Jesus and the City

WHAT DOES JESUS HAVE TO DO with the the city? Understanding the term city in its broadest sense, that is, as any human community, the answer is everything. "For where two or three are gathered together in my name," Jesus says, "there am I in the midst of them." (Matt. 18:20) This is broad enough to include any human community, from marriage upwards. Jesus is thus at the center of the Church's social doctrine.

What, more precisely, is the "everything" that Jesus has to do with the human community? The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church explores this and identifies those areas where Christ's role is key. We might call them the apocalyptical, the kenotic, the soteriological, the paradigmatic, the transformational, the eleutherian, and the transcendent.

The apocalyptical Christ and the apocalypse of man. The term apocalyptical comes from the Greek term apocalypsis which means "lifting of the veil," or revelation. In this sense, Jesus is the final apocalypse of God. "He who has seen me," Jesus says, "has seen the Father" (John 14:9). There is no veil between God and man in Christ: the veil of the temple that separated man from the Shekinah of God is rent forever. God is fully and finally revealed to man in Jesus. In Jesus one sees the naked God, as it were.

Our response to this great act of benevolence and mercy, of love, ought to be to remove the veils that separate us from Jesus. This is the meaning behind the beautiful formula of St. Jerome so loved by the Franciscans: Nudus nudum Christum sequi.* Nakedly we ought to follow the naked Christ. "Jesus' followers are called to live like him," the Compendium says, "and, after his Passover of death and resurrection, to live also in him and by him, thanks to the superabundant gift of the Holy Spirit, the Consoler, who internalizes Christ's own style of life in human hearts." (Compendium, No. 29)

Let us explore this a little more. What does Jesus reveal about God? How are we to be like him, and live in him, and by him? How is this possible?

Christ, Christians believe, is God incarnate. The ultimate meaning of the Incarnation is the"full revelation of Trinitarian love." (Compendium, No. 30) Most fundamentally, Christ reveals that "God is Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; truly distinct and truly one, because God is an infinite communion of love." (Compendium, No. 31)

Now, if man was made in God's image, as the first chapter of Genesis has taught us, and God is Trinity, it follows that man is made in the image of the Trinity. In our created nature is the image of the communion of love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are by nature made to love others, and thereby imitate God.

Drawing on Pope John Paul II's insights, the Compendium summarizes this truth: "'To be human," therefore, "means to be called to interpersonal communion,' because the image and the likeness of the Trinitarian God are the basis of the whole 'human ethos, which reaches its apex in the commandment of love." (Compendium, No. 33) We are designed to be in communion with God and with all men as God is in communion within himself.

In John Paul II's highly-charged words: "Being a person in the image and likeness of God . . . involves existing in a relationship, in relation to the other 'I'." (Compendium, No. 34)** This is a high calling, with both relation to the "other 'I'" above us, God, and relation to the "other 'I'" about us, our fellow man. Communion therefore has both vertical and horizontal components. This is reflected in the first table and second table of the Ten Commandments. "The revelation in Christ of the mystery of God as Trinitarian love . . . sheds light on every aspect of the personal dignity and freedom of men and women, and on the depths of their social nature." (Compendium, No. 34)

This, of course, is something inaccessible to reason. Accepted by faith, it will, however, open up an entirely new realm of reality to reason. Christ's revelation about the internal life of God "has opened up new horizons [otherwise] closed to human reason by implying that there is a certain parallel between the union existing among the divine Persons and the union of the children of God in truth and love." (Compendium, No. 34)*** "Christian revelation shines a new light on the identity, the vocation, and the destiny of the human person and the human race." (Compendium, 35).

Using Platonic imagery, Christ has taken all mankind out of the cave. We no longer have to look at shadows, but we have access to the realities outside the cave. This is Christ's gift.

This means the Church has the key to understanding man that no other philosophy and no other religion has. This is her pearl of great price, her great treasure, her great boon to the world, and it means that the Church has the obligation to share this key and this treasure with every person.

The kenotic Christ and the kenotic man. Not only does Jesus reveal the Trinitarian life in God and in man, Jesus rendered that inexpressible love concrete in his exemplary passion and in his death, which represented the total giving of his self for others. This takes us to the kenotic message of Christ. Kenotic comes from the Greek word kenosis, which means emptying out. It comes to us from St. Paul's letter to the Philippians: "Jesus emptied himself (ekenosen), taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men" (Phil. 2:7).

Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) by Salvador Dalí. (1954)

By his giving of himself, Christ revealed the hallmark of Trinitarian love. Jesus' commandment that we "love one another, even as I have loved you" (John 13:34), means that we have to learn to empty ourselves out so that we may give ourselves more effectively to others. "The commandment of mutual love, which represents the law of life for God's people," the Compendium states, "must inspire, purify, and elevate all human relationships in society and in politics."

The "Politics of Selfishness" as author Paul Nevins in a book by that title called the regime under which we live,† are anathema to the Christian, who follows an other-regarding kenotic paradigm entirely different from the self-regarding egotistic paradigm advocated by John Locke or Adam Smith or their legion of followers.††

The soteriological Christ and the soteriology of man. Christ's message is more than just reformist or prophetic; at its heart it is soteriological. The word soteriological comes from the Greek soteria, which means salvation.

It would be a mistake of huge proportions to limit Christ, as Thomas Jefferson did, to a mere moral teacher. Christ is more than a moral teacher, more than a moral model. Christ is man's savior, a unique, irreplaceable, and necessary office. "The salvation offered in its fullness to men in Jesus Christ . . . is salvation for all people and of the whole person: it is universal and integral salvation." (Compendium, No. 38)

Not only is Christ the savior of all men, he is the savior of every single part of man. We are not to parcel, bracket, or remove any part of human life from the salvation offered to us in Christ. Salvation, "concerns the human person in all his dimensions: personal and social, spiritual and corporeal, historical and transcendent." (Compendium, No. 38). Nothing human is outside the salvific pale of Christ.

In the Heautontimorumenos 1.1.25, the Roman playwright Terence said: "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto," which translated says, "I am a man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me." Jesus Christ can say the same thing with an entirely different meaning. Nothing human is alien to Christ. Christ is alien to nothing human.

Now, as St. Augustine so felicitously phrased it, "God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us."††† The salvation universal and integral offered to all men in Christ is not forced, as it "requires [man's] free response and acceptance." (Compendium, No. 39). Salvation is not forced, but the offer of salvation beckons, courts, even woos a response, an act of faith, an act in which a person freely commits his entire self to God. The divine bridegroom asks us to marry him as if we were to be his bride.

The other part of this message--that Christ is man's only salvation, man's only spouse, as it were--is this: that man can do nothing to save himself. There is nothing but "error and deception" in any "purely immanentistic visions of the meaning of history and in humanity's claims to self-salvation." The ideologies that are built by man as means for self-salvation--Communism, Fascism, Liberalism, even Islam--calculated to exclude the salvific Christ who is the one and only God, are nothing less than social, economic, political, or religious towers of Babel.‡ "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain." (Psalm 127:1)

Christ the paradigm of man. Christ's message is paradigmatic, exemplary. Christ gives us an example of what it means to love our neighbor. He is the incarnation, the paradigm, the epitome, the model of the Divine law in action, in all its concreteness: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Mk 12:29-31). It is Jesus who teaches us that we must love our fellow man, that he "must be treated as another self," whether he thinks and acts "differently from us in social, political, and religious matters" such as the Samaritan woman at the well, and indeed, "even if he is an enemy," such as Judas whom Christ loved and with whom Christ broke bread. (Compendium, Nos. 40, 43)

Even if he is an enemy, our neighbor must be treated as another self! Banned, then, is any form of dualistic ethic, of tribalistic moralism, an "us-them" mentality, where there is one moral law for "us," and another for "them." This seems like an impossible burden. Even the best of us are beset by sin, riddled with selfishness, and suffer from the weakness of the flesh, where even if the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. Christ's paradigm seems impossible for man. And it is, unless we keep in mind the transformational Christ.

The transformational Christ and the transformation of man. "The inner transformation of the human person, in his being progressively conformed to Christ, is the necessary prerequisite for a real transformation of his relationships with others." (Compendium, No. 42) Social change cannot come about without an inner conversion, a conversion of the heart. "The acknowledged priority of the conversion of heart," however, "in no way eliminates but on the contrary imposes the obligation of bringing the appropriate remedies to institutions and living conditions when they are an inducement to sin, so that they conform to the norms of justice and advance the good rather than hinder it." (Compendium, No. 42‡‡)

This transformation--where we conform ourselves to Christ--is not the fruit of our own efforts. "This path requires grace, which God offers to man in order to help him overcome failings, to snatch him from the spiral of lies and violence, to sustain him and prompt him to restore with an ever new and ready spirit the network of authentic and honest relationships with his fellow men." (Compendium, 43)

Finally, this transformation will show itself not only in the manner in which he treats his neighbor, but in the manner that he treats the entirety of the created universe, and the "human activity aimed at tending it and transforming it, activity which is daily endangered by man's pride and by his inordinate self-love." (Compendium, 44).

Christ, therefore, will order the liberal and fine arts, technology, even science, for, although they have a certain autonomy relative to their discipline which needs to be respected, these also are meant to operate under the transformative power of Christ, so that they are used not for selfish reasons, but as an expression of love of neighbor and act within the confines of the natural law.

The euletherian Christ and the authentic freedom of man. By demanding man to follow the way of love exhibited by God to man in Christ, man is in no wise restricted or constrained. No. Rather this demand is a call to freedom, to authentic liberty. For this reason, the last of the implications of Christ's revelation is eleutherian, from the Greek word eleutheria, meaning freedom. "[T]he more that human realities are seen in the light of God's plan and lived in communion with God," the Compendium observes, "the more they are empowered and liberated in their distinctive identity and in the freedom that is proper to them." (Compendium, No. 45)

Though activities of man have a certain ordered autonomy and independence, it is a falsehood of great proportion to suggest that any discipline of man is entirely autonomous from God. Quoting from Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, the Compendium concludes: "If the expression 'the autonomy of earthly affairs' is taken to mean that created things do not depend on God, and that man can use them without reference to the Creator, anyone who acknowledges God will see how false such a meaning is. For without the Creator, the creature would disappear." (Compendium, No. 46).

It is absurd to believe that anything can have reality apart from God.

The transcendent Christ and man's transcendent destiny. Man is not meant for this world, but is meant for another world. Christ, who was God transcendent and God immanent, pointed to this reality. "The human person, in himself, and in his vocation, transcends the limits of the created universe, of society, and of history: his ultimate end is God himself." (Compendium, No. 47) This transcendent destiny makes man's earthly existence relative to another, greater, overarching existence. The Compendium calls this reality the eschatological relativity and theological relativity. All things in heaven and on earth are passing, and they are relative to our ultimate eternal destiny, and relative to the one God who is our destiny.

This truth relativizes all human plans and activities, since it puts at the forefront persons, and most especially the three persons in one God. Quoting from John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus,‡‡‡ the Compendium states: "Man cannot give himself to a purely human plan for reality, to an abstract ideal, or to a false utopia." Anything short of God will result in man's alienation from his destiny and alienation from his brother.

"[A] man is alientated if he refuses to transcend himself and to live the experience of self-giving and of the formation of an authentic human community oriented towards his final destiny, which is God." But not only may man be alienated from God. A society can be similarly alienated from God. "A society is alienated if its forms of social organization, production, and consumption make it more difficult to offer this gift of self [to God and to others] and to establish this solidarity between people." (Compendium, No. 47)

The transcendent destiny of man relativizes of all of man's temporal doings. At the same time, that destiny will reject any vision man which refuses to recognize that transcendent destiny. For any absolutization of man's earthly world is a form of idolatry. "Any totalitarian vision of society and the State, and any purely intra-worldly ideology of progress are contrary to the integral truth of the human person and to God's plan in history." (Compendium, No. 48)

These are bold words, bold concepts. Where does the Church get the audemus dicere, the "we have the courage to say," to the world that she holds the key to man's nature, to his social relations, to his history, to his freedom, and to his ultimate destiny?

In the final introductory component of the Compendium, the divine warrant of the Church, her credentials as it were to speak to all men, is placed before the world.
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*St. Jerome uses it in Letter 125 and in his Homily on Luke.
**Quoting John Paul II, Mulieris dignitatem, 7.
***Quoting VII, Gaudium et spes, 24.
†Paul Nevins, The Politics of Selfishness: How John Lock's Legacy is Paralyzing America (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010).
††As one instance of Lockean thinking which is fundamentally anti-Christian, we might point to the following: "***"
†††St. Augustine, Sermo 169.10(13) ("Qui ergo fecit te sine te, non te iustificat sine te")
‡Islam may be the most vicious and most intractable since it excludes God as Trinity and Christ as God from all institutions which it comprehends--political, economic, legal, familial, social, religious. And it does so claiming the warrant of God, under the auspices of a Monotheism which is anti-Trinitarian and anti-Christian. By definition, Islam, which is an utterly comprehensive doctrine of life, expressly excludes God as Trinity and Christ as God.
‡‡Quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1888.
‡‡‡John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 41.

Ignorance of the Wrong-Restless Hearts' Final Rest

THE NATURAL LAW IS INTENDED to be man's guide to a natural perfection, and this regardless of time, place, and circumstance.* In particulars, it is a highly flexible law, even if in essentials it is an unchanging and immutable law. Human nature remains the same--whether found in a Greek monk holed up on Mount Athos, a Jewish Wall Street broker in New York City, a Venezuelan beauty queen participating in the Miss Universe pageant, an Arab pilgrim on hajj in Mecca circumabulating counterclockwise the Ka'aba, or a Chinese man floating in his Junk in Hong Kong harbor. The normative guidance the natural law provides, both in general and in particular, as we go from man inchoate (in potentia) to man realized (in actu) is found in the natural law's precepts. "The precepts of the law," Bertke says, "are the lights placed in the labyrinth of life guiding human acts to the right paths and turns. It is of the precepts' nature to guide man to a correct realization of his capacities, to inform him what must be done if he is to arrive at his ultimate end." Bertke, 24. It is the precepts that help us judge aright what is the fitting and right means to our ultimate end.

As commands, the precepts inform and guide the intellect and the will, since both intellect and will are involved in any human act. Though guiding both intellect and will, the precepts principally are commands or norms of reason, not merely arbitrary commands, and by acting in accordance with these precepts of reason we are properly fitted into the great order of the cosmos, in harmony with our own nature and with God's plan for us in any particular time and place:

By following the precepts of the natural law man assumes his correct relations to everything else in the realm of being; order is brought out of the apparent chaos of many conflicting tendencies. The conflict between matter and spirit inherent in the complexity of man's nature, is resolved by obedience to their mandates, and harmony in relation to his prime purpose in [his natural and supernatural] life is obtained.

Bertke, 25.**

The precepts of the natural moral law oblige, and as obligations they impose themselves upon man. But they impose themselves upon man's freedom, seeking not to curb it or frustrate it, but to guide its use properly. So the natural moral law is an obligation in the order of freedom. It is not a restriction on freedom. And it certainly is not a law of physical necessity.

Sts. Thomas, Augustine, and Teresa of Avila
God alone suffices

Though there is a necessity to obey the natural moral law, that necessity is moral, not physical. The necessity is not a necessity of must (as if we have no choice or are compelled to obey it), but is a necessity of ought (since the obligation imposes itself upon our freedom and orders its proper use). The precepts of the natural law are oughts which impose upon themselves as an obligation because they are ordinations of reason, and not merely arbitrary dictats. Since they are based upon reason, the precepts carry their own reason for their obligation. It is self-evident that a life in accord with reason, a life fitted with reality and which promotes our very being and reflects who we are, is superior to a life that is irrational and which is not fitted with reality and contradicts or lessens our being and who we are. We are meant to flourish, our whole being inclines towards its flourishing, and obedience to the precepts of the natural law assures that flourishing, whereas disobedience to those precepts would result in our not flourishing. The obligation is then plain, as it is a matter of simply living right or reasonably instead of living wrong or irrationally. Of being rather than not being.

The precepts can be view under an active mode or a passive mode depending upon if we look at them from the perspective of the one commanding or the one commanded:

In the case of the natural law the active command is an act of the divine intellect; passsively, it is the actual ordination as perceived by the creature.

Bertke, 25.

The passive mode of the natural law (God's command as perceived by us) can be known without knowledge of God, so knowledge of at least the foundational precepts of the natural law can be known self-evidently, without knowledge of God, which knowledge is not self-evident. Similarly, the natural law binds us self-evidently, regardless of whether we have derived from our observation of reality and application of reason (or from Faith) that there is a God who has promulgated such a law.

It is a curious fact that man is a restless creature. No created thing fully satisfies him. Glory, honor, power, wealth, health, pleasure, the development of all natural powers of our soul or the possession of any and all created things do not, it would seem, satisfy.† But it would appear implausible for man to have no end, that he is condemned to be dissatisfied, and so there is implied in man's very restlessness that there is something he ought to seek beyond created things that will satisfy him, that ultimate good for which he yearns, which is God alone, his summum bonum, his finis ultimus, his plenary good, his ultimate end in which he alone finds repose and perfect joy and happiness.

I answer that, It is impossible for any created good to constitute man's happiness. For happiness is the perfect good, which lulls the appetite altogether; else it would not be the last end, if something yet remained to be desired. Now the object of the will, i.e. of man's appetite, is the universal good; just as the object of the intellect is the universal true. Hence it is evident that naught can lull man's will, save the universal good. This is to be found, not in any creature, but in God alone; because every creature has goodness by participation. Wherefore God alone can satisfy the will of man, according to the words of Psalm 102:5: "Who satisfieth thy desire with good things." Therefore God alone constitutes man's happiness.

Respondeo dicendum quod impossibile est beatitudinem hominis esse in aliquo bono creato. Beatitudo enim est bonum perfectum, quod totaliter quietat appetitum, alioquin non esset ultimus finis, si adhuc restaret aliquid appetendum. Obiectum autem voluntatis, quae est appetitus humanus, est universale bonum; sicut obiectum intellectus est universale verum. Ex quo patet quod nihil potest quietare voluntatem hominis, nisi bonum universale. Quod non invenitur in aliquo creato, sed solum in Deo, quia omnis creatura habet bonitatem participatam. Unde solus Deus voluntatem hominis implere potest; secundum quod dicitur in Psalmo CII, qui replet in bonis desiderium tuum. In solo igitur Deo beatitudo hominis consistit.

S.T. IaIIae, q. 2, a. 8.

This spiritual inquietude and its satisfaction is classically rendered by St. Augustine in his Confessions: fecisti nos, domine, ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. You have made us Lord for you, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. St. Thomas succinctly stated: Deus solus satiat.†† The mystic, St. Theresa of Avila put it wonderfully well in her "Bookmark": Solo Dios basta! Only God suffices.

Nada te turbe,
nada te espante;
todo se pasa,
Dios no se muda.
La pacientia todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene nada la falta:
solo Dios basta.

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

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*We say natural perfection, not supernatural perfection, which, without thereby deprecating his natural perfection, is what man's ultimate calling. We know, not through nature, but through revelation, however, that the natural law also has a tutorial or preparatorial task, as the natural perfection is fulfilled or perfected by the gift of Grace. While compliance with the natural law is necessary for salvation, it is not sufficient for salvation. Moreover, man's perfection is, as we know through revelation, found ultimately in a union with God, a participation in God's very being, a gift and destiny which is wholly supernatural.
**Again, this harmony will not be achieved without grace, given man's current state of disharmony, his Fallenness. Nature, while not entirely corrupted by man's Fall, is a natura corrupta or natural lapsa, and is not a natura integra, and the only means to overcome the corrupt or lapsed nature and obtain a measure of its original integrity is through the natural law and through habitual supernatural grace. In this life, however, that integrity is never fully restored, even after sanctifying grace, and full integrity awaits us only after death and resurrection of the body in glorified form.
***E.g., S.T. IaIIae, q. 98, art. 6, ad 2: "A law should not be given save to the people, since it is a general precept." q. 90, art. 2, c. "Consequently, since the law is chiefly ordained to the common good, any other precept in regard to some individual work, must needs be devoid of the nature of a law, save in so far as it regards the common good." The law or precept, however, is also concerned with particularities: "A command denotes an application of a law to matters regulated by the law. Now the order to the common good, at which the law aims, is applicable to particular ends. And in this way commands are given even concerning particular matters." q. 90, art. 2, ad 1.
†This is beautifully analyzed by St. Thomas in his "treatise on happiness," found in the Summa Theologiae, to which, because of its length, the reader is referred. S.T. IaIIae, q. 2 (English); S.T IaIIae, q. 2 (Latin).
††"Deus enim solus satiat, et in infinitum excedit: et inde est quod non quiescit nisi in Deo, Augustinus, in I Conf.: fecisti nos, domine, ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te." St. Thomas, In Symbolum Apostolorum, a. 12.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 5: Contemplation of God as the Ultimate Good

HOW IS IT THAT MAN ACHIEVES HIS NATURAL END? By what means will that which will make man objectively happy, God, and which constitutes man's ultimate good, communicate to man his subjective happiness? How does man (naturally) know God? How does man achieve his perfection? These are all the same way of asking the same thing. And this is Mercier's next inquiry. His thesis, or proposed answer, is that "Man enters into the possession of his happiness by the act of his intellect." [217(12)] The act of the intellect by which it is accomplished is the contemplation of God, an act of the speculative intellect. The contemplation of God, however, is "the subjective end of human nature." Man's objective end is God himself. Man's subjective end (contemplation) is subordinate to Man's objective end (God). "[C]ontemplation . . . is only a subordinate end--'finis sub fine',* as St. Thomas expresses it." [218(14)] Contemplation of God is the ultimate subjective end under the ultimate end, God himself.

In discussing his thesis, Mercier observes that man has many faculties, physical (the senses) and intellectual (mind and will). Man's supreme end, it would seem evident, would employ the exercise of man's highest faculty. So which is man's highest, most noble faculty? Between the physical faculties and the intellectual faculties, the former are subordinate (or are recognized to ought to be subordinate) to the latter, so man's intellectual faculties are clearly more high, more noble than the physical. Of the two intellectual faculties, mind and will, which, then, is the more noble?

Philosophers are divided on this question. St. Bonaventure attributes happiness to both intellect and will, whilst St. Thomas and Duns Scotus argue for a single faculty--the former for the intellect, the latter for the will. The difference between these three is only one of standpoint. However this may be, we are of the opinion that it is in the exercise of the intellect that the supreme end of human nature is formally realized.

[217-18(12)] So in choosing the intellect as the faculty that participates most intimately in the ultimate good, that is, God, Mercier sides with his philosophical master, St. Thomas. He does not do so arbitrarily. He does so by reasoning. How so? He reasons by eliminating the will as a possible candidate, leaving the intellect as the only possible candidate. He asks: What is it that changes at that instant between the will in a state of tendency (as it seeks its end) and the will in a state of repose (when it has sought its end)? "Clearly some change must have been produced in the disposition of the will with regard to its end." [218(12)] What caused that change?

The change must be caused by the intellect, specifically by the fact that will has been brought into contact with the good "by means of a representation made by the act of the intellect." "Hence," Mercier concludes, "the act by which human nature immediately enters into possession of its supreme end, the act by which the taking possession of the supreme end is actually brought about, is an act of the intellect." [218(12)]

But is it an act of the speculative, or an act of the practical intellect? Cardinal Mercier asserts that it is an act of the speculative, as distinguished from the practical intellect, that must be involved in man's ultimate happiness. Since God is sought for his own sake, is an object of contemplation, while acts of the practical intellect "are considered with a view to the end for which the will pursues and realizes them," it would seem that the speculative intellect is how subjective happiness is achieved. This is Mercier's sixth thesis. It is God as grasped by man's speculative intellect that engenders the love of God (a matter of the will), and so it is by means of activity of the speculative intellect, contemplation, which gives rise to our happiness, and thus "is in reality the supreme perfection of our rational nature." [219(14)] Mercier concludes:

The end of a being is the most perfect act of which its nature is capable. In the case of man this act is the contemplative knowledge of God. This knowledge constitutes the end of man, his natural beatitude.

But the perfection of an act of knowledge, as indeed of any action, involves three things: an object, a subject or principle of action, and the delectation of which the action is the source. With regard to the first, the perfection of of our most perfect act is God: He is then the perfection of the objective end of our nature. With regard to the second, the subjective end of our natures is the exercise of our thought applied to its highest object; that is to say, it is the contemplation of God. Finally, with regard to the third, the complacency which results in the will from the union of our nature with its supreme end also forms part of our end. However, as an action presupposes the object towards which it tends, it is necessary to say that the absolute last end [of man] is God, 'finis ultimus'; and the subjective beatitude and the felicity which it brings are a subordinate end, 'finis sub fine'.

[219(15)] This is all consonant with Aristotle and with Thomas.

Mercier acknowledges that various "difficulties"** arise from his thesis (no thesis of morality is without its difficulties), and he attempts to respond to them.

One of the difficulties to the thesis that God is the supreme end of man is that, as a matter of experience, we are not conscious that "the knowledge and love of God are the motive of all our acts of volition." [219(16)] One would think that if all our ends were subordinate to our supreme end, all of us would be always and at each moment conscious of God as our supreme end, and that any other good would be consciously engaged in as a finis sub fine, a subordinate end. But even the pious do not experience this awareness. We engage in a number of concrete acts that are not directly or consciously engaged in with God as their ultimate end (e.g., sleeping, exercising, smoking a cigar, reading the newspaper). "It is true," Mercier acknowledges, "that man does not always represent his supreme end to himself under the explicit concept of the Divine Being." [219(16)] But this difficulty between what philosophy identifies as man's ultimate end and happiness and man's actual behavior can be explained by the distinction between abstract and undetermined acts and concrete and determined acts, and by the distinction between explicit and actual inspiration and implicit and virtual inspiration. God is our ultimate end under the vantage point of abstract and undetermined thought, not concrete and determined (though he may also be our concrete and determined end in an act, say in attending Mass for the purpose of adoring him). Moreover, though God may not be explicitly and actually sought in each and ever good which we seek, it remains true that any particular or subordinate good which is the object of our desire can be good "only inasmuch as it is related to the perfect good," and it is in this sense that one can say that the "desire of the Sovereign Good inspires, at any rate implicitly and virtually, each of our acts of volition," that seek an honest, albeit subordinate, particular good. Thus, when we smoke our cigar, or sleep, or read the newspaper, so long as that act is a particular, concrete, honest good and not contrary to our ultimate end (e.g., we don't sleep to the neglect of our responsibilities, or smoke excessively), it remains, even if tenuously, connected, and is implicitly and virtually remains subordinate, to our ultimate end. The good in created goods are vestigia Dei, and thus enjoyment in them is implicitly or virtually pointing toward the God who created that good.

This perhaps is the reasoning behind St. Paul's advice to the Corinthians:

Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God

Sive ergo manducatis sive bibitis vel aliud quid facitis omnia in gloriam Dei facite.

(1 Cor. 10:31) This Pauline injunction is an acknowledgment that God is our summum bonum, our finis ultimus, and that any other particular, concrete good is subordinate to that supreme good, is a good sought (or which ought to be sought) as a finis sub fine.

Other difficulties present themselves. It is apparent that "[d]uring his earthly life man does not experience that complete development of his being which allays all desire and want and endow the soul with the imperturbable repose of happiness." [220(17)] Even so, there is some participation in happiness in this life. And yet, "Beatitude in the full sense is possible only in a life to come." [220(17)]. So here we confront a significant difficulty. If our ultimate good is not fulfilled in this life, but is only fulfilled in a life after this one, then how can this ultimate good be said to be a natural good? It appears to be a supernatural good. Isn't there a contradiction here?

Our destiny is in point of fact a supernatural one; such a destiny is intrinsically possible, since we know [through revelation] that is actually a reality. May we, then, still speak of a happiness that is purely natural? To be happy is to be in possession of a good which gives full satisfaction to the desires of the will, and if its admitted that human nature is capable, by supernatural aid, of knowing God intuitively, it would seem that a discursive knowledge of God cannot suffice for man's happiness.

[222(22)] In other words, what is the value of a natural end of man (discursive, external contemplation of God) if, based upon revelation, man's end is supernatural (intuitive knowledge of God, the light of glory, the beatific vision)? In light of our supernatural end, can the natural end have any real meaning? In light of the supernatural happiness toward which we are called, does it even make sense to speak of such a thing as natural happiness? Various ways have been posited as a means to solve this difficulty.

One way is to state ex hypothesi that if man was in the condition of pure nature (i.e., if God had not deigned to give man a supernatural end), man would never have conceived of the possibility of the beatific (intuitive) vision of God. So what God has superadded (Grace) does not really impugn nature. Mercier does not accept this argument, as he considers it lacking of "sufficient foundation." [222(22)] As for himself, Mercier appears to build a theory that negotiates between the notion that, in a hypothetical situation of man in a state of "pure nature," man would have had no possibility of being aware of his supernatural end and so would not desire any such thing at all and the notion that man would have had a categorically absolute awareness and desire for this supernatural end and have felt frustrated.

In addressing himself to this problem of man's supernatural end and natural end, Mercier distinguishes. Distinguo. First, reason can "establish with certainty," that the supernatural vision of God "surpasses the natural exigencies and capabilities of every creature." [223(22)] If left to his own devices, man would have been unawares of any inclination, he would have had neither an innate appetite or natural appetite (appetitus innatus seu naturalis) which desired or yearned for the intuitive vision of God. It was through revelation alone (and acceptance of it by faith) that man can convince himself of the "positive possibility of the vision of God and that he has the "essential capacity . . . to bear such an intense felicity." [223(22)] Naturally, such an intuitive vision of God would appear to be outside his reach. So it follows:

It is reasonable to say that the will of man, in the condition of pure nature, is incapable of willing the vision of God with a categorical absolute will (appetitus elicitus efficax).

[223(22)] These two distinctions seem soundly based upon the fundamental divide between created, finite nature, and the infinity of God. It also appears to accept the fundamental difference between nature and a grace.

However, this does not mean that man's unaided nature (pure nature in some sort of hypothetical man yanked from reality) could not have an inkling, perhaps speculative or as a result of conjecture, of "the possibility of obtaining from the divine Omnipotence an intuitive knowledge of the Deity." [223(22)] Therefore, though they may not be an absolute or categorical will or desire for the intuitive vision of God (in pure nature), that does not exclude the presence of a "conditional desire (appetitus elicitus inefficax), a 'velleity',*** a hope . . . ." [223(22)] In a state of pure nature, however, such a thin desire would have been overshadowed, as it were, by the stronger impulse to the higher absolute natural desire to conform his life in accordance with the order of the universe, which reason would have seen as the expression of God's will and the ordination of his Providence. "Hence it follows," Mercier concludes, "that the conception of a natural happiness is in no way a contradiction" to the presence of supernatural happiness based upon revelation.

The happiness of a being consists in the possession of its supreme end. Now doubtless the supernatural end alone is, in the absolute sense of the word, the supreme end of an intelligent nature, in the real order of things in which we find ourselves placed. Yet the natural end, which in a possible order of things might have constituted the complete and exclusive end of man, is also, in a legitimate yet relative sense, a supreme end--that is to say, one not subordinated to a higher end. Thus there is nothing to prevent the attainment of the natural end being called happiness, though in a sense less complete than that of the supernatural end.

[223(22)]

The relationship of man's natural end in a state of pure nature (which is a speculative state, since man, a we know from revelation, has never not had a supernatural destiny) to man's natural and supernatural end in the reality in which he finds himself (called to a supernatural destiny) is sort of like the prayers Novus Ordo rite of the Offertory. We start with a calix mixtus, the mixed chalice, where drops of water are put into the chalice full of wine.

Per huius aquæ et vini mysterium
eius efficiamur divinitatis consortes,
qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps.

By the mystery of this water and wine
may we come to share in the divinity of Christ
who humbled himself to share in our humanity.

Even though the priest has mixed water in the wine, the Offertory Prayer relating to the wine ignores, as it were, the presence of the water which has become practically homogeneous with the wine:

Benedictus es, Domine, Deus universi,
Quia de tua largitate accepimus vinum, quod tibi offerimus,
Fructum vitis et operis manuum hominum:
Ex quo nobis fiet potus spiritalis.

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation.
Through your goodness we have this wine to offer,
fruit of the vine and work of human hands.
It will become our spiritual drink.

Intellectually, speculatively, one can talk about offering the water alone, apart from the wine. But, in fact, one is offering water intrinsically, inseparably, really mixed with wine, so that it has already virtually become wine, the admixture is so unitary, so homogeneous.

Something similar occurs when looking at the "mixed chalice" that is man. He is called both to a natural end and supernatural end. Like the unconsecrated wine in the chalice, the supernatural end is overwhelmingly significant, and yet the relatively less significant natural end is mixed in with it much like the drops of water. One can think of man in a state of pure nature, like one may think of the offered water in the "mixed chalice." But in practice, one will never see the two apart. There are not two offerings, one of water and one of wine. The water has become blended in the wine so as to be one offering of wine. Similarly, in reality, there is no such thing as a man in the state of pure nature, but nature has gotten mixed in with supernature, in a composite where there is no more seam, an admixture where there is no more composition, other than intellectual.

St. Cyprian said:

To the Lord one cannot offer only water, and in like manner wine alone cannot be offered. If someone offers only wine, the blood of Christ is without us. If someone offers only water, it is the people who are without Christ. But when both are mingled, and are joined together with one another by a close union, there is complete a spiritual and heavenly sacrament.

Domini offeri aqua sola non potest, quomodo nec vinum solum potest. Nam, si vinum tantum quis offerat, sanguis Christi incipit esse sine nobis: si vero aqua sit sola, plebs incipit esse sine Christo. Quando autem utrumque miscetur et adunatione confusa sibi invicem copulatur, tunc sacramentum spiritale et coeleste perficitur.

Epis. LXIII, Ad Caecilium de sacramento Dominici calicis, xiii, 4 PL 384.

If someone speaks only of the supernatural end of man, and ignores nature, the supernatural end is without man. If someone speaks only of the natural end of man, without reference to the supernatural end he is called to, he is without Christ, that is, he is condemned to be unfulfilled and unhappy. When both are mingled, the natural and supernatural end, and there is a complete man as he really is, as we find him, called to an intense and marvelous communion with the God who made him, who calls him, and who wants him to live with him in the life hereafter.

We step into the universe of grace, without ever leaving the world of nature.

What must we do to realize this happiness of the contemplation of God? Two things seem required of us according to Mercier: First, we must have "rectitude of will or sinlessness." [220(18)] It would make sense that if we seek the end, we ought to seek the means to the end. How can we say that we are pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, if we are on the road to Seville? The other thing that is required of us is securing the good against loss. The only way for this to happen is that the intellectual knowledge of God does not cease with our death. "[T]he natural desire of existence and happiness cannot be satisfied inf the happiness may be limited or lost . . . its happiness must endure forever." [220-21(18)] There must be a life after life.

Mercier then discusses the issue of whether both body and soul participate in this eternal life, a matter which will not be addressed here, though Mercier's opinion is that the body and soul both, and in particular in their union, appear to be one of the exigencies of human nature and so suggests both must be joined for the fulfillment of eternal life and eternal happiness. [220-221(18)]

________________________________

*"an end under an end," that is, an end subordinate to or beneath another.
**As we must always remind ourselves, "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt." John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia pro vita sua (London: Longman 1878), 239. This saying was quoted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church in its teaching on Faith and its certainty. See CCC § 157.
***"Velleity," a word derived from Latin, velle, will or wish, is used to refer to volition or will in its weakest form. The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia defines it a "an indolent or inactive wish or inclination toward a thing, which leads to no energetic effort to obtain it: chiefly a scholastic term." John Locke, in his Essay Human Concerning Understanding (II.xx.6) defines it well enough: velleity is "the term used to signify the lowest degree of desire, and that which is next to none at all, when there is so little uneasiness in the absence of anything that it carries a man no farther than some faint wishes for it." It is a scintilla of a will, a whisp of desire. Someone once said that a dry Martini is prepared by whispering the word "Vermouth" over the Gin. With respect to will, velleity is hardly more than that.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 4: Happiness

HAPPINESS IS THE END OF HUMAN NATURE. No created good can make man happy; ergo, the only good that can make man happy is uncreated. That leaves but one thing left that can make man happy: God. Do we take this proposition by faith? We can. Can it also be established by reason? Mercier believes that it can, and he offers two proofs or arguments, one negative and one positive.

The Negative Argument

Major	"The object capable of making us happy must completely satiate all our desires; its possession must be secure and assured; and this object must be attainable by all."
Minor	"But in no created good are these conditions verified."
Conclusion	"Therefore no created good can be the adequate object of our happiness."

[216(11)] In the table above we have presented the argument in Mercier's words. The major premise is established, since all men have a human nature, from which it follows that happiness should be attainable by all, and that is should fully and finally satisfy that for which nature yearns. Why would some human natures be ultimately satisfied by one thing, some human natures ultimately by another? Then they would not be the same nature; they would be different natures, and one would be a man, and the other not. But the minor premise requires proof.

Mercier's proof of the minor premise is as follows. He distinguishes three kinds of goods, those of the body, those of the soul, and those external to the body and soul. These goods all suffer from a "three-fold deficiency," so that they cannot meet any of the requirements of the major premise for ultimate happiness. They all fail in these characteristics: they don't satiate all desires, their possession is not secure and assured, and they are not attainable by all men. Created goods suffer from the following deficiencies:

• "they are so incomplete that they have never satisfied anyone";
• "they are of so short duration and so unstable that no on can possess them without anxiety and fear of losing them"; and
• "they are so limited that they can be possess only by a small number of people."

[215(11)] Even if we joined all created goods together into one huge batch and put them in a man's storehouse, they would fail ultimately to satisfy the requirements of the major premise. Malaise, ennui, disaffection, would soon set in. The conclusion, then, is reasonably certain: "No created good, then can verify the conditions of man's objective beatitude." [215(11)]. This does not mean, however, that men will subjectively adopt what reason would tell them is the only honest-to-goodness ultimate good, the only summum bonum honestum. What it does say is that if man attempts to ground his ultimate happiness in a created good he is doomed to failure. It also means that any moral philosophy that is grounded on an ultimate good other than God is false, is irrational.

Mercier is not satisfied with a negative proof. He also offers a positive argument for the thesis that only God is man's ultimate happiness.

The Positive Argument

Major	"[A]n object can be the adequate cause of man's happiness only on condition that it realizes the whole perfection of which man is naturally capable."
Minor	"[O]nly in God is this condition verified."
Conclusion	"The object in which our nature finds its absolute rest is none other than God himself, the uncreated Good."

[217(11)] Mercier's proof of the minor premise, that only God realizes the whole perfection of which man is naturally capable, is as follows. He begins by noting that man's intellectual powers, the powers of his "intellect" and "will," are superior to those of his body, the "organic and sensitive powers." The intellectual powers are unique to man and obviously make him superior to the animals who share with us the lower powers. Between the intellect and the will, the will appears to be subordinate because "the will in its turn comes into action only after the exercise of the intellect, under the attraction of the object which this latter presents to it." [216(11)] Here, now, is the heart of Mercier's proof:

Now the perfection of our intellect demands the most perfect knowledge of the formal object, i.e., the synthetic knowledge of the essences of all material things, through their supreme cause, of their properties and laws, together with the analogical knowledge of the supersensible realities that are connected with them. Or more briefly, the complete development of the mind's activity is the knowledge of the First Cause, the principle of order of the universe.

[217(11)] (emphasis in original). "Here, then, at length we have an object capable of making man happy." [217(11)] This is the First Cause. God.

Depiction of the Aristotelian Cosmos

No one has shown, or can show, that a created good, or a bundle of created goods, can give man bliss. Unless man were the brunt of a bad cosmic joke, one would think that his yearnings would have a purpose, an end, and ultimate satisfaction. Since created things cannot seem ultimately to satisfy those yearnings (they are at best temporary plugs, and any limited satisfaction is nothing but a hint, a clue of the God behind those created goods), it follows man's ultimate good must be that which is (or Who is!) behind the created goods, that First Cause of those goods.

Philosophically, we know him as God, the First Cause.

As Christians we know him as God, the Father.

He is one and the same. Every man's summum bonum. Every man's finis ultimus.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 2: The Question of All Questions

"IN THESE PAGES IS A MESSAGE FROM LOUVAIN." This is how Professor Peter Coffey begins the closing of his Preface to Cardinal Mercier's A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy.

In these pages is . . . a little of the truth that is indestructible. For the time a great seat of learning lies desolate [as a result of World War I]. For the time: its voice will be heard again: rescissa vegetius resurget.*

Being cut down, Vegetius will make it rise again!*

Mercier's Manual handles ethics in Volume II of that work. His treatment of ethics is divided into two parts: general ethics and special ethics. His treatment of general ethics advances a theory of good and evil, and is divided into four chapters, one on the natural end of man, one on free will, one on the moral order, and the final one on conscience. Mercier's discussion of special ethics advances a theory of right and duty, and is divided into three chapters: one dealing with the rights of individuals, another dealing with the family, and the last dealing with the rights of the state.

It is not difficult to grasp the concept that man has a natural end. Everything that we see around us appears to have some aim, however complex or simple; nothing we see that is living really moves about aimlessly. They all seem to display what Aristotle and the Scholastics would call a final cause: id cuius gratia aliquid fit vel est, that on account of which a thing is done or is. It is precisely the inclination to this end that is a thing's nature:

The inherent inclination of a being toward its one end is called its natural tendency or, in one word, its nature. In its primary meaning, nature denotes the substance of a being in so far as it has within it a primary and internal principle of activity. . . . Nature, then, impresses upon the activity of a being a special direction, or tendency, towards a determinate end; this end is also called the good of this being.(212[4])**

Dogs pretty much incline towards being dogs. Cats pretty much incline towards being cats. Stones pretty much incline towards being stones. Stars pretty much act like stars. Even humans, who have a free choice in the matter compared to other beings and so have an added complexity unshared by other parts of creation, incline pretty much toward being humans. That inclination is nature.

Some things ought to be observed. Nature is something that inheres in us; that is, it is an intrinsic, inherent, vitally centrally part of us. To suggest that we not follow our nature whatever the apparent grounds, whether freedom or anything else however noble sounding, is to suggest that we become untrue to the deepest part of what we are. It is a recipe for inauthenticity, for disaster, and ultimately, it goes against our deepest inclinations and yearnings. It is a lie to the truth that is in us. It denies our primary principle of activity. It denies our internal principle of activity.

Nature is not imposed upon us ad extra as if it were some positive, accidental law, something artificially imposed, something extra. Rather nature is something within us; deeply intimate with us; nature is within us: ad intra. It is no less deep in us, and in fact, more deep in us, than it is in brute animals and the rest of creation, because it is in us to some extent passively, but to some extent through self-direction. This inclination is not "violent," that is, it is not an extrinsic or external impulse wrought on us. The inclination is intrinsic or internal to us, in other words, natural to us. The inclination we have is exercised through the power of "self-direction," unlike the inclination in animals or in plants, which is "passively directed." [213(5)] Our natural inclination may therefore be called voluntarily or spontaneously natural, where that of creatures that are not self-directed would be called natural simpliciter.

Man has freedom, therefore, to self-direct, and this gives him the freedom to act in such a manner as to order his will in accordance with his inner tendencies, or to act against them. But the exercise of this freedom is not inconsequential. That freedom, and that choice that goes along with self-direction, has serious consequences attached to it. It is absolutely consequential.

Man alone directs his actions in the full sense of the word, since he alone can freely order his will. He knows the end which is assigned him, he can freely direct himself towards it by suitable means, or, freely but culpably, turn himself from it.

[213(5)] What is this except for saying that we are responsible for our choices, and that there are deserts or punishments associated with them?

Since this inclination, this nature, bespeaks our end, and the end is our good (bonus est quod omnia appetunt, "good is that which all things seek"), and the good is the source of all self-perfection (bonus est perfectivum, "good is perfective"), to violate our nature is to go against our good and our perfection. We therefore injure ourselves, and make ourselves imperfect should we go against nature. It is a form of moral self-mutilation, self-loathing, self-abuse. Indeed, this may be said to be one of the natural punishments attached to going against nature. [244(52)]

Mercier distinguishes two basic kinds of end: proximate or immediate ends, and a last or supreme end.


Proximate or immediate ends are beneath the last or supreme end, and they are distinguished from the last or supreme end in that the latter has no ulterior end, that is, it has no end beyond it that may be referenced, or to which it points. When one gets to the last or supreme end, one is at the road's end, so to speak. A further distinction can be made based upon the end as it exists subjectively in the actor or agent (what the agent considers his end; his intention) and the end as it may exist in reality, objectively, "in the ontological order of natural ends and means." [213(6)]

What is good? In answer to this Mercier divides goods into a three-fold categorization.


The good that the will views as being good in itself, and not good for another reason, is called an absolute good.

If a good, however, tends to yet another object, that is, it is not viewed as a good in itself, but as a good that leads to another good, an ulterior good (whether mediate or ultimate), then that good is considered a relative good, a useful good or bonum utile.

The kind of good that is involved, whether absolute or relative, makes a difference for the will. For an absolute good is, from the will's perspective, its end; whereas a relative good is, from the will's perspective, a means.

In addition to being sought by reason, goods are also sought because of the delight or pleasure, intellectual or physical, they provide the agent who is conscious. So the will may pursue both the good and the pleasure which will accompany that good's attainment. The good, in itself and apart from the pleasure that its attainment may give the agent, is called the objective good. The pleasurable aspect that its possession creates in the agent is the agreeable or delectable good, the bonum delectabile.

There can be competition among goods, and there are times that a good is sought in a disordered manner. Regardless of whether goods are sought as means or ends, or as a means of the delight that is found in them, an object that is pursed by the will which is inclined "under the guidance of right reason," is called the bonum honestum, a moral or just or authentic good, an "honest-to-goodness" good.

Cardinal Mercier then approaches a question which has raised the ire of those who reject an Aristotelian, Thomistic, Scholastic, or Natural Law moral philosophy. That question is whether there is only one end, one fundamental tendency in man, and if so, whether it can be identified.

Is there a summum bonum, a greatest good, a good of all goods? Is there a finis ultimus, an ultimate end, and end of all ends?

We are at the edge of a watershed question: On the one hands stands the perennial philosophy. On the other hand, the moderns, guided by Hobbes and all his darkened minions.

Here is Hobbes' answer to the question:

To which end we are to consider, that the Felicity of this life, consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis ultimus [utmost ayme,] nor Summum Bonum [greatest Good,] as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers.

The question of whether there is an utmost aim, a finis ultimus, or whether there is a greatest good, a summum bonum, is, in fact, the question of whether we intend to live in the shadows and imaginations of relativity or live in objective truth. It is the question of whether there is right and wrong objectively. It is, at root, the question of whether God exists or whether the soul is immortal. It is simply asked in another way.

Kant believed (and here I believe him right), that the possibility of a summum bonum is suggestive of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and that God's existence and the immortality of the soul are necessary conditions for there to be the possibility of a summum bonum.

The summum bonum, then, practically is only possible on the supposition of the immortality of the soul.

Now a being that is capable of acting on the conception of laws is an intelligence (a rational being), and the causality of such a being according to this conception of laws is his will; therefore the supreme cause of nature, which must be presupposed as a condition of the summum bonum is a being which is the cause of nature by intelligence and will, consequently its author, that is God.

Critique of Practical Reason, II.ii.4, 5 (Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, trans.)

Whether there is a summum bonum, a finis ultimus, is one of the most important questions in moral philosophy. It is a moral great divide.

On which side do we fall?


_______________________________

*I'm having difficulty with this phrase. Vegetius, though uncapitalized, appears a proper name, and seems to be a reference to Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, a Roman author of the 5th century A.D. who is famous for writing a military manual, De re militari (also known as Epitoma rei militaris), but also has a manual on veterinary medicine attributed to him, Digesta artis mulomedicinae. I assume, therefore, that it means that even though an animal is on its deathbed, Vegetius (the author of the book on veterinary medicine) can bring the animal back to health. Therefore, when Christianity is close to death, Mercier's Manual (like Vegetius's in the context of veterinary medicine) will serve to make Christianity rise again.

**Bracketed references are to page, with section number in parentheses.