“…the widespread interest in and unease about his approach tell me something deeper is going on. Many Christians I’ve spoken to express discomfort with Comer’s approach, but they can’t always articulate why. That tension warrants further reflection.” - TGC
“Christians…increasingly want their church to point to God, not only in the explicit worship and teaching, but also in its appearance, how it makes them feel, and the subconscious ways they experience the space.” - Barna
Read Part 1.
In the Scholastic period of Catholic theology the classic languages were re-learned and many old works were read, including Aristotle. His ideas about the formation of the soul found purchase in the minds of theologians like Abelard, Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas. In You Are What You Love, Smith depends heavily on these men for his thesis. In this paper, we will consider what they believed.
Thomas Aquinas said this about justification:
The righteousness and sanctity which justification confers, although given to us by God as efficient cause (causa efficiens) and merited by Christ as meritorious cause (causa meritoria), become an interior sanctifying quality or formal cause (causa formalis) in the soul itself, which it makes truly just and holy in the sight of God.1
For Thomists,2 the soul is truly made just in the formal aspect of justification. The Christian’s identity as a just person is made real in the formation of his soul. R.C.Sproul puts it like this:
