HUMILITY AS THE PRINCIPLE OF REALISM epistemological

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Humility is radically intelligence virtues, with which it, recognizing employees from being, tidy to being and below being, It opens at the Royal, It is subject to the real and to listen to his impulses, It leaves form from the real and adapts to the real: the conformity of intellect and thing. This equating It is act of the intellect, but the will wills the intellect to adapt. The first, Humility is essential to obey the reality, that the truth.

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Author
Giovanni Cavalcoli, o.p.

It is curious that in the centuries-old confrontation between realism and idealism There has always stopped by both contenders, on considerations and confutations order of mere theoretical, moreover, often interesting and deep; but there has never worried by both sides to clarify the relationship between realism and idealism on the one hand and, correspondingly, on the other, the relationship between humility and pride, deepening and motivating the fact that while the humility gives rise to realism, l'idealism, especially in its pantheistic outlet, It is the result of pride. To tell the truth, dialectics humility – Pride is the traditional Christian ethics; but not so idealistic ethics, who prefers to oppose slavery to freedom. It is clear that what realism is pride, for the idealist is the boldness of thought, that stands beyond all limits and its irrepressible force rises to the infinite horizon of the Absolute, rather, which reveals their absolute hidden under the appearance of the empirical.

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So for the idealist, the realist is naive, a slave to prejudice the existence of an external world, Natural laws coercing the freedom of the spirit and of a transcendent God, ultra-worldly, rewarder and punisher of a pipeline meanly interested and servile. Admitting being a transcendence towards thought, for the idealist would be to make slaves of this being; while he must be freely placed by the thought and regulated by the thought.

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As there is no middle ground or mediation between humility and pride, so there is an intermediate position or mediator between realism and idealism, as there is no mediation between the yes and no, between being and not – to be. Some, come Leibnitz, Wolff, Schelling, Husserl and Bontadini, they thought that they are two opposite extremes, for which they are believed to be compelled to establish a median position; but to no avail, than to juxtapose theses contradict each other.

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In tal modo, in the history of epistemology, or Knowledge of doctrines, there are essentially two choices or basic orientations: or realism or idealism. And that's because? Because knowing involves the relationship between the idea and reality. The alternative arises when we ask what is the object of knowledge. The object is either the idea or reality. If we place the object is the idea, We idealism. If we ask what is the reality, We realism. What is the right conception? You realism, because the idea is a means and not an end or object of knowledge. Indeed, we use the ideas to reach or grasp reality, which therefore it is the object of knowledge. The idea can be object of knowledge, but in the second bar, subsequently, after we know the real or the thing or body, reflecting on the inner half, which we used or we know the object size.

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The path to the truth of knowledge is humility, which consists in subdue the intellect to things, to being, to the real. And this is precisely the realism. But humility leads to obedience, because humility is the virtue that makes us aware of being dependent on a higher. The soul - says Saint Catherine of Siena - "is so obedient, how humble and as humble as obedient" [1] [(c). 154]. We are at the bottom [humus] and he is at the top. But it is at the top not to oppress us, unlike ma, because you want to do good, It wants to raise him, give us what he. The humble is so open and willing to receive, to welcome the good that the top does give him, to comply with its directives, attentive to his commands or his incitements.

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The humble, that recognizes that his subjection, He is ready to obey, that is, to do what the superior commands him. The humility leads to greatness, ie to participate thereof at which the upper is higher, accepting the good that is proper to the top and now, obeying, become his. Thus St. Paul says to "make every thought captive to obey Christ" [II Cor 10,5].

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Humility is radically intelligence virtues, with which it, recognizing employees from being, being ordered and below being, It opens at the Royal, It is subject to the real and to listen to his impulses, It leaves form from the real and adapts to the real: the conformity of intellect and thing. This equating It is act of the intellect, but the will wills the intellect to adapt. The first, Humility is essential to obey the reality, that the truth. Humility, then, Consequently, It will be the act of the will with which it puts into practice the good known by the intellect. Humility leads to love. Vice versa, the Cartesian refusal to base knowledge and certainty on equating to external things, is a form of disobedience to the real, which it is a sign of arrogance. It is also a self-contradictory position, because his acclaimed desire to find the truth obliges him to practice the equating; but when he practices the equating to deny the equating, It demonstrates that the will is insincere.

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Idealism thus introduces in thought, with denial of the principle of non-contradiction, beyond the Hegelian rhetoric of "reconciliation", un'intima, desired and incurable inner laceration, and then it introduces a principle of dishonesty and duplicity in thinking and talking. The rest, Descartes mocked the principle of identity, considering what empty and useless. Idealism, under the guise of "science" and even pretending to be the "absolute knowledge", which is nothing but the gnosis, It is so open to all the tricks of sophistry and more refined art of deception.

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The humble and sincere desire, instead, obeys the real through the intellect. So says the love of truth. It involves humility and obedience. The will let the real act on intellect, that you implement it, that the fruitful, that determines. So the intellect rises, if it raises: vacuum becomes full, full object known.

ATTITUDE idealist

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Idealism intellect does not submit, I order. It is not considered below being, but above. Being dependent on him because the being is being thought of him. This is the attitude of pride, which involves the motion exactly opposite to that of humility: while humility intellect submits to being, pride in the intellect wants to subject himself being. The lower wants to take the place of the upper.

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Like Adam, does he decide, instead of God, what is good and what is bad [cf. Gen 3,5]. No longer, then the adjustment to the divine command, but the disobedience, which precisely, as taught by St. Catherine, "It comes from pride, that comes from love their own self, depriving oneself of humility" [2] [(c). 154]. We should also distinguish, Saint Catherine, a dual ego turn on itself: what she calls "self-knowledge", and from this comes the humility: "Humility comes from self-knowledge" [3]; "In the knowledge you will humble yourself, seeing you for you and not your being you will know from me" [(c). 4]. In this self-consciousness, my thoughts turn to my subordinates to be, which is proof of God. The knowledge self based realistic self-awareness, because I appear as a real, Act independently to think and not as a simple thought. Santa Caterina also speaks of another self-consciousness, which is "self-love", that gives rise to pride [(c). 38]. And pride, for its part, He takes off "knowledge of himself ", which it is the self-consciousness of healthy realism, based on knowledge of things, and guided by humility. Indeed, The place itself from self-self is not objective, Act independently to think, but it is the self-made absolute idealist.

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Instead healthy realistic self-awareness leads to the discovery of God [(c). 128]. realism, which involves the adherence, l ’equating, obedience to the things, It gives the initial certainty of knowledge, ed opens, in humility, the eye of the truth on the ego, about the world and about God. Vice versa, "Love just blurs the eye of" [(c). 136], because I, considering themselves self-sufficient and first principle of knowledge of certainty, become self, It is not open to objective reality, but it closes superbly in himself and in his own ideas. Instead ontology born ideology. But by the same token, If the idealist thinks he sees, but it really is blind. It lacks what Santa Caterina calls the "holy discretion ', you can even call "discernment", namely intellectual virtue, possibly enriched with the spiritual gifts of intellect and wisdom, for which the intellect or reason, fed experience, and prudent in reflection, on the basis of objective values, distinguished, in concrete situations, right from wrong and good from bad. Conversely, l '' indiscretion 'of the love is its effect [cf. (c). 121].

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With just attack me to my love as I was God. I do not recognize as a creature, but I absolutize my ego as if it were up to nothing. I do not know the truth, but "I am" the truth. My self, my thoughts are unfounded, but founding. My thinking does not require more of my being, but founds, because I identify my being with my being thought by me.

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For the idealist the reality is the idea I have of reality. They are infallible, because my thinking coincides with being. Being, indeed, And It is thought by me, It is my idea, is the thinking being that I am. I'm not one that I can think of, but a thinking self. As the thinking being identical, because the idea is to be, It is thought to be, I become subsistent thought and by that subsistent being who thinks himself. absolute Self-Awareness. For the idealist I exist by myself, not another. Do not depend on anyone, but only from myself. I think of myself, not because I have drawn an external reality. The idealist does not take into account the fact that, if in the act of thinking about myself, I catch myself thinking, I think it is because an external reality. It - one that St. Thomas calls the essence of the material - it is the initial object of knowledge. So in knowing childbirth from it and not from myself thinking. It and not myself is the first certainty.

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Doubt Thomist CARTESIAN DOUBT

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It is true that spiritual certainty is stronger than that sensible things out of me. However, This noblest sure we get it starting from the humble but conclusive sensitive certainties, which are invalidated only by mental illness, so there's absolutely no reason to put them in doubt. Because of this, Cartesian doubt is unreasonable doubt, absurd and hypocritical, since it is not realistic humility to accept things as they are and the value of the ideas that represent them, but by pride of not wanting to lower to accept those humble although extremely solid certainties. Yet it is God Who gives us the wonderful show of nature and all sentient creatures, from which only [cf. RM 1, 20] we can get, by analogy, to spiritual discovery, ego thinking and God himself. So the deliberate undermining and discard those certainties, exchange them for illusions or false starting points, Descartes was an act of foolish pride and foolishness, masked by the pretext of founding and start knowing the certainty of the spirit and not from that of the senses. But so Descartes threw himself into the abyss - what Kant will call the "abyss of reason" [4] - then pretending to be rescued by God.

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This is demonstrated by the history of thought that comes from him, Thin Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Husserl, Nietzsche and Heidegger. The rejection of the initial certainty of sense, perhaps presumptuously claiming to be self-assured, instead of humbly receive from the creatures and then by God, It is paid at the end of the high price of total skepticism and nihilism of modernity. Even St. Thomas argues the legitimacy and indeed the need for universal doubt about the truth [5] to give beginning to philosophy; but advances like simple hypothesis, completely absurd, not to be taken seriously and not exercise as it did Descartes. Because of this, for Aquinas there is certainty that they exist because you think, not because of doubts; and such certainty, however, is based on the original certainty of common sense. Instead, Also the Augustinian solution to the skeptical doubt Academic, similarly to the Cartesian solution, It is not exempt from a basic flaw. Sant’Augustine, indeed, how will Descartes, founds the principle of certainty in consciousness that, I doubt, I exist [«if I am not mistaken, sum»] [6], regardless of the fact that the question is not really thinking, but a simple swing thought jammed, so the inferred its existence from this doubt foolish, It can not be a truly founding act of certainty. St. Augustine also saves the certainty with the a posteriori argument, since it admits the veracity of the senses, while Descartes, that does not admit the, wrong even more seriously, remaining in its closed cogito.

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We also observe that, also admitted and not granted that doubt is a thought, it is true that when I reflect on my thinking, I take myself as a thinking; but this does not entitle me to say that I think in essence. My being is not well founded or place by my thinking; ma, on the contrary, my being is the foundation and premise of my thinking. No, or I exist because I think, but I think they are. My thinking depends on me, but my being. It is true that if I, I'm; but even if I do not think. Only God is subsistent Thought, because it is subsisting Being. Only He can say absolutely: "I am". So, as taught by St. Catherine, self-love of self is an inordinate self-love, which deprives the love of God:

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"He who loves Me is love private self messy love" [c.128]. Such love creates pride, which in turn generates the disobedience: "Disobedience is the pride, that comes from love their own self, depriving themselves of 'humility'[(c). 154].

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REALISM AND Idealism

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We realize that we know things. When we know, we intentionally identify with them. They come into us, in our spirit or in our mind clearly not in their being or in their materiality, but dematerialized, by means of an image or an idea or a concept. As we grasp the truth or reality in a judgment or intuition. But how is it that the same thing or reality, a spiritual materials, which it is outside of us, independent of us, becomes at once present to our mind, intimate thereto? Precisely through the idea or representation, that we form the essence of that thing, starting from sense experience, if it is material, or by analogy with material things, it is spiritual.

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Instead, the wrong conception of knowledge is idealism, for which the object would be the idea, ie it is thought. So either you start from the idea and you reach the external things [7]; or else the thing itself or the reality or the entity is resolved in the idea or in the thought or in the thought or in the thinker [8]. Being is being thought. Being identifies himself with the thought. It is identified with the consciousness of thinking oneself. The inner being is the thought, not out of thought. But why this view is wrong? For two reasons. First, because if we have in us the ideas of things and of ourselves, it is not because our knowing departs from ideas of things or of our ego that thinks, but why, having previously contacted with the senses things, we formed the ideas of things we contacted. And reflecting on these ideas we produced, we become aware of ourselves, producing ideas and thinks things. So, our knowing does not start with ideas of things or from the consciousness of our self, but proceeds from the things. In second place, Being is thought once it is thought, but not before being thought. Being, so, It is distinct from my thinking. It is true that, thinking being, being intentionally gets me thinking, be thought. But at the same it remains distinct from my thinking; It is in front of my thought [obstructing finds], outside and independent of my thought. Being is the rule of truth of my thinking, which it will be true if it is appropriate or subject to being, to reality, things, if faithfully it represents them as they are in themselves.

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The truth is in the realism of the subject Compliance the object; while the opposite occurs idealism: is the object that conforms to the subject, It is derived from the subject and depends on the subject. Because of this, the Church qualifies it as "subjectivism" [9]. But subjectivism is also gnosticism, which it is nothing but the theory of knowledge of idealism. Indeed, Gnosticism, as idealism, gnoseology is that according to which the human mind, divine by nature, He stands for itself the divine science. He says therefore, the Letter Rejoice and rejoice:

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"Gnosticism supposed" faith in a locked subjectivism, which affects only a particular experience or a series of arguments and knowledge that you think will comfort and enlighten, but where ultimately subject is closed immanence of his own reason and his feelings " [n. 36, text WHO].

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And what about the fact that we saw that the object of thought, for idealism, it is the same thought, It is the idea, which it is the coincidence of being and thought, ideal and real. Being is being thought. Being is thinking. E, consequently, thinking the same as being. But this is the same divine being and the object of divine knowledge. And then, in the idealistic Gnosticism human knowledge he elevates himself to the divine knowledge.

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The idealism IS ONE GNOSTICISM

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Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Tell, if thou hast understanding!

Gb 38,4

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Maritain rightly spoke of «Hegelian gnosis» [10]. And it has detected as

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"Rationalism inaugurated by Descartes came with Hegel at the end of his conquests. Everything is subjected to the empire of Reason which is, in the sense most definitely unique, Essence [beings] the divine Spirit, as the human spirit '.

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Hegel expressed in triumph, in Conclusion of his Lectures on the history of philosophy [11], This final outcome firm Cartesian, outcome that he himself had brought about with his philosophical work. He is like the "discovery of God, He knows what ' [p. 412]. In this final synthesis, Hegel sums up the path of philosophy made by Descartes in his time, namely the elaboration of his system. philosophy Subject, Hegel, It is "the totality of thought, the intelligible world, It is the concrete Idea » [p. 413], "The ideals of all reality"[ibid.]. With Descartes, Hegel continues, "Penetrated in it" [ideality] "The principle of subjectivity, individuality and God as Spirit became real to Himself in the self ' [ibid.]. Because of this

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"The modern age work is to understand this idea as the Spirit" [ibid.]. But "to proceed from the Idea that knows how to precisely know the Idea, the opposition must be infinite " [ibid.]. "In this way, the Spirit produced this spiritual world, as a nature, the first creation of the Spirit. The work of the Spirit is now to bring that 'beyond' in reality and in the self; which is done as self-consciousness thinks itself and knows the absolute essence that thinks itself. The mere thought surged in Descartes on this doubling " [p. 414]. Thus, "the idea is in its quiet restlessness" [pp. 415— 416]; "Opposites are identical in itself, because eternal life consists in eternally produce the opposition and the eternally resolve. Knowing the opposition and unity in the opposition unity. Here is the absolute knowledge " [ibid.]. "The finite self-consciousness" [Umana] "It ceased to be over; and in such a way on the other hand, the absolute self-consciousness " [Divina] "He holds that reality, that before she missed. The whole world history in general and in particular the history of philosophy, represent only this struggle », ie the person who denies himself and is reconciled with itself, "And they appear to have received them off at the point where the absolute Self-awareness, of which they have the representation, He has ceased to be something foreign, in which therefore the Spirit is as real as Spirit. Indeed, this is because it knows itself as absolute Spirit, and this I know in Science » [p. 416]. That's exactly Gnosis.

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Hegel means that with idealism man infinity and God yes finish, so that you have what Hegel called "the identity of human nature and the divine nature ", ossia il pantheism. No longer the thing itself external to the subject, no longer a transcendent God and Abstract, but the God concrete and historical, which it is the same self-consciousness of the human subject. Indeed, Cartesian logic, which is expressed in cogito, It is not entitled to a subject, in addition to the subject, attuandone capabilities or forces; but it is the same subject, understood as originally [«a priori"] and essentially thinking and reasoning. In practice, as subsisting reason. But this is already the divine reason.

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We find in the Cartesian concept of reasone, of knowledge and thought footprint obviously Gnostic. For he, In the Discourse on Method [12], It expresses a desire to "fix all its opinions to the level of reason '; He plans to establish a "universal science, that can elevate our nature to the maximum of its perfection" [13]; a thought, that does not take anything from the outside, but everything, even the sensations, from himself [14].

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Descartes is certainly realistic in considering the corporeal world as external to the human spirit, objectively knowable and exists in himself as created by God, although knowledge is not based on the senses, but it's guaranteed by the veracity of God known a-priori as underwear to mind. In Descartes, so, the distinction between the human self and the divine self starts to become fuzzy and fogs, because the human ego, the cogito, no longer experiences a divine You ahead, come on-iecto, objective, discovered as a cause of the ego and creator of the world contacted by the senses, but as found by the idea of ​​God cogito horizon of consciousness. So Descartes is not that I have the idea of ​​God because He exists, but God exists because I have the idea. It is already the God of idealism, which will come up to Hegel. By contrast, in Descartes, why not accept as true anything but what it conceives clearly and distinctly. The interest of reason moves by the attention to the real to his way of conceiving the real. It is real only what is on the size, only what is rational, clearly and distinctly conceivable. What appears to obscure and indistinct is then rejected as non-existent.

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We have here another blow against the theology, in which reason is in front of the darkness and in-distinction of the divine nature, although it is clear and distinct in itself. Again God is identical to the concept of God. But if the concept as I produce, as I'll end up identifying with my God I? This is the path that leads to Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. So, Descartes already in human reason implicitly considered divine or at least able to deify. No wonder, At that time, if the reason, conceived, It is capable of rising or transcend itself, so as to reach the level of "gnosis", ie the divine knowledge or divine thought subsisting and creator of man, for which man, in the words Dear, It has the power to create himself [«autoctisis»].

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THE RISE of Gnosticism

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So the subject no longer invokes the salvation from God, and it is no longer a gift of his grace, but it is saved by himself, because for itself possesses a divine power. The God decided thus reveals in Gnosticism the «inconsistency of claims to self-salvation, who rely on human strength " [n. 13 text WHO]. The man has no need of grace, because even the human ego, founded on cogito, He has in itself the principle of their car elevation Absolute. Nothing comes from man to lift; but he rises to God by the power of thought and will. It is also a theme Pelagian.

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In Kant remains a residue of reality in the thing self external intellect. But here idealism goes a step further than Descartes. indeed, while, compared to Descartes, the thing itself loses value, but it continues to exist, in Kant becomes unknowable in itself and the intellect acquires too much power, because Kant even gives the power to shape the object of experimental knowledge, that, as is known, It is no longer the thing itself, but the phenomenon. There remain, however, moral knowledge, the critique of reason and the idea of ​​God.

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But with Fichte, here it is that idealism takes another step, the resolution being in thought. Descartes had deducted sum from the cogito. But it was the simple act of thought, a logical deduction, for which I know to exist. But that my existence is created by God, It is independent from me. Instead the me fichtiano "places" [sets] the non-ego not only logically, but also ontologically, then it produces himself. So we no longer have that I am created by God. From here it understands how Fichte was accused of atheism. He defended himself by citing God as absolute I, but I do not see how this, which it is the ego empirical foundation, may be its creator. That I am a deep or shallow, It is still the same I. So, the empirical I, how to teach Fichte, It has only to become aware of being a contingent manifestation of his absolute I and carry out the divine potential inherent in it. In this sense the Letter of the CDF God has pleased notes that "individualist reductionism of a neo-Gnostic tendency promises a merely inner liberation" [n. 11 text WHO]. But the ego of Fichte, as is known, I think adds to the ego Kant [I think at all] the dialectical factor of self-denial, as affirmation and position of not-I, opposite to the ego. Fichte express the 'existing self-contradiction, as we have seen, In the cogito Cartesian and in theological dialectic Kant:

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"If the ego has set itself the absolute totality of reality, That must necessarily be placed in the non-ego the absolute totality of negation; and the very negation it must be placed as absolute totality. One and the other, the absolute totality of reality in the ego and of the absolute negation of totality in the non-ego, They must be unified by determining. Therefore the I partly determines and partly is determined" [15].

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Schelling raises even more the ego of Fichte adding the denial of the non-ego by the ego identity of being and thinking, of being and becoming, of subject and object, the ideal and the real, Spirit and Nature, Theory and practice. However, as reported by Hegel, "Schelling concept called the common intellect category, whereas concept is concrete thought, in himself infinite ". He cites the same Schelling: "There remains, therefore more, if you do not represent " [the Absolute] «in an immediate intuition» [16]. But Hegel doubted the objectivity and universality of such insight. For this he is taking a decisive and final step of the ascent to the Absolute Promethean, started, without full knowledge by Descartes, instead persuaded to give the best evidence of what God had done St. Thomas. And this step is to argue that the essence of God can not grasp in a vague and indeterminate intuition, where everything is indifferent to everything and merges with everything, but only in logical and rational concept as self-consciousness of the Idea.

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Hegel surpassing the previous step established by Schelling compared to Fichte. These had added Kant than the elimination of the thing itself, henceforth produced by the ego in the ego. With Hegel so we come to the end of Cartesian parable: that cogito who arrogantly outset surpasses the just and natural limits of the ego and humiliates the reality of things created by God, lowering and raising God himself, continue its transfer work to man the divine attributes, so that in the end the man has become God and God is gone. Hegel is the one that leads the Cartesian principle of cogito to the extreme; He has the audacity to explain clearly and consciously the culmination of the climb to the sky taken by the cogito Cartesian, with the famous principle of the "identity of human nature and divine nature" [17] sn the basis of the development of God, which is opposed to the front ''dare"Dogma of Chalcedon.

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Inalready, the Pleased Deo warns us that the way to salvation which offers us Christ, "It is not a purely inner journey, on the edge of our relationships with others and with the created world " [n. 11, text WHO]. This is not from ego and close all the ego. "The grace that Christ gives us is not, as claimed by the vision of neo-Gnostic, a merely inner salvation, but that introduces us in the concrete relationships that he himself lived. The Church is a visible community " [n. 12]. It is open to reality, in the world, to the others, to God, to society. The Gnostic instead, closed in his ego, and build social un'area, a slap on their own, separating itself from the effective ecclesial communion, that only the realist can perceive and live, creates a cult for his service to a mass of gullible brainwashed, myopic zealots or clever flatterers. Gnosticism is an exaltation exaggerated ego, of knowledge and of human thought, as saying the Rejoice and rejoice:

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"Gnosticism is one of the worst ideologies, so long as, while unduly exalts the knowledge or a particular experience, It considers that their view of reality is perfection. In tal modo, perhaps without realizing it, This ideology feeds on itself and becomes even more blind " [n. 40].

The Gnostic falls into this deception it speculates on thinking abstractly taken, in its absoluteness, without considering the conditions and the limits, in which it is exercised by man. Moreover, the Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith God has pleased ago still note the characteristic of Gnosticism: his Interior absolute, which it resolves itself into an absolute individualism, so everything is ego, the ego and the ego:

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"the reductionism individualist neo-gnostic tendency promises a purely inner freedom " [n. 11]. Freedom does not involve any link with an objective moral law, but it is resolved in a pure act of his own will. Because of this, Letter warns that the way of salvation that Christ offers us, "It is not a purely inner journey, on the edge of our relationships with others and with the created world " [n. 11]. "The grace that Christ gives us is not, as claimed by the neo-gnostic vision, a merely inner salvation, but that introduces us in the concrete relationships that he himself lived. The Church is a visible community " [n. 12].

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Moreover, the Rejoice and rejoice notes that Gnosticism

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"Sometimes it becomes particularly tricky, when you masquerade as disembodied spirituality. Indeed, Gnosticism 'by its very nature wants to domesticate the mystery', is the mystery of God and his grace, is the mystery of the life of others " [n. 40]. "They conceive a mind without incarnation, unable to touch the suffering flesh of Christ in others, plaster in an encyclopedia of abstractions. Eventually, disincarnando mystery, They prefer a God without Christ, a Christ without the Church, a Church without people " [n. 37].

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Gnosticism is a disembodied spirituality because it solves being in thought and matter in the spirit. The same Cartesian method, with its distrust of sensuous experience and therefore of intelligibility of material substance, It shows its ancestry, perhaps unconscious, by Gnostic Manichean dualism of matter good- spirit bad, quoted from both the Pleased Deo that from Gaudete. But this ultra spiritualism turns into its opposite, as it appears from the materialism of Marx, who he says he converted from Hegel simply "putting a head that head that was instead of feet and putting in place the feet, that were previously in place of the head ', that is to say that, If Hegel derives matter from spirit, Marx derives the spirit from matter. They are not the ideas that guide the material world – economic, but this is to drive ideas.

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Moreover, as notes the Rejoice and rejoice, I gnostico you ritesene in possession of absolute science, ie as encompassing the Science of. The Gnostic is omniscient, certainly not in the sense of knowing the details of all things - you realize that in fact he thought it would be madness - , and yet in a sense, that does not mean that does not denote an inordinate pride. The Gnostic believed omniscient in the sense that it is believed to possess the Science of Totality. If nothing is out of the being and the being it is being thought of him, it follows that there is nothing that is not the subject of the Gnostic thought. Being coincides with being thought of him; then there can not be a being that he ignores or transcending his thinking, including God. In this sense, the Said ed leap he says that

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"The" Gnostics "judge others on the basis of verification of their ability to understand the depth of certain doctrines" [n. 37]. "Typical of the Gnostics is to believe that with their explanations can make perfectly understandable all faith and all the Gospel" [n. 39]. "The Gnostic balance is assumed to be formal and aseptic, and it can take on the appearance of a certain harmony or an order that encompasses all » [n. 38].

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An example of this ideal is found in Gnostic Schelling, it states:

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"My point of view is generally Christianity in the totality of its historical development, my goal is to only truly universal Church [if 'Church' may be the right word here], that only in the spirit must be built, and which may consist only in the perfect understanding of Christianity, of its effective fusion with science and knowledge in general» [18].

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Hegel praises him Gnosticism, although subject, with these words:

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"All these forms end up in troubled waters, but on the whole they have the same determinations as their principle and arise from the general and profound need of reason to determine and understand as concrete what is in and for itself» [19].

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However, the final outcome of rationalism nefarious Descartes was not immediately felt by the Descartes and his contemporaries, which vice versa there remained admired, as they had been in front of a philosophical genius of unprecedented magnitude, and so happily she drank the poison without realizing.

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Far-sighted, like always, It was the Church, than in 1663 Index put the works of Descartes. But unfortunately, such was the success of the messianic philosopher, that revolutionized all philosophical thought developed in the preceding millennia, hardly anyone, even among theologians, He heeded the wise warning of the Church, except Thomist, that, for their critical prudence, it is very difficult to deceive, even by the most cunning impostors. Those who remained faithful to the truth was considered an outdated, a barren school, a conservative stubborn and so it goes.

For the idealist, ie for the gnostic, also what appears under external, It is internal to the ego, consciousness and thought, as thought. In fact, the idealist does not realize or does not recognize that the thing itself, Although the act of knowing enters, as represented, horizon of consciousness, in itself, in its reality, It is out of our thought or our mind; And extramentally, as St. Thomas says. "It is the stone that is in the soul - Aristotle - , but the image of the stone ". It 'clear that our ideas are not external to our mind; but this does not authorize us to believe, with the idealists, that the reality matches our ideas, if not intentionally and accidentally in the act of knowing the true.

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CHARACTERS DELL'IDEALISMO

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It is idealistic axiom that is not given to be out of pensiero, but that being is always in thought. The being is always thought. Do not you think being, but it is thought, because being and be thought coincide. It is thought the thought, because being is thought [20]. Everything is at once being and thought. Now, But, only in God being coincides with the thought, because God is subsisting Being and Thinking Subsistent. Says St. Thomas:

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"In God [21] on is knowing its substance '. In God, "the intellect, the object of thought [that which is understood], l'Idea [an intelligible species] and thinking are the same thing" [22].

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But man is no distinction between his being and his thinking. The man is not, as he believed Descartes, a thinking subject - only God, in which being and thinking are identified, It may be this - , but it is a subject that can think. And if you think, He not for this is not a man, be able to think. God is essentially thought, It is essentially thinking. Instead humans thinking is merely an option, as essential, but that may be the simple faculty was, without passing upon. For the human intellect being or entity, created by God, it is independent of thought, It transcends thought and rule of the truth of thought. To be in the true, the human mind must adapt to being humbly, must obey the laws of being. It gave, instead, creator and the Creator of, not being as an object before Him and independent self. So He knows Himself and the world as a separate being from his thinking, but how to be immanent to his ego. Clearly for us the thought as thought is within our thoughts. But before they thought it can only be out, in external reality: what St. Thomas calls things outside. It is spiritually enters or intentionally, as a concept or idea or representation, in our thinking, once you think or know.

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If everything is to be and thought, everything is idea, as they believe the idealists, and there is to be distinguished from thought; if the institution as such, including the divine, It is immanent to our thinking; if it is true what he says Rahner, that "the nature of being is to know and be known" [23]; sand being is "conscious being" [24]; if being "is always also known" [25]; if being "is the knowing subject itself" [26], It is as such and not just the divine being is identified with the thought, then we have pantheism. According to the idealist, we, thinking being, think God, because being is God. But on the other hand, since being identified with being thought, and our being is being thought, our being is identical with the divine being, which is precisely the be thought.

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For the idealist, also not be thought, however, it is thought. And then there is not thought to be. It is clear, moreover, that if I think being, This is thought to be. But before you think or do not think so, I ignore it and it is not thought by me. Instead idealism, as the starting point and the object of knowledge is the idea and the consciousness that I have of themselves as thinking, the truth of knowledge is the conformity of the real being or idea, or self-consciousness. But now the identity of thought with being is the absolute knowledge, because it is a knowledge that has nothing that is outside or beyond this knowledge. It is the divine knowledge. And so by contrast with the identity of being thought is the absolute being, because this being is in place everything that thought can think. So is the divine being. And therefore the idealistic gnoseology involves pantheism, ie the identification of human thought with the divine thought, which is what the Rejoice and rejoice It is defined as "Gnosticism", the deification of human knowledge, of which we have the most conspicuous example of what Hegel, called "absolute science" or "Absolute Idea".

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We have to say, instead, that the object of metaphysics is not the 'I', is not the thinking subject or self-conscious, but it is the body, that is before [obstructing finds] to me. The initial founding certainty from which the metaphysical and on the basis of which the reason constructs all his knowledge, is not that of their own thinking or doubting, as he believed Descartes; nor is God, as Hegel believed; but it is the certainty and the ability to know the external sensible things, as agreed upon by Aristotle. Certainly the spiritual knowledge that comes from the discovery of ourselves thinking, It will prove to be more robust than that sensitive, given the most ontological value of spiritual things than material. And even greater confidence of faith. But the supreme certainty of faith would be nothing, if it were the ultimate maturation of a certainty, although humble, which already begins with the perception of sensible things. The certainty of the self follows the certainty and knowledge of things, because it's just reflecting on our ability to achieve this original certainty, that we discover our self, as a subject with a mind that has known. We do not derive or deduce the knowledge of things from that of our self, as he believed Descartes, unlike ma, as agreed upon by Aristotle, we realize that we have a faculty of knowledge that draws on things, After that we reached; and the conscience of our know how we come to know the affirmation of our self as knower.

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REALISM Lutheran

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The Lutheran is a realist epistemology, because Luther to that there is a world outside, There is the self and God exists, He revealed in Scripture and object of knowledge of faith. This, for Luther, It is reality, for which he acknowledges that to be the truth, that the mind must be adapted to that reality. Yet Luther despised metaphysics. Come May? Because his realism is defective and eventually turns into subjectivism. Because? What do you mean? Why Luther is convinced that the certainty and truth are not given by reason, but by faith. He believes in the reality itself, created by God, independent of him; It does not reduce the real to his idea, how will Hegel; it is believed each creature of God and not absolute subject, how will Fichte and Schelling; for him there is a God in himself, incarnated in Christ, Judge and Lord of the world, and not as a simple idea, come in Kant.

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Only Luther intends its realism as an immediate jump Heart from sense experience emotional or internal intuition of God's Word and of the mystery of Christ - what Kierkegaard called "the leap of faith" - without going through the mediation of reason and thus of metaphysics. So without going to the social mediation of the Church, that can only be accepted on the basis of a rational realism, for which the Catholic, He illuminated by faith and believe dall'apologetica, he recognizes the divinity of the Church from signs of credibility [27]. Indeed, metaphysics gives anthropology foundation and morals. And this in turn leads to recognize the Church as a human community, which gives evidence of historically enjoy infallible divine assistance in the preservation of the Gospel. Instead, the entity as such is not interesting to Luther, because his mind does not care to apply the principle of causality to the level of reality and of entities, in order to pass, as Saint Paul teaches [RM 1, 19 – 20], from the consideration of created effects [visible] that the Creator [invisible], supreme being. Not that he does not believe in the universality of thought. It perceives perfectly the universality of God's Word and the Gospel message and could grasp the universal human needs. Otherwise his message would not have been so successful. At the same time he felt a great need for concrete.

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Luther believes in God the Creator and Savior. Slices hear his Word and want to preach. However, he believes in God because he knows demonstratively, with reason, that God exists, but because he feels in his heart, with that feeling that the Germans call "mood» [28], an original dark certainty, which we are not known to account and you do not give account. This irrational feeling will still be present in 'Feeling"Di Schleiermacher. Luther, the term "faith", so, not mean the acceptance of God's Word, on the assumption that one knows the reason that God exists, but it directed precisely to this "feeling". This is connected with the fact that, Although Luther feels God as something else and transcendent to itself, and thus he is staying in realism and avoid pantheism, in which instead will fall Hegel, It feels so intimately and habitually in him, that not even suggests the possibility of losing such a union because of sin, and precisely because of his belief, which he considers "faith", which always he has God in him and with him.

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It is what the Church has long called "immanence", that is not - mind you - the pure presence of God in the depths of the soul; of that fact also speaks Sant'Agostino, which does not make it an immanent. But it's what speaks Feeding of the flock [NN. 10, 33, 35, 39, 62, 65,73, 80 text WHO]. It is therefore necessary to distinguish accurately immanentism and pantheism, although they may look alike. The immanence does not deny divine transcendence. It is the error of Luther. Instead pantheism there is the identification of human nature with the divine and the human knowledge with the divine, ie Gnosticism, the identification assumption of thought with being, of which we have already spoken. This is the error of German idealism [29]. It is clear then that with Luther realism is less to be replaced by a vague non-conceptual subjective emotion, strongly reminiscent of the '' transcendental experience 'Rahner. He also recalls that "experience" [n. 21, 22, 25, 39, 78, 79 text WHO] or that "feeling" no objective foundation, which are contradicted by PI went up of St. Pius X [NN. 10 – 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 38, text WHO]. Here realism is replaced by subjectivism.

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A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE GOD OF SAINT THOMAS AND THE GOD OF HEGEL

humble Esaltavit

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The highest result of humility in exercising intellect is since the conception that the mind becomes God, Why, the more the mind It is willing to accept the reality, the more the power of intellect, fertilized by real, suitable for a real and reaching out to the real, which it is the end and the good of the intellect, It has the possibility to be implemented and realize the maximum of its possibilities, supported also by the grace, to grasp the sublime truth and achieve higher learning, concerning the essence and attributes of God. The humility, as awe or equating of mind to the real, obedience to the royal reception and the real, It leads the mind to know that it by itself is not anything and that all that is and has, beginning with his own existence, him by God, who created it. It realizes that it has Being, but not And Being. It is not by itself, but on the other, that is from God. Without the Other, it would be nothing. Instead pride, impact and legacy of original sin, pushes the ego to consider itself self-founded and self-sufficient in being. On the contrary, Fichte come to interpret sum Cartesian as "I am being" and "I place my being '. The ego does not ask: why does it exist? There are just. Or it gives the totally insufficient responses, like that of Darwinism.

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The humility, which it is expressed in realism, quenches fever and cancer of pride and leads the subject to reality and to the real dimensions of the sua existence, limited, weak and sinful. thus cleansed, the subject is in the best position to operate the best and to be raised by grace, who reveals the mysteries of the Godhead. Instead Cartesian ego can not think of having been created by God, but like an absolute I, the origin of reality and of thought, It purports to prove the existence of God by deducing it from a supposedly non-existent innate idea of ​​God, forgetting that, if I can produce the idea of ​​God, I can not for this cause God.

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It is interesting to compare then what idea of ​​God comes by two opposing methods of realism and idealism, choosing two emblematic cases, like that of St. Thomas and Hegel and considering the concept of God from three angles: God as Being and Spirit; God as Absolute Idea; and God as Sdefend assoluto. For both St. Thomas and for Hegel God is put on the plane of. Whether for one than the other God is the ego or absolute Subject. Whether for one than the other is absolute Idea, Absolute science, absolute Spirit. Except though, while St. Thomas being is distinct from becoming, for Hegel it coincides with becoming [30], which already implies an identification of God with the world and therefore the human ego with the Divine Self. For St. Thomas, It gave, absolute Being, identical to Himself, creates the world from nothing. For Hegel, It gave, synthesis of being and nothing, He becomes world by denying himself and determines how the world, who, denying himself, becomes God.

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While St. Thomas, then the human ego is distinct from the ego divine, that God is a You respect human ego, Hegel God is the ultimate essence and substance of the human self, which is just a "moment" in the passenger and absolute ego contingent. The self I'm the cogito Thomistic leads to the discovery of the ego are divine as the absolute Thou who created me. L 'I I'm the cogito Cartesian Hegel leads me to realize that I am absolutely divine sense and that you who I have before me, I ask them myself with my thoughts and my interests. While for Thomas God is the purest Spirit [31], simple [32], identical to itself, infinite goodness, unchangeable [33], immortal, transcendent, independent of the world, Hegel God is essentially mutable, becoming, contradictory, dialectical, mundane, material, mixed with evil and deadly.

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He says Hegel:

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"The "if" [the cogito Cartesian] "Implements the absolute Spirit lives. This figure is that simple concept, which, however, abandons its eternal essence " [God is alien] "And there" [in the concreteness] «Or acts. It has in the purity of the concept split or the rise, because the purity is absolute abstraction or negativity " [becoming]; "Similarly it has an element of its actuality" [the world] "Or being in him in the same pure knowledge, because the pure knowledge is the simple directness, which it is so that there be ' [the concrete], as essence; each moment is negative thinking, the other is the same positive thinking. That there is finally, and just as the being of him - both as be it as a duty " [the good] "Reflection in itself, i.e. being— bad» [34].

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In either case, God is the absolute Idea.

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"The absolute Idea," says Hegel[35], and in this Thomas could agree - it is being, life that does not pass, Truth self conscious, and it is the whole truth ". In tal modo, both Thomas and for Hegel God, Truth is absolute, in that, come dice l’Aquinate, "The Divine Being not only complies with his intellect, but his own to understand»[36], identity of being and thinking.

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Whether for St. Thomas to Hegel Idea God is the '' logical idea ' [p.936], the concept that God has of Himself and of things. It is the idea that God has of Himself and of things. It is the rational Idea of ​​divine Reason [37].

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"L'Idea divina - says Hegel [38] - it is the only object and content of philosophy. Containing itself any determination, and being its essence to return to itself through its determined or particolarizzarsi, it has different configurations, and the task of philosophy is to know in these ".

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In Hegel the human mind is a moment the divine Idea; God thinks Himself in man as man; St. Thomas in the human mind is an analog participation Idea divine and man thinks himself in God as God. The divine Idea Hegelian, But, unlike that thomist, distinguishes in God the only idea - that is, the idea that God has of himself or Logos [The word] [39] - from the many ideas, corresponding to created things, It does not transcend the ideas of things as the uncreated transcends creation, but as the universal is realized in particular, or as the indeterminate is determined as determined, or as the substance is determined in the way of being. Because of this, Hegel in the divine Idea is syllogistic and dialectical, It is the method of knowledge [cf. p. 937], and the

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'Concept of movement "[p. 937]; 'It is grasped in the concept " [p. 936], who "has everything and its movement is the universal absolute activity, ... is absolutely infinite force, when no object, as it is present as outer, away from reason and from her independent, could resist, It is compared to it of a particular nature and refuse to be penetrated by her " [pp. 937— 938].

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Here one sees how Hegel gives to human reason a power which in reality is totally beyond its real possibilities and functions, it was also perfectly healthy as it was before the fall. Imagine in their present state, afflicted, weakened and blurred as it is by so many evils, defects and bad inclinations, which it is necessary to remedy the, in addition to a strict discipline of reason, an intense life of grace. Let's see how Hegel Pelagianism is joined to Gnosticism.

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Vice versa, St. Thomas in the divine idea is the idea that God It has things that creates. This does not mean that in the divine mind there is a plurality of ideas, as it happens in the human mind. With one Idea, that is God thought to Himself, God sees all things [«God knows many ways:» [40]]. There are many ideas, as things you think of God as first thought to exist in external reality to God. And in this sense there are more ideas in the divine mind [41]; and it is the idea that God the Father to Himself, ie the Logos or divine Word, the person of the ChildrenO [42]. In both cases, God is absolute Science. For St. Thomas, "Given that the divine essence is its own Idea» [species intellegiblis], "Necessarily follow that his knowledge" [to understand] «both its essence and its being» [43]. For Hegel's absolute knowledge is the philosophy. It is the knowledge that God has of Himself as a man. What philosophy knows of God it is what God knows Himself. So human reason knows what Self knows the divine Reason, because basically, as Hegel says, the reason is only one: it is divine. Therefore man, as reasons, and me, He knows what God knows. The Cartesian logic was at its peak of his aspirations. From here Gnosticism Hegel. He says that philosophy Hegel

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"It is the idea that thinks itself, who knows the truth " [ie the truth subsisting, personified, l '' I'm a I thinking "of Descartes], "The logic to mean that it is the universality validated the concrete content as by its reality. Science is, for this manner, back » [dialectically] "At its beginning" [pure being]; "And the logic is its result as spirituality: Assuming the judgment, in which the concept was only in itself ' [being abstract] "And the beginning, anything immediate, and then by the appearance, that there had ", [the empirical data] "Spirituality" [namely the Cartesian ego] "It has risen to its own principle" [ie absolute ego] "As its element '[44].

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CONCLUSION

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The man has an innate need to greatness. However this needs to be channeled and moderated, not to become excessive and source of tragic illusions. reasonable Aspiration, It is not to be infinite, dictated by pride, but to contemplate the Infinite, dictated by humility. Indeed, between human finitude and divine infinity exists an insurmountable climb. To try to overcome it is insane arrogance, It is what the Greeks call hubris.

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As taught by the Fourth Lateran Council, "Between the creator and the creature you may not notice a similarity that, that no greater dissimilarity should be noted" [45]. The man, Although it created in the image and likeness of God, through faith and grace, but it can overcome the forces of reason and be allowed to participate in the divine life, but only up to a certain extent granted to him by God and no later than.

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If enough reason to fully understand the concept the divine essence, no divine revelation and faith would be needed for add content to reason that it itself can not grasp. And even with all that the human mind, Also in heavenly glory, It remains fundamentally under the understanding that God has of Himself. The reason by itself can certainly know God by analogy and through the creatures. But one can not know the divine essence or essence quidditatively, in the words of Thomas de Vio said Cardinal Caetano. You can know the Infinite only finitely, not infinitely, as only he can know Himself.

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Exists, it is true, irrational exaltation of faith and fideistic, that claims to build on the ruins of reason, as if it were the reason against faith and this would replace the reason the knowledge of God. What happens in these cases, At that time, It is that the mind is not actually illuminated by the Word of God, but it is deluded by human found vainly passed off as "absolute knowledge". S. Paul warns us against this scam: "Take heed that no man deceive you through philosophy and vain fallacy, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ " [With the 2,8].

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Varazze, 24 July 2018.

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NOTE

[1] Dialogue, (c). 154.

[2] Ibid., (c). 154.

[3] Ibid., (c). 9.

[4] Critique of pure reason, Laterza editions, Bari 1965, p. 491.

[5] The exposition of Aristotle's Metaphysics 12, edited by R. Spiazzi, 1. III, lect.I, n. 343, Marietti editions, Torino 1964, p. 97.

[6] cf. E. Gilson, Introduction to the Study of St. Augustine, Vrin, Paris 1969, p. 55.

[7] This is the Cartesian form.

[8] This is the form Hegelian.

[9] cf. the recent Letter Apostlica Rejoice and rejoice, of Pope Francis, n. 36.

[10] Moral philosophy. historical and critical examination of the major systems, Morcelliana, Brescia 1971, pp. 215— 220.

[11] III, 1, The Nuova Italy Editrice, Florence 1981, pp. 410— 418.

[12] Part II, n. 2.

[13] cf. J.Maritain, The dream of Descartes, Buchet Chastel,Paris 1932, p. 17.

[14] cf. E. Gilson, Introduction to the Study of St. Augustine, op.cit., p. 321. Gilson wrong, however, in attributing the same to St. Augustine, on the contrary, it admits that the external thing affects the senses and then in the soul: «Every thing, whatsoever that we know, engenders in our knowledge of its» [Trin., IX, 12, 18]. «None of that body, whether it is possible to understand, if not sense anything about that to be announced» [Trin., XI, 5, 9].

[15] The doctrine of science, Laterza Publishers, Bari 1971, p. 104.

[16] Lectures on the Philosophy of History, III,1, Editrice La Nuova Italy, Florence 1981, p. 387.

[17] Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Zanichelli Publisher, Bologna 1974, volume II, p. 366. G. Horses, THE DIALECTIC IN HEGEL'S CHRISTOLOGY, sacred Doctrine, 6, 1997, pp. 87— 140.

[18] Philosophy of Revelation, Bompani Publishing, Milan 2002, p. 1413.

[19] Lectures on the history of philosophy, 3,I, The Nuova Italy Editrice, Florence 1985, p. 27.

[20] cf. my two studies: THINK THE THOUGHT. CONSIDERATIONS ON THE DIGNITY, THE FUNCTIONS AND THE LIMITS OF THOUGHT, I, divinitas, 2001, 3, pp. 279— 300 THINK THE THOUGHT. CONSIDERATIONS ON THE DIGNITY, THE FUNCTIONS AND THE LIMITS OF THOUGHT, (II), divinitas, 1, 2001, pp. 43— 72.

[21] QUESTION, I, q 14, a. 4.

[22] Ibid. This thesis Aquinas was dogmatizzta from the Council of Florence 1442: «All are one in God?» [Denz. 1330].

[23] Listeners of the word, Borla Editions, Rome 1977, p. 66.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid., p. 67.

[26] Ibid., p. 68.

[27] J.V. the Great, o.p, The sum of the Catholic apologetics to mind St. Thomas, Ratisbon 1906; R.— M. Schultes, o.p, Of the Catholic Church. lectures apologetic, Lethielleux, Paris 1931; R. Garrigou—Lagrange, ON, The revelation by Catholic Church, with goals, Ferrari Editions, Rome 1932; A. Benin - S. Cipriani, The true Church. The font of Revelation, Florentine publishing bookshop, Florence 1953.

[28] cf. G. Fagg's, Meister Eckhart and the German mystic preprotestante, Brothers Publishers Mouth, Milan 1946, pp. 192— 194; 201; 296; 298 ss.

[29] N. Hartmann, The philosophy of German Idealism, Mursia Publisher, Milan 1983.

[30] Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Laterza editions, Bari 1963, p. 93; Science of logic, Laterza editions, Bari 1984, p.71.

[31] QUESTION, I, q. 36, a. 1, to 1m.

[32] Ibid., I, q. III.

[33] Ibid., q.IX.

[34] Phenomenology of the Spirit, New Editions Italy, Florence 1988, vol. (II), pp. 293— 294.

[35] Science of Logic, Op. Cit., p.935.

[36] QUESTION, I, q.16, a. 5.

[37] Ibid., I- II, q. 93, a. 1.

[38] Science of logic, on. cit., p. 935.

[39] QUESTION, I, q.34.

[40] Ibid., q.15, a.3, ad2m.

[41] Ibid., I, q.15, a.2.

[42] Ibid., q.34, aa.1— 2.

[43] Ibid., q.14, a. 4.

[44] Encyclopedia, op.cit., pagg.527- 528.

[45] Denz. 806.

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— Theologica —

Gnoseology Theological WALTER KASPER, THAT OF THESE TIMES YOU DILETTA EVEN TO GIVE TO THE GNOSTIC

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Following the Hegelian dialectic, Walter Kasper has moved away from Christianity even more of Luther, because Luther, at least, had seen, albeit clumsily, the risks of a superb reason and, albeit so arrogant, the fundamental importance of obeying the Word of God, while the Hegelian dialectic turns God into a syllogism and dissolves the Mystery in the development of history.

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PDF print format article

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Author
Giovanni Cavalcoli, o.p.

The way we think about moral action and our own moral conduct depends on our conception of reality and how we conceive the knowledge of reality, that is, from our "epistemology". This applies to everyone, and therefore also applies to the famous theologian Walter Kasper. In this essay we will see how it works in him this report.

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For many decades, Cardinal Walter Kasper, as the guide of the ecumenical activities of the Church, It carries out a way of doing ecumenism, that does not close the separated brethren to full communion with the Church, but instead it leaves them in their errors and their separateness, as if this condition was not a fault to be repaired, but simply the sign of a way of being a Christian different from the Catholic and equally legitimate, indeed complementary.

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But it has happened and it happens that not only Protestants do not convert to Catholicism, but many Catholics, attracted by Luther's errors, and since we are no longer correct as before, and the cessation Catholic work to convert the Protestants, It got the idea that the Church has corrected his judgment on Luther, and he found that he was right, or at least his way of conceiving Christianity may be subject to optional choice for Catholics. So these Catholics feel empowered to choose at least some of Luther's positions, in the belief that they can continue to say Catholics, or perhaps they think they can be considered "progressives" and "advanced". But the more subtle pitfall is the fact that some of Luther's errors are presented as Catholic truth, so many unsuspecting and gullible fall for Catholics. And they drink the poison without realizing. One of the most skilled players of this massive fraud is Karl Rahner.

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Now we need to find a way out of this situation, because the Catholic faith is fading, while it is increasing the influence of Luther. It should therefore be that the Supreme Pontiff latches this interpretation modernistic ecumenism and promotes the implementation of authentic ecumenism, as per the true teaching of the Council.

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The relationship between metaphysics and the doctrine of the Church

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In the theology of Walter Kasper, as in any theological system, all it is resulting from the consequential cohesion of the parts connected to each other: if it undermines the foundation, everything else collapses, like the statue of Daniel's vision [Dn 2, 21-31]. Everything starts from the knowledge. If this is healthy, everything else holds; otherwise everything collapses. We dedicate this paper to its then gnoseology, no mancar to show the truth of this assumption. We say that it is false to say that "the Church does not advocate a particular metaphysics" [1], however since it is recommended for ages that of St. Thomas Aquinas. But it does so on the basis of the belief that metaphysics is some science, perennial, incontrovertible, objective and universal, important to know, unfading fruit of human reason as such, suitable for all people and all cultures, in every time and place.

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The Church does not believe in a metaphysical date, but in metaphysics as such, as it does not promote the reason of Tom or Dick, but human reason as such, of any human, at all times and in all places. Because of this, in its educational institutions, cultural and academic, The Church promotes the metaphysical and epistemological in his prime in his stride, wanting free from errors and defects, in the discussion of freedom, research and teaching. It knows that there are different forms, systems or metaphysical thought horizons, some valid, it admits in its schools, especially the system of St. Thomas, but then also to, eg, St. Augustine or St. Anselm and St. Bonaventure, or Alexander of Hales and of Blessed Duns Scotus or Francis Suarez; while others, instead, dangerous, it looks at them with suspicion or reserve, as for example that of Scotus Eriugena or William of Ockham or Cusanus or Ficino, or Campanella or Descartes or Leibniz or Wolff or Blessed Antonio Rosmini, though veneri the sanctity of the latter. Other systems it definitely rejects them, although in its majesty, urge theologians to recover what they can be valid. They are the doctrines that are at odds with the realism of sound reason, and thus contrast with the faith, such as the ideas of Giordano Bruno or Spinoza or Kant or Fichte, or Schelling or Hegel or Heidegger or Gentile or Severino or Rahner.

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As for heretics, the church, when he condemns errors, He asks theologians to highlight in them what remained of the common heritage of faith, in the hope that they will correct you and want to meet Church. With all men, believers and non-believers, the Church communicates on the basis of natural reason, in order to introduce them, if possible, the mystery of Christ. However, there are several different metaphysical or, just as there are different opinions or different. Indeed, we repeat it, metaphysics is a science and not an opinion, as well as, for instance, They are not opinions geometry, physics, botany, geography a l'anatomy.

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The Church recommends the use of metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas

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The church, therefore, between the different metaphysical produced in the past, as a result of appearance of theological accommodation of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, He has chosen and has certainly preferred a metaphysical date, precisely that of St. Thomas [2], but not as he had chosen opinion among other questionable doctrines or deciduous. This of course does not mean that the metaphysics of Thomas is defect or not improvable, or can not sorgerne a better future [3]. This preference of the Church is motivated by the excellent manner in which St. Thomas knows how to motivate the harmony between reason and faith [4], in order to the elaboration of a apologetica, a rational theology and natural ethics, and the interpretation of Scripture and the formulation and explanation of the dogma.

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Before the appearance of St. Thomas, the Church gave eagerness certainly that Scripture had annotated and interpreted using healthy and rational philosophical concepts, while the dogmas that had been previously defined, as for example the Christological dogma, They had been formulated with the use of metaphysical categories, duly adapted, derived from Greek philosophy, as indeed they had already made the Fathers of the Church and St. Augustine using the Platonic philosophy for the development of their theology.

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But before St. Thomas no theologian had not risen who he had been able to organize such wisdom all the theological knowledge into a single rational system. This need began to be felt from the thirteenth century [5]. We had in fact noticed that the biblical teachings and dogmas that the Church had made from them, although they were scattered documents that had occurred over the course of centuries and although many of these documents had the object of reflective narration made the divine action in history - for example the transition from the Old to the New Covenant, the Incarnation and the Redemption, the founding and development of the Church -, however, they contained also the speculative truth, rationally connected to each other; universal truths, immutable and eternal, rational and revealed "Heaven and earth will pass; but my words will not pass " [Mt 24, 35], truths that relate especially to God, That, in its pure spirituality, immutability and eternity, Himself is beyond space and time, transcends history and evolution of the world, although, with the Incarnation of God's Son, God has united to Himself in Christ humanity a single unit of one Divine Person, and consequently, through this man Jesus, He has joined Self, "No confusion" and or without mutation ", as it deduced from the Christological dogma of Chalcedon, every man, the story, the time and the world.

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Because of this, the Second Vatican Council He was able to say that "by his Incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man" [GS 22], rahneriano certainly not in the sense that all men are in grace, but as Christ offers everyone the possibility to join him and thus to save, as we know from the Gospel and dogmatic teachings concerning the condition for salvation. And 'what it says Christ: «When I am lifted from the earth, I will attract everyone to me " [GV 12,32]. But not all are attracted.

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The Church is careful from imposing to all the people of God, like its official doctrine, any theory, changing idea or choice, contingent or limited to the field of special or dell'opinabilità, it is a political trend, a current cultural or artistic work or worship or devotion or spirituality or way of living the faith and moral conduct. But it leaves it to all full freedom of choice. That, instead, on the authority that was conferred by Christ, It imposes absolutely to all believers, under penalty of eternal damnation, only what, Christ's command, It is universally necessary and obligatory for the salvation of all. But nobody prevents her from proposing even well-founded human doctrines and universally valid, connected with the truths of faith, in order to facilitate learning [catechesis] or to introduce them [apologetica] or draw conclusions or to facilitate the development dogmatic [speculative theology or morality] or to allow good comments to Scripture [biblical exegesis] or foster devotion and sanctity [spiritual theology].

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In the name of this discretion, who it is also his duty, The Church especially recommended to pastors and theologians, St. Thomas [6], obviously not because its doctrine is necessary for salvation, but for the validity, the utility and the universality of his thinking in order for those purposes. Because of this, of Aquinas' doctrine, Pius XI said that the Church has made her, has stated that he. And Thomas was called by the Church A doctor of the Church.

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The analogy entity according Kasper

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Kasper thinks he can make a connection between analogy, dialectical and historical thinking. The idea is not bad; but unfortunately the result, as we'll see, it is disappointing. He says:

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"The structure of ' “in-above” It is characteristic for both the analogy, both for forensics, both historical thinking. Now if we compare dialectic analogy, this does not mean that 'analogy of being both the 'form of Catholic thought' [7]. He can not and will not be given 'the form of Catholic thought' for the reason that the Church did not support a certain metaphysical. The Church must witness to the Gospel and certainly accomplishes this task using human language. It therefore needs, to this end, of philosophy as a critical-methodological reflection and as being human experience interpretation. Such thinking is still deeply historical " [8].

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We observe that it is true that the analogy unites and connects the body immanent, mundane, all’ente transcendent, divine. But the immanence-transcendence ratio is very distinct in the case of the dialectic and history. The dialectic, indeed, He does not know a transcendence, because it remains on the floor and uniqueness is limited opposition between being and non-being, between affirmation and negation. It remains on the mundane plane and opinions. To ascend to God, intellect do not need opposites to each other, besides all limited scope of appearances, such as dialectical, is because God, although transcendent, We are not opposed to the world, It is not the enemy of the world, ma, on the contrary, It is in harmony with the world, It is in communion with it, having created him; and both why, to explain worldly certainties, we need a foundation first and most certain and not fluctuating as dialectical. If the foundation falters, you will indeed?

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To go up, therefore the world to God, we need a concept that, although it applies to the world, has the dual function of being a part in continuity with the notion of God and thus predicable of God; but on the other it is necessary that the notion or the level that reaches this concept is not too low and does not remain at the level of being worldly, in order to express the transcendence or the superiority of God over the world. Otherwise, instead of reaching God, we would only have an idol or a pagan god. Moreover, We must be sufficiently universal notion, that is applicable to all things, because God must explain the existence of the world. We must therefore use the broader concept and more universal that we possess. But this concept must also be sufficiently high, because it must not only explain the existence of material things, but also the spirit world. It is therefore necessary that it abstracts, transcending him, from material things and then also from space, by time, from becoming and history, to consider the spirit, which it is immaterial and, although it can work in history, However touches reality and values ​​sovrastorici, immutable and incorruptible. The simple historical thinking is not enough to obtain or have a concept of God. For although no doubt God created the history and governments, and although He is incarnate in Jesus Christ, and lived among us, It remains in Himself immutable and above history and historical human nature of Christ is distinct from the divine nature.

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Moreover, the aforesaid operation abstractive, as evidenced by the Cardinal Gaetano [9], It involves three degrees of overcoming of matter: physical, mathematical and metaphysical [10]. At the end of this operation, we hold the notion that has all the above requirements: analog notion, metaphysical and transcendental being as a body [even out even] and its properties transcendental [one, true, good, beautiful, res, something]. The thought of Gaetano is important in showing how the intellect proceeds in achieving metaphysical knowledge. This is an elevation of intellect, for which it, forming the entity metaphysical concept, It is able to build speculative theology, conceiving God as the First and Supreme Body. Because of this, remained famous exhortation of Gaetano: «Learn to lower the temper, and another order of things to come».

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This is the best term to distinguish God and the world e, while, to move from world to God and God to the world. It is to be noted that here the intellectual movement has nothing to do with the 'tipping', which speaks Kasper, because this is not about to swing between yes and no, but to go from a lower yes yes to another supreme. Denying the possibility to use a single entity analogue concept to join God and the world, God and history, Kasper demonstrates a misunderstanding of or did not understand what l 'analogy of being, Why, Certain, while the real body is manifold, the entity concept or analog is one [11] or it's nothing, although also both internally diversified, precisely to reflect the multiple reality entity. This lack of unity of transcendental being perceived Kasper explains some errors.

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First, the rejection of systematic theology. He has in mind the rationalist systems and immanentistic idealistic and does good to refuse. But he is wrong in rejecting the system as such, it is rather an essential need of reason and science. Wise to order, as St. Thomas says. And theology is a science and wisdom. And as such, theology is not a simple converging, meet and discuss among theologians; It is not a simple exchange of views; It is not simply a personal or joint search. These are certainly good things. But theology, as a service to the Magisterium of the Church and souls reception and introduction of the same Magisterium, It must have a school form, methodical, educational and training, particularly for the formation of the clergy. It is transmitted to the disciples notions already acquired, certain and definitive, useful to the ministry and to the life of piety, based on the dogma, on Scripture and Tradition.

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The problem for the building of a systematic theology It is based on what principle or from which. The error of the idealists was not what we wanted to build a unified system, Deductive and universal. The mistake was to be based on cogito Cartesian, instead ENTITY. And systematic theology is precisely founded on God as Being first and highest, come The very being of self-subsistent,.

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This explains this statement by Kasper:

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"Theology must remain anchored to the foolishness of preaching, open and not closed to dialogue, which here it becomes the reference opening and the temporary nature of our situation eschatological, and it makes it impossible for a large theological system » [12].

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This setting occamistica leads to undesirable consequences in the dogmatic theology, who is deprived of his sources, which are precisely the teachings of the Church, of Scripture and Tradition. Dice Kasper:

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"There is no official index of the Church dogma […] So the question is sometimes naively mail, those dogmas properly exist, can not have absolutely reply » [13].

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We respond by saying that it is not naive to ask how many and what are the dogmas and it is not impossible, but it is of vital interest for the salvation, answer with certainty to this question, as it is entirely legitimate to ask what and how many are the vital organs of the human body. And this question answers the Church itself in its official documents, especially in the teachings of the Popes and Councils. For this purpose, But we must first have a right concept of "dogma" [14], consistent with Catholic doctrine, distinguishing it from the upper degrees and lower than those of the data revealed. The highest degree are the same explicit teachings of the Lord contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, which are the same sources of Revelation, and are therefore the foundations of dogma [15], which instead they are infallible interpretations of God's Word, proposed by the Church. Dogmas are the articles of faith. It is summarized in the Symbol of Faith. Their number in quality are contained in the Catechism and are illustrated by dogmatic theology.

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Second, in the line of epistemology Occamistic, (c)he was also Luther's, Kasper can not get over and unify the multiple structure of thought, sign, this also, who did not understand the analogy entity, because the very notion entity is the most universal and the one that, as we have seen, allows the intellect to unite God and the world. This explains the dialectic mentality and historicism Kasper. Indeed, is the dialectic that the old thinking, by their very essence, They have a conceptual foundation duality: the dialectic, It makes a comparison between the yes and no; the historical development, It has the act-power duality.

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Third, taking the Hegelian dialectic It comprises two harmful consequences, already present in it, namely on the one hand, a pernicious opposition between the true and the real, on the other, the hypocritical glance ['Tipping'] between true and false. The consequences are very serious in theology, even blasphemous: on the one hand the hostility between God and man, lacking a concept of bodies linking the One side; on the other, horrible covenant between Christ and Belial, for explaining why Christ, when it is not recommended to be between yes and no, states that 'more than this comes from evil " [Mt 5,37]. This "more" is the addition of a third term, The "synthesis" of the Hegelian yes and no.

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Note well that the aforesaid oscillation has nothing to do with the vibration signals of the doubt was, in which thought moves disadvantaged between yes and no without being able to decide, because it has no reason for either the one nor the other. But the desire of the subject is to find the truth and to stop in it, It does not care if it is in yes or no. Instead the hypocrite oscillation is studied and desired, with the express purpose of deceiving and appear or bring up what is not. The hypocrite language does not advance a choice between yes and no, but claims to simultaneously affirm and deny. He believes dispensed from observing the principle of non-contradiction.

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The oscillation of which speaks Kasper therefore it involves a transgression of the principle of non-contradiction, already present in the smart Hegelian dialectic, master of duplicity, and in no way required by honest and loyal dialectics Aristotelian-Thomist [16], which entails not a pairing, but a simple comparison between affirmation and negation, in order to clarify, if possible, what choice do, in what similar to doubt, with the difference that here the thought moves constantly between the two poles, while in dialectical thinking he stops weakly and temporarily in one of the two.

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L’idea, married for Kasper, under the pretext of the "mystery", God is above and independent of the principle of non-contradiction, It had its first signs in the thirteenth century with the theory of "double truth", that what is true in philosophy may be false in theology and vice versa. William of Ockham, for its part, admits that God, of absolute power, does nothing inconsistent, but it can do so in the creation, or from the ordinary, whereby, if he wanted, adultery could be at a time licit and illicit.

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But those who believe that the contradiction is resolved in God, always under the pretext of mysticism, is Nicholas of Cusa in the fifteenth century, with its famous coincidence of opposites. We observe that if God's yes and no overlap, then it means that no longer holds the command of Christ to keep them apart and do not join them, which of course is blasphemous

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Luther and Hegel start here and unfortunately Kasper follows them when he adopts the Hegelian dialectic. Thus God is in contradiction with Himself and verified nonsense that we saw about the theory of the divine attributes kasperiana. The moral consequences of this "mystical theology" you can imagine and are now before our eyes. We will see at the end of this essay.

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On his already mentioned line of thought, Kasper also states:

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"Christianity, its universality, He can not bind to a particular philosophy, indeed break and put in crisis every philosophical category. Just biblical theology, as noted Fuhrmans, rightly he brought to light that Christian thought is historical and dynamic thinking ' [17].

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We answer remembering that Christianity is a supernatural life, that comes from a divine truth revealed by Christ to human reason, that is cultivated, polite, purified and raised from philosophy. Of course, Christian truth is not deduced from the truths of reason, or you can have the claim to establish it or prove it. However, the exercise of reason, preferably educated by philosophy, It is an indispensable condition for the knowledge and understanding of Christian truth, which is added to those already known by reason, and then the very existence of Christianity, which it was founded by Christ for the good of man, rational animal.

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So, in reality, Christianity, although for its essence transcends all philosophy and is not the birth of any philosophy or any human mind, It is, however, substantially not bound to a particular philosophy, but the philosophy, as to its existence or at least to its better to be. And the least we can say is that Christianity is bound to the use of right reason, as a condition for the possibility of the same Christianity, because it is implementation of man as a reasonable. Nothing, however,, in this context, prevent the Church, to choose, between the various philosophies, one that most favors access of reason to faith. For this reason the Church, as I said above, It recommends the philosophy of St. Thomas in a special way.

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The Christian thought can never be reduced to a "historical-dynamic thinking» but it is also a speculative-systematic thought, necessary to the formulation of dogmas and theological sciences. This exclusivism Kasper is because its not a simple honest historical thinking, but it is a thought historicistic, denier of the immutability of truth, according to the modernist form, He paid in the past condemned by Pope Pius X.

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The philosophical relativism leads to dogmatic relativism

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This lack of perception of the universality of philosophical knowledge reduced to a contingent multiplicity of "thought forms", ie changing views, relativized to the changing historical contexts not only theology, but also the dogma, given that the Church, to define a dogma, uses notions of natural reason justified by the philosophy.

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Kasper means the universality of Christianity not as founded on universal truths - the dogmas of the faith -, but on what he calls "original catholicity" or "ecumenical", which embraces in itself, moments as 'special', he calls "sectarian" [18], the two dogmatic Catholicism and Protestantism. Just that one wonders what would be the content of this Catholicism sopradogmatico. Evidently here also there is the background of Denken Hegelian, which is the all-encompassing dialectical totality of thought, which denies, synthesizes and surpasses itself in moments of imaginations, which are the dogmas or the "confessions" of the various positive religions.

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Kasper rejects the idea of ​​the Church as widespread community in the world, effect of the preaching of a unique and universal truth - the Gospel -, that, starting from Rome, as the center of the mission, See of Peter's Successor, spreads in concentric circles around the world, but as a "polyhedron with many faces» [19], ie as a collection or federation of various particular and questionable interpretations of the Gospel, perhaps in contrast with each other.

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Clearly here the influence of epistemology Occamistic [20], in which the universal unit does not radiate from the essence to all common - one in many ―, but it is just a collection of individuals at the same level, independent of each other and connected to each other only in a blurred image. It is a universality non-formal or speculative, but merely material and collective, as when we say: a "universal consensus" to say: "of all".

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Kasper would like to highlight the fact the dogmatic progress, but it intends to modernist manner, not as a clarification or explanation of an immutable truth, but as dialectical overcoming a contrary view of the past. Indeed, as we'll see, According to him, to interpret the Word of God, you should not use the philosophy of St. Thomas, but the Hegelian dialectic.

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For Kasper dogma does not reflect an objective reality, external to the subject, ma, the idealistic manner, "The dogma has value only insofar as it expresses the inner" [21]. It is not mediation or interpretation of the infallible Word of God made by the Magisterium of the Church, once and for all, but one of the Magisterium thesis, which must be screened and controlled, comparing it with Scripture. It is the method of Luther: "The dogma - says Kasper - must be understood in light of the testimony of Scripture" [22]. He approves Rahner, which states that "a dogma may very well be true and yet humanly premature, guilty, dangerous, ambiguous, tempting, reckless" [23]. I do not comment. According to his dialectical language that says and does not say, the dogma can be simultaneously "permanent" and "temporary":

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"A dogma is the provisional form in which the eschatological-definitive truth of Christ becomes an event. Tentative is the term with which you want to express the character of anticipation of their dogma; so it is not to be understood in its opposition to 'final', but in the original sense of the word, as a precursor of the advance flake» [24].

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We observe again that the universality of the Gospel and of Catholic dogma message It is not given, as he believes Kasper, from simple pragmatic convergence, dialogic or dialectical, constantly evolving, a plurality of special "forms of thought" and inconsistent and conflicting ways to understand or interpret the dogma, the Gospel and the Tradition, but by the universality of a certain number of precise content of faith, unchangeable and absolutely true, universally shared and effectively and commonly shared and accepted by all the faithful.

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We must therefore support the exact opposite of what is claimed Kasper, namely that Christianity, precisely because of its universality and to better promote this universality, and its spread in all times and all places, especially in its most cultured forms and high, It is institutionally and essentially bound to the debtor and philosophy and precisely, between the various philosophies, to the one or ones that best help the reason to access the knowledge of faith. Indeed, the Christian knowledge, as knowledge of universal openness, intended for all men, It can only be rooted in what is universal in human knowledge, and this is nothing more than the effect of the cognitive faculty that characterizes the man as a man, ie that faculty which all possess, and which it is precisely the reason. Now, as you know, philosophy is precisely the supreme knowledge of reason. That, in the words of St. Thomas, and the perfect operation.

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On the basis of what has been said, it will be evident that then claim that Christianity "breaks and breaks all philosophical category" It is a serious slander to Christianity damage, which can be output from the lips of Luther in a fit of fury against the Catholic Church, that surprises and shocked to read in the book of a Catholic theologian, besides all today Cardinal. A denial of this serious false history Kasper, he who gives so much importance to history, one must say that a "loose and put crisis every philosophical category" were, if anything, the barbarians, that in the dark ages of medieval assaulted and destroyed the abbeys, where the monks kept the treasures of classical and Christian culture.

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The "historical thinking" according to Kasper

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The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations [Shall 33,1]

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According to Kasper, in theology should replace the "old thinking" to the metaphysical thought. But what exactly he meant by this expression, we have already met? Here we find the core of his gnoseology. The "historical thinking", per Kasper, is not only the thought or knowledge of the one who narrates the historical facts, but it is especially true think like this, ie thought consistent with reality, because the reality is Kasper history. As we have already seen, the old thinking, so, for him, It is not as pertaining to think of other forms of thought, come, for instance, metaphysical thought. No. On the contrary, metaphysical thought is not even a real thinking, because it assumes as an object of unchanging reality, that do not exist, because for Kasper, as Heraclitus, all wetsuit: panta rei. And therefore, even in the moral field it is not given a science or a moral theology, whose object values ​​or absolute duties, universal and immutable, but also a moralist, to be consistent with the reality of human action and determine the rules, It must make use of historical thinking, He must be thinking "historically", ie variables must devise standards, mutable, objectionable, conditioned, contextualized, because these are the actual rules of human conduct, whereas belief that human behavior can be regulated by universal and abstract principles, perhaps on metaphysical foundations, It is an illusion deleterious, which stiffens the action taking away its own dynamism, his freedom and his openness to progress [25].

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But Kasper not only changes the object of the concepts - and this may be right, if they are related to changing things -, but changing the very concepts, changes their meaning, it is never absolute,, but always historically conditioned, and then change their meaning even the dogmas of the Church, as conceptual formulations. this change, per Kasper, not only involves an evolution in the history and diversifying among different cultures and religions, essentially it consists of a "swing" or simultaneous duality of meaning between the two opposite poles of the contradiction, because Kasper takes the Hegelian conception of reality as a 'dialectical', that is, contradictory. It is that reality and then the truth is expressed precisely through the junction of the yes and no.

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Let's see how Hegel himself explains this process:

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"The task is to implement the universal spirit nell'infondergli, removing certain thoughts and solidified. Moreover, it is much more difficult to render fluids thoughts solidified, which render the fluid sensuous existence. ... Thoughts become fluid, when the pure thought, this inner immediacy, It is recognized as a moment, or pure certainty of self abstracts from itself. ... It must abandon fixed in his autoporsi: both the hard concrete of pure, which it is the same I in opposition against the separate content, both fixed and of the different, which, places in the element of pure thought, part of that ego unconditioned " [26].

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Kasper applies this method in theology, so that, speaking of the divine attributes, it follows that God is both knowable and unknowable, being and becoming, simple and differentiated, immutable and mutable, eternal and temporal, impassive and liable, powerful and powerless, finite and infinite, immortal and mortal, heavenly and worldly [27]. Kasper speaks here of the Person of Christ, and apparently confuses the human nature of Christ with the divine, as he had already done Hegel [28].

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Let's take an example of this method Hegelian dialectic in the manner in which Kasper would convince unit, in God, power and impotence:

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"God is so supreme in its power and freedom, which can also afford to give up everything without “lose one's face”. And so the power is affirmed God's own impotence, His lordship in bondage, his life in death " [29]. It is so absurd that says, that not even worth refuting.

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Analysis Lutherans

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Kasper, the wake of Hegel, echoing the heresy of Marcion, God opposes the identity and the "abstract" to the God of the Old Testament "concrete" and dialectized [ie Trinitarian] New, namely, Christ, develops dialectically Lutheran setting of the historical transition from the Old Testament God angry and punishing God, sweet and "compassion" of the Gospel. So does the praises of Luther, Christology against the "metaphysics" of St. Thomas, he finally discovered, after sixteen centuries, the true face of the evangelical Christ. Indeed, he attributes to Luther the merit of representing

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"A break with a whole set of metaphysical theology bases. The Reformer is not starting from a philosophical concept of God to understand the cross, but tries to understand God right from the phenomenon of the cross. This new approach we find expressed in the same “Disputa in Heidelberg” the 1518: “It is named theologian worthily, he who considers the intellect the invisible things of God through the things done, but the party seeking the intellect things visible and rear of God through the suffering and of the cross”. […] The hidden mystery of God should not be located beyond: such a God not interested in speculative. We must not penetrate the mysteries of the divine majesty, but be content with the God of the cross. God can only be found in Christ; if we look for it outside of him, we will find only the devil. Starting from these premises, Luther comes to an entire Christology reversal » [30].

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It is false that "God can only be found in Christ". We find God through reason, before you find Him, it's better, in Christ. Luther and with him Kasper fact forgets that we may not know that Christ is God, if we did not already know that God exists, that God demonstrated by reason [RM 1,20], She already knew, and Moses [Is 3,14]), before Christ appeared in the world.

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There is no question of "to seek God outside of Christ". No Christian savvy dreams crazy like that, but it is starting to seek Christ by God, Why, if reason does not find God above, as Creator of the world, starting from the things of the world, then Christ is not; and he that believeth, as Luther and Kasper, finding Christ independently or against a previous rational knowledge of God, meets only a false Christ, namely the "god of this world" [II Cor 4,4], that is the devil.

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There is nothing wrong with investigating philosophically Divine Nature regardless of Christological dogma. This is nothing more than rational theology. This survey is useful to interreligious dialogue and is very useful to clarify the meaning of the Christological dogma, and preserves us from falling into the confusion that Kasper is between human and divine attributes attributes.

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The meaning and purpose of the dialectic

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Kasper thinks the cognitive instrument of theology is the dialectic. It lacks the concept of theology as a science [31], and then as a speculative science. On this point he is closer to Luther than to Hegel, which equates dialectics with speculative science. In addition to this, Kasper serious mistake is to believe that for the interpretation of Scripture and dogma is better to refer to the Hegelian conception of dialectics, rather than that of Aristotle. Indeed, the enormous advantage that, in the order of the above-mentioned purposes, offers the Aristotelian dialectic than that of Hegel is that, while the former is a school of humility for the reason, educating them and adjusting it on the floor of the argument and then abituandola likely to correct any errors or avoid false appearances, the Hegelian dialectic, that solves the real opposition in the thought and in the effects of the will, encourages the arrogance of the subject lured to be a moment of the 'Absolute dialectical. And we know how all biblical ethics is nothing more than a contest between humility and pride, between Christ and Belial for the rule on the heart of man.

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Following the Hegelian dialectic, Kasper has moved away from Christianity even more of Luther, because Luther, at least, had seen, albeit clumsily, the risks of a superb reason and, albeit so arrogant, the fundamental importance of obeying the Word of God, while the Hegelian dialectic turns God into a syllogism and dissolves the Mystery in the development of history.

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Kasper still insists in these terms:

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"The Church must gather the wisdom of all peoples and of all times, also of all the forms of thought, because your ad is getting bigger and surpasses every thought. Theology, so, It has precisely the task of destroying every form of thought, di integrate, and to overcome it in another. For that theology must always think dialectically " [32].

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We observe that the theology is not the sum of more theologies between them diverse and much less conflicting. The theologies of the various authors or of the various schools are different manifestations of theology as such, ie as a science in its universality. Theology must not destroy or exceed any single form of thinking, but rather recognize, integrate and enhance it and, in his welcoming universality, He must comply with them and promote them all and ensure that communicate with each other in a mutual complementarity.

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Theology must think dialectically yes in formulating new and exchange opinions or criticisms of the same, but must above all be in continuous research and make work of science, reaching certain conclusions and demonstrated, universally shared, that one day the Church could elevate the rank of dogma, as it happened to some theses of Thomistic theology.

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"Dialectics, per Kasper, It is only the faint image of the dialogue and properly translated into a monologue what usually happens in the dialogue: the passage through the many aspects of the truth, which it is fixed in its non nonobjectivizability » [33].

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We say that the dialectic is not only monological ― relevant to the subjective opinions dialectics -, but also dialogue, in the sense that it governs the discussion or dialogue between two thinking, as for example it happens in Dialogues Platonic or as happens systematically, after the boost given by Abelard in the twelfth century, in medieval theological treatises, called Highest, use school. In them, the teacher solves a problem, the Question, through the comparison of opposing hypothesis, the method of It did not, for which the teacher motivates its scientific opinion or questionable whether it was, responding to the contrary objections.

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For example, when St. Thomas, in Question IX Before Pars from the QUESTION He wonders if God is immutable, but it examines some opinions that say that God becomes, ma, concluded the examination of these opinions, formulates his judgment, resting on the Bible, stating with clarity and certainty, without ambiguity or reserves, what a god (a.1) and only God (a.2) It is immutable, unlike a Kasper or Rahner, for which, on the basis of '' oscillation 'dialectic, God is an immutable and mutable time.

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The Hegelian dialectic

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Kasper inspires its conception of the dialectic to that of Hegel. Let's see his thoughts. The dialectic, for him, an action of "substance-subject ', that is, the "spirit" or "self":

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"The substance is the movement of the put himself or because it is the mediation of the becoming-other-than-self with itself. As a subject, it is the simple and pure negativity is, precisely what, the cleavage of a simple two-part or opposing duplication; this, around you, It is the negation of this indifferent diversity and its opposition; only this equality that reconstitutes or reflection within the other being in itself - not the original unit as such, nor immediate unity as such - is the real. The real is the becoming of himself, the circle, which presupposes and has its top end and that only through the implementation and its end is effectual » [34].

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But for Hegel God himself is dialectical, namely it becomes historically:

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"The life of God ... until degrades all'insipidezza, When lacking the seriousness, pain, patience and the negative labor. In itself, that life is the intact equality and unity with itself, that he has never seriously engaged in being more and nell'estraneazione, and even in the overcoming of this estrangement. But such itself is the abstract universality, in which, that is, It is independent of the nature of it to be for itself, and then, in general, dall'automovimento of the form. ... The true is the whole. But the whole is only the essence of which is completed by its development. The Absolute it must be said that it is essentially result, that only at the end it is what is truth; and precisely in what consists its nature, being effectuality, subject and become himself " [35].

.

Still Hegel:

.

"The purpose implemented or existing effectual is movement; It has become now in its deployment; but just this unrest is the Self; and it is equal to that to that simplicity and immediacy of the beginning because it is the result, because it is what is returned in himself. But that was back in himself is precisely the Self; and the Self is the equality that relates to Himself " [36].

.

The dialectical movement, Hegel, It is the movement of the spirit for which, in history, accidentally it becomes substantially, the relative becomes absolute, death becomes life, the false becomes true and nothing gets to be, by virtue of '' immense power of the negative ", for which the self opposes itself to itself and, denying this opposition, I know again. But the opposition dialectical negation-affirmation, Hegel, It is not limited to the realm of thought and language, but concerns the same be, the real, under the well-known principle of identity of being idealistic in thought.

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Denial is act of the spirit and therefore is an act, the will and language. But as Hegel being is spirit, the negation is primarily a practical act under the real, ie it is a cancel or, as expressed Hegel, It is a "remove" [Repeal]. But then out of nowhere "magically" being resurrected.

.

Here is the "magic" of dialectics:

.

"What accidental it may, separated from its scope, that what is bound and in his only real connection with another, gains its own particular existence and its own distinct freedom, everything is the immense power of the negative; it is the energy of thinking, Pure I. The dead, if we want to call that unreality, It is the most terrible thing; and hold fast the dead, This is what we will require great strength […] That life that endures death and maintains it, is the life of the spirit. It gains its truth only on condition of finding itself in the absolute devastation [ …] The spirit is strong because he knows this sol to face the negative and dwell with him. This pause is the magical force that turns negative in being. It is the same as was said above Subject, while in his element it gives existence to definiteness, It exceeds the abstract immediacy namely, generally, only existent, and is therefore the true substance, being or the immediacy, that does not have the same outside himself, but it is this same " [37].

.

So says Tomas Tyn, o.p. this dialectic of an Absolute, effect of "negative" which combines life to death, being nowhere. It promises a vain and impossible to reconcile them, which can not be other than an oscillation between the one and the other, one staying between yes and no, a serve two masters:

.

"The faces are opposed to one another irriconciliati, fleeting moments of piercing dialectic, elevating herself to absolute principle, after giving the identity between being and nothingness, nihilisms two - one equivocante " [Hegel] "Of an all based on nothing, the other univocante of a whole that, indifferent as to its particular moments, stalemate fails to found, because it is already, for immediate identity " [Schelling] "Indifferently everything - that the dialectic would claim to unite in a third and absolute nihilism, for which nothing at all coincide with the whole of nowhere " [38].

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According to the Hegelian dialectic, Kasper makes his, it is never possible to make statements or net and absolute negation, always accurate and in any case, both the dogmatic and in the moral field. You have to express themselves so that what we say can be interpreted in the opposite direction to that which appears. Our yes must betraying a no. Under the yes there must be no. This judge twice, with a judgment poster and another underlying or underlying or hidden, but not enough to avoid recognition, opposite judgment at first, it said in greek ypò-krinein, hence the Italian term "hypocrisy". Because of this, the theological language Kasper, become customary a real moral imperative. It is to bargain with the false, hiding it under the real, so the little fish that he hears us, abboccando hook, ingests the poison. Indeed, according to these principles and these winding streets, any proposition, also dogmatic, is maneuverable and unambiguous, It can go subject to conflicting interpretations and moral produce adverse effects, opposed to those that appear on the surface.

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But what, for the Hegelian dialectic is not to create scruples or upset, rather it is normal thing, allowing you the freedom of thought and theological pluralism, as for example the coexistence of Catholicism and Lutheranism. On the contrary, for Hegel is the precision and uniqueness that are a sign of a naive, one-sided and incomplete real, which takes no account of its historicity and its contradictory dialectical.

.

The duplicity erected into a system

.

lying lips, speak with a double heart [Shall 12,3]

No one can serve two masters;: or hate the one and love the other or to the one and despise the other [Mt 6,24]

.

The opposing the no to yes may be disobedience or act of virtue. Disobedience, if we say no to God. Virtue, If we say no to sin. But there can also be the theoretical denial, when we say no to a thesis. And even here there can be honest or dishonest: the honest, if we say no to fake; the dishonest, If we say no to the truth. Christ commands us to say yes to that is yes and no to what is not. We must not contradict the truth and we must condemn the false. Who is halfway, It comes from the devil. This is the duplicity, represented in the Bible by the forked tongue of the snake.

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This is the meaning of the words of St. Paul:

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"What I decide, I decide according to the flesh, so to say at the same time “Yes, Yes” e “O, no”? God is faithful, our word to you is not “Yes” e “no”. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you, I, Silvanus and Timothy, It was not “Yes” e “no”, but in him was the “Yes”. And actually all the promises of God in him have become “Yes”» [II Cor 1, 17-20].

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The dialectic, as we have seen, plays with the yes and no with. It can be a dangerous game, when we want to be clever or if we want to deceive others. There are rules that both the dialectical thinking of the scientific. They are at once logical and moral rules rules. Aristotle, who cured honesty in speaking [39], He took pains to make a list of fallacies in thinking and talking, to 'directories sophistical ", to warn against dishonesty in thinking and talking, ie against the duplicity and hypocrisy. Now, unfortunately Kasper declares no admirer of healthy dialogue Aristotelian, used by St. Thomas, but that of Hegel, who is a teacher sum of ambiguity, malicious insinuations, fascinating tricks, sophism, misconduct and dishonesty in reasoning and conclusion.

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Kasper connects the analogy does the Thomist conception, but the dialectic of Hegel, so it is no wonder if he, as we have already seen, It falls into a false concept of analogy. We continue now the discussion in relation to this duplicity of the Hegelian dialectic, which, far from lend itself to interpret Scripture, falsifies the roots.

.

Kasper is in favor of the analogy, but it does not have a fair concept. He says:

.

"The analogy argues exist between absolute and finite identity and difference. It combines identity and diversity, negation and position in an oscillating center. This center, however, It is not a concept of being that includes God and the world, which could bring, in truth, to some form of identity philosophy, but it means, in the sense of the analogy of proportionality, only a correspondence [no identity] the proportions of the two analogati " [40].

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Some observations. God and the world exist. Yet God is no different from the world. It can therefore be preach in either case. But the meaning of being in the two cases is different. So we have something - being - we preach around in many ways, senses or different meanings. To on pollacòs legòmenon, as Aristotle said. The being is said in many ways. It is always being for each entity, world and God, so we have a single concept, but with a plurality of different meanings. Between God and the world there is no identity, but similarity and diversity. They are not the same thing. They are two different realities, differentissime. Two things can not be at once the same and different. One can not affirm and deny at the same time the identity or the difference. God and the world do two. Yet they are included in a single concept being analog. This is because the notion itself contains its differences, without, however, completely abstracting from them.

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The affirmation and negation do not fit in the analogy, but in the dialectic. In the analogy there is no question of finding a "swinging heart" between two opposite, but rather to move the intellect attention among the various analogati, for instance, in considering the analog concept of life, from the vegetative life and climb to the divine life.

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In the analogy is not together with the yes no, not "oscillates" between the yes and no, because it would be duplicity, but every analogatum is in the order of Yes, as well as in Christ, who is the supreme analogatum "There was just so" [II Cor 1,17]. The analogy is placed on the floor of the diversity, the similarity, concordance, of the relationship, of the comparison, the proportion.

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Kasper is right to connect through dialogue. But it is wrong to link it with the dialectic. The latter requires a choice between the yes and no, even if it comes to the truth by comparing two opposing views. Dialogue instead says exchange, communication, integration, correction, enrichment, mutual complementarity.

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Continue Kasper:

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"Man can think only in that double movement" - swinging - "which means continuously transcend the finite to the infinite and continuous infinity materialize towards the end. Such a thought must be characterized as a historical thought; it is in a never-ending dialectic of past and future, of freedom and necessity, in a dialectic always disposed over itself and, as such, It is circumscribed than any static thinking. As the radicalization of transcendental problematic, it also captures the absolute first as an internal moment in this historicity " [41].

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The ascent of thought towards the transcendent and universal abstract, and the return in the concrete singular and immanent, apply to moral thought, which must establish the concrete action, not for what metaphysics and speculative theology, that, After a climb to the sky, includes, in Static Thought, ie stable and unchanging, the "things above" [With the 3,1]. It is false, therefore, that man can think only in thought "historical", Whereas, in addition to everything what Kasper mean by this expression, as we have already seen.

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The then conceive of the Absolute as "internal time of historicity" of consciousness, He knows a lot of idealism. Certainly God is present and intimate to the conscience of every man. But present it in these terms gives a false image of the same Absolute, That seems to be a thought, albeit sublime, but still a simple human idea, immanent to the historical limits of consciousness, when in fact the eternal and infinite God transcends them indefinitely.

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Continue Kasper:

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"The modern interpretation of the principle of analogy […] They make their own transcendental approach and intend analogy as explication dell'autocompimento spirit, which can only express the finite horizon of infinity no longer be objectified and therefore no longer expressible uniquely " [42].

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Although this is "modern interpretations of the analogy", yet they do not understand what is the analogy, which does not suppose any idealistic transcendentalism and no "self-fulfillment of the spirit", but simply the analog-transcendental being notion. Because of this, to know the real analogue in theology does not express "the finite only in the horizon of the infinite", but expresses analog being horizon.

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Theology does not at all part of the concept of God, to know the world in the light of that concept; ma, on the contrary, sensitive part of the experience of the world to go up to God as cause and creator of the world [RM 1,20; Sap 13,5]. It is true that God can not be objectified, that is knowable concepts. It is, Certain, not uniquely, but analogously.

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The dialectical conception of God

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Dice Kasper:

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"The absolute must be known only in and with that oscillating position and negation center. What in scholastic theology it is juxtaposed in such a way as relatively extrinsic the way this position e the way of exclusion, here it becomes, instead, unique global movement of thought, indeed it becomes the exercise of the spirit itself. The absolute is then known only as dialectical movement of the spirit and not in a so-called analogue concept » [43].

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Kasper at some point, Comes Clean and shows very clearly that his "analogy" is nothing more than a red herring, that actually conceals the Hegelian dialectic synthesis between yes and no, the knowing and not knowing:

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"Is it not true that man, also and precisely in its opening endlessly, still remains finite spirit? And in this finite spirit can he think of the infinite? Or will not know and fail to realize at the same time?» [44].

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As there is double vision in the physical view - for example, see the drunks or myopia -, so there is one in view of the spirit. And as the first is abnormal and unpleasant, so it is even more unpleasant abnormal and the second. This, however, is not inevitable and there is no taste to try, as it seems they try Kasper.

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With a double view, God thus appears twice: eternal and temporal, immutable and mutable, impassible and suffering, punisher and an accomplice of sin, merciful and cruel, etc.. Kasper completely misunderstands the relationship between positive and negative theology theology: It does not include that it is not absolutely simultaneously affirm and deny the same divine attribute. What would that say yes and no, that Christ gives to the devil. It deals with, instead, just as medieval theology teaches him unjustly despised, own accurately separate, no contrast, the moment of positive theology from that of the negative, for the fact that the second is constructed on the basis of the first, in that, while that asserts a divine attribute in its absoluteness - eg. the goodness -, the second one denies evidently not as such, ma, placing itself in terms of our human way of conceptualizing and how we can understand the divine goodness. The favorite method preserves the transcendental content of the concept of goodness, but he denies the finished way in which goodness is realized in our human knowledge [45].

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In front of the divine Mystery, the concept is not in contradiction with itself, but on the contrary it is stated in its maximum power and rises to its highest dignity, certainly not with his way of being finished [46], but in its theological content. Here Hegel was right against Schelling. And the concept, in the moment in which this warns its limit, realizes to be infinitely surpassed by way of being divine. And this experience makes him realize that he had reached God, Why, if not warned to be exceeded, what it conceives would not God, but an idol. On this point Schelling had a point.

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The God of Schelling and Hegel

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Kasper proposes a theology, which brings together the idea of ​​God in Schelling and Hegel, despite the strong contrast that divides. But both are derived from the Lutheran conception of God, and this explains, in my opinion, this fact join them together. It remains, however, that, while Schelling focuses attention on God is concealed, Mystery absolute and undifferentiated ideal-real identity, subject-object, unknowable and inexpressible, «coincidence of opposites», the God of whom you can say everything and the opposite of everything, "Foolishness of preaching", an Absolute that, as is known, It appears to Hegel "the night - as he says -, in which all cows are black ", Hegel considers the God who makes history and appears in consciousness void contrary species, the God has revealed, the Christ event, the Logos, the reason, the Word, the concept, l ' "concrete Universal".

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Kasper, As for Schelling, in its conception to its, the reports in these terms:

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"The infinite not objective, native to, It may not be able objectively, but only in an absolute way. This transcendental knowledge, however, It is not simply beside the objective knowledge, but it includes it and makes it possible to, thematizable is not in itself, It should not be objectified and then distorted. It can only be discovered in the dialectic, in quell'oscillare and in that switch between " [47].

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This knowledge "absolute" is the dialectic ever, come in Hegel: the synthesis of the yes and no, affirmation and negation, with the difference that while in Hegel the Absolute can and should be designed rationally and determinately, whereby, as Hegel says "the mystery is unveiled», absolute knowledge of Schelling is indifferent to conceptual distinctions, leaving them in their opposition, and therefore it gives the impression to appreciate the mystical and divine experience darkness, but when this knowledge is expressed, It falls in the '' tipping 'between yes and no, we have already seen. It is basically the coincidence of opposites Cusano, even though we have already seen.

.

Even for St. Thomas, Certainly, God is the Absolute, but this does not prevent that we can have a concept, although imperfect, Essence of God, expressible in language, already according to reason and even more by faith. This concept, produced by our reason, albeit it illuminated by faith, certainly can not understand or embrace exhaustively the divine essence in its infinity. Yet the limited can know the truth. While, St. Thomas does not deny that our word is lacking, when we consider, especially in the experience of charity, the infinite goodness of God. It thus does not deny the mystical experience. But it is careful not to base it on the oscillation between the yes and no. Instead, it comes from a yes to God said with all his strength and on the basis of the truths of faith.

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Stay anyway, as we have seen, we can conceive of God by resorting to the concept of being analog, the fact that Scripture teaches us that God is "the One Who Is" [Is 3,14], so, as St. Thomas observes, God is a body, the essence of which is to be absolutely and infinitely. In this sense, God is the Infinite and the Absolute. analog speak concept, for the fact that, as Scripture teaches [Sap 13,5], we can know that God exists and therefore we can farcene a concept, starting from the consideration of entities, that the things, which are effects of his creative power: "In fact, from the greatness and beauty of creatures by analogy perception of their Creator ". For if all things have in common that exist and have being, a being whom participate, without any of them is to be the essence, the reason compels us to admit that, having received them being, there must be a Being, What I have given them, that is, that has created, a Being who, to explain the existence of entities, in turn has received being, but that is pure and infinite Being, what St. Thomas calls the very being of God by itself, subsisting, It gave.

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Once, therefore, that we have formed the notion of being most universal, we can be able to preach be both things, than of God, but we must bear in mind that we are speaking in the two cases not univocally, like them and God's will could be preaching in the same direction, but very different in two ways, ie analog, Why, while things were being, ie they are finished, God is the infinite. For this, Aquinas says that while the reality has created that which it has to be, God is His. And on the other hand, exaggerating the difference between the creature and the Creator and falling being nell'equivocità for mysticism and a false sense of mystery, We can not say that being is not predicated of God, by virtue of the "transcendence" of God and of his superiority over all human concepts. This is the error Schelling, in which also he falls Kasper.

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The God of idealism proposed by Kasper oscillates between the ambiguity and the 'uniqueness. This trend is in nuce already in the God of Luther, that connects the Augustinian conception of God within the conscience and the light of consciousness, source of eternal truths, col Dio in Ockham, which is a God who does not take account of our certainties, then a God, on which attributes you can equivocate, because his inscrutable and absolute will not command what is good, but what He wants it to be good. Whereby, if God would allow adultery, it would be legitimate. Indeed, per Ockham, since it does not admit the existence of universal essences, It does not exist a human nature, governed by universal moral laws, valid for every individual, that the good man is not the observance of these laws, but simply the fact that every single man fulfilling the will of God in his particular situation and men's variable man. The duties of man are not motivated by a reason, which does not give certainties, but only to opinions, and the mere fact that God wants it so, and might want otherwise.

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The God of idealism approved and recommended by Kasper and he considered better and more biblical than that of St. Thomas, It is a conjunction of the Lutheran conception of God with the Cartesian, through Kant and Fichte.

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The Augustinian God in consciousness is reflected both in Luther that Descartes, but while in Augustine consciousness comes into herself to open up to external things that lead to God and the visible structure, institutional and sacramental of the Church led by the Vicar of Christ, with Luther and Descartes, the God in the conscience becomes, to quote Kasper

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"The modern principle of subjectivity, the process in which man becomes conscious of his freedom as autonomy, and if the starting point makes, and measurement means for a whole conception of reality " [48].

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God and history

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The proposal is clear kasperiana: It is to replace, interpretation of Christian revelation, Thomist philosophy with that idealistic, despite the age-old recommendation that St. Thomas made by Popes, to the requirements of Vatican II and the following Pontiffs, like St. John Paul II in the encyclical Faith and Reason and the repeated condemnations of idealism by the Magisterium of the Church since the nineteenth century. It's evident, also, in Kasper, the intent to favor Luther behind bestowed praises to Schelling and Hegel.

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We consider some significant statements by Kasper. He believes that

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"Hegel's philosophy ... offers to the theologian of the conceptual tools that help him, more than it has been unable metaphysical traditions of the past, to understand the advent of Christ and to reflect on God no longer philosophical and abstract terms, but concretely, to think that God as the God and Father of Jesus Christ " [49].

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Let's see what would be the second Kasper these 'conceptual tools', they do know the Christian mystery better than St. Thomas. He says:

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"A God who is now thought within the horizon of subjectivity, It can not be understood as the supreme Existing, perfect and unchanging. This leads, after several attempts undertaken by Scotism and medieval nominalism, as well as by thinkers such as Meister Eckhart and Cusanus, a de-substantialization the concept of God ' [50].

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Kasper praises Hegel because it has come to conceive the Absolute

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"Not as substance but as a subject, as it alien another by itself " [51]. "The whole (It gave) It is nothing but the essence is accomplished through its evolution " [52]. "This historical understanding of God - says Kasper [53] - it is mediated at the level Christological and reaches its peak in the phenomenon of the cross, in an attempt to understand the death of God "

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"The event of the cross - Kasper continues talking about Hegel - is the outward description of the absolute Spirit story»[of God]; "For it takes place in a God “split”»; the death of God means that he denies himself: "In this self-alienation death is the highest summit of finitude, the supreme denial and therefore to the greater manifestation of God ' [54].

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He also says Kasper:

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"By its very essence the absolute Spirit puts himself in its difference from itself. According to Hegel, this is philosophical exegesis of the biblical said: 'God is love'" [55].

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It is evident here dialectic interpretation of the mystery of the Cross, which has nothing to do with what the doctrine of the Church and Scripture teach on the subject [56].

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Consequences in anthropology and moral

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If the house is founded on quicksand of becoming and uncertainty, no wonder whether it might not have a firm structure and ensure a safe living space. And in fact the kasperiana anthropology and morality based thereon leaves us at the mercy of the waves agitated history, without a fixed destination and without a sheltered harbor where refuge, it's not what takes place in the dialectic of our subjective consciousness. Shortly it helps us recall an "Absolute" like us embroiled in the events, in misfortune and in the darkness of this mortal life, so much so that it is not clear if it is he who comes to our aid and we must help Him.

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Dice Kasper:

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"The man is facing an insurmountable mystery, indeed he himself is an impenetrable mystery. You can not derive the essential lines of our existence " [57].

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It resolves the delicate problem of the essence of man, as well as the goals and the laws of his life with a cheap mysticism, which it is nothing more than a convenient but shameful flight from responsibility. In tal modo, abandons the serious moral issue in the hands of any charlatan. For a Catholic theologian of the thing, then, It is even worse, considering the rich and millennial doctrinal heritage, which have about anthropology and Catholic morality.

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The reduction of man, made by Kasper, a mere possibility to implement the grace, a mere vessel of grace, It may give the impression of high spirituality, but it is actually a straightforward imposture, rather it is an absurdity, because grace is a perfection of nature: if there is no perfectible, may not even exist the perfection it should refine it.

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He says Kasper:

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"The infinite distance that separates man from God, the creature from his Creator, and whose mediation foretells in the person of man as a question and as hope, It can not be filled by human possibilities. By its very essence this mediation can come only from God. In his personality, man is only grammar, power oboedientialis, pure and passive possibilities of this mediation » [58]. "Anthropology is, as it were, the grammar of which God uses to self-expression; but the grammar as such remains open to set out the most diverse and finds its concrete determination only in human life of Jesus " [59].

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The man before God is not just a passive "grammar", but it is a free creature made in his image, with very specific purposes and regulated by precise laws, whose obedience is accountable to God; It is not a tape recorder, but a personal active subject, an interlocutor able to answer yes or no, and that God calls you to say yes.

.

In ethics descending from anthropology kasperiana everything is possible and the opposite of everything. Nothing is stable, nothing is universal, anything you need, nothing is absolute. But everything becomes, everything is historicised, everything is relative, everything is diversified, everything is contextualized, everything is particular and concrete.

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The disturbing note of this historicist and relativist ethics They should put us on alert and make us aware of the importance of good metaphysical and theological foundations of morality, if we do not want human conduct, abandoning the streets of the Gospel, falls to the level of 'one man Wolf.

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Varazze, 24 May 2018

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_______________________

NOTE

[1] The Absolute in history last Schelling's philosophy, Jaca Book, Milan 1986, p.492.

[2] Cf G.Cavalcoli, St. Thomas and Christian philosophy, in The Christian philosophy of the century and the Magisterium of Pope Leo XIII, in Proceedings of the Perugia 29.V-1.VI 2003, by the Archbishop of Perugia, Perugia 2004, pp.323-332; AA.VV., Thomas Aquinas and the object of metaphysics, Armando Editore, Rome 2004.

[3] And 'now that the conviction of rahneriani Rahner has supplanted St. Thomas or St. Thomas both of our time. this conviction, pace of rahneriani, of course it is based on a misunderstanding of the fundamental truths of reason and faith.

[4] See the great encyclical Neptune Paul II Faith and Reason the 1998.

[5] Cf E.Gilson, The spirit of medieval philosophy, Ed.Morcelliana, Brescia 1964.

[6] Some texts on the importance and relevance of the thought of St. Thomas: G.Mattiussi, XXIV The thesis of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas approved by the Congregation of Studies, Typography of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome 1947; J.Maritain, The Angelic Doctor, Desclee De Brouwer&C.ie, Paris 1930; A.Fernandez –M.Cordovani – M.Maggiolo – R.Spiazzi, The mission of Thomism, Old Editions S.Sisto, Rome-Naples 1967; C. Jacon, The major thesis of Thomism, Patron Editions, Bologna 1967; P.Relative, Thomistic therapy for the modern problematic from Leo XIII to Paul VI, Logos editions, Milan 1979; J.A.Weisaheipl, Thomas Aquino.Vita, thought, works, Jaca Book, Milan 1988; N.Sarale, St. Thomas Aquinas today, Publishing Civilization, Brescia 1990; A.Livi, Thomas Aquinas. The future of Christian thought, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan 1997; R.Spiazzi, The thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, Dominican Studio editions, Bologna 1997; R.Garrigou-Lagrange, The Thomistic synthesis, edited M.Bracchi, Preface of A.Livi, Editions Faith&Culture, Verona 2015.

[7] Here Kasper argues with him Przywara.

[8] The Absolute in history, op.cit., p.492.

[9] As is known, Gaetano was commissioned by Pope Leo X to order Luther to recant. Unfortunately, the mission failed because Luther would have liked to defend themselves, but at the most learned and pious Dominican Cardinal, obedient to the Pope, He was not permitted to discuss with Luther. At this point Luther would not hear of correct and remained attached to his ideas, as he would do for the rest of his life. Who knows that instead, if the two had been able to talk, to Gaetano it had not been possible, with its exceptional persuasiveness, to open a chink in the consciousness of Luther about the importance of metaphysics to interpret the Word of God. Cf. on this interesting topic in-depth study of the Dominican historian Charles Morerod, Today Bishop of Lausanne, Cajetan and Luther 1518, Friborg, Switzerland 1994.

[10] Cf J.Maritain, Seven lessons of Being and the first principles of speculative reason, Who are you, Paris 1934, pp.88-96.

[11] It can not be divided in himself or multiple, though it has multiple meanings, it must cover the full breadth and extension of being and being out there than nothing. This was already the error of Henry of Ghent, nel sec.XIII, who thought that there were two similar analog entity notions between them, one for God and for the world. Cf E.Bettoni, Philosopher Duns Scotus, Publishing Life and Thought, Milan 1966, pp.67-69.

[12] The Absolute in history, op.cit., p.504.

[13] The dogma in the Word of God, Shepherd-Morcelliana, p.48.

[14] Denz. 1507, 3020, 3074,. 3540; Catechism of the Catholic Church, n.88-90; Cf "the Code of 1917: «Christ has given the obligation, as she, And during the presence of the Spirit, doctrine revealed reverently and faithfully exposing» [Can.1322§1]; Melchiorre X, On the theological, New York 1786, pp.88-93; R.-M.Schultes, history dogmatum, c.I, Lethielleux, Paris 1922; A.Gardeil, The revealed and Theology, Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1932; S.Cartechini, Dall'opinione to dogma. Value of theological notes, Editions "La Civilta Cattolica", Rome 1953; Y.Congar, The Liver and Theology, Unpaste, Tournai, 1962, pp.54-71; F.Marín-Sola, Homogeneous evolution of Catholic dogma, Madrid-Valencia 1963, cc.III to IV; G. Cavalcoli, The question of heresy today, Viverein editions, Rome 2008, pp.215-223.

[15] Cf Conc. Vat.II, Cost.Dogm. God's word,cc.II and III.

[16] Of which speaks Maritain in the aforementioned September Lessons, pp.45-50.

[17] The Absolute in history, op.cit., p.61.

[18] CF Martin Lutero. An ecumenical perspective, Queriniana, Brescia 2016, p.54.

[19] He misunderstands this proposal by Pope Francis, which did not relate to the essence of the Church, whose organizational center is clearly the Pope, but ecumenism.

[20] See the interesting analysis of the metaphysics of William of Ockham in T.Tyn Metaphysics of substance. Participation and analogy entis, Dominican Studio editions, Bologna 1991, pp.243-258.

[21] The dogma in the word of God, Ed. Queriniana, Brescia 1968, p.47.

[22] Cit., P.137.

[23] Ibid., p.65.

[24] Ibid., p.148.

[25] Because of this, admission, supported by Card.Kasper, of cases in which Holy Communion may be granted to divorced and remarried, it is not founded, As I have argued on this site, that is at stake here simply ecclesiastical law, but it depends on whether he, because of his historicist epistemology, It can not accept the indissolubility of marriage as absolute and universal value.

[26] Phenomenology of the Spirit, New Italy, Florence 1988, vol.I, p.27.

[27] See the steps Kasper in my book The mystery of the Redemption, Editions ESD, Bologna 2004, pp.321 and 325.

[28] DIALECTICS IN HEGEL'S CHRISTOLOGY, in sacred Doctrine, 6,1997, pp.87-140. It's not about The interchange of properties, because Kasper attributes the non-human to the divine nature as it is united to human nature in the Person of Christ ("God is dead", "God suffers"), but in the divine nature as such. For him, as Hegel, God is essentially human. Regardless man, God is not God. According to the idealistic coscienzialismo, God is God in human consciousness as thought by man. Everything in consciousness, nothing out of consciousness. AND, at the bottom of, the cogito Cartesian developed by Fichte.

[29] Jesus the Christ, Queriniana , Brescia 1975, p.231.

[30] Jesus the Christ, Ed.1981, pp.250-251.

[31] A.Livi, Vera and groundwater theology. How to distinguish the authentic "science of faith" as an equivocal "philosophy of religion", Leonardo da Vinci's publishing house, Rome 2012.

[32] The Absolute in History, op.cit., p.493.

[33] Ibid., p.503.

[34] Phenomenology of the Spirit, op.cit., pp. 14,15.

[35]Ibid.

[36] Ibid., p.17.

[37] Ibid., p.26. The defect of the Hegelian theory of knowledge is the fact that the starting point of knowledge is not given the apparent affirmation, ie the sensitive thing that fronts the experience and reason, ie the object, ma, on the contrary, by its negation: the object is an opposite to the subject, so the real is the fact that the subject, denying the object, identifies him again to himself. Cf. my article The denial of the truth of common sense in Hegel, in the certainty of truth, Collection of contributions by various authors by Antonio Livi, Leonardo da Vinci's publishing house, Rome 2013, pp.143-148.

[38] Metaphysics of substance. Participation and analogy entis, op.cit. p.875.

[39] It is strange that Luther has accused Aristotle of being a sophist, while the great sophist was him.

[40] The Absolute in history, op.cit., pp.493-494.

[41] The Absolute in history, op.cit., pp.491-492.

[42] Ibid., p.494.

[43] Ibid., pp. 494-495.

[44] Jesus the Christ, Ed. Queriniana, Brescia 1975, p.65.

[45] So, When Jesus said that "only God is good" [MC 10,18], evidently it does not deny that the creatures are good [Gen 1, 10,13, 18, 21, 25] in their way over; but simply it means that only God is absolutely and infinitely good. Cf J. H.Nicolas, God known as unknown. Test of a critique of theological knowledge, Desclee De Brouwer, Paris 1966, pp.145-146.

[46] It should be infinite also the mode of being of this concept. But here there is only one proper Concept, which is the Logos.

[47] The Absolute in history, op.cit., p.491.

[48] Jesus the Christ 1981, p.253.

[49] Jesus the Christ 1981, p.256.

[50] Ibid. p.253

[51] Ibid., p.254

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Ibid..254-255.

[55] Ibid.

[56] See my treatise The Mystery of Redemption, Dominican Studio editions, Bologna 2004.

[57] Ibid. p.65.

[58] Ibid., p.346.

[59] Ibid., p.66.

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— Theologica —

The EPISCOPATE German and intercommunion MASS WITH PROTESTANT. PETER WASHES HANDS AS PILATO: "FIND A SOLUTION BETWEEN YOU UNANIMOUS"

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If the Bishops of Germany, unanimously they were to agree to give Holy Communion to Protestants, what will happen tomorrow, if another episcopal conference, unanimously, decide to unite in marriage same-sex couples? What will happen if another, unanimously, decide that it is permissible to abort the fetus of a baby found suffering from malformation, not considering it right to give birth to a creature affected by imperfections? What will happen if another, unanimously, It decides that it is an act of charity to end the life of a terminally ill and suffering that has no life expectancy? Since when, unanimity, It is a guarantee of sound doctrine and profound respect to revealed truth?

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

Contrary to those who for years are stealing the reviews on the subject contained in the articles of Fathers of The Island of Patmos looking from mentioning the Authors, doing then pass certain analysis as their own, we have proven Christian intellectual honesty and always mention when we appeal to any past or present author, well it was a minimum sigh. This is the reason why our writings published on the page Actuality abound with numerous citations in brackets, those on the page Theologica notes at the page bottom or between the lines of text.

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This introductory preamble just to sing two anthems: the first, to tenants who after the harvest they look from saying where they harvest the grapes. The second, to excuse me if I quote below the expression of an author that at the time I just can not remember the name, this thing that prevents me from giving the legitimate paternity to a phrase not mine, which is as follows: "The Supreme Pontiffs have placed the tiara, the laity and theologians have worn '.

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When you feel discomfort, or subjective discomfort human, we must keep it, to limit talk privately with those who can possibly help. This not only because the emotion is not to be publicized, but because it is not appropriate or prudent to do so, less still it is to download their any inconvenience on others, in a very special way when - like the writer of these lines -, He has called for the sacrament of grace and mission to be guides and teachers, not sowers of confusion. But when the discomfort is objective, because based on public facts, often painful or even dangerous, in that case, manifest discomfort, It can be an imperative following awareness obligation to explain what is right and what wrong, if anything, even preaching to that slice of the People of God made slothful by bad shepherds to feel discomfort and pain before certain grave problems affecting society and the Church. All this with all due respect to those who try to eliminate certain problems at the root saying: "Nobody has the truth in your pocket". Phrase that said and then read in a certain way consequently leads to say that at the bottom, the truth, it is questionable, but above all relative. If anything, it is true that no one owns the truth, of which we are called to be faithful servants and announcers, or as St. Thomas Aquinas: "You're not you who possess the truth, but it is the truth that has you " [cf. Of the truth]. For this reason, wriggling from certain discussions or answers with ambiguous phrase "No one has the truth in your pocket", statement is false and dangerous in itself, place the Church, which is a, santa, catholic and apostolic, the truth is the trustee and custodian, so that, far from having in his pocket, have it still in custody by the will and divine mandate. And we, that we are certainly not its masters, But we are his faithful servants, guardians and announcers. So, who announced this truth and defends it from error, It is not acting in this way because with style Pelagian O legalistic He believed to have in your pocket, but precisely because it must serve, defend it and proclaim it. No one who is true guardian and herald of truth may omit to specify and order the error, why in the world, with the truth, there is also the anti-truth that wants to impose on the truth, often so violent and destructive, but mostly untrue.

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THOSE IN QUESTION AND LAY unconscious EVERYTHING REDUCED FOR A CLASH OF THE PARTY AND THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY OF progressives

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The ongoing controversy unleashed these days the German Episcopate on giving Holy Communion to Protestants, It is a delicacy beyond any ordinary, because once again, these indomitable and irreconcilable barbarians, touch on beyond Rome and above Roma heart engine that drives the whole Mystical Body which is the Church: the Most Holy Eucharist. And before this problem, all of the theological and ecclesiological, as well as canonical and disciplinary, i laiconi floundering between an online journal and between a blog and the other, They are reducing their style as the whole issue to a political conflict.

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Aware of speaking to that effect to the deaf, I repeat that certain major issues are theological and doctrinal, then face them with the typical spirit of the political tussle, eventually reducing everything to a struggle between the so-called party of the conservatives and the progressives, It can only encourage the de-consecration of the sacramental signs and reduce the Church of Christ to a battlefield on which collide animated subjective moods at the base by pure ideology, not rarely even by personal problems of certain people who would need a good spiritual director, of a good confessor, but sometimes certain of a good psychiatrist.

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This inevitably leads to some lay people who stood on his head the tiara placed by the Supreme Pontiffs, to cause further damage to the Church and to the People of God, never as lost and confused today.

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GREAT DECEPTION THAT ALL PLAYED BY PARA-COUNCIL AND THE COUNCIL ON POST-A LANGUAGE NOT JUST HAPPY ADOPTED BY THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

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briefly summarize the overrun problem German then proceed with the analysis of the fact: The German Bishops' Conference discussed the possibility of giving Holy Communion to married Protestants with Catholics, adopting in this sense, the technique of the so-called "sliced ​​salami". Indeed, each time in the Church were granted limited special pardons and as many limited permissions to experiment, these concessions were then adopted practices, almost always it spreads beyond all limits of what had been granted. A concrete example of the many that serve as a paradigm? Soon said: the liturgical reform etched in Holy Council [cf. text WHO]. Please read this carefully and then make an evaluation: which are written, indicated and granted all liturgical aberrations, many of which are flush with the sacrilege of the Holy Eucharist, who for four decades we've made in many of our churches to the nefarious work of an army of exotic creative priests? In the text there is no trace, let alone legitimacy of the worst now institutionalized liturgical abuses in the fearful silence of the bishops who do not ensure, They do not prohibit and not awarded on the proponents of certain aberrations; if anything, they take strong dislike and make life bitter for those few priests who dare complain as this is not good and what is the duty of bishops oversee and stamp out certain practices in the clergy. Therefore, if the text of that reform does not permit grants what is now plain for all in many of our churches, where does the problem, or rather the catch? Arises from the fact that the documents of Vatican II - as I explained more times [cf. per es. WHO] - use a new language, which affected, for the strong influence exerted by the Teutonic theologians, the typical style of German Romanticism decadent. To this is then added the optimism of Pope John XXIII, convinced that we must not always judge and condemn, but rather talk. Through this set of things we can finally reach the documents that express profound concepts, valid and useful, together with urgent and necessary reforms such as Holy Council, but omitting to clarify through the precise standards that what is right and what is wrong, What is allowed and what is prohibited, if anything, even adding fines and penalties for offenders, the so-called "Anathema sit», often it used in documents of previous councils, who have not been any less of councils meta-council Vatican II, even if in the opinion of the whole foolhardy many theologians, with this last session of the Council seems finally to be born suddenly, after two thousand years of history, the Catholic Church.

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The certainty and clarity of the doctrine and canon law, It is not only protecting the deposit of faith, of truth and thus the doctrine itself, but also valuable protection for ministers of the sacred ed i believers of Christ, in order to avoid those kinds of injustices and abuses that almost always take life by the poor lack of clarity. In fact, when we hear the "revolutionary" cry "enough of this legalism, with this doctrinal hardness, with this "cult" of canon law!», always it ends up failing both the certainty of the law also erected to protect the members of the Body of the Church, is the clear doctrinal definition of what is lawful and unlawful, right and wrong, what is the truth and against what the other hand is false and erroneous. A quel point, when the lack of clarity leaves room for ambiguity, here is i ministers of the sacred on the one hand and believers of Christ on the other hand, they will end up becoming victims suffering of the free will of those who can make the biggest voice and impose itself despotically.

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WHERE CAN REACH THE SIN OF MURDERERS Catholic Faith;? UP TO beatify and canonize I POPES IN THEMSELVES HAVE DESTROYED THE TEACHINGS

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The capocomici of this terrible theater had among other things need to beatify and canonize then all the Popes of the post-conciliar. But beware well: not because nothing interests them the elevation of these Pontiffs to the altar glories, but because through them they wanted dogmatise and finally canonizing the para-council and then the post-council. And all this they did it with a spirit evil delinquent, because the same people who wanted at all costs Blessed and Saints these Popes, are also the same people who are questioning the Humane Vitae imminent Holy Paul VI; They are the same who have destroyed over the past five years the teaching of St. John Paul II, not hesitating to define the Familiar Consortium as a document dated, passed, but above all the result of sexual phobia inherent in the moral rigor of the Supreme Pontiff. but yet, just how much of what they believe, teaching and acting accordingly, but especially undermining and destroying the teaching of these blesseds and saints Popes, They wanted at all costs to canonize John Paul II in record time, instead of waiting for him as for his other predecessors, as prudence of the Church he imposed once, Thirty years after death, before opening a long process, finally reaching, no earlier than half a century after their death, the first stage of their beatification.

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It is thus clear to what kind of dangerous and destructive criminals we ended up in the hands? It is therefore clear how, these dangerous and destructive criminals, They are wreaking serious damage in the Church, favoring the worst decadence and self-destruction inside, after replacing the clear language and certainly with the "poetic hope", Finally replacing the much-despised "harsh and strict law", with their staff and free will tyrannical?

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It was old overall context of fifty this weak language, uncertain, apparently permissive and open to all the disparate hypotheses, you have to read the recent case of the German Bishops, but staging political clashes between the party and the conservative party of progressives, as do the so-called lay people engaged who are put at the head of the tiara deposed Popes.

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All this is at the so-called "salami technique", of which it is granted a slice, but later, a slice behind the other, It is sliced ​​and taken everything. The same goes for the repeated proposal farfetched which presses on one of the greatest destroyers of the Church of Brazil and as such a major contributor of uncontrollable bleeding of his faithful, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, pressing to have - obviously to experiment ― i sources try married ordained priests for the region of the Amazon where there is the greatest shortage of clergy. I say then, hypothetically: we allow the well 'experiment, only to see at a glance how the Amazons will also become Belgium, Holland, in Germany, France and so to follow.

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BISHOPS OF GERMANY HAVE DISCUSSED ON THIS ON WHICH THERE IS NO REASON TO DISCUSS YOUR OWN, WHILE THE CARDINAL REINHARD MARX PLAYING AT Vestal Virgin

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Of the twenty-seven members who make up the Episcopal Conference of Germany, plus the Exarchate Professor of Germany and Scandinavia and the Military Ordinariate, for a total of twenty-nine diocesan bishops, who are joined by a total of forty-one auxiliary bishops assigned to the holders of episcopal chairs of these twenty-seven dioceses, seven diocesan bishops in total have sent a letter to the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, S. AND. Mons. Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, and the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, His Em.za Cardinal Kurt Koch. The signatories to the question are sent to Rome His Em.za Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne [cf. WHO], followed by Their Excellencies Rev.me Ludwig Schick, Archbishop of Bamberg [cf. WHO]; Konrad Zdarsa, Bishop of Augsburg [cf. WHO]; Gregor Maria Hanke, Bishop of Eichstatt [cf. WHO]; Stephen Oster, Bishop of Passau [cf. WHO]; Rudolf Voderholzer, Bishop of Regensburg [cf. WHO]; Wolfgang Ipolt, Bishop of Görlitz [cf. WHO].

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The request for clarification addressed to Rome by seven bishops concerns an exemplary question: "Such a decision, It could be addressed by a single episcopal conference?». The answer, which it is neither a journalist nor be confined to disputes between secular party, it is easier than you just imagine. Indeed, seven bishops that the question they put, the answer to the same question are very familiar: a single episcopal conference, such an argument can not even dare to face him. What this escaped to all journalists and all lay with the tiara on his head that dipped in fish to comment on this story from them reduced to succulent "party struggle".

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A quel point, His Em.za Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Monaco of Bavaria and President of the Episcopal Conference of Germany, lowering himself in the role of vestal virgin - role that however well poorly suited to its physical shape, which attracts more an obese brewer Bavaria instead of a Prince of the Church -, even dares to argue the 4 April in these terms: "I'm surprised by the initiative [no. Seven German bishops], because the pastoral resource discussed in February by the Assembly of Bishops of Germany was only a draft and not a final text ».

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The answer, for many who unfortunately have not understood or understood, other socket instead perhaps even for good, It should be read in three optical delicate linked to the foundations of ecclesiology, the foundations of dogmatic sacramental, to the fundamentals of canon law. And based on these three foundations, the reckless Vestal Virgin Bavarian should know that they had not even dare, to discuss such a thing, all the more so if they wished then change it into an eventual indecent Proposal addressed to the Holy See, if not worse, in a real ratification of the Episcopate of Germany, which before due to Martin Luther, Then centuries later because of the para-conciliar and post-conciliar, it is not always clear that they are Catholics only insofar as they are with Rome and especially in Rome. And these days, to speak to certain vestal virgins Teutonic concept of "Rome" and especially "in Rome», You run the risk of blowing away the dust from their surface to immediately emerge the Lutheran romanofobo hiding under.

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The Vestal Virgin Bavarian, It should first of all know that for the Bishops gathered in the assembly is not permissible to discuss - to give a concrete example - the legitimacy of women's ordination, because a similar theme can not be discussed, it is a topic that has been closed once and for all through a precise document [cf. Priestly ordination, text WHO] which is expressed so definitive, What this implies that recourse to the second degree of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, which it is expressed by means of three different grades, so both defining is definitive [cf. To protect the faith, § 2, text WHO]. Just as we can not argue on the possible legitimacy of abortion in certain special cases and restricted, equally applies to euthanasia, for adultery lawful and so to follow. Always to make some concrete examples: the bishops of any national conference can come together to discuss whether it is appropriate or not to join in marriage of same-sex couples, because the discussion has not really any reason to exist, because there is nothing to discuss. As it is not lawful to discuss whether the case would be better to reformulate the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary or of her Assumption into heaven in body and soul, because those who formulated those dogmas, He has formulated them well; and dogmatizzando these two mysteries of faith, It closed any possible future discussion, even for the restless German episcopate and large insidiatisi German experts like a cancer in the Second Vatican Council, within which, not having been able to play on the substance of the doctrines, They played on language style. And at the moment no one noticed, nobody understood the ambivalent language and not decided, where on the one hand and the other urges are not threatening to those who transgress it, would be a great gateway to the great de-future construction generated an unprecedented chaos, based on the destruction of the legitimate apostolic authority and the imposition in place of the authoritarianism of the flag theologians and laity with the tiara on his head.

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And by the way that certain lay which it is not quite clear on their role within the Church, They are born to those movements that right under the eyes of the Blessed Paul VI and St. John Paul II have ended up giving life to real churches within the Church, complete with their own liturgies and catechisms, spreading wrong idea heretical and often based on non slight confusion they are doing on the common priesthood of the faithful acquired in Baptism, and the ministerial priesthood acquired the Sacred Order; and here I refer to the Neocatechumenal. To say nothing of the pneumatology of certain self-elettisi lay personal delegates of the Holy Spirit, which it is not easy to clarify that charisms bestowed by divine grace, They are such only if recognized and regulated mainly by the Church, then practiced in the Church, for the Church and under the watchful eye of the Church; and here I refer to certain fringes of the charismatic and the Renewal in the Holy Spirit. All this has produced in the Church that very well explained at the time the Venerable Pope Benedict XVI, lamenting the "clericalization of the laity and the secularization of the clergy". Well, Perhaps these were the expected results and desired by the Second Vatican Council that addressed the discourse on the mission of the laity in the Church? If we read the decree on the laity in the Church, between its rows there will find nothing that can justify only distantly certain follies put standing by Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez or by certain charismatic fringes [cf. Apostolate, text WHO]. Where do, so, certi “monsters”? Soon said: the para-conciliar and post-conciliar of the great “interpreters” e “actuators”. Needless to say, if at the beginning of his pontificate, Saint John Paul II, towards these phenomena degenerative state for the last decade, It used the same clarity and severity used towards those who favored the distribution of contraceptives in the countries of the African continent, we would never come after fifty years to the current situation today to the out of control, with ever higher numbers of pastors who ask the bishops to be removed from parishes where lay groups they have completely occupied for decades the scene, imposing on priests liturgical directives, catechetical and pastoral, except make his life a living hell if they dare raise objections; and the fierce and terrible are women, also said the priestesses. All this with no little certain aggravating: under Pope St. John Paul II, these movements was even allowed to open seminars and training future priests, which generally are not the priests the bishop, but the priests of the movement, formed according to the criteria of the movement, often formed even by the laity, and obedient in fact not the bishop, but the movement.

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Eh, There had occupied a little 'less of condoms and a little 'more than was triggered degenerative level within the Church!

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PLAY ON SEMANTIC NUANCE IS AN OLD TECHNIQUE OF GERMAN THAT HAS GONE BIG AND SERIOUS DAMAGE TO THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH

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Had it not been for some careful theologians, including Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, It would be passed with subtle semantic nuances so-called "wild collegiality" in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church The light, in open break with all previous magisterium and the tradition of the Church, thus changing Pietro, holder by divine mandate an absolute record, in a first among equals [the first among their own peer]. Discovered the time to catch, in the text of The light the numbers were well placed 22-24. Afterwards, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, to n. 883 fu printed: "The college or body of bishops has no authority, if it is not united with the Roman Pontiff […] as its head "As such, this college "is also the subject of supreme and full power over the whole Church: this power can not be exercised without the consent of the Roman Pontiff ".

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All that was concocted during the para-council, though never assimilated and ratified by the Vatican Council II, has been realized, however, in the large "interpreters" post-council and "actuators", including the claim to exercise a "wild collegiality" in open defiance to all the previous magisterium, the tradition of the Church, and to the teaching of the same Vatican II.

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Cardinal Reinhard Marx, It has therefore clear in itself the Eucharistic mystery and the Eucharist as the "core of the mystery of the Church"? [cf. Church of the Eucharist, text WHO]. The teaching of the acts are in fact clear in affirming: "The Eucharist objectively creates a powerful bond of unity between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches, which they have preserved the authentic and integral nature of the eucharistic mystery. At the same time, the emphasis on the ecclesial character of the Eucharist can become an important element also in dialogue with the Communities of the Reformation " [cf. The Sacrament of Charity, text WHO]. Well, reading these words, what will the Cardinal Reinhard Marx? Can you grasp that while those Orthodox are referred to as "Churches" separate, aggregations born from Lutheran schism are referred to as 'Community'? It is clear to Cardinal Reinhard Marx of difference for us Catholics that runs between Orthodox and Protestants? The Orthodox, separatisi from Rome for the "shape" of and a son inserted in the symbol of faith of Nicea-Constantinople, They enjoy apostolic succession and profess the substance of our faith, beyond different rites in their outer shape and accidental beyond various "shades". The Protestants, that preserve within itself a definite Christian heritage, They are not separated from us by external accidental or the "nuances", but so they are the deep substance of the sacraments and the very way of conceiving the Church, to read and to announce the Holy Gospel. Moreover, the Protestants, do not recognize the primacy of Peter over the universal Church and its full and absolute power, do not recognize the Ministerial Priesthood, do not recognize the transubstantiation and the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Or maybe you think, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, that all these are only semantic nuances? But if the Presiding Bishop of Germany has some gaps, then, instead of wasting time and perhaps even the Catholic faith in some theological faculties of Germany, could always visit one of our brave missionary sisters that with a few, short and simple words prepare children for First Communion in the most remote villages in Africa; and transmit the purity of the faith to believers of Christ certainly much better than some bloated doctors disaster of German theological faculties.

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In the Holy Eucharist we are called to be perfect in the unit [cf. GV 17, 20-26], not in the fragmentary diversity of multiple pseudo-churches, because the Word of God founded only one true Church entrusted to Peter, assisted by the College of the Apostles [cf. Mt 13, 16-20]. Furthermore, I understand that in Germany you recite in the Profession of Faith: « … the one, saint, catholic and apostolic church». And in German, if I'm not mistaken "the one'Followed to mean "one", "single", "Unique". This is to remember that Martin Luther destroyer of unity and communion, He was not scheduled yesterday and can not become an emblem of the "good reform" even today. Therefore, though some of his followers married to a Catholic spouse yearn to receive the Holy Eucharist, It must first be clear what is essentially and actually the Eucharist, then they have to undertake a proper catechesis, Finally abandoning errors heresiarch Luther and his followers and enter with a sincere act of faith in the Catholic communion. Only then, They can receive the Holy Eucharist, We remember that it is a free gift like all thanksgivings, it's not a “political right”.

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perhaps it needed a priest and Italian theologian to remind members of the German episcopate filled with doctorates, and at the same level from clinically affected anthropological Overall Genius and the complex of the culturally superior race, what are the basic rudiments of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that in fact they have been shown not to know the substance of their talk and act?

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HOW DO I TELL EYEWITNESS: GERMAN BISHOPS HAVE TRIED TO formalize WHAT ARE LONG TIME IN TOTAL contempt AT THE CHURCH TEACHINGS AND TO READ CANONICAL

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In the past I stayed for several months in Germany and for some time in the Archdiocese of Monaco of Bavaria, already straight at the time Archbishop Reinhard Marx, created Cardinal then a few years later by Pope Benedict XVI. They are therefore an eyewitness of all their abhorrent abuses, to which I attended and which many times I refused to participate. Then I will offer a few examples, which is already reported in my book 2011 in the process of reprinting. Let's start from the Eucharist: in total disregard to what has clearly the Education Redmptionis mystery [cf. text WHO], at the Abbey of Sankt Bonifaz where I was staying, in the heart of the Bavarian capital, I was shocked to see people who were taking the Eucharist with their own hands and dipped in the chalice of the Precious Blood of Christ, unconcerned that here in the document cited, to n. 104 It is imposed: "The host into the chalice Do not allow yourself to communicating intinct itself". Also in the church of this abbey, I saw a woman, after the Holy Communion of the faithful, altar to purify the sacred vessels and a lay lay the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, while the concelebrants were sitting on the presbytery. It's still: i have seen, churches in the archdiocese of Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Women who actually held the functions of the deacon, I saw lay proclaiming the Holy Gospel during Mass, and once, during a concelebration, after a layman had proclaimed the Gospel, I saw him get on the presbytery, a woman dressed in a strange black robe that begins to make the homily. When the brother sitting next to me, murmurs: "But who is this ... what does?». He answered me: "It's a bishop Lutheran, every so often we do these ecumenical exchanges ». At that point I stood up, I took off my neck Stole, I laid it on the chair and left way before the whole assembly ". then when, after Mass, the other priests asked why the foreign priest had gone away, they replied: "Ah, never mind, it's a Roman priest, people closed!».

Not being able to submit to certain abuses, because where I was visiting was not allowed to celebrate Mass in private in some chapel, because I had to be the obligation of concelebrations coerced and put up with all their worst abuses, through the good offices of two elderly Jesuits in Rome, I went at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Jesuits of Monaco of Bavaria where I placed at the disposal one of their several chapels to celebrate Mass.

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One of my main problems It was also and above all tied to the Most Holy Eucharist, because it was widespread use in the Bavarian parishes that Protestants, spouses or companions divorced united in a second marriage to the Catholic, They went quietly to receive Communion. All this is to clarify, that Roma specializes in pretending not to know and not to know, that Cardinal Reinhard Marx and the assembly of the German Bishops, except for seven that raised a question to the Holy See, they simply tried to "ratify" and then to "legalize" and "formalize" what is in fact already do for many years. All this while Roma continue to pretend not to know and not to know, committed as it is today to speak only of two basic mysteries of faith: refugees and migrants.

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PETER WASHES HANDS AS SAYING Pontius Pilate: "TRY TO BE PLACED BETWEEN YOU AGREE"

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And so, early May, a delegation of the German Bishops It met with S.It is. Mons. Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The delegation was composed by Their Eminence Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Monaco of Bavaria and chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne, Their Excellencies Rev.me Felix Genn, Bishop of Münster, Karl-Heinz Wiesemann, Bishop of Speyer, Rudolf Voderholzer, Bishop of Regensburg, Gerhard Feige, Bishop of Magdeburg, Father Hans Langendoerfer S.J. in his capacity as Secretary of the Episcopal Conference of Germany.

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This meeting ended in a stalemate redolent indecency, through which we understand to what extent under this pontificate Rome is no longer the heart of the Church Mater et Magistra, but only a bored and helpless spectator. Indeed, the Supreme Pontiff Francis I, far from giving or to give an answer on an issue that touches the heart of the Church and the center of its unity, He did respond to appreciate "the ecumenical commitment of the German bishops and asks them to find, in a spirit of ecclesial communion, an outcome possibly unanimously ' [cf. WHO, WHO]. In short, he sent them home after having told him in clear substance: "You try to agree among yourselves unanimously" (!?).

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Needless to ask a question, although unfortunately I must put it: If the Bishops of Germany they had been at odds over key issues that haunt this pontificate, namely refugees and migrants, the Supreme Pontiff, He has been slow to give a clear and precise answer, if anything, well seasoned with one of his sour jokes against those he said variously "hard-hearted"?

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I think that in two millennia, we can not afford "the luxury" to respond to Jesus Christ with the same question of Pontius Pilate:

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«[…]”I came into the world: to testify to the truth. Who belongs to the truth listens to my voice”. Pilate says to Jesus: “And what is the truth?”» [GV 18, 37-38].

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While the house is burning and everything collapses, while the lay people who have worn the tiara placed on their heads by the Supreme Pontiffs and while several journalists improvvisatisi ecclesiologists, theologians and canonists, reduce everything to a clash between the party and the conservative party of progressives, We take note that the Successor of Peter, just like Pontius Pilate, after being asked "but what is truth?», He responded to the bishops of Germany telling them: «And now, Try to make arrangements between you unanimously " (!?).

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If the Bishops of Germany, unanimously They should agree to give Holy Communion to Protestants, what will happen tomorrow, if another episcopal conference, equally unanimous, decide to unite in marriage same-sex couples? What will happen if another, unanimously, decide that it is permissible to abort the fetus of a baby found suffering from malformation, not considering it right to give birth to a creature affected by imperfections? What will happen if another, unanimously, It decides that it is an authentic act of charity to end the life of a terminally ill and suffering that has no life expectancy? Since when, unanimity, It is a guarantee of sound doctrine and profound respect to revealed truth? These are the questions that, S. AND. Mons. Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, who spoke on behalf of the Pope to the delegation of German Bishops, It should respond to all of us; and it should do it right in his capacity as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, knowing that in the fourth century, the majority of the bishops, They had accepted the Arian heresy. Come May, in that case, an absolute majority did not constitute any guarantee of truth in deference to the mystery of Revelation? there, This it must explain the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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These are the facts, it is not humoral opinions dictated by some kind of sympathy instincts, dislike or closing worse reasoning. And before the matter of objective fact, It consists of Peter who washes his hands like Pilate, I have no more to own more, because I know better than to say the least, but especially, and especially when it comes to Peter, It avoids above all, to say more than they should.

From the island of Patmos, 5 May 2018

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«You will know the truth and the truth will set you free» [GV 8,32],
but bring, spread and defend the truth not only of
risks but also the costs. Help us supporting this Island
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— Theologica —

WE DRAGGED IN HOUSE AN ENEMY THAT hang you ROPES WITH THE CHURCH AND THE EUROPEAN STATES HAVE PROVIDED: HISTORICAL REFLECTION, SOCIAL AND THEOLOGICAL ON ISLAMIC FAITH

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Unfortunately, it pains us to admit it, with some very imprudent gesture, the Holy Father delivered, the new invaders of Europe now in an irreversible phase of de-Christianization, house keys. While in, to us, in this situation irreversible and without human possibility of return, we just have to wait for the opening of the Seventh Seal according to the account contained in the Apocalypse of Blessed Apostolo Giovanni.

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Authors
Giovanni Cavalcoli, o.p. – Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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YOU CAN BUY THE BOOK BY CLICKING: WHO

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«You will know the truth and the truth will set you free» [GV 8,32],
but bring, spread and defend the truth not only of
risks but also the costs. Help us supporting this Island
with your offers through the secure Paypal system:

or you can use the bank account:
They were IT 08 (J) 02008 32974 001436620930
in this case, send us an email warning, because the bank
It does not provide your email and we could not send you a
thanks [ isoladipatmos@gmail.com ]

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