Mark K. Spencer

This paper develops a metaphysics of man and woman that fits with Catholic magisterial claims about the sexes, especially the doctrine that only men can be ministerial priests. I first explain what an argument from fittingness is. Then, I consider accounts of differences between man and woman based on procreative functions. While this is a necessary aspect of a metaphysics that fits with Catholic claims, and while procreative functions are the aspects of sexual difference best known to us, I use an argument from fittingness to defend a metaphysics on which manhood and womanhood are modes of personhood. After responding to two objections, I then argue that, in virtue of these modes, men and women intrinsically symbolize divine persons. If only men can be priests, then men as such symbolize the Son of God in a distinct way. If the sexes are equal, then women also must intrinsically symbolize a divine person, though in a different way from men; I present two accounts of how women intrinsically symbolize divine persons.

Thomas Aquinas holds that we have a natural duty to offer God external sacrifice, in which something is destroyed or killed. I propose a metaphysics on which that claim makes sense. I first consider the Thomistic grounding for this duty in relations between spiritual and bodily acts, and between natural sacrifice and Christ’s sacrifice; these groundings are a preamble to the Faith. I draw an objection from Francisco Suárez to the anthropological grounding, and another objection from René Girard to the claim that natural sacrifice prefigures Christ’s sacrifice. I respond by developing the Thomistic anthropology that grounds this duty, using the paleoanthropological, evolutionary theory called the “hunting hypothesis” (especially using the ways this hypothesis has been joined to an analysis of ancient myth and sacrificial practice by Roberto Calasso) to argue that we have a natural teleological orientation fulfilled through destructive sacrifice. I argue that we are naturally priests, who offer creatures back to God; grasping this shows how our natural duty to sacrifice prefigures Christ’s sacrifice.

This Element is an overview of the Catholic conception of God and of philosophical problems regarding God that arose during its historical development. After summarizing key Catholic doctrines, the first section considers problems regarding God that arose because Catholicism originally drew on both Jewish and Greek conceptions of God. The second section turns to controversies regarding God as Trinitarian and incarnate, which arose in early church councils, with reference to how that conception developed during the Middle Ages. In the third section, the author considers problems regarding God's actions towards creatures, including creation, providence, predestination, and the nature of divine action in itself. Finally, the last section considers problems regarding how we relate to God. The Element focuses on tensions among different Catholic spiritualities, and on problems having to do with analogical language about God and human desire for God.

In an earlier paper, Mark Spencer synthesized three understandings of divine simplicity, arguing that the Thomist account can be enriched by Scotist and Palamite distinctions. After summarizing that earlier work, this paper builds upon it in four main ways. Firstly, it relates Scotus’ logical (diminished) univocity to Aquinas’ metaphysical analogy in language about God. Secondly, it explores the limits of univocity and the formal distinction as applied to the divine essence (in the Palamite sense), utilising the scientific metaphor of tomography. Thirdly, it defends Palamite energies from the charge of being Thomistic accidents by introducing the concept of “intrinsic ramification” and applying that concept to the Thomistic divine ideas. Fourthly, it tabulates some significant pre-existing parallels between the three systems’ nomenclature in referring to similar aspects of the divine.

Thomistic metaphysics has been challenged on the grounds that its principles are inconsistent with our experiences of divine action and of our own subjectivity. Challenges of this sort have been raised by Eastern Christian thinkers in the school of Gregory Palamas and by contemporary Personalists; they propose alternative metaphysics to explain these experiences. Against these objections and against those Thomists who hold that Thomas Aquinas’ claims exclude Byzantine and Personalist metaphysics, I argue that Thomas’ metaphysical principles already have “flexibility” built into them, such that they can accommodate ways that reality is given in experience, which Thomas did not consider. I argue for this claim using the work of Byzantine and Personalist Thomists, and especially of Jacques Maritain, who outlines several ways in which Thomistic metaphysical principles can be expanded to explain experiences that he did not consider.

While all phenomenologists aim to grasp the “things themselves,” they disagree about the best method for doing this and about what the “things themselves” are. Many metaphysicians, especially Catholic realists, reject phenomenology altogether. I show that many phenomenological methods are useful for reaching the goals of both phenomenology and realist metaphysics. First, I present a history of phenomenological methods, including those used by Scheler, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Marion, Kearney, Rocha, and others. Next, I consider two sets of challenges raised to some of these methods. Finally, I outline how to join these methods with each other and with the methods of realist metaphysics, ultimately arriving at an aesthetic method, inspired by the work of von Balthasar, for considering fundamental phenomena.

Phenomenologist Dietrich von Hildebrand argues that many properties of the material world only exist in relation to persons, that sense perception is not merely a bodily act, but a properly spiritual, personal act, and that our highest act is not purely intellectual but involves bodily sense perception. By his own assertion, his philosophy must be understood in the context of the Catholic philosophical tradition; here, I consider his account of the material world and of sense perception in comparison to two strands of the Aristotelian tradition in Catholic philosophy, represented by Thomas Aquinas and Gregory Palamas. I show how von Hildebrand’s views on the material world and sense perception can be better understood, their phenomenological bases defended, and their deficiencies corrected, by drawing on the notion of energeiai from Palamas’ thought, and of participation and obediential potency from Aquinas’ thought.

Some recent philosophers of religion have argued that no divine attribute sufficiently grounds an obligation to worship God. I argue that divine beauty grounds this obligation. This claim is immune to the objections that have been raised to claims that other divine attributes ground this obligation, and can be upheld even if, for the sake of argument, those objections are granted. First, I give an account of what worship is. Second, I consider reasons for and against the claims that the obligation to worship is rooted in God’s having created us, God’s being our final end and lawgiver, God’s numinousness, and God’s goodness. Finally, I show how divine beauty grounds the obligation to worship, by drawing together accounts of beauty from Thomas Aquinas, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Plato, Aristotle, and others.

Catholic philosophical anthropologists have defended views of the human person on which we are not reducible to anything non-personal. For example, it is not the case that we are nothing but matter, souls, or parts of society. Nevertheless, most Catholic anthropologies have been reductionistic in other ways. Mark K. Spencer presents a philosophical portrait of human persons on which we are entirely irreducible to anything non-personal, by synthesizing claims from many strands of the Catholic tradition. These include Thomism, Scotism, phenomenology, personalism, nouvelle théologie, analytic philosophy, Greek and Russian thought, and several others. It adjudicates among these traditions' claims by considering whether they are grounded in how we appear in experience and whether they are non-reductionistic. While many metaphysical claims about persons are defended, the picture that ultimately results is one on which persons are best grasped not through abstract concepts but through aesthetic perception, as unique kinds of beauty. This portrait also shows how we have many irreducible parts, principles, and powers. Various chapters explore the irreducibility of our subjectivity, senses, intellect, freedom, and affections, and of our souls, bodies, acts of existence, and activities. Readers will also find explorations of divine simplicity and causality, the nature of matter, organisms, and artifacts, all of which must be understood to fully grasp our own irreducibility. In considering how to synthesize various traditions' claims, the book also offers new solutions to a number of prominent debates in contemporary Catholic philosophy. These include debates over natural law, the natural desire to see God, the separated soul, the nature of gifts, integralism and personalism, idealist and realist phenomenology, and various scholastic accounts of the act of existence. The picture of persons thereby developed helps the reader to perceive persons more perfectly.

Christian Personalists have objected to Thomism’s claim that humans could have existed in a state of pure nature, on the grounds that this claim entails that historical states like grace do not give fundamental meaning to us, that these states are merely accidental, and that it led to modern secularism. I show that Thomism can affirm its traditional claims regarding grace and pure nature, while denying the first two implications, by developing the Thomistic metaphysics of status. In Thomism rightly understood persons develop historically through status in non-accidental ways and grace gives fundamental meaning to our lives. But I also argue that modern secular experiences are natural to the human person, not merely the result of sin, and that this is rightly supported by the theory of pure nature.

Dietrich von Hildebrand is often seen as being at odds with the scholastics in his anthropology. I argue that he in fact uses scholastic principles when distinguishing the powers of the human soul, but he uses these principles to distinguish many more powers in our souls than the scholastics do. His expansion of the list of human powers both is supported by and safeguards his expanded metaphysics of given reality. I first consider the principles that the scholastics use in reasoning about powers. I then show how von Hildebrand’s account of the human person is hylomorphic. Finally, I present von Hildebrand’s account of human powers, in light of the scholastic principles, considering his accounts first of bodily powers and then of powers in the soul.

Contrary to many interpreters, I argue that Thomas Aquinas’s account of divine simplicity is compatible with the accounts of divine simplicity given by John Duns Scotus and Gregory Palamas. I synthesize their accounts of divine simplicity in a way that can answer the standard objections to the doctrine of divine simplicity more effectively than any of their individual accounts can. The three objections that I consider here are these: the doctrine of divine simplicity is inconsistent with distinguishing divine attributes, with the doctrine of the Trinity, and with the doctrine of divine freedom.