Catholic Studies Speaker Series: Fr. Robert Barron

good morning everyone good morning everyone I'm wanna leave Addis if you don't know who i am i'm president of aquinas college and i want to welcome all of you to our campus this morning what a great crowd so pleased you all came out this is wonderful on a beautiful day when you could be doing other things or here and that's a great sign today's lecture by father Robert Barron is part of our Catholic studies speaker series led by dr. John Pinero who is our director of our Catholic Studies program and he's also professor of history the mission of our Catholic Studies program is to share the rich experience of the church's own culture and foster spiritual and intellectual development among our students today we are happy to extend that opportunity to our greater community I encourage everyone here and all of our community to enroll in our Catholic Studies courses and further their development of faith Catholic studies is just one Avenue toward deepening our commitment to our Catholic faith you may have heard the exciting news that we are planning for a new chapel here on campus which we hope will become yes thank you we are well on our way with that the architects will be here for final discussions today we're very excited and we hope that that will become a centerpiece of the Catholic culture here on our campus alongside with our academic offerings it is our privilege today to listen to father Barron as he discusses Thomas mertens metaphysics of peace however I have it on good authority that father Barron's personal hero is another Thomas st. Thomas Aquinas I'm also a very big fan of his so now please let's welcome our College chaplain father stand Rogowski who will deliver the invocation this morning father Stan Thomas Aquinas in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit God our Father we joined the heavens and the earth and their proclamation of your power and glory you inspire in us Wonder and awe for the magnificence of your creation and we give you thanks for the beauty and promise of this day in your great love for us you invite us to delve with humility and faith into the mysteries you set before us you offer us a challenge to be a people of peace in your name true peace driven by your love we ask you God of all to send the power of your spirit to guide our intellectual pursuits today and always send your spirit of wisdom to inspire father Baron to proclaim your word of truth grant us all to have open minds and hearts so as to be filled with the light of your goodness we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord Thank You Father Stan I'm dr. John Panero and I have the privilege of introducing our speaker today before I do that I would like to thank Lewis McBride and Baker book house for co-sponsoring this event the Catholic studies speaker series is funded entirely by donations and through partnerships such as this with Baker Book house I would like to thank our benefactors therefore especially Ken Anita moravsky for making it possible for Catholic studies to continue to bring great and interesting Catholic scholars to acquaintance College and I'd also like to welcome our newest benefactor the Catholic Lawyers Association of Western Michigan which seeks to promote the new evangelization and form Catholic lawyers after their patron saint Thomas More that's a tall order and now the main event father Robert Barron is the founder of word on fire ministries director of Mundelein seminary and the creator and host of Catholicism a groundbreaking award-winning documentary about the Catholic faith clap if you've seen that he received a master's degree in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Institute catholique in Paris he has published numerous books essays and articles on theology and the spiritual life he's appeared in several media outlets and I think you'll be is it NBC you'll be doing the commentary on for Pope Francis's visit in September his website word on fire dot org has reached over 3.8 million people which is why we hope you'll post this on your your website and his weekly YouTube videos have been viewed over 9 million times his pioneering work in the New Evangelization led the late Francis Cardinal George to describe him as quote one of the church's best messengers as if this was not enough I've discovered in the past couple of days that he also gives great golf advice I could just good golf advice would be good for me his latest book published by Bakker books the co-sponsor of this event is Catholic theology essays on God liturgy and evangelization please welcome father Tom father Robert Barrett thank you very much good morning everybody thank you for that nice introduction I was almost father Thomas Aquinas huh no as your good president said quite correctly my great hero is Thomas Aquinas and so I'm always happy to be speaking at a place named for Saint Thomas when I was 14 years old I was at Fenwick High School outside of Chicago and it was a kind of lazy spring afternoon and one of the young Dominican friars presented to these freshman religion class Thomas's arguments for God's existence and I'm sure he had no impact on the other kids in the class but for some reason it had a huge impact on me and it changed my life it started me on a path I've never really left and so I was think of Thomas Aquinas as the great patron of my life as a priest as a theologian as a writer it's that day in the spring of 1974 you can guess how old I am now that set me on that path and behind me on the the seal you see the wonderful words of Thomas you know when the Lord spoke to him from the crucifix Thomas you've written well of the sacrum of my body what would you have in recompense and I always tell my students in Mundelein if the Lord ever asks you what do you want don't say a Maserati or something what you say is right there you say no an easy tato meaning I will have nothing except you and so that's the guiding light of Thomas's whole life and spirituality so I'm delighted to be at this great institution and speaking to you also very grateful to Baker books I was there yesterday and really enjoyed the day Baker books represents I think a really great ecumenical outreach they've been very generous to me as a Catholic author and they have a lot of Catholic books we had a wonderful crowd last night so very grateful to Baker books grateful to to carnal George's sister Margaret errs here today Karl George who died you know just a few months ago was a great mentor to me and to so many in the church and I mean he was the Lion of the American church he was the great intellectual spokesperson and we miss him in so many levels I was telling his sister that I visited his grave just a few weeks ago and it's in a you know public it's a Catholic cemetery in Chicago but in a very simple grave just with a simple stone that says George and your parents are buried there and then Cardinal George is just there next to them I was very moved by it but it was him he wouldn't have wanted some grand monument it's just you know it was it it spoke to the simplicity of his spirit so Margaret very grateful to you for coming today and reminding all of us at the Cardinal so good I'll be talking today about Thomas Merton and your president was right in suggesting that when I was a kid these two Thomas's played a big role in my life Thomas Aquinas as I told you but I'll tell you how I met Thomas Merton I was working at a bookstore called Croxton brentano they're long gone now most bookstores are that's why I sing Baker was so good yesterday they've seen this beautiful bookstore but I was working there was a 16 year old kid and the custom was of a paperback got a little too worn the owner would would take the cover off and then we could take the book home if we wanted so a copy of Merton seven story mountain his great spiritual autobiography was worn out and they tore the cover off and my brother had it he was working there as well my 17 year old brother and he threw it to me I was in the stockroom he threw it to me and I caught and he said you'd like this it's by a Trappist monk and I said in my 16 year old wisdom I didn't want to read a book by some Buddhist he said and I quote Trappists are Catholics you idiot and and with that I got the seven story mountain so and you know those who've read that book no it's a great story of a person falling in love with God I mean so I think in my teenage romanticism and enthusiasm I got caught up in that story and so Thomas Merton along with Thomas Aquinas had a big impact on me as a young man so that's why I have been studying him and writing about him for many years I am gonna plow through this paper with you I promise it's not that long so we should be through in about 40 minutes or so if you're if you're keeping score so I will be reading through the paper with a little fortification first so the title is Thomas mertens metaphysics of peace I've never been comfortable with interpretations proposed either gleefully from the left or regretfully from the right which claim that a huge gap yawns between the early Thomas Merton of say the seven storey Mountain and the older Merton of say conjectures of a guilty bystander there is to be sure a rather remarkable development from one to the other but as John Henry Newman taught us authentic development is always marked by a continuity of principles and stability of form it'll be my contention in this talk that the young mertens conversion to Catholicism described so vividly in his autobiography and attendant writings in the 40s and 50s involved an immersion into an entire worldview a significant dimension of which is a metaphysics of peace and that this conviction found full expression in his later writings on war and non-violence obviously the explicit ation of this implicit belief came only after long years of prayer study conversation and the discipline of the monastic life but there is I will argue no reason to suppose that mertens commitment to non-violence in the 1960s involve the slightest betrayal of the worldview that he adopted in the 1930s just the contrary I'll try to show that the latter is in fact nothing but a practical consequence of the former rightly understood so first section al Merton and Aquinas in a particularly vivid section of the cemetery Mountain Merton speaks of his discovery of Etienne Jewell sones classic book the spirit of medieval philosophy at scribner 's bookstore on Fifth Avenue and how that book revolutionized his life if you go to New York that bookstore is long gone but still on the side of the building that once housed it you see Scribner so you can find the exact site where Merton found this book he bought the text because he was enrolled in a course in medieval French literature and had quote five or ten loose dollars burning a hole in my pocket but he was mortified when he noticed the knee Hill obstinate and the imprimatur on the frontispiece so disgusted was he by this association with Catholic dogma that he was sorely tempted to hurl the book out of the window of the train but quote by a real grace he didn't throw it away in fact he actually read it the big concept that's mertens phrase they took from jill's own study was quote contained in one of those dry outlandish technical compounds that the scholastic philosophers were so prone to use the word ass ate us this term designates the fact that God exists through himself or by himself I say that he is in a classes language assumed sa subsystems the sheer act of to be itself this pithy but profound description convinced him that what Catholics mean by God is not quote some vague and rather superstitious hangover from an unscientific age but rather something I'm quoting again deep simple and accurate a child of his skeptical age Merton had assumed that the God in whom Christians believed is nothing but a projection of their desires and subjective ideals a Feuerbach Ian's fantasy or Freudian wish-fulfillment there's very interesting parallel I think between mertens Awakening and one described in evylyn Hua's masterpiece Brideshead Revisited BETT novels narrator Charles Ryder from his post conversion perspective remembers that during his own period as a convinced agnostic it had never occurred to him that religious dogma could ever constitute a serious worldview or be anything but a consequence of complexes so Merton was like Charles Ryder in Brideshead what are the implications of this revolutionary idea that sold galvanized the young Thomas Merton first is this but God is not a being not one existent among many not a thing above or alongside the world rather assumed sa right to be itself while remaining radically other than any finite existent is the ground of finite existence and therefore must be as Aquinas put it quote in all things by essence presence and power and Thomas adds in team a by the way most intimately Augustine expressed the paradox in his elegant formulation God is simultaneously superior sumo Mayo at in Timmy or in Timo male both higher than my highest thought and closer to me than I am to myself but this divine intimacy entails furthermore the connectedness of all created realities through God the deepest center of any one creatures existence coincides with the deepest center of any other creatures since that Center is none other than the divine power of episome si as fellow participants in God's active to be all things are related to one another in the most intimate way possible for all our ontological siblings if I can put it that way thus when he wrote of brother son and sister moon Francis of Assisi was employing that simply evocative poetry but accurate Christian metaphysics the brother the the Sun and Moon our brother and sister to us were ontological siblings when meister eckhart who sat in the dominican chair of theology in paris just a generation after aquinas spoke of a shared sinking into God he too was but drawing out the implications of this radical metaphysics of divine to be the connectedness of all creatures to each other through God is expressed not only in formal philosophical language but also in Christian art architecture and poetry the medieval Rose windows which I came to love when I was studying over in France those great wheels of light and color that decorate the Gothic cathedrals symbolically bespeak participation metaphysics at the center of the rose is invariably a depiction of Christ and then arranged around that still point in harmonious patterns are the various midday on the French call the medallions portraying saints patriarchs angels etc this signals the ordered cosmos grounded in and related to the divine core when the young Merton misses in the summer story mountain explore the town of San Antonia and southern France he found this metaphysics reflected in the architecture and layout of the place all the roads and alleyways conduced to the church raining splendidly in the center of the town and it was therefore impossible he found to move around the city without being drawn eventually to the liturgy to the Eucharist to the sacred the town itself was like a rose window like a sacred wheel we hear an overtone of this when later in the cemetery Mountain Merton speaks of the Monastery of Gethsemane as quote the real capital of the country in which we are living the center of vitality that is America the cause and reason that the nation is holding together he saw Gethsemane as the center of a kind of Rose window at the conclusion of the Divine Comedy have worked at Merton specially reverenced course takes the title seven story mountain from the purgatorial Dante sees the heavenly empyrion as a white rose an ordered harmony gathered around a luminous Center and he envisions the saints and angels as bees carrying grace from that flower to the far corners of creation obviously Dante the architects of the Gothic cathedrals and the town planners of Santa Antonin knew full well that the world is a dangerous and violent place but but they also knew through their Christian convictions that the deepest reality of things is peace and this they expressed through their art the the peaceful interconnection of all things through God the notion of the divine sa taas has implications as well for the way we understand the very act of creation if God is assume sa subsistence then whatever else comes to existence must be created ex nihilo literally from nothing there can be nothing outside of the sheerly subsistent God from which or on which he works no pre-existing matter or substrate with which he creates though God is like an artist in his creative imagination and intelligence he is not like a sculptor who works with marble or a painter who assembles a picture from canvas and oil but this implies that the act of creation is thoroughly non-invasive and non manipulative God's creative act is one of utter generosity since he needs nothing outside of himself and it's utterly nonviolent since he shapes or influences nothing outside of himself and this in turn signals the radical disjunction between the Christian account of the world's beginnings and most philosophical or mythological versions of the same in many of the primal myths creation takes place through some sort of violence either the conquest of one God by another or the successful battle against chaos or recalcitrant manner even in the philosophical doctrines of Plato and Aristotle we find that matter coexisting with a divine from the beginning is shaped and molded into order the implication of the Christian doctrine of create Co X meelo is that non-violence is the deepest truth of things non competitiveness the ground of being and thus to live non violently is necessarily to be ethically upright it is to be if I can put it this way cosmically correct it is to be in line with the grain of creation what the young Thomas Merton took in when he absorbed the medieval philosophy of Aquinas mediated to him by Etienne Jill sone he was taking in a view of the real as a realm of coherence participation and non-violence at the truest and most metaphysically dense level the universe he saw is a reflection of the peaceful and Cheerilee generous act by which epsom sa brings it into being okay second part of the talk now is on the dissolution of this vision what I've been laying out now with the help of Jill Solon and Aquinas and Merton fell apart and we in many ways are the unhappy heirs of that dissolution one of the great ironies I think of a 7-story mountain is that Merton discovered this brilliant medieval Christian vision at a moment when his literary and philosophical culture had largely forgotten or repudiated the tired modernity of mertens youth expressed aesthetically in some of his favorite writers such as D H Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway and politically in the communism with which he flirted was the consequence of the collapse of a participation metaphysics one of the first causes of this collapse was oddly enough a Franciscan friar namely John Duns Scotus when SCOTUS insisted that there's a univocal concept of being he situated God in creation under the same great ontological canopy effectively setting God alongside the world one being however great among many but the juxtaposing of God and creatures amounts to a negation of the participation metaphysics that Aquinas advocated on the SCOTUS reading the world is comparable to God but it doesn't share in the very to be of God and when this participation is denied the essential connectedness of all creatures to one another is also undone SCOTUS his univocal conception of being was carried further and deepened by William of Occam and the nominalist inspired by him and they in turn had decisive influence on Martin Luther and the other reformers the SCOTUS akima strain can be discerned in Luther's embrace of a radical theologic rucious and his effective distance iation of God from the world though these theological and metaphysical moves were born of Luther's legitimate concern to guard God's transcendence and sovereignty they would have been inconceivable within the framework of Aquinas his participation theory what commenced is an aberrant strain within Christianity I would argue reached its full flowering in the philosophy of secular modernity in the rise of Thomas Hobbes for instance massively influential on our view of politics we see that once God has been effectively removed from the scene the world becomes a place of disconnected atoms in motion read the beginning of Hobbes as political philosophy it's a metaphysics he lays out that what what is finally real I said are just atoms matter in motion this view informs Hobbes's cosmology as well as his famous take on the pre political state of nature as a realm where life is in his famous quote solitary poor nasty brutish and short in a complete reversal of a crisis non-violent social ontology here we see that the natural condition of things is individualistic and antagonistic the war of all against all political cohesiveness is not for Hobbes a reflection of nature just the contrary it's an artificial construct based upon the fundamentally selfish agreement of the social contract they'll be express it a bit more delicately both Locke and Rousseau share the Hobbesian assumption of a fundamentally violent social ontology and that assumption shapes their view of the purpose of government as the protection of individual rights rather than the fostering of a community of justice that's a whole other semester course where you talk about the way we've construed politics I think it's largely based on a modern metaphysics rather than the one I've been describing an acquaintance this tradition furthermore is clearly reflected in the language of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence which has wonderful elements in it please don't get me wrong I think that there's a wonderful way to recover the natural law precisely within Jefferson but when he says government's come to be primarily in order to preserve and protect individuals from one another to preserve our rights over and against each other and among the fundamental rights of human beings is the freedom to pursue happiness left undefined precisely as they see fit in all of this we see I would say the political consequences of the unraveling of the medieval Catholic vision of participation whereas in the medieval view violence and antagonism were seen as sinful aberrations departures from the natural order of things on the modern reading their reflections of the way the universe simply is now the awakening the Thomas Merton experienced through his exposure to a medieval Catholic metaphysics triggered a process that led him eventually in 1941 to enter religious life as a Cistercian of the strict observance as a Trappist immersing himself and the rhythms and routines of Trappist life Merton was able throughout the 40s and 50s to explore the implications of his faith and this exploration gave rise not only to his great autobiography but also to the monastic journal the sign of Jonas that great study of prayer seeds of contemplation and its successor vol new seeds of contemplation and many other texts on spirituality and theology but as I suggested at the outset of this talk a major transition seemed to occur in the early 60s as Merton shifted to a concentrated focus on issues of war and peace and the praxis of nonviolent resistance to some degree the change was prompted by the tenor of the times the intensification of the Cold War the beginning of American involvement in Vietnam etc but it was also the unfolding of the creation participation theology that he had learned from Etienne geo soul before turning through the explicit texts on war and peace I want to explore what amounts to a bridge between the earlier and later phases of mertens development namely the moving and popular account of an experience he had at the corner of 4th and Walnut Streets in Louisville it's now become sort of a modern classic of a mystical experience in interpreting this well-loved passage from the conjectures of a guilty bystander we are enormously helped by the recent publication last you know 10 15 years of the complete journals of Merton well worth plowing through on February 28th 1958 that means just three weeks before the experience at fourth and walnut Merton reported in his journal a dream that he had and I'm quoting now on the porch at Douglaston that was the home at his grandparents Head on Long Island when he was a kid is the dream he's had on the porch of Douglaston I am embraced with determined and virginal passion by a young Jewish girl she clings to me will not let go I see she's a nice kid in a plain sincere sort of way I reflect she belongs to the same race as st. Anne I asked her her name and she says her name is proverb I tell her it's a beautiful and significant name but she does not appear to like it perhaps others have mocked her for it that's mertens account in his journal of this dreamy head on March the 4th as a few days later Merton scribes in his journal a sort of love letter to this dream figure expressing his gratitude to her for awakening in him something he had lost and praising her for her quote virginal solitude and for the beauty of her name now this character proverb has been interpreted by Merton of scholars as his feminine side as his anima and the Jungian sense as childhood and all those readings probably have some validity but see I think the key to understanding her is the name that Merton finds so powerful and so moving one of the most important presentations of creation in the Old Testament is found in the eighth chapter of the book of Proverbs where the wisdom of Yahweh is personified as a girlish figure a young girl who plays at the feet of the creator as he brings forth the world I'm quoting now from the scripture the Lord created me this is this is the divine wisdom speaking at the beginning of his work the first of his acts have long ago when there were no depths I was brought forth when there were no springs abounding with water when he established the heavens I was there when he assigned to the sea its limit when he marked out the foundations of the earth then I was beside him like a master worker rejoicing before him always delighting in the human race that's proverbs 822 231 given the playful associative and fecund quality of mertens mind is it possible to say that what embraces Merton in his dream this young girl called proverb is a reawakened sense of the purity and innocence of God's creative act what gives way to this interpretation is the proximity of the proverb dream and the experience at fourth and walnut I'll follow the exactly the evocative account he gives of this powerful spiritual event in the conjectures of a guilty bystander while in town for a medical appointment Merton found himself standing at a street corner in a busy section of Louisville's shopping district you go there now there's a nice plaque that commemorates the experience crowds of people hurrying by him he comments quote I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people that they were mine and I theirs and we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers a dream of separateness that he had cultivated during his monastic years was suddenly over I'm quoting again we monks belonged to God yet so does everybody else belong to God what dissolved from Merton during this encounter is the common modern view that the universe is composed of isolated and mutually antagonistic atoms divorced from each other because of their common divorce from God as Merton develops the inside his language becomes more metaphysically exact I'm quoting again then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts the depth of their hearts were neither sin nor desire and or self-knowledge can reach the core of their reality if only they could all see themselves as they really are you see the metaphysical ontological language he's using which undergirds this sense of connectedness he could love all these perfect strangers precisely because they were at the core of their being his own ontological siblings only a metaphysics of creation and participation could ground this mystical experience of Union in one of his texts on prayer Merton described contemplation as I love this finding that place in you where you are here and now being created by God discovering in a word the core of your being and thus the point of contact with everything else in the universe in a description of 4th and walnut Merton gives this Center a new name I'm quoting again from him again that expression the previous is French for the virginal point remember he was embraced by this young girl proverb in the dream with a virginal passion he says again that expression the previous comes in here at the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion a point of pure truth a point or spark which belongs entirely to God this little point of nothing is the pure glory of God in us the deepest ground of a soul to point the edge this virginal point is best described as nothingness precisely because creation takes place as we saw ex nihilo there is nothing that stands between us and God it in turn implies that the most elementary truth about ourselves the rest of creation is peace connection non-violence if we realize this truth we could live with the grain of the cosmos and the only practical conclusion would be a life of peace quoting again from Merton it's like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven it is in everybody and if we could see it we would see these billion points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a Sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely this is what happened to him at fourth and wollen this I would say awakening to the full implications of a creation metaphysics one of the qualities of proverb and his dream that Merton found so attractive was her quote virginal purity and we can see it in this account of the Puentes the place in all things have unsullied and undisturbed contact with God were we to live out of that space and be illumined by that light sin would almost automatically wither away from a correct understanding of creation in God orthodoxy would come non-violence and compassion orthopraxy that's what he got okay now with that I want to turn to mertens explicit writings on peace and non-violence Thomas mertens writings on non-violence are among the most passionate and controversial in his avila it's impossible to read say a chant to be used around a site with furnaces or the original child bomb or develop meditation in memory of Adolf Eichmann these are all the prayerful meditations Merton wrote in the 60s without being stirred to either anger or righteous indignation or perhaps both at the same time as every Viagra FERS reminded us and becomes eminently clear in the journals burden in a difficult time getting many of these writers writings past the censors in his own order and those that did find their way into print were met with either bewilderment or outright opposition on the part of those who wondered what had become of the pious and socially conservative convert of the cemetery Mountain for though he consistently denied that he was a pacifist and that's true throughout his write Merton said he's not a pacifist in these texts from the 60s he clearly departed from the straight-laced Just War theory of the cold war-era Catholic Church and he did indeed venture into more radical territory moreover he associated during this period either directly or by correspondence with some of the better-known peace activists at the time including Dorothy Day Daniel Berrigan and James Forrest it's my conviction that Burton did not so much depart from a conservative metaphysics and embrace a radical social theory as he uncovered the behavioural implications of what had always been a radical metaphysics I think from our modern point of view that medieval participation metaphysics has always been a radical view he pulled out some of the behavioral implications of it I think in the 60s the most thorough and sustained presentation of mertens views on the praxis of non-violence can be found in an article entitled the Christian and world crisis published in the June of 1964 just one year after the appearance of John the 23rd peace and cyclical pocha meant eras what Burton tries to argue in this essay is that non-violence is a practice deeply rooted in the truth of things and not the quirky conviction of a few fanatics quote maladjusted creatures lost in impractical ideals sentimentally hoping that err and demonstrations can convert men to the ways of peace that's mertens characterization of the of the cliche at the centre of his analysis is a survey of the Christian views on war and peace in the patristic era beginning with origin of Alexandria expressing a fairly common view in the ancient world Celsus origins feisty and stubborn interlocutor had maintained that Christians with their commitment to non-violence could not possibly be loyal citizens of the Roman Empire it's a good argument by the way that Celsus makes he's a Roman you know aristocrat and says you Christians you can't be faithful loyal in Romans because you won't fight it's a bit like people back in the 1920s saying well how can you Catholics be loyal Americans or Englishmen in the 16th century saying how could you Catholics be loyal to the Queen it's a similar argument so this is third century we're talking about Origen responds by admitting rather blandly that Christians could not support the Emperor through arms though they could certainly support his legitimate purposes through prayer what strikes the contemporary reader I think immediately is the matter-of-fact quality of this rejoinder namely of course disciples of Jesus don't take up arms and second the frank acknowledgement of the power of prayer in the context of political life even though we pray all the time for our political leaders that we really believe that this has a huge impact on what they do but the heart of origins response to Celsus is not practical but theological what Christians challenge most vociferously he says is the Roman Assumption shared by political powers up and down the centuries that wars are necessary given the basically antagonistic quality of human relationships in light of the incarnation of the Divine logos Christians maintain a hope that the original unity of creation can and will be restored and they therefore have the courage to live in non-violence and forgiveness Origen argues I'm quoting no longer do we take the sword against other nations nor do we learn war anymore since we become sons of peace through Jesus who is our author instead of following the traditional customs by which we were strangers to the Covenant extraordinary quote and from the third century in brief the arrival of God's creative power the Lagos in the midst of human history has affected a radical shift at both the ontological and epistemological levels now the world is in fact being restored to its original interconnectedness and now we can begin to see the deepest truth of things our eyes undimmed by sin the violent and antagonistic universe assumed by both ancient Rome and I would say modern Europe and so on is revealed to be in light of the coming of Christ a sort of lie or illusion Merton summarizes origins position as follows I'm quoting the presence in the world of the risen Savior in and through his church has destroyed the seeming validity of all that was in reality arbitrary tyrannical or absurd in the fictions of social life therefore a Christian should live stubbornly in the truth incarnated the end times even now in the hopes that they will thereby dispel the clouds of illusion that surround them after origin Merton turns his attention to another Christian theologian who 200 years after origins contras awesome wrestled on the grandest possible scale with questions of war and peace I'm talking of course about st. Augustine in the City of God Augustine of Hippo offered a theology of history at the heart of which is an articulation of the relationship between two fundamentally divergent conceptions of the human community one deceitful and the other truthful Augustine's Civitas toreno he calls it the city of man will say but he calls it the earthly City usually Augustine Civitas toreno is that collectivity which predicated upon love of self is inherently unstable and violent turned in on themselves the members of the society cannot sustain true communion and their being together is therefore accidental and essentially antagonistic the driving forth force of the earthly city is what a Gustin I think magnificently called the libido dominant eye which means the lust to dominate I think it's one of the great descriptions of sin the lust to dominate watch it in all forms of sin and this quality is no more fully displayed Agustin thought then in the paragon of earthly justice namely the Roman Empire Rome as indeed established a kind of stability the PAC's Romana so-called but says Agustin it's a phony and dangerous piece because it's predicated finally upon the ruthless threat and exercise of violence furthermore the dysfunction of the Roman polity is a reflection and function of the false theology of the Empire the gods and goddesses of Rome whom Agustin consistently characterizes as demons any quite rightly are themselves venal vain self-absorbed and violent it's very interesting thing we become like what we worship it's a basic biblical principle you become what you worship whom did the Romans worship well read the stories of the gods and concept full of vanity and violence and arrogance and so on whom do we worship see and for agustin it makes all the difference whom we worship what the Bishop of Hippo proposes as a counter force is the Civitas day the City of God that community grounded in love of the true God given to the Creator rooted in their common center the members of this Kollek tivity can find true communion in and through each other in this context antagonism is recognized as the lie a distortion of the truth of things and thus compassion forgiveness and non-violence can readily surface and flourish here's the point is making just as the Civitas toreno flows from false worship so the Civitas day is a consequence of right praise you know that word orthodoxy the the fundamental sense that is not right belief but right praise duk-soo means glory praise so the right praise of the church leads to the right or the city the true God Agustin knows is not a self-obsessed a potentate but rather himself a commune of persons ordered hierarchically but non competitively and in the measure that they honor this God the members of the Civitas Dei become his peaceful icon and reflection Merton finds compelling Augustine's insight that in the mythology of Rome the great city was founded in the wake of the murder of Remus by his brother Romulus that's why it's Rome and that Reem right and Romulus killed Remus and that this is precisely echoed in the biblical account of the fratricidal Cain as the founder of cities Agustin saw that wonderful insight at the great city of Rome founded through an act of violence the the founder of cities in the Bible is a is a killer his brother whether the fact is viewed positively or negatively violence conditions the Civitas toreno from the beginning and on Agustin's reading the great representatives of the peaceful Civitas day Noah Abraham Jacob Joseph Jeremiah Jesus himself are necessarily Pilgrims and Wanderers resident aliens in and among the earthly cities the peaceful order of the Trinitarian community and the peaceful order of creation are the deeply countercultural truths preached by and embodied in the peacefulness of the Civitas day now what might be surprising if you think Augusta no he's the great theoretician of Just War that's how we know this is the fundamental stuff in Augusta see to be sure augusten departs from origins total commitment to non-violence he allows for some limited use of coercive punishment and warfare but this is as he repeatedly insisted nothing but a concession to sin I mean to read Agustin is some kind of war mongering you know just a fire of war that's completely alien to his spirit he saw that as a painful concession to sin the tragic acknowledgment that sometimes Goods have to be protected through the use of force but it's certainly not the acceptance of the false theology and metaphysics of the earthly city it seems to me this Augustinian resolution is quite close to mertens own a fundamental clear theologically informed acceptance of the way of peace without an absolutist embrace of pacifism I think Merton takes a fundamentally Augustinian position after this consideration of the patristic period Merton casts a glance at modern political thought as exemplified by Hobbes as we saw in Machiavelli and notes there affective unraveling of the Christian vision Beni turns his attention to analysis of Pope John's recent at that time possum and terrace a text he interprets as a ringing reaffirmation of the integral Christian metaphysics of peace though being cyclical treats of individual rights the need for international Authority the tensions of the Cold War etc its primary focus and organizing principle is the order of God's creation whatever we say about the rapport between peoples and nations Pope John says must be predicated upon the undergirding truth of the world Merton says that Pope John's fundamental optimism about the social life flows from Paul's cosmic optimism as expressed in the letter to the Colossians I'm quoting all things have been created through and for him he is before all else that is in him all things hold together there's first chapter of Colossians that's the ground for Thomas Aquinas Thomas gives that precise metaphysical expression Etienne Jules sone mediated acquaintance to Thomas Merton who's now writing these words that's the traditions coming from ultimately is is the New Testament because the world's been made and redeemed through the divine logos things and people despite all relatively superficial obstacles hold together at the center is that what Paul saying in Colossians the Christian call for peace is therefore not a whistling in the dark but an Evoque ation of the deep Grainne of the universe Merton explicitly links this Paul line vision to the two mystic metaphysics that so galvanized him as a young man I'm quoting Merton L st. Thomas dared to demonstrate the natural goodness of the world as something that could not be fully understood and vindicated except in the light of the doctrine of creation ah this is Merton 1964 but echoing what he learned in the 1930s from sheíll song and then he makes a connection between this intuition and the Pope's argument for peace I'm quoting as Peter said he means Yosef paper there as Yosef paper said of st. Thomas so we can say at Pope John to his mind it would be utterly ridiculous for man to undertake to defend the creation creation needs no justification the order of creation is on the contrary precisely the standard which must govern every man's judgment of things and of himself there's your metaphysics of peace but what is this order whether is expressed by Paul Origen Augustine or Thomas but the order of participation connection non-violence and love having invoked so many of the greatest theological thinkers of the tradition Merton draws his meditations to a close not with a theologian but with a saint and poet toward the end of his life Saint Francis sent one of his friars to his cz in order to mediate a dispute between the mayor and the bishop of the town he told them to sing in their presence the canticle of the son Francis's praise of God in His creatures for he was convinced that the best way to turn people's minds to peace quote was to remind them of the goodness of life and of the world after the friar sang as him the mayor broke into tears and the bishop confessed his own haughtiness and there was peace between them as I contended earlier in this paper brothers son and sister moon can be coherently uttered only by someone who's understood an ontology of participation and connection a metaphysics of peace just a quick word of conclusion it's been my central argument in the paper that the proclamation of creation is the condition for the possibility of real peace for creation implies both non-violence and deep interconnection I've tried to show that Thomas Merton throughout his career knew this in his bones he learned it first from the participation ontology of Aquinas that seeped into his own mind through zeal sown it was renewed in the virginal embrace of proverb the dream figure and in the point VA of mysticism of 4th and walnut and it's surfaced again in the creation base summons to peace in his 1960s writings on non-violence I'm persuaded as well that Burton's meditations on this rapport might indicate a way forward for Catholic and Christian social teaching believers in creatio ex nila have no need to import a social theory from secular or pagan sources either from Aristotle Cicero Adam Smith or Karl Marx for a participation metaphysics is itself a distinctive and compelling social theory one of forgiveness and non-violence god bless you all thanks for listening god bless you all thank you for that I think we have a little time for Q&A so there's some yep we got about 20 minutes we have wired microphones on both sides of the room if you'd like to step up here otherwise I have a wireless microphone if you'd like to raise your hand I can bring it around please thank you for your superb paper I really appreciate the fact that you says you said cosmology precedes ethical theory and we don't have to buy into the politics of the world I'm wondering I'm wondering if we haven't bought a Hobbesian social ontology even in the church if you follow some of the stuff on Facebook is very disturbing recently when I see some of the stuff on Bruce Jenner etc etc and we've forgotten this connectedness and the spirituality of non-violence what do you suggest we should do about a spirituality non-violence within the church itself I mean I'm not so much concerned about the state I expect the state to operate on different terms not the idea what is it should be but what do you do about a non-violence and corrective for those of us within the community called church no thanks for the observation and the question because I really agree with your observation that metaphysics has to come first and you can't do ethics properly without a metaphysical grounding and I think our great theoreticians have always known men we take in with our mother's milk a false ontology many ways we take in the false ontology of antagonism and that affects the way we think about the world ethically so I think agree with you on that I furthermore agree that you know if if the light goes out we're meant to be the light of the world if the light goes out who's gonna you know illumine things we're meant to be the salt of the earth if we lose our saltiness who's gonna result us as Jesus and so that's right our job in the world as a church is to remind the world of the deepest truth of things if we simply embody what what you see anywhere else in the world then we've lost our our prophetic and missionary purpose so I agree with that can the church recover for itself resources of non-violence and I would stand very much with as I laid it out Agustin and Merton I don't subscribe to an absolute pacifism I think there are times when certain Goods are so fundamental they're the only way we can defend them in a fallen and conflictual world is through violence so I I'm not but I also think we grossly underestimate the power of non-violence and we forgotten how to use it we're look in the last century Gandhi who learned is non-violence not so much from his Hindu tradition he learned it from us when Gandhi was a young guy in London he reads the Gospel of Matthew and he reads the Sermon on the Mount but he read it with fresh eyes he'd never read it before it took his breath away and he went to his Christian friends and said this is amazing and if the Christians all that well no one takes that very seriously but why God Gandhi took it seriously and effected this massive social reform Martin Luther King of course learned it from his own Christian text but also through Gandhi John Paul - the best example in the late 20th century of someone that used provocative non-violence in a very powerful way and affected the most radical social change if you told me when I was a kid in the 1970s that the Soviet empire would fall apart with barely a shot being fired and that the Pope would be the principal protagonist and it would be like a fantasy that's exactly what happened but what did he use but provocative non-violence so to your point I think we as a church need to recover those sources and we need to embody that to the world because that's our job our job is not just to retire into our private spirituality but now to be salt and light for the world so I'd say study the great practitioners of non-violence and learn how they did it and we need to be in the forefront of it as a church so thank you for them please I'm sorry go ahead we have competing microphones to the left good bottle thank you first of all I think I speak for everyone when I say thank you for coming in and being with us today so very insightful Thanks we can't hear you - well do you have the mic on hello there you go okay there we go first of all thank you I think I speak for everyone and say thank you for coming and being with us today I want to go back to the beginning of your talk when you were speaking about Thomas Merton and and noticing how the churches were the centres of the towns and everything surrounded around that how that was very metaphorical to how God is with reality and you you mentioned something about that when he talked about the Jewish temples of Jesus's time where the temples were the place where Israel goes up yeah - yeah and I it was curious - about I was wondering if if you that if what Jesus's Church what he established on earth if that was kind of the fulfillment of the temple and the concept of the temple and in relation to the metaphysics of how that works if that can give us some guidance and how we can go forward in in today's world kind of how the Jewish world saw the temple as a way to yeah good because he temple means the place of praise right and as paul tillich said all you need to know about someone you can discern from asking one question what do you worship it's a very biblical idea we become what we worship worth-ship right from the middle english means what's the highest worth to you everyone's got it atheists have it we all worship something right it might be money it might be sex it pleasure power honor my own ego but there's something that I worship is of highest value to me everything else my life will arrange itself around that point of worship the Bible keeps saying worship God alone look at the quaintness no one easy tato meaning if what do you want see the Lord what do you what do you worship what do you want none knees ETA I want nothing except you say now that's a rightly ordered soul that right worship will lead the medieval 's new to a rightly ordered City and that's why those towns still it plays like schardt you can see it when you go into shower even today well what dominates the skyline but the great Cathedral and then everything revolves around it literally you know everything leads to the praise of God good go into our cities what do you see churches like Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago if to get a guidebook and where is it I missed all that but what do you see by the way well you see the great towers of Industry and the towers of business and of insurance like you know the three biggest buildings of Chicago we have the Hancock building the Aon building and now the Willis Tower they're all insurance company now I got nothing against insurance people please don't get me wrong nothing against it but isn't interesting how you walk into this great city of Chicago what are the biggest buildings insurance companies to insurance against the dangers of the world and so on that tells you a lot about what a society values you know and so do you point about the temple or the church being at the center of a city or a town that does tell you something about the attitude of that people so there's what we have been very influenced by a different ontology a different type of worship and I think we should be fighting back a bit that the praise of God belongs at the center of life that's what the liturgy is all about thanks here go ahead please it's very pleasant to see you in person as opposed to YouTube I get to ask your question this way I do have three dimensions in vanity you mentioned in the dream that Burton had yeah he talked about specifically referred to virginal yeah and then when you spoke of his experience at Walnut yeah fourth and wall north and walnut and you spoke about how once again he talked about this virginal place at heart do you see a connection there yet with John Paul the second theology of the body and his reference to the the virginal state the original state and and what would you say that might speak to you on many other fronts of concern no that's good I mean maybe you could develop that because I had not made that connection I think that's right you know John Paul has got this richly metaphysical view of things and so his theology the body is not just an ethic it really is grounded in a metaphysics his anthropology is deeply philosophical so I think that's good I think that's the right connection I'd have to think about it more to say something really intelligent about it but I think that's a good line to follow you know I do please other I'm wondering if you can flesh out more mertens views you said that he's not he was not an absolute pacifist and you said that he his views were similar to Augustine's in that there could be a time for the use of violence to punish the wicked or to protect the vulnerable and so I'm wondering in particular what what mertens views would be what would he say to the Christian in the military and and like world war two I'm curious about his thoughts as to world war two yeah he does see a couple things about world war two and at that point I think he was supportive of it keep in mind he's doing this writing on non-violence during the Vietnam period just as Vietnam way and that war was famously controversial and many felt it was unjustified but what he said it at the beginning is right and worth repeating that Merton again and again said I'm not a ideological pacifist there are times when I think he perceived reading the signs of his times what was needed was a stronger voice in favor of non-violence so and that's I think it is very much like Agustin who's the mainstream of agustín's thought is very strong on this ontology of peace and then but he acknowledges given the fact of sin and the fall sometimes grudgingly we have - anything - about that's interesting the Just War Theory I'm a great advocate of it because the Just War theory of the Catholic Church is not a war mongering let's go get'em it's a really really strict limitation of violence I mean I think it's very hard to find frankly a war that we could justify using the real strict categories of the Just War theory even world war ii look at the the practice in world war ii the firebombing of Dresden the firebombing of Tokyo the atomic bombs there's no way you could justify those on Catholic social theory grounds you know so my point there is the Just War Theory should not be construed as Oh anything goes let's go out there and you know rah-rah it's a very very strict interpretation now having said all that what would Merton say to some of the military what do I say for example when we did the Catholicism series one of the gestures we made was we sent a box of it to every military base around the world I have great affection for the chaplains in the military for the people serve in the military there's a legitimate moral role but should people in military really know of adjustable theory I would say yeah in fact it's funny just last week I got an invitation to speak at West Point to all the cadets and and I say to them and maybe that's that maybe that's it is to say I really subscribe to the Just War theory which I do but if you really look at it that's a very strict set of limitations so kind of thinking out loud an answer to your provocative question yeah please go ahead please thanks for a very interesting talk I was curious both both in Mertens view and in your view do you need to accept the metaphysics of peace in order to correctly apply Just War theory you can practice yes no no I think that's I think that's a good way to put it I would say that's right but if you don't have the metaphysics behind it it'll it'll be applied very awkwardly or artificially or probably without the right of stringency so I think that's a good intuition that you should have that in place and then you'll understand how and why to apply those criteria if I breed a father it is this metaphysics necessary for the correct application so I yeah necessary maybe it's a strong word I think it's a very important support to understand them properly I'd say that yeah thank you a lot of big words I'm just I would just like you to elaborate a little bit about the role of Jesus in our lives how it seems to me that seeking him a lot of these things will be revealed to us and fall into place without us trying to understand and practice and track down all these things that are impossible in our own our own our this was a simple person yeah you know what you know it all comes from Jesus in other words this whole vision comes from Jesus now go back to Matthew 5 6 7 go back to the Sermon on the Mount and what do you find but an ethics that's coming right up out of a deep metaphysics so why do you love your enemy Jesus says I'm so counter-intuitively love your enemy are you joking I love him I mean maybe tolerate him maybe you know but love him was he how can you say that unless you know that at the deepest possible level you are connected even to your enemy so the Isis murderers I think the most wicked people right now on the planet right there's repugnant people on the planet should we love them yes how unconditionally it ones love me love means willing the good of the other right says Thomas Aquinas we love them now well how could you possibly say that unless you believe in this metaphysics of connection that even with them those horrible people wicked people we are connected by a bond that makes us ontological siblings my point there is Jesus ethics in the Sermon on the Mount is predicated upon this vision of life so it's all coming from him yeah well that's it but that's how he teaches you as Agustin says he's the master that's teaching you in you not from outside like I'm a you know a very inadequate teacher standing outside teaching Christ teaches you from within so that's quite right is you it's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me says Paul that's Christ living in you that's teaching you these truths you know so no I guess right I just by turning your life ever more and more to him so that you can say every aspect of me belongs to Christ that you become a rose window think of all the medallions in the Rose window your mind your will your passion your private life your sexuality your public life your friendships your entertainment that all of it is connected to him and therefore it holds together as a beautiful harmony that's how you do it keep surrendering every aspect of your life to him to him let him be there for the the cathedral at the center of your city so that everything in you turns to him to praise that's how you do it I think thank you okay please okay when when I was listening to your explanation of Thomas Merton and his metaphysics of peace one thing that came to mind was passivity and I don't know that this is it's just something that the impression I got and in the context of the broader gospel it I don't think it can be passive yeah because yeah but the impression I got is that you have this passive unity with everybody else and for me that's a little bit it's it's true that we all share in the being of God and that gives us unity but my question is and I guess to put it specifically we'll put it on the contact of Thomas Martin that says it's talk today so does Thomas Merton have an understanding of an active living out of this unity because yeah God is Trinity so God is a relationship so where does this unity this being of God become a relationship that we can give to others that's that's exactly it in other words I don't want anything passive I don't need any passive about it what you want is an active engagement of this deep truth so if you want to call that I mean a passive connection meaning it's already there but now actively engage it and now live it vibrantly on the public stage now you've got the church in its dynamic mode best example john paul ii you know the heaven the catholicism series I learned it from George Wiggles biography John Paul 1979 with the million people around him the communist government behind him and just starts speaking about human rights and speaking about God and speaking about dignity well what's he talking about but creation metaphysics and then the people respond with their we want God we want God for 15 minutes we want God that's when the Soviet empire collapsed it collapsed that day so they're nothing passive about that this very vibrant figure who's invoking this tradition and then awakening in the people this very active response that's I think what I'm talking about and what I think Merton is implying - good I'm glad you brought that up okay please okay please go ahead thank you thank you for coming the question that I haven't yet touched on it just a little bit is this whole Isis yes you you know Isis is sort of like spilled kool-aid everywhere are there any thoughts on how they can be dealt with collectively without violence because it seems the more violence that there is like the bombings and all that they kind of stir up more like a beehive and you know just thinking about if you meet one individually that's one thing but the way these seemingly really good people are being just sort of sucked into it vulnerable people young people how do how do we deal with that you know I know it's it's a it's a horrific ly complicated you know issue it comes home to me because a kid I'll comb and I taught 20 years ago is now a bishop in the Assyrian Church of the East they're in union with the Catholic Church but they're based over there and this guy that I taught out in the classroom in Mundelein is now a bishop in that region and people are streaming to him fleeing from Isis and we just got communications from him he's in serious danger himself and is giving you know shelter to these people so I know I mean I I know from him how dire this is with an Augustinian framework in mind might there be an in that those cases violence called for I think so I think some actions got to be taken but then look at the great practitioners of non-violence how they did it how you provocatively and actively engage wickedness by a refusal to cooperate with it so I would urge looking to the Gandhis and Kings and John Paul the seconds of how you do that but not urging an ideological pacifism I'm with Merton and Agustin there but I think drawing on our resources of provocative engagement of of evil the cross is the supreme example right the cross is the supreme example of how to engage wickedness so with the Christ here but no I'm Nessen out of judgment was looking to illustrate they're good but what what did Jesus do but he he took on the violence of the world and then swallowed up within the greater divine mercy all Christian nonviolent activists are imitating the cross the dynamics of the cross you know now for the particulars we have to do a lot more talking a lot more looking at what's on the ground you know but those are the principles I think thank you great god bless you all thanks for coming today you

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Published: Wed Jul 29 2015