Why does the Old Testament include all those ritual purity rules?  Are they just arbitrary taboos?  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with consuming the blood of an animal, or wearing a garment woven of two different kinds of fiber, is there?

The assumption behind these questions is that nothing should be forbidden unless it is intrinsically wrong.  A moment’s thought shows that this assumption is incorrect.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with driving on the left; in some countries they do drive on the left.  But it would be harmful for vehicles to drive both on the right and on the left, so in each country the law chooses designates one side of the road for vehicles and prohibits driving on the other.   The fact that the law could have chosen a different possibility doesn’t make its decision arbitrary.

In the language of the natural law tradition, there is a term for this sort of thing.  The requirement of driving only on the right is said to be a determination of the more general requirement to drive safely.  We could say that it pins down the particular way in which safe driving is to be achieved among a particular people.

In much the same way, the Old Testament ritual purity rules are determinations of the more general rules which direct man to God.  They pin down the particular way in which that was to be achieved among the chosen nation.

One could think of these rules as a divine educational program.  For example, the prohibition of consuming blood separated the Hebrew people from the surrounding pagan nations who drank the blood of their victims, and taught them to abhor the shedding of human blood.  In turn, the pouring out of blood in animal sacrifice dramatized the fact that they owed God their very life, and foreshadowed the sacrifice of Messiah.

A more puzzling case is the trio of prohibitions in Leviticus 19:19, which prohibits allowing different kinds of animal to mate (for example a horse with an ass), sowing a field with more than two kinds of seed (for example wheat and barley), or wearing cloth made from two kinds of fiber (for example linen and wool).  What purpose do these three determinations serve?  Many have been suggested.  But considering what the trio have in common, couldn’t one of the purposes of the divine pedagogy in their case have been to nurture respect for the order of creation, and to militate against contempt or disregard for natural boundaries?

No doubt such wholesome attitudes could have been inculcated in other ways – but it would be dreadful to neglect them.  Or is such a fear unnecessary and overwrought?

Not in the least.  Consider what is already happening in our repaganized world.  The attempt to develop so-called chimaeras -- creatures brought about by crossing humans with other creatures -- is already well underway.  Several biotech companies have transplanted the nuclei of fertilized human eggs into the eggs of sows that have had their nuclei removed, and then let them begin to divide.  Other scientists have proposed blending the genetic material of humans and chimpanzees to make “humanzees” which could be used as slaves.  Such obscenities are treated as though they were all but inevitable.  Law journals carry articles about the chimaera law of the future.

I don’t propose reinstating Old Testament ritual purity rules, but the fact that Christians are released from them does not imply that the lessons the rules meant to teach are no longer true.  In fact, through the grace of the sacraments, the divine pedagogy continues.

The Jews were not free to live like pagans, disreverence life, spurn God, trespass natural boundaries, or befoul the sweet order of creation -- and neither are we.

Natural Law Trailer

Since I’ve lost time recovering from surgery this week, I’m not composing a “proper” blog post.  But since I do hate to let readers down, I’m offering a few words about lost time itself -- and about blogging.

About lost time.  When I grouch about time being “lost” or “wasted,” what I usually mean is that I had to use the time differently than I might have chosen.  But if God is the master of our days, as I claim to believe, then isn’t this attitude of mine graceless?  Why should I assume that how I would have chosen to use my time would have been better than what He has in mind for it?  If He sees fit to slow me down this week and interrupt what I fondly call my projects, presumably there is a reason.  Perhaps there is something else that I need to be doing more than what I think I should be doing -- something that I wouldn’t have taken time to do unless He had thrown a little sand in my gears.  Such as learning to be more patient.  Or more still.

About blogging.  If my website statistics are to be believed, I’ve gained a bunch of new readers lately.  (And lost some old ones!  Must be a story here.)  If you’re new, and you’ve tuned in just for the blog, I invite you to look around the rest of the website to see what else you may find interesting.  Maybe nothing, but maybe something.  If you do find something you like, I hope you’ll tell other folks about it.  Link, tweet, chirp, or whatever folks do.  Much obliged to you.

Now excuse me, please.  I’m going to take a nap.

For the past two years I have been writing a book on Thomas Aquinas’s theory of happiness and ultimate purpose.  One of the topics he considers is whether we can attain happiness just through our own natural powers.  Wondering how others might answer, while writing the chapter about it I did a quick web search using the question, “What can we do to be happy?”

The first time I ran the search, the query yielded 627 million hits.  Ironically, the first one after the advertisements was a suicide hotline.  After that bleak note, the results became buoyantly optimistic:  “10 Simple Things You Can Do Today That Will Make You Happy,” “45 Things You Can Do to Get Happy No Matter Where You Are,” and the cockiest, “10 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Incredibly Happy.”

The happiness gurus who write these items almost never suggest becoming a virtuous person.  From a Thomistic point of view, this is worse than an oversight, since what might be called the happiness of this life lies chiefly in the exercise of the virtues.  How else can we even enjoy the other good things?  For example, how else can we properly practice friendship, delight in our families, and contemplate the objects of knowledge?

A good deal of the advice the gurus do give is either wrong (some of them attribute magical powers to money) or fatuous (my favorite was “Happiness is maximized at 13.9° C”).  Some of their advice is not really about the attainment of happiness, but about the banishing of sorrow – a topic St. Thomas treats separately, making practical suggestions like enjoying innocent pleasures (go read a novel of P.G. Wodehouse), sleep, baths, weeping, the sympathy of friends, and fixing the gaze of one’s mind upon Divine truth.

Not all of the “simple things” the gurus suggest are bad ideas.  And St. Thomas certainly agrees that to attain what passes for happiness in this life, human powers -- plus a certain amount of good fortune -- suffice.

Of course one might not have good fortune.  Besides, even if one does, what is called happiness in this life inevitably leaves us asking “Is this all there is?”

His answer is that the happiness of this life is not all there is.  But for supreme and perfect happiness – not just more of the same old happiness, but a higher kind of happiness -- we need Divine help.

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics

Curious how conversion works.

One may think the only difference is that one’s beliefs have changed.  Or that one’s moral standards have changed.

It is more like rising from the dead.

Perhaps without having realized that you were dead.

Imagine having a family photograph and noticing one day that someone you hadn’t thought present in the photograph had been there all along.

It was like that with the memory of God.

Imagine waking up and discovering someone in the house whom you hadn’t remembered that you lived with.

It was like that with His presence.

Imagine becoming aware that your motives for various actions had not been at all like what you had taken them to be.

It was like that with the knowledge of self.

Imagine realizing that you knew all sorts of things that you had told yourself you didn’t know and even couldn’t know.

It was like that with knowledge of a host of other things.

Imagine having sat in a dark place for years, not knowing that the shutters were nailed closed.  Now they are being flung back.  Beams of light are flowing in as solid as columns of ivory.  You had forgotten what light looked like.

It was like that.

Book:  What We Can’t Not Know

Aspiration is better than self-esteem.  Many of us were serenaded in childhood with lyrics like this:

Would you like to swing on a star

Carry moonbeams home in a jar

And be better off than you are

Or would you rather be ...

Each stanza presented something one might rather be – a mule, a pig, a fish, or a monkey.  But why be one of those, when by learning and honesty, you could be swinging on stars?  The images of swinging on a star and carrying moonbeams in jars cast a spell on my imagination.  The catchiness of the tune didn’t hurt either; from time to time I still find myself humming it.

Though it’s more sonorous, the fine motto inscribed over the West Entrance of Norlin Library at the University of Colorado, Boulder, conveys much the same encouraging spirit:  "Who Knows Only His Own Generation Remains Always a Child."  Should we retain the innocence of childhood?  Yes!  But its ignorance?  No!

Not everyone considers the motto so fine.  At a website for millennials, one University of Colorado student writes that “It promotes knowledge beyond one's self and one's immediate surroundings, and that's totally cool.”  But it “feels like I'm constantly being scolded and berated by my library, which keeps calling me a child.”  The slogan “turns the library from a sanctuary of study into a bully ... who keeps heckling me across the Quad.  Come on, library, don't be like that.  This is what I see when I look at my library.”

Here is the good news:  The aspiration expressed by the Norlin Library motto is not dead.  When I read it to my own undergraduates, they thought it was great.  When I asked them what they thought of the young man’s reaction, they pleaded “Don’t judge millennials by him.”

One of them expressed the very thought with which I had planned to end this post:  It is hard to see why anyone would resent a gentle exhortation to rise beyond childhood, unless he had no intention of doing so.

Book:  How to Stay Christian in College