. And this is grace. The father, by allowing his son to journey into the consequence of sin was displaying his wisdom and grace. Salvation for the prodigal son could only occur through the gift of hell, through the wages of sin, through a death.

The death of what? In the moment of salvation--the turning toward home--something dies. Specifically, the sinful self, in all its pride, is killed off and buried. And this renunciation of sin is no "work" performed to "earn" our salvation. No, this renunciation of sin is as natural as dying.

And as natural as being born.
End of quote

Mind-forged fetters

 

 

 “Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

– Burke, letter to François-Louis-Thibaut de Menonville, 1791

 

Those are good - and true - thoughts, BUT -  for myself, and for others I presume - understanding the words is not sufficient for us to attain the freedom Burke is talking about. What is needed is an insight particular to us as unique individuals; an image or phrase that captures who we are and why we do not possess the freedom we long for. 

First, of course, we need a taste of that freedom, or we would not desire it; a great effect of the 'fetters' is to keep us from gazing on larger freedoms, or feeling the fresh breeze blowing from the land of righteousness.

In whatever manner that 'taste' comes from, we know it when it happens.

Then an image or phrase just nails us - rings us like a bell - and we truly see what we've been about, and how artificial fetters have constricted us. For me, the vehicle has been the poetry of Rumi (1207-1273). An example or two from Coleman Bark's translation in The Soul of Rumi (2001) - page numbers refer to that volume - '

From "The Pattern Improves" (Page 30)

'Leave thinking to the one who gave intelligence.

In silence there is eloquence.

Stop weaving, and watch how the pattern improves. '

I'll not comment on this, as it it not the kind of thing that needs explanation so much as revelation.

Or, the entirety of "Looking into the Creek", one of my favorites (page 38) :

'The way the soul is with the senses and the intellect is

like a creek. When desire weeds

grow thick, intelligence can't flow, and the soul creatures

stay hidden. But sometimes

the reasonable clarity runs so strong it sweeps the clogged

stream open. No longer weeping

and frustrated. your being grows as powerful as your wantings

were before, more so. Laughing

and satisfied, the masterful flow lets creations of

the soul appear. You look

down, and it's lucid dreaming. The gates made of light

swing open. You see in.'

We need, I think, a glimpse of Joy - the 'far country' - to recognize the lack of it in ourselves. Then, the work of understanding how we have manacled ourselves by unthinkingly hewing to tradition, or unthinkingly parroting a creed. By all means understand your tradition or your creed! - that is necessary - but it is up to YOU to accept or reject them partially or wholly. It is a Quest.

Please comment below if you'd like...

 

 

 

Mature religion

This is from Bill Vallicella's wonderful blog, The Maverick Philosopher. 

 

" The following is from an interview with A. C. Grayling who is speaking of the open mind and open inquiry:

    It’s a mindset, he reveals, that “loves the open-endedness and the continuing character of the conversation that humankind has with itself about all these things that really matter.”

    It’s also a way of thinking that marks a line in the sand between religion and science. The temptation to fall for the former—hook, line, and sinker—is plain to see: “People like narratives, they like to have an explanation, they like to know where they are going.” Weaving another string of thought into his tapestry of human psychology, Grayling laments that his fellow human beings “don’t want to have to think these things out for themselves. They like the nice, pre-packaged answer that’s just handed to them by somebody authoritative with a big beard.”

A. C. Grayling, like many if not most militant atheists, sees the difference between religion and science in the difference between pre-packaged dogmas thoughtlessly and uncritically accepted from some authority and open-ended free inquiry.

That is not the way I see it.  For me, mature religion is more quest than conclusions.  It too is open-ended and ongoing, subject to revision and correction. It benefits from abrasion with such competing sectors of culture as philosophy and science.  By abrasion the pearl is formed.

All genuine religion involves a quest since God must remain largely unknown, and this by his very nature. He must remain latens Deitas in Aquinas' phrase:

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit, Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore, Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more, See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

(tr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, here.)

But as religion becomes established in the world in the form of churches, sects, and denominations with worldly interests, it becomes less  of a quest and more of a worldly hustle. Dogmatics displaces inquiry, and fund-raising faith. The once alive becomes ossified.  All human institutions are corruptible, and are eventually corrupted.

Mature religion must be more quest than conclusions. It is vastly more a seeking than a finding. More a cleansing of windows and a polishing  of mirrors than a glimpsing. And certainly more a glimpsing than a comfortable resting upon dogmas. When philosophy and religion and mysticism and science are viewed as quests they complement one another. And this despite the tensions among Athens, Jerusalem, Benares, and Alexandria.

The critic of religion wants to pin it down, reducing it to dogmatic contents, so as to attack it where it is weakest. Paradoxically, the atheist 'knows' more about God than the sophisticated theist -- he knows so much that he knows no such thing could exist. He 'knows' the divine nature and knows that it is incompatible with the existence of evil -- to mention one line of attack.  What he 'knows,' of course, is only the concept he himself has fabricated and projected.  Aquinas, by contrast, held that the existence of God is far better known than God's nature -- which remains shrouded in a cloud of unknowing.

The (immature) religionist also wants religion pinned down and dogmatically spelled out for purposes of self-definition, doxastic security, other-exclusion, worldly promotion, and political leverage. This is a reason why reformers like Jesus are met with a cold shoulder -- or worse.

How is it that someone as intelligent as Grayling could have such a cartoonish understanding of religion?  The answer is that he and his brethren  utterly lack the religious sensibility.  They lack it in the same way many scientists lack the philosophical sensibility, many prosaic folk the poetic sensibility, and so on.

This is why debates with militant atheists are a waste of time. "

 __________________________________________________________________________________

Personally - (DB) - I think it would be best for young believers, or seekers, those on any Quest - to understand the above principles from the 'get-go'. There are too many shattered hopes that were based on unreal expectations and  unsupported presuppositions. Best to go forward with a clear head and clear eyes.

https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/01/mature-religion-is-open-ended-too-more-quest-than-conclusions.html

Aquinas : the 8 daughters of lust

 Since I'm on an Aquinas roll, here is another set of insights from the good Doctor. A little long but good for the mind and soul.

"
Question: Does " lust" refer  only to sexual desires and pleasures?
"A lustful man is one who is dragged toward corruption by means of pleasures." Now sexual pleasures, above all, draw a man's mind. Therefore lust is especially concerned with such like pleasures.
So, lust applies chiefly to sexual pleasures, which more than anything else work the greatest havoc in a man's mind, yet secondarily it applies to any other matters pertaining to excess. Hence a gloss on Galatians 5:19 says "lust is any kind of unrestrained indulgence."
"Lust" can also be applied to wine , either in the sense in which unrestrained indulgence in any matter is ascribed to lust, or because the use of too much wine affords an incentive to sexual pleasure.
Question: Is every sexual act a sin?
A sin, in human acts, is that which is against the order of reason.
-Now the order of reason consists in its ordering everything to its proper goal in a fitting manner.
-Therefore it is no sin if one, by the dictate of reason, makes use of certain things in a fitting manner and order for the goal to which they are adapted, provided this end be something truly good. Just as the use of food can be without sin, if it be taken in due manner and order, as required for the welfare of the body, so also the use of sexual acts can be without sin, provided they be performed in due manner and order, in keeping with the goal of human procreation.
A thing (such as sexual intercourse) may not be a sin, but still may be a hindrance to virtue in two ways:
First, as regards the ordinary sense of virtue:  only sin is an obstacle to this kind of virtue.
But what if we aim to higher virtue? Then Secondly, as regards the perfect degree of virtue, and as to this virtue may be hindered by that which is not a sin, but a lesser good. On this way sexual intercourse casts down the mind not from virtue, but from the height, i.e. the perfection of virtue.
Virtue depends  not on the amount of pleasure, but on conformity with right reason: and consequently the exceeding pleasure attaching to a sexual act directed according to reason, is not opposed to the mean of virtue.
What really matters is how much of an interior appetite is raised by that pleasure. It is not necessarily true that a man cannot seek spiritual things and also reasonably enjoy the sexual pleasures : For it is not contrary to virtue, if the act of reason be sometimes interrupted for something that is done in accordance with reason, else it would be against virtue for a person to set himself to sleep. The real problem is that over-sexualized  desire  and pleasure are not subject to the command and moderation of reason, is due to the punishment of Adam's sin, inasmuch as the reason, for rebelling against God, deserved that its body should rebel against it, as Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiii, 13).

Article 3. Whether the lust that is about sexual acts can be a sin?
I answer that, The more necessary a thing is, the more it behooves one to observe the order of reason in its regard; wherefore the more sinful it becomes if the order of reason be forsaken. Now the use of sexual acts, as stated in the foregoing Article, is most necessary for the common good, namely the preservation of the human race. Wherefore there is the greatest necessity for observing the order of reason in this matter: so that if anything be done in this connection against the dictate of reason's ordering, it will be a sin. Now lust consists essentially in exceeding the order and mode of reason in the matter of sexual acts. Wherefore without any doubt lust is a sin.
1. As the Philosopher says in the same book (De Gener. Anim. i, 18), "the semen is a surplus that is needed." For it is said to be superfluous, because it is the residue from the action of the nutritive power, yet it is needed for the work of the generative power. But the other superfluities of the human body are such as not to be needed, so that it matters not how they are emitted, provided one observe the decencies of social life. It is different with the emission of semen, which should be accomplished in a manner befitting the end for which it is needed.
2. As the Apostle says (1 Corinthians 6:20) in speaking against lust, "You are bought with a great price: glorify and bear God in your body." Wherefore by inordinately using the body through lust a man wrongs God Who is the Supreme Lord of our body. Hence Augustine says (De Decem. Chord. 10 [Serm. ix (xcvi de Temp.)]): "God Who thus governs His servants for their good, not for His, made this order and commandment, lest unlawful pleasures should destroy His temple which thou hast begun to be."
3. The opposite of lust is not found in many, since men are more inclined to pleasure. Yet the contrary vice is comprised under insensibility, and occurs in one who has such a dislike for sexual intercourse as not to pay the marriage debt.

Article 4. Whether lust is a capital vice?
I answer that, As stated above (II-II:148:5; I-II:84:3; I-II:84:4), a capital vice is one that has a very desirable end, so that through desire for that end, a man proceeds to commit many sins, all of which are said to arise from that vice as from a principal vice. Now the end of lust is sexual pleasure, which is very great. Wherefore this pleasure is very desirable as regards the sensitive appetite, both on account of the intensity of the pleasure, and because such like concupiscence is connatural to man. Therefore it is evident that lust is a capital vice.
1. As stated above (II-II:148:6), according to some, the uncleanness which is reckoned a daughter of gluttony is a certain uncleanness of the body, and thus the objection is not to the point. If, however, it denote the uncleanness of lust, we must reply that it is caused by gluttony materially—in so far as gluttony provides the bodily matter of lust—and not under the aspect of final cause, in which respect chiefly the capital vices are said to be the cause of others.
2. As stated above (II-II:132:4 ad 1), when we were treating of vainglory, pride is accounted the common mother of all sins, so that even the capital vices originate therefrom.
3. Certain persons refrain from lustful pleasures chiefly through hope of the glory to come, which hope is removed by despair, so that the latter is a cause of lust, as removing an obstacle thereto, not as its direct cause; whereas this is seemingly necessary for a capital vice.

Article 5. Whether the daughters of lust are fittingly described?
I answer that, When the lower powers are strongly moved towards their objects, the result is that the higher powers are hindered and disordered in their acts. Now the effect of the vice of lust is that the lower appetite, namely the concupiscible, is most vehemently intent on its object, to wit, the object of pleasure, on account of the vehemence of the pleasure. Consequently the higher powers, namely the reason and the will, are most grievously disordered by lust.
Now the reason has four acts in matters of action. First there is simple understanding, which apprehends some end as good, and this act is hindered by lust, according to Daniel 13:56, "Beauty hath deceived thee, and lust hath perverted thy heart." On this respect we have "blindness of mind." The second act is counsel about what is to be done for the sake of the end: and this is also hindered by the concupiscence of lust. Hence Terence says (Eunuch., act 1, sc. 1), speaking of lecherous love: "This thing admits of neither counsel nor moderation, thou canst not control it by counseling." On this respect there is "rashness," which denotes absence of counsel, as stated above (II-II:53:3). The third act is judgment about the things to be done, and this again is hindered by lust. For it is said of the lustful old men (Daniel 13:9): "They perverted their own mind . . . that they might not . . . remember just judgments." On this respect there is "thoughtlessness." The fourth act is the reason's command about the thing to be done, and this also is impeded by lust, in so far as through being carried away by concupiscence, a man is hindered from doing what his reason ordered to be done. [To this "inconstancy" must be referred.] [The sentence in brackets is omitted in the Leonine edition.] Hence Terence says (Eunuch., act 1, sc. 1) of a man who declared that he would leave his mistress: "One little false tear will undo those words."

On the part of the will there results a twofold inordinate act. One is the desire for the end, to which we refer "self-love," which regards the pleasure which a man desires inordinately, while on the other hand there is "hatred of God," by reason of His forbidding the desired pleasure. The other act is the desire for the things directed to the end. With regard to this there is "love of this world," whose pleasures a man desires to enjoy, while on the other hand there is "despair of a future world," because through being held back by carnal pleasures he cares not to obtain spiritual pleasures, since they are distasteful to him.
1. According to the Philosopher (Ethic. vi, 5), intemperance is the chief corruptive of prudence: wherefore the vices opposed to prudence arise chiefly from lust, which is the principal species of intemperance.
2. The constancy which is a part of fortitude regards hardships and objects of fear; but constancy in refraining from pleasures pertains to continence which is a part of temperance, as stated above (II-II:143). Hence the inconstancy which is opposed thereto is to be reckoned a daughter of lust. Nevertheless even the first named inconstancy arises from lust, inasmuch as the latter enfeebles a man's heart and renders it effeminate, according to Hosea 4:11, "Fornication and wine and drunkenness take away the heart [Douay: 'understanding']." Vegetius, too, says (De Re Milit. iii) that "the less a man knows of the pleasures of life, the less he fears death." Nor is there any need, as we have repeatedly stated, for the daughters of a capital vice to agree with it in matter (cf. II-II:35:4 ad 2; II-II:118:8 ad 1; II-II:148:6).
3. Self-love in respect of any goods that a man desires for himself is the common origin of all sins; but in the special point of desiring carnal pleasures for oneself, it is reckoned a daughter of lust.
4. The sins mentioned by Isidore are inordinate external acts, pertaining in the main to speech; wherein there is a fourfold inordinateness. First, on account of the matter, and to this we refer "obscene words": for since "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Matthew 12:34), the lustful man, whose heart is full of lewd concupiscences, readily breaks out into lewd words. Secondly, on account of the cause: for, since lust causes thoughtlessness and rashness, the result is that it makes a man speak without weighing or giving a thought to his words. which are described as "scurrilous." Thirdly, on account of the end: for since the lustful man seeks pleasure, he directs his speech thereto, and so gives utterance to "wanton words." Fourthly, on account of the sentiments expressed by his words, for through causing blindness of mind, lust perverts a man's sentiments, and so he gives way "to foolish talking," for instance, by expressing a preference for the pleasures he desires to anything else. "

Many of us can attest the hurt and pain we have caused those we love, not to speak of our own souls, by willfully turning from these truths.

Aquinas: Our Gardening Task

 A nice short summary of Aquinas' idea of the "big picture." I find it helpful as a heuristic thought-pattern, and try to interpret more difficult dogmas within its boundaries. From the Timothy McDermott translation of the Angelic Doctor's Summa Theologiae.

"What the scriptures teach is that man failed the gardening task and ruined God’s creation, but that God graciously came, as a friend and cooperator, to help him salvage and recreate. In choosing that way to help man with his original goal God gave man’s life a new goal - that of fellowship with God himself as friend. The journey of this life is no longer simply a journey to the fulfilment of man’s nature, for that journey has been taken up into a journey into the presence of God Himself, into the good and happy state which God himself is."

McDermott: "This is Thomas’s preferred way of describing the relationship between what later commentators called man’s natural and supernatural ends. He does not talk, as they do, of man first knowing God as author of nature, and then as author of supernature. Rather he consistently talks of God, known to man’s learning as the author of nature, becoming through God’s teaching the object of his happiness. The word translated ‘happiness’ has more the sense of ‘happy state’ or ‘blessed state’, meaning a state which has blessedly happened or turned out well - a state of goodhap rather than mishap. It corresponds to the Aristotelian word ‘eudaimonia’, which some modern scholars translate as ‘flourishing’. When Thomas uses happiness as a name for God himself he is thinking of God as fulfilled life; and this explains why he talks of happiness as being accompanied by delight, rather than as consisting in it.
God has destined us for a goal beyond the grasp of reason."

I just love that.

amazon.com/Summa-Theologiae … +mcdermott