On the Occasion of Spiritual Reading:

When reading that progress in the interior life consists in a fuller and fuller identification with Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, it then appears that this takes place (and this is common ascetical parlance) by the living of virtues which, in the assumed metaphysics of Aristotle, are habits, or accidents, of a substance: a being that is in itself and not in another. And so “it is necessary to struggle to grow in this identification by the increase in charity and the growth of the other virtues cooperating freely with grace” (Burkhart and Lopez, vol. 3 p. 293). How can this not be a contradiction when the Son of the Father cannot metaphysically be a substance without contradicting the reality of the Trinity as One God. How can there be three Substances, Each being in itself, and at the same time One God?

   To be even talking of identification with Jesus Christ as “Son of the living God” (Mt. 16, 17), neither He nor we can be substances but Persons, and person must take its meaning prototypically from within the Trinity? This imprecision of thought and expression keeps nagging to be corrected.

   What is needed is a philosophy that will not vitiate the revealed truth of the Person of Jesus Christ. It makes me think of Louis Bouyer's...