The Incarnation’s Increasingly Ignored Gifts to Transform Our Mortal Lives – Part 1 of 5: The Divine Law Fulfilled
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What Are We Distracted From? This is the great question of our age, because we know we are being distracted. We can break down that question into six parts, six First Questions.
The last post explained the very First Question, and its Answers, on Reality. Today: Purpose.
This initial set of three First Questions comes from the philosopher Walter Watson's book The Architectonics of Meaning (1985)1. Watson uses “archic analysis” to pinpoint these almost mutually exclusive definitions of today’s religions and ways-of-life, in philosophy and literature, and even art and science. Using Four Questions and Four Answers within each, his analysis results in 256 distinct combinations. Here we start to isolate today’s religions and draw their dividing lines.
Question 2: Purpose (Principle, Cause): – What one function impels the universe, God, and/or humans within Reality to the most good and beautiful?
Purpose describes what the religion exists for, which drives or motivates the universe and everything in it, including humans. It marks what goals and motivators we are distracted from.
As Watson writes, “An end of purpose or function is present in the text so far as the text has within it something that causes it to function, a principle of its functioning.”
Creative – The driver is the act of creating, or being a creator, out of nothing.
Elemental – The driver of things is change itself; the mode of people and the universe is to change, with no other reason or cause. “An uncaused cause.”
Comprehensive – The driver is the functioning of people and things because they are part of a larger whole.
Watson’s fourth Variable is called “Reflexive,” which is the idea that the functioning itself causes more functioning, and is not caused by anything else. Watson writes that for Reflexive principles, “the functioning of any principle can always be treated as an end for which the principle is required, and the principle as actualizing itself in the functioning.” For our purposes, we can now eliminate this Variable as providing a primary driver. However, Christianity often merges the Creative and the Reflexive, for example, in incorporating Augustine and Aquinas, respectively. This, and Aquinas, will come into play in a subsequent Question, when we discuss the fact that God is primarily Creative, but has that Purpose is driven by a pre-ordained Design.
In summary, this second of three First Questions provide three Answers each, which Watson assigns to each major way of life and religion today.
Creative
Modernism (including Hedonism, Existentialism, modern Sociology (e.g., Max Weber), etc.)
Marxism
Deism
Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, Gnosticism
Elemental
Materialism
Buddhism
Taoism
Hinduism
Gnosticism
Comprehensive
Confucianism
Thus, the Creative unequivocal Answer about Purpose helps define the Abrahamic / Judeo-Christianity religions, and distinguishes them from other religions.
This Answer eliminates most of the Eastern religions and the Modernist way of life, but does not differentiate Catholicism from other Western religions. The differences between Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and Gnosticism require Answers to more Questions, to be covered in the next four posts.
In fact, Question 3 will continue to help elevate the Abrahamic religions above the other ways-of-life, especially Modernism.
To synopsize the Christian Answers to the three Questions, the Holy Spirit revealed these Answers to St. John the Evangelist, which he wrote in the first paragraphs of his Gospel. Its distinguishing Truth inspired nearly all priests to recite this at the end of billions of Masses from the 1100s until the 1960s. (Special thanks to the Anne Barnhardt podcast team, Episode 165 https://s194.podbean.com/pb/89b8428bb9b963337e5df1d7970ef786/62c8dd22/data3/fs94/1742339/uploads/Barnhardt-Podcast-165-2022-01-27.mp3?pbss=a2122c72-6980-5371-803e-5a8860fc0d0b (29:45 – 39:30), for bringing this holy passage to the forefront to make this point.) Here are the passages that crystalize the Creative Purpose.
[3] All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. [4] In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
[12] But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name. [13] Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
To further reveal our Creative Purpose, Scripture and Tradition guide us, as follows:
The Holy Bible 4
Genesis 1
[26] And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. [27] And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.
Colossians 1
[15] Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. [16] For in him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and in him. [17] And he is before all, and by him all things consist.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) 5
The Creed, Article I: "Creator"
For God formed the world not from materials of any sort, but created it from nothing, and that not by constraint or necessity, but spontaneously, and of His own free will. Nor was He impelled to create by any other cause than a desire to communicate His goodness to creatures. Being essentially happy in Himself He stands not in need of anything, as David expresses it: I have said to the Lord, thou art my God, for thou hast no need of my goods.
As it was His own goodness that influenced Him when He did all things whatsoever He would, so in the work of creation He followed no external form or model; but contemplating, and as it were imitating, the universal model contained in the divine intelligence, the supreme Architect, with infinite wisdom and power-attributes peculiar to the Divinity -- created all things in the beginning. He spoke and they were made: he commanded and they were created.
The Creed, Article I: God Preserves, Rules and Moves All Created Things
Not only does God protect and govern all things by His Providence, but He also by an internal power impels to motion and action whatever moves and acts, and this in such a manner that, although He excludes not, He yet precedes the agency of secondary causes. For His invisible influence extends to all things, and, as the Wise Man says, reaches from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly. This is the reason why the Apostle, announcing to the Athenians the God whom, not knowing, they adored, said: He is not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and are.
The Creed, Article I: Creation Is the Work of The Three Persons
Let so much suffice for the explanation of the first Article of the Creed. It may not be superfluous, however, to add that creation is the common work of the Three Persons of the Holy and undivided Trinity, -- of the Father, whom according to the doctrine of the Apostles we here declare to be Creator of heaven and earth; of the Son, of whom the Scripture says, all things were made by him; and of the Holy Ghost, of whom it is written: The spirit of God moved over the waters, and again, By the word of the Lord the heavens were established; and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1995) 2
285 Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins…
1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him. “Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.” (St. Irenaeus)
St. Thomas Aquinas 6
In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God. (Summa Theologica I, q.2, a.3)
Sources
1. Walter Watson, The Architectonics of Meaning, 1985, University of Chicago Press
2. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1995, Doubleday
3. Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies, 1938, Cavalier Books.
4. The Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims Version, 2009, Saint Benedict Press [Original published 1582-1609]
5. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, (J.A McHugh, O.P., and C.J. Callan, Trans.), 1923, Middletown, DE [Original 1566]
6. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.), [Online] Available from: http://www.documenta-catholica.eu/d_1225-1274-%20Thomas%20Aquinas%20-%20Summa%20Theologiae%20-%20Prima%20Pars%20-%20EN.pdf [Original 1265-1274]
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Christopher is married and has helped raise a family of three children, while also working as a human factors engineer and project manager in the fields of healthcare, intelligence, military, aerospace, and manufacturing. He has Master’s degrees in Humanities (Houston-Clear Lake) and Industrial Engineering (Auburn). Christopher belongs to the Discalced Carmelite Secular Order. He is also the author of the novel Dumb College: A Story about the Decline of Western Civilization.
