πλήρωμα vs Jesse’s shelf-stable paper mâché God

Jesse has most recently tried to paint Catholics as Protestants. He has read them as a protestant reads: believing in tablets of stone rather than tablets of hearts; thrilling to red ink rather than passion; imitation leather rather than a beatific vision. Jesse gives Catholics demerits for transcending bookishness. Like the French philosophes, Jesse cannot quit worshipping his rationalizing skull. 

The Enlightenment is many things. So much have we inherited that is good and bad but badly discerned. There is the instrumental Enlightenment: the scientific method of reasoning our way to improve technique in order to inflate, sharpen, and commodify outcomes. How can we increase yield in chemical reactions? How can we engineer the Slave Ship to deliver the most viable product on the easter shores of the Western Hemisphere? Good and Bad. Then there is the critical Enlightenment: using our transcendental reason to critique runaway instrumental reasoning appetite in order to question the quality of projects and outcomes. Especially in the social sphere of humankind: what kinds of political organization develops the more efficacious democratic process? Are there conditions that impose poverty on some but not others? What are the limits of laws; when does a particular law become inhumane? How is justice balanced with mercy? What is our nature and is our natural mind capable of transcending our material physique? If we are merely biological, how do we construct society with a moral system?

As I've written before, there is long standing and vibrant school of thought that protestantism brought us a secular, transactional capitalism. Originally the thesis of Max Weber, this argument has only grown stronger, wider and deeper, by many (Enlightenment based) researchers and professors in the Western intellectual world. Jesse tried to say there was no such seriousness. And he found one living scholar who opposes this thesis. As if one erased the seriousness of hundreds. 

Jesse has now demonstrated another way in which protestantism secularizes society. He erases the human capacity to encounter God directly. Jesse assumes - I assume ignorantly rather than actually thinking through the doctrine - that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the supernatural and the natural world, such that we human beings do not perceive the life of the Spirit but must assume it purely on a basis of blind faith. This protestant bunker life is the most recent product of Karl Barth who takes up Kantian and empiricist and Heideggarian post-modernity objections to the concept of natural theology and blends in the protestant convictions the any Christian knowledge of God must absolutely come solely from basing all theological reasoning on divine revelation content in the crucifixion of Jesus. 

The base conviction of natural theology stems from scripture and inherent in the legacy of the Church Fathers and Medieval Scholasticism, most notably Aquinas, and continues through all the congregations of the immense breadth of Catholic thought in the centuries since. Such as the one Jesse mentions, Nouvelle Théologie (the term Jesse uses, Resourcement, is his unconscious acknowledgement that mid-20th century French theologians were urging the rereading of the Church Fathers, thereby reestablishing a dynamic relationship with the traditions of early Christian thought), but also Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, Franciscan spirituality, the turn to theology by phenomenology, etc.

In short, missing from Jesse's education is the role of a modern Thomistic tradition confessing the inherent capacities of human nature for knowledge of God. That we can experience for ourselves our own createdness giving meaning and goodness to the quality of daily life. Further, that our natural ability to think our way to God is itself a necessary grace prior to reception of any revelation from God. Otherwise, in the absence of thinking God, a vision of God could only produce in us a schizophrenic fragmentation of useless ineffable sparking. Even reading scripture is vanity in the bizarre protestant denial of our natural capacity to conceive of a God. This protestant denial of natural theology leads to a seriously tortured misunderstanding of the nature of human beings, of our response to God's grace, and our incorporation into Christ's body, the church. 

Jesse thinks we can just read it. And read it. And read and read it and read it until we grasp and contain the idea and trust the existence of three divine persons in one being. Like the French Enlightenment vision of rationally capturing all of existence and putting it down in ink on paper as a massive Encyclopedia of all knowledge. But the French philosophes at least knew it would be endless. Jesse is a failed philosophe, or, we may hope, a sapling of 17th century epistemology who, with luck and achieving mature faith over the next many years, will enter transcendence. Which is, fundamentally, the Christian life.

Here is Jesse's own summary of 2,000 year old Catholicism - and surely, by extension, the spirituality of the Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Coptic, Syrian, Mar Thoma, etc peoples (2,000 years, mind, of the teaching life of the Holy Spirit):

"A system that must define, refine, and adjust its doctrines across centuries is not presenting a finished body of truth but engaging in an ongoing interpretive project. The emergence of major doctrines long after the apostolic era, the continual need for clarification, and the structured plurality of theological schools all point to a tradition that develops rather than one that possesses revelation in a final form. Catholicism may claim to guard the truth, but its own history shows that it does so through a process of continual reinterpretation rather than through a fully complete and final expression of divine revelation."

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Jesse denies the capacity of the Holy Spirit to teach the church everything over time. And so Jesse kills life. Everything that is created has a developmental life. A tree has greater life than Jesse's static, varnished, dust collecting desk. 

There is birth, growth, maturing, decay, and death. What Paul presents to us is a created life transcending death, life eternal that is born when we believe and join Christ's body. And Paul urges the Hellenistic and Latin churches to grow in this identity of participating in the fullness of Christ's reality: Christ's completely filling love through sacrifice; Christ's relating to us the fulness of eternal deity: and Christ's incorporation of all believers as members of his body which fills all creation with the fulness of himself. 

Paul promises that we will grow richly glorious in our inward, spiritual being, by the power of the Spirit, able to comprehend the 

This is the process of faith: the grace of God's life in us. How far is this from a protestant coven of encyclopedists calming that they have grasped "a fully complete and final expression of divine revelation" entirely absent of daily and ongoing mystic and beatific relationship with God via our existing in the fulness of Christ's life. Not a book.

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything..."

Not a book. The book is holy because it is not internally satisfied or satisfying. The Holy Scriptures are holy because they faithfully point beyond their earthly limitation to the Holy One.

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But what does scripture - when read - say?

"But when the fullness (πλήρωμα) of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children

"For in him all the fulness (πλήρωμα) of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."

"For in him the whole fulness (πλήρωμα) of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fulness (πεπληρωμένοι) of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him....  If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch”(referring to things which all perish as they are used), according to human precepts and doctrines? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting rigor of devotion and self-abasement and severity to the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh."

"I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fulness (πλήρωμα) of him who fills (πληρουμένου) all in all."

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness (πλήρωμα) of God."

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And then there's Marshal, commenting on Jesse's post, and reflecting on his Catholic upbringing and rejection of its challenges: "They've made it all far more complicated than it needs to be."

And Matthew: "Then the disciples came and asked him, 'Why do you speak to them in parables?' He answered, 'To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.'"

Explains why Marshal is running on empty.

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from Dei Verbum, one of the four major constitutions of Vatican II. (Regarding the development of doctrine the significant portion of the following excerpt is, “This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. (5) For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.

The words of the holy fathers witness to the presence of this living tradition, whose wealth is poured into the practice and life of the believing and praying Church….”)

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CHAPTER II

HANDING ON DIVINE REVELATION

7. In His gracious goodness, God has seen to it that what He had revealed for the salvation of all nations would abide perpetually in its full integrity and be handed on to all generations. Therefore Christ the Lord in whom the full revelation of the supreme God is brought to completion (see 2 Cor. 1:20; 3:13; 4:6), commissioned the Apostles to preach to all men that Gospel which is the source of all saving truth and moral teaching, (1) and to impart to them heavenly gifts. This Gospel had been promised in former times through the prophets, and Christ Himself had fulfilled it and promulgated it with His lips. This commission was faithfully fulfilled by the Apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did, or what they had learned through the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The commission was fulfilled, too, by those Apostles and apostolic men who under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit committed the message of salvation to writing. (2)

But in order to keep the Gospel forever whole and alive within the Church, the Apostles left bishops as their successors, "handing over" to them "the authority to teach in their own place."(3) This sacred tradition, therefore, and Sacred Scripture of both the Old and New Testaments are like a mirror in which the pilgrim Church on earth looks at God, from whom she has received everything, until she is brought finally to see Him as He is, face to face (see 1 John 3:2).

8. And so the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved by an unending succession of preachers until the end of time. Therefore the Apostles, handing on what they themselves had received, warn the faithful to hold fast to the traditions which they have learned either by word of mouth or by letter (see 2 Thess. 2:15), and to fight in defense of the faith handed on once and for all (see Jude 1:3) (4) Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith of the peoples of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes.

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. (5) For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.

The words of the holy fathers witness to the presence of this living tradition, whose wealth is poured into the practice and life of the believing and praying Church. Through the same tradition the Church's full canon of the sacred books is known, and the sacred writings themselves are more profoundly understood and unceasingly made active in her; and thus God, who spoke of old, uninterruptedly converses with the bride of His beloved Son; and the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel resounds in the Church, and through her, in the world, leads unto all truth those who believe and makes the word of Christ dwell abundantly in them (see Col. 3:16).

9. Hence there exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.(6)

10. Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church. Holding fast to this deposit the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread and in prayers (see Acts 2, 42, Greek text), so that holding to, practicing and professing the heritage of the faith, it becomes on the part of the bishops and faithful a single common effort. (7)

But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, (8) has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, (9) whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.

It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God's most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.”