Comments on: More Thoughts on Christian Marriage, Celibacy, and Personal Freedom

By: Tom H

Tom H — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 22:37:53 +0000

One of the mp.icatns of the Incarnation, For Aquinas, Ralph, is that eternity is not “without” to e, but rather embraces time. Eternity creates time and s is a wider term. Eternity is to time as infinite, uncreated being is to finite, created being.

By: CJ Wolfe

CJ Wolfe — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 17:55:32 +0000

One of the challenges of interpreting Aquinas on sex and marriage is that unfortunately he did not finish Part III of the Summa Theologica, where he had planned to discuss all the seven sacraments. He stopped writing before he came to the sacraments of holy orders and matrimony. You have to turn to either Aquinas very early Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard or Summa Contra Gentiles book III (on Providence) and IV (on Salvation- that’s the sections on whether there’s sex in heaven) to find out what Thomas thinks about the subject. Based on what kind of Thomist you are, you will interpret the Summa Theologia vis a vis the Summa Contra Gentiles differently; Thomas Hibbs, for instance, has an interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles as filling a certain role in Thomas’ corpus that some other Thomists wouldn’t agree on.

I just wanted to bring up those challenges for interpretating Aquinas on this subject because I almost never hear the Theology of the Body folks bring them up. The point they focus on- and I think it makes sense- is the unitive and procreative goods that sexual activity should aim at.

Somthing also to consider is how Thomas deals with the Old Testament fathers that had many wives.

By: SATURDAY GOD & CAESAR EDITION | Big Pulpit

SATURDAY GOD & CAESAR EDITION | Big Pulpit — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 18:17:41 +0000

[...] Christian Marriage, Celibacy, and Personal Freedom – Peter Lawler, PoMoCon [...]

By: Robert Cheeks

Robert Cheeks — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 16:55:28 +0000

An enjoyable critique of modernity’s beloved feminism. But isn’t all of the progressivist’s systems derailed in the sense that they stand outside the Platonic ‘metaxu’ and, consequently, beyond the “..relational hierarchy of the Trinitarian Creator God?”

By: Ramsey

Ramsey — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 21:09:04 +0000

A question occurs as I begin to think along these lines–what’s the significance of the personal falling away in the Lord’s Prayer, where there is no reference to ‘me’ and ‘mine,’ but only ‘us’ and ‘our’? Couldn’t it be that we come to know God in time, after the Fall, as persons, and that the manifestation of God to man in history is as Trinity, but that these distinctions fall away in light of eternity or at the End of Days? The self may actually be a delusion or partial truth, a consequence or product of human sinfulness, and there may be some significance to Eve being recognized as ‘flesh of my flesh.’

By: More Thoughts on Christian Marriage, Celibacy, and Personal Freedom – First Things (blog)

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 19:29:40 +0000

[...] More Thoughts on Christian Marriage, Celibacy, and Personal FreedomFirst Things (blog)So here are some additional reflections on the Christian view of marriage and the family. They are mainly based on what I read in Christopher C. Roberts' excellent Creation & Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in the Moral Theology of … [...]

By: Ralph

Ralph — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 19:02:15 +0000

Excellent extraction of key points from Roberts, Peter. Key question may be: just how great are tensions in Thomas, and can they be composed? I’ve never quite understood how the primacy of contemplation can be squared with the ultimacy of persons. I think the primacy of contemplation corresponds with a pagan impersonal rationalism,and thus with a cosmos in which eternity always trumps time — and what is a person without time, without agency, without being involved in… the unfolding of eternity? And so back to sex: the tension is reflected in the idea that there could be a purely rational pre-lapsarian sexual desire — purely instrumental to “eternal” purposes. As if eros could be swallowed up in theoretical serenity. But what makes eros erotic is the sense (or illusion) that our acts have some eternal significance. In this they carry us beyond any classical or thomistic “reason.” So what is at stake is the subordination of eros to atemporal, impersonal reason.
All this is much too fast, of course — but here are least are some suggestions as to what might be at stake.