Another great example of a natural metaphor to explain a supernatural phenomenon is evidenced by the manifold answers to the following question:

What, exactly, did Jesus accomplish on the Cross?

It is cast as ransom for a prisoner, as redemption of a slave, as rescue from behind enemy lines, as a jailbreak from the gates of Hell, as vicarious suffering of a punishment, as repayment of a debt, as a lamb being led to slaughter, as a new Passover (itself somewhere between physical/historical and spiritual)…and this is just off the top of one’s head.

What is interesting is that one is often taught that no single metaphor captures it.  In fact, some are downright scornful for some scholars, except that they appear in Scripture, and so must be addressed.  The redemption of a slave received this treatment recently.

I am personally of the view that we should not be so quick to judge Scripture, and that whatever the case may be just is the case.  If God Himself would tell us to imagine we were slaves (to sin) and that He came to redeem us for a price (His suffering and death), what exactly is my objection?  That He did not order the Universe properly so as to avoid a slave analogy?  That He did, in fact, redeem me?  Nonsense.

Anyway, this great spiritual reality strains all analogies, which is a lesson that the spiritual realm is truly a different realm.  Just as new formulas and rules govern 2D geometry and 3D geometry (and beyond), so are there new rules in the spiritual which we can hardly begin to imagine by way of the physical.

One of the more acute ways of demonstrating this point follows:  Imagine you are speaking to a man who has been blind since birth.  How would you describe a beautifully cut, flawless diamond?

You could approach it – perhaps some exquisite smell, like a rose, with an almost geometric perfection – or perhaps by means of heat and texture, as well as construction that might be conveyed by touch.  You see the point, though.

In no way have you shown this man the diamond.  And we left you the benefit of four senses.

Likewise, in no way do we really understand what Jesus accomplished by His Passion and death.  Yet even a child can understand it was marvelous, miraculous work, and precious to possess.

Nota bene:  Naturally, these metaphors do not refer to purely physical phenomena.  The social construct of slavery, for example, does not appear to have any parallel in the animal kingdom, and relies on abstractions such as dignity (or lack thereof) and power.  The spiritual analog is, therefore, a next-level abstraction.

“The condition of human nature … is such that it has to be led by things corporeal and sensible to things spiritual and intelligible.”  – St. Thomas Aquinas

As always, St. Thomas has not only arrived where we want to go centuries in advance, but he has done so with precision and the poet’s flourish.

Still, every generation must grapple with the world as they find it.

The contemporary search for proof of God’s existence often runs through the sciences, namely physics, though the atheists fancy that biology can do their work for them.  Neither is necessary to show that God exists, nor can either possibly show that He doesn’t exist.

Rather, what grew out of that search, for me, were the ready analogies that physics offers for spiritual phenomena.  I learned, for example, that the very laws of physics break down as one approaches the first instant of creation, the Big Bang.  Seeing the Universe issuing forth from the command of God, I found it remarkable that there was nothing but the spiritual realm, when all of the sudden laws, mathematics, particles, energy, space and time came “screaming” into existence.  The abstract realities – laws, mathematics – reached terminal velocity, like a satellite re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, and the resulting fire and fury resulted in forces, space, time, and matter, immediately and inexorably falling into order.

That analogy is not exactly what I mean, but a bridge to it.

That spiritual realm persists – it has to – even while our physical world lives and grows, fights and loves, and decays and dies into the matter that forms new life.  And how do we know the spiritual realm exists?  The first analogy…

It would be odd for any creature to have a sense which senses falsely.  Biologically speaking, this would be extra baggage, more body to protect and feed.  There are even instances of fish which had sight, when a group of them came to be effectively trapped in a a cave for many years.  In order to save energy, they evolved the loss of their eyes.

In other words, there was first light, and so the eyes developed and were useful.  Then there was no light, and the eyes were not useful, and soon they atrophied away.

Now when many billions of people around the planet claim experience or evidence of the spiritual realm, are they like fish with eyes and no light?  Why haven’t we evolved the loss of this spiritual sense?

What if, instead, the organ (the soul) survives because there is something that it detects, which proves useful for living in a physical reality?

There is much here; we will explore it.

The Pharisees made an art and a science out of observing the Law of Moses, cowing many followers into observing the endless minutiae and machinations they had devised.  It was indeed a heavy burden – was God really like this?

Or should the commandments of God liberate us from sin, and cut a path to His love and mercy?

Along comes Jesus, who earlier permitted his disciples to pick grain to eat on the Sabbath, and now was healing on the Sabbath.  How could he explain this over and above the endless strictures concerning the day of rest?  -which strictures certainly appeared to take the command “Keep holy the Sabbath” as seriously as possible.

Jesus’ justification is two-fold:  First, a man is more valuable than a sheep (and the Pharisees would certainly rescue their own sheep from harm on the Sabbath).

Second – of course it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.  The whole point – of all God’s commands – is that we ought to do good.  But we sin, so we require God’s mercy and guidance to do good rather than to sin.  The commandment regarding the Sabbath was directed toward being holy – not toward following a rule.

The commandments are not for nothing.  They are the pattern of behavior, the focus and discipline of a man’s spirit toward the will of God.  If you follow them because you love God, you will do well!

If you follow them because you love power and influence, because you leverage them so that men will grovel at your feet or struggle to be conformed to your image, now that you have sufficiently misshapen the Law…

Right then, it is time to turn back.  Immediately.  Turn around – you’ve gone far, far off the path.

But take heed… a viper would be found far off the path.

See it again, one more time:   If there had been no Fall, there would be no Law.  We would be inclined toward the Good, and thus “all things are permissible.”

As it is, there was a Fall – and therefore we are profoundly broken.  We see good, and perceive that it is evil.  We see evil and imagine it is good.  It is an honest mistake, or it would be a diabolical one.

To counter-act this, God established rules-laws-patterns of behavior that would settle all disputes within the will (and the community).  My fallen nature urges me toward an illicit act.  But it is powerful and feels genuine – why not act on it?

There might not be any reason to avoid doing so, except the Law.  Of course, even that was violated, but at least we could then recognize we had sinned, and were in need of a Savior…

Therefore, the Law was good – profoundly good, so that not one iota would be altered until heaven and earth disappear.

And it was this profound good that the Pharisees had appropriated for their own gain.  The promise of God, that one would find true peace and prosperity and joy in following the commandments (“Lord, I love your commands!”), became a long chain of shackles hammered together by men too small to let their brothers live free.  It became an admixture of their neuroses and scruples, their leverage from a distance of a great weight upon their brothers.

This weight they attempted to foist upon and trap Jesus, the Messiah.  As if to anticipate the old atheist riddle, they burdened the Son of God with a weight they imagined he could not handle.

Notice, though:  There is a rock so big that God cannot lift it.  That is, of despair.   And with so many laws, and laws upon laws, and consequences of laws that must be addressed by still more laws, one could easily find, say, lepers and paralytics and tax collectors laden with such an impossible weight.

For love of them – the lost – Jesus flares up with indignation.  His Law – an instrument of liberation – bent back upon itself and sharpened into an instrument of condemnation.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

No – the purpose and the end are God.  They always were.  It was always – dimly – the Beatific Vision, the “well done, good and faithful servant!”  The Fall was a happy fault, because God would not, even then, abandon us.  He would find a still more incredible way to point us back to Him, and deliver us.

And we might say – He’ll be damned if His own rules are going to be used against Him.  How true.

I’m not sure anyone who has met our second eldest has managed to forget her.  I like to say that I’ve never met anyone like her, and it’s still true.

Ruth is a child who has seemed to love life from birth; one assumes she was not unhappy in the womb, either.  For most of her life, she has run, nearly at a dead sprint, everywhere she wants to go.  When we have gone on walks, she runs.  Her wavy blond hair bobs behind her, and if I know anything about running, I’d say she has excellent form.

She was already trying to turn cartwheels…well, I’m not sure if anyone ever told her what one was.  I would not be surprised if she had invented them for herself.  All I can positively say is that, when she struggled at first to get them right, I gave her a little coaching.

A little.  I am not a gymnast, or a gymnastics coach.  I can’t do a cartwheel myself.  But a few words from an amateur about how to push and propel her body, and she was doing them end-over-end.  A complete natural.*

Ruth’s affections are over-the-top, and she was often in time-out for nearly smothering her siblings.  She has unbelievably good comic timing, bringing me to tears a number of times.  Ruth has made up languages and wants to know all about bodies and is very savvy about social cues…when she wants to be.

I could say as much as I want, but it is nothing like a few minutes of Ruth in her full strength.  Her presence is such strong stuff, her energy so potent, that many have come away amused, thrilled…

And they expect trouble for us, her parents.  She is the quintessential willful, wild child.  Ruth broke her leg when she was two, and while the doctor set up her cast, I said, “Is it ok if she walks on this?”

He was puzzled at first, then understood my meaning, and waved it off, “Oh, she won’t be able to walk with this cast on.”

“Well,” I insisted, “If she does manage it, is that ok, or should we prevent her from doing it?”

“With the way I’m setting it,” he said, with a hint of condescension, “she won’t be able to walk on it.”

Somewhere around her four-week appointment, I brought her in, and he watched her shuffling around the exam room…walking on the cast.  He was in disbelief, and told me we had to prevent her from walking on it, because it could mess up her gait.

Having known Ruth for two years, I was so completely nonplussed by this development that I did not bother telling the doctor, “Told you so.”

It’s easy to see why others are impressed – well, overwhelmed! – by Ruth.  She is a cyclone of enthusiasm, a three foot tall force of nature.  She will leap onto your lap without warning, ask some intimate question about your body or your relations, then pull you three directions to play cards, dress up, and do cartwheels, all at once if possible.

You will say something surprised you, or hurt, or that you need a break, and she will let up for all of three seconds.  Maybe.  But whatever you say, short of absolutely putting your foot down, she will not stop.  And even then, she will negotiate.

One hardly knows what to do with her.  One only expects that she will flit and flutter and positively burst in all directions at once, and naturally that gets more serious the older she becomes.  Naturally, eventually, that becomes actual trouble.

I utterly reject this conclusion.  I spit it out for the lukewarm drivel that it is.

First – Have you ever been called, “stubborn as a mule?”  Some mules have been dubbed, “stubborn as Ed.”

Where our guests are too polite or too timid to drop the hammer, I have few qualms.  Where Ruth pushes, I am all but immovable.  Where she might burst, I de-fuse.  Where she is sophisticated in her appeals, insistent on her intentions – I cut her designs at the root, and leave them stacked for the fire.

If she is a cyclone, I am the deluge, a 1,000 year flood.  (A father ought to loom large).

Second – why all this talk, anyway?  Do you think I boast?  Do you think I compare my strength with a child and thus exalt myself?

God love you, no.  I am about the serious, absurd, disruptive, epoch-making work of forming a Saint.  It is not about me at all, except that God has seen fit to give me the task.

And He has given it to you, too.

But think about Ruth – she really could be a wild child, no?  How if I simply threw up my hands, and no one loomed large in her life?  What then?

The very thought disgusts me.  Honestly, somebody bury me alive if I display such cowardice.  But first give me a chance, and simply slap me across the face.

No – I see St. Ruth, not Ruth the wild child.  I see the eternal youth of God in her uncontrollable enthusiasm.  I see the perceptiveness of the Oracle in her understanding of social cues and in her moral compass.  I see St. Teresa of Avila, chiding God Almighty, in her easy chiding of adults and parents alike.

I see the hope of ages, light in darkness.  I see the blistering, unrelenting love of Christ in her smothering kisses.

Think she is uncontrollable?  Cause her the least part of scandal, and watch what I do.  They’ll cast Jason Statham in the title role.**

I’ve told her, as we’ve told all our kids, that our goal is that they should be Saints.  I don’t know if she invented it, or if I did, but one day she declared that she would become “St. Ruthie the Silly.”

Amelia, her practical older sister, objected that this was not how Saints are named.  But I gently corrected her, “She can be St. Ruthie the Silly, if that’s what God wants.”

*It’s no joke.  We signed her up for gymnastics classes, and she was quickly invited to the advanced level.  I came to watch just one of her practices, and it’s for the best, because I hardly made it out without weeping.  I’m a sap, but she is gifted, and that’s beautiful to behold.

**Now I see what is meant by the “jealousy” of God.  It is ferocious.

The first and second posts in this series introduce us to the layman level of the Justification divide:  Before considering the arguments from authority (those of Scripture, and those meaning to interpret Scripture), how is the layman confronted by the issue?

Here I attempt an analogy to suggest how the layman ought to approach the issue.  That the analogy, itself, has a basis in Scripture is both unintentional and telling.

One commonality between Protestants and Catholics – and I can’t say I’ve heard any objection to this – is that believers ought to become mature in the faith.  So who is it, in an ordinary sense, who is new to life and for whom we wish maturity?

And who is it, ideally, who provides the means to this maturity?

We have a child and a parent, respectively.  Permit me to guide a meditation on this…

From the very first moment, a human being is utterly dependent on his mother.  There is nothing that child could do for himself, except that he benefits from the many good and necessary things his mother’s womb provides for him.  He benefits – more basically, he survives – because of her good graces.

The child is born and remains, it is readily seen, utterly dependent on grace; but now he has reflexes which are his own, which have developed because of prior grace on the part of the mother.  He will suckle if something is put in his mouth, he will cry to express his needs.

Now this initial “adoption” of the child, even a biological child, is akin to Justification.  In a natural sense, the child has not merited the grace of his parents.  There is nothing he has done – there is nothing he could do – except to receive and cooperate with their grace.  It is they who have first loved him.

From the start, the mother and father wish for their child to become a mature human being.  The child should ultimately walk on his own, think clearly and speak deliberately, and become productive to the point that he will have grace to spare for others.  This maturation process is analogous to Sanctification.  The child cooperates more and more fully with the will of his parents.

This fuller sense of cooperation begins when the child develops a sense of autonomy, a period known as toddlerhood.  Now the child can (and does) choose not to cooperate with the will of his parents, even when that will is most obviously in his best interest.  But when he understands why he ought to cooperate, and does, then he grows.

The grace continues to flow.  The parents continue to feed the child, shelter and clothe him, provide for his education and his recreation, and dispense wisdom.  And, ideally, the child finds himself less and less dependent on these graces, as he becomes stronger, wiser, and more skillful.

The ultimate goal of the parents, I say, is to bring the child up so that he can survive on his own; better, so that he can prosper, be upright, and give grace to others, including his own children.

The Baptist in our previous post wants the child to mature in this way, but such maturation is secondary.  The Catholic sees salvation as on-going, as requiring works only because they are part and parcel of the maturation process.  You do a good work because that is the way you grow.

We are – I believe and confess – unable to perfect ourselves.  That is the purpose of grace, just as it is for the infant who is unable to care for himself.  Adoption (we Catholics consider this to be Baptism) brings us under His direct care, but He does not force His grace on us.  We must cooperate in order to remain, just as a child must cooperate with his parents in order to receive their care (he cannot be fed if he won’t eat; he cannot be taught if he won’t learn).

From the outset, though, I admitted this is only an illustration; if Scripture refuted it clearly and soundly, the illustration would fail.  However, as a Catholic, I have never seen Scripture as an altogether foreign entity.  It welled up through the geology of the human race; it is the water of everlasting life, but it carries the sediment of human history.  The illustration, then, might serve as a means to interpret the very same Scripture.  Indeed, this is how it seems to me.

Much like faith and reason, Scripture and the human experience are not at odds.  But that’s for another series.

…just like Libertarianism.

Now, before showing why this is so, let us just say that both have their merits as concepts.  The merits, however, are exceedingly superficial.

Libertarianism, for example, is the idea that government should leave people alone to the fullest extent possible.  In fact, a thoroughgoing Libertarian might well say that there ought be no government at all (anarchy).

It is readily abundant to any thinking person that government is a problem humanity has never properly solved.  Moreover, those especially under the government’s thumb at any given time are keen to be out of it.  But the only thing worse than government is no government.

What is government, after all, but concentrated power?  So, fine, eliminate it:  What is left?

Towns?  But what defines the town?  Without a centralizing influence of some kind, and an authority (here is the key) to enforce it, there is no town.  There are just families and individuals living near each other.

Clans, families?  But these are also governed.  (To be fair, I have not heard a Libertarian say that even families should be dissolved in deference to his politics, but I’m sure they’re out there).

So the individual is the basic unit of society, the locus of power which cannot be further dissolved – at least not without degenerative biological consequences.  The idea behind Libertarianism is that individuals may rule themselves, and no one should rule over them.

But is this really possible?  Let us take one example.

It is clear to all that no one is completely self-sufficient.  Leaving aside the vulnerability of childhood, few have the skills to survive completely unaided by another human being, and fewer still want to.  There is a social instinct and need in human beings which must be satisfied for sustained health.  (Remember, we are regarding Libertarianism as optimal, not merely bestowing the possibility of survival).

Some interaction will be required among the individuals in a Libertarian society.  There will be bartering, for example.  Still more, there will be agreements – promises to perform, contracts – which make possible the advancement of human well-being.

Now, as the basic unit of power, I may decide that it is in my interest to make a contract with you, and then break it once you have delivered on your promise.  This is obviously bad for you, and it is also bad – tangibly and in principle – for our society.  But I am a locus of power.  Who can stop me?

And this is only one kind of treachery.  I might also choose – in my own interest, you understand – to harm you for amusement, or to steal all you have, or even to murder you.  Who can stop me?

Someone or something stronger.  And that will likely happen.  But see – if it does, now you either have government, or you have might-makes-right.  The former we are trying to avoid by definition; the latter is functionally the same, though the slope slides toward tyranny.

Now a similar thing happens with Secularism.

First, a note:  Secularism has often been conceived as a compromise among sects of a single religion – usually Christianity – and not as the complete absence of religion in public life.  Indeed, it would be fair to say the Founders of the United States had exactly that frame of mind, particularly when you read men like John Adams.

Certainly, others have conceived of Secularism as the absence of all religion, and among the undiscerning, this seems to provide the same societal goods.  Let us have this, then.

The idea is that the state will not adopt or favor any religion, but will govern in the common interest in a pluralistic society.  The citizens may be adherents of any number of religions, or no religion.  The assumption is that they will all benefit if the state does not show any deference whatsoever to any religion at all.

After all, Christians might not like living in a Hindu society, if the government there enforced Hindu doctrine.  Likewise, Muslims may not appreciate living under Christian rule, and Buddhists might like to be free of Muslim oversight.

A funny thing happens here, though:  Those of no religion win.  They don’t like to admit this, of course, but it’s logically guaranteed.

In a society where Christianity is the official religion, Christians win.

In a society where Hinduism is the official religion, Hindus win.

In a society where no religion is state sponsored, those with no religion win.

The counterpoint is that, somehow, a state with no religion is a state where every religion wins.  I don’t know…how did the Orthodox fare in Stalin’s Russia?

Moreover, when you’re talking about governing in the common interest, you have to appreciate that a perfect consensus is as mythical as …atheism.  (Just as interesting, too.)

And so, whenever you do not have a consensus – say, on whether to go to war with a given country – you are violating the spirit of Secularism.  And notice that you are violating it both ways.

In other words, if you go to war against the will of some – then they no longer perceive that you are governing in the common interest (whether or not they are guided by religious conviction).

And if you don’t go to war, you are also governing against the common interest – whether or not they are guided by religious conviction.

Indeed, as I’ve pointed out before, in the context of Secularism it is better to think of religions as worldviews, and atheism as a worldview, and then it all becomes obvious:  SOME worldview must dominate.

But if you get tired of living in a Secular society, perhaps a Libertarian society will do.  Maybe you can get there on your Hydra.