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.

What one must immediately see is that the spiritual and the physical are completely different.  And we have always seen this.

They are parallel lines, running together but never crossing.  If we were mere physical creatures – like the lower animals – a “spiritual realm” would never occur to us.  Even among men, we are dismayed at those who are singularly focused on the physical – a woman obsessed with her looks, a man with his riches.

Just so, the spiritually obsessed are often mocked, detached as they are from the most basic and necessary elements of living on a physical planet.  The ditz, the new age believer – we instinctively understand that they enjoy a disposition supported by those who daily reckon with the elemental – dirt and steel and sweat and disappointment.

But the spiritual is more real, the foundation of the physical.  God spoke the Universe into existence, and not the other way around.

So, why not detach from the physical?  Why not all be esoterics?

Surely you’ve thought of that.  And what came of it?

You’re here, reading today – surely you’ve thought of forsaking the world completely, praying all night, perhaps, as Jesus did, or else fostering such piety that you might levitate while in an ecstatic vision of the Almighty.  Are you familiar with the Stigmata?

And you did not wonder, at least for a moment, what that would be like?

That, my friend, is exactly what forsaking the physical looks like.  It looks like holes through your hands and blood and water flowing from your side.  It is a coronation with thorns, because they are no better or worse than gold.

“My kingdom is not of this world.”  No joke, that.

My friends, it is dreadfully painful to forsake the world, because you just are a physical being.  Your very being responds to the environment, to the stimuli impressed upon you.  There is the objective quality about it, that if you are shot through the heart, you will suffer and die, no matter what you believe or how you live.

And yet…

Yet, some do forsake the world.  Not absolutely, but – shall we say? – in spirit.

Now, how are we to resolve this paradox?  We exist as physical and spiritual beings, and while the spiritual is more fundamental, we can be destroyed by physical means.  The two do not intersect, and yet we cannot ignore either of them.

How do parallel lines cross and remain parallel?

They do so, if you view them from a third angle, another dimension.

A basic biological creature – an emu, perhaps – only deals in the physical.  Life is all hatching and growing and foraging and mating and running and dying.  Often it’s not quite that good.

By the naturalist’s account, this ought to be everything for humanity, and we may as well enjoy it while it lasts.

It would be everything, except for that pesky “brain virus” that clings to religion, that continues to believe old fairy tales against all experience and evidence…or so they would have you believe.

I don’t notice the godless being all that critical about paganism.  They will tell you this is because the pagans do not trouble them, but they are ignorant of history and human nature besides.

It is more a case of making allies with a common enemy.  If modern religion disappeared, Paganism would immediately gain from it.  We know this by looking back before Christianity emerged, and noting that human nature has not changed.

But Paganism is the bellwether of Naturalism’s demise – its miscarriage, really.  If Naturalism could not dam up religion from the earliest days, it never had a chance.*

Why is this significant?  The question is the answer.

That is, significance is the first handhold out of the physical realm.  If physical objects can be imbued with meaning beyond their physical utility, then we are also engaging in a realm beyond physical activity.

Think of a flower, for instance.  It has physical utility, a place in the natural order.

Now think of giving a flower.  One is not offering the flower in order to pollinate another flower, or for ingestion, or for composting or anything else.  Instead, the giver and the receiver both perceive an abstract (roughly, a spiritual) significance to the flower and the act of giving the flower.

This is what the naturalist could not prevent from happening, never could prevent from happening.

*The usual line is that humanity has sufficiently advanced, or will inevitably advance, such that religion will be seen for the fraud it is.  They believe we will see Christianity like we now see Roman paganism.

As a matter of fact, the sword has another edge – if the Stoics and the Enlightenment could not free the world from the grip of religion, it is doubtful that anything else could.  Rather, one religion comes to dominate another at any given point in time.

We have established that humanity, over and above the emus, has an innate sense of the spiritual realm, and this is demonstrated by the persistence of religion in human life, among other things.  Against the naturalist, we see the impossibility that human life could have been purely physical, because of the ease with which humans engage in abstractions.

In other words, a single kiss from my daughter is the kiss of death for Naturalism.  Requiescat in pace.

This frees us to advance:  What do we know about the spiritual realm, anyway?  What can we know?

Our difficulty is that the physical realm seems so…well, obvious, immediate.*  When we want to say something about the physical realm – the sun is shining, the tree is blooming – these things are generally provable by observation.  Humans broadly agree about the facts right in front of them, in this sense – we don’t argue with the weatherman about whether it’s raining, nor the traffic reporter, for that matter, who sees down the road and looks upon other roads.

The spiritual realm is not verifiable in the same way.  It is not engaged with by means of the physical senses…though, it can be indirectly verified that way.  Let us return to that another time.

For now, the grievance of the naturalist is more important than his arguments:  If beliefs aren’t scientifically verifiable, then anyone can believe anything they like!  How can this rise to the level of knowledge?

That’s true.  That’s a good point.

One argument, which we have alluded to already, is that humans have a spiritual sense.  It “looks” upon the world and detects certain abstractions, like good and evil, beauty, even truth.  The philosopher Alvin Plantinga says we have a “sense of the divine” which justifies our belief in God.

For another argument, we derive from Plato the world of “forms,” which are abstract and ideal molds from which the physical instances are derived.  Is there an ideal form of a chair?  I don’t know, but there is something remarkable about the ability to make a chair without explicit instructions, as though the idea exists as a universally accessible concrete entity.

Let’s take a third.  That is, the natural order appears to be governed by laws, which laws have no physical properties.  These laws are often expressed by mathematics, which is the highest point of agreement between the naturalist and the supernaturalist – math works, is practically the most reliable form of knowing that there is.

Whereas the naturalist may agree that mathematics is the language of the Universe, the supernaturalist goes further and says that information does not simply occur, but is articulated by someone or something.  Math is preceded by Logos, which gives the Universe structure and predictability and knowability.

And so, we can have knowledge of the spiritual realm by direct experience of it (the spiritual sense), by abstraction from the physical structures to a spiritual ideal, and by observing that the physical realm operates according to non-physical laws, which laws must have their own reality.

Any of these, arguably, is more reliable that the physical world itself as a deliverer of truth.  You will find people who claim to have seen the spirit world in a vision or a near death experience.  You will find others who hold to the Platonic view of the world.  And still others construct reality on a foundation of abstractions – arguably, all of modern science, for a start – and build a monument of knowledge thereupon.

*Who stops to wonder – is this by design?

We have laid out three ways of knowing the spiritual realm, which is further proposed as the true realm.  The physical realm is but an echo.

The difficulty remains that – ordinarily –  we know the physical realm with a higher degree of confidence than the spiritual.  It feels more real because it is more obvious and less deniable.

There is a reason, after all, that apostates are made by imprisonment and torture.

So if there are three ways of knowing the spiritual, which are nevertheless nebulous to the populace; and if we have a systematic and reliable way of learning about the physical; what could ground us more firmly in true knowledge of the spiritual?

Here is my thesis:  The spiritual realm is the source of the physical.  It is often analogous to, but not an exact emanation of, the spiritual.

In some ways this sounds like Plato.  I said before – honestly – that I don’t know whether the world of Forms is real.  Nevertheless, we are not saying that there are forms, per se.  We are saying that, if one imagines that forms exist, it gives us a useful way of learning about the spiritual from our experience of the physical.

Indeed, suggesting that humans have a spiritual sense captures what we’re about here – that one’s physical senses are analogous to one’s spiritual sense.

But what if your spiritual sense is dull, or inoperative?  Or what if you simply don’t trust it?

What if you think Plato is interesting, but he’s mostly talking ho-bunk?

If, still, you wish to learn something about the spiritual realm, I suggest you can learn it by a careful study of the physical realm.  We’ll take some examples next time.

There is a reason, after all, that saints are made by imprisonment and torture.