Laws of Spiritual Dynamics

It seems that a lot of what I post here are comments, often critical ones, on something Bishop Robert Barron has said or written. This may give one the impression that I dislike the bishops views and insights, which could not be further from the truth. I greatly admire him and his work, and highly recommend attending to what he says and publishes. It is just hard to say anything about the views and insights of someone you almost universally find to give true and insightful reflections or presentations.

That said, I do have a slight quibble with a phrase Bp. Barron seems rather fond of using, which is “spiritual physics.” He employs it in this Facebook post of his reflection on the Gospel reading (Luke 13:1–9) about the fig tree which bears no fruit. Barron writes that Jesus’s overall point of the parable is that “Every single person has a mission: to be a conduit of the divine grace into the world.” To be rooted in Christ is to receive life and bear fruit in giving life to others. But there is a limit to divine patience:

In Jesus’ parable, the one caring for the tree begs the owner for one more chance to manure the tree and to hoe around it, hoping to bring it back to life. But if no life comes, the tree will be cut down. This is the note of urgency that is struck over and again in the Bible. We can run out of time. We can become so resistant to God’s grace that our leaves dry up. This is not divine vengeance; it is spiritual physics.

So don’t be afraid of God! Surrender to him.

Barron is alluding to the cutting down of the barren fig tree signifying the final perdition of one who resists God’s grace being permanently cut off from God (and cast into the fires of Hell). But to call such inevitable result of a spiritual being’s moral choice “spiritual physics” grates against my Thomistic sensibilities, since “physics” entails a physical, i.e., natural material, order. The term derives from the Greek phusis which means the natural order of birth and decay, the fate of things composed of matter. I get that Barron is saying that such eternal consequences of one’s choices is just the way of things, the nature of the spiritual reality we inhabit (which the Greek word can also convey). But as one who professes to be inspired and follow the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas, as both Barron and myself claim to do, the phrase “spiritual physics” strikes me as, shall we say, infelicitous.

For Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, spiritual substances, angels and human souls (and God, for that matter (no pun intended)), could not possibly be material, since their spiritual nature consist in being intellectual, understanding universal objects (concepts or ideas). “Spiritual physics” is a metaphysical, indeed logical, impossibility.

Now since to understand is not the act of a body, nor of any corporeal [power] (virtutis corporeae)… it follows that to have a body united to it is not of the nature of an intellectual substance, as such; but it is accidental to some intellectual substance on account of something else. … Therefore in the intellectual nature there are some perfectly intellectual substances, which do not need to acquire knowledge from sensible things. … [S]ome are quite separated from bodies, and these we call angels.

Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 51, a. 1.

In this, Aquinas opposes the idea of “spiritual matter” or “universal hylomorphism” attributed to the 11th c, medieval Neoplatonic Jewish philosopher, Solomon ibn Gabirol (Latinized as Avicebron). According to this view, since form is the principle of actuality, and only God is pure act, He alone is pure form; everything other than God, is composed of matter. So, spiritual substances, i.e., angels, are composites of form and “spiritual matter.” (See Summa Theologiae Ia, q. 50, a. 2 ad 3)

For Aquinas, this makes no sense, as angels are intellectual beings capable of intelligent (universal) thought, but nothing material is so able to think. And his reason for this, is that all cognitive activity, i.e., all knowledge, is a union of knower and object known, the possession (in the case of humans, the receiving) of form without matter.

Now to understand is an altogether immaterial operation, as appears from its object, whence any act receives its species and nature. For a thing is understood according to its degree of immateriality; because forms that exist in matter are individual forms which the intellect cannot apprehend as such. Hence it must be that every intellectual substance is altogether immaterial.

Summa Theologiae Ia, q. 50, a. 2

Knowledge is an immanent activity, as distinguished from the transient action material things undergo, and so a “spiritual immutation.” This kind of spiritual activity happens to a limited extent in the bodily organs of sensation (even in animals), but it happens to an unlimited extent in intellectual minds (angelic and human) owing to their separateness from matter. For Aquinas, it is just metaphysically impossible that something capable of abstract, universal thought (human souls, angels, or God) could be material. This why I am not all that worried about machines, robots or so called “artificial intelligence” achieving sentience or consciousness: as physical artifacts, there is just no way they could achieve any level of immaterial, immanent activity.

So, some phrase other that “spiritual physics” would be better to describe the natural tendencies and consequences that actions of spiritual, separate (from matter) substances have on their ultimate destinies. Perhaps, one could say that it is by the laws of spiritual dynamics that separating oneself from God by resisting His divine grace necessarily results in one’s ultimate and eternal separation from Him, to one’s own everlasting frustration and agony. For all of this Thomistic quibbling, though, Bishop Barron’s ending exhortation is true and well said, “So don’t be afraid of God! Surrender to him.” I remain grateful to the bishop for his prodigious work.