Be All You Can Be

Be All You Can Be Kevin Vail P 632 – Foundations of Healing Dr. Felicity Kelcourse

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Introduction “Be all that you can be” is a well-known slogan used by the U.S. Army in a recruiting commercial in the 1980s and 1990’s. It was an exhortation to young men and women to improve themselves and gain experiences and skills they could get nowhere else. It was also a promise of character building experiences. It was certainly a successful ad campaign, at least insofar as the slogan was remembered and is still repeated two decades later but is it more than that? What can it tell us about health and healing? If we parse the wording and examine its meaning (and certainly in the process make more of it than the slogan’s authors intended) can we find an eternal truth? There is much confusion about health and healing, primarily because we are no longer sure about what constitutes health. While nearly all will agree that physical disease or injury – cancer, heart disease, or broken bones constitute a lack of health, what of mental or spiritual illnesses? Some doctors may discount one or both of those as unreal and untreatable, and perhaps they are from the point of view of modern, Western medicine. There is a growing awareness of the importance of mental and spiritual health; most, if not all hospitals provide services such as mental health counseling, Reiki, massage therapy and chaplaincy but the confusion remains. Entelechy I contend this confusion is due to the loss of our awareness of the human person as a hylomorphic unity of body and soul with a purpose beyond ourselves. To recover this knowledge I will turn to two primary figures in the intellectual history of the West – St. Thomas Aquinas and the man St. Thomas referred to simply as “The Philosopher”, Aristotle. Aristotle taught, and St. Thomas accepted, that to know an object you must know its four causes: 1. Material cause – “that from which, present in it, a thing comes to be”

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2. Formal cause – “the form, i.e., the pattern … the form is the account of the essence … and the parts of the account.” 3. Efficient cause - “the source of the primary principle of change or stability” 4. Final cause – “something’s end (τελος)—i.e., what it is for” (2001a, pp. 240-1) By far the most important cause, for Aristotle, is the final cause. This he calls “the cause of causes”. The good of an object is always found in what it is ordered towards (also called its “end”). It is also true that one cannot know the final cause of a thing if one does not know the formal cause, its substance, for the essence of a thing defines what it is ordered to. In the Aristotelianized neo-Platonism of St. Thomas, the formal cause declares in which eternal ειδος the object participates. Aristotle defined growth and change as motion and divided motion into categories of potentiality and actuality. He often used term ἐντελέχεια (entelechy) as all but a synonym for actuality. Entelechy means, “to have completion” and is often also translated as “perfection” or “state of fulfillment” (Stravinskas & Shaw, 1998, p. 378). In order for us to know what the entelechy of an object is, we must know its essence. St. Thomas accepted Aristotle’s definition of man as a “rational animal”. The first act of a living thing is its existence; the second act is its operation. In other words, the entelechy of the human body is the soul (Aquinas, 1951). The form, which gives essence to the human body, is the rational soul and he divided the human soul into three primary powers: 1) the appetites, 2) the will and 3) the intellect. Each power is ordered to (has it’s τελος in) one of the three transcendentals. The appetites of the human soul refer to its sensitive (in St. Thomas this term refers to the five senses of the body) power, which is ordered towards the Beautiful; the will is ordered towards the Good and the intellect is ordered towards the True. In moving towards the transcendentals, the soul is in its second act (Aristotle, 2001b). According to St. Thomas, the soul does not exist as a “ghost in the machine” (Cartesian or Platonic dualism) but is rather the substantial form of the body. The soul is, according to

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Aristotle, the formal, efficient and final cause of the body (2001b). It is dependent upon the physical structures of the body, which must be properly disposed for the operations of the soul. For example, an infant cannot be said to use the power of reason but nevertheless the child does possess a rational soul. Its power to reason awaits the proper disposition of the bodily organ (the development of the brain) to become operational. For Aristotle, the connection between soul and body is so intimate he could not decide if the human soul could survive the death of the body. St. Thomas resolves this by differentiating the lower parts of the soul (the appetites), which are generated by the body and the higher parts of the soul (the will and the intellect), which are immaterial and can survive death. In this way too, St. Thomas was able to highlight the importance of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The souls of the blessed in heaven are not perfect because they lack the sensitive powers, they can only be made perfect and thus their joy be made perfect by being reunited with their bodies on the last day (Aquinas, 2008). The Entelechy of the Human Person John Sanford writes, “everything alive in this world seeks to become what it is meant to be” (1992, p. 6). The Christian knows his/her τελος because God has revealed it. The Baltimore Catechism, in use in Catholic schools in the United States in the late 19th and the first part of the 20th centuries, stated it very simply: Q. What do we mean by the "end of man"? A. By the "end of man" we mean the purpose for which he was created: namely, to know, love, and serve God. The scriptures tell us that the ultimate cause of illness and death is sin. Sin is separation from and a rejection of God. God never intends for us to be ill, God created humanity without illness or death. Illness is an evil, a privation of being. It is not caused by the personal sins that we all commit but the original sin of our first parents, which deprived the human race of sanctifying

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grace. (cf. Gen. 3; Rom 5:12-20). Christ came to pay the price for our sin and to reconcile us to God. St. Paul calls us to “put on the new man” (Eph 4:24), however in another place he acknowledges it is a battle; we struggle daily under the bondage of sin, which shatters us and separates us from God and from ourselves. Sin is concept psychology has had little use for, which is perplexing given that the very word “ψυχλογὶα” literally means “words about the soul”. Aristotle penned the first treatise, in the West, on human psychology and he called it “On the Soul” (Gr. Περὶ Ψυχῆς). John Sanford identifies 8 different words and their corresponding concepts used in the New Testament for sin. He notes, [I]n the early church, to indulge in sin was to shut oneself off from the light. This only increased the ignorance and darkness of the soul, leading to the soul’s loss of contact with God and ultimate to its death. Ignorance tended to darken the soul and lead the soul into sin, and sin further darkened the soul, obscuring the soul’s capacity for selfknowledge and understanding (1992, p. 70). Sanford’s understanding of sin here is perfectly Thomistic. Sin makes one unable to see the Truth. Sin affects the soul whether it is intentional or not. While certainly intentional sin is more destructive, Catholic moral theology has always differentiated between venial sins – those that are of a less serious nature or are committed unintentionally and mortal sin – those of a serious nature, committed with full knowledge and consent of the will; all sin is damaging to the soul. The most important word for sin in the New Testament is ἁμαρτία (hamartia), which means, “to miss the mark”. The

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word and the concept is tied to archery since for the Greeks, “the inability of the archer to hit the target lies in a fault in the character or consciousness of the archer” (Sanford, 1992, p. 113). The Thomist/Aristotelian tripartite division of the soul is a hierarchy. The intellect directs the will and the will disciplines the appetites. To act in accordance with the principles of right reason to the ends which man is ordered towards is to act humanly. St. Thomas writes, Of actions done by man those alone are properly called "human," which are proper to man as man. Now man differs from irrational animals in this, that he is master of his actions. Wherefore those actions alone are properly called human, of which man is master. Now man is master of his actions through his reason and will; whence, too, the free-will is defined as "the faculty and will of reason." Therefore those actions are properly called human which proceed from a deliberate will. And if any other actions are found in man, they can be called actions "of a man," but not properly "human" actions, since they are not proper to man as man. [Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 1 ad 1) (2008). The ultimate τελος, for the Christian, is to become a saint. As St. Paul wrote, “To all that are at Rome, the beloved of God, called to be saints.” (Rom 1:7). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle identifies the final τελος of human life to be ευδαιμονια, a word often translated as “happiness”. But Aristotle does not mean happiness as we modern English speakers typically mean happiness. In the modern vernacular, happiness typically refers to the satisfaction of desire but his makes no sense for a reading of Aristotle or for Christian ethics. The beatitude, “happy are those that mourn” (Matt 5:5) is a meaningless contradiction if we assume happiness means satisfaction of desire. Ευδαιμονια is better understood, in modern English as “blessedness”.

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Aristotle identifies that a final τελος must be something we desire for its own sake, rather than for the sake of something else. St. Thomas identifies that this τελος can only be “the vision of the Divine Essence”. He writes, Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence. To make this clear, two points must be observed. First, that man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire and seek: secondly, that the perfection of any power is determined by the nature of its object. Now the object of the intellect is "what a thing is," i.e. the essence of a thing, according to De Anima iii, 6. Wherefore the intellect attains perfection, in so far as it knows the essence of a thing. If therefore an intellect knows the essence of some effect, whereby it is not possible to know the essence of the cause, i.e. to know of the cause "what it is"; that intellect cannot be said to reach that cause simply, although it may be able to gather from the effect the knowledge of that the cause is. Consequently, when man knows an effect, and knows that it has a cause, there naturally remains in the man the desire to know about the cause, "what it is." And this desire is one of wonder, and causes inquiry, as is stated in the beginning of the Metaphysics (i, 2). For instance, if a man, knowing the eclipse of the sun, consider that it must be due to some cause, and know not what that cause is, he wonders about it, and from wondering proceeds to inquire. Nor does this inquiry cease until he arrive at a knowledge of the essence of the cause. If therefore the human intellect, knowing the essence of some created effect, knows no more of God than "that He is"; the perfection of that intellect does not yet reach simply the First Cause, but there remains in it the natural desire to seek the cause. Wherefore it is not yet perfectly happy. Consequently, for perfect happiness the intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First Cause. And thus it will have its perfection through union with God as with that object, in which alone man's happiness consists, as stated above (1,7; 2, 8) [Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 3, ad 8] (2008). In Thomism, both ethics and epistemology are ontologically grounded. The perfection of any faculty in the soul is to reach its τελος. Therefore when the intellect knows the Truth, the will serves the Good and the appetites love the Beautiful, those faculties are perfected. Each individual has different

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strengths and weaknesses - some are of average or below intelligence, some lack good self-control, and so on. The process of human growth and change always involves confronting our defects, moral or otherwise and our unrecognized strengths. It’s then pushes us to confront our childhoods, our assumptions and our prejudices. Finally we wrestle with the problems that have always confronted human beings and come to some level of peace with those problems. Mythologist Joseph Campbell called this the “journey of the hero” and identified its universal components and steps in the mythologies and religions of the world. The Healer Though it is God Himself who has opened the gates of Heaven and healed the breach between man and Himself, some of us are called to participate in this healing. St. Thomas identifies two types of grace – 1) gratia gratum faciens and 2) gratia gratis data. The first of the two is the type of grace given to a person that justifies him/her and make him/her a friend of God and deserving of eternal life. The second type is grace given to one so that they may aid another in achieving the proper end of human life; that is to lead them to God (Ripperger, 2003). Ulanov identifies that “one function of depth psychology is to bring Spirit down into the matter of our daily living” but she also cautions, “spirituality in the consulting rooms can also possess us, burn us up, destroy us” (2004, p. 22). Healers need to remain in the humility that it is God who heals, not us. Ripperger specifies how St. Thomas emphasizes three qualities that are needed for one to cooperate with God and to aide another: 1. A full knowledge of divine things – this includes the certitude of faith; knowledge of the principle conclusions of theology and knowledge of the human sciences

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2. One must provide evidence that his/her knowledge is true. In other words, the patient must see that he/she is actually getting better under the care of the healer 3. One must possess the skill of speaking to others in a way they understand and can relate to. Gratia gratis data is a freely given gift of God for the benefit of others and of the Church. It indicates nothing about the holiness of the person who receives it and cannot be merited. Healing occurs in the sacred space set aside for it and only in God’s time (2003). The healer cannot walk the “journey of the hero” for the patient. Individuals must do that for themselves, but we can walk with them and perhaps bring a flashlight of knowledge, wisdom and experience to shine in some of the dark corners. We learn with the patient what God is calling them to do. Ultimately both the impetus and the energy to make such a journey comes from God’s grace.

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References Aquinas, T. (2008). Summa Theologica (Fathers of the English Dominican Province Trans.) (Kevin Knight Ed.). Retrieved 4/30/2009 from http://www.newadvent.org/summa/. --------------- (1951) Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima (Kenelm Foster, O.P. and Sylvester Humphries, O.P., Trans.) (Joseph Kenny, O.P., Ed.) Retrieved 5/1/2009 from http://www.diafrica.org/kenny/CDtexts/DeAnima.htm. Aristotle. (2001a). Physics. In R. McKeon (Ed.) The Basic Works of Aristotle (pp. 213-394). New York, NY: Random House, Inc. ----------- (2001b). On the Soul. In R. McKeon (Ed.) The Basic Works of Aristotle (pp. 533-603). New York, NY: Random House, Inc. Ripperger, C. (2003). Introduction to the Science of Mental Health – Vol. 2: Sacred and Other Spiritual Causes. Lincoln, NE: Baronius Press. Sanford, J. (1992). Healing Body and Soul: The Meaning of Illness in the New Testament and in Psychotherapy. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press. Stravinskas, P. & Shaw R. (1998). Entelechy. In Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Encyclopedia (p. 378). Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing. Ulanov, A.B. (2004). Spiritual Aspects of Clinical Work. Einsiedeln:Daimon Verlag.