Here’s a bad joke I came up with just now:

Q: What did Pontius Pilate say when St Thomas Aquinas asked him to prove Christ’s divinity?

A: “I find no cause in him” (John 18:38).

Though it’s doubtful that medieval angelologists ever debated about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but, as Peter Kreeft says, “It’s a good question.”

Let’s look at this problem more closely.

What is an angel?

An angel is a “separated substance” other than a human soul after death but before the resurrection of the body, that is, an angel is a pure spirit. He is not a soul because he is not meant to inform a body. An angel is a substantial form with no matter of any kind. His essence and existence are not identical, that is, he is not God but rather a creature.

What, then, does it mean for an angel to be in a place?

Since an angel is a spirit, he is not in a place as bodies are in a place. A body is necessarily accidentally in a place by virtue of what it is to be a body. A spirit, however, has no matter and cannot be in a place accidentally as a body is. When we say that a spirit is in a place, we mean that he contains that place by his power. He does not circumscribe a place as would a larger body in space. Rather, for an angel, to be in a place means to be effecting change¹ in bodies in space. If a spirit is effecting some change on a body which is in a place, the spirit can be said to be in that place.

An Angel of the Lord descended at certain times into the pond and the water was moved. And he that went down first into the pond after the motion of the water, was made whole, of whatsoever infirmity he lay under. (John 5:4)

How does an angel come to be in a place?

An angel comes to be in a place (in the sense of containing it by his power, that is, acting on bodies which are in a place) at will. Thus, an angel does not cease to be in one place by local motion from it to another place. Rather, by a movement of the will from acting on one place to acting on another, the angel ceases to be in one place and begins to be in another.

And Habacuc said: Lord, I never saw Babylon, nor do I know the den. And the Angel of the Lord took him by the top of his head, and carried him by the hair of his head, and set him in Babylon over the den in the force of his spirit. And Habacuc cried saying: O Daniel, thou servant of God, take the dinner that God hath sent thee…. And Daniel arose and ate. And the Angel of the Lord presently set Habacuc again in his own place. (Daniel 14:35-38)

Can more than one angel be in the same place at the same time?

As we said above, for an angel to be in a place means to be effecting a change in a body in that place. The angelic power, too, is such that it effects these changes in bodies perfectly. Two men may cooperate as imperfect causes to cause a single movement in a body. For instance, to push a heavy car two or more men may cooperate, but there is a single movement in the car. This is due to an imperfection of power on the part of each man. An angel does not have this imperfection because he is of a higher order altogether. Therefore, his power to influence bodies is of a different kind not only of a different degree than the power of corporeal creatures. An angel does not effect a change matter by coming into bodily contact with it but by his will alone. Moreover, an angel does not assert his power in varying degrees. Every operation of his is perfect according to his faculties. Therefore, two angels cannot cooperate in moving a body because there cannot be two perfect (secondary) causes of the same movement.

Conclusion

To dance on the head of a pin clearly requires presence on the head of said pin. For an angel, this presence means to be effecting a change in the head of the pin itself or in a body on the head of the pin (e.g., air or other particles). The latter seems to be the more probable opinion.

If an angel were to effect a change (even an imperceptible one) in the head of the pin itself, other angels would be precluded (not as a body precludes other bodies from sharing the same place through the impenatrableness of its dimensive quantity extended in space but due to a potential confusion of causes) from effecting a change in the same body. Therefore, in that case, only one angel would be able to dance on the head of the pin.

If the head of the pin is not treated as a single body but rather as a collection of atoms or even subatomic particles, then the case is equivalent to effecting local motion in particles on the head of the pin.

If it is a question of effecting changes in the particles located on the head of the pin, then the number of angels would have an maximum equal to the number of particles present on the head of the pin. Undoubtedly, other angels could move more particles onto the head of the pin for the sake of effecting changes in them. Therefore, a maximum number of angels is established at the maximum number of particles that could be present on the head of the same pin.

Therefore, presuming strictly contemporaneous dancing (though angels could change places so quickly that we could not possibly notice), the number of angels who could dance on the head of the pin is limited to the lesser of two numbers: the maximum number of particles that could be present on the head of the pin and the difference between the total number of angels and the number of angels occupied in places other than the pin.

Or:

A = min((Maximum Number of Particles on the Head of the Pin), (Total Number of Angels - Number of Otherwise Occupied Angels))

This is the maximum number. Obviously, in practice, if an angel were to exert his power over all the particles on the head of a pin simultaneously, all other angels would be precluded from presence there.

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1 An angel cannot effect every kind of change in a body since he cannot immediately give a form to matter nor effect a substantial change. He can, however, effect local motion in matter immediately because this does not cause an intrinsic change but only an extrinsic change of place in the body thus moved. An angel can indirectly cause different kinds of changes than local motion in bodies by using other bodies. “Dancing,” however, here is taken to mean effecting local motion in a body whereby the angel is said to be in one place and then another.

I often wonder at the appellation “pro-choice.” What does it mean? Does it mean that a person thinks abortion is a morally acceptable option in some or all circumstances? Does it mean that a person thinks the question of whether an action is moral does not pertain at all to abortion? Does it mean that a person is simply in favor of the human faculty of free choice?

Really, there weren’t a lot of options for names for the pro-choice position. For example, the Pro-life movement takes its name from the human good (life) which it seeks to protect. The title “pro-life” indicates the good to be protected. Does the title “pro-choice” indicate a good to be protected?

One could argue that the good to be protected is “choice.” However, in the context of the “pro-choice” position, there is a fundamental misunderstanding about what freedom is. In fact, freedom is seen as separate from any point of reference and treated as something indifferent, independent, and ultimately arbitrary.

The pro-life position is that life is a fundamental human good. Nothing we do can change that; it’s part of human nature. Freedom in the proper sense is also a human good, but the important point is this: Freedom is not able to determine what is good for man. Freedom comes from human nature; it does not precede it.

Let’s look at the history of man’s understanding of freedom (broadly and briefly).

Classically, freedom is understood as being for the good. In other words, man is free from things that hinder his attainment of the good. He can cooperate with attaining his good (or “end,” “goal,” or “purpose”) in a way that is more excellent than non-rational creatures. An acorn is inclined to its end of being a tree and moves toward the attainment of that end by necessity but without free cooperation. Man, on the other hand, may freely choose to cooperate in the attainment of his end. He is not “free” to decide what his end is! But, he is free to choose the means of pursuing that end, and, thus, he does have the possibility of rejecting his end. This is an abuse of freedom, though. In fact, a man who is farther from his end is less free since his freedom is for the purpose of attaining his end.

In this classical notion, freedom does not come first. Man’s nature comes first and freedom is a faculty which man necessarily has because he has reason and will. Freedom is also recognized as something that can be perfected: a man can be more or less free.¹

The Nominalist conception of freedom, however, is that freedom is indifferent. Freedom precedes reason and will, and, therefore, is neither for nor against the good. Of course, in the Nominalist understanding, “good” is only what one calls good and is not a stable concept. In this understanding, man’s freedom is static: it cannot be disposed or attracted to anything. In fact, the Nominalists would see an attraction to the good as making a man less free.

This is where “pro-choice” is left. In accepting a Nominalist understanding of freedom (freedom precedes reason) the position is left unable to assert anything about what is good for man and can only repeatedly affirm what it considers to be man’s primary ability to choose. While “pro-life” clearly indicates a good that comes from human nature, “pro-choice” cannot say anything about what is good or what is evil: it can only say that man must have no “constraints” on his free choice whatsoever. Even an attraction to the good would be considered a constraint. Only completely indifferent and independent “choosing” is “free.”

If the “pro-choice” position had any kind of reasonable understanding of human nature, it would not focus only on the act of “choosing” in itself but would be trying to answer the question, “What should be chosen?”

Sadly, the answer is often, “Killing an innocent person.”

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1 If you’ve ever wondered why there’s no sin in Heaven, this helps explain it. In Heaven, we’ll be perfectly free such that it will be impossible for us to sin. Trying to understand this really shows how much we’ve inherited the Nominalist conception of freedom.

The Manichaeans, of whom St. Augustine is rightly regarded as the most illustrious refuter, were spirit-matter dualists. More to the point, they were soul-body dualists such that they regarded the body as evil and the soul as good. They even ascribed to the body its own “will,” which they regarded as base and evil.

Believe it or not, many many people think that Christianity–especially Catholicism–has always taught this about man: that his soul is good and his body is evil. The world thinks that Catholicism regards the body and sexuality as sinful. Even my arch-nemesis The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Catholicism claimed that the Church professes dogmas such as the perpetual virginity of Mary because it regarded the body and sex as evil. In fact, the Church has constantly dealt with heresies that introduce a division into man between soul and body: from Docetism to Descartes.

Irony of ironies, the world is dualistic and Manichaean in its approach to the human person. Just look at how we justify things these days: “I can do what I want with my body.” Besides the glaring error when this statement is used to justify abortion (what you’re doing only secondarily involves your body and is primarily intended to kill another person), what’s the reasoning? This statement means “the body has nothing to do with morality.”

For example, let’s think about so-called “homosexual unions.” I say “so-called” because homosexual actions actually divide rather than unite those who engage in them: this actually follows from what advocates for their liceity themselves claim.

Why should homosexual actions and heterosexual actions be morally equivalent? The specific difference between the two (indeed, the characteristic which even gives us the words “heterosexual” and “homosexual”) is that homosexual actions do not involve sexual complementarity while heterosexual actions do. There is simply no denying this complementarity on a physical level (to speak vulgarly, even in terms of “mechanics”).

Now, what is the argument from those who hold that the two are morally equivalent? They say that sexual complementarity on the physical level is not relevant to the morality of the action, or, in general, a person’s body or his sex does not pertain to his actions in a morally relevant way. Now, every morally relevant action is an action of the person, that is, of the subject. So, what they’re saying is that the body is divided from the person. If this were true, then it would be true that homosexual relations and heterosexual relations are morally equivalent, but it would also necessarily mean that no act of sexual intercourse could involve the persons who perform it other than by a sort of merely incidental association.

Sex would then be an act of the body, but it could never be a personal act; it could never involve love. Frightful to say, but if this line of thinking is continued, then things terrible crimes such as rape would be morally equivalent to petty theft since they would be thought to involve only the body regarded as drastically foreign to oneself.

Recall, again, the Manichaeans. They did not strive to overcome the flesh because they regarded it as evil and as a separate thing from the person: they became consumed with seeking sensual pleasure.

Men who deny the goodness of the body do not make themselves angels.

John Paul II talks about this same tendency in Veritatis Splendor:

48. [ ... ] A freedom which claims to be absolute ends up treating the human body as a raw datum, devoid of any meaning and moral values until freedom has shaped it in accordance with its design. Consequently, human nature and the body appear as presuppositions or preambles, materially necessary for freedom to make its choice, yet extrinsic to the person, the subject and the human act. Their functions would not be able to constitute reference points for moral decisions, because the finalities of these inclinations would be merely “physical” goods, called by some “pre-moral”. To refer to them, in order to find in them rational indications with regard to the order of morality, would be to expose oneself to the accusation of physicalism or biologism. In this way of thinking, the tension between freedom and a nature conceived of in a reductive way is resolved by a division within man himself.

This moral theory does not correspond to the truth about man and his freedom. It contradicts the Church’s teachings on the unity of the human person, whose rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of his body. The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the human being, whereby it exists as a whole — corpore et anima unus— as a person. These definitions not only point out that the body, which has been promised the resurrection, will also share in glory. They also remind us that reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and sense faculties. The person, including the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts. The person, by the light of reason and the support of virtue, discovers in the body the anticipatory signs, the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in conformity with the wise plan of the Creator. It is in the light of the dignity of the human person — a dignity which must be affirmed for its own sake — that reason grasps the specific moral value of certain goods towards which the person is naturally inclined. And since the human person cannot be reduced to a freedom which is self-designing, but entails a particular spiritual and bodily structure, the primordial moral requirement of loving and respecting the person as an end and never as a mere means also implies, by its very nature, respect for certain fundamental goods, without which one would fall into relativism and arbitrariness.

49. A doctrine which dissociates the moral act from the bodily dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of Scripture and Tradition. Such a doctrine revives, in new forms, certain ancient errors which have always been opposed by the Church, inasmuch as they reduce the human person to a “spiritual” and purely formal freedom. This reduction misunderstands the moral meaning of the body and of kinds of behaviour involving it (cf. 1 Cor 6:19). Saint Paul declares that “the immoral, idolaters, adulterers, sexual perverts, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers” are excluded from the Kingdom of God (cf. 1 Cor 6:9). This condemnation — repeated by the Council of Trent” — lists as “mortal sins” or “immoral practices” certain specific kinds of behaviour the wilful acceptance of which prevents believers from sharing in the inheritance promised to them. In fact, body and soul are inseparable: in the person, in the willing agent and in the deliberate act, they stand or fall together.

Bolding by me.

St. Augustine wrote the following about Manichaeism (Confessions, Book V, Section 10):

I still thought that it is not we who sin but some other nature that sins within us. It flattered my pride to think that I incurred no guilt and, when I did wrong, not to confess it… I preferred to excuse myself and blame this unknown thing which was in me but was not part of me. The truth, of course, was that it was all my own self, and my own impiety had divided me against myself. My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner.

Anyone familiar with the television series Star Trek: Voyager will remember the character of the holographic doctor. When the ship’s doctor was killed at the beginning of the series, a computer program–the Emergency Medical Hologram–was activated as a temporary solution. Since Voyager became stranded in the Delta Quadrant, the EMH had to be utilized far more than intended by his designers. Throughout the series, the doctor’s behavior simulates more and more closely that of a normal member of the crew such that he becomes regarded by the others as another person whom they have come to know.

This theme is entertaining in Star Trek: Voyager but deadly in real life, that is, the theme of becoming a person. In the modern West, today, we often base our behavior on the premise that personhood is something to be accomplished.

There are a number of ways this is expressed:

1. Personhood is achieved by reaching a certain stage of physical development.

This is one reason why abortion is acceptable at all in our culture. While we cannot deny that from the moment of conception an embryo is a unique human being (speaking from a biological point of view), we easily deny that it is fully human by appealing to a lack of personhood. Interestingly, this runs completely counter to our tendency to materialism–after all, we can’t appeal to something immaterial if we are materialists. Materially, speaking, an embryo is just as human as anyone else.

2. Personhood is achieved by being able to perform certain functions.

Most people who support abortion will appeal to this, especially if they are confronted on the first point. This is also the error that admits things like euthanasia, etc.

3. Personhood does not intrinsically entail certain rights which must be respected.

This is a very sad error, indeed, for it denies the most basic rights of everyone. The other errors tend toward this error in practice. Claiming that a person has no intrinsic rights by virtue of being a person, leads to several horrific conclusions, e.g.: a person’s rights are granted by the state (the opposite of the American philosophy), a person who is strong enough may assert his will in an arbitrary manner (Nietzscheism), we all operate on a consensus of “polite behavior” in a society.

Those who embrace this error cannot know what love is because they recognize in no one–not even themselves–anything which by its nature is lovable.

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As usual, we have things entirely backwards.

Every human being is a person by nature. This human nature, which entails personhood, is a gift of God, and is a primary reason that human beings are in the “image of God.” God is personal; in him are Three Persons. We are personal, too. Our destiny, therefore, is a free relationship with him. This freedom is his gift to us, a key element of our personal nature.

The theory of human rights is based precisely on the affirmation that the human person, unlike animals and things, cannot be subjected to domination by others. We must also mention the mentality which tends to equate personal dignity with the capacity for verbal and explicit, or at least perceptible, communication. It is clear that on the basis of these presuppositions there is no place in the world for anyone who, like the unborn or the dying, is a weak element in the social structure, or for anyone who appears completely at the mercy of others and radically dependent on them, and can only communicate through the silent language of a profound sharing of affection. (Evangelium Vitae)

I was watching some Neon Genesis Evangelion the other day and I was struck by the emphasis placed on Existential beliefs such as “reality is what you make it” and “you have as much value as you choose to give yourself.” Indeed, “self-worth” and “worth” were used synonymously.

What is the problem with self-esteem?

Your value does not depend on how much you value yourself.

It doesn’t depend on you. It doesn’t depend on what you accomplish. It doesn’t depend on others.

Every human being has value because God loves him. Period.

This is just another example of modern philosophy’s (and psychology’s) tendency to think it can create reality rather than recognizing what is real.

While the Church does not reject the theory of natural selection or various other theories of evolution, I find that there is a problem with the “evolutionary mindset” of people today. What is the problem? It is precisely that people find it hard to recognize differences of kind rather than merely of degree.

For example, how many people consider human beings to be on a continuum with plants and animals? No one can deny that humans are more advanced than other animals, but plenty of people today deny that there is a qualitative difference. The difference is huge: man has a spiritual soul. Our spiritual faculties such as intellect and will cannot be the result of matter and thus could not have evolved.

So, technically speaking, man could not have evolved from lower creatures. However, the Church does not rule out the possibility that man’s body could have evolved to the point where it was capable of being animated by a spiritual soul.

It’s interesting to note that it used to be commonly held that the ability to reason required a non-material element in man while today people commonly take it for granted that reason is the product of evolution, a material quality. This leads people to suppose on one hand that in the future artificial intelligence will be possible and on the other hand that things like abortion are okay because we’re simply animals anyway.

Hierarchical cosmology where there are clearly different orders of things recognized (plants, animals, men, angels) has been replaced by a democratic cosmology where everything is thought to be on a continuum. In other words, modern man simply believes that one kind of thing is not really distinct from another but that given the right circumstances any kind of thing could become any other kind of thing.

There are words that have become ubiquitous in our vocabularies that I just don’t like to use. Some of these started out as legitimate terms but have taken on modern meanings that I don’t want to support.

Values: These are created by people. Because different people have different “values,” they cannot be debated. After all, a debate would only be an appeal to someone’s values. Which value system do you use? How do you decide? You don’t. Use this word when you want to keep people from offending you by questioning one of your beliefs or actions.

Lifestyle: This word is a very recent one, I’m sure. I can’t imagine that before the rise of the middle class and radical individualism the idea that people can choose to live different “lifestyles” arose. Use this word when you want to declare that a class of behavior is not debatable.

These words obviously have legitimate usage, but often they are thrown out simply to keep us from talking about what is really going on. They’re a sort of secret code. There are more examples, but I don’t want to go into all of them right now.

This is not to say that there shouldn’t be any variety to people’s lives or to what their interests are. It is to say that these things are secondary and must be grounded in the recognition of a set of core principles.

Realist: I’m a realist.
Nominalist: I’m a realist too.
Relativist: You’re both right.
Nihilist: This is pointless.
Phenomenologist: No. It only seems pointless.
Analytic Philosopher: Let’s not get bogged down in semantics.
Solipsist: Whatever. I’m going to take a nap.

Jimmy Akin has posted a thought experiment which explores how it could be that Muslims and Christians pray to the same God despite great differences in theology.

I’ll be honest with you, my favorite part is the analogy he uses involving Batman. It’s pretty funny.