Transforming Union

I am hearing on EWTN, only now and then, and from persons I cannot name, what I submit may be a rather serious heresy. It concerns not only the summit of mystical theology, the transforming union, but also the effect of our reception of Holy Communion. The reality of substance is crucial. What happens when we receive our Lord, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in Holy Communion is entirely a qualitative - which is to say - accidental union and not of the substance of the soul. The same is true of the mystical-spiritual transforming union. This is in no way to minimize the degree of perfection such a union signifies. It is seen only in the canonized Saints,(generally speaking). It requires, and or presupposes, heroic virtue. The sisters of St. Therese, clearly witnessed such heroism, in the last months especially, of Therese's life.

Read the published LAST CONVERSATIONS, for very obvious examples of the heroic virtue manifest in the transforming union. But the point I wish to emphasize - and I submit all to the judgment of Holy Mother Church, is that there is no substantial change in the human soul, in this transforming union, nor in the greatest effect possible of Holy Communion. Our souls remain substantially human. We are "divinized", only accidentally, not substantially. This is not to derogate the union, but only to point out that we do not become God, which would be heresy to believe. We do become God-like, in a degree that grows with our cooperation with Divine Grace. Transforming union is the summit of the spiritual life and is open to all who are called to a life of prayer. According to many spiritual authorities, this means everyone who is baptized! Another common error, and one not unrelated to that just discussed, is what happens to the food we eat. Food is of two kinds and they are quite different! Many plants transmit the vital principle or substantial form of their being - in seeds that we eat. The cereal grains such as wheat and nuts, like walnuts pecans etc. When these seeds enter our digestive tract - they do not sprout and begin to grow - as into a bean plant or stalk of wheat

Rather, they begin to disintegrate and reduce to the nutritive elements, such as amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, sugars and minerals, that our bodies utilize as vital nourishment. The point is - that the only substantial change that takes place is in the individual plant or tree, that - (eventually with the nut tree) - dies. We can say that the seed or grain as carrier of the plant's vital principle, dies in our digestive process. There is no substantial change in our bodies as a result of eating anything - even God Himself in Holy Communion. Where ordinary food is concerned, the individual plant and/or animal dies, and that is a substantial change for the individual - but not for the species, which continues to be transmitted by reproduction. Even in human reproduction, there is no substantial change. The ovum and the sperm are both cells of the male and female bodies. They are, therefore, accidental forms - not substantial forms. If they were substantial forms, they would refuse to unite. They do unite in reproduction, which is not a substantial change, but simply or complexly - the pro-creation of a new substantial form. The human being as conceptus - when God infuses the rational human and immortal soul into that tiny conceptus.

Incidentally, all virtues of the supernatural order, because they are entirely spiritual and thus unlike those human virtues of the natural order, have no basis in quantity. They are entirely qualitative and spiritual. This is why St. Bernard could say - that the only measure of our love for God is to love Him without measure. Of course, only in God, is every attribute infinite. Many saints tell us, that our own feeble virtue is potentially infinite - in that it strives to be without measure... especially when it comes to that greatest of all virtues, charity. All physical objects are measured by the electro-magnetic spectrum and the frequency they measure - according to it. Scripture tells us that God has ordered all things in measure, number and weight. (Wisdom 11:21). That is the physical and therefore quantitative. This same book of Wisdom (8:1) - tells us that Wisdom, which is the highest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit,... reacheth.. from end to end mightily,and ordereth all things sweetly. Might and sweetness are qualities, and if supernatural, that is, of Divine Grace, they cannot be measured. The Master assures us - that His yoke is sweet and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). All the sourness and all the heaviness that irks us, comes entirely from our self-love and self-centeredness.

So there is only one kind of substantial change in the natural order, and that is the death of the individual plant, animal or man. Our individual death does effect the substantial change of separation of soul from body. Soul and body, in man, form one substantial form, - one substance. Death is an awesome change, but take comfort from the Preface for the Mass for the Dead ....that those whom the certainty of death afflicts - may be consoled by the promise of future immortality. For thy faithful, O Lord... life is changed, - not taken away. The abode of this earthly dwelling being dissolved - an eternal dwelling is prepared in heaven. All other changes are accidental - involving the actions of those wonderfully versatile elements, whose obedient operations are beyond any human imagining for marvelous design. And yet, these accidental changes are all of the natural order.

The great miracle of Transubstantiation, is entirely supernatural, for the elements are mute. For the first and only instance - of all their wondrous arrangements - with reports therof, they must remain silent, and obediently cover the most stupendous event in all of creation, as they stand guard, as it were, over the transformation of lowly bread and wine - grain of the field and fruit of the vine - into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Redeemer. This is truly a change of substance - a transubstantiation that does not issue in death, but in divine and eternal Life. For by dying, He overcame our death, and by rising again - hath restored our life. (Preface for Easter). But the wise virgins took oil in their vessels - with the lamps. (Matthew 25:4.) This singular parable is specific for the Last Days - for it begins,"Then shall the kingdom of heaven be like to ten virgins - who taking their lamps, went forth to meet the Bridegroom and the Bride." (Matthew 25:1)

It is obviously full of symbols - which it is necessary for us to know and to practice - if we are to be among the wise virgins, who were ready when the Bridegroom came and went in with Him to the Marriage. And the door was shut. Our salvation is at stake - for those foolish virgins - who had no oil for their lamps and had run off to buy oil when the Bridegroom came - so that when they finally did arrive - they found the door shut to them. Not only that the Bridegroom Himself refused to open the door to them, because He did not know them. Knowing, in Scripture, always means the deepest and most intimate knowledge... spiritual as well as carnal. For virgins, this knowledge is entirely spiritual and even abhors the merely carnal. What are the lamps... what are the vessels and what is the oil? These are most important symbols of spiritual realities and signify things necessary for salvation.

Now, please check me on the following, because I do not have access to my reference books. I think it is the consensus of Catholic commentators that the lamp, with its shape, its wick and the flame of its fire is Supernatural, that is, Baptismal - Theological Faith, Hope and Charity. These three virtues are necessary for salvation. Since it is the oil that burns.. the oil is charity. Hope is the wick- and the lamp is Faith. The three theological virtues are so closely related, as almost to be one instead of three. And yet, St. Thomas is clear that an abstract kind of Faith, yet fastened to the will, also can exist without Hope and Charity. But it is certainly a precarious kind of Faith. Some, especially men, are said to cling with a persistent Faith, to the intercessory power of our Blessed Mother Mary - and not without good reason. What are the vessels that apparently only the wise virgins carried with the lamps? The lamps of the foolish virgins went out for lack of this extra oil carried in vessels with the lamps.... that is, in addition to the lamps.

In these Last Days of Darkness, everyone will need lamps just to survive spiritually - but only the wise ones carry extra oil in vessels with the lamps. Why only 10? And why virgins? What worse fate can one imagine than to hear those awful words of our Divine Lord: " I know ye not!" Jesus, Mary, Joseph, save us for Thy Glory.

Kyrie, Eleison!

Secondary Causes

The most important thing to know about Secondary Causes, is that they cannot cause anything that was not first caused and created, ex nihilo, and in toto by the Primary Efficient and Final cause of all things during the first Six Days of the World, when God established His Order of Creation to be preserved throughout time in the Order of Generation.

It is in this Order of Generation that Secondary Causes perpetuate by physical transmission or reproduction - the Substantial Forms that God created -- as only He can, so create the original and immutable forms of all corporeal beings. Secondary causes have received the power of agency in order to transmit the Substantial Form - which Form determines all the processes or functions of that form.

Dr. Stephen M. Barr, in his 2011 pamphlet, SCIENCE AND RELIGION: THE MYTH OF CONFLICT, - page 39 quotes eminent Catholic scientist Peter E. Hodgson on the view of John Henry Newman:

... Newman believed that the Creator lets His work develop through secondary causes - which have imparted certain laws to matter... millions of ages ago, which have surely and precisely worked out.... in the course of those long ages, those effects which He, from the first, proposed... Thus, Mr. Darwin's theory need not be atheistical, be it true or not.... it may simply be suggesting a large idea of Divine Prescience and Skill. (Ignatius Press, 2011.)

The phrase "be it true or not", saves Newman from total commitment to Darwinism, but not Dr. Hodgson nor Dr. Barr, both of whom are, to all appearances from their published works, committed theistic evolutionists. But it all hinges upon a colossal error in the life sciences, leading to a very false idea, even heretical, about the nature of God. The error in the natural sciences is that functions and processes operate in search of form, as it were. But the opposite is true. It is absolutely necessary, biologically, physically, metaphysically and theologically that Form come before process and function. It is a case of Dr. Michael Behe's mouse trap. All the parts are necessary if it is to catch a mouse. Now Dr.Barr says several very good and true things in this little pamphlet - as when he defines miracles as "extraordinary events.... (that presupposes that there is a natural order that determines what is naturally possible and what is not..." (pp.10-11)

Now it is just as certain that secondary causes presuppose a first, Primary Efficient and Final Cause, as it is -- that miracles presuppose a natural order.... that a miracle temporarily suspends. Because the natural order, and its in-built laws, are but the Order of Creation described as established in the First Six Days of the World and preserved, with accidental variations, throughout time in the Order of Generation. But Dr. Barr commits a colossal error - and he certainly cannot document it when he says:

For the Catholic Church, the physical processes by which plants and animals formed, like those by which stars and planets formed, are a matter of natural "secondary causes" and for the natural sciences, not theology, to concern themselves with. (page 40.) I underlined these words because this is the crucial error: science can only see the processes that take place by and in the Forms of created beings, that is, processes that only began once the Forms had been created in toto by God, during the First Six Days of the World and then transmitted by reproduction in the Order of Generation. These original forms, the created kinds of Genesis One are immutable creations, as history proves, except for minor variations. Some variations, such as those within the canine and feline kinds, may seem more than minor...- from lion to domestic cat or from Jack London's "White Fang" - to my pet Fido - but they can interbreed, and it is for the taxonomist to discover these boundaries of the Genesis kind. But Saint Thomas is very emphatic - that while it may not be for theology to oversee the ordinary work of the scientists, it is for theology to judge of the scientists conclusions - in the light of Divine Revelation. (See question 1 of the Summa - where the sciences are all discussed in relation to Theology.)

And I must add that it is most certainly - not - "the Catholic Church" - that teaches anything remotely resembling Darwinian evolution by secondary causes. St.Thomas is equally clear and emphatic that in creation - God used no instrumental or secondary causes - because creation of all the first substantial forms was a work done by Acts of God alone. No processes at all were involved in God's Creative Acts. He spoke and they were. He commanded and they came into existence.(Psalm 32.) This evolutionism propagated by prominent men of science - like Dr.Steven Barr and Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer, is the major error of the synthesis of all heresies that Pope St. Pius X condemned as Modernism in 1907 - in his encyclical Pascendi and his syllabus Lamentabili. What scientists - like Dr.Barr observe through their high-powered telescopes is not the formation of anything -- but rather the motions of disintegration - things coming apart - not coming together to form intelligible objects. God did that in the beginning, just as Genesis One narrates. God created all things ex nihilo and in toto. The in toto means that all things issued from His Creative Word - instantaneously, fully formed, mature and ready to begin to function according to their created Forms - Substances - Natures and Kinds.

Genesis 1-3 is full of all the real, scientific knowledge - any professional scientist could possibly wish for. But he must have eyes to see and ears to hear, as Our Divine Lord so often admonishes.

(For the places in the Summa of St. Thomas, please see this writer's, THIRTY THESES AGAINST THEISTIC EVOLUTION.)

Cognition - And Other Issues - Final Part

 

What, then, finally of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars? Are they, each one, a Substantial Form? Like the Earth with its waters, the Sun, Moon and Stars fulfill the 3^rd requirement: they cannot be subsumed. They seem to be incommunicable, complete and autonomous. But are they? Do they not depend in a rather absolute way – upon the firmament in which they have been set on Day Four? The waters cannot exist without some kind of container, such as the ocean’s shores, the river’s banks, the firmament for those above? It seems to me that all of these larger parts, as well as the atomic and other particles, require a larger Substance in which they inhere as to be what they are: accidental forms, not substantial. Did not St. Thomas recognize this implicitly when he said: “The world is composed of the whole of its matter. For it is not possible for there to be another earth than this one – since every earth would naturally be carried to this central one, wherever it was. The same applies to the other bodies which are part of the world. (ST,I,q.47,a3. - See answers to all the objections. “No agent intends material plurality as the end…”)

 

My present thinking about organ donation and related topics has not changed since previous statements. All “scientific” experiments involving human body parts – I find extremely repulsive, and I truly believe they are all deeply immoral. It is agreed, I think, amongst Traditional thinkers, that “brain death” ought to be considered illegal as a test of body death. All organ transplants require a living organ. The implications are quite obvious. I even question now, the very common giving of blood. And I find the issue of frozen embryos highly questionable. If an adult human body is frozen, death certainly ensues. But embryos are routinely frozen and thawed and implanted!?! I wonder if we have the whole truth here? Maybe there is some truth in the medieval idea of the vegetative soul preceding the sensitive and the sensitive preceding the rational. Cardinal Mercier of Louvain, (and the villain in the so-called mandate to accommodate Thomism to modern science’s “method and data”). (See this writer’s “A Great Betrayal”) --- also was a proponent of the medieval embryology, as opposed to the modern pro-life consensus that at the time of conception, i.e., fertilization, the soul is present, when the genetic complement is complete. 
 

The method of modern science is the exclusion, the absolute ruthless exclusion, of any relation or reference of creatures to the Creator-God. And the “data” of modern science is the imposed ideology of evolution, which is also and just as ruthlessly, that is, categorically ruled to be the given that replaces the real and true givens of the First Principles of all knowledge. The marvel is that this great deception has succeeded for so long to convince so many people that it is the truth about reality. I think it is evidence, before all else, of the power of the authority of knowledge. This is Lucifer’s Masterpiece: the evolutionary worldview – starting with the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo. With the fixed-central Earth dislodged and sent whirling and twirling like any other planet, the entire cosmological order of reality was bound to produce a chaos in men’s minds. It could not disturb the Created Order, which continues the same as God created it and fixed it on Days One, Two, Three and Four – in preparation for Adam as the prototype of the God-Man Jesus Christ, Our Lord and His Immaculate Mother Mary, the Second Adam and Second Eve to redeem us from the ruinous fall of our first parents. It remains to demonstrate – that the elements are accidental forms, NOT substantial forms. This is best done, I believe, by showing how they operate – always – as the model properties of one or the other of Aristotle’s nine categories of accidents of some substance.

 

I think it was John Locke who first made a big To-Do over what he called Galileo’s secondary qualities, such as color and sound. This issue was also first brought into prominence for me when one of the boys I was home-schooling, one who had been through the first six grades in a public school, refused absolutely to believe that there was any objective reality to color or to sound. Color, he was convinced, and so remains to this day – I suppose – is due entirely to the rods and cones in the eye. With sound, it is entirely to the action of the apparatus in the ear. The way he put it was that if a tree fell in the forest, there was NO sound at all, if there was no one to perceive it. What must be emphasized, therefore, is the objective reality of dimensive and continuous matter or atomic motion. The particles of material forms are always in motion, and this motion, whether measured and perceived by anyone or not, takes place as a result - as an effect of the action of some material – secondary cause, created by God. The same is true of the colors generated by the photons of light in the air. It is the finite character of the Prime or Primary Matter of the Universe – what St. Thomas designates when he says that the “world, that is, the Universe, is composed of the Whole of its matter”, (ST. I, q.47, a.3) – it is the potencies contained in this immensity – the virtually infinite number of potentialities for all material-corporeal beings, including Man – that determine, in conjunction with each specific form – the essential nature of each, in the Order of Generation, but always preserving the substantial forms of the Order of Creation.

 

Agency and Passivity are the two categories that follow quantity and quality in the list of nine categories of accidental forms. And they designate the areas of secondary causality. There are two areas most clearly illustrative of secondary causality and the production of accidental forms. One is the transmission by generation of the substantial forms of each physical species. A. in plants of the cereal forms – the flowering forms and the tree forms. B. in all the marine forms and the birds. C. in all land animal forms and D. of man-kind.

 

In all of these areas, the Substantial Forms of the Order of Creation are transmitted by the male-female reproductive process which produces new Substantial Forms, without any substantial change in the parents. The same is true in the areas of making things wherein the beings who are Substantial Forms, make things of beauty and of use. They are Secondary Causes, acting under God’s primary efficient Causality. (See the 2^nd Way of St. Thomas). In the area of Art, the maker or cause is a Substantial Form, and the product or effect is an accidental form. In the Inanimate domain of the elements, we have innumerable examples of agency and passive receptivity on the part of the elements, illustrating the operations of accidental forms amongst themselves – obeying the laws of the Substance into which they have been subsumed. Here, I need the help of a physicist and chemist to illustrate the many operations of physical and chemical change on the part of the elements – especially as they climb up the ladder of the Hierarchy of Being, from one-celled plants and animals, to the human body in its fallen state, and in the perfect integral Sacred Humanity of the God-Man and His Immaculate Mother Mary. The Category of Relation is one that needs special attention. For Aristotle, it meant consanguinity. But it can be extended to designate any inter-relatedness between beings, such as our relatedness to the environment and to other human beings. The notion of value, under the new “science of aetiology, (please check me on this), is an attempt, in my opinion, to replace the notions of natural and un-natural, of virtue and vice – or sin with a notion of “value”.

 

(ST, I-II, q.31, a.7)

 

In an article “asking” whether any pleasure is not natural? St. Thomas answers that in man, what is natural can be taken in two ways: One being pleasures that are experienced when one acts in accord with reason. For instance, it is natural to man to take pleasure in contemplating the Truth and in doing works of virtue. The second being – and here I invite the reader to read for himself – what St. Thomas says and especially his use of the term – connatural, which I have seen printed as connatural and I do not think they are the same. St. Thomas relates this second kind of pleasure to an individual deviation, disorder or corruption of nature in an individual and peculiar to him as individual. Such are from the body, from some ailment, or from an evil temperament – or on the part of the soul. Thus from custom – some take pleasure in cannibalism or in the unnatural intercourse of men and beasts, or other such things, which are not in accord with human nature. (ST.I-II, q.31, a.7)

 

It is in objection (2) that the objector quotes from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, v.5 – whatever is violent causes grief, for whatever is against nature is violent. Therefore, nothing which is unnatural can give pleasure. And as noted above, St. Thomas points out that some individuals do take a kind of con-natural, or really unnatural, pleasure in certain actions related to nature, but in an improper or unnatural or con-natural way. Well, the homosexuals, lovers of animals, and other lovers of the unnatural, could take this text from St. Thomas as their basic “justification”, I suppose, as Modernists are prone to do. I prefer to use such terms as unnatural and perverse – rather than connatural or co-natural. But I see St. Thomas’ point. The Objector was simply denying that even some actions so un-natural as to be perverse and mortally sinful in God’s sight – as St. Thomas surely demonstrates in his discussions of sin in the human act – are still so close to the natural pleasure as to offer to some individuals of a corruption in their body or in their soul, a kind of substitute for the natural pleasure. And he gives example of those who in a fever, taste sweet as bitter, those of an undisciplined, evil temperament – may commit totally irrational acts, such as eating dirt or hot coals, etc. This digression was occasioned by an interested reader who asked for more on proper and improper relations.

 

In the area of the natural sciences, Aristotle’s category of relation- I have extended to designate the relatedness between the atoms that causes them to be attracted or repulsed to or by each other. I suppose it would come under the valency of the electron and the bonding conditions. Here is where so much research needs to be done by those with expertise in such fields as pure physics and all the areas of chemistry in the life sciences. Time and Place are the next two categories and I have written at length on both of these in previous works. Time, was created on Day One as it began with the first motion of a physical particle. Its measurement by man was determined by God Himself with the inauguration of Days and the movements of the Sun, Moon and Stars. Adam, and his sons, made great use of the constellations by imposing the primary figures of the Redemption on these starry configurations. See Joseph Seiss – THE GOSPEL IN THE STARS. Any attempt to replace this realistic notion of time and of time coupled with space, in some kind of continuum, is only Einstein’s mental-mathematical construct - a work of science fiction at best and at worst.

 

As for Place, the Body of the Universe is, itself, one vast, immense created place for all of God’s creatures, including the Angels! On this subject, with special reference to HEAVEN AS A PLACE, see the excellent article of that title, by Robert Siscoe, in the Catholic Family News, for September of 2013. Posture and Clothing relate specifically to those accidents or properties of human beings that are accidental in the most superficial and external sense, but could be found quite relevant to someone deeply and thoroughly versed in physics, and the differing geometric shapes that the atoms assume in their many operations. In fact, the Platonists of the Pythagorean tradition – not only discovered the “music of the spheres” – but also the (5) Platonic solids in their emphasis upon the mathematical marvels – evidenced in Creation, for we know from Divine Revelation – that God hath ordered all things by measure, number and weight….mightily and sweetly. (Wisdom 1:8 and 11:21.)

Cognition - And Other Issues - Part 2

Based on the authority of St. Thomas and the First Principles incorporated in his 5 ways of demonstrating God’s Existence, and on the experiential fact that the human mind in its very First acts of Cognition, which are non-conceptual and judgmental, that is, affirming BEING as such….maintain that the human intellect and will, is conformed by its very nature to the Reality of the extra-mental world and its existence. Then comes the affirmation of the fact that things not only exist – but exist as certain identifiable things, not only identifiable but reasonable. These First Principles have been labeled and analyzed as: 
 

The Principle of non-contradiction, or the Principle of Being as being and not non-being, which are contradictory, so that it is absolutely certain that a thing cannot be and not-be at the same time. And given all circumstances, there cannot be a horse here and now and this same animal, we are told, some millions of years ago, was a different kind of animal – that changed into its present form and is still in the process of changing into some other kind of animal in the future. In other words, all things are becoming and there is no permanent or stable form of physical being anywhere in the history of the physical world. This philosophy of becoming violates the First Principle of non-contradiction, or, to state it in more experiential terms, the evolutionary philosophy of becoming – violates the First Principle, which apprehends and affirms by an affirmative judgment of the mind, vis a vis the Real world, that some things, based on the Second First Principle of
 

Identity….that some things that are identifiable by their nature or essence – are fixed in that essence or nature and will not change over time.

 

This, in turn, is based on a third First Principle, called the Principle of Sufficient Reason or Intelligibility. It should be evident by now that the First Principles are so related, as almost to be one instead of several.

 

The Principle of Sufficient Reason or Intelligibility, immediately gives rise to the Principle of Causality, and this is where the most popular principle emerges, for example, in the famous Argument from Design, made popular by Anglican minister William Paley and his book, NATURAL THEOLOGY, (ca 1830.) Paley actually represents a kind of ragged remnant of the great medieval synthesis, and specifically the 5^th way of proving God’s existence in the Second question of the Summa of St. Thomas. But what is most enduring throughout this history of the de-constructioning of the great Medieval synthesis, is the fact that the human mind has not changed in its innate and created ability to affirm and to analyze the structures of the real world, in which we live and move and have our being – our very existence from God the Creator. I have just been reminded that action or the practical side of life, flows directly from our intellectual “vision” of what life is all about. In other words, this is why Our Divine Lord told us that we must seek First the Kingdom of God, and then, all other things will be added. (Matt 19: 16-22)

 

Yes, because our nature is wounded by the consequences of Adam’s Original Sin, we suffer from a darkening of the intellect, a weakening of the will, and a strong inclination to evil on the part of our passions or emotions. This is the life-long struggle of spiritual “warfare” – to acquire dominion over our senses and the necessary discipline of our passions. As discussed previously, the whole emphasis of Eastern Catholic spirituality is to regain the state of innocence enjoyed by Adam and Eve before the Fall. But an important point to be emphasized is that spirituality must flow from, and/or be based upon, the truths of dogmatic theology. How can there be a true spirituality based on a “synthesis” of heresies that is evolutionary modernism? One sees the disastrous results of such attempts in the degrading examples of those who emphasize human behavior patterns similar to those of animals.

 

Let me get back to my analogy of the Body of the Universe with the human body.

 

The human body is ruled by the one – substantial form of the rational-spiritual form that permeates every particle of the human body, until the separation of soul and body at death. St. Thomas says that the soul contains the body, not the body the soul, as the Platonists hold. The soul is in the body as containing it, not as contained by it. (ST,I,q52, a.1) I suggest that what takes the place of the soul in the Body of the Universe is electricity in its most refined and invisible forms. For example, the very recent observations of what is called entanglement, involves electrons “communicating” over long distances (by telephone ?!?)! -- What is between them is assumed to be a vacuum, and so, the modern scientist holds this up as an example of action at a distance. But this is a premature conclusion. Aristotle held, and it is absolutely true – that nature abhors a vacuum. There is no such thing in nature as a vacuum. What is between the electrons in “entanglement” is the potency in the Prime Matter of the Body of the Universe, because the electrons are always in motion and motion is defined by Aristotle and St. Thomas as the passage from potency to act wrought by an agent-electron in a “patient-electron” so disposed to receive such action. There is no vacuum. There is only the passage of the process involving the change from potency to act – wrought by some agent. There must always be the agent in any motion – an agent with an end or goal in view.

 

The “memory” that the moderns are attributing to the electrons is simply the manifestation of a seeming intelligence in the inanimate elements, but is the set of physical laws created for the elements, as of physics and chemistry – the laws that the empiricists discover over the years, as Boyle’s Law about gases (Boyle died in 1691) and the many laws about the elements and how they can bond, that is their valency. This is obviously what is involved in entanglement. So much for the Soul of the Body of the Universe. It has no soul, but like the plants and animals, although on a much lower, because totally inanimate level in the Hierarchy of Being, it has a material-formal principle – which I suggest is some form of electricity, permeating the Universe, as its Prime Matter and that of all Substantial and accidental forms in the processes of change that govern all things. St. Thomas’ 5^th Way explains how beings with no intellectual soul perform actions that seem to be intelligent. This applies a fortiori to the elements, particles and photons of the inanimate realm of action. Now for those parts of the Body of the Universe that most seem to be substances existing in themselves and not inhering in a larger substance: There are the Earth, Water, certain elements such as gold, and the celestial bodies of the sun, moon and stars. It seems there may be an analogy with the brain, the heart and the other “vital organs”. But though the analogy is crude, at best, there does not seem to be one.

 

Human Body ------Body of the Universe

 

Brain/Intellect – gives light ------- Sun, Moon and Stars

 

Heart – Will – circulation of blood --------- Earth and Waters

 

In both cases, the parts shown are certainly essential for the proper functioning of the Body as One system informed by one Substantial Form in the case of the human body. But is it also the case in the Body of the Universe? Is there but ONE Substantial Form – or are there several?

 

I maintain that the Earth, for example, first of all, is NOT a planet orbiting the sun, but rather, is the center of the Universe, and therefore analogous in some ways ,to the heart in the human body. But while the Earth does not move, as the human heart pumps the blood throughout the human body, the Earth is the place where all the rivers and oceans distribute the vital-for-life waters. And all the rivers flow down to some larger sea and eventually, all the rivers of a continent flow into one of the great oceans or gulfs. The analogy is even cruder with the Brain and the Sun, Moon and Stars. In fact, the analogy ends with that of light. I submit that the tendency to see gold and other elements as substances is due to the fact that objects of great beauty, or value, or use are made with them. But St. Thomas teaches quite emphatically, that all art forms are accidental forms. No matter how beautiful the cathedral’s architecture, or the sculptor’s statue, or the painter’s canvas, or the composer’s symphony – all objects and forms of artistic work are man-made. As such, the efficient cause is a man or woman – a human being acting as a secondary cause.  The first efficient cause is always God the Creator – Who created the materials used by the artist on one of the Days of Creation Week. (See this writer’s Study of Beauty.) All of technology, of which men are so proud today, is but a useful exploitation of the materials and elements God created in the beginning of time. Every so-called “substance” of human invention and artistry can be traced to something that God created on one of the First Six Days of the World.

 

But what of the Earth itself? Does it fulfill the four criteria of a Substantial Form?

 

It could be said to be complete in itself - containing all that is necessary for its earthly perfection. But does it really? Is it really complete and perfect without the Heavens that surround it, especially the Sun and Moon?

 

Is the Earth autonomous as to its existence? Again, it needs the Sun and Moon and Waters to be complete and perfect.

 

But all living things and the Earth also, do possess this requirement: the Earth cannot be subsumed by another being. We must go to the atomic elements, to the sub-atomic particles like the electrons, and to the photons of light to find created beings that can be subsumed by another being.

 

This category rightly belongs to logic and linguistic analysis – (Not necessary here. The 4^th category is that of the grammatical subject.)

Cognition- And Other Issues....Part 1

I have been asked to expand upon the processes of cognition, (knowledge=science), with direct reference to my views of cosmology, or, more specifically, what I call my Catholic cosmology, to distinguish it from that of the evolutionary Big Bang cosmology. First of all, I must beg the indulgence of anyone reading these papers. I am confined, (I won't say imprisoned) to a nursing home - with no way to document my statements, since my library is in storage. And so, because I write from memory, please check what I say with my previous papers and the reference I give there. Some readers may be familiar with the work of Bernard Lonergan. I am not at all conversant with his work, and so, I cannot speak in any way about it. I speak entirely out of the context of such Neo-Scholastics as Father Reginald Garigou-Lagrange, O.P., Brother Benignus, Father Celestine Bittle and Father Charles A. Hart. I am most indebted to the extensive work of lay Thomist historian Etienne Gilson. And finally, last but certainly not least, Dr. James Craig La Driere and Father (Dr.) William Joseph Rooney. Both R.I.P. These latter two professors were the major directors of Graduate programs in English literature at the Catholic Univ.of America in Washington DC, during the 1940's and 1950's, and well into the 1960's - when the proponents of Structuralism, based on the Thomistic principles of Matter and Form, were replaced by the De-Constructuralism of ---I cannot recall his full name - but any account of recent literary criticism will advert to this big change in literary studies world-wide.

I have also been urged recently by someone really more competent than myself when it comes to physics and especially chemistry - to demonstrate the assumed truth of my cosmology. I have just been re-reading my Litany of the Creator, and on page 86 of the handwritten copy, I have this statement: "Ultimately, all beings or physical existing entities, must come to this first Substantial Form, and the Material-Formal Cause of all material being." In this Litany, first written during the Lent and Paschaltide of the year 2010, I was still referring to the Body of the Universe as the Ethereal Substance. This term is cumbersome, but does designate the quintessence of Aristotle, which he termed the aether, anglicized as ether. And Aristotle's ether - I believe - is an essential constituent of the Body of the Universe. It is made up of those particulate entities - formerly recognized as the medium necessary for the operations of ALL physical beings - but invisible and perhaps, in Aristotle's mind, even insensible. And this reveals, indeed, the very point at which we must, of necessity, distinguish between the spiritual and the material. I based my conviction on the importance of this real distinction on the work of Henri Van Laer, a Dutch scientist, who insisted that ALL physical motion is local - because it takes place in the medium, which must also be physical in order to preserve the radical difference between the spiritual beings of God and of the Angels, and the inanimate physical beings of the atoms. There is no action at a distance, that is, there is always some physical contact between the two beings acting and reacting.

Does not the telephone prove this? There is actual, physical and successively, local contact, amounting to immediacy, much like the instantaneous "speed" of light, between the sounds of my voice and the voice of the one at the other end of the phone line, wherever that may be! Back to my quote from the Litany. What I have and had in mind, there is or was to trace the action of any atom or compound to its ultimate source in a Substantial Form, assuming, as I am, that all atomic and molecular structures are accidental forms of the Body of the Universe, which is the Substantial Form in which they necessarily inhere. The Body of the Universe is necessarily the only corporeal or physical Substantial Form that does not depend directly upon another physical being for its very physical life. I do not say existence - because God alone and directly is the Cause of every being's existence. And so it is also with the Body of the Universe. God alone maintains it in existence and in its physical being as a whole, with all of its particles, atoms, photons and larger parts. Here, I think, the analogy with the human body may be helpful.

The Medievals made much of the difference between the celestial bodies and the sub-lunar terrestrial bodies. And here in 1 Corinthians 15:38-41, there is also one of several New Testament confirmations of Genesis 1-5 and the very important distinction and immutability of the substantial forms created during Creation Week - just as narrated in Genesis One. St. Paul says: "and there are bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial. But one is the glory of the celestial and another of the terrestrial. One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars, for star differeth from star in glory. (See Dr. Jason Lisle on this.) So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption - it shall rise in incorruption...." Before these verses, St. Paul says: "....to every seed its proper body. All flesh is not the same flesh: but one is the flesh of men, another of beasts, another of birds, another of fishes...." (1 Cor.15:38-43)

I could not wish for a better verification from Holy Scripture of the radical destination of the substantial forms that God created in the plant seeds and in the flesh of men, of beasts, of birds and of fishes on Days 5 and 6 of Creation Week. And there is also an implicit, or at least, an allowance for the admission that the celestial bodies of the sun, moon and stars are of quite - radically different matter than the bodies of earth and water. There is also confirmation of a point that needs to be emphasized by Catholic scientists. I had occasion to correct a Catholic scientist who was accepting the fusion of hydrogen and helium as a process to make the heat and light of the sun. It is imperative to resist any sort of process where God's Acts of Creation and Making during the first Six Days are concerned. This is not an eccentricity of my Catholic cosmology. It is a most important point of dogmatic truth. When God created Water on Day One, hydrogen and oxygen were present in their proper quantity and ratio. The same is true of hydrogen and helium in the sun. God created these forms in toto. And it was just as necessary for the forms made of the elements in their inanimate state, in Earth, Water, Air and Fire, as it was for the Bombardier Beetle to have the Form in toto before any processes could begin. A great deceit of the evolutionists is to con the public into believing that the “pathways” --- that is, the processes going on during development in the transmission of all substantial forms, is the same as the evolutionists “pathways” in his changing of species due to the work of “natural selection” or mutations. I had occasion to see this deception in action in my analysis of The Evolution Controversy by two professors from Christendom College, and which I had the temerity to entitle – The Resolution of the Evolution Controversy. Please consult it, and be on the lookout for these deceptive “pathways” in action by the Luciferian deceits of evolutionists.

Now please allow me to draw upon the analogy of the Body of the Universe with the human body. Keeping in mind that all analogies “limp” – because there is never a perfect correspondence between forms in the different grades of the hierarchy – but only enough similarity to clarify. It may have been Blessed Hildegard of Bingen who made famous the imagery of Man as the Microcosm, but I believe it was a common theme in the earlier Fathers and Doctors of the Church. And please remember, I have no access to my usual reference books. Recall, first of all, that the Body of the Universe has no soul. The idea of a “world soul” – is Platonic or in the Platonic tradition. It is not Aristotelian or Thomistic. But this immense Body of the Universe, besides having virtually – innumerable – accidental forms in the areas of identifiable and quantifiable structures in each of the Grades of the Hierarchy of Being, also has parts that consist of a unity of particles that are strongly tempting us to label these parts as Substances. In the human body, such parts are the “vital organs” – the brain, heart, kidneys, liver and even the organs of sense, such as eyes, ears, etc. But the criteria of Substantial Form will always prove the “litmus test’ to distinguish. The current debate over brain-death in organ donation is a good example. Let us begin with Cognition and an article from the Summa (ST, I, q.47, a.3). St. Thomas says that only those can assert that many worlds exist – who do not acknowledge any ordaining wisdom, but rather believe in chance, as Democritus did, and who said that this world, besides an infinite number of other worlds, was made from a casual, i.e., concourse of atoms.

But the mind of the normal, honest man sees and affirms as a given, that is, self-evident – and therefore – undemonstrable, that this world is one by the unity of order, whereby some things are ordered to others. But St. Thomas did demonstrate that all things created by God have a relation of order to each other and to God Himself. This is his 4^th Way of proving, that in demonstrating the existence of God from the evidence of the Hierarchical Order of all things. There can be no ORDER without inequality, the differing Grades of Perfection manifest in the World of Nature.

Why Cosmology Is So Important

Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., in his devotional classic, DIVINE INTIMACY, (Perseverance, #293) - speaks of the instability of matter, as opposed to the stability of spirit:

"We are not angels, we are human beings. The angel, a pure spirit, is stable by nature. If he makes a resolution, he holds to it, but this is not the case with us. We, being composed of spirit and matter, must suffer the consequences of the instability and fluctuations of the latter. Hence it becomes so difficult for us to be perfectly constant in the good...(p.879).

It is precisely within this ever-moving material-cause - conjoined to the stability of the formal cause of the body of the universe, that we find a physical manifestation of the stability of the spirit - which is God Himself, His Holy Ghost, Divine Grace, and His life in our own souls. St. Paul says that in Him, we live and move, and have our being. St. Thomas explains this as God's efficient-final power of Causality, which alone sustains the Universe as a whole, in being. Not every soul is in the state of Grace - but every living soul informing a physical body, is maintained in existence by God's power. And so it is also with the Body of the Universe.

This body, created on Day One, is a purely physical-material Body with no soul, but constituted entirely by the inanimate elements - the particles and photons that the modern physicists and chemists study with their immensely sophisticated instruments. Since the Copernican revolution, the Body of the Universe is no longer seen or felt to be even a relatively stable environment for mankind, and the rest of creation, in the descending hierarchy of beings below him. Before Copernicus and his popularizing disciple Galileo, plus the concourse of revolutionary figures that arose during the 16th and 17th centuries, the universe was trustingly perceived as terra firma within the great and grand hierarchical Order of the Angels, who were charged with keeping the celestial bodies, and their beneficent influence on the sub-lunar world - in their proper periodic motions around the immovable earth. But the Copernican revolution changed all of that, and because Copernicus attacked the Cosmology, the very environment of our living being - it gave rise to that "synthesis of all heresies" - which is evolutionary Modernism as defined, described and condemned by Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili of 1907. And this "synthesis of all heresies" can only be corrected and replaced by the synthesis of all truths, which is represented so well by the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas.

In his Summa, St. Thomas demonstrates the importance of the entire Natural Order for Theology. Truth is One, which means that all particular and general truths relate to one another in some way. There can be no real conflict or inconsistency between a truth of the natural order, the moral order, the principles of Metaphysics and the Truths of Faith based on the literal meanings of the Holy Scriptures. An example of this, that is routinely overlooked in modern times, is the institution of marriage. This institution is established for all time in Genesis 2:18-25 and implicitly in Genesis 1:27-28. The words of Adam describe the natural union of man and woman in the consummation of the vowed agreement or covenant/contract, especially the "two in one flesh". The Church has always taught that Our Divine Lord raised marriage to the level of a supernatural sacrament - replete with all the necessary graces a married couple need to save their souls and accomplish the primary purpose of marriage - which is the procreation and education of children - explicit in God's command to increase and multiply. It is obvious that when the institution of marriage in Genesis - and the Church's raising of the natural union to the supernatural level - when these basic facts of Creation are forgotten - the entire natural order is threatened, as it is today. And why is Genesis forgotten? Because of a false science, - what St. Paul calls "knowledge falsely so-called" (1 Tim.6:20), and what Pope St. Pius X condemned as evolutionary Modernism. And it all started when Galileo insisted that the Holy Scriptures erred when they made the Earth the IMMOBILE center of the Universe.

The most obvious and extensive conflict of truth and error, in modern times, is that between the entire evolutionary world-view and the world-view of Scripture. Both worldviews begin with Creation. And the most obvious - and I believe probably the most important difference - yet the one most misunderstood and misrepresented is this:

Creation by God is an Act - absolutely transcendent and involving NO PROCESS whatsoever - nor any instant of time. Creation by God is an a-temporal, transcendent Act. But, "creation" by evolution - or in the evolutionary world view, is all process - taking millions and billions of years - as if the impossible could become possible in time! This is what makes the evolutionary world-view the greatest Myth of all time. In fact, it is Lucifer's Masterpiece. The ancient myths of all the earliest city-states and civilizations were corruptions of the Primordial Revelation given to Adam, and edited by Moses, who discerned, by divine inspiration, the real words of God and the eye-witness accounts of the Patriarchs, from the later fictional embellishments of the original events by such poets as the author of the Gilgamesh epic, etc. All of this has been well documented. One of the best accounts I know of is that of Henry M. Morris in the introductory material to his book - THE GENESIS RECORDS.

I am certain that one day in the future, theologians and following them, all natural scientists, will find the order of the literal - 24 hour - six days of Creation Week - the first six days of all time, to be absolutely necessary, not only in their ORDER, but also in the "work" of each Day - for a correct and intellectually satisfying basis for all the sciences. This concerns primarily the fact that what God did on each of the six days - was to create, ex nihilo and in toto, the substantial form of each being that He intended to endure until the End of Time and even glorified into Eternity. Thus, He definitely intended at least three plant forms to endure:

The grasses and cereals
The flowering plants
And the trees - vines, e.g. grape.

The animals and plants of the marine world and the birds

The land animals - insects - reptiles and mammals

Mankind

For the sciences, the formal object of each science is determined, defined and limited by the form - the formal principle of that science. It may be instructive to inject a personal note here. In graduate school at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC...in the 1950's - I elected to take literary theory as my special field of study. My doctoral dissertation was a defense of Jonathan Swift's - A TALE OF A TUB, as a primarily poetic - rather than a rhetorical construct. I was basing this view on what I perceived to be the formal principle of this literary structure. I held that the end achieved by the TALE - was a poetic - rather than a rhetorical purpose. It did not even attempt to persuade or move to action certain rhetorical purposes! What it did accomplish, was to produce in the reader or listener - an apprehension of simple contemplative, that is, non-conceptual pleasure in the structure as such, the FORM produced by the juxtaposition of the three figures in the TUB and their adventures. A similar and more spectacular example is John Milton's PARADISE LOST, wherein the poet's avowed and explicit purpose was to "justify the Ways of God to men?, but the purpose actually achieved - is one that necessarily must transcend any Truth values - because the end achieved is simple - aesthetic pleasure in the architectonic structures within structures that constitute the almost superhuman building and Formal being of this linguistic construct, or what some consider to be an aesthetic monstrosity! And so it is with the Formal Principle or Cause of every TRUE Substance in nature - created by God on one of those First Six Days of the World.           


The Formal Principle, like any principle or cause, is invisible, hidden, but the primary operative - in any being - because it is the cause that - under God as First Cause always, causes a being to be, that is, to exist, to be actual, and then, to be what it is or to have a nature, an essence. In natural beings, we may think of the DNA as the Formal Cause, but it is not. The DNA is what defines the essence, the what-ness, the nature of what it is to be this or that Kind of being. The Formal Principle, with the Material Principle in corporeal beings, is what is behind each particular DNA. For example, it is the active force or power that gives the rationality to the human DNA. And you can see that this can only be God, because no human or angelic power is or ever was or will be capable of inventing, and then activating, such a FORM as that of a human being like Adam, or of the simplest atomic element or particle or wave of light.

All of these things, including language, come ready-made. Men and animals can only use them, as birds use twigs to build their nests, and as men use the wood of trees and natural metals to build their houses and other things - such as ships and cars and airplanes. And so, what does all this have to do with cosmology? Everything! Because Cosmology includes Creation and everything. Absolutely everything presupposes Creation. And too often, an ideological-fictional principle forgotten by the evolutionist is the all-important fact that FORM absolutely must precede, in fact be present and actually existing, that is, in act - anything remotely resembling a process or a function. You can see from this - both physical and meta-physical necessity for the presence of FORM, how really ABSURD all evolutionary methods of proceeding really are!

Michael Behe made it famous with his example of the Mouse Trap. And Creationist Dr. Duane Gish followed (or proceeded?) with his brilliantly - stunning demonstration of what would happen to the Bombardier Beetle, if only one of the several chemicals - necessary for the proper functioning of his defense mechanism were missing or "fired" at the wrong time! When men and animals, such as beavers and spiders, make things, the method is necessarily a process involving time. Not so with God! He does not need time. In fact, to take time would be against His very Nature, which is eternal. Time is His creature. Time began with the motion of the first particle and photon on Day One and was measured by the succession of "instants" in the progression of a particle of atomic structure, say, of the electrons around the nucleus of the gold hidden in the water-enfolded earth. The atomic particles began to move - the instant the Body of the Universe was created ex nihilo and in toto.

This in toto refers to each Substantial Form that God created during the Six Days. The First Substantial Form - was the Body of the Universe, including its spherical shape with Earth at the center and covered with Water. I understand that it is difficult to see Earth and Water as accidental forms of the Body of the Universe. But here the analogy with the animal or human body may be helpful. In each human being, there is but one - substantial form, and that is the rational soul. The heart and the brain are physical organs that are necessary for the soul to use - in order for the human being to function as a human being. At the same time, the heart and brain cannot be said to be either substantial forms themselves - or parts of the substantial form. But they are very important - even perhaps - necessary parts of the total human organism. The human organism, or Body, is a hierarchy of parts with brain and heart - functioning as an intellectual control center, or central intelligence agency at the service of the Soul-Form. Perhaps in a similar manner, the Earth is like the heart of the Body of the Universe. Water is like the circulatory system and the Sun is in some ways - analogous to the human brain. After all, it is the light of the world! Physically, only, of course! But Jesus Christ is the True and Eternal Light of the World. Yes, our Divine Lord is the True and only Light of the World that can dispel the darkness of Sin and Error. And today, the world is overwhelmed by the false artificial light of Luciferian technology - electricity. Electricity is a creature of God and therefore good in itself. But today, under the influence of Godless men, it has been harnessed for evil purposes.

Please read Solange Hertz on these subjects, especially - "HELL'S AMAZING GRACE" - available from the Remnant Press. 

Women: Meditations - Last and Final Part

And in line with my present focus, we can see in all women Saints, some kind of special relationship with a man, usually in the Priesthood. And there surely needs to be many special studies of married Saints. In all cases, I submit, it would be most profitable and rewarding to focus on the masculine loss of the feminine principle, which is incarnated in the woman. This is why

men are irresistably drawn to women. And it places upon women the most sacred responsibility, the truest obligation and most natural of all duties to respond to that need in a way that conduces to the eternal salvation of both. And it is important for a woman – always – to be under some man in authority, either ecclesiastical or the head of the family. There is no such thing, in my opinion, as a woman whose career is her life. There are only two vocations for a woman: marriage and religious. If a woman does not enter a religious order or congregation and elects to remain in the world, she is obliged, in my opinion, to live the evangelical counsels in the world….but live them she must. Consider: Poverty. One is either wealthy and living a life of luxury, i.e., un-necessary things, the opposite of which is a certain frugality tending to real asceticism. Otherwise, how will she save her soul?

Poverty is undoubtedly the most difficult of the three evangelical counsels for anyone living a single life in the world and sincerely trying to follow Christ according to His own conditions. Just consider those three chapters in St. Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5,6 and 7, containing the Sermon on the Mount and addressed to all who would believe in Him and therefore, follow him according to His calling and conditions. In my opinion, it is simply a matter of priorities. “Seek first the Kingdom of God…” – It is simply a matter of what and how the first is FIRST. Everyone living in the world is obliged to practice OBEDIENCE, to the precepts of the Church and to one’s confessor or spiritual director. And chastity speaks for itself. What is not mentioned or emphasized enough is Prayer! St. Paul says we must pray without ceasing. St. Theresa of Avila would perhaps identify this as the Prayer of Recollection. What a great Grace it is!

Perhaps we can learn much by comparing Our Lord’s Temptations in the Desert with those of Eve and Adam in the Garden.

Our Lord’s First Temptation was to work a miracle, turning stones to bread, in order to satisfy His hunger in a gluttonously, instantaneous, that is impatient manner – as when one is ravenously hungry. It is one of the virtues of civilization to surround the animal necessity of eating with an elaborate system of manners – the do’s and don’ts of table etiquette. And it is traditionally something that pertains to the woman to supply and teach and enforce – even so far as insisting that the man “carve” the meat and serve the portions. After all, he is the Provider. It is certainly fair to say that Our Lord here atoned for every sin involving food, from the prolonged luxurious pleasure of the rich to the ravenous satisfaction of the starving – even – also – to the shopping mall pleasures of selection. For He had within Him, the Feminine love, even lust for viewing and grasping that is inherent in the shopping mania peculiar to the modern woman in the midst of superfluous choices. Our Lord’s rebuke to Lucifer/Satan is, of course, all important. “Not by bread alone doth man live, but by every word that proceeds from the Mouth of God.” (Deut.8:3.) Like so many of Our Lord’s admonitions, this one, too, is EXTREME, or so it seems. And yet, the Church has always exhorted us to the virtue of temperance, especially in food and drink, and all other pleasures of the Flesh – involving necessities of life. In fact, temperance is one of the four cardinal – natural virtues, necessary for natural health.

Now, let’s recall that Adam and Eve enjoyed at this time, the high state of innocence and original justice. They were in the highest state of sanctifying grace, from whence flowed all the pre-ternatural gifts they possessed. But Lucifer/Satan possessed a power apparently unknown to the beautiful simplicity of God’s children. Lucifer was subtle, that is, he was cunningly and maliciously deceitful. He was something… truly virtuous souls do not know how to be. In a word, he was tricky. It was not a playful trickery, but a deeply malicious and cunning intent to destroy by deception. And so he did. In the absence of Adam, her “other and better half”, Lucifer presented to Eve the opportunity to gain something she lacked! The masculine power of knowledge by intellection. He engaged her in debate, something she should have refused at once – on the very basis of her femininity. It is always for the man and his masculine mind to engage in dialectical issues. And Lucifer knows this – so he temped Eve with a question: “Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree in Paradise?” And the woman answered him: “of the fruit of the trees that are in Paradise we do eat. But of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of Paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat – and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die.” And the Serpent said to the woman: “No, you shall not die the death. For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened – and you shall be as God, knowing good and evil. “ And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold. And she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat and gave to her husband, who did eat. And the eyes of both of them were opened and when they perceived themselves to be naked. They sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons….” – (Gen.3:1-7).

Notice how Lucifer distorts God’s commandment making it appear unjust that they were not allowed to eat of EVERY tree in Paradise. But Eve corrects him, probably feeling very good about herself as she defends God’s command to this Arch Deceiver! And so, she very imprudently gives Lucifer an opening, wherein he can insert his BIG LIE! And his outright denial! And his “little” very telling addition. Apparently, he knew MORE about the future, than she did! (This may be objected – Lucifer did not know the future as God did). Had not his testing revealed more than Eve could have dreamed – of tears and sorrow, unknown until then, and at what a price of transitory pleasure! But we must remember that Eve was bathed in the Supernatural Light of Innocence and Justice. I think it is only when we begin to realize the immensity of the height to which Adam and Eve had been raised, and from which they fell by some unfathomable degree of prideful and ambitious malice – that we can also begin to understand some little bit of why Our Divine Lord had to undergo such atrocious sufferings in order to redeem us, in order to satisfy the outrageous insult and offense given to the Creator by His first two human children – upon whom He had heaped such favors.

Truly, the Scriptures are “divine” as the Fathers and Doctors described them. The “Bible” is not a human book. It was most certainly dictated by the Holy Ghost, so that there is no error in it, from the plain, pure historical narrative of Genesis – to the highly and most sacred symbolism of the Apocalypse.