On the Intellectually Dangerous
May ruffle some feathers with this one.
A Sinner, of the blog Renegade Trads, takes me to task in a recent Vox Nova thread and on his own blog for venturing into “intellectually dangerous” places. My “vain exercise,” it seems, is impiously exploring the consequences for a Catholic understanding of original sin if science were to show that the whole human race did not descend from the biblical figures Adam and Eve. I may also be living a life of “intellectual promiscuity” by thinking “thoughts better left unthought” and possibly revealing, through my philosophical promiscuousness, “a total lack of faith.”
I plead guilty as charged. I am willing, albeit with fear and trembling, to think thoughts that could lead me to question and even reject my faith. This may be impious of me, but it is not a venture that runs counter to what that in which I have faith calls me to do. I am Catholic because I believe that to which Catholicism directs and disposes me is ultimately true, because that truth has eternal ramifications, and because the way and means by which I get there matter. I believe there is a truth to pursue and true ways and means of pursuing it.
I do not believe, however, that any particular, historically-situated way of thinking about the truth establishes a standard of truth beyond question, criticism, and development. I am willing to entertain new or differing ways of thinking about the human condition, the nature of the cosmos, sin and salvation, good and evil, God, and even the meaning of truth itself. I view as deconstructible any thought constructed in history. I hold that any formula can be reformulated. This is no sin against truth, but a way of protecting truth, of keeping truth more than what we happen at a given moment to think truth is.
We do not believe in formulas, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but in those realities they express, which faith allows us to touch. Touch. Not contain, not encapsulate, not surround or swallow, but touch. There is a difference between thought and that about which we think, and because that is a difference I insist on maintaining, I consider no thought to be the last word. Only one Thought is the Thing Itself. Only one Word is the One Who Speaks.
I have a total lack of faith in formulas and words and thoughts and anything else under the sun: I do not believe these to be the Truth. My faith is in what eludes our formulas, what escapes our words, what dances always ahead of our thoughts. Because of my faith, I am willing, in fear and trembling, to reconsider all that I have considered. If science or philosophy or another pursuit of reason touches upon the truth of something in the domain of reason, something to which theology also speaks, and the claims of each conflict with one another, then I say to theology (though not always only to theology), rethink!
If it is impious of me to say that theology and the Church itself should be willing to reconsider how they understand original sin because their traditional understandings of Adam and Eve may not be scientifically credible, then so be it. I say, without any hesitation, that when the Church makes claims about faith and morals that touch on matters of science, history, or philosophy, it ought to be open to rethinking these claims when a claim of reason presents a conflict. After all, the Church is very clear that we rise to truth on wings of faith and reason. From the Church’s standpoint, the two shouldn’t be in conflict.
Perhaps even more impiously of me, I cannot treat the authoritative responsibility and mission of the Church as an authoritarian power. My acceptance of its authority is not unconditional. If the Church were, for example, to proclaim definitively and with full authority that genocide could be morally dandy or that the earth is 6000 years old or that beer is intrinsically evil, the game would be up. The imp would be out of the bag. The church would have failed its own standard for being true. I don’t say this out of some belief that I know better than God or than the teaching office of the Church, but because if there is such a thing as truth, then it has criteria well beyond the say so of Church or any other authority.
Comments are closed.
How can you know you shouldn’t think something until after you’ve thought it? In which case its already been thought.
Assume it, maybe?
If certain first-century Jews had not thought along these lines, there would be no Christianity.
Exactly.
Well, I think there might have also been a small matter of God becoming man, suffering and dying for our sins, and rising from the dead. It’s not as if Christianity were just invented by some free-thinking Jews who boldly went where no one had gone before.
Yes, but these acts of God inspired new ways of thinking about, in a sense, everything.
Agreed.
But those new ways of thinking about everything were inspired by actions and revelations by God. Not by group of deeply thoughtful Israelites who after reading the scriptures decided that they meant something totally other than what they originally were thought to mean. There were lots of groups like that in first century Judaism, but they’re all long gone now.
It is a problem when people refuse to accept truth where it is found because it doesn’t match their preconeived notions — and certainly those of us who take the rock-ribbed orthodoxy approach to things should keep in mind that Christ’s genuine revelation was viewed as an unacceptable development by some of the self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy in His day.
At the same time, it seems to me that for those who see themselves as boldly setting out into the deep, it’s also as well to recall that Christ was able to bring us a new revelation because he was God, not because he was a fearless thinker who turned over orthodoxies.
I’m not saying you, Kyle, are falling into this way of thinking. But it did spring to mind reading David’s comment.
Well, I think there might have also been a small matter of God becoming man, suffering and dying for our sins, and rising from the dead. It’s not as if Christianity were just invented by some free-thinking Jews who boldly went where no one had gone before.
Darwin,
The first Jews who followed Jesus, while he was alive, had little or no conception of anything you have said in the quote I reproduce. They were following a charismatic man who was at odds with the authorities of his day. I think it would be difficult to argue that the early followers of Jesus, even after his death and resurrection, believed he was God incarnate, the second person of the trinity, who had become man to die for the sins of the world. It took a long time for some of those formulations to develop, and just exactly what some of it means is still a matter of speculation.
“I think it would be difficult to argue that the early followers of Jesus, even after his death and resurrection, believed he was God incarnate, the second person of the trinity, who had become man to die for the sins of the world.”
They may not have used the word “Trinity” or “incarnate”…but they definitely believed this, at least after they witnessed the Resurrection. If you don’t think so, than this is simply the divide between this sort of thinking and orthodoxy which is irreconcilable.
Kyle, I don’t always agree with your conclusions (does anyone?), but I always read your posts with interest exactly for their philosophical curiosity and the insights you often share. It seems to me that ‘A Sinner’ is taking a very un-Catholic, fundamentalist view of your questions, part of which may be due to a lack of understanding of philosophy and its purposes, and especially the way Catholic philosophers have contributed to our faith over the centuries. Of course, it helps that I myself am now deeply ensconced in philosophical studies in preparation for seminary and the religious life in the near future.
I remember well my own “fear”, as it were, of potentially faith-affecting philosophical queries before I began studying them myself. Part of that was from my own worry of questioning the truths of our faith as revealed through Scripture and the Magisterium, but as the current and previous popes have very pointedly declared, faith and reason cannot and must not be treated as if they were in conflict. This is why our Catholic faith and philosophical traditions are such a tremendous gift, for we fear not studying that which doesn’t always “jibe” with our faith. To the degree that a particular philosophy is true, it has a share in “the Truth” on which our Christian faith and lives are based. To the degree that it is not, we can learn from it. Imagine if Augustine or Aquinas had refused to study many pre-Christian philosophers!
The danger, I think, that ‘A Sinner’ is trying to avoid is that wherein a particular philosopher or theologian has a specific axe to grind against some aspect of revealed truth or Natural Law, so he or she then attempts systematically to dismantle or undermine some of these revealed truths in order to further a personal agenda or defend a particular area of weakness and sin, i.e., to justify one’s own behaviors that do not agree with revealed truth or the Natural Law.
Thank you, Kevin. My sense is neither the Church’s teaching authority nor the lay faithful need fear the questioning and intellectual exploration of what is posited as revealed truth. If it’s true, then it won’t fall to sincere criticism.
I agree with you, Kyle. The gist of the line of thought you are speaking of seems to be, “Just don’t go there.”
If we’re afraid to go there, haven’t we already admitted we don’t think the Church’s teaching will stand up to critical thought?
But there are certain types of critical thought it WON’T stand up to. Namely, wild hypotheticals that have nothing to do with reality. Science supports monogenism! Submitting dogma to “critical thought” in such a way that the mere fact that a teaching is historically contingent is used to deconstruct it (even when history and science DO currently support its account) based merely on the fact of that contingency, to try to transmogrify it into some vague symbolic “spiritual” truth rather than meaning what it has always meant…is dangerous territory.
Kyle,
It seems to me that your position is pretty much in line with what the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught in Mysterium Ecclesia:
http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/teach/mysteccl.htm
God Bless
Thank you.
I continue to maintain that the doctrine of original sin is not supported by an objective analysis of the texts upon which it is supposedly based–never mind the biological science that can be brought to bear on it. I suspect that most of us are more capable of discussing the texts with some degree of expertise, than we are of discussing the genetic heritage of the human race. That said, nobody exercising even a tad of objectivity can seriously assert that the “Adam and Eve” is anything other than myth. But what–I continue to ask–lesson is the myth (or myths) in question designed to convey? [cross-posted at "Journeys in Alterity"]
You know us Catholics, Rodak. We believe all sorts of stuff not stated in the Sacred Scriptures. As for what the creation myths are meant to convey, I would sum it up by saying that it cannot be summed up in a concise lesson. The myth reveals (supposedly) truth about God’s relationship to humanity and the cosmos, but its a truth that finds expression, and perhaps can only find expression, in the form of myth. I couldn’t possibly give a full exegesis of the myth and exploration of its meaning here.
Rodak,
I think that Original Sin is consistent with Genesis and Romans but that it is a development of scripture based on experience of and reflection upon life in a very fallen world.
G. K. Chesterton once said that “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved,” (Orthodoxy, chap. 2). He saw original sin as the one Christian doctrine that is empirically verifiable and validated. I think many people would agree with that, but perhaps this view comes more easily to those with a more acute sense of the pervasive human tendency to sin ?
God Bless
Actually, though my latest post was inspired by my thoughts on the monogenism discussion, I wasn’t particularly talking about you at that point.
The idea of “re-examining” Church teaching certainly spurred it, but I was mainly talking about cases of several other people I know who like to engage in this sort of intellectual exploration (several of whom ended up losing their faith).
“I plead guilty as charged. I am willing, albeit with fear and trembling, to think thoughts that could lead me to question and even reject my faith.”
Depending on the danger, this could be either a proximate or a remote occasion of sin. If the former, it is a sin in itself.
As the Catholic Encyclopedia matter explains, “The unconditional, interior assent which the Church demands to the Divine authority of revelation is incompatible with any doubt as to its validity.”
Doubt in matters of religion IS a sin:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05141a.htm
“I am willing to entertain new or differing ways of thinking about the human condition, the nature of the cosmos, sin and salvation, good and evil, God, and even the meaning of truth itself.”
Yes, I’m sure you are. That’s exactly the error people need to be warned against.
“I view as deconstructible any thought constructed in history. I hold that any formula can be reformulated. This is no sin against truth, but a way of protecting truth, of keeping truth more than what we happen at a given moment to think truth is.”
Yes, and this is exactly what I critique. Reformulating truths as if translating them from one philosophical language to another is one thing. Reformulating them so as to actually make the truth conceptually different is another.
We either descend from one original couple or not. If you “reformulate” things so that this is different, you haven’t just rephrased the truth in a different language or philosophical framework…you’ve changed the very truth in question. When this actually changes how people ACT, when praxis is changed to reflect new “theory”…this is especially egregious.
Because of the Incarnation, Christian truths are historically contingent, yes. It is not some vague eternal truths up in the Forms. Our truths are not just “truths” but also FACTS. Generally unfalsifiable, but still.
The formulations of the truth proposed by the Church remain forever valid and true understood in the sense/language according to which they were formulated (even if other later statements explain or clarify or elaborate on them. But never change.)
“I have a total lack of faith in formulas and words and thoughts and anything else under the sun: I do not believe these to be the Truth. My faith is in what eludes our formulas, what escapes our words, what dances always ahead of our thoughts.”
A dangerous position. I’ve been there. This is ultimately cognitively meaningless mystic babble that eventually leads to total nihilism. The whole point of our religion is that language and thought can hold truths.
If the “whole point of our religion is that language and thought can hold truths,” then our religion hardly provides something that cannot be obtained elsewhere. One needn’t be Catholic or even religious to conclude that language and thought contain truths.
And, for the record, I find language and thought hold truths aplenty, but also that language and thinking bring something subjective to what is expressed and thought about and that these “containers” cannot fully contain the truths they are about.
A Sinner,
For centuries it would have been the teaching of the Catholic Church that the entire story of Adam and Eve was literally true, that Adam was created from dust, that Eve was created from Adam’s rib, and so on. Now the Catechism of the Catholic Church says it is a story conveying in “figurative language” an actual event in human history. Would you accept that as a valid “reformulation”?
David,
I think both remain valid. Catholic dogma strictly-so-called is neutral on the question of whether the story is literal in all its details or rather stylized. The idea of it being stylized is an ALLOWED opinion, but it certainly doesn’t constitute “Church teaching.”
Catholics are not required to be creationists, but they also aren’t required to believe the story is stylized in the form of mythological literature (though I personally think it is).
It’s not like the Church’s doctrine used to be “this is totally literal” and now is “it is not literal.” There was a time when “this is totally literal” was certainly the preferred opinion (mainly the counter-reformation period rather than previously) to the point of being enforced, but it’s not like the Church now positively teaches the opposite as a binding doctrine (even if it is now tolerated and generally held).
A Catholic is allowed to hold either position (though I think holding the literal one is rather silly). And, frankly, there is a tradition of this that is not just modern; many of the Fathers explain that “eating the fruit” was less about a literal fruit on a literal tree and more about a Sin of pride, obviously.
Of course, the majority of the opinion held by Catholic thinkers has shifted from literalism to being stylized, but the articles of Faith related to the story have not changed as if we are now required to believe the opposite of what we once were required to believe. That would be absurd!
These articles are, according to Ott:
# The first man was created by God. (De fide.)
# The whole human race stems from one single human pair. (Sent. certa.)
# Our first parents, before the Fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace. (De fide.)
# The donum rectitudinis or integritatis in the narrower sense, i.e., the freedom from irregular desire. (Sent. fidei proxima.)
# The donum immortalitatis, i.e.,bodily immortality. (De fide.)
# The donum impassibilitatis, i.e., the freedom from suffering. (Sent. communis.)
# The donum scientiae, i.e., a knowledge of natural and supernatural truths infused by God. (Sent. communis.)
# Adam received sanctifying grace not merely for himself, but for all his posterity. (Sent. certa.)
# Our first parents in paradise sinned grievously through transgression of the Divine probationary commandment. (De fide.)
# Through the sin our first parents lost sanctifying grace and provoked the anger and the indignation of God. (De fide.)
# Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the Devil. (De fide.) D788.
# Adam’s sin is transmitted to his posterity, not by imitation, but by descent. (De fide.)
# Original Sin consists in the deprivation of grace caused by the free act of sin committed by the head of the race. (Sent. communis.)
# Original sin is transmitted by natural generation. (De fide.)
# In the state of original sin man is deprived of sanctifying grace and all that this implies, as well as of the preternatural gifts of integrity. (De fide in regard to Sanctifying Grace and the Donum Immortalitatus. D788 et seq.)
There can be debate over, say, what is meant by “the first man was created by God.” Does this mean his body? His soul? Directly? Or rather through Providence and secondary causes? But the article itself can never change conceptually.
A “reformulation” that changes a statement of doctrine into its own negation…is absurd. Calling “not A” merely a “reformulation” of “A” is ridiculous.
David,
Given that neither Augustine nor Aquinas took a strictly literalist view of Genesis 1-3, I’m a little uncomfortable with the claim that a literalist approach would have been universal until recently. If neither of the two greatest Church thinkers thought something, then maybe it wasn’t quite as widespread as hindsight suggests.
“The whole point of our religion is that language and thought can hold truths.”
But this is just blasphemous, if included in the “truths” to which you refer to intend *the* Truth–Christ, the Incarnated God. Neither our language nor our thought can “hold” Christ, as we can have no concept, strictly speaking of God, only of what God is not. You are dangerously mistaking theological formulae for the realities which those formulae are only ever imperfect approximations.
Yes. I’d also say that language in general contains what it cannot contain, whether language is used to signify God or the finite world.
Kyle,
The issue really isn’t with faithful Catholics scholars taking up a study in private or in conjunction with other faithful Catholic scholars to pursue the truth in conjunction with a love of the Church. The problem with your forum for such exploration is that the VN comment box echo chamber (and I assume the majority of readers of this blog) consists of Catholics who publically dissent from church teaching or others who appear to be non Catholics whose mission or agenda seems to be to tear down church teaching. Thus your attempt to seek the truth via the Church teaching is coopted by those in this comment box who hate the church or those unfaithful to her teachings.
Kimberley,
I haven’t detected a lot of hatred toward the Church in these parts, though, yes, not everyone who comments in these threads agrees with the Catholic Church’s understanding of the world. Some of our readers bring some pretty challenging arguments against Church teaching, and I am thankful for them. They benefit the blog and, more importantly, the pursuit of truth, which may or may not coincide with a love of the Church.
We offer Catholic perspectives here at VN, but we’re also interested in hearing the perspectives of others and allowing those other perspectives to challenge ours and help improve our thinking. I welcome any commenter who genuinely pursues the truth, whether or not the commenter happens to reach conclusions in agreement with Church teaching. After all, the pursuit of truth is not limited to the study and discussion of faithful Catholics!
“…the VN comment box echo chamber (and I assume the majority of readers of this blog) consists of Catholics who publically dissent from church teaching…”
Kimberley, it seems to me that you’re making some awfully broad assumptions.
“Neither our language nor our thought can “hold” Christ, as we can have no concept, strictly speaking of God, only of what God is not.”
What you have said there, although I would guess that it was not your intention to say it, is that one’s man’s opinion about any theological idea is as good as the next man’s.
Kyle, above, drops by a few yards and punts. He speaks of “what we Catholics believe” but declines to discuss the basis of these (apparently uniquely Catholic) beliefs as they relate to three relatively short chapters of an endlessly interesting ancient scripture.
Why talk (or think) about a notion such as Original Sin at all? “What Catholics believe” is all available in print and needs only to be memorized by rote in preparation for the Final Exam.
You’ve raised important questions, Rodak, but I punt, for now, because the questions really call for a separate post.
Rodak,
I don’t think repeating a formulation of, among others, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor of the Church, entails committing oneself to the position of theological relativism. At least I hope not, otherwise Leo XIII got that wrong!
The Catholic Church containing the fullness of God’s revelation *for us* is consistent with God being utterly unknowable *in se* for us on earth. We can have no concept of God, because he is infinitely greater than any concept. So if you are worshiping a concept of God rather than God, you’re actually an idolater. (Again, this is Thomas.)
God created us with an intellect and a will. He expects us to use both. As Benedict XVI never tires of saying, there is NO contradiction between faith and reason: Each needs the other for completion, for heaven’s sake. So any road that you walk down with honest intellectual questioning is completely safe. In the spheres of either faith or reason, as in anything else, we can easily run off the road when we err in pride: i.e., identifying our own will/thoughts with those of God.
There are a ton of references on this topic: “Caritas in Veritate”, the Pope’s last encyclical, is the first that comes to mind but he also discusses it at some length with Seewald in “Light of the World.”
thereserita,
I would agree about Reason, in itself, never contradicting Faith. Indeed, as I also explained on that thread…modern science vastly SUPPORTS monogenism (which doesnt mean a bottleneck).
If concrete evidence ever seemed to contradict the Faith (unlikely, given that the articles of faith are largely practically unfalsifiable even when they make historical claims)…then the “faithful” answer would be to say that scientific theory has changed in the past and might change again, and therefore to give the benefit of the doubt to the dogma over science.
There was a time when polygenism was a somewhat popular theory in science. Now it’s fallen out of favor entirely. How foolish the man looks who abandoned the Faith over this issue back then…only to see science supporting the Faith now!
However, as I said in my post, I may be a subconscious doubter. If it ever became clear that Catholic dogmas wasn’t true then, as Kyle has said about genocide or biblical literalism or beer…I would probably conclude that the Faith itself wasn’t true in the first place.
Of course, those examples are strange. Those things he mentioned are already not part of Catholic teaching, so if the Pope suddenly proclaimed them, “the game would be up” not even because of those ideas being wrong in themselves, but even just because of the contradiction with past teaching.
So the use of Reason in itself wasn’t my objection, really. I’m all for free-thinking and against mentally authoritarian mindsets. That’s what my whole blog is about!
My objection is about trying to use such hypotheticals to deconstruct the faith in the here and now even when there isn’t any real damning contradictory evidence. About the attitude or implication that basically says, “This teaching is contingent on [science, history, philosophy]. This very contingency, by nature, makes the teaching deconstructable even when, currently, [science, history, philosophy] DO agree with it.”
I think that’s the danger inherent in the scoff about: “as if something not being apparent is enough to place limits on the liberty of thought.” Because then it becomes about not merely trying to reconcile dogma with even an actual contradiction, but merely with hypothetical contradictions. Trying to push the “limits” of dogma merely to show their versatility, to deconstruct for the sake of deconstruction, to try to identify the truth not in any specific idea but in some vague “essence of the truth” formed in the “differance” between various formulations…is simply not the Catholic way of doing things. If one wants to be a postmodernist, one should go be a postmodernist.
Heresy does exist. “if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” Altering this teaching to make it more symbolic because, someday, we “might” find a box of bones almost irrefutably belonging to Jesus of Nazareth is the very essence of the lack of faith. We have to believe that we never WILL find such a box.
In my world, one can be both a postmodernist and a papist. Or so I like to think.
Look,I myself am more right leaning too, but what this tradie poster seems to convey by Kyle’s statements seem extreme. I simply add my two cents as follows:
$0.01 – Yes there are fundamental truths to the Catholic Faith and if these are contravened in any way you aren’t truly Catholic and might be committing heresy/apostasy. However, if in the natural progression of science, reason, etc. that a truth is revealed according to the desire of the Church and taught to us by its Magisterium, then we must allow for it.
$0.02 – Seems what “A Sinner” has done has only harmed the traditional cause. It’s bad enough what 40+ years of liberal influence has done to the Church, but if he/she wants to promote traditionalism, they do more harm than good by doing what he is to Kyle. It is “intellectual” slander this that make us moderate (or more right leaning) Catholics not want to side with trads, and makes the stereotypes we hear and read about them online more true. This will only push things two steps back if the EF/Trad. Latin Mass and other facets of traditional Catholicism are to be restored to the faith.
Chesterton may be right that Original Sin is observable, but is there any way that belief in a pre-lapsarian sinless state can be reconciled with the Theory of Evolution? Big organisms have been eating little organisms since life began. Science is clear that there never was an Eden.
“Big organisms have been eating little organisms since life began. Science is clear that there never was an Eden.”
Please. Animals ate animals in Eden.
Aquinas himself said in the Summa:
“In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man’s sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede’s gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals.”
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1096.htm#article1
What is with the eagerness to deconstruct these dogmas???
I am not talking about “deconstruction of dogmas” but rather Biblical interpretation. In this area you are so, so far out in right field that any attempt at further intelligent discussion from my position would be a waste of time. May God bless you.
Well, many other saints thought that animals did *not* eat each other in Paradise, as I recall. And, in any case, whether nature was red in tooth and claw prior to the Fall is not addressed by any dogmatic formulation. It’s theological open territory.
It may be, yes. But the point is that science doesn’t “disprove” our faith in an original human paradisal state just because of evolution.
Quoting Aquinas was in direct response to the statement, “Big organisms have been eating little organisms since life began. Science is clear that there never was an Eden.”
Science doesn’t disprove it just because animal death existed prior to the Fall, because as the Aquinas quote proves…that was always at least one opinion that existed about “Eden.”
If anything, Science has merely demonstrated that Aquinas was probably correct on this question and that those others saints who believed there wasn’t animal death were probably wrong, knowing what we know now about evolution.
But, as a purely dogmatic question, you are totally right.
Part of what’s so troubling about these attitudes is how little benefit of the doubt is given to the Church and how quickly people jump to believe that science has discovered something that should cause the Church to change. Aquinas, writing in the 1200′s didn’t believe ANIMAL death was the result of MAN’S sin (why would it be? Man’s sin affected MAN). And yet, you are so quick to assume the Church teaches that and was thus wrong about original sin due to evolution. Give the Church some credit, will you?
The Church asks me to accept as true declarations that cannot be proven or demonstrated and sometimes cannot even be understood. The pursuits of reason (science, philosophy), when done rightly, won’t have the last word, but they do (at least attempt to) offer proof or demonstration for what they ask me to accept as true. Being the good postmodernist that I am, I’m incredulous of their grand narratives as I am of any others, but they proceed to show (rather than merely tell) me that what they say is true is true. Of course, religious claims often involve demonstration and argument, but their truth claims rest on unprovable premises in a way significantly different than other truth claims. They’re matters of faith.
WJ–
I fully agree that to worship a limited concept of God, rather than the Unknowable, is idolatry. But the concept of the unknowable God is not dependent upon the doctrine of Original Sin, or any other specific doctrine that can be shown to have been devised by man, whether in an attempt to explain the mysterious, or for reasons of ecclesiastical politics. There are better and worse (or plausible, more plausible, less plausible, and implausible) ways to interpret any text. If that weren’t true, English professors would have no basis upon which to grade their students’ essays on color symbolism in Moby Dick.
“Aquinas, writing in the 1200′s didn’t believe ANIMAL death was the result of MAN’S sin (why would it be? Man’s sin affected MAN).”
St. Paul apparently did not hold this view. In Romans he clearly states that all of creation fell along with Adam, and now awaits redemption, along with man:
Romans 8:19–23
19 For the eager expectation2 of the creation3 eagerly awaits2 the revealing of the sons of God;
20 for the creation was subjected4 to futility5, not willingly6, but on account of the one who subjected it7 in hope8
21 because the creation itself also9 will be liberated from the bondage of corruption10 into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.11
22 For we know that the whole creation12 groans together and suffers together13 until now;
23a and not only this, but ourselves also,14
23b who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
“In Romans he clearly states that all of creation fell along with Adam, and now awaits redemption, along with man”
That says nothing about animal death, though.
Material creation (and I specify material, because what of the unfallen angels?) “fell” relative TO Man, inasmuch as it was all ordered towards man and his use, and when man fell into sin, material creation became the instrument of sin, etc.
At least, that’s one possible interpretation consistent with Aquinas.
This doesn’t have to mean the world objectively changed like Man did. It didn’t necessarily change in itself. It subjectively changed and is “groaning” because of its changed relationship TO Man.
As Aquinas explains in that same Summa article:
“for his disobedience to God, man was punished by the disobedience of those creatures which should be subject to him.”
We might say they have “fallen” only inasmuch as Man fell. Their last end (which was the good of Man) was altered, so their fulfillment was altered, but this would be a relative change on their part, not an absolute change.
The good news is that historically the catholic church has proven to be rather flexible accommodating this sort of ‘dangerous’ thinking. After all it is no accident of history that quite a bit of scientific methodology was developed rather swiftly very much within the geographic and cultural boundaries of the christian hemisphere. Let’s not kid ourself – most of us catholics clearly ignore the bulk of ‘dogma’ and get along reasonable well by emphazising the more emotional dimensions of our religion.
For me this is a bit like asking a opera lover why he/she bothers in light of the obvious ‘imperfection’- clearly in my view for example the words/script of most operas are rather crude and simplistic.
Obviously humans have loved pondering philosophical/religious type questions and created all kinds of believe systems.
For me that is where the divine spirit resides – not in the particulars.
Since there are many skeptics who think that Genesis is merely a myth and that Adam and Eve never existed, it is important to consider the truth of the matter.
1) If one is an atheist, one believes that humans are highly evolved animals and do not have an immortal soul. This belief is consistent with philosophical materialism but it cannot be proven.
2) If one believes that humans possess an immortal soul, this belief is based on reason (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, etc.) and/or faith in the Bible (e.g. Matt. 10:28) and/or the teachings of the Catholic Church (CCC. 366) or some other religious tradition.
3) Now if the soul is immortal it cannot be produced by the body, for then it would die with the body. So an immortal soul must have an immaterial or spiritual source, (God) or be eternal itself, (Hinduism, Buddhism).
4) For the Christian, who believes that the each individual soul is created by God, The creation of souls had to begin with soul #1 and soul #2 and continue from there. So for Christians the existence of Adam and Eve follows logically from a belief in the soul and is based on reason as well as faith in truthfulness of the Bible.
5) Finally, for Christians who believe that faith and reason lead us to the truth, Genesis is not merely a myth but an inspired story that prepares the way for faith in Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God. Belief in the incarnation and the resurrection is foolishness to those who have other metaphysical commitments, but for Christians they are part of a complete way of life. The only thing foolish from the Christian perspective is to try to be half a Christian.
Lamont–
There is no reason, according to your schema, why soul #1 and soul #2 couldn’t both have been the souls of males, since you state that the soul is not produced by the body.
Very funny Rodak. But if you were trying to be serious I think you should take another look at Genesis 2. I think God reveals with great clarity why He chose a man and a woman to be the first to have a soul.
Yeah, come on, Rodak. The soul may not be produced by the body, but human bodies are given human souls according to human nature, and human bodies are only produced by a previous male and female body.
But it’s not quite clear why God invented sexual reproduction as a means of multiplying the number of humans with souls. God could have just made more, the same way He made Adam and Eve. You start with what’s given and work back to the reason. Your argument is circular.
Well, He didn’t necessarily directly make Adam’s body. It was made from “the slime of the earth,” meaning pre-existent matter, which given what we know about evolution probably means pre-existing ANIMAL matter (ie, born from an unensouled hominid mother).
Still, as for “why” God decided human nature would be passed on through sexual procreation, you’ll have to ask Him. We can speculated about possible Trinitarian symbolism involved or about human beings being creatures essentially ordered towards the Other, but ultimately that’s just how He made human nature. It doesn’t need to be explained to show that original sin is scientifically possible.
You also don’t explain why, or how–if God makes each new soul–souls 3-and-beyond were tainted by the stain acquired by souls 1 and 2. Was God now constrained to make flawed souls in perpetuity by the disobedient act of his first two attempts?
He isn’t constrained; obviously, we believe in the Immaculate Conception. If He wanted to create a new soul in the state of grace (or even with the preternatural gifts of immortality, impassibility, etc) He could.
But He doesn’t, because that is how the drama is playing out. As the Head of the human race, Adam was given grace and the preternatural gifts (which are not naturally due to human nature) as gratuitous gifts for himself and his posterity.
When he fell (as God surely foresaw he would), this “justified,” in some sense, God not giving these to subsequent humans because, in Adam as the Head, humanity lost them. Though totally within His “rights,” it would perhaps have seemed unnecessarily cruel to just create us without these superadded gifts (ie, in need of redemption) without having at least given us an original “first chance” (even if it were inevitable that we would blow it.)
But it’s not really so much that original sin is a “flaw” as it is the purely natural state of man without God. Of course, it’s a vale of tears without Him and thus we see that human nature is intrinsically ordered beyond itself, is naturally ordered to the supernatural, which is a beautiful truth indeed.
See, your schema only works if the body DOES make the soul, rather than God making each one. Which is it?
http://www.trosch.org/the/ottintro.htm
I think this from Ott is very important for Catholics to read and understand regarding the notions of dogmatic development being so flippantly proposed here.
I really hate to play the “syllabus card,” but one should also remember which propositions were condemned by Lamentabili Sane:
# The Church’s interpretation of the Sacred Books is by no means to be rejected; nevertheless, it is subject to the more accurate judgment and correction of the exegetes.
# From the ecclesiastical judgments and censures passed against free and more scientific exegesis, one can conclude that the Faith the Church proposes contradicts history and that Catholic teaching cannot really be reconciled with the true origins of the Christian religion.
# Even by dogmatic definitions the Church’s magisterium cannot determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures.
# Since the Deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences.
# The exegete who constructs premises from which it follows that dogmas are historically false or doubtful is not to be reproved as long as he does not directly deny the dogmas themselves.
This last point seems to be especially important here.
Claim that you are a “post”modernist, but it sounds like your view of dogma and Scripture is a garden variety Modernist one in the strict sense. And that’s an accusation I think most trads throw around flippantly not knowing what it means. But the paradigm expressed here seems to be exactly what Pius X condemned.
One would also be wise to remember Vatican I’s anathema:
“If anybody says that by reason of the progress of science, a meaning must be given to dogmas of the Church other than that which the Church understood and understands them to have let him be anathema. (A.S. D 1818)”
I think some of us are forgetting that the truth is independent of what we, or anyone, actually believes. The truth is the truth, whether you are aware of it or not. If we believe Catholic teaching is the truth, then obviously anyone questioning it will arrive at the conclusions that the Church has already come to, right? So then what’s the risk?
It seems to me that anyone afraid of questioning Church teaching must, on some level, have some doubts as to whether it is true…
A friend in high school used to say that the genius of Catholicism was that they made you your own mind police. If you had a doubt that something you were taught was true, you were obliged to castigate yourself for doubting and either believe by force of will or simply tell yourself your doubt had to be wrong, and not think about it any more.
I have told this so many times I’ll shorten it so I don’t have to “hear” it again myself. One year my high school religion teacher taught something (I really don’t remember — probably about sex), and the class raised so many intelligent objections that he said he would get back to us with more information. Some time later he revisited the topic with additional information in hand, and the class brought up even more objections. His response was, “Well, I can’t explain it, but that is what you have to believe.”
I agree Dan. I believe we’re never going to find a box of Jesus’s bones, and as I said, science now actually heavily supports monogenism.
I merely was taking issue with this attitude:
“I expect, though, that if science does entirely rule out the idea that we all descended from Adam, the Church will change its teachings on human origins and original sin. Perhaps slowly and with much kicking and screaming, but a change based on the revelations of science nonetheless.”
Now, I know he said “if”…but the belief that this is even possible (the attitude of the whole original post on polygenism) is equivalent to Modernist propositions (condemned in the syllabus) such as: “Since the Deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences.”
So the position of the Church is that, in a fit of pique, God goes on making flawed souls–even though He doesn’t have to–and his reason is that His prototype, as designed and put into operation by Him, failed when subjected to an arbitrary and unnecessary temptation? Does that fairly sum it up?
No, I take issue with “flawed souls.” There is really nothing flawed about a soul in original sin except it lacks grace. But grace was only ever gratuitous and superadded to our nature ANYWAY. It means God used to give us a gift in conception that He now gives in baptism, and that we also lack certain other gifts (immortality, impassibility) that likewise were never part of our nature. But they will be restored to us (and in an even better form) when we rise in our glorified bodies.
I also wouldn’t say that the failure of Adam is God’s “reason” for continuing to make souls in that state. His reason is because, probably, that’s how He intended it to work out all along, so that the Felix Culpa could win us so great a Redeemer. From the human perspective though, He has to redeem us FROM something, so giving humanity a first chance followed by a Fall is more fitting than just not giving us grace in the first place, if only because (in analogizing original sin to personal sin) it puts the emphasis on our freedom and culpability.
Anyway, I want to apologize for giving a bad impression or offending if I did. Like I said, my post was mainly “aimed at” a couple friends who are losing their faith through such philosophical dabbling (though, in their case, it’s in Marx and Existentialism, not the natural sciences) and not at you specifically (though that’s what inspired it that night).
If you know what my blog is actually all about, it’s hardly right-wing or extremist. I mean, why else do I read and link to Vox Nova except that I LIKE its combination of progressive politics and tolerance with Catholicism in a way so refreshing compared to the crazy neocons and rad trads.
But. One does have to be Catholic. One cannot hold the heresy of modernism. If a moderate voice is going to triumph over the weird identity-politics and fascism of the new Fundamentalist Catholics…it is going to have to be orthodox. Unquestionably orthodox. Like Rosa Parks or St Thomas More, we have to be absolutely impeccable if our taking a stand is to have any effect. If there is any shadow of suspicion of heresy in our statements or attitudes, then our line of thought is simply going to find no place in the Church, like the irrelevant old previous generation of Catholic liberals.
No offense or bad impression taken, A Sinner. I appreciate the critique and challenge.
Does the concept of the “felix culpa” not make it explicit that the serpent and God were acting as a team and that there was no way that Eve could NOT have accepted the fruit, since that would have meant no role for the Redeemer in the future? If so, is not the concept of “Original Sin” just a boogeyman to scare TODAY’s children into the pews?
It seems to me that no matter which side one looks at the doctrine from, there is a having it two ways at once. Nothing is resolved; there is just a refusal to talk about it with all of its elements on the table simultaneously. There is always a lie of omission being told on one or another issue.
I wouldn’t say “acting as a team,” but God certainly let it happen and everything was arranged in Providence that way even though He knew that’s what would happen.
Our Free Will does not contradict God’s absolute sovereignty, because in His providence, He arranges the circumstances. Sure, in this circumstance, I freely choose A instead of B. But I’m in this circumstance because of providence. He likely could have arranged things in such a way that, in those other circumstances, I would have chosen B instead of A.
Even Augustine hints at a certain “inevitability” of the Fall, that God chose to create Adam and Eve foreseeing they would sin, rather than Jack and Jill foreseeing they wouldn’t. That it was all sort of “intended” or planned that way from the start. It is a drama in that sense. But that doesn’t make it a farce. Obviously, it is all utterly real.
Your argument seems to be that you have a certain concept of “God” and think that such a Being (if He existed) wouldn’t act a certain way (and what does that even mean? Probably nothing more than that YOU wouldn’t act that way if you were such a Being). And therefore, you conclude there is no such Being because the world isn’t how you’d imagine such a Being making it (ie, not how you’d make the world if you were God). Well, thank God you aren’t God!
That He (an infinite and omniscient Being) hasn’t acted how you (a mortal with finite knowledge) would “expect” Him to act…is no argument against His existence nor our Revealed religion.
I think we need to understand the nature of the soul before we can solve the original sin problem to satisfaction. We’re a long ways off from that.
Seems to me that original sin is a convenient explanation for the duality we see between our desires and our ability (or inability) to choose the good, even though we may consciously want it. How it comes about or what its origins are mysterious.
All that you say is true, Dan, so long as it is understood that “a convenient explanation” is no more than just that; i.e. one plausible metaphor, or analogy, for something that is only very incompletely understood.
I happen to believe that the myth of Eden is an attempt to depict the genesis of human self-consciousness and its consequences. I don’t think that it is about “sin” at all.
A Sinner I think this is somewhat naive and wishful thinking on your part when you (along with half the Catholic blog sphere) declare the irrelevance of the previous generation of Catholic liberals.
Even the fact that everybody and his/her brother freely engages in the kind of discussion we have in the catholic blogshere is a rather ‘progressive’ concept. Last I checked the self declared catholic traditionalist and orthodox are not exactly waiting breathlessly ( obedient) for Rome to utter this or that – no they are all unbelievable opinionated and full of attitude. Dare the Pope who says something that they do not appreciate. Take JPII’s laudable attempts at interfaith dialogue for example.
Just go over to Fr. Z’s outfit – did you ever notice how important the good man takes himself?
This liberal finds it rather amusing for example to see the picture of the good father lording over the red and black at about twice the size of that of the Pope.