The Lust For Domination

Posted on September 7, 2021 by Matthew Phillips

“I know how great is the effort needed to convince the proud of the power and excellence of humility, an excellence which makes it soar above all the summits of this world, which sway in their temporal instability, overtopping them all with an eminence not arrogated by human pride, but granted by divine grace. For the King and Founder of this City which is our subject has revealed in the Scripture of his people this statement of the divine Law, ‘God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.’* This is God’s prerogative; but man’s arrogant spirit in its swelling pride has claimed it as its own, and delights to hear this quoted in its own praise: ‘To spare the conquered, and beat down the proud.’**  Therefore I cannot refrain from speaking about the city of this world, which aims at dominion, which holds nations in enslavement, but is itself dominated by that very lust of domination.  I must consider this city as far as the scheme of this work demands and as occasion serves.” Augustine of Hippo, The City of God:  Preface, trans. Henry Bettenson (London 1972), p. 5. [Emphasis added]

In this preface to his most famous work, The City of God, Augustine of Hippo sets forth one of the most significant themes of his work: power, pride, humility, and grace.  He examines numerous events in Roman history that explain how fallen human beings sought power and glory through the dominion over others.  Based on the ancient Roman authors, Augustine rightly explained how Rome originated as a State based on violence and became a State based on conquest in the first five books of The City of God.  He later emphasizes the theology of humility and grace as the heavenly antidote to human sin and pride.

*James 4:6

**Virgil, Aeneid 6

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More Than a Feeling

Posted on August 3, 2021 by Matthew Phillips

“For virtue is nothing else than an affection of the mind ordered according to reason, and such affections are said to be very numerous according to the various inclinations of the same mind, yet having one root and origin, the will.  For one will, according as it inclines itself to various things either by seeking or avoiding, forms various affections, and receives divers names according to the same affections, although, however, all these things are in one will, and are one will.”* 

In this famous early twelfth-century theological text, Hugh explained the nature of virtue.  The interconnection of emotion and reason form the basis of virtue.  Notice, virtue exists when reason controls the affections.  The will must seek or avoid certain things and thus form affections.  According to twelfth-century theologians, how does the will do this?  Simply put: Love.  Twelfth century theologians understood love as the source from which all affections and actions flow.  Bernard of Clairvaux stated that love exists in the emotion and the action and love must shape the will toward feeling or action. When the divine love motivates the will then truly right emotions and good deeds follow.**   

In a devotional work, On the Praise of Charity, Hugh of St Victor extolled the power of love by identifying it as God’s primary motivation for becoming a human being:

“O charity, for you alone were able to draw God down from heaven to earth. O how powerful is your bond, whereby both God could be bound and the human, having been bound, broke the bounds of iniquity! I do not know if I am able to say anything greater in your praise than that you draw God down from heaven and elevate the human from earth to heaven.  Your great virtue is that by means of you God is brought all the way down to earth and the human is exalted all the way up to heaven.”*** 

Hugh followed this section with a meditation on the Incarnation and Passion of Christ.  He described Christ as a man conquered by love as she motivates him to obey his Father’s will.  Love has wounded Christ and therefore wounds his followers deeply in their hearts.  For God is love (caritas). This is the only virtue which is also God Himself and from it flows all of life.  Hugh concludes: 

Charity cures every weakness of the soul.  Charity pulls up all vices by the roots.  Charity is the source of all the virtues.  Charity illumines the mind, purifies the conscience, delights the soul, [and] reveals God.****       

          

*Hugh of St Victor, On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith I.VI.17 (English trans. at p.105) {Emphasis added}

**Bernard, Sermon on Song of Songs 50. II.3 (English trans. vol. 3, p. 31); Bernard On Loving God

***Hugh of St Victor, On the Praise of Charity, trans. Hugh Feiss, OSB, On Love: Victorine Texts in Translation (Hide Park, NY 2012), p. 164.

****Ibid., 166.  

 

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The Spirit of Resistance

Posted on July 3, 2021 by Matthew Phillips

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.”*

Thomas Jefferson wrote these sentences in a letter to Abigail Adams in February 1787 during his  in Paris as Minister to France.  Jefferson is referring to the events known as Shays’ Rebellion here.  Jefferson states that he hopes the rebels were pardoned, then moved on to other matters.  Later in the same year, Jefferson wrote to William Stephens Smith (John and Abigail Adams’ son in law) and expressed similar thoughts about the spirit of resistance.  He pointed out that the 13 States had existed for 11 years and only this one rebellion took place.  Jefferson then concluded famously:

And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.**

Jefferson concluded this letter with a lament that Shays’ Rebellion had influenced the actions of members of the Convention taking place in Philadelphia.  He feared an overreaction would give the government too much power under a new constitution.

*Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 22 February 1787 https://founders.archives.gov/?q=Thomas%20Jefferson%20to%20Abigail%20Adams&s=1111311111&r=149&sr=

**Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 13 November 1787 [Emphasis added] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0348

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The Special Function of History

Posted on April 5, 2021 by Matthew Phillips

“Now the special function of history, particularly in relation to speeches, is first of all to discover the words actually used, whatever they were, and next to establish the reason why a particular action or argument failed or succeeded.  The mere statement of a fact, though it may excite our interest, is of no benefit to us, but when the knowledge of the cause is added, then the study of history becomes fruitful.  For it is the ability to draw analogies between parallel circumstances of the past and of our own times which enables us to make forecasts as to what is to happen: thus in some cases where a given course of action has failed, we are impelled to take precautions so as to avoid a recurrence, while in others we can deal more confidently with the problems that confront us by repeating a solution which has previously succeeded.  On the other hand, a writer who passes over in silence the speeches which were actually made and the causes of what actually happened and introduces fictitious rhetorical exercises and discursive speeches in their place destroys the peculiar virtue of history.” Polybius, The Histories XII. 25b, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (London: Penguin, 1979), p. 440.

Polybius wrote a history of the Roman Republic’s rise to becoming the greatest power in the Mediterranean world from 264 to 146 BC.  He was a Greek noble who spent seventeen years as a hostage among the Romans.  In Rome he became close to some of the most powerful Roman leaders including Scipio Aemilianus, who oversaw the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.  Polybius traveled with Scipio to North Africa and most likely Spain also.

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A Virgin Shall Conceive

Posted on March 25, 2021 by Matthew Phillips

Isenheim Altar at Colmar, France

“Perhaps at the time the angel came, she was holding [the text of] Isaiah in her hands; perhaps she was then studying the prophecy which declares: Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name will be called Emmanuel.* I think that at this moment these [words of the] Scriptures were producing a very appealing conflict in her heart.  I think that when she read that it was to come to pass that a certain virgin would give birth to the Son of God, secretly and with some fear she longed that she might be that virgin. But at the same time she considered herself utterly unworthy of being granted such a privilege.” Aelred of Rievaulx, “Sermon 9: For the Annunciation of the Lord,” in Aelred of Rievaulx: The Liturgical Sermons, trans. Theodore Berkeley and M. Basil Pennington (Kalamazoo 2001), p. 162. [Italics in original]

Aelred of Rievaulx preached on the Annunciation of the Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary here.  As a Cistercian abbot in the twelfth century, Aelred focused on the Incarnation of Christ in his preaching and devotional texts.  Notice how he imagines that Mary was reading the text of Isaiah that prophesied Virgin’s conception and birth of Christ.  Gabriel brings God’s word to Mary but she was also reading text of holy Scripture. Later  medieval artists often depicted Mary as reading this text when Gabriel appeared to her as depicted in the Isenheim Altarpiece painting to the right.  Medieval theologians emphasized Mary’s virtues.  Aelred did not differ as he concluded:

“Charity conflicted with fear, devotion with humility.  At one moment she almost despaired through overwhelming fear; at the next, through the overwhelming desire she drew from it, she could not but hope.  First, devotion moved her to presume to it, but then her great humility moved her to hesitate.  It was then, when she was in this [moment of] hesitation, this wavering, this longing, that the angel came to her and said: Hail, full of grace.”** Ibid.

*Isaiah 7:14

**Luke 1:28

On the development of the devotional tradition of the reading Virgin Mary see Laura Saetveit Miles , “The Origins and Development of the Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation,” Speculum 89.3 (2014): 632-669.

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How Students Deceive Themselves

Posted on February 28, 2021 by Matthew Phillips

“For the first step in learning is the capacity to doubt, nor is there anything so inimical to learning as the presumption of one’s own erudition or excessive reliance upon one’s own wits: the one takes away our interest in learning, while the other diminishes it, and in this way students unnecessarily deceive themselves.  The easiest person to deceive is one’s self, and there is no one our deceit damages more than ourselves.  This comes about because inexperienced students have not yet been permitted to assess the byways, bends and precipices which lie hidden in the sciences;* hence they either mistakenly correct many things in books which they are unable to understand well on their own, or they blame the ignorance and carelessness of scribes, passing deliberately over the numerous things they do not understand.  Effort and perseverance will shrug off such attitudes, however.” Piero Paolo Vergerio, “Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth,” in The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be An Educated Human Being, ed. Richard M. Gamble. Wilmington 2007, p. 323. [Emphasis added]

Vergerio wrote this pedagogical work around 1400.  His writing represents the epitome of Renaissance learning and teaching.  Here, he points out how students often deceive themselves through presumption or ignorance.

*This word means all areas of knowledge

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Delusion Makes You Happy

Posted on December 18, 2020 by Matthew Phillips

“If Folly is any judge, that man is the happiest who is most thoroughly deluded.  May he remain in that state which comes from me alone and is so widespread that I doubt whether there can be found one person in the whole race of man who has been wise for every moment of his life and has never been touched by some madness or other. The reason a person who believes he sees a woman when in reality he is looking at a gourd is called crazy is because this is something beyond usual experience.  However, when a person thinks his wife, who is enjoyed by many, to be a an ever-faithful Penelope, he is not called insane at all because people know that this is a common thing in marriage.” Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, in The Essential Erasmus, trans. John P. Dolan (New York, 1964), 128.

In this famous satire, Erasmus gives folly a voice.  Here he explains how those who are the most deluded seem the happiest in this temporal life.

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Fortune Grows Cruel

Posted on October 21, 2020 by Matthew Phillips

“Fortune began to grow cruel and confuse everything.  Men who had easily endured hard work, dangers, uncertainty and adversity found that leisure and wealth, things desirable at other times, were a burden and the cause of misery.  And so, at first, greed for money grew, then greed for power.  Ambition forced many men to become liars, to hide one thing in their heart and have something else ready on their tongue, to value friendship and enmity according to convenience, not substance, and to put up a good face rather than have a good heart.  At first, these things grew gradually, they were  punished occasionally; afterwards, when this contagion invaded like a plague, the state changed, and the political power which had been most just and best became cruel and intolerable.’ Sallust, Catiline’s Conspiracy 10, trans. William W. Batstone (Oxford 2010), 15. [Emphasis added]

Here Sallust describes society in the breakdown of social virtue in the late Roman Republic.  The Romans had conquered much of Mediterranean world by the end of the 2nd century BC.  The blessings of wealth and leisure led to misery instead of happiness.  Ambition created liars and transformed society from just to cruel and evil.  If one examines the actions of the Roman Senatorial class during the late Republic then Sallust’s words give an apt description.  Roman Senators promoted Roman State’s actions to enrich themselves particularly in the area of foreign policy.   

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Love and Rewards

Posted on September 26, 2020 by Matthew Phillips

“God is not loved without a reward, although he should be loved without regard for one.  True charity cannot be worthless, still, as ‘it does not seek its own advantage,’ it cannot be termed mercenary.  Love pertains to the will, it is not a transaction; it cannot acquire or be acquired by a pact.  Moving us freely, it makes up spontaneous.  True love is content with itself; it has its own reward, the object of its love.  Whatever you seem to love because of something else, you do not really love; you really love the end pursued and not that by which it is pursued…True love merits its reward, it does not seek it.” Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God VII. 17. trans. Emero Steigman (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1995), 20. [Emphasis added]

Bernard focuses on the spontaneous nature of love.  Divine charity transforms the soul.  True love (verus amor) does not seek a reward.  It is not an contractual agreement.  A lover’s desire reshapes her affectus (the word translated as ‘will’ above) and redirects it toward a new object.  Therefore, she seeks no reward from a human lover or God.       

 

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Rewarding Merit and Confronting Evil

Posted on August 22, 2020 by Matthew Phillips

“The only proposals in the senate that I have seen fit to mention are particularly praiseworthy or particularly scandalous ones.  It seems to me a historian’s foremost duty to ensure that merit is recorded, and to confront evil deeds and words with the fear of posterity’s denunciations.  But this was a tainted, meanly obsequious age.  The greatest figures had to protect their positions by subserviency; and, in addition to them, all ex-consuls, most ex-praetors, even many junior senators competed with each other’s offensively sycophantic proposals.  There is a tradition that whenever Tiberius left the senate-house he exclaimed in Greek, ‘Men fit to be slaves!’ Even he, freedom’s enemy, became impatient of such abject servility.” Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, trans. Michael Grant (Penguin: London, 1996), p. 150.  [Emphasis added]

In this section of his work on imperial Rome, Tacitus examined the reign of Tiberius, who followed Caesar Augustus as ruler of the Roman empire.  Tacitus clearly considered Tiberius to be tyrant and most of the politicians of Rome to be sycophants. He also understood that an historian must evaluate the actions of historical figures.     

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