CANONIS APOLOGETICA: Part One

[Bogatyr 335]

CANONIS APOLOGETICA

Disputations in the Defense of the Faith: A Treatise

 

Authored by Mtr. Adolpha Yohānāh of Alstreim

 

AND THE PRIESTS WERE HUMBLED, AND GODFREY SAW THAT JAMES WAS GOOD AND PIOUS SO GODFREY RAISED THE HORN AND LAUREL, AND SAID UNTO JAMES, “O JAMES, PIOUS SON OF THE LORD, I HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF GOD IN YOUR HEART AND HIS WORD ON YOUR TONGUE. YOU WILL BE MY HIGH PRIEST, AS IN THE DAYS OF EVARISTUS AND CLEMENT. I NAME YOU PONTIFEX, FOR YOU ARE A BUILDER OF BRIDGES.” AND HE PLACED THE LAUREL ONTO JAMES’ HEAD, AND THUS IT CAME THAT THE FAITHFUL WERE UNITED. SO, AS HOREN AND OWYN, GODFREY WAS THE SAVIOUR OF MEN, WHO BROUGHT HOLINESS INTO THEIR KINGDOMS AND PEACE TO THEIR HOMES.

—Gospel 6:57-63

 

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PREFACE

 

Because our mission as theologians and masters of the Canon truth is not only to add and enjoy upon the existing lineage of dedicated Canonist teachings for the lay clergy, but also and foremost to instruct wayward priests and beginners (see, Gospel 6:49-50: “But they were quarrelsome, for they had no lords, and they brought great confusion into Godfrey’s kingdom with their divisions. So Godfrey called the priests of the Lord together, and bade them to agree upon rites and hymns that all men should use.”), it is purposed in the following work to address principle arguments which treat of all that pertains to our faith at an entry-level to laymen and burgeoning priests. Our chief objective in the initiation of the work is henceforth to expound the science of God, not only as He is in Himself, but also as He is the beginning of matters and their last end, in such a way as may tend to the  capabilities of student scholars and priests.The contents of the work, due in part to the magnitude and volume of work which must be addressed, will be continued by multiple subsequent chapters and parts, each endeavouring to tackle individual aspects of our rite, treating in both parts; of God (1) and of the rational creature in service of God (2) and his institution that is the Church in its advance to God (3). 

 

Additional provisions extended toward the Summa Theologia initiated by Bl. Pius of Sutica as the blueprint on which these apologetics are founded, which is extensively cited alongside its author.

 

Thank you, and remaining the least of your servants, 

Mtr. Adolpha Yohānāh.

 

PART ONE:

QUESTION I. THE BREATH (WILL) OF GOD

 

1. Does God capably/completely will?

2. Is the will of God inherently good?

3. Is the will of God the cause of moral order?

 

ARTICLE I: WHETHER GOD CAPABLY/COMPLETELY WILLS?

 

OBJECTION 1: It would seem that there is no will in God, or at least that it is incomplete or not inherently a capable and conscious or active will. For God allows the persistence of evil, when the object of will is good. Evil transgresses against God’s will. Therefore God does not will capably.

 

OBJECTION 2: Further, if we are to take God as the independent agent responsible for all causal interactions (See, Understanding God’s Causality [1985]), then it would seem that there are some causal relationships which exist out of the parlance of God’s Breath. God permits miracles to occur when they deviate from His causal framework. Therefore the will of God is not fully capable because it cannot be considered the root cause of all effects. 

 

OBJECTION 3: Further, it seems that the causality of God is edited marginally by the intercession of prayers; the outcomes of God’s will do not reflect their original intention. If God did will capably and completely, the outcomes of prayers would not vary. The inconsistency of God’s will suggests an imperfection to his capability, for a truly capable will would ensure uniformity of natural outcomes notwithstanding righteous petitions. Therefore individual outcomes can be independently altered against the original will of God.

 

ON THE CONTRARY, Fr. Pius of Sutica accepts the predestination of God’s Breath without imposing the estrangement of independent activities therefrom, “God is outside of time. Hence, to Him, all time has happened, is happening and will happen, all at once.  How can God not know the outcome of our free choices if I.He knows all things, and II.He knows them outside of time, and hence He has already seen them before they happen […] Man has free will, it is that God already knows the outcome of his choice.” (Bl. Pius, Letters to Cardinal Goren on Free will).

 

I ANSWER THAT, we must hold that God capably and completely wills sufficiently that He is the cause of all things; and that He wills and acts thereby and as an exercise thereby, and not as a necessity of His nature. Consider the course of an arrow, whose definite destination and movement is predetermined by its bowman; likewise must any agent responsible for the happenstance of a causality possess both an ends and a means—in intellect and in nature—to a causality to duty it and be its author. And, since God is the Author of all rational and irrational causalities (Gospel 7:23), He wills both with intentionality, capability, completeness, and intellect. 

 

This is self-evidenced in the observable outcomes of the world. Irrational creatures, events, and objects, which lack their independent rationality, agency, and practicality, act nigh-always in identical, predictable ways. They possess the ends, but not the self-sufficient means to obtain such ends, hence it must be inferred that they are designedly engineered to act in such a way. And since those lacking with intellect cannot consciously direct themselves to such an ends, it must be by a foreign, conscious and rational author that they are directed (Bl. Pius, Summa Theologica p.1 q.1). Smoke rises from an open flame predictably because it is by God’s causal will that it does; the earth thaws after it snows not because it believed that was decidedly so, but because God alone willed it; and, if such pattern were to be reversed or overridden, then it would be by God’s will that that was so.

 

We arrive herein at the question of how seemingly independent causes can exist dependently upon the initial will of God viz. how can the realm of unpredictability of rational natures i.e., Man be attributed to the unyielding predictability of God. This is addressed in, “Predestination cannot be thought to constitute a singular sequence of casualities, as “[God] knows all things, in darkness, in light, in the din of the market, in the silence of the mind.” (Spirit 3:16), and therefore God’s Plan encompasses all contingencies of human choice and decision. God’s will and predestination likewise cannot be conflated to the self-automation of reality nor predecision, because it is not a deterministic stamping but a relational understanding of the realm of all freely-made decisions. God’s elect can make free choices which still accord with His plan, restoring Man’s culpability to his decisions, good and bad. A fish can swim against the current but still be within the river.” (Mtr. Adolpha Yohānāh, On Free Will: How We Exist in God’s Breath). God’s will is full but not deterministic, because it considers, welcomes, and intends for the whole realm of possibilities which occur relationally. If one were to make the precipitous decision to wake up one morning, it would be no different causally than if he were to remain aslumber, because it is one of several alternatives which are addressed in the will of God, and that these alternatives are reasoned and arrived at with full rationality which does not undermine the principal will and predestination of God.

 

REPLY TO OBJECTION 1: The persistence of evil cannot be attributed to, allowed by, or otherwise purposely reasoned by God because He is the highest good. A good entity would not allow evil to occur lest it should impose on His goodness. The will of God permits intellect and rationality to exist at a lower extent than Himself and His own, which can on their own liability and culpability contravene God’s moral law but never His natural law. God rather endures evil such that a higher and transcendental good can result from it viz. Man has the faculty to choose between alternatives classed relationally either as good or bad (High Pontiff Tobias I, Dogmatic Constitution of the Church).

 

REPLY TO OBJECTION 2: With respect to a miracle of seemingly impossible happenstance, the conflict rests in the fact that such an occurrence represents a departure from the natural course of events, and one which imposes on the predictable pattern that is charted by God’s will. However, it must be established that the existence of one object with the other cannot be conflated to its existence by another. Their concomitance proves a simultaneity, but not a causality. When a flame produces smoke, the fire itself lacks intellect and therefore cannot propel itself to any independent action. God alone is the Author by which the smoke occurs naturally and the incineration of the fire’s parts, and as such no causal connection can be attributed to an irrational agent and a rational outcome because it lacks the means to engineer such an outcome. Therefore, causal agency is solely enjoyed upon by God, and miracles are endured as exceptional effects predicted by His will alone.

 

REPLY TO OBJECTION 3: God’s intercession upon prayers variably cannot be understandably reasoned by His creatures. While the outcomes of identical prayers may be purportedly or seemingly variable, each outcome serves a premeditated, predicted role in God’s infinite will. Even in such exceptional circumstances, it is by God’s Breath alone that such a causality can occur, because human supplication independently cannot alter or initiate change in the withstanding will of God; it is only by the direction of God that a prayer might be interceded or enjoyed upon through the enaction of a certain set of predetermined alternative outcomes.

 

ARTICLE II: WHETHER THE WILL OF GOD IS INHERENTLY GOOD?

 

OBJECTION 1: It seems that God wills evils. For any good that can or does exist, God wills. But it is also a good that evil and struggle should exist at all, as it is said by Fr. Goren: “[One of two types of sufferings caused by forces beyond Man] are intentionally designed by God for the purpose of furthering His plan,” (Fr. Goren, Extrapolations on Divinity s.6). Therefore the will of God is not inherently good because it permits adversity ungovernable by Man; God wills evil by extension of His own Breath.

 

OBJECTION 2: Further, if the will of God were inherently good, all His creations would reflect perfection. Yet, we observe imperfections in His creation, even though God wills all that appertains to the perfection and beauty of the world, which is what God desires in all His creatures. His creation is not equally good. Therefore God wills evil and His will is not inherently good.

 

ON THE CONTRARY, Cardinal Ailred says: “To be kind, but to also have that kindness tempered by justness and fairness, for evil ought to be punished […] The Creator of all things, however must be just and good because, by virtue of having created all things, He defines what justice and goodness are, and therefore to be good is to be godly. Any human conception of what it is to be good can be dismissed as subjective.” (Card. Ailred of Reinmar, On the Existence and Attributes of God s. 2 a. 5). Therefore it is such that goodness exists insofar as God’s divine plan dictates; that which serves His plan is self-determinedly good. Because all His creation is patently good, all His earthly struggles, which may at hindsight appear deliberately evil, are ordered towards the ultimate good—that is the infinite and indivisible goodness of God. Therefore God wills not evil things and His will is good.

 

I ANSWER THAT, the infinitude, goodness, and perfection of God’s creation requires that there should be inequality in things, so that every degree or grade of goodness may be realised. We know that from the causality of God, Who Himself is the Author and Agent of all being, all beings and events which exist in whatsoever manner are directed to and by God towards a predetermined end. 

 

Evil is not willed by God for its own sake but is permitted insofar as it accompanies greater goods, Bl. Pius poses: “Is not therefore the higher good of courage dependent upon the lower evil of suffering? Can God not therefore suffer this privation, which we call evil, so that the higher good of courage might exist?” (Bl. Pius, Dialogues p.1 s.5), thereafter substantiating this claim as he quotes: “I can demonstrate that evil permitted can lead to higher goods. And therefore, evil and God are not contradictory, for He, being, as you say, "the One in whom we live, and move, and have our being," knows our greatest good better than we ourselves do, and that infinitely so, and therefore any evil in the world is not incompatible with this belief.” Any struggle of the spirit perceived as evil is itself not willed plainly as a suffering, rather as a rung in the providential plan of God as a means to cultivate the soul and its virtue, directing it toward a greater degree of good in accordance with the direction of His plan. God wills the good to which these perceived evils are attached i.e., justice in punishment and the lower evil of guilt in sin, because they grant a greater consciousness of good in the self as He says: “For I have given you the pains of the world, and I have given you their cure. And you shall know the trials of this theater of virtue, and know that they shall strengthen you.” (Virtue 5:7-8). 

 

Bl. Pius says also of this,

 

“God knew His plan would be interrupted and permitted it so, for the allowance of the greater good, viz. the free choice, for that immortal souls loving Him freely is a greater good than not being able to do otherwise. For love is by nature freely given, and love slavishly obtained is not love at all […] Rather that by its nature must be freely given. And since God created us "for love" He could not have made us except with the choice of evil, and so he created us knowing we would fall and already having the plan for reclaiming us for His love.” (Bl. Pius, Response to the Extrapolations on Divinity by Card. Goren). 

 

Therefore the will of God is inherently good and wills not evil, because evil is a privation of God’s goodness and the goodness of His Plan; His will seeks the ultimate good through its orchestration of all being and through its predestination of salvation for all of God’s elect.

 

REPLY TO OBJECTION 1: We must first caution that God does not necessarily desire for evil to occur incidentally, regardless of the fact that many apparently evil things are ordered to some good end. Evil is not, however, designedly ordered to good, but adventitiously. Fr. Alfred Barclay says of Evil, “Although Evil wants to take us on the worst path, a path that has no end to that evil,” (Fr. Alfred Barclay, The Problems of Evil). Likewise as it is beside the intention of a tyrant that the virtue and patience of martyrs should emerge from his persecution of them, and likewise as it is beside the intention of a lion who treats upon his prey to harm them, for his foremost intention is to be satisfied, Evil does not intend for good ends. The good which emerges therefrom does so relationally to evil and alongside it. God goes to no end to put us upon the beaten path for meagre virtue, because He intends good always for His elect. Through His infinite Love, He enjoys upon us trials, and any surfeit suffering appertaining thereto follows only as a byproduct. Therefore God does not desire evil upon us in any capacity, and His will is inherently good.

 

REPLY TO OBJECTION 2: Further, it must be reminded that creation, while emanating from divinity and goodness of God, is not identical to His divine essence which is His perfect likeness. While there is a likeness of God in His creations, it is an imperfect likeness, forasmuch as Godfrey and his people spoke of Man’s perfection, they were rebuked for this by God (7:18-20). Thus the law of creation is that finite beings come into being with inherent limitations. Perfection, that is the perfect likeness of God, cannot be except in an identical nature, and there is no nature identical as to He. It only exists in Man as in an alien nature, as the image of a king exists in a silver five-copeck coin; for creation contains a likeness to God but cannot by its own virtue fully mirror His perfection. There exists in His creation various degrees of perfection, as it is delivered in the scripture that “before the mountain, the ant and the aurochs are equally small.” (Virtue 7:7) but both owe their being to God alone who is the Father and both natures are equally not identical thereto. Man’s excellence rests in the fact that God created him in His image by granting him an intellectual soul, “So GOD was pleased, and he gave them language and greater knowledge.” (Gospel 1:49), and with that the procession of the Word as we understand and the procession of love as we will viz. our capacities for wisdom through rationality and love through will and relationality as reflections of God’s divinity. All other creatures, however, including the beasts of the field, possess some likeness to God in a trace. And, as there is a likeness to God as a trace in the other creatures of God, so there is only likeness as a trace in our own animal nature. Therefore any limitations or imperfections in creation are not due to deficiency in God’s will, but are intentionally created to maintain an order between God and Men, and characteristics of our own finite and contingent existence. Therefore the will of God is both inherently good and perfect because of its fair and ordered creation.

 

ARTICLE III: WHETHER THE WILL OF GOD IS THE CAUSE OF MORAL ORDER?

 

OBJECTION 1: It seems that the will of God is not the cause of moral order. For if God’s will were the cause of moral order, then every moral law and principle would be directly resultant of the divine will. However, moral laws can and do oftentimes reflect human reason and individual natures existing independently of the divine law imparted upon Man. As Fr. Alfred Barclay says, “Man himself, in many situations in life, creates many evils for which he does not know the final consequences.” (Fr. Alfred Barclay, The Problems of Evil). Therefore the will of God is not the direct cause of moral order because it more often aligns with self-autonomous moral truths or the law of the land.

 

OBJECTION 2: Further, it seems that the will of God is not the cause of moral order. For if it were, then His will would reflect consistently across the precepts or counsel He bids us by. Although, this is not so, as not all demands of His divine will produce consistent moral outcomes, as when God mantles Owyn with the moral responsibility of “[taking hold of the blade], a symbol of holiness, and by it [Owyn] shall cleanse mankind of sin.” (Spirit 4:24), but the moral order instructed by God is misconstrued as reflected in Owyn’s kinslaying. Therefore the will of God is not the cause of moral order.

 

ON THE CONTRARY, Fr. Goren accepts the determination that God is uniquely responsible for our understanding of goodness and morality in that He leads by example, “To put simply, what is good is what fulfils His plan. What is Good is His will as laid out by the Church and by the Scrolls. What is good shall fulfil His will, but that is not always clear […] To come to Confession and cleanse the spirit is a preparation for death, which may lay around any corner. And this is good, for upon our death we shall truly know what is good and evil, and the weight of our crimes which we may understand with a clear conscience shall drag the spirit down. To lessen the Evils of this world is good, to multiply them, evil. All beings with the Light of Wisdom have the capacity to know, and thus are beholden to do right.” (Fr. Goren, Extrapolations on Divinity s.7). Thus it is known to the creatures of the earth at some inherited and inborn level what good is because God is good. His goodness is known also because it extends into His design, as it is narrated that, “That which was farthest from the Lord became the Void, and that which was nearest became the Skies, and betwixt them was the World. And GOD saw that it was good.” (Gospel 1:4-5). We know what good is because goodness exists not only at a rational level but also at a creative level, and rightfully hence it is not ours to judge, for God cautions, “You shall not judge your own virtue, be it great or small, for all fall short of Me.” (Virtue 7:8). Therefore the will of God is the cause of moral order, because moral order was willed creatively and manifestly in the levelling of the universe.

 

I ANSWER THAT, the moral order of the world designedly points to God, because God is the sole guarantor of justice and the delivery of proportionate causality. Namely that in the next life, one receives good and evil in proportion to the respective good and evil done upon earth. Morality can only be wholly and most fairly actualised if God exists. Fr. Alfred Barclay delivers on Virtue 4:6-7, “What is bad and evil can never be good in the eyes of God - sentence that we all need to be aware of. If God forbids sinners from entering the Seven Skies, we immediately conclude that it is the right thing to do.“ (Fr. Alfred Barcay, The Problems of Evil). God demonstrates a rationally higher distinction or moral good from evil, in that His nature embodies the ultimate standard of goodness. Because evil is antithetical to His will, our collective morality is held to the standard and weighed against His own—which is Goodness. It is quoted in the Virtue, “I am the Lord God without peer, and My Word is the holy word, and My path is the virtuous path, and all the blessings of the Virtue shall fall before the righteous who tread it.” (Virtue 1:9), wherein it is affirmed that the will of God is the golden standard against which actions on earth are judged and imposed against; in both parts, those who affirm His will upon earth and actively, and with self-denying resolve, reconcile with personal will are equitably rewarded, those who exercise a deliberate effort to defy or elude it are proportionately punished. 

 

While Man enjoys, and indeed is afforded, the trace likeness of God in his intellect, the human intellect is ultimately relegated to a position of rationalising a correct response between several alternatives as opposed to designing his own and collating the moral determinations of others and the supremely good nature of God. This position is substantiated as it is delivered, “You shall not judge your own virtue, be it great or small, for all fall short of Me.” (Virtue 7:8). Man has the rationality and reason to distinguish good and bad natures relative to God’s own, but lacks the responsibility and full, omnipotent, eternally fair moral faculty to chart his own ethical determinations. The statutes of God are eventually arbitrated on earth by Men, but human judgements of goodness fall short in the long term because judgement is passed solely by God, who is the Author of reward and punishment. That is because human reason is like to God’s intellect in trace form, and is clouded by mortal error and the temptation of sin, as opposed to God’s which is virtuous, level, and equitable. 

 

Withal, Virtue is oriented towards the divine standard because God is Virtue. All which upends His will is proportionately punished because it is proportionately wrong, and His will is always delivered in full. Even in the punishment of the reprobate His merciful will is seen, which, though it does not wholly remit, but somewhat alleviates, in punishing short of what is deserved.

 

REPLY TO OBJECTION 1: Whereas it is correct that human reason and natural law do not always reflect an objective moral reality, these statutes are ultimately founded on and participate in the Divine Wisdom. The moral order inherent and inborn in creation is a manifestation of God’s will. Man is equipped to perceive and understand these moral facticities, but cannot generate them independently; rather, he discerns them as reflections of the Word and the Law. Therefore the will of God is the cause of moral order, but does not deny Man his agency and private, incomplete judgement of His plan without contradiction.

 

REPLY TO OBJECTION 2: In a like manner to the first objection, this one misunderstands the exact way in which the divine will of God and independent human interpretation interact. Reaffirming the prior position, God’s will is the ultimate standard of a moral Spirit, but due to his defective intellect Man does not necessarily comprehend and execute that will fully and coordinately. In the example of Owyn, the saint’s destructive and misguided delivery of justice represents how human reason is eclipsed by emotion and personal inhibition, and therefore its fallibility, and not a reflection of God’s will—in essence, a half measure. Because He is good, God’s will remains fundamentally good, but its outcome rests on the capability of Man to distinguish good from wrong and reasoned determination. Therefore the will of God is the cause of moral order, notwithstanding the natural propensity of humans to error and a lack for the full intellective capacity to wholly understand and proportionately deliver God’s divine statutes.

 

END OF QUESTION 1. THE BREATH (WILL) OF GOD

 

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Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised, my Mercy, who didst create me and didst not forget me even when I forgot Thee. O true Light, to You I lift up my heart and mind lest it should teach me vanities. For in the restless misery of fallen spirits, which expose their darkness stripped of vesture of Your light, You clearly show how great You made the rational creature, since for its repose and beatitude nothing less than You suffices, and from Thee shall arise our vesture of light, and our darkness shall be as midday. 

 

Since he is the Alpha and the Omega, this thesis is ended thus with God, who is blessed throughout the ages.

 

Remaining the least of His children,

Rev. Mother Adolpha Yohānāh.

 

Saint Jude, Pray for Us.

Saint Kristoff, Pray for Us.

Blessed Pius and Seraphim, Pray for Us.

Edited July 28, 2024 by Bogatyr

[tadabug2000 4918]

A young girl of pious nature has another theses added to her studies. It tested behind two other pieces, all of which she needed to read tonight!

[growingivy 3382]

Spoiler

i dont do religion rp but omg i could NEVER write smth like this i love it