October 23, 2003
LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT?:
Aquinas and the Heretics (Michael Novak, December 1995, First Things)
Frederick II was held by many to be the Great Heretic of the epoch, who for nearly thirty years waged constant warfare throughout Italy, leaving a train of ruin, slaughter, humiliation, and misery. Just as St. Thomas was fortunate to know personally one king who was widely regarded as a saint, Louis IX of France, and at least two who were, on the whole, good kings, Edward Plantagenet of England and Charles of Anjou, so he knew through bloody experience a king who was-and rejoiced in being-an on- again, off-again foe of popes. When the term "heretic" was used, it was not for Thomas Aquinas or his contemporaries an abstraction.Nevertheless, Frederick II was himself a foe of heresy. In his own legal code promulgated at Melfi in 1231, Frederick followed the legal precedents of the era, including those of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, in condemning heresy, sacrilege, treason, usury, and counterfeiting (in that order) as structural crimes against the state. Professor Abulafia, himself no admirer of the Church of Frederick's time, explains the rationale of the Melfi code:
Heresy, indeed, is presented as treason. Those who deny the articles of the Catholic faith implicitly deny the claims of rulers to derive their authority from God. They are enemies not merely of God and of the souls of individuals, but of the social fabric. Their questioning of religious truth involves a questioning of the monarch's command over the law; as enemies of the law, they are its legitimate targets, and the position of primacy accorded to legislation against heretics is thus entirely proper. [...]
With regard to heretics there are two points to be observed, one on their side, the other on the side of the Church. As for heretics their sin deserves banishment, not only from the Church by excommunication, but also from this world by death. To corrupt the faith, whereby the soul lives, is much graver than to counterfeit money, which supports temporal life. Since forgers and other malefactors are summarily condemned to death by the civil authorities, with much more reason may heretics as soon as they are convicted of heresy be not only excommunicated, but also justly be put to death.
But on the side of the Church is mercy which seeks the conversion of the wanderer, and She condemns him not at once, but after the first and second admonition, as the Apostle directs. Afterwards, however, if he is still stubborn, the Church takes care of the salvation of others by separating him from the Church through excommunication, and delivers him to the secular court to be removed from this world by death. The Decretum repeats Jerome's comment, Cut off the decayed flesh, expel the mangy sheep from the fold, lest the whole house . . . the whole body, the whole flock burn, perish, rot, die. Arius was but a single spark in Alexandria, but as it was not at once put out, the whole world was laid waste by his flame. To read this text, we must clarify what Aquinas means by heretic. He does not mean a Muslim or a Jew, an unbeliever or an infidel. He means a Catholic who has chosen to deny his faith, in whole or in part. For Jews and Muslims, Aquinas argues for toleration, not only of their persons but also of their public rites. It is true that from his viewpoint their faiths are incomplete and to that extent erroneous. It is also true that for Thomas toleration is a means for gaining respect for the true faith, rather than an end in itself, a duty simply owed to the conscience of others. But he does argue for toleration for Jews and Muslims in an emphatic way, as he does not for heretics. About the Jews, for example, he writes: "Among unbelievers there are some who have never received the faith, such as heathens and Jews. These are by no means to be compelled, for belief is voluntary." And about the religious rites of Jews and Muslims, he adds:
Thus from the fact that the Jews keep their ceremonies, which once foreshadowed the truth of the faith we now hold, there follows this good, that our very enemies bear witness to our faith, and that what we believe is set forth as in a figure. The rites of other infidels, which bear no truth or profit, are not to be tolerated in the same way, except perhaps to avoid some evil, for instance the scandal or disturbance that might result, or the hindrance to the salvation of those who, were they unmolested, might gradually be converted to the faith.
Similarly, Aquinas shows a great deal more respect for unbelievers, such as his beloved Aristotle, who knew nothing whatever about Christ and His revelation than he does for heretics. He admires in unbelievers how much of the truth about man revealed by Christ they had come to simply by studying the laws of their own being. (For Aquinas, it is inconceivable that there are two truths, one learned from the things that are, the other learned from faith. For him, the one God, the Creator, is the sole source of truth.) For that he respects them, acknowledging that by fidelity to truth they served the God they did not know, and so are dear to God.
The student of Aquinas already familiar with his teachings on individual personal responsibility, conscience, and the role of reason and will in free choice is likely to be surprised by his unremitting hostility to heretics. In a typical passage, Thomas wrote:
Every judgment of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins. Or again, this passage from the Summa Theologica:
Since conscience is the dictate of reason, the application of theory to practice, the inquiry, whether a will that disobeys an erroneous conscience is right, is the same as, whether a man is obliged to follow a mistaken conscience. Now because the object of a volition is that which is proposed by the reason, if the will chooses to do what the reason considers to be wrong, then the will goes out to it in the guise of evil. Therefore it must be said flatly that the will which disobeys the reason, whether true or mistaken, is always in the wrong. Given such teachings as these, why could not Thomas respect the conscience of heretics?
By heretic, again, Aquinas meant a person of Catholic faith who deliberately and resolutely, even after having been called to reflect on the matter, has chosen to renounce that faith in some important particular. Aquinas points out that the word heresy comes from the Greek word for choice. Heresy for him is not a mistake of the intellect but a choice of the will. It is a choice of adherence to a proposition, or set of propositions, known by the chooser to contradict the Catholic faith. It is a choice to cut oneself off from communion in the Catholic faith, to put oneself in a sect-a thing cut off. It is right, insists Aquinas, that such choice be dealt with harshly.
Aristotle begins his Politics with a seemingly simple statement that may no longer be true for those who preach a kind of watered-down liberalism that elevates toleration above all else:
Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good.
This seems a perfectly sensible notion, that a community or state, once organized to achieve a certain purpose, must be able to enforce that purpose on its members. Otherwise, how will the purpose be achieved, or, at any rate, how much harder will it be to achieve?
Now, when we truly feel our state or community threatened, as in the wake of Oklahoma City or 9-11, we almost all take rapid recourse to this notion--so that few will quarrel with the government locking up white separatists or Islamicists and crippling their organizations. But if we recognize this in extremity, mightn't we also have to recognize that in general we have a right to some degree of conformity to our founding principles? This is not to say that we need to burn folks who disagree with the original understanding of the Republic at the stake, but it does suggest that we can justly require that they conform or be banished.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 23, 2003 1:42 PMWhat if there is a factual dispute about what the original understanding was? What if, for example, you can plow through boxcars of commentary on that understanding and never find any mention of Article VI?
Or -- and if I believed in providence, I'd have to ascribe this next to it -- what if, in actual practice, the outlook you just defended leads to disaster?
It might seem to some that I spend my life looking for Christian atrocities, but I don't. It's just that there are so many and so heinous that I cannot keep from encountering them. But there are more that I don't know than that I do, and I encountered a particularly awful one day before yesterday.
It comes in Spence'e "Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci." When the Inquisition was established in Goa, the church declared the Cochin (or Thomasine) Christians heretical and, according to their own statement, mulcted and slaughtered them up and down the coast of India.
Now, that may have been almost the oldest Christian community in the world -- as old as the one in Rome. So, first, we have the question of original understanding. Who is to say that the Thomasine version of Christianity was not more original than the Roman? It had had, after all, less opportunity to be twisted and corrupted.
On a less cosmic level -- the governmental practicum -- a small group of foreign Christians on the shore of a continent of nonchristians probably should have welcomed the presence of local co-religionists, who were not, obviously, any threat to their government.
(Importantly, the error and sin comes from the religious teachers and not from the humble flock. When the rough Portuguese seamen arrived in Calicut in 1498, they worshipped daily for six months at a temple of Kundalini, under the impression that it was a local version of Mary. Only 50 years later, the priests had taken over and were slaughtering not Hindus but actual Christians. Go figure.)
The fundamental problem, of course, is that one cannot be a heretic against a government in a free society -- because it is free. One can choose to become a lawbreaker, but not a heretic.
What you argue for here, Orrin, is stultification. Few people are going to sign up for that, if they understand the price.
On the coarsest level -- below even government practicum -- Frederick's tolerance of Muslims was real, as opposed to the church's, which (whatever Aquinas may have advised) was non-existent.
Sicily was thought to be the richest state in Europe during Frederick's reign. After the church destroyed him and his son, it murdered all the Muslims in Sicily, who, it turned out, were the good farmers (inheritors of the pagan Roman technique).
The miserable state of the island today is a direct reflection of the insane decision to destroy the system of raising food in favor of enforcing an obscurantist religious doctrine.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 23, 2003 3:12 PM
By founding principles, do you mean "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? How are you going to coerce conformity to these pronciples? Fine the dead? Imprison the opressed? Banish the depressed?
Posted by: Robert D at October 23, 2003 8:19 PMMr. Eagar speaks of Christian atrocities, which sinful Christian have had two millenia to perpetrate. The militant atheists who followed Marx and erected tyrannies in his name have had less than 100 years to murder 100 million. I wonder what they would get up to over 2000 years.
It is simply a fact that all manner of men -- believers, unbelievers, heretics, agnostics, secularists -- have committed ghastly crimes. And incidently, Christianity contains the most compelling and profound explanation for that fact.
Posted by: Paul Cella at October 24, 2003 11:06 AMPaul-
Every occurance of human brutality that I am aware of has religous causes always and everywhere, without exception. Christianity has been the main contributor but every religion is as guilty of similar inhumanity. It is only a question of quantity not quality. Even those instances of cruelty imposed by so called non or anti-religious influences were, in fact religious in nature, since only those with the belief in an absolute or scientific truth are in fact religious.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at October 24, 2003 3:20 PMIf you are not being sarcastic, Tom, I almost agree with you.
The question is, who gets to define heresy, isn't it?
Because whoever gets to do it gets to kill.
Is that a system that needs to be encouraged?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 24, 2003 3:34 PMI think Tom is poking a stick in my eye.
I assert that the One Thing all these atrocities share in common is argument from unquestionable authority.
The conclusion being that the character of the belief is the same, and is independent of the involvement of a supernatural being.
Tom--which part did I get wrong?
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at October 24, 2003 5:25 PMLife is too short to spend much of it reading Aquinas, but I didn't realize that when I was younger and I did waste time on him.
One of the gravest charges that can be laid against the Catholic Church is that it treats him seriously. Even making allowances for the time he lived in, the man was incapable of coherent thought.
There cannot be a dichotomy orthodoxy:heresy. It can only be heresy:heresy. Unless, of course, there is some independent appeal board you can go to.
But when dealing with speculative theology, there cannot be, can there?
Therefore, you end up with a Hobbesian (perhaps I should say antiHobbesian) situation in which whoever kills the most the fastest gets to be orthodox.
No sensible person would want to take part on either side of such a crazy deal.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 25, 2003 12:25 AMMr. Guinn seems to have discerned the motivation for all the atrocities in history: subservience to authority. Not cupidity or the desire for personal gain; not jealousy or passion; not mental disease or madness; not intoxication with power, nor intoxication with chemicals, nor anything else. This is a remarkable discovery.
Mr. Eagar, decorated journalist, seems to posit a desire for Utopia: the perfectly Open Society, where all questions are open questions. I call this Utopia because it is impossible. All questions cannot be open questions; to even assert the foregoing is to contradict it. What is really asserted is that all questions are open questions except the question of whether all questions are open. So we get the reign Tolerance, with its own orthodoxy, and its own heretics.
More concretely: every society must be able to protect itself from subversion from within. Call the subversives heretics or traitors or whatever -- they cannot be afforded the freedom to overturn the society which nutures and protects them.
Posted by: Paul Cella at October 25, 2003 9:55 AMJeff-
Argument from unquestioned authority is indeed the problem but as an argument for absolute secularism or official atheism it falls short. As the framers of our constitution would tell you , authority or the power of coercion must lie somewhere or might makes right. Secularists want unquestioned authority placed in the state. TheAmerican idea posits an authority above even the state or man. The values to be preserved and protected are not sourced in the state and in fact are beyond the authority of man and the state. Where exactly would you like that power to lie? What values would you like to preserve and protect as beyond the reach of the state and why? Pure utilitatrianism will fail you here since it all depends on how far those MEN in power are willing to go in pushing their particular programs beleieved by those same MEN in the best intersts of their subjects. The authority of svcience, reason, equality et al have been tried and have UNIVERSALLY failed tragically. Rights, in the American tradition are seen as inalienable or beyond man's reach to change or diminish because they come from a source beyond man's power. You don't have to believe it but we've got to respect the simple but profound truth of that proposition or we are at the mercy of other men rather than that authority which transcends man. The existence of the "Creator" is more than just implied, it is presumed to be the truth.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at October 25, 2003 1:44 PMThat's why we have laws that sanction behavior, Paul, and do not have laws that sanction thought.
Orrin, at least, is consistent on this point. He had acknowledged, more than once, that he'd trim his beliefs to the prevailing sentiment (as, for example, he said he could make himself acceptable to a Southern Baptist congregation despite his unorthodox views about Jesus as a personal Saviour).
Consistency is something, but Absolute Truth just went out the window.
I prefer a mixed society, like the one we have, to a dogmatic one.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 25, 2003 9:03 PMTom:
First, please note that I mentioned a comonality in the character of belief, and that character is independent of the presence of a supreme being. Any belief system that insists on orthodoxy to pre-ordained notions will lead to similar outcomes.
For instance, any orthodoxy that insists that human nature is a tabla rosa upon which society writes, will lead to awful outcomes. Just as will any society that insists specific forms of belief and behavior must be imposed to prepare for the everafter.
To insist all, or even most secularists want all power in the state is a simplistic canard. As would be insisting the opposite about religionists. Certainly you have heard of the American Council of Churches.
Paul, I did no such thing. Rather, I assert that by focusing on whether a belief system includes an immortal, supernatural, being, is to have a woodpeckers view of a forest. Rather, the quality you need to focus on is how rigidly laws control thought.
As Harry is fond of saying, Results Count. We live in a material world. All we have to go on is Results.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at October 25, 2003 9:28 PMDoes the state have divine sanction, pace Aquinas? Or is it a band of perfidious law breakers, more along the lines of Augustine?
The state historically has shown itself to be a greediless monster that I welcome contract theory and the limits of government. I have trouble thinking the state is some sort of extension of the family, except perhaps in a monarchy. Then again, reading 1 Samuel, God wasn't pleased that the Israelites wanted a king, which they got with Saul.
I'm a little tired of the Thomists I work with at the Catholic minor seminary who view the state as having divine sanction. Check out Ralph Raico's review of The State by Franz Oppenheimer at Laissez Faire for the libertarian (and Augustinian) view:
http://www.lfb.com/prodinfo.asp?number=PP7384&variation=&aitem=3&mitem=4
Drawing on vast historical knowledge, Prof. Oppenheimer (1864-1943) says the state "can have originated in no other way than through conquest and subjugation."
He was a big influence on Albert Jay Nock who, after all, wrote Our Enemy, the State.
Paul, you should check this out if you already haven't.
P.S. All this Judeo-Christian faith talk when we can't even agree on the day of the Sabbath!
Posted by: Brent at October 26, 2003 5:07 AMMan, Brent, you just asked some people a tough question.
To even entertain the Aquinian proposition, you have to give up Absolute Truth (because there are obviously States that have religious sanction but the wrong gods: India, for example).
It is a matter of inconsequence to a materialist like me, but I'd like to see the Judeo-Christians wriggle out of that one.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 27, 2003 12:08 AMThe State always rests on the point of a sword, or, as Chairman Mao might say, the barrel of a gun.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at October 27, 2003 6:31 AMI think you guys are forgetting a simple distinction about the American tradition, namely the just powers of government being derived through the consent of the governed. The "divine right" of the people, one might say, is its own justification. The very purpose of the state, assuming its just administration and properly controlled, being the protection of those basic rights. The next question should be, why? It is not based on a specific sectarian belief system but it is based on theism. That is as far as it needs to go, but it does go directly there.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at October 27, 2003 1:36 PM