Round 2 with James Swan on "how the blessed dead know about the living."

From this Beggars All post.

My prior comments here.

Swan writes:

Peter Sean Bradley said... The point of your post confuses me.


OK, let me try to restate the point.

1. As far as I can ascertain your actions, you left an Aquinas quote on this blog entry highlighting the fact that Augustine's position on praying to the dead was the same as Jimmy Akin's.

2. I went through the entire quote, demonstrating the quote you used does no such thing.

3. Moral of the story: read a quote before posting it, to make sure it says what you think it does.

I respond thus:

Mr. Swan,


I appreciate your advice, but I am wondering about why your tone appears - to me to be so strident.

Let me correct you in a couple in a couple of regards.

1. What I actually said was that "Akins simply restating a position held by many Christian theologians, including St. Augustine."

It appears obvious in light of our interchange - which started from the quote I cited - and read down just a little bit more in the Summa - that I was entirely correct. On which point, I note that you don't disagree with my substantive point.

Your response appears to designed to take the attention away from the substance of my point and make it "procedural," i.e., did I read the entire source before posting?

The answer is that I did, which is why I was able to correct your misimpression as quickly as I did.

2. Your "breakdown" of the quotation was quite excellent so far as it went, something which I've admitted on my blog. The problem is that you've misunderstood the dispute between Augustine and Gregory by reading it through a post-reformation lense.

The issue was not whether the "separated souls" in the beatific vision could know of the prayers of the faithful. Both Gregory and Augustine believed they could. Rather, the issue was whether in the beatific vision, "separated souls" would know of all things that happened on Earth by their direct vision of God as an ordinary aspect of being in the beatific vision. Gregory said "yes," and Augustine said "no."

Augustine said "no" for the reason that you've noted, namely that if they did, then they would be constantly involved in human affairs. Augustine therefore said that the knowledge of earthly affairs was regulated by God. Gregory's position was that although the "separated souls" in the beatific vision did know of human affairs as an ordinary matter of the beatific vision, their participation in human affairs was limited by God.

Aquinas sides with Gregory on that for a couple of reasons. First, he notes that Augustine is simply expressing an tentative opinion. Second, he analogizes the "separated souls" in the beatific vision to the angels, both of whom receive their knowledge through God. [For the explanation on that you would have to go to Question 58 of the Summa.] Since Augustine says that "separated souls" in Heaven are not inferior to the angels, Aquinas takes Augustine at his word and says that they have the same kind of knowledge.

The reason, incidentally, that I recognized Akins as "simply restating a position held by many Christian theologians, including St. Augustine" is that I've worked my way through major texts of both. There are many terms that someone who hasn't might glance over without realizing their significance, such as "separated souls."

I appreciate your comment, though, inasmuch as it gave me an opportunity to dig deeper into Augustine's position on this subject.

If you have an interest in answering my questions, I'd be interested in reading your responses.

I also posted this:

In addition, please allow me to a misimpression you may have about my first comment.


I fully understood the point of your comment. That's why I responded to it and offered your a fuller context from "On the Care of the Dead" to help you with your understanding of Augustine.

What I was - and still am - puzzled about is the purpose of your post - the original post that leads off this comment string.

That's why I asked the questions I did. Namely, do you think that God cannot provide information to souls separated from their body who are in the beatific vision? Do you think that such souls have their exising bodily senses? Do you think that such souls have communication with each other? Do angels participate in the knowledge of God by virtue of their participation in the beatific vision?

I apologize if my use of the term "post" for "the post" and the questions that I asked were not sufficiently clear to alert you to my confusion as to your "post" about Akins, which, to be entirely fair to me, was the subject of my comment.