MacIntyre and the failure of Culture

Every culture is characterised in part by what it conceals and obscures from view, by what its habits of mind prevent it from ackonwledging and appropriating. We err therefore in so largely, sometimes exclusively writing the history of ideas, of science, of art, of culture in general in terms of positive achievement. Culture is present also in failure and it can in crucial respects blind the educated to what needs to be seen. So it was with the failure to understand the work of Aquinas in the late Middle Ages. So perhaps it may be with us... . p. 169

This is a rather a gloomy - characteristically grumpy we might say - assessment of the state of intellectual enquiry! MacIntyre characterises the reception of Aquinas' grand synthesis of Aristotle and Augustine as a rank failure, with the usual suspects - Occam and Scotus - taking a beating on this. And in Meister Eckhart's sermons, the business of theological thinking becomes (for MacIntyre) separated from rational thinking: preaching becomes a matter of rhetorical effect, a 'mere rationalization of the preacher's processes'. This effect MacIntyre sees very much in evidence today.

Thomas Aquinas on fortitude and martyrdom

Aquinas considers the issue of courage/fortitude and martyrdom: is it an act of fortitude? Certainly, the early martyrologies apply soldier-like qualities to the martyrs.

...it belongs to fortitude to strengthen man in the good of virtue, especially against dangers, and chiefly against dangers of death, and most of all against those that occur in battle. Now it is evident that in martyrdom man is firmly strengthened in the good of virtue, since he cleaves to faith and justice notwithstanding the threatening danger of death, the imminence of which is moreover due to a kind of particular contest with his persecutors...
Two things must be considered in the act of fortitude. One is the good wherein the brave man is strengthened, and this is the end of fortitude; the other is the firmness itself, whereby a man does not yield to the contraries that hinder him from achieving that good, and in this consists the essence of fortitude. Now just as civic fortitude strengthens a man's mind in human justice, for the safeguarding of which he braves the danger of death, so gratuitous fortitude strengthens man's soul in the good of Divine justice, which is "through faith in Christ Jesus," according to Rm. 3:22. Thus martyrdom is related to faith as the end in which one is strengthened, but to fortitude as the eliciting habit.

Now, I am by instinct repelled by this, because the emphasis on 'courage' is misplaced I think. It places all the weight on the analogy between martyrdom and secular acts, and on the virtues displayed by the martyr. So, the witness of the martyr ends up being to his or her own fortitude rather than on to Christ himself. What might rescue this account for me is that Aquinas acknowledges this fortitude as a gracious gift coming from without and strengthening the person, rather than a matter of significant and impressive inner resolve. It is so abstract, though, isn't it? 'the good of Divine justice' is what we are strengthened in rather than in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... though technically they are the same thing I guess.

Vaughan Roberts on Daniel 7

Harlech Castle, Wales.

Vaughan Roberts (of St Ebbe's C of E the rector) preached a terrific sermon on Daniel 7 today - one that rang all sorts of bells in my thesis addled brian. He started with the martyr question: if I was in the situation of having to chose life or martyrdom, what would I do? The right answer is, of course, 'I don't know'... Why? Because martyrdom is not within our human power; and because it isn't about exercising courage.

And this was the earth-shattering point: it is about vision, aka faith. That is, the vision we get in Dan 7 - the vision of the temporary state of the empires and the sitting on the throne of the ancient of days, and the handing of authority to the Son of Man - is visible to the eyes of faith. And it is this vision - a revelation that is given, of course - of the way things truly are that makes it possible for the Christian to say 'I can be none other than what I am'. This is a vision of the providential work of God worked out in Jesus, the Son of Man.

So, what makes a martyr distinctively Christian is this vision of the rule and authority of God in Christ Jesus. Without that vision: nothing. Martyrdom (contra Aquinas) is the result of faith.

Alasdair MacIntyre continues...

Well, I shoulda read the next chapter before posting! As MacIntyre tells it, Thomas Aquinas was uniquely able to reconcile Augustinianism and Aristotelianism in his thought. This was because he didn't imagine that he was translating one into the terms of the other - MacIntyre thinks this never works. What he was able to do was to inhabit both worlds of though in true bilingual fashion, and so produce a synthesis which was native to both.

MacIntyre doesn't give much detail as yet as to how this actually works out in Thomas' thought. How can he hold together a strong view of original sin and its noetic effects AND also have an Aristotelian rationality?