The Parable of the Laborers, the Church's Doctrinal Labor

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The Parable of the Laborers, the Church's Doctrinal Labor

5 Sources of Catholic Truth, 5 Sets of Laborers

Before we get to the parable of the laborers, we will need to go through some preliminary theology that I have written of before:




The 5 Sources of Catholic Truth and the Inverse Relationship between Reliability and Evidence for Veracity

Firstly, we have seen from previous argumentation that any fallen world that is to receive Incarnate One will, by Divine Providence, possess 5 distinct sources of Divine Truth in the Covenant of Incarntate One, ordered from both most reliable to least reliable, and, at the same time, from least evident to most evident as legitimate sources of truth.

These sources would be, in that very order:

God Himself, as Triune an Incarnate
The Supreme Mediating Father [The Pope]
The General Mediating Fathers and their Explicit, Rigorous Revelation [Bishops and Sacred Oral Tradition, or Oral Word of God]
The Implied and Poetic Revelation [The Written Word of God, Scripture]
Reason

Note, the law of inverse relatonship of reliability of a source of truth vs evidence for legitimacy as a source of truth holds, by examining them:

Let us first look at how the reliability, or degree of truth, decreases as we descend the list:

At the top of the list, we have, clearly, the most reliables source of truth of all, the unmediated, Supreme soure of God Himself, the Trinity and Incarnation being the supreme mysteries of Our Faith. To see God as He is to face all truth unknowable.

Under God, there is the Pope, obviously the next in line in degree of truth, in fact, the supreme source of truth ON EARTH, since Peter by himself guards the whole Catholic mystery of doctrine, the infallible vicar of the Incarnate One.

Less reliable is the General Apostolic Tradition and Oral Tradition by itself, which the Orthodox have. They are the closest to Catholicism, just lacking the fullness of doctrine.

Next in line is Scripture, which is much less clear than the Oral Tradition. That is why Protestants, who possess this as their only source of Divine Revelation, are far less confused and certain of things as the Orthodox.
FInally, there is Reason, the lowest source, not even a source of Revelation, only of the natural truths. With reason, not much more than general monotheism and the general principles of the Decalogue can be known.

On the other hand, whereas reliability of a source DECREASES as you descend the list,the evidence for the legitimacy of these sources INCREASES as we descend, the OPPOSITE relationship. That is, the MOST reliable source is the LEAST evident, and the LEAST reliable source is the MOSTevident!
THis is surely true by working our way up. Reason is the most evident source of truth, since all men have reason. Many in the world never knew even of Scripture until the Church brought it to them, but they had reason. From reason, they could know there was "a Great Spirit", like our natives of this nation, and the self evident principles of morals: Worship the Creator alone, honor your parents and legitimate authority, do not murder, do not be unchaste, do not lie, do not steal, do not lust, do not be greedy.

When we move up, we have Scripture. Again, this is less evident in the world, for many knew of it not, thogh all had reason. Scripture is held true by ALL Christians, and is therefore the most evident source of Revelation from God.

Still less evdient is Apostolic Succession and Oral Tradition, held true by less of Christendom. For whereas the quotations in Early Christianity from Scripture are the overwhelmingly most numerous, quotes of the authority of Sacred Tradition are less, hence why Protestants argue it is not that evident.

Finally, when speaking of the Supreme Apostolic Sucessor, the testimony of the SUPREME voice of Peter, or Rome, is much more obscure than the General Tradition and Apostolic Succession, and hence why the Orthodox argue against it as one reason.

FInally, surely, the mysteries of God as Triune and Incarnate are the least evident from the early Writings.

Hence, the higher up on the list above, the more reliable a source is but the less evidence to support its veracity as legitimate, and the lower on the list, the less reliable but MORE evident.


Apocalypse 10, the Angel with the Scroll, His Two Feet on the Earth and Sea

Clearly, this mystery can veiled in apocalypse 10, which shows the angel with the scroll, the Word of God, or truth, standing with the right foot, the strongest foot, on the sea, or weakest foundation, and the left foot, the weakest foot, on the earth, or strongest foundation. Hence, the stronger sources of truth rest on weaker foundation of evidence, and the weakest sources of truth rest on stronger foundation of evidence.




Christ’s Crucified Feet

Consider also the mystery of Christ’s crucified feet. The toes of the strongest foot on top of the weakest foot, making the toes in inverse proportion: the longest toe of the stronger foot on top of the shortest toe of the weaker foot, and then continuing in inverse, down to the shortest toe of the stronger foot on top of the longest toe of the weakest foot, as if Christ’s crucified feet also reveal the mystery of the five sources of truth, like the apocalypse above, in that, again, with the stronger foot representing the degree of truth in the sources, each toe being a source of truth, and the weaker foot showing the evidence of the sources, then the strongest source of truth is on top of the weakest evidence (longest toe of stronger foot on top shortest toe of weaker foot), down to the weakest source of truth on top of the strongest evidence (the shortest toe of stronger foot on top of the longest toe of the weaker foot)!



Ecclesiological History, the Illuminative Way

We have seen in the arguments of the greater ages that the Church’s illuminative way is a stage of growing in intimacy with God and His Truth. Hence, we can argue that the primary stages of the Church’s doctrinal development are contained in this illuminative way. So then, the illuminative way of the Abstract Society of Incarnate One [the Church] must be the Church’s ascent up the Mount of Carmel though deeper contemplation of the Divine Truths by precisely considering the greater depths of the aforementioned five sources of truth above. Again, this is an ascension of intimacy in truth and grace. But the ascent is sad, for the growing intimacy is at the expense of parallel but contradictory growing of coldness to such increasing intimacy, punctuated desolations, which culminate with the dark night of the soul.

This mystery seems aptly symbolized again in Apocalypse 10, the scroll that the angel holds in his hand, which is sweet in the mouth but bitter in the stomach, symbolizing that whereas the truths of God are sweet to taste and delightful to ponder, drawing us ever so closer to God, nevertheless their digestion is bitter, since, firstly, living them requires suffering, and, secondly, the outer world is cold to this intimacy that we wish to share with it!


We also note that the stages of devlopment in this illuminative way of our world have many times been instigated by attacks on the sources that the world considers. Moreover, these attacks in our history have started at the top of the list of Sources and progressed downward. This is common sense. Why? Well, obviously, the dragon’s desire is to get humanity to reject the TOTALITY of Catholic truth, but by the boiling frog lesson, the water must be turned up gradually. So the truth must be gradually eroded away. But then clearly, the dragon must start with the least evident source and work downard to most evident, since if one wishes to discredit a movement, they cannot come out swinging at the strongest evidence but work with the lesser and then build toward the more evident. Therefore, the dragon must work from LEAST evident sources to the MOST evident. Hence, the dragon starts with the Trinity and Incarnation and works down to Reason.



The Parable of the Laborers, 5 sets of laborers, 5 Sources of Truth

Remember that the days of Creation image the REcreation of the world, and that, by way of implication, as we have seen, per Augustine and other Early Fathers, the sixth day symbolizes the age of the Church spreading. That is, just as God CREated man in His LIKENESS and IMAGE on the sixth day, so God RECREATED man in His Likeness and Image in the sixth age of human history by placing the sharing of His Image, the fullness of grace and truth, back in man's hearts. This happened in that the Gentiles, who had long since been in the darkness of paganism and sin, were brought, by whole continents, into the light of the Gospel. Similarly, the final day of God’s LABOR in recreating the world symbolizes the final AGE of labor for God’s Holy People. Hence, why shouldn’t Christ’s parable image the FINAL DAY OF LABOR of Salvation History, the day of labor of His Church to spread the Gospel and WORK OUT the implications of the Deposit of Faith, the illuminative way.

Now for a more detailed analysis. Note that a Biblical day begins with NIGHT, or evening, then CONCLUDES with morning, or day. Hence, the evening before the parable's daylight labor would be the spiritual darkness of the sixth age. But of course, the spiritual darkness is pagan Rome, the purgative way. Hence, when Constantine conquers and brings the primary purgations of martyrdom to an end for a great time, the sun is beginning to rise, and the laborers of the Church begin to go out and “work out” the implications of the faith!

The night at the end the day of labor in doctrine is then the dark night of the soul, which is today, the modern, secular apostasy.

Now, then, the partitioning of the day into five times of laborers will be the phases of doctrinal development related to the five sources of truth we have seen above. That is, the Church is ‘laboring’ in the field of the world to work out the implications of the Deposit of Faith by immersing Herself deeper into the sources of Her Revelation.

From our outline above, we have the following:

Effectively, then, the five calls are:

Dawn: Go out and labor against those who would attack the Trinity and Incarnation [Begining Trinitarian and Christological Heresies, then Islam]

Third Hour: Go out and labor against those who would attack the Supreme Mediating Father [The Great Schsim]

Sixth Hour: Go out and labor against those who would attack the General Mediating Fathers and Explicit, Rigorous Revelation [The Moral fall of the Catholic clergy and the Protestant Revolt]

Ninth Hour: Go out and labor against those who would attack Poetic Revelation [The Enlightenment]

Eleventh Hour: Go out and labor against those who would attack even Reason [The Current Secular Apostasy of the Last Recent Generation]!

And see how, at the twelfth hour, the sun has set, symbolizing that when reason is finally attacked, we are back at total darkness again, as it was in pagan Rome: The world in apostasy against the Church, rejecting the TOTALITY of Her Truth, the boiling of the frog, the heat at the peak of its gradual increase over the day!

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