The Theology of Eating Too Much Ice Cream - A Thomistic Analysis of Your 11 Passions

Posted by Taylor Marshall 

Do you sometimes want to eat a pint of Butter Pecan ice cream or an extra basket of chips even though you know that you shouldn't? Do you sometimes become overly sad or angry in a way that is irrational? 

Guess what? You're experiencing what philosophers and theologians call your "passions." 

Nobody has likely ever explained to you why you have this problem in a philosophical way.  Would you like to know why? Let's take a look under the hood...

Everyday, we humans experience our passions getting the better of us. The passions are what we might call your emotions. They come and go, sometimes quite quickly. One of the goals of becoming a saint in Christ is learning to have mastery over your passions.

Before looking at your passions, let's take a global look at your soul...

Every human being has a hierarchy in his or her soul. At the top is your rational intellect. Below that is your will. Below that are your eleven passions:

1. intellect
2. will
3. 11 passions

Now, passions are not evil. They are good! All the saints were passionate people. Saint Thomas Aquinas spends a lot of time treating the passions and he explicitly states that they are good. 

Evil results, however, when our passions overtake our intellect. When the passions get the better of the intellect, this usually results in sin. When the passions are fully mastered by the intellect, you have a beautiful and passionate saint. The goal is not to get rid of the passions (Stoicism) but to tame the passions (Christianity). 

For example, your child spills coffee on your freshly printed report for work. You flip out and become angry. Maybe you raise your voice or say something you should not have said. In reality, your over-passioned reaction was not reasonable. You could have just printed out another report and been a little late for work. I hope you get the idea.

Thomas teaches that you have eleven passions in your soul: "Consequently there are altogether eleven passions differing specifically; six in the concupiscible faculty, and five in the irascible; and under these all the passions of the soul are contained."

Six are concupiscible passions (a five dollar word for 'related to desire') and five are irascible passions (a five dollar word for 'related to anger').

For example, when you want to eat a whole pint of Butter Pecan ice cream - that's a concupiscible passion. When you want scream and flip off the guy who just cut you off - that's an irascible passion getting the better of you.

Here are the eleven passions:

Concupiscible Passions

1. love and hatred
2. desire and aversion
3. joy and sadness

Irascible Passions

1. hope and despair
2. fear and daring
3. anger which has not contrary passion

Now Jesus Christ has all these passions (He is fully man), but He is in perfect control of each one. He perfectly loves sinners. He perfectly hates sins. He was perfectly angry at the money changers with the precise amount of anger needed and only for the precise amount of time that the situation required.

Sometimes Christians can assume that being holy is to lack passion. They think that Spock from Star Trek is the ideal. Not so. This belief is repackaged Stoicism. Thomas Aquinas rejected this Stoic idea of the passions as incompatible with Scripture.

God wants you to be a fully passionate person. Yet he wants those passions submitted to right reason. If you are becoming a saint, people should see that you're rightly passionate about God and your neighbors. Your passions will be like a symphony under a masterful conductor. 

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The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive - Did St Irenaeus Really Say This?

Posted by Taylor Marshall 

One of my favorite quotes, which I repeat often is the famous line from Saint Irenaeus: "The glory of God is man fully alive."

Saint Irenaeus lived in the second century and this quote is rightly celebrated as one of the most profound incites into theological anthropology - a five dollar term for the theology of human nature. God receives external glory when humans are truly alive, presumably alive in God.

However, I recently read this article by Father Patrick Henry Reardon (an Antiochian Orthodox priest) that attempts to explain how people naively misuse the quote, "The glory of God is man fully alive."

Here's Father Reardon's article in three bullets:

• Saint Irenaeus didn't write "man fully alive" but just "living man." It's preserved in Latin as  "Gloria Dei est vivens homo." If you know Latin you can see what he means.
• The cult of "self-fulfillment" has co-opted the quote.
• True fulfillment is only in Christ, not in "self."

Father Reardon situates the original quote in context. Saint Irenaeus goes on to say, "the life of a man is the vision of God." So the context reveals that "living man" or "man fully alive" is in actuality rooted in the beatific vision, that is, Heaven.

However, I wonder if Father Reardon is pushing on this a bit too much! From a Thomistic point of view, there is an analogy between the life of glory in Heaven and the life of grace on earth.

For example, I don't think we want to say that the Blessed Virgin Mary was not "fully alive" while on earth. True, she wasn't in Heaven. So in that sense, she was not yet fully alive. Nevertheless, there is an obvious analogy to Heaven and living on earth with the Holy Trinity in your soul. Did the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Paul, and the Little Flower demonstrate the "glory of God" while living on earth? 

You betcha.

Strictly speaking Father Reardon is right. People do abuse the quote. However, I don't think that we have restrict the passage to human persons being fully alive in Heaven. God is truly glorified when we live the life of grace here on earth.

Gloria Dei est vivens homo!

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Boston Bomb Massacre: What Would Jesus Say?

Posted by Taylor Marshall 

I recently had an interesting request from a reader of this blog via Facebook.* The request comes from Christopher Calara in Manila:

Dear Dr. Marshall,

A blessed day! Please post something regarding the tragic Boston bombing. It would greatly help in efforts to offer healing and acceptance among the victims and the American public. Obviously, I'm not American but I am one with you in solidarity when things like this happen. It is an act of evil, pure and simple, this is the time when people look to God for answers and strength.

- Christopher Calara

When I heard about the Boston Marathon explosions, my heart sank. There are no easy answers to tragedies of this kind. I am a philosopher and my mind immediately begins chomping on the philosophical data:

1. God is all powerful.

2. God knew this was going to happen.

3. God could have stopped it somehow. He could have given the bomb-setters a heart attack. He could have had the bombs result in a dud.

4. Crisis Question: Why didn't God do anything?

An easy answer would be something like this: "Well Boston Marathon runners are sinful people and so God punished them through extraordinary means." Yet this answer is clearly wrong.

Fortunately, our Lord Jesus Christ did give us a teaching on these types of tragedies.

At Luke 13:1-5, Jesus speaks about 18 people who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them. These were innocent victims of a tragedy which was due to no fault of their own. Jesus said:

"Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Lk 13:2-5)

Scholars and archeologists have not been able to identify the "tower of Siloam," but the sudden death of 18 people certainly made an impact on the audience of Jesus. It was the latest news and had raised philosophical and theological questions.

Here, Jesus explicitly teaches that some tragedies (such as a tower falling and killing people) was not because the victims were more sinful than others. Original sin is the reason why there is evil in the world. But personal tragedy and personal culpability do not always go hand in hand. 

Sometimes infants are treated cruelly and murdered. This has nothing do with the personal sins of an infant since an infant does not have personal sins. Baptized babies don't even have original sin, and yet bad things happen even to them.

The long answer to this problem is "read the book of Job." The short answer is "God never tells us." It remains behind the veil of uncertainty. 

We pray for those killed and wounded in Boston. Moreover, we recommit ourselves to living out the prayer "thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." In Heaven, nobody bombs anybody else.

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Is Being Drunk a Mortal Sin? Teaching from Paul, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas

Posted by Taylor Marshall 

Michelangelo's Drunkenness of Noah

I grew up in a home in which my parents drank wine at dinner. Occasionally I'd see my dad have a beer. I never saw them get tipsy. Alcohol was a normal part of life and certainly not taboo. It was healthy.

My first experience with alcohol happened when I was about 15 or 16. It happened after I had my wisdom teeth pulled. If you've had your wisdom teeth pulled, you know how the surgery can lay you out for a few days. Very painful.

Well, a day or so after the surgery I was hanging out with some high school friends. My mouth, jaw, and cheeks were throbbing with pain. I could feel my heartbeat in the empty sockets of my mouth. The pain was excruciating. I realized that I had forgotten to take my painkillers for the wisdom teeth. 

So one of my friends had an idea. He got his dad's bottle of Jack Daniels and poured me a shot. I imagined myself as one of those wounded cowboys in a Western movie. A swig of alcohol should do the trick, right?

Well, I don't know how many swigs I had. I remember the music in the background becoming even more interesting and my senses became dull. The next day I was so sick and dehydrated...and the holes where my wisdom teeth had been felt ten times worse. That was the first time I experienced alcohol. 

I'm sure that you also can remember the first time we were stung by the fire water. Michelangelo's painting above from the Sistine chapel memorializes the first time it happened to a human: Noah.

People often ask me about the ethics of alcohol.One time, a Hell's Angel biker once approached me about it. He wanted to know if "getting drunk" were really a sin.

Saint Paul answers this question clearly: "And be not drunk with wine, wherein is luxury; but be ye filled with the Holy Spirit" (Eph 5:18). Being drunk is certainly a sin.

And then there is the Proverb: "Wine is a mocker and strong drink is a brawler; whoever goes astray by them is not wise" (Prov 21:1).

Saint Thomas Aquinas deals with this topic directly: "To take more meat or drink than is necessary belongs to the vice of gluttony, which is not always a mortal sin: but knowingly to take too much drink to the point of being drunk, is a mortal sin. Hence Augustine says (Confess. x, 31): 'Drunkenness is far from me: Thou wilt have mercy, that it come not near me. But full feeding sometimes hath crept upon Thy servant'" (Summa theologiae II-II, q. 150, a. 2, ad. 2).

Here we learn that deliberate drunkenness is a grave sin. If somebody spikes a girls drink and she gets drunk, it's not a sin on her part. If someone sits on the couch and slams six beers to forget his woes. That's not right. 

In this same article, Saint Thomas Aquinas states that Noah did not commit a sin when he became drunk the first time (see Michelangelo's rendition of the event in image at the top of this post). The reason for this is that Noah was the first human to drink wine, and he did not yet know its effects. He did not seek intoxication with intention. It was an accident.

By the way, the Bible celebrates alcohol. In the Old Testament, "lack of wine" is always a judgment of God against His people (Jer 48:33; Lam 2:12; Hos 2:9; Joel 1:10; Hag 2:16). Yes, you read that right. When the Jews sinned in the Old Testament, God made it so that they lacked grain and wine - two types of the Holy Eucharist. This conforms to the Catholic teaching of "virtuous drinking," of which I have spoken about at length: here.

Whenever God wanted to bless Israel, He provided an abundance of wine (Gen 27:28; Deut 7:13; 11:14; Joel 2:19, 24; 3:18; Amos 9:13-14, Isa 55:1; Jer 31:12; Zech 9:17).

So alcohol is clearly a God-given blessing. He wants us to enjoy it. He wants us to be merry, in moderation. But he doesn't want us to drink so as to sacrifice human intellect. We must always keep our wits. To be drunk is to lose what makes us human, our rationality. When we are drunk we become like animals. Senseless and moved by our passions. A dangerous state of being.

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Did Judas Iscariot Receive the Holy Eucharist?

Posted by Taylor Marshall 

Did Our Lord give the Holy Eucharist to Judas Iscariot at the Last Supper and First Mass? Saint John Chrysostom explains the Apostolic Tradition that Christ did indeed give the Holy Eucharist to Judas Iscariot:

Judas was not converted while partaking of the sacred mysteries. Hence on both sides his crime becomes the more heinous, both because imbued with such a purpose he approached the mysteries, and because he became none the better for approaching, neither from fear, nor from the benefit received, nor from the honor conferred on him." 

- Saint John Chrysostom, Homily 82 on Matthew

Saint Dionysius* says (Eccl. Hier. iii) and Saint Augustine (Tract. lxii in Joan.) also confirm that Judas received the Holy Eucharist.

What is the theological significance? Saint Thomas Aquinas explains:

And this would have been quite proper [to refuse Judas the Eucharist], if the malice of Judas be considered. But since Christ was to serve us as a pattern of justice, it was not in keeping with His teaching authority to sever Judas, a hidden sinner, from Communion with the others without an accuser and evident proof. lest the Church's prelates might have an example for doing the like, and lest Judas himself being exasperated might take occasion of sinning. 

This reveals that secret sinners continue to receive the Holy Eucharist. But this begs the question. What aboutpublic sinners? The Chruch Fathers and Saint Thomas Aquinas say that public sinners should not be allowed to receive the Holy Eucharist. For Saint Augustine's take, see Summa theologiae III q. 80, a. 6.

This post was gleaned from passages in Saint Thomas'Summa theologiae.

PS: And remember: Judas Iscariot was the first person to leave Mass early. Don't be a Judas. Stay through to the end of Holy Mass.

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Sistine Chapel Draws Souls to Eternity

Famous Church, the Papal Conclave Site Since 1492, Showcases the ‘Bookends of the Bible’ in Stunning Detail

by Elizabeth Lev, 

For the two short days of the conclave, the eyes of the world were focused on the four forbidding walls of the Sistine Chapel.

Dwarfed by the grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica, the unobtrusive chapel appears merely a humble attendant. The brick exterior makes for drab attire, compared to the polished travertine of the basilica, and the whole chapel would be engulfed in one of the wings of St. Peter’s transept. Yet, in this intimate space, the captain of the barque of Peter is chosen.

The room is best known for the formidable contribution made by Pope Julius II, when he hired a reluctant Michelangelo to paint the ceiling, as well as the glorious conclusion given by Paul III Farnese, when he persuaded a still-reluctant Michelangelo to paint the Last Judgment. Still, the Sistine offers other, subtler messages to the cardinals during these critical moments in Church history.

Pope Sixtus IV hired an architect with military experience for the construction of the chapel, which boasts thick walls, high windows and defensive additions. The building, completed in 1477 and bearing the pope’s name ("Sisto" in Italian), had a single entrance, allowing it to be sealed off like a fortress. This space was destined for praying, preaching and, as of 1492, picking the next pope. Herein lies the secret of the chapel: The exterior may be sturdy and simple, but the interior transports the spirit as only the Renaissance knew how — through glorious art and inspiring music.

To adorn the chapel, Sixtus called in a "dream team" of Florentine artists, including Botticelli, Perugino and Ghirlandaio (who would become Michelangelo’s painting teacher). These giants of painting decorated the side walls with the stories of Moses and Christ in parallel along the nave. As Moses escapes into the desert, so Jesus retreats for 40 days; as Moses gives the Ten Commandments, Christ delivers the Sermon on the Mount. Like the polyphonic harmonies of the Sistine choir, these frescoes boast a startlingly variegated palette: They shimmer with gold leaf and hypnotize with lapis blues. Vast landscapes carry the mind to faraway lands, while the newly constructed hospital of Santo Spirito returns the viewer to the Rome of Sixtus. Studded with portraits, the paintings are a veritable who’s who of Renaissance celebrities.

The two most important works speak directly to the cardinals of the conclave: Perugino’s Delivery of the Keys and Botticelli’s Punishment of Korah. In these two panels, these Renaissance rivals employed their wildly divergent styles to send one of the most powerful messages to the conclave: the need for unity. Perugino presents a vast piazza with stately flagstones that lead the eye from Christ giving the keys to St. Peter in the foreground to three monumental constructions framing the horizon. Botticelli, for his part, narrates the tragedy of the Korah family, who contested Moses’ decision to pass his staff of authority to his brother Aaron. Where Perugino’s apostles pose peacefully, Botticelli’s characters are windswept, caught up in the turbulence of their disputes. Both painters drew on ancient art for their backgrounds, but the triumphal arches of Perugino stand pristine and intact in the Delivery, while Botticelli’s Arch of Constantine, a symbol of the hard-won religious liberty earned in 313, is crumbling. Only Perugino includes a Christian structure — an eight-sided edifice — a symbol of renewal and regeneration.

Placed on either side of the entry into the voting area, these two panels — painted by rivals who learned to collaborate for the sake of the Church — admonish the cardinals to stand by the decision made in that room. If the recent displays of joyful collegiality around Pope Francis are any sign, it seems that the message has been received, at least by this generation.

Imagine Michelangelo’s chagrin when he was charged with decorating atop the work of his masters. Yet, undaunted, he overshadowed them all with his revolutionary art.

In four years, Michelangelo frescoed the 1,200 square feet of the vault with the stories of Genesis, a perfect iconographical complement to the works below. When he unveiled it on Oct. 31, 1512, his contemporaries were stunned at the achievement of making a narrative readable from 68 feet below. Eschewing the versicolor palette and the sumptuous settings of his teachers, Michelangelo drew upon his sculptural training to produce figures that seem hewn from stone to propel his story. God the Father is seen as a dynamic force of energy that ultimately, in the creation of man, transfers his own divine spark to Adam, elevating him above all creation. Even though the fever pitch of creation is followed by Adam and Eve’s temptation, the Fall, the flood and, finally, Noah sprawled in a tragic parody of Adam’s awakening, the story does not end in the last dark panel.

From that dark scene, Michelangelo’s palette changes to brilliant hues as prophets, sibyls and the ancestors of Christ lead the viewer back to the altar. There, perched in the most challenging position of any figure on the ceiling, is Jonah, appearing to fall from the heavens to the altar. The quintessential symbol of Christ’s death and resurrection, he brings the Old Testament into the real time of the liturgy. Invisible beginnings and invisible endings delineate the chapel — the bookends of the Bible.

Twenty-two years later, in the heat of the Reformation, Michelangelo returned to the chapel to paint the Last Judgment. This massive work, covering the entire altar wall, looms sternly above the cardinals as they cast their votes in the urn. The swirl of bodies draws the eye from the newly resurrected through the souls assisted by saints, angels or, in one case, a rosary, to the heroic lineup of the elect. An awe-inspiring Christ sits at the heart of the work, his head turned away, while Mary nestles by the wound in his side, continuing to draw souls to her Son. The powerful nude bodies — which caused so much commotion over the years that several were "fig-leafed" with painted drapes — are meant to remind us that the crown of heaven is a prize to be won by heaven’s athletes, and the man the cardinals elect is called to be their spiritual trainer.

Blessed Pope John Paul II — who oversaw the cleaning of the chapel and ordered the removal of many draperies — chose the Sistine as the permanent home of the conclave. In this room, the cardinals realize that they are not only rendered naked before the eyes of God, but confronted — thanks to Michelangelo — with the Pope’s true role: saving souls.

Elizabeth Lev is an art

historian based in Rome.

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Can Humans See Bodiless Angels? Answer from St Thomas Aquinas

Posted by Taylor Marshall 

Yesterday my students were asking about the apparitions of angels in the visible world and how that could happen since angels did not have physical bodies. No doubt, the apparition of Saint Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation was miraculous. However, how did it happen? Angels don't have bodies, eyes, mouths, wings, or anything physical that we typically imagine. 

How then can people see angels?

Saint Thomas Aquinas addresses the question directly atSumma theologiae I, q. 51, a. 2.

Some have maintained, Thomas explains, that the angels appeared only in the imagination of the human mind perceiving them. Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas reject this theory. Saint Gabriel wasnot a phenomenon of Mary's imagination incited by God or Gabriel himself. No. Somehow Gabriel was "out there" and being perceived by Mary's physical eyes and ears.

Saint Thomas goes on to explain:

Yet Divine Scripture from time to time introduces angels so apparent as to be seen commonly by all; just as the angels who appeared to Abraham were seen by him and by his whole family, by Lot, and by the citizens of Sodom; in like manner the angel who appeared to Tobias was seen by all present. From all this it is clearly shown that such apparitions were beheld by bodily vision, whereby the object seen exists outside the person beholding it, and can accordingly be seen by all. Now by such a vision only a body can be beheld. Consequently, since the angels are not bodies, nor have they bodies naturally united with them, as is clear from what has been said (1; 50, 1), it follows that they sometimes assume bodies.

Does this entail that angels become incarnate? No. Do they assume human nature? No.

Thomas teaches that the angels take surrounding matter and arrange it so as to look like a human that talks and moves. Thomas explains how he thinks this works: "Although air as long as it is in a state of rarefaction has neither shape nor color, yet when condensed it can both be shaped and colored as appears in the clouds. Even so the angels assume bodies of air, condensing it by the Divine power in so far as is needful for forming the assumed body."

One might even speculate that an angel could use little pieces of green grass to make for itself green eyes or arrange dust or dirt to make hair. Perhaps even bend light to make a brilliant breast plate of armor like the one Saint Michael is seen to be wearing. All this is an illusion. Angels do not have bodies. Angels do not really hold swords or spears. Still, it is very interesting to consider and contemplate how we humans perceive them and honor them.

Isn't God awesome?

Question: When the Blessed Virgin Mary appears, it's for real. She has her glorified body. But not so with the saints. That is when Saint Peter or Saint John appear, it's not really their bodies. Would it be accomplished the same way? Please leave a comment about this or any other question.

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