St Maximus the Confessor Shows Us Why We Cannot Rely Upon the Church Fathers Alone

I really like St Maximus; he is one of my favorite saints and one of my favorite patristic writers. There is much within his works that inspire me and my own theological development. Yet, he was a man of his time (the 7th century). And in this time, their understanding of human biology was woeful at best. Perhaps the best way to show this is to explore a quote of St Maximus on abortion:

Question 28 (III, 7): What is the meaning of the passage about the woman who is struck and ‘has an abortion,’ and ‘if the child comes out perfectly formed’ the law declares that the one who struck [her] must give ‘life for life.’ But if the child falls out unformed, [why] is it only an accident?

Literally, we understand the passage in this way: since the murder is of the body — for a soul, being immortal, is never murdered – for this reason ‘being not perfectly formed’ into the human form does not entail to danger but only mild damage. But if the human image is fully developed, it is reasonable to see such a person as committing the murder of a perfect human being [1].

We now know more about the biological processes going on during pregnancy. We know that human life exists at the time of conception, long before the embryo looks human. In the time of St Maximus, they did not have the means to investigate the process, and they assumed that life began when the fetus was in human form. If we find the ancients could be wrong on something so fundamental as when human life was formed in the womb, we can understand why their other opinions are not always to have a hold on us as well (something which those who quote patristic sources to make an argument against evolution fail to understand).

The Church Fathers are an important witness of the faith of the Church, but that witness must be understood within its proper context. They are not the final authority by which we know the dogmas of the faith — rather, they are a witness of our faith, and show us the difficulty we all face, in all times and places, to properly declare that faith in a way which is comprehensive and valid.

Footnotes

[1] St Maximus the Confessor, Questions and Doubts. Trans. Despina D. Prassas (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 57.


[1] St Maximus the Confessor, Questions and Doubts. Trans. Despina D. Prassas (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 57.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 11:40 am and is filed under Abortion, Henry Karlson, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “St Maximus the Confessor Shows Us Why We Cannot Rely Upon the Church Fathers Alone”

  1. Tom says:
    November 20, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    Whoever said we could rely on the Church Fathers alone? This is a straw man argument.

  2. Henry Karlson says:
    November 20, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    Tom

    What is the straw man? What is the argument? Do you get the point?

    I am someone who studies and learns from the fathers and finds them to be a significant part of my theological development. However, there are many people who will quote one or another, when they find themselves in dispute with the Church on some issue or another. This is quite common — ignoring the authority of the Church as the interpreter of tradition and using one quote or another as a reason for it — look, for example, to how Jansenists turned to Augustine.

  3. Gordie says:
    November 20, 2009 at 2:04 pm

    Henry:

    You make a very good point. I have an affinity for the writings of Pascal and St. Augustine, although my readings of them are limited. They resonate with my own experiences and beliefs. I try as much as possible not to go extremes as if the Church hadn’t already considered and synthesized their thoughts and ideas into her teachings.

    What ideas of Augustine did the Jansenists misappropriate for their theology/philosophy?

    Thanks again. I enjoy your posts.

  4. Henry Karlson says:
    November 20, 2009 at 2:16 pm

    Gordie,

    Jansenism followed a particular reading of St Augustine, taking his nature of nature and grace Calvinistically; they looked upon Augustine as their mentor, and would quote Augustine to counter objections to their theology, not always understanding either 1) they are misreading Augustine (which happened not only to them) or 2) not all of Augustine was valid. For a very quick explanation, this is what the old CE had to say:

    In order to present this doctrine under the patronage of St. Augustine, Jansenius based his argument chiefly on two Augustinian conceptions: on the distinction between the auxilium sine quo non granted to Adam, and the auxilium quo, active in his descendants; and on the theory of the “victorious delectation” of grace. A few brief remarks will suffice to make clear the double mistake. In the first place the auxilium sine quo non is not, in the idea of Augustine, “a grace purely sufficient”, since through it the angels persevered; it is on the contrary a grace which confers complete power in actu primo (i.e. the ability to act), in such a way that, this being granted, nothing further is needed for action. The auxilium quo, on the other hand, is a supernatural help which bears immediately on the actus secundus (i.e. the performance of the action) and in this grace, in so far as it is distinguished from the grace of Adam, must be included the whole series of efficacious graces by which man works out his salvation, or the gift of actual perseverance, which gift conducts man infallibly and invincibly to beatitude, not because it suppresses liberty, but because its very concept implies the consent of man. The delectation of grace is a deliberate pleasure which the Bishop of Hippo explicitly opposes to necessity (voluptas, non necessitas); but what we will and embrace with consenting pleasure, we cannot at the same time not will, and in this sense we will it necessarily. In this sense also, it is correct to say, “Quod amplius nos delectat, secundum id operemur necesse est” (i.e. in acting we necessarily follow what gives us most pleasure). Finally, this delight is called victorious, not because it fatally subjugates the will, but because it triumphs over concupiscence, fortifying free will to the point of rendering it invincible to natural desire. It is thus clear that we can say of men sustained by and faithful to grace, “Invictissime quod bonum est velint, et hoc deserere invictissime nolint”.
    http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08285a.htm

    I’m glad you enjoy my posts; some are more detailed than others, but I try to present something of interest in all.

  5. David Raber says:
    November 23, 2009 at 8:21 am

    The powerful general assumption in our world today is that thinkers of the past, including the Church fathers, have little if anything to offer us because we are all so much smarter today: We have computers and we can send a man to the moon and make mice and men out of a petrie dish.

    The big historical perspective should tell us that thinkers centuries hence will inevitably regard themselves as superior to us, and indeed see our actual mistakes–just as we see, for example, the mistakes of the racial “science” of the nineteenth century which was widely accepted at the time as the latest and greatest gospel truth.

    So I guess we just need to read the Church fathers as fellow human beings as fallible as ourselves, and possibly as wise or wiser than us too. Along with this a part of our attitude should be at least some good measure of deference, given the fact that so many other thinkers over the years have given their vote to these writers as especially worthy of our study.