It shouldn’t surprise us that Thomas has written about thankfulness. There are very few topics that he did not cover. He devotes an entire question of the Summa to thankfulness. (It is part of his section on justice.) I’ll just mention a distinction—one that surprised me—that he makes in article 4 of the question on thankfulness.

The question of article 4 is whether a man is bound to repay a favor at once. At first this seemed to me like a silly question. But on reflection I can see Thomas’s point. According to Thomas, it might seem that one ought to repay a favor at once, but he quotes Seneca’s maxim that “He that hastens to repay, is animated with a sense, not of gratitude but of indebtedness.” There’s the fundamental distinction to observe: Do I react to a favor because I am thankful or simply because I am indebted.

Of course, says Thomas, we ought to be quick to repay the favor as regards the affection of our heart—that is to say, our attitude of gratefulness ought to be immediate. From Seneca again, Thomas quotes, “Do you wish to repay a favor? Receive it graciously.” The attitude of thankfulness is primary; it is what forms and maintains character most of all.

But with respect to making repayment with an actual gift, Thomas says that we ought to wait “until such a time as will be convenient to the benefactor.” Quoting Seneca a third time, Thomas writes that “he that wishes to repay too soon, is an unwilling debtor, and an unwilling debtor is ungrateful.”

What is of interest to me in this article is the fact that a certain behavior—repaying a favor quickly—might seem wholly proper when in fact it demonstrates a lack of virtue. Simply repaying the favor is not sufficient to be grateful. One must be careful to repay the favor at the right time, in the right manner. This is what “the rectitude of virtue demands.”

I can remember making the mistake Thomas describes: A neighbor gave us an unexpected gift, and I immediately invited him over for dinner. It was an awkward moment, and I felt that I should not have sullied the neighbor’s gift with my too-quick repayment. In that case, would that I had read Thomas before offering to repay so soon.

Thus, Thomas distinguishes between acting out of gratitude and acting out of indebtedness. One test to determine which of the two is animating our action is to assess how comfortable we are in deferring repayment of the favor to a time that is appropriate for the benefactor. If we are comfortable waiting to repay, that’s a sign we’re genuinely grateful. If we are hasty to repay, we should reflect on whether we are truly grateful.

As Christians, we are a people who live in a present that is shaped definitively by the past and the future. The meaning of our present, of our contemporary lives and relationships, is fixed, but not yet revealed. We take shape only in relationship to the eternal, which Boethius famously defined as the “simultaneously whole and perfect possession of everlasting life.”

But this “everlasting life” that structures our lives’ meaning is not an abstract formula, but a concrete reality that took shape–and will take shape–in the historical presence of the man Jesus. As Christians in more liturgical orders proclaim in the “Mystery of Faith:”

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

It is this eternal that shapes the temporal, this history and future that defines the present. And as the people of God, this history is by extension and invitation our history. As we proclaim the mystery of faith, we affirm that by his graciousness we are able to identify with him and accept the meaning of his life as the meaning of our own. As the Apostle puts it, “It has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but when we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

This Thanksgiving, then, I am thankful for my history. I am thankful for my parents, for their instruction in the faith and for introducing me to A.W. Tozer, C.S. Lewis, and Andrew Murray. I am thankful for Biola, for John Mark and Torrey Honors, and the role they played in expanding my historical understanding of the Church and its role on earth. And I am most thankful for my all-too-brief history with my lovely wife.

But all these things are inevitably ordered, are structured, around that definitive and final history that is the history of Jesus Christ. And as such, I am most grateful that he has shared his “eternal life” with us, making all that we do in his name now and always.

(Cross posted at Evangel)

I wonder if I have presumed too far upon the generous gift of a friend.

When I was married over a year ago I was graciously given a sabbatical rest from my labors as a Mere Orthodoxy contributor in keeping with the spirit, although not the letter, of Deuteronomy 24:5 which states, “When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out with the army nor be charged with any duty; he shall be free at home one year and shall give happiness to his wife whom he has taken.”  I say in keeping with the spirit because I spent the greater part of half of my first year of marriage out with the army and charged with the grave duty of transporting men and equipment into and out of the American theaters of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Even so, the break from writing was quite welcome as I was free to devote my spare minutes and hours to my beautiful wife without the slightest twinge of a guilty conscience caught between matrimonial delight and editorial duty.

While we all live in societies that do not follow the specifics of Mosaic Law and are not given one year leaves of absence in order to lay a happy foundation with our spouses, I nevertheless recommend the spirit of such a law to any who may find themselves in the wonderful and terrifying position of being a newlywed and urge that as many responsibilities as may be laid by are most definitely dropped.  It is not merely for sensual indulgence that God gave this command, but for the preservation of love and the fostering of a deep confidence between husband and wife, two things which, while being gravely important, remain elusive for thousands of men and women. (more…)

One of the common complaints against traditional evangelicalism is that it has been held captive by a distinctly Western approach to rationality that eschews mystery and narrative. The central target of this complaint is the “Enlightenment,” with its emphasis on reason to the detriment of revelation. Shane Hipps’ first book seems to walk down this road, though there are countless others.

As the emerging church conversation has focused on the nature and role of truth, the epistemological effects and aspects of the Enlightenment have been pretty well worn over (though I see John Franke’s latest will probably restart that conversation for a while). But as I have continued to read about the period, I have become convinced that it’s deepest impact was not on our theory of truth and its relationship to rationality, but rather on our concept of our relationship to nature. And unlike the Enlightenment’s focus on rationality, that aspect of the enlightenment has largely been ignored by evangelicals.

But consider the words of Joseph Priestley, an 18th century chemist:

Nature, including both its materials and its laws, will be more at our command; men will make their situation in this world abundantly more easy and comfortable, they will prolong their existence in it and grow daily more happy. . . the end will be glorious and paradisiacal beyond that our imaginations can now conceive.

Or Descartes in his Discourse on Method:

For by them [notions respecting physics] I perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly useful in life; and in place of the speculative philosophy usually taught in the schools, to discover a practical philosophy, by means of which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans, we might also apply them in the same way to all the uses to which they are adapted, and thus render ourselves the lords and possessors of nature.

The rationality of the enlightenment might have been propositional, and it might fail to be incorrigible and its foundations indubitable. But that wasn’t what was most problematic about it: for Descartes, the goal of rationality is subordinated to the end of mastering and possessing nature. It is a “practical philosophy” that Descartes is after, not a speculative one. The French philosopher (don’t hold it against him) Jacques Ellul calls this, I believe, “technical rationality”–it is rationality toward the truth, but only for the sake of the pragmatic results that the truth brings about.

For Descartes, truth was a means and not an end. But for his heirs, the truth was dropped and a principle of “good enough” was adopted in its stead. And it’s easy to see how that would happen, if the goal is in fact the mastery of nature and not the knowledge of it.

I suspect that only a robust concept of ‘nature’ as having some sort of internal organizing principle, and consequently some sort of intrinsic ends (i.e. teleology), could prevent this sort of rationality from devolving into a strictly utilitarian posture toward the world. And if Darwinism has had any impact, it seems to have destroyed the possibility of natural kinds existing in nature that might limit our technological mastery of it. These two ideologies have combined and created the crises in bioethics on the one hand, and the crises in sexual ethics on the other. And meanwhile, post-modernism has sought to undercut the abstract notions of ‘truth’ and ‘rationality,’ leaving us only with pragmatism. If it works, do it. And as Ellul points out, the rule of technical rationality is that if it can be done, it must be.

If this is correct, then it simply means that the transition away from a linear, linguistic notion of rationality toward images and mystery that Hipps describes isn’t a revolution, but rather the inevitable outgrowth of the particular understanding of the relationship between rationality and nature at the Enlightenment. The problem with Enlightenment thinking, on this count, isn’t that it’s too rational–it’s that it’s not rational at all, as it is divorced from the natural laws which are tied to the structure of the created order and which ought guide thought. Once nature is mastered and possessed, there is no natural kind there to prevent it from being altered according to our whims. Rationality is, on this score, unbounded by anything except our wills.

This story about the Enlightenment opens up, I think, the possibility of reflecting about new ways in which we might be captive to the Enlightenment. Specifically, I wonder whether we have adopted of a pragmatic notion of rationality where what we think is subordinated to the ends it produces. To use a popular example, we tend to think that the missionary impulse is enough justification to engage in something like online church. But our imperatives–our missional impulse–must be chastened and directed by the very real indicatives of theology. If they are not, then we render ourselves lords and possessors of the nature of the church, a problematic result indeed.

One more potential implication: evangelicals, in our adoption of technology, need to recognize that we are taking the fruit of a sickly tree. The ideology that undergirds technological production in our era is not neutral, but is grounded in an impulse to subordinate the whole world to our whims and wills. Churches should think seriously about being technological refuges, places where we can escape the principality and power that is technocentricism and adopt–if only for a few hours–a different way of being human. That younger evangelicals continue to be drawn toward Rome, Canterbury, and Constantinople is indicative of the fact that we want an alternative to this paradigm, while many churches are unwittingly perpetuating it.

For individuals, it means technological asceticism is perhaps the most important discipline for our day. I say “perhaps” if only because I continue to think that no discipline helps us see our need for new life more than fasting does (when accompanied by meditation on Scripture). But the technological paradigm is the ruling paradigm, and it is the paradigm that we as Christians have been least attuned to. Unplugging, turning off, and sitting in our rooms in silence will free us to use technology, but to use it well. For as Calvin puts it, all things are ours, but to serve us and not to lord over us.

(Cross posted at Evangel)

After discussing questions about killing plants, animals, and sinners by private citizens, public officials, and clerics, Thomas picks up the weighty and delicate subject of suicide. His position is that “it is altogether unlawful to kill oneself.” Thomas isn’t messing around here. He usually reserves language like “altogether unlawful” for serious purposes. And this is the only place in the eight questions about killing that he uses such strong language. Furthermore, Thomas usually considers only three objections to his position. On suicide, he considers five objections.

Whenever I discuss the morality of suicide with students, two considerations usually come up: The first is that a person can do whatever he wants with his own life—it’s his life after all; the second is that a person can commit suicide to avoid something bad, pain from terminal illness, for example, or even shame. Thomas addresses each of these points, and he throws in a discussion of Samson for good measure.

Before addressing these objections, let’s get clear about Thomas’s reasons for thinking it’s altogether unlawful to kill oneself. He’s got three reasons.

First, “everything naturally loves itself.” (Note the “naturally” and the “loves.”) This means that everything naturally strives to keep itself in existence. Thus, suicide is contrary to the “inclination” of nature and to “charity whereby every man should love himself.” The person who commits suicide not only violates the natural law but also does not love himself.

Second, since every person belongs to a community (Thomas actually says “the” community, that is, (I think) the community of human beings), and every person is considered to be a part of a community, a person who commits suicide injures the community by removing a part of it.

Third, God is the giver of life, so life is subject to God’s will. Thus, anyone who kills himself sins against God by taking something that does not belong to him. I think Christians are most familiar with this third line of reasoning. I won’t discuss this anymore.

Returning to the first two reasons: There have been those who doubted whether a person has a duty to himself. C. S. Lewis wrote (somewhere) that he thought, for example, that a person (like himself) who was learning to swim had a duty to himself also to teach himself to learn to dive even though diving was frightful. Kant wrote (somewhere) that a person had a duty to himself to develop his talents, abilities, etc.

But Thomas isn’t concerned with duties to oneself. His argument is about having charity toward oneself, loving oneself. (In fact, Thomas says that we each owe the greatest love to ourselves. This is in part because the person I am best able to love is myself.) And if you love something, then you want it to continue in existence. This brings up, tangentially, the question of what a person is because of course Thomas thinks that the death of the body is not the end of the person. So it must be that I need to love myself qua embodied person. Suicide (even attempted suicide) evidences a failure to love oneself as an embodied being.

In addition to the issue of loving oneself, there is also the consideration that individuals are not autonomous. They are intrinsically members of a community, and their community makes legitimate claims on them from which they cannot extricate themselves. If I kill myself, I harm my community because I am a part of it. I cannot simply choose to not belong to a community.

Thus, Thomas rebuts the consideration that a person commits no injustice in killing himself by arguing that he does act unjustly toward God and his community, and he undercuts the consideration about injustice by stating that justice is not the only relevant virtue—we must consider charity, too.

Now to the consideration that killing oneself is not lawful even if one does it to avoid some other bad thing. In the first case, if death is the greatest evil, then it makes no sense (says Thomas) to avoid a lesser evil by bringing on a greater one. And, in general, evil may not be done that good may come. In the particular case of committing suicide in order to avoid shame, Thomas says that this action is not courageous; it’s faux courage: “a weakness of soul unable to bear penal evils.”

And what about Samson, who killed himself in bringing down the pillars? The real difficulty is not that the Old Testament records Samson’s action but that Samson is listed among the men of faith in Hebrews. Thomas says Samson must have made that glorious list because the Holy Spirit “secretly commanded” him to bring the building down on himself (and everyone else). This kind of response will come up again in Thomas’s explanation of why Abraham was a good guy even though he was ready to kill his innocent son: Abraham was obeying God. (Note that Thomas does not try to excuse Samson on double-effect grounds. (If you don’t know what double effect is, we’ll get to that in the article on killing in self-defense.))

One last point about the seriousness of suicide. I noted at the start that Thomas takes suicide very seriously. This is because in killing oneself one has no time for repentance. If a person murders another person, the murderer at least has time to repent of his sin. Not so in the case of suicide. Thus, suicide turns out to be worse than murdering another person.

Michael Bird, a New Testament  scholar of the first rate, highlights Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 8:3 that “anyone who loves God is known by him” before going on to quote Richard Hays’ statement that “what counts is not so much our knowledge of God as God’s knowledge of us.”  

I don’t know about how to rank these things, but I do know that my spiritual life underwent a remarkable change when I realized that God’s knowledge of us was the foundation and precursor of our knowledge of Him, and that His knowledge, while intimate, is a source of comfort and joy.  I also know that in treatments of Paul, his emphasis on God’s knowledge of us gets too little attention.  And no wonder.  It seems to be an undercurrent in Paul’s thought that only occasionally bubbles to the surface and becomes explicit.  Consider the two other passages where Paul echoes his thoughts in 1 Corinthians 8:3.

First, 1 Corinthians 13:12:  ”For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”  This comes, interestingly enough, at the end of Paul’s magesterial explication of the love of God.

Second, Galatians 4:9:  ”For now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?”  You can hear Paul catching himself–nope, it’s not quite right that we know God, but rather, we are known by Him.

Paul is, I think, simply adopting some of the best of the Old Testament language of God’s knowledge of us, not least of which is Psalm 139:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

Our knowledge of God is enormously important.  But for Paul, it is also eschatologically oriented.  We know in part, but then we shall know fully.  Meantime, we are to be grounded in and secured by God’s knowledge of us and his accompanying love.  For us, here and now, it is that which makes all the difference.

In my response to Frank Beckwith and John Mark Reynolds in The City, I pointed out that any that Christendom is impossible until evangelicals recover a robust notion of the Church’s existence as a culture–and maybe not even then. The notion of Church as culture, though, begs the difficult and tangled question of what kind of culture the Church is?

This is one question Peter Leithart raises in his brilliant little book, The Baptized Body. Leithart defends baptizing infants by locating the practice in the context of discipleship and full integration into the culture that is the Church. Writes Leithart:

If the church is indeed a culture, then instilling Christian character is analogous to instilling character in other cultures. Groups display common characteristics not so much because of genetics and racial characteristics, though these factors should not be wholly discounted; primarily, individuals display the character common to their group because they have been nurtured in common habits, outlooks, aspirations, hopes. They have learned a common language, see their own lives and history in general in terms of a common story, and have a common outlook on life.

I will not recount the full argument here, but one aspect of Leithart’s defense of infant baptism has, I think, particular bearing on our understanding of the Church. Leithart points out that “infant baptism imposes a religious identity that the infant has not chosen.” Leithart argues forcefully against the adult baptist position that infant baptism indicates “not absolute choice, but an alternative givenness, equally unchosen.”

Though Oliver O’Donovan does not interact explicitly with Leithart’s essay, he might as well have, as his treatment of the question of baptism in Desire of the Nations has substantive overlap with Leithart’s:

Baptism is the sign that marks the gathering community. It was the sign that marked the community when Jesus himself accepted it; for he came to be baptized by John as the representative of God’s expectant people. In accepting baptism, each new believer accepts Jesus as his or her representative, and accepts Jesus’ people as his or her people…We say ‘each’ new believer because existing collective identities have to be set aside and replaced with this new collective identity. Even members of existing Israel had to come out to the wilderness to find God’s Israel there. In baptism each person makes vows singly, is addressed singly and (by tradition) given a new name. The prophets of the exile expected that the gathering to Jerusalem must take place one by one (Isa 27:12, cf. Jer. 3:14).

O’Donovan’s notes on the matter are worth excerpting as well, for he expands his critique of Protestant defenses of infant baptism:

The characteristic weakness of defences of infant baptism is that they elide this point. The defence which has most influenced Protestant thinking, that of John Calvin, is a clear example. Taking as its starting-point the apostle’s comparison of baptism and circumcision in Colossians 2:11f., it draws from this an analogy between the membership of Israel and the membership of teh church. This overlooks precisely the most important difference between Israel and the church as political societies. As the eschatological society, the church is entered only by leaving other, existing socities. It is not a society anyone can be born into. There is a better way to understand the traditional practice. Because the community is eschatological, the decision of a person to enter it is not one among many decisions; it is the one, total and final decision of life. For this reason no person may be baptised twice. If the virtue of adult baptism is that it throws weight upon the personal decision of the candidate, its danger is that it invites confusion between the particular decision to be baptised and the ultimate decision which baptism represents. That decision is not taken on a Wednesday! Infant baptism, on the other hand, by locating the sign at a moment when there is no possible particular decision to confuse it with, throws into high relief the eschatological character of the decision to follow Christ. Yet it is still the candidate’s decision, and no one else’s, that is treated of.

Sociologically speaking, the renewed emphasis on the continuity between creation and new creation is behind both the rise of the young Reformed and the progressive elements of evangelicalism that are focused on social justice. Leithart’s appeal to the analogy between the culture of the Church and other cultures seems to rest upon this continuity, which perhaps is why I am more in line with O’Donovan on this point:  the reality of the resurrection introduces discontinuity in the structure of creation and makes the Church a community unlike any other in such ways that the individuality of choice must be given its place.

But evangelicalism and our historical emphasis on voluntariety need to be chastened by Leithart’s argument that the reality of our salvation precedes our conscious response, and that our choice is not determinative of salvation.  As O’Donovan writes elsewhere, “”The subject is realized in the church, the church completed in the subject.”