Form as a Universal Principle and Cause of all Finite Being - Month of May

Greetings in the season that so emphatically illustrates the vertical dimension of our universe: the Up and the Down directions of all corporeal things. Even the Angels obey these laws of our physical world - whenever they come and go on missions to us from God. And even the Reveternity which is the Angels' version of Time, is known, at least by us, in terms of Up and Down, as in Jacob's Ladder, wherein the Angels ascend and descend in a temporal dimension that appears to us, and is really, a horizontal or linear dimension, known in Thomistic theology as the Order of Generation of processes, that obey the laws of their specific Forms. So these two dimensions, the vertical - up and down, and the linear-temporal - horizontal co-exist, and, indeed, one cannot exist without the other. Together they define the Formal Cause and Principle of the Universe as a whole, and as a Substantial Being - the first of all things - corporeal - created by God on Day One of the First Week of the World.  

 

Now it seems not only fair and true, but even necessary, to say that this First of all Substantial Forms is also the First of all Secondary Causes. God is, and always acts as, Universal Governor and Maintainer-Sustainer - Efficient First-Primary Cause after having first created and made all things ex nihilo and in toto - just as He has told us infallibly and in no uncertain words, just how and where and when He did this. Genesis One through three is of primary importance for our Catholic Science - supporting our Catholic theology - in all of its ascending and descending branches of the great Hierarchy of Reality.

 

In these earliest chapters of Genesis - God Himself defines and describes for us the entire Order of Creation. And by chapters two and three - we see the Order of Generation - though in prophecy (Gen.3:15) - until the birth of Cain and then Abel, (Gen. 4: 1-11.) It is very important to understand - because of the prevalence of the heresy of evolutionism - that after Day Six of the First Week of the World - God has created no new Substantial Forms, except those human souls. Now, while the Human Rational (intellect & will) - is the one substantial form of the human being - and must be created directly and immediately by God for each human being, the physical being of humans are still liable to a great deal of physical variation. But these accidental variations of the physical categories, are strictly limited in their possibilities BY THE FORM - which dictates and controls, UNDER GOD'S PRIMARY - EFFICIENT CAUSALITY - exercised in the Beginning. When God created the first SUBSTANTIAL FORMS OF ALL CORPOREAL (hylemorphic, matter-form) beings, - He obviously gave to these beings the power of agency - that is - of re-producing their own kinds.

 

This is secondary causality, because God, as the sole source of EXISTENCE - remains always and everywhere - the FIRST PRIMARY EFFICIENT CAUSE of all things - acting now - in the Order of Generation - not as some erroneously suppose as secondary cause - but as First Cause (in the Six Days!) - having conferred upon His living creatures, the power of agency to transmit by reproduction ("increase and multiply") - the same Substantial Form - which God alone could first of all create - ex nihilo and in toto in the beginning - you see the absolute importance and necessity for the literal Six Days!

 

Empirical science even proves, insofar as induction can, that there are no new Substantial Forms in the history of the world that science studies. Empirical science has discovered many wonderful properties, as those of the elements - especially of the electro-magnetic spectrum and the atoms. It is from these elements that science has provided all the wonders of modern technology. And so, what are the elements? That is the big question.

 

Aristotelian-Thomistic Metaphysics tells us that the elements, (we are speaking of hydrogen, oxgen, carbon, nitrogen, etc etc...) are structures constantly in motion, and constantly changing their formal arrangements, in order to combine with other elements to form other elements, such as larger molecules of sugar, salt etc. This versatility of the atomic elements indicates that they are accidental properties of some larger Substantial Form, in which they inhere, and from which they receive their directions for operations - but also the limitations beyond which they may not go. The elements are most remarkable for the fact that they obey the dictates of whatever substantial form into which they enter: plant, animal, mankind.

 

You see the importance - the primacy of form over function! As I never tire of pointing out: only green plants perform the process of photosynthesis - and yet - the very same elements of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc...are present and operative in the Substantial Forms of animals and man. The elements simply obey the dictates of that Substantial form they have entered into. Discovering the synthesizing processes unique to each substantial form is a very fertile field of research awaiting study and experimentation.

Human Dignity

The human dignity so talked about today - but never really examined - because it is a concept used in total abstraction from our real creaturehood. The concept is referenced mainly by Catholic apologists attempting to confer some kind of real dignity on the evolutionary fable of man's organic development, or now the term is emergence from a population of hominids. The atheistic evolutionist emphasizes man's lowly insignificance in the great evolutionary scheme of things, whereas the theistic evolutionist, such as Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn, exalts the human dignity of emergent humanity in view of what he has since become and especially in view of the Incarnation. The real drama of Creation – ex nihilo and in toto – is thereby conveniently overlooked, - especially the key factor in that drama – which is man’s Fall from Grace called Original Sin. It is very difficult to find the kind of human dignity so exalted by Pope John Paull II and his followers in the state of fallen nature that still awaits the final and most complete redemption in the new Heavens and the new Earth of the Apocalypse, chapter 21.



It is true that we find the best examples of real human dignity in the canonized saints. The most striking feature of the human dignity of the saints is the fact that it is conspicuous by its absence! Think of the gross insult to all human dignity embraced by Saint Peter – our first Pope – in being – by his own request – crucified upside down – because he was unworthy to be crucified in the same way as Our Lord and Master – Jesus Christ. Or the desire of St. Ignatius of Antioch to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts into a perfect wheat for Christ! This is human dignity reduced to the lowest form of life in the hierarchy of being. Or the perfect joy of St. Francis. This is the time in history when the Franciscan mode of spirituality is given free rein! The Franciscans control EWTN, - the one and only worldwide television network that can be called Catholic. But I have not yet heard of the perfect joy in St. Francis. That episode, though fictional, is a true representation of the real spirituality of St. Francis – and it is a truly shameful picture of human dignity on the fact of both the doorkeeper who refused hospitality to the begging wayfarers, and the true followers of Christ, who had nowhere to lay their heads, even in the midst of the snows of the Alpine winter!



Well, it’s hard to know for sure just what they mean by this human dignity in practice – because in practice it turns out to be a disguise for pride. This, at least, is the constant teaching of asceticism – which is but the flip side of truly Catholic mysticism. The nada and toda of St. John of the Cross are but the total death – even annihilation (anneantisement) of the prideful self inherited from Adam as the consequence of his Original Sin. Baptism removes the guilt, but not the wounds – the consequences in our disordered nature, of that Original Sin inherited with the physical body from our biological parents. All talk of human dignity should be based solely, on the “image and likeness” of Genesis One: 26-27, and securely caged in by the subsequent Fall and its consequences. This leaves the souls of men and women and children pretty much stripped – especially in these our corrupt times – of all but that saving disposition – theologically termed the potential obedientialis or potency- that is – disposition for the obedience required by divine Catholic Faith, Hope and Charity.



It is extremely distressing to find in a nursing home - such as the one in which I am living, so many Catholics who, to all appearances – have lost all hope of heaven. Of course, only God knows what is going on in the depths of the soul. I speak only as one adult Catholic seeking Catholic “fellowship” with another Catholic. I can attest to this: at least two Catholics have followed my example in making the Sign of the Cross at meals. And one of these says the Rosary every day, although cancer is taking her down physically – very visibly. There is a great field – white for the harvest here – but I see no Tradtionalist priests taking it up. The Catholics here, except myself, all of whom are Novus Ordo, do, indeed, receive the ministrations of some sweet old ladies who bring Holy Communion about once or twice a month on weekdays.



Kyrie, eleison.

Attention Michael Baker of Australia

Truth is One, but because Reality is a Hierarchy of Being, which truths reflect, some truths are more important than others for our eternal salvation. At the same time, every truth in the Hierarchical Structure of Reality is most intimately related to every other truth, but most especially to the truth just above it and that truth just below it in the Hierarchy. Thus, mankind is most intimately related to the Angels just above him, because of his rational - spiritual - substantial soul, but also to the animals just below him - because of his sensate body needing nourishment from the plants of the Earth.

That is the vertical structure of reality which is static, unchanging. There is also the dynamic - historical Order of Generation, by which generations succeed one another in the Order of Time. Now let me refer you to the 2nd Way of proving God's Existence that St. Thomas Aquinas presents in the Summa, Q2, a3.

Unless you subscribe to an eternal world, which is an error against Faith, and commit to an infinite regress, you will accept St. Thomas' proof of God's Existence as Cause - First Efficient Cause of all things, but not the Creator. According to St. Thomas, belief in God as Creator of all things - ex nihilo and in toto (in their whole substance) was first defined by the 4th Lateran Council in 1215, (check my memory on this.) But Creation is the first article in all of the earliest Creeds. So it is, we must agree, a primary article of Faith and one very closely related to the natural knowledge of God's Existence as First Efficient Cause of all things. (Cf Romans, 1:20)

I am trying to determine, and am asking you to help me determine, just how important Creation is in the Hierarchy of Truths that must be believed in order to be saved.

The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, have always, - that is - traditionally been known as the historical books, only to single them out as differing from the Wisdom books, the Prophets, and other more specific in topic and person books such as Ruth, Judith, Tobias, Job and 1st and 2nd Machabees. I left out Esther, Joshua and Judges. These are all histories in the truest sense, and treated so by the Father and Doctors of the Church. They only have the added dimension of supernatural typology - which begins with Adam and Eve, literally our first parents, but also proto-typical to Jesus Christ, Our Lord, the Second Adam, and Mary Immaculate, His Mother, the Second Eve. There is no true typology without a real-literal Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and so on. All of this discussion leads to one inescapable conclusion, and that is this: Everything - theologically, meta-physically, physically and historically presupposes Creation. And I have spent a large part of my adult life in trying to demonstrate that the Catholic Creationist, both as to science and theology, has the firmest ground to stand upon.

 

In previous papers, I pointed out that the Council of Trent, the First Vatican Council in its Decree on Creation and/or Revelation, and Leo XIII's --- Providentissimus Deus - not to mention innumerable Fathers and Doctors, hold to a view of Scripture as "dictated by the Holy Spirit" - and a view of the literal sense as absolutely primary and historical in those books where recorded history is intended. Pope Benedict XV in his encyclical - Spiritus Paraclitus, - condemned the division of Scripture into primary and secondary meanings, what today, implicitly denying all previous magisterial teachings, is dividing Scripture into what pertains to "salvation history" and what is termed historical and scientific error. This is pure Modernist Heresy and the burden of proof is on you, Mr. Michael Baker - to prove that you are not a Modernist - whose primary doctrine is the law of evolution. So says the encyclical - Pascendi - and the Syllabus - Lamentabili - of Pope St. Pius X
 

I take my stand on these two documents - as well as on all the others cited and on the Ruling in 1909 of the Biblical Commission that assures me I am not in error or heresy if I take the word .....yom ....in Genesis One to mean a literal - natural - 24 hour day. How dare you take it upon yourself to accuse people like me of schismatic tendencies and jeopardizing the Faith because we obey this ruling of the PBC? If I have done so, myself, and I admit I have accused evolutionists of heresy and complicity in heresy, it is because of......Pascendi ...and ....Lamentabili. I suggest you read and study these magisterial documents, since it seems you have never heard of them. The existence of God with His Creation of all things, ex nihilo and in toto - are indispensable dogmas for salvation.

 

Please note: Lateran Council's use of the term, - in their whole substance - in toto - absolutely requires a literal, natural, 24 hour Day for the Days of Creation - the First Week of the World - just as narrated in Genesis One.

 

Creation is an Act of God - outside of time. Evolution is a process - entirely in the minds of certain - so-called scientists. Therefore, it is an ideology, and does not merit the name of philosophy.

March for Life in Ottawa, Canada, March 9-10

 
One need only see the coverage of any major public event by EWTN, such as the one announced above, to realize that the public life of the visible church today is completely controlled by the Franciscans, and specifically those of the Scotist school.

Duns Scotus was a voluntarist. That means he emphasized and valued the will over the intellect.

It takes a real Thomist to see the proper relation of both intellect and will. For the will is the nobler faculty, to use St. Thomas' own term. The will is blind and depends upon the intellect to show it both the true, the intellect's proper object of the will. It is also the task of the intellect's judgmental power to discern the real from the only apparent good. For example, just about everything has an aspect of good - because the good is one of the three transcendental aspects of all being. But this particular good thing may not be the real good for me at this time and place. Getting into moral theology here, which branch of theology is the only one operative today. And it is not very strongly in evidence, as clearly evident to all. But the intellectual life of the church is in even worse condition, being in a position not only of near absence but where at all present, subject to hostility and contempt. This is to be expected in a society wherein "freedom" has become license. The awful thing about the will is that it tends to call to its defense, in every circumstance, except where it is unusually purified by a wise asceticism, all the lower passions and tendencies to evil that we suffer because of Original Sin.

Remember those three consequences: Darkening of the intellect. Weakening of the will. A strong inclination to evil.

But as Our Lord told St. Paul and also each one of us: "My Grace is sufficient for thee."

But I think we must have enough intellect left to understand that we must ask Him for these most precious gifts of His Grace....The intellect sees and judges - but it is the will that chooses. Therefore: Sin is always and only in the will.

The intellect brings the whole person to contemplation of Truth. The will brings the whole person to action for good works. The Saints are those in love with the truth and desirous of bringing all souls to this love for Truth by all appropriate means available in the Church and the world. Real good does not exist apart from the Truth. To save souls cannot mean anything but bringing souls to a love for the truth. The highest truths are those of Faith - for Truth is a hierarchy - reflecting the Hierarchy that is Reality. There are degrees of being and perfection. See the 4th Way of proving God's existence.

God alone is ALL being, all ACT, with no needs, - no potencies for further Being -- infinite Reality - Infinite Goodness - Truth and Unity - infinite power, infinite knowledge - infinite wisdom. Any good or perfection we can find in a creature is in God infinitely. What more can one say?

What needs to be said, and said constantly, is the prayer Our Lady gave to the three children at Fatima in 1917:

Oh My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love Thee - and I ask pardon for all those who do not believe, do not adore - do not trust and do not love Thee.

These are abbreviations of the Acts of Faith, of Hope and of Love - the three Theological Virtues received in Baptism. How many Catholics today can say the Act of Faith - the Act of Hope and the Act of Charity in their entirety?



 

The Absolute Necessity of the Six Days of Genesis

The modernists reserve a very special animosity for the literal, 24 hour - Days of Genesis One. It is not only the elements that are rejected - but the Order of their presentation in the narrative. Scott Hahn and his "school" make much of this ORDER as a literary device, reducing Genesis One to a merely literary decoration.


Some cosmology!


God is just no scientist!


It is true that St. Thomas and the medieval were the first to see this format of


Day 1 ---- Day 4

Day 2 ---- Day 5

Day 3 ---- Day 6



(Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, Genesis - page 18 - based on ST.I, q. 70, a.1)



However, this literary scheme is presented somewhat as a mere afterthought, as anyone can see who consults the Summa's Treatise on the Six Days, Part I, questions 65 through 74 – a mere afterthought to a really stupendous cosmology.


And, if we see the four ancient elements of Earth-Water-Air-Fire as the entire inanimate realm of the atomic elements with light, which St. Thomas defines as a quality of the first sensible body, then the literal meaning and the ORDER of the Six Days, reveals in a rather spectacular way, the absolute necessity for the Six Days, exactly as they are revealed to us in Genesis One. Test it out this way.


Suppose the “work” of Day 4 – were to have happened on Day 2, as the evolutionists would have it. The “work” of Day 4 had God fixing the celestial bodies – Sun, Moon, and Stars, in their places in the firmament and revolving around the central, fixed Earth. But on Day 2, the Earth was still covered with Water. Day 2 actually saw the distinction of the Waters above from the waters below, and the setting of the outermost limits of the boundaries of the Universe by its farthest-reaching spheres. So if the Sun, Moon and Stars began to function on Day 2 – instead of on Day 4 – their entire purpose would be thwarted – because dry land only appeared on Day 3 – along with the waters of Earth arranged in Seas. Only with Day 3 and its proper work – was the existence of Sun, Moon and Stars meaningful. Granted – the water cycle was quite different before the Flood and after the Flood. But this – too – would have been quite meaningless if Day 4 had followed directly from Day One.


All the elements are ordered to the great cycles – wherein the inanimate elements enter into the living, animate forms to perform their essential processes. If even one of the Six Days had been in another place, these wonderfully necessary cycles of interchange would have been radically disrupted, destroying the Order of the Universe and its unity. Try shifting them around for yourself. It just does not work.


God’s created order is not just better or best, it is necessary. And not only is the ORDER necessary, but the literal – 24 hour day is also absolutely necessary. Day 3 could not have lasted millions or billions of years without the Sun, Moon and Stars of Day 4 – because without the celestial bodies, there could be no carbon cycle, the interchange of elements causing photosynthesis. There could have been no nitrogen cycle – so necessary for the disposal of waste. The 24 hour day is as necessary as the Ordering of the Days. It is impossible to imagine the Divine “work” of Day 5 occurring after Day 6 or before Day 4, which would necessitate putting Day 6 after Day 4. This would “create” chaos!


Any understanding of the vital inter-relations of the elements and their cycles – reveals the absolute necessity for the literal 24 hour day and the ordering of the Six Days – just as revealed to us in Genesis One.


I challenge anyone to reveal a flaw in the above --- not in my poor presentation, but in the claim for the necessity of the Six Days.

The Natural Sciences

When St. Thomas points out that all the works of nature, meaning secondary causes, presuppose creation - he is making a very important point, and it is this: the scientist studies the processes of secondary causes, but not the Acts of Creation, that God did during the First Six Days of the World. During these first Six Days, God created the Substantial Forms of all His corporeal creatures. Only God can create, and what He created during the first Six Days were the bara-min, the created kinds of all things. The formal objects of the natural sciences are the processes, the functioning of these created substantial forms: plant kinds, animal kinds, man-kind. The form was given at creation. The nine categories of accidents, are what the natural scientist studies. These are quantity, (the science of mathematics), - (quality, sound, color, etc.) - agency and passivity (the science of motion, which is is the passing from potency to act) -- time which is the measurement of motion; for example, time is the measure of the motion from sunrise to sunset. Place - the locale and could be environment. Relation - relatedness can be taken as consanguinity, and this is how Aristotle understood it. But it can also refer to structural relations, as of the difficult atoms in a process such as photosynthesis. Habit is cloth and Posture is shape..e.g. geometry. 
 

The accidental properties of a Substantial Form are the formal objects of the natural sciences. It is for metaphysics and theology to study Substance. It is obvious how very far astray the natural sciences can go when the correct, metaphysical concept of Substance is lost. That is exactly what has happened today in all of the natural sciences. It is especially obvious that the science of physics has reduced itself to mathematics - that is quantity. 
 

Now, it is true that every corporeal or physical entity is a quantity - by the very nature of its being physical, that is, material, it is measurable and so - a quantity. The atom is a prime example. And since the atoms are the entities, whose interactions are the object of chemistry, there is much interchange in these two sciences. In fact, since the atoms constitute the material of ever physical being, physics and chemistry are the most basic of all the physical, natural sciences. But what is the substance in which the atoms inhere? 
 

That is the big question!
 

And only when this question is correctly answered, are the natural sciences able to fulfill their proper role of contemplating and describing the Creator's Work for His glory - and also, as a really lowly - in fact - the lowliest task of the natural sciences, to suggest some possible uses that discoveries of natural laws might be put. Hence, the useful arts.
 

I do not know enough of the history of technology, but it is common knowledge, I think, that the first of the useful arts arose with the discovery of certain metals and their properties. Technology rose first in making means of transportation, especially of ships. Look at the technology involved in the building of Noah's Ark, described in Genesis 6. Aristotle represents the highest degree of perfection in the natural sciences - without the aid of Divine Revelation. Based on his Organon:
 

Quantity - mathematics and all its branches, especially geometry.
 

Quality - the discovery of the electro-magnetic spectrum is the quantitative basis for all qualities of a merely physical nature, e.g. Newton's Optics. 
 

Agency and Disposed Passivity
 

All Secondary Causes, are Agents of Reproduction in the Life Sciences

The Hierarchy of the Sciences

Theology - Queen of the Sciences - The Science of God based on Divine Revelation and Tradition

Metaphysics - (First Philosophy) - Handmaid of Theology - A Natural Science of Being as such

Mathematics - based on quantity - basic interior of material being

Cosmology and Astronomy - Days One and Two in Genesis!

Physics and Chemistry - The Inanimate Elements as accidental forms (atomic) of the substance: Body of the Universe

All the Life Sciences and Geology - Earth Sciences - must see the Flood