3: The Nature of Truth

This is the third of five chapter in HUMANÆ DESIDERIÆ, a philosophical inquiry into human longing. In the first chapter we looked at what is real, and in the second chapter we investigated how our desires fit into that reality. This led us to the idea of faith. In this chapter we shall look further into faith, and the nature of truth.

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At the end of the last chapter, we addressed the argument that faith is a positivistic view of life. Another argument that is often made against faith is that it is used to avoid truth, specifically the types of truth which can be factually documented, and that faith is used to make leaps across gulfs in knowledge which further study might be able to bridge. Again, one hears also the objection of positivism, that faith allows one to establish the conclusion they are hoping for, and then declare that faith guided them to that “truth” even in the face of hard evidence against it.

Most often, such objections are raised when either real truth, or real faith has already been compromised. At their pinnacle of meaning, truth and faith must go hand in hand. In religion, faith is to truth, what theory is to experiment in science. We can have one of two opinions on truth. Either it is something within the ability of human thought and speculation to completely and fully unravel. Or it is something which we are incapable of ever knowing completely, however close we think we may come. If we hold the latter view, then faith must be part of the equation. Faith is not a substitute for truth, or a bandage we put on truth, but the glue that holds truth together. If one uses their idea of faith to stubbornly hold onto the conclusion they hoped for, then their faith is not real. It is no better than opinion. Opinions should no more be called faith than they should be called true.

The search for truth has inspired and frustrated humanity since history began. Philosophy has grown and changed through the ages, but the questions are the same as they have always been. How are we to know what is true? The clue is in our desires: those transcendental longings which point us beyond our own life. And this, as pointed out at the end of the previous chapter, brings us back to faith. Faith is the beginning of our being able to experience the satisfaction of our desires, including, our desire for truth. This desire, this quest for truth is one of those inexplicable tendencies of humanity which must make sense, must have an answer, and must be treated every bit as real as our flesh and bones. If we listen to our desires, listen to our faith, the truth of our existence becomes plain. Returning to the question of what is real, to each of us, we ourselves are the most real and the best arbiter of truth. To this point, St. Augustine admonishes the philosophers “not to wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within humanity dwells the truth.” (De Vera Religione, 39)

In the current culture of the world, the search for truth has become less of a virtuous quest and more of a personal experience, in which truth for one person may not be truth for another. Such a thing as absolute truth is no longer sought, and often not even considered possible. What’s more, these modern philosophers label those who make claims of absolute truth as intolerant, self-righteous, and even downright naïve. The questions of philosophy are no different than the questions grappled over by the ancient philosophers of Greece, but while Plato and Aristotle sought answers (often unsuccessfully) today’s philosophy considers the questions themselves as the beauty of the philosophical practice. The questions are more revered than the answers. Holding to this pattern, when a viable answer is proposed, it is dismissed as unknowable or unproveable. The problem with this is that by denying the possibility of truthful answers, the questions themselves become meaningless, and the entire practice of philosophy is rendered useless.

Speaking of philosophy, Aristotle says “Knowledge and understanding have always something else as their object, and themselves are only the way. Further, if thinking and being thought are different, in respect of which does goodness belong to thought?” (Metaphysics, 1076)

The focus on questions rather than answers, on thinking rather than being thought, is a new pattern for philosophy. When Christianity sprang upon the world, it engaged in dialogue with philosophy. When the Apostle Paul went to Athens he argued for the Christian answer to the questions of the Epicureans and Stoics (Acts 17:18). St. Augustine hammered out Christian dogma from a reason steeped in Greek and Roman thought. St. Thomas Aquinas reinvented the teachings of Aristotle from a perspective of Christianity, simultaneously engaging in dialogue with the great thinkers of Judaism and Islam, who had at the time far surpassed the Christian teachers in knowledge of philosophy and science. Christianity gained strong footing in the medieval world because it offered an answer to the questions which had troubled humanity from the beginning of time. In all these eras, the Christian fathers joined scientists on the cusp of knowledge, eagerly looking to unlock the secrets of the world as clues toward understanding the language of God. There was never a dispute between the ideas of philosophy and reason. Indeed, they were considered indispensable to each other, and faith (religion) was tightly woven between.

But the Age of Enlightenment seemed to change all of that. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the three practices gradually drifted apart until now, they are considered wholly independent fields of study. Science no longer has much use for philosophy, and philosophy certainly has no use for faith. In response, Christians try to prove all aspects of their faith with science and reason, while scientists fight to disprove it. Both reactions are silly and futile. Yet the world no longer has a place for a student of all three fields. Their value, as relating to the others, is vehemently denied.

How did this come about, and why? That is a difficult question. Part of it comes with the advancement in learning which occurred during the Renaissance. As humans began to think they could find all the answers through science, they squeezed out the responsibility that comes from religion. Yet while scientific knowledge has made huge strides toward understanding our world, five centuries have not been enough time to answer the key questions of existence. But instead of returning to religion as the giver of those answers, modern philosophy embraces something of an agnostic nihilism, preferring to believe that nothing can be known, rather than taking an answer that brings with it responsibility.

This being said, much of the blame also rests with the Church. Rather than embracing scientific knowledge as it had done in the past, during the Renaissance the church stifled it. Continually, over the last half millennium, as one scientist after another explains a new facet to the workings of the universe, the Church blindly declares the discoveries to be false. The fear comes from the attempt by humanism to use new scientific discoveries to explain away the need for a creator. Rather than addressing this challenge head on, the Church takes its aim at science. The Church should eagerly support the work of science, yearning for greater knowledge of our creator. The search for truth is always a worthy pursuit, and one which the Christian, the philosopher, and the scientist should be happy to share.

But instead, in the face of insurmountable scientific evidence, many Christians refuse to acknowledge the facts of science, clinging to an idea of the world which was born in the middle ages and is not even based on scripture. Ironically, it is most closely related to the scientific knowledge of the time. Christians have become a laughing stock for what they perceive as faith, when instead it is ignorance. Because of their bravado in linking their ignorance to their religion, the world now also perceives this as faith, and this perception has become a detriment both to faith and, cripplingly, to philosophy.

Just as many Christians refuse to acknowledge the answers which science gives to their questions, so today’s philosophers ignore the answers provided by religion. What is it about the modern thinker that allows him to ask “What does it mean?” without expecting or even legitimately desiring an answer? If there were no answer to such a question it would cast doubt on whether our very existence was real. Just as humanity’s transcendental desires, so deeply rooted in our make-up, must be considered real, so too must our quest for truth be considered real.

In his encyclical letter on faith and reason, Pope John Paul II considered it “unthinkable that a search so deeply rooted in human nature would be completely vain and useless. The capacity to search for truth and to pose questions itself implies the rudiments of a response. Human beings would not even begin to search for something of which they knew nothing or which they thought was wholly beyond them. Only the sense that they can arrive at an answer leads them to take the first step.” (Fides et Ratio, 29) In the same way that scientists who believe a theory are not swayed by set-back in experimentation, so philosophers must hold steadily to their search for truth.

Our search for truth is actually tied into our life-long desires. These human longings cannot be satisfactorily explained unless they point to something real. Thus I would argue that absolute truth is real, and whether or not the complete realm of it can be known by the human mind, there are aspects of it which can be known and which would be foolish to deny. Many of these facets of absolute truth are proven to us by science and reason, yet many more are given to us by faith.

Without a perception of truth, philosophy loses its traction. Without employing the wisdom of philosophy and faith, the truth of science will be incomplete. And without acknowledging the accomplishments of science and philosophy, the truth of faith will be naïve. The church should lead the way by admitting its past failures in the arena of truth and embracing modern science as the paint brush of God. The church has attempted to reconcile these fields, even if thus far, only half-heartedly. Notably at the First Vatican Council in 1869, when the church attempted both to address current modernist challenges and heal some of the wounds of the reformation. The Cardinals addressed the union of faith and reason. “Even if faith is superior to reason,” they wrote, “there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason. This God could not deny himself, nor could the truth ever contradict the truth.” (Vatican I, Dei Filius IV) If reconciliation can be made between the three fields–science, philosophy and faith–each will be benefited, and the world will become a much wiser place.

2: Human Desire

This is the second of five chapter in HUMANÆ DESIDERIÆ, a philosophical inquiry into the true nature of human longing.

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We have established that humanity’s longing for something more must be treated as real. One could go so far as to argue that it is the defining characteristic of our race. Let us take a moment to explore the nature of this longing.

We have an insatiable desire for more—more money, more things, more joy, more knowledge, more love, more life. It is not in human nature to ever be entirely content. No matter how much anyone has, they want more. This tendency should not only be viewed on the negative side of the spectrum. Certainly, greed is a terrible thing which causes great evil, but the desire for more can also lead people to greater love, greater goodness, greater compassion, etc. Ultimately, this human desire is built into each and every one of us. It is up to us whether we will turn it to good or to ill. The main similarity we find in all our longings is that we are never content. Our greatest longings, even in finding intermediate satiation, are never fully satisfied. We soon discover that the answers to our desires cannot be found in this life. This can lead us to one of two courses. We can give up, either in despair or a contented cynicism, or we can look to an answer beyond this life, beyond this present perception of reality.

In humanity’s most acute desire, which is love, we see the proof that the latter answer is not in vain. Countless men and women, both religious and completely unreligious, have treated love as more important than life. A parent will eagerly give his or her life to save their child. A soldier will stand to the death to protect his homeland. Centuries of tragic drama has glorified the ideal of love which transcends death. These examples have nothing to do with a religious belief in an after-life, but speak of the reality that to forsake love is worse by far than death. Yet what love, however precious, has ever given a full, unwanting contentment? This desire, which promises our greatest reward, still more often than not fails to satisfy. Yet it is through love that we get our closest glimpse at that realm to which all our desires point—a realm which waits beyond this life.

Surely, the vast majority of our desires are ultimately hopeless. Our childhood dreams seldom come true, the experiences we lust after often give no reward, even our greatest passions often leave us discontented. Those of us who seemingly mount the greatest heights are the least content. If this life cannot fulfill these longings, shouldn’t we have learned to give them up by now? Would not a few generations have been enough to set us on a more practical course: following our animal friends on a quest for the very achievable rewards of survival, sustenance, pleasure and comfort? Yet instead we spurn such logical rewards on a quest for more abstract things such as glory, love and righteousness. These abstractions we value more than life itself. What fool-hardy beings we have become! Are we really the most intelligent animal? If this life is all there is, and our desires are only our imagination, our abstract goals of virtue and love nothing but a wild misplacement of value, then we have nothing to brag about to the practical ant, whose life is surely better spent than ours. Our divine longing, and by divine I am simply referring to that which is beyond this life, is what separates us from the animals. If it is a false longing, then it is a detriment, a theatre in which the animals’ practicality has tooled them better for their existence than we.

Why would such a desire, which without an answer would be nothing but misery, be written into our very natures? Is it a cruel trick of evolution that humanity developed into someone who could long for something they could never have? Are we so utterly stupid that we willingly give up life for a hope which does not exist, for an ideal of love which is nothing but a joke? Does the beautiful symmetry of nature, while containing the answers to all the mysteries of physics, laugh at the desire which motivated us to unravel those laws? Does physical symmetry stop short of encompassing the laws of the human soul? Human beings are smart. Our intuitions are often accurate. Our desires are customarily for things tangible and real. Could we have gotten this one thing so wrong? Could we be so stupid that three quarters or more of our race believe an unfounded myth?

What cruelty it would be if love is only a thing of this short life. That our great hope, which we never fully grasp in this life, and which for some, eludes them altogether, could be only a phantom myth—this would be the cruelest world imaginable. Nor would it be consistent with the world we know, which despite its shortcomings has given us wonder, beauty, pleasure, excitement, life. How then, could its’ greatest gift—love, which we value more than our life and all the wonders of the world, be a joke?

Human evolution has consistently brought us to higher points of being, whether it is in our physical makeup—such as the development of locking knees that permitted us to walk upright, or the development of opposable thumbs, allowing us to grasp tools—or through our increasing mental capacity, which eventually allowed us to reason and plan. We have not taken any major visible steps backward in evolution. The homo sapien has advanced to greater ability and maturity throughout our existence. At some juncture in this development, a transition occurred, an evolutionary step, “mutation” if you must, which was just as dramatic as the development in knee or thumb. This step was the advent of our longing for such things as virtue, goodness and love—desires which found no acceptable answer in the human experience, but for which we tirelessly strive. Why would this tendency to long for something outside of this life have developed in us and survived through the millennia? We see no such desire in animals; it is a strictly human tendency.

Evolution does not work that way. If a trait develops which is not beneficial to the species, it is weeded out. Such a universal human tendency would not have been able to spread throughout our race unless there was some validity to it. And back to the idea of symmetry—if all the scientific laws are somehow interconnected, in a manner which shows the necessity of each and every observed behavior, then could such symmetry not be applied to humanity? We can see how well the systems within our body work: our cells and organs, circulatory and nervous systems. It makes sense to suppose that we also contain such symmetrical operations, and if so, then our desires and longings, which guide so many of our actions, must be included in the equation.

Those who wish to reason away from belief in any deity should approach their rejection of God along with a rejection for any desire which transcends this life, including love, fame, virtue, honor, and even the innocent dreams of childhood. For when we believe in God we are simply believing in a love which answers the longing that earthly love has failed. God has promised us the satisfaction of each of our abstract desires. If someone wishes to refute the existence of God, they should first refute the validity of humanity’s innate, transcendental longing, which even the atheist shares.

What despair, if failed earthly love, failed earthly glory, and hollow earthly pleasure are all to which our longings take us! All the accomplishments of humanity would be in vain. We would have been better off pursuing animalistic desires of survival and comfort.

In the first chapter we discussed the idea of reality, stating that any philosophy or theology must reference reality if it is to be considered valid. Surely this transcendental desire must either be the ultimate mirage, a big joke of the human mind, or else be the most real thing of all our experiences, for if there is indeed another existence which follows this one, then that one must be more real even than this. Thus does the Apostle state: “what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” (II Corin. 4:18) There can be no in between. Either our transcendental desires are a figment of our collective imaginations, an evolutionary “blip” which destines a terrible human misconception, and should all be discarded, or else it points toward something true—something so real it surpasses even the visible reality of our world.

Yes, love is real. And it does transcend death. Our lifelong hope, which lives through the worst of our hardships, will not be in vain.

Once we have placed our belief in that for which we hope, even if it is something not immediately perceptible, and make the claim that this hope is real, we have made a profession of faith. We cannot show through logical discourse that our desires find their answer in a realm beyond this life, but through the logic I have laid out, we begin to see that it is probable, and that is the point at which we must take a “leap of faith.” Faith is not a cliché of religion, but simply the assurance that love and life are transcendental, that the intrinsic longing of human nature is not void, but has an answer which waits for us in another life. Finally, faith is the patience to wait for that answer.

The beauty of faith is that it allows us to enjoy the desires which otherwise would be a drudgery. Without faith our desires lead us to the window through which we strain to behold the object of our longing, and despair that we cannot. Our side of the window is a prison. But faith brings us to the window with eyes eager to behold the promised reward. Our desires, both exercised and suppressed, give us a taste of the goodness which awaits us. Faith provides a sampling of the transcendental realm for which we long. Faith is already the beginning of the experience of the afterlife. (Catech. 163)

There are two commonly used definitions of faith which should be clarified. In a certain context, the word “faith” is used almost in exchange with the word “religion.” When someone speaks of their faith, they may simply mean the particular religion they have chosen to follow. But this is not how I am using the word. By faith I mean the conscious and trusting belief in things not seen or proven. Faith is not only a function of religion, but is likewise a necessary tool of science. Scientists must have faith in a theory until experimentation can prove the expected results. As theoretical physics reaches further and further into unknown arenas of space and time, faith becomes more vital in giving theories weight. There is a horizon to our current scientific ability, limiting how far, how small, and how short of measurements in spacetime we can probe, yet through what we have been able to observe, we make confident predictions about the realms beyond. This is faith as used in science.

Faith gives us confidence in our hopes and dreams. It is our comfort for the desires which are never fulfilled in this life, and allows us to believe even when no hope can be gleaned from commonly observable facts. Finally, faith leads us to an assurance in absolute truth, even pertaining to realms beyond our ability to see. Facts on their own will always lead us into frustration when seeking truth, but faith, based on fact can transcend those facts and guide us to truth.

It has been argued that faith, as presented in religion, is a positivistic approach to life—that in going beyond what can be proven, and having hopeful faith in a benevolent creator and a life based on love, we have decided what we want to believe and then formed our arguments accordingly. There is an aspect of truth to this accusation, and while not denying it, I also wish to embrace it. For the God of the Christian is a God who is good beyond our imagination. If we betake to believe in such a God at all, we have already expressed a stance of positivism, viz., having faith because we want to believe. Yet I would turn back the argument upon those who say there is no God because it cannot be proven. For it equally cannot be proven that there is no creator. Just as the Christian believes because they want a God of love, so the atheist rejects God because they want to believe in humanity’s glory. The atheist takes just as positivistic a stance as the theist. Nobody will ever believe something they do not want to believe in. Inquiry and evidence can always be arranged to fit the opinion.

But faith must go beyond what can be known through inquiry. Even science employs faith when speaking in theory, antecedent to experiment. Thus does Cardinal Newman identify faith as “an act of the intellect, opening a way for inquiry, comparison and inference, that is, for science in religion.” (Development of Christian Doctrine. Chap. VII, 1, 4). Even St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest of all theologians in his arguments for God’s existence and law, makes no apology for supplementing inquiry with faith in speaking of the divine. “It is necessary for man to receive as articles of faith not only the things which are above reason, but even those that for their certainty may be known by reason. For human reason is very deficient in things divine.” (Summa Theologiæ).

We have seen that the rules of nature and evolution support the idea that our hope and longing must be considered real. Thus, that our transcendental desire has led us to have faith in a love greater than that which we now know, should not be cause for shame. Rather, we should embrace faith as the promise of our desire.

1: Perception & Reality

This is the first of five chapter in HUMANÆ DESIDERIÆ, a philosophical inquiry into the true nature of human longing. I will post one chapter each Tuesday for the next five weeks.

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Life is unbelievable. Every detail of existence, when probed, seems beyond comprehension, too exotic to take seriously, too beautiful to really believe. Yet it is here. We are. This incredible fact demands to be pondered, and on it, humanity has pondered throughout its history. Life is not intuitive. While some are satisfied to live their lives without asking why or how, the philosophers among us cannot let these questions rest.

Humanity is always on a quest for greater knowledge, our desire spurred by these most basic questions: Who are we? Why are we here? What does it mean? Unfortunately, as our knowledge continues to grow, so do our questions. This can be seen so clearly in the scientific fields, where the answer to one question, sometimes thought to be the final path to these basic questions, opens up not only new questions, but new fields of science. This is absolutely clear when one reviews the history of physics in the twentieth and early twenty-first century, as physicists seek a “final theory,” the so-called “theory of everything,” which would be the Holy Grail of scientific discovery. Albert Einstein spent the last thirty years of his life unsuccessfully seeking this unified theory, and dozens of the world’s top physicists have continued his search.

Humanity, with our infinite questions, is forever shackled by our finite knowledge. The very finite idea of a “theory of everything” is a comfort to us, in that it cases our questions in a graspable goal. Yet by making the answer finite, we have limited it. Thus, if our epistemological history has taught us anything, it is the absurdity of the idea of a “final theory,” after which there will be no more questions. I certainly share the hope of modern physicists that one day (and soon!) we will find a way to explain in one theory, the four forces of nature, and to unite the concepts of general relativity with quantum mechanics—this is usually what is meant by the “theory of everything.” But this answer will by no means end our questions. I would warrant to guess that such an answer will burst open an entirely new field of physics, replete with a host of new paths of inquiry and theory, just as Max Planck, by “answering” the question of heat waves, opened up the field of quantum mechanics, with more questions than he could ever have imagined.

Our questioning will never end. The more answers we find, the more questions we will ask. Karl Rahner compares knowledge to “a small island in a vast sea that has not been traveled. It is a floating island, and it might be more familiar to us than the sea, but ultimately it is borne by the sea and only because it is can we be borne by it.” The sea he calls mystery. (Foundations of Christian Faith. Into: 3) Any “theory of everything” may turn out only to be valid for everything on the island.

We are now brought to the point of asking what is, and is not, real. Indeed, this is where our inquiry must begin. As philosophers, we often lose touch with everyday reality. If a philosophy stretches out of the realm of human experience and thought, it becomes essentially a philosophy of nothing. Nor are scientists free from this accusation, much as they may insist that they deal only with the truly real. But as theoretical physics attempts to probe reality on a smaller and smaller scale, and things suddenly seem to become very bizarre, the question must be asked, as some top physicists even have, whether distance scales that small even can be considered to exist. Ultimately, philosophy, science, and certainly religion, must provide answers to the questions of everyday life (relationships, health of one’s body and soul, the structure and well-being of the world, etc.) if they are to be considered at all valid. Sometimes, in all three of these fields, the utter depths must be probed in order to gain an understand of reality. I am hardly one to shy away from probing to the depths. Yet it is when we have probed to the point that we are no longer seeking to understand reality, but a strange new theoretical world of our own creation, when we know we have gone too far. And so at each point of our inquiry, we should be able to ask whether it concerns what is truly real; if we cannot honestly answer “yes,” then it is time to redirect our course. Philosophy must keep itself firmly pointed toward reality.

Philosophy is natural, and necessary to us. A philosopher cannot bear to live without inquiry, and is perpetually fascinated and tormented by the most basic questions of existence: Who are we? Why are we here? What does it mean? Yet an equal or greater number of those who share the human condition feel no need to inquire into these questions. Oftentimes the philosophers (with whom I include any who seek answers to the questions above) wonder and marvel at what they consider the simple thought of the masses. But this simplicity, which is more in touch with reality than we are, is not only valid. There is truly a majesty to those who do not inquire. Theirs is the truth, in that they live what is real without the burden of needing to probe its depths. They already understand.

What is real? At what juncture does science or philosophy usher us round a corner where reality is no more? Obviously, this could be a hotly contested question. Some would argue that it is only the depths which are real, and what we see, the everyday life we perceive, is the mirage. Some theologians claim that the heavenly, blessed life to which we are aspiring is reality, and our lives on earth are nothing but a stage on which our greater destinies are played. This existence, they say, has meaning only in context with the next.

There is an old adage that says, “Perception is Reality.” And there is vital truth to this phrase. The depths of existence have meaning only in the context of what we perceive. In the current study, reality shall be treated as that which we perceive. As science breaks the world down into ever minuter fractions, the ingredients of the world only make sense as applied to the whole. Similarly, religion makes sense only in regard to the presently perceived reality. The depths of inquiry must be understood in their context of seeking answers to the questions we face in every day life.

Of all that is real, most real of all is the relationships we have with others who share this existence. Based on the premise that perception is reality, my relationships prove my own existence. Without others who perceive me, I run the risk of becoming confused by my own perceptions, where dream and reality become unclear. But the attention of others validates my own perceptions.

The entire world and life itself is a miracle. But greatest of all is the miracle of love: that human hearts may bond in companionship and bliss. If anything should be treated as real, it is this. Even the reality of self is dulled without shared human contact. Without another to justify my place, I would begin to doubt my own reality. All religion, and all science only make sense in the context of the bonding human hearts, what I shall refer to hereafter as community. The assurance of a loving smile, or the comfort of a warm embrace, are the truest of the human experiences. It is the human bond that makes life worth living, assuring us that this is not a dream, or a mirage, but the greatest reality imaginable. Love is real, based on our perceptions and interactions with one another. If it is real at all, then it must be treated as such, both with in philosophy and science.

Now in regards to religion, since indeed that is the primary focus of this exploration. Some may have already questioned my statement that religion makes sense only in regard to the present perception. But think of the full spectrum of human perception, including and beyond that of community. It does not only involve flesh and blood, matter, and the senses. It also involves emotions such as hope, fear, anger, love. All of these feelings are imminently real, and religion addresses them in ways that science cannot. Even if science identifies a chemical reaction in your brain which causes love, how real is that based on our present definition. It is a clue as to the inner workings of reality, but the love you feel is already real based on your perception. Science may be able to tell you how, but it cannot tell you why.

Let us focus on the emotion of hope. Humanity has a very real longing for meaning, for something which is more powerful than this present life. At first sight, human existence looks to be completely meaningless. If suffering behaves randomly, as it appears to, if our desires can find no satisfactory gratification, and if we have no hope for a great equalizing afterlife, then the most basic questions of the meaning of life grovel for answers. (John Paul II: Fides et Ratio. 26) But instead, hope drives us in almost everything we do. If we believe in a religion, it drives us to adhere to sometimes uncomfortable creeds. If we do not believe in a religion, it haunts us as a dark unknown. Morality trumps selfishness in human behavior exclusively due to this longing, which makes us fear the consequences of ill behavior. Based on our definition of reality, hope, along with love, must be considered real.

We have looked briefly at the idea in science of a “final theory” or a “theory of everything.” This search has arisen out of a grand symmetry which has been observed in the universe. It has not yet been proven that the world is physically symmetric, but most physicists agree that there is truth to the idea that all the laws of nature are somehow interconnected, and that all the forces of nature work together in a way that essentially has to work. Albert Einstein saw in the universe the necessity of logical simplicity, such that he doubted God could have made the universe in any other way than what it is. Any study of science will eventually convince the student that the universe has an incredibly grand order. Everything that we perceive as real works together in an intricate framework that is beautiful beyond anything we could imagine.

How does this fit into the concepts of hope and love, along with our human longing for meaning and something beyond this present? Well, as these emotions are indeed real, if there is a physical symmetry to the universe, then these emotions, must fit into that symmetry. An empty answer to the desire of humanity would be inconsistent with the beauty, order and elegance of the universe. Whether we see emotions as something contained in a soul separate in essence from the human body, or as something triggered by chemical reactions in the brain, these feelings are as real as the matter which makes up our bodies. The same scientific and philosophical laws should apply to both physical and emotional reality. And if emotions of the heart and soul can be combined into this physical symmetry which science is striving to prove, then the questions of humanity must necessarily point to an answer which is more than an illusion, ergo, an answer which is real.

Can that answer be given by what we call God? If so, then God must also be real, not in an intangible sense, as a distant supremity outside this universe, but real by our present definition. God must be so close that we can touch him, feel him, and interact with him in a manner consistent with the reality we perceive.

Let me summarize the preceding argument. If our perception is indeed reality, as opposed to being an illusion shone by something entirely else, then our emotions must be treated as equally real, including the emotion of hope, which is the human longing for something which transcends this perceived reality. Further, if science can succeed to show that the laws of the universe are physical symmetric, than the human longing must be included in this symmetry, necessitating an answer which is greater than nothing.

Veneration of the Cross

This Good Friday, I want to wish you the love of God which is proven to an astonishing degree this day. While Christmas and Easter celebrate Jesus’ glorious incarnation and resurrection, it is on Good Friday that we really see what kind of God we worship–a God who suffered unimaginable pain and torture for us.

Singing in the St. James Cathedral choir during the veneration of the cross, I am always struck this day by what the crucifixion means. We so often complain about the strees and suffering of our lives, or ask questions such as “Why does God allow such horrible things to happen in our world?” The cross does not answer all those questions, but it certainly shows that Jesus can empathize with our suffering, for he has faced suffering much worse than our own. Whenever we feel weighed down by our pain, depression or loneliness, we can remember that Jesus was betrayed and abandoned by his friends, ridiculed, laughed at, and then executed. He can understand everything we suffer, because he has endured it as well.

On Good Friday we reflect more deeply on the words from our creed “Crucifixus etiam pro nobis.” What this phrase says is not just that Christ died for us, but that Christ is still dying for us. Christ’s love for us is so great that our suffering is his suffering, our pain is his pain, and our death is his death. When we venerate the cross on Good Friday we acknowledge our appreciation for what Christ did and continues to do for us.

On Easter we celebrate Christ’s glory, but it is on Good Friday that Christ proves his remarkable love.

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This reflection appeared in the March issue of In Your Midst, the St. James Cathedral newsletter.

Stand Up and Follow Christ

The following is a reprint of my article published in the March/April edition of the Social Justice Review. http://www.socialjusticereview.org. Vol 98, St. Louis, MO.

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Is the church in crisis? That is what the secular media would have us believe as it daily reminds us of our terrible scandals and labels us as intolerant, out of date, and morally hypocritical. Reformists within the church echo a similar cry, claiming that we are out of step with the world we live in and, while not calling for us to sacrifice our moral standing, wish for the church to embrace more of contemporary cultural norms. Yet the conservatives of the church, led by the Pope himself, view this attempted embrace of modernity and culture as the very root of the crisis.

The reality of living as a Christian in today’s world is an unending challenge. This culture, and my young generation, prides itself in its tolerance for all lifestyles and all creeds, but has NO tolerance for one which claims to be true. Its only intolerance is for what it considers to be intolerant—for acceptance of natural law and our common moral tradition. In many ways, the church is now attempting to meet this challenge, opening itself up as a more truly “catholic” place.

I have heard claims, both from the secular media, and from within the church, that if the church does not begin to spread a wider umbrella of tolerant acceptance, it will render itself an insignificant vestige of the past. Well, the church does accept everyone, but it does not accept actions which are against its foundational law. Once it does, then the church will become insignificant. If the church offers nothing that is different from the modern world, then what is its draw? What is its reason for existing? The danger in this acceptance, admirable as it is, would be to lose sight of our claim of truth: Jesus is the Son of God, and we serve him through works of love and charity. If we bow to contemporary culture to the point at which we no longer make this claim, then we will have lost the essence of Christianity. Christianity offers a truth that must stand separate from the world. If it stops being separate, it will stop being true.

The most valued moral in today’s world is called freedom. Freedom is good, but if freedom becomes religion, we enter a dangerous place wherein morality becomes relative to the individual. Any moral code that attempts to limit the individual’s freedom is considered intolerant. We, as a culture, have become so besotted with the idea of freedom that truth and morality are thought to be only a personal judgement. People behave in depraved and sinful ways, claiming it is their “right” and that they have the “freedom” to do whatever makes them happy. But in reality, the freedom of an individual within a society cannot be separated from the freedom of others. The alternative is a primitive chaos, where the strong exercise their freedom at the expense of the weak. Humanity’s freedom must be a shared freedom. Pope Benedict XVI says that freedom must be linked “to a yardstick of truth,” and that individual freedoms, untethered by the order of the natural law, merely cancel each other out: the absence of law is the absence of freedom. (J. Card. Ratzinger: Communio 23, 1996.) Christianity offers us this law, which to modern culture may appear as a limitation to freedom, but whose goal is a shared freedom of all, strong and weak, rich and poor, for the betterment of the human race as a whole.

What does Christianity have to say about freedom? It remains mute. Christianity offers no freedom, only sacrifice. Jesus commands the slave to work diligently for his master, and the captive nation of Israel to submit to the rule of Rome. These are hardly the values of modern culture!

How then can the church balance the competing pressures of the culture of tolerance, and the “religion of freedom” with what we believe is true? We should be tolerant to other lifestyles, even other religions, but not to a point where we give up our Christian morality–the law which provides this shared freedom. Once we come to that point, we do a disservice both to ourselves, and to those from this modern world who have sought the church as a haven of love. The moral principal of Christianity may be the cause of its rift with the modern world, but it is precisely that which keeps the church relevant in today’s world.

What about the moral shortcomings of both church leaders and the church itself, which the secular world is constantly reminding us about, both with our current scandals and our history of violence and persecution? How dare we preach morality? The short answer is that if we were not capable of sinning, we would not need a savior at all. The continuation of the Catholic Church, even through all its errors is the proof of God’s grace. Does the fact that we are sinners make us hypocrites for condemning sin?

As culture (and the church) were revolutionized in the 1960s, the cult of “freedom” was becoming the way of a new generation. Popular culture no longer valued sacrifice and vocation, but rather an unfettered individualism. As a result, the seminaries became empty, and so many of the priests who remained fell into a pattern of abuse. Due to this changed cultural value set, the life of a priest over the last forty years, particularly in America and Europe, has arguably been harder than at any other time in history. But a generation has now past since Vatican II and there is a new crop of Catholics ready to propel the church forward.

Now back to the challenges of the Christian in today’s world. When I tell people I am Catholic, they seem to find it “quaint,” but their assumptions and their judgements are in place and they have no interest in hearing about the hope and love which is my faith. They assume that I must be intolerant, judgmental and sexist. Catholics are the butt of jokes, rather than the acknowledge bearers of truth. The reaction of many Catholics seems to be to retreat into the safety of the mass and individual prayer. Yet this is the time to be proud of our faith. The world thinks it has us in retreat, that we are the rear-guard defenders of a fading, archaic religion.

Christianity is under a new kind of persecution. We are not being burned at the stake, or thrown to the lions, as Christians were persecuted in the past. But we are under an ideological persecution today which is equally strong and potentially more dangerous. The world is not interested in the message of Jesus, and does not want us to speak it, lest we should infringe upon their freedom with a message of sacrifice. This persecution threatens to become more and more acute as not only freedoms, but tolerance of freedom begins to be legislated. If the law requires what Christian morals do not allow, what choice has the church but to stand firm? Already, such political pressure has endangered the tax-exempt status of some Christian charitable organizations, and these are only the beginnings of what we will face if we stand by our morals as the world changes. The consequences could be dire, threatening the basic structure of the church, both ideologically and financially. Loss of tax exempt status, coupled with potential lawsuits could bankrupt the church. Current culture, while priding itself on tolerance and freedom, has the capacity to threaten this religion simply because it does make a claim of truth and absolute morality.

The future may be grim, but should we be surprised? Jesus painted a grim picture for his followers. What hope could they take from his words when he said, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him.” (Matthew 17: 22,23) All is not roses in following Christ. The time may soon come when the church as a whole must take up its cross and follow. But surely, only in persecution can the church find the unity it has lost. This challenge of modern culture against the church’s very foundation may indeed be God’s purpose to bring the varying schisms within his flock back into the same fold. Under persecution we will be united. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” (Matthew 5:10,11).

Now more than ever is the time to take pride in our faith. Our persecution, ideological now instead of physical, was promised to us just as surely as our joy. Keep on proclaiming our hope, despite the pressures against it, for the world’s religion of freedom offers no such hope. “If you suffer as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name.” (1 Peter 4:16). We have a great hope: that death will bring us to a life of everlasting beauty and love. This promise comes only through sacrifice, but as Christians we believe the sacrifice, even if it be death on a cross, is worth the reward. This hope, held even through suffering, is the light that will show the world the truth of our words.

So rejoice when the world laughs at you. Rejoice, young men, when the world scorns you for taking the vows of the priesthood. God did not call us to seek freedom, pleasure, and personal fulfillment, but to minister to his flock, which is the poor and lowly of the world. If we continue to live with love, even through persecution, we will prove the truth of Christ.

This truth, the confidence of the Holy Spirit, will allow us to take pride in our faith even through the worst persecution the world can muster against us. When the Spirit of Truth came upon the disciples at Pentecost they went pouring out into the streets, proclaiming their joy, and only stopped proclaiming it when they were killed! If the hope of Christianity is worth proclaiming, even in the face of death, why not proclaim it now when only faced with the scorn of our peers. How best is it proclaimed? Not through words alone, but through acts of love, charity, and compassion. These are the demands of Christ, that we love our neighbor as ourselves, and give to those in need. If the world sees us doing this, they will no longer dare to call us hypocrites. If we call ourselves Christians but do not aid those in need, then the world can rightly call us hypocrites. “Faith by itself, if it has no works is dead. But… by my works I will show you my faith.” (James 2:17,18). No matter what the world does to us, if we continue to love, we prove our faith.

So be proud to be a Christian. Be proud to proclaim your hope to the world even if they call you a fool. Be proud to follow the way of Jesus, which is the way of the cross. And through charity, compassion and love, we can still show the world what it means to be a Christian.

The Gift of Beauty

Beauty surrounds me.

I behold it as I gaze from my window at the lake and mountains of Washington. I see it in the majestic sky and clouds that hover above the scape. I feel it in the lungs that breath, the eyes that see, the heart that beats, the very fingers that magically know how to write these words. Above all I sense it in the Love which seeks my heart, and which I strive all my life to grasp.

I have learned to take all this beauty for granted. The pristine landscape no longer surprises me, for it has always been there. The fine-tuned working of my body does not shock me, for it has worked as long as I have been inside it. These things are supposed to be. But the functionality of nature and my own body are truly incredible. And as if that was not enough, they are also beautiful! Couldn’t the human body work just as well without its beauty? Would the world still turn if it was grotesque rather than lovely? Could it be that this beauty is a gift—the generosity of Love?

Why is there such a thing as pleasure? For some species, survival is enough to motivate them. Why are humans and some animals blessed with pleasure? Food would nourish our bodies just a well if the meal did not give pleasure. The tree gains no pleasure from its photosynthesis. Why do we have this opportunity? By all logic, our method of fueling ourselves should have been equally mundane. Similarly, our method of reproduction could have been one void of the pleasure and passion we encounter in it, yet this gift also has been given with no logical explanation. All the necessities of our survival could have been ordered without the benefit of pleasure. But they weren’t.

Take another example and consider the beauty of music. I have never met someone who did not love music. Certainly, our opinions and taste differ wildly. But everyone, in every culture, loves music, most of them almost to an addictive degree. Why is there such a thing as music? We may credit the musician and the composer only so far. Rather, consider the very existence of music, that sound-waves may be arranged in such patterns to become notes–that two and three can form into chords, and then into melody and harmony. Why is there such a thing? Whither these tools that tickle the composer’s imagination? Does the world need something like music to survive? If we had never known it would we miss it? Music is extraneous to survival. Is music also a gift?

Take the time to question the beauty all around you, and not just the more obvious things such as the human body, the mountains and lake and trees. But question also the beauty of water, of dirt, of your skin, of the air you breath and the act of breathing it. What do all these things mean? The unexplainable blessings we encounter all around us are very profound. We should not take for granted that we and our world are beautiful, that there is such a thing as music, that our very existence gives pleasure to our bodies and minds. This all should shock us. The gifts of our existence abound beyond our comprehension.

My life is a collection of gifts which I did not earn—gifts of beauty. The greatest of all is my own life—the very being of my body and soul, the simple “I am,” or in Latin, the sum of life. I did nothing to earn my life. I came as a result of my parents’ love, and they created me from the Love which encompasses all. Most of us take our lives for granted when we suffer and feel the gifts of beauty have eluded us. But if I possess any more beauty than my own life, that is a gift of bounty. I did not earn my life, and I certainly did not earn any gifts that add to my life!

Love is the explanation. We are here because of love. Love created us in its own image so that we might reciprocate that love. Beauty and pleasure were the gifts given by Love to enhance our lives. That we have come to expect these gifts and grown complacent in our appreciation for them is a terrible selfishness of humanity. How can we live a single day without gratitude for the Love which gave it to us? God is love, and love is the reason for creation.

And what of the sick, the oppressed, the anguished: what beauty and pleasure do they experience in their lives? Shall they not rightly feel bitterness for their fate? Who am I, free born and blessed, to tell the slave of the world’s beauty? The gift is no more my right than his, yet I have all and he has none but the life which he fain would lose. How can such a disparity be reconciled? How could the Love which gave us this life have allowed such suffering to fester? People are often quick to blame God for the world’s pain, but this is a horrendous displacement of responsibility. The reason for the suffering of the world is the greed of humanity. We have corrupted beauty and pleasure by giving in to an insatiable desire for it. Through this desire the free hoards beauty from the slave, the healthy from the sick, the strong from the weak, the rich from the poor, the privileged from the unlucky. And the Love which gave to all cries in despair.

Do not blame God for the world’s pain. God gave enough for all, even in times of disaster and famine. But human greed has interfered with Love’s bounty. Has there ever been a natural disaster in which there was not actually enough room to house all the displaced somewhere in the world, ever a famine when the world could not have fed all the hungry? Before you answer, glance at your vacant couch, or the empty plate at your table. The world’s suffering is not God’s fault. It is ours.

Charity is the act of sharing beauty, whether in the form of comfort, sustenance, or even pleasure. It is not the Creating Love which failed to give sufficient beauty for the world. Rather, it is the greedy who keep more than they need and let the rest live in hardship. Through generosity and charity we might hope to undo the damage done by our selfishness. We are made in the image of Love. And what is love but a gift? It is impossible to love without another to give it to. The whole human race is a community of love. What right have we to withhold our love from anyone?

How did we come this far, that our greed could have caused so much hardship? Why are we never content with our given measure of beauty and pleasure? We are born with an overwhelming desire to experience all the beauty we see and feel. My nature drives me out into the world to taste all its mysteries. But each day I return and the mystery remains unsolved. I try to grasp the beauty as my own but am always unsatisfied.

I find an idyllic meadow, cased in lush forest and clear sky. The beauty of it stuns me. I photograph it, but the picture cannot do justice to the reality. The next day I pick the daisies from the field hoping to light my dreary home with their splendor and smell, but by the time I return they are wilted and the odor is gone. So at last, not to be defeated, I buy the meadow, build a house on it, fence it off to prevent others from disturbing what is mine to enjoy, and I go to live there. But my lust has destroyed the meadow, both for myself and for others. Soon I return to the city, sorrowful and ashamed. Was I wrong to love the meadow’s beauty? If not, then how did I manage to ruin it?

Learning from my mistake in trying to own beauty, I seek instead the pleasure of experience, throwing myself into raucous revelry, gluttonness dining, taking pleasure in excess and debauchery. My eyes are enticed with entertainment, my taste with exotic food and wine, my body with lust… Each of my pleasures is an experience in beauty, but after I enjoy the moment I feel sick with the consequences, for I have perverted the beauty which was given to me.

These enticements seem like they will bring satisfaction, but it is only in the quest for them that I have any enjoyment. The pleasure ends with the deed. The achievements of my desires are hollow, only leaving me desirous for another quest. Why do I burn with such desire? Is there a void in my life? On the contrary, my blessings, my pleasures, my gifts of beauty are plentiful. I do not suffer from want, nor from an inability to satisfy my own desires. Yet I have felt the sickness of envy, which poisons the enjoyment of what one has. Why do the privileged feel more greed than the lowly? How curiously the affluent man observes the joy of the poor, for whom a simple meal and brief pleasure delights more than his own frenzied pursuits. The poor man is often happier, purer of heart, and comprehends better the true meaning of beauty. Yet would I willingly change my place with him? Would you? Stubbornly we adhere to our miserable paths, gathering beauty far beyond the measure of those who actually know it is beautiful.

There is something in all of our natures that strives toward the beautiful, but it is never content. The more of it we have, the harder it is to satiate. Beauty cannot be held in the hand if it is to last. Beauty must be left free, cherished, but never grasped. Is it the infinity of beauty or the infinity of our desire that overwhelms us? Indeed beauty is the infinite, so until we embrace its infinity, our desire will never be quenched. We do not simply seek to be a part in the infinity, but to grasp it all. Have we not all sought to make love, the ultimate beauty, infinite? The world makes a fantasy of romantic loves which transcend death. We dream of an infinite beauty with our infinite desire. But is it really impossibly? Our greed for beauty only leads to despair, but what about our greed for love? What if infinite love really did exist? Could love really be stronger than death? This is the meaning of our longing for beauty, and its unquenchability. It is the sign of love, and love is the closest the human heart can come to infinity. Beauty itself is a shadow of the divine. It gives us a hint of our Creator who gave us the gift of beauty in all its forms. In striving to own, to grasp, the things we see as beautiful, we are acting on our longing for the greatest beauty of all. In grasping for it we will never be satisfied. We must take our place in the world’s beauty, appreciating all but not attempting to control. We must stand willingly as a part of beauty’s infinity if we are to find any contentment.

We know that love cannot be contained if it is to flourish. It must be given before it can be received. We can see this truth with love, but it is just as true with beauty, which is nothing but a sign of love, the gift of Love. So too, beauty must be given, spread, if it is ever to be fully appreciated.

How did beauty become corrupted? How did it come to infect us with envy, lust and greed? How did it come to symbolize so much of what is wrong in the world? Is its very goodness a curse to those who lack it? No less is it a curse to those who have too much! Beauty is a gift from the world to each one of us. Whenever we seek to harness beauty and own it, we are perverting it. We did not earn it, so we have no right to clutch it lest we deny its wonder by reducing it to human greed. It is a lack of appreciation both for what we covet, and for our own lives without it. We reduce beauty’s value by trying to claim it as our own invention, our “right.” And we reduce our own value by noting any small absence of beauty when our life itself overshadows any other beauty. The very fact that we can see and breath and think is the most incredible thing of all. Sadly, few of us meditate on the simple gift of beauty that is our own life. Nor do we recognize that our infinite desire is satisfied in infinite love. Instead we give in to our greed, seeking to own, and beauty always fades in ownership. It is the freedom of being infinite that makes it beautiful.

What was it about the meadow that made me seek to own it rather than simply engrossing myself in its wonder? What is it about experience that does not content us until we have more? What is it about a beautiful person that inspires in us feelings of either lust or envy? Lust is the desire to “own” that person by taking them in a sexual way; envy is a desire to “own” that person’s characteristics. What prevents us from simply appreciating the beauty we see without any need to own it? We should see beauty as our chance to reflect upon the love which created it, not as a chance to own it. Our desire for beauty is insatiable. Our longing for the infinite is itself infinite. When we are hungry and feed ourselves, we are satisfied. When we thirst and drink, we are quenched. When we are weary and sleep, we are rested. But when we seek to satisfy our desire for beauty in pleasure, the longing persists, stronger with each bit of beauty we attempt to contain.

Is there another way? Can we satisfy our longing for beauty without attempting to own it? Why is everything around us so beautiful without our being able to hold it? Is it in our very natures not to be content? Seeking to possess beauty brings only pain to ourselves, others, and the world. It is a corruption of the gift we could never be valiant enough to deserve. Yet instead of seeking to possess it, if rather we seek to give beauty to others, a remarkable thing happens. Suddenly, we do begin to possess the beauty! In giving it away, we have mysteriously made it ours. Love and charity are very worthwhile investments.

Truly the only way to satisfy our insatiable longing for beauty is to accept our place within it—as a small cog in the infinite. Then perhaps we will realize how little we deserve, how much we are given, and how much more beautiful we will be by giving again what was given to us! There is enough beauty, enough love, enough goodness, for the whole human race. But only if we give back to the Love which gave so generously to us.

We are all made beautiful—in the image of the Love which created us. All our lives we long for this perfect beauty and perfect love. It is when striving alone that we hoard beauty as possessions, pleasures and experiences, and ever slip farther from the love we seek. But if we recognize the needs and the equally insatiable longing of our fellow companions, we begin to glimpse this love. If every human being was made in the image of Love, how can we get closer to Divine Love than by gazing into the heart of another human being? The gift of beauty was given, undeserved, to us. In giving this beauty to those more needy than ourselves– through kindness, compassion and charity—we at last see the divine, and experience the beauty we long have sought.

The face of God is written on every person you meet. If that man is needy and I have plenty, how can I withhold from him, for I am withholding from God? And surely, by sharing Love’s bounty we have made it ours. Only through love can beauty be held, and what is love, but an act of giving? Our desire for beauty is satisfied in love—the true love which outlasts even death. What a contradiction it would seem to seek only to be loved without giving love in return. So why do we seek to possess beauty as if it were only for us to take and never to give? For beauty is a descriptive manifestation of love. We must give it to have it. Just as we must love in order to accept the love which would be bestowed upon us. If we live lives of love we will truly be stronger than death. Love transcends earthly life.

This is the message of all tragic drama, from the Greeks, to Shakespeare, through the age of opera, and in our current age of cinema. The ideal of love is one which transcends death. The great lovers: Dido & Aeneas, Antony & Cleopatra, Romeo & Juliet, Tristan & Isolde…seek death’s infinity as the only way to cement their love. Through love, Plato says, “Mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal.” (Symposium) The stories of these lovers are not simply cliché. They tell us much about the human temperament, describing both our fear and our hope. That through love (beauty) we can achieve eternity, and the infinity of beauty. Our fear of losing love is worse than death and our gain of love is more important than life. Plato gives two answers to this longing for immortality: through generations of offspring, and through worldly fame that outlasts one’s lifetime. But Pope Benedict XVI points us back to our creator. “All love wants eternity, and God’s love not only wants it but effects it and is it. Man can [not] perish because he is known and loved by God.” (Ratzinger: Intro to Christianity. III, II, 2. 1968) Love is the culmination of all our desires, whether for beauty, pleasure or eternity.

But there’s more! Love is also the community of people within our immediate reach–not only our children, family, lovers and friends, but everyone with whom we come in contact. Love teaches us our basic dependence on the other. Love demands community, for what is love without the beloved? We are a species which thrives on each other. No human feels complete until they love. How glorious it is when we realize that the beloved comes in the form of all humanity! The more love you give, the more love you have, and the closer you come to the immortal—the divine.

Love is a way of living which unites one person, one soul to another, and unites both with the Love which created them. One act of love is actually threefold–the one that loves, that which is loved, and love itself. (St. Augustine: De Trinitate. VIII, 14) We often forget the importance of the last segment, that our loving relationships depend on a greater Love, indeed, the very Love which created us and gave us all these gifts.

If we need love—community—so badly, then so too does our Creating Love. Being made in the image of Love means we share this trait with our maker. Certainly, Divine Love seeks to be loved just as we do. It weeps for its beloved when betrayed, and overflows with joy when its creation loves in return. Without creating, Diving Love had nothing to return its love. Only through us was love reciprocated.

God was lonely. We are the benefactors. What a responsibility! What a joy! The Love which our Creator eagerly bestows on us is the greatest joy, the most perfect beauty we can hope for. Love itself offers us the chance to be called “Beloved.” How could we refuse such a beautiful, tender embrace? And all we must do to have such a joy is to offer our love to those with whom we share creation. God’s embrace is nearer than we think. It waits for us in the hearts of all those who with us were made in the image of love. Therefore, Beloved, let us love one another, just as God first loved us! (First John 4:7)

To Die for Me

Oh mighty God, who in glory
Art maker and master of all,
What foolishness to die for me!
With thy death to stay my dread fall.

Thou lookest upon my great guilt,
My shame for sin but weakly loathed,
But not with wrath, rather sorrow
For my heart not in virtue clothed.

Thou art not jealous of the life
Thou gavest me with love so free,
E’en though my freedom built the cross
That takes the breath of life from thee!

I should have died, for I have soiled
The perfect gift of thine image.
If thou wouldst judge me, I would go
To bear the weight of sin’s damage.

But instead I look up and see,
Upon the hill so grim and bare,
And on that dreadful cross hangs thee!
Thy bounteous love is nowise fair.

“Lord, let me die for thee,” I cried,
“Not thou for me! For I have sinned
Against thy blessed and holy law.
Come down, this foolish fate rescind!”

He looked at me, eyes wet with pain
Though tender with love ever true.
“Let me forgive you with my death,”
Said he, “for you know not what you do.”

I felt I killed my God that day,
And the guilt tormented my soul.
But three days thence he came to me
New in the garden to console.

“Now you see that if thou hadst died,
As rightly deserved from thy sin,
Death would have owned thee. But my love
Cannot die, and so I rise again.”

Oh my God, I was once shamed by
Thine ever pure and perfect love,
Let it now hold my sinful heart
And bear it to heaven above.

To Rest in God

A meditation on work and comfort, invoking the example of
St. Augustine

“I find no rest until I rest in Thee.”  

This most quoted phrase of  St. Augustine (Confessions: I,1) eloquently encapsulates humanity’s passionate quest for beauty, and the simple answer discovered after a long life of searching. In his confessions, Augustine describes his tireless pursuit of pleasure in his youth, yet nothing sufficed to grant him the satisfaction and rest he sought. He offers himself as a case study for the pursuit of such desires as fame, wealth, pleasure and sex, to all of which Augustine honestly confessed. Even his quest for knowledge he counted among his sins, having sought wisdom for reasons of ego and power.

Deeply he regrets not to have rested sooner in the love which constantly reached out to him both from God and from his devoted mother. In his old age he looks back on much of his life as an experience wasted, when the answer to his desire was so simple. His tardiness is one common to humanity, when we think we will have time to think of loftier goals later in life, or put off charity for awhile to follow our own desires.

But why should we wait to experience such rest, such comfort as only the God of love can offer us? Think of the pain and suffering that can be wrought upon us without notice, through nature, war, or cruelty. Where will we be if we rely but on our own ability to comfort ourselves? Once Augustine discovered the comfort of divine love he could hardly comprehend why he wasted so much time in distracting pleasures. “Wherefore delay,” he asked, “to abandon worldly hopes, and give ourselves wholly to seek after God and the blessed life?” (Conf. VI,19)  Indeed what reason could we have to wait? The desires which we prioritize over God will only disappoint. God has the sublimest love and most peaceful rest to offer us, if we will only accept it.

Rest, or what we also call comfort, is one of the primary goals of the human temperament. Yet we insist on distracting ourselves with pleasures that really give no comfort at all. Just as Augustine busied himself with all manner of selfish sins and finally relinquished his pleasure in deprecating self-pity, so we too prefer distractions over focus, comfort over work, thinking it will give us rest. Gratefully should we heed the old scribe’s warning and cease to seek rest in aught but love.

Distraction is the opposite of meditation and prayer. Yet we long for distraction as the alternative to thoughts which we might find difficult. We fear the true comfort that comes from giving ourselves up to the embrace of God. So we dominate our minds with distracting pleasures even though they choke out the meditation that could teach us true happiness. We are distracted by the false comfort of empty-mindedness. When we are plunged into suffering, we blame God for the loss of comfort, even while shunning the comfort of God’s love. The worst consequence of this is to keep us from our deeper desires, our meditation and prayer, and the work which is our life’s purpose.

Comfort, like all our other pleasures, and all the beauties we seek in our lives, is a wonderful thing, but it cannot be had in excess until we learn to rest in the perfect love of God. What we think of as comfort should be reserved as a reward for work well done. Work is our act of love and union with all of humanity. Comfort without work is a hollow pleasure, infused with guilt. But if we are working, marching forward in the purpose of our lives, comfort is the respite that gives us strength: the well by which we pause to quench our thirst, only to continue the pilgrimage of our soul. We would rightly question anyone who waits constantly at the well, fearing to go on lest he should be thirsty again. And thus, in his comfort he never moves forward. Rather, we must trust that another oasis waits at the end of our day’s journey, for God placed our respites where we need them. Who would wait at the desert well, drinking until it runs dry only to find that his feet have lost the ability to go on?

If we encounter a well of comfort on our walk, we should stop and drink. Our work can wait, and will be better performed by our hard-earned rest. If we pass on in our zeal we will be thirsty when there is no well. Work and comfort must remain in balance. In excess, either can make us forget the reasons we sought comfort to begin with. True comfort is the knowledge of work well done, free from distractions of the mind and body. If we become drunk with comfort it kills our will to work.

What is our true work? It is the love of community, tempered and strengthened by comfort, and not slave to the lust for pleasure.

Only rest in God, and in the love we have for each other, can satisfy. Love must be given if it is to be had. That is why a selfish comfort can never content. What is that but laziness? The one who is drunk on his comfort is no better equipped for his work than the one drunk on wine. Neither has any chance of productivity, and certainly neither has a chance to fulfill the passion inside their hearts. Only the comfort that comes from work (the love of humanity) will bring satisfying rest.

Do not begrudge the dusty walk your soul must take from one well to another. For the dust of your journey makes sweeter the water of rest. No water tastes better than when thirst is strongest. If you distract yourself with pleasure before it is earned, you sour the water when you reach the well. Your thirst may temporarily be quenched, but the respite gives little satisfaction. Rather, if you work hard, taking joy in your march and eliminating distractions from your way, the water will be pure and contenting upon your lips.

Work also comes in the form of virtue, which is the greatest form taken by the love of one person for the community of the world. Virtue is achieved when the good of the whole is put above the will of the one. If we distract ourselves with too many selfish pursuits we forget how to act with virtue. Or perhaps we choose to ignore virtue, for it is seldom easy and always seems called upon at the worst possible times. Virtue calls us to abandon our own comfort for another’s need. Funny that the moments when virtue is needed are most often just when we thought we had earned our rest. We come to the well after a hard day’s walk, our lips parched and burned, our pilgrim feet aching and callused. Yet we arrive with another, weaker than ourselves. There is only enough water to dip the ladle once. What will we do? Certainly we have earned our drink, our comfort, but if we take not the course of virtue, and sacrifice our comfort for the other, our whole journey is in vain!

There is a sacrifice which comes from the knowledge that we were made in the image of God; it is that virtue must take precedence over rest, charity over comfort. For those who require our virtue and charity just as surely reflect the image of God as do we. Only love can bestow the rest we seek. If we forego love in our quest for comfort, we will move further away from rest eternal.

But if we forgo our own rest when we have earned it, or if we forgo the charity of others, then our work is also rendered meaningless. These are the honest rewards of our work. Refusal to accept them is ungratefulness.

Why do we work so tirelessly for rewards we refuse to collect? Why do we hoard money we refuse to spend, surrounding ourselves with possessions that are lost in the blink of an eye? What is the tragedy of the man who works without rest all his years, hoping only for a comfortable retirement, yet dies before his satisfaction is spent? Is his tragedy in his loss, or in his best years wasted? And what of the man who toils all his hours for the house which is given up to the storm, or for the possessions which are sacrificed to the thief? Surely the one who works only for him/herself must live with the fear of loss. But the one who works for others—for love—is already giving their gift, and thus receives a reward such that neither storm, nor thief, nor death can take.

Work for love and rest in God.

Work not to separate yourself from your fellows through wealth and status, but to stand in unity with them. If you only work to hoard your own wealth, your only reward will be stress. Such accumulation only leads to increased desire. Rather, work that the goodness of your labor should benefit the world and those you love. What other reward can you honestly envision attaining by your labor, and when will you get there? The higher the ambition the more fickle are the forces that hold you there. The greater the gain of wealth, power or fame, the more perilous, and indeed imminent, is the fall. But if you turn your ambition toward love, you have already arrived at the goal. The contentment which can be gained by breaking loose from false hopes gives the rest which wealth and possessions never could.

When a rich young man asked Jesus how he could gain eternal life, Jesus told him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor. But rather than obeying, the young man went away grieving. Why did this young man hold so tightly to the possessions which gave him grief? Jesus told him how to be free from his grief, but he valued the comfort of his possessions more than the rest available in the kingdom of heaven of which Jesus said “it will be hard for a rich person to enter.” (Matthew 19:22-23)

The person who’s contentment, yea, his whole identity is in his money, his labor, his possessions, has no time or energy for the kingdom of which Jesus speaks–the kingdom of love. The tragedy for such a man is that his selfish labor contents him not; neither in eternity, or even now. His wealth gives no rest, only fear that the wealth could be lost. The young man in the gospel went away grieving. Where is his joy in wealth? Selfishness is a parasite which must be fed, cannot be satisfied and slowly drains life away. Work done for oneself alone gives no joy as it drains away hours, years and lives. It takes such hold that we cleave to our possessions in grief, even faced with the eternal promise of love. Is it easier for the poor to enter the kingdom of God than the rich? Indeed! For the poor are less prey to the distraction of greed. Likewise the learned are often too proud to grasp the truth which the unlearned reach for without pause. The wise are ashamed to follow the path carved by the ignorant; the rich reluctant to follow the way of the poor.

But the promise of our work, if done in humility, is a promise of rest eternal. St. Augustine compared our work to the work God undertook on the first six days, the conclusion of each being described with evening and morning, followed by another day. But on the seventh day, when God rested, there is no mention of evening. (Genesis 2:2). The rest of the seventh day is a pure and heavenly rest, a comfort that comes from work which was good.

“Oh Lord God, give peace unto us: the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath, which hath no evening. That that rest which thou undertookest after thy works, we also after our works shall rest in Thee, in the Sabbath of eternal life.” (Conf. XIII,50,51)

This is the promise of our labors, each day of which passes into evening. Augustine was right, as he found through a long hard road, littered with useless pleasures and distractions. Let us all pray this prayer. We find no rest until we rest in God. Only once we submit to the God of love like a child to its mother can we find rest.

How peaceful is the baby’s comfort as it suckles at its mother’s breast. The child knows no ambition, no stress of unfulfillment, no consuming desire for beauty, for it already cleaves to perfect beauty. The baby’s greed, its selfishness which causes it to cry when the milk is taken away can be forgiven, and not only because of its ignorance. Would we not cry if perfect rest and perfect love were known to us and then removed? We could be forgiven just as easily if our greed were for our Creator’s love and eternal rest. The child’s ignorance is its blessing, and it knows nothing else. The mother’s generous gift grants this bliss. We are all created out of love, just as the child was born from its mother’s love. The baby knows no pleasure but this, and contents itself in the simplicity. Would we could have rest so pure!

All our lives we seek pleasure and beauty in experience, just as the child leaves its mother’s breast to seek fulfillment in the outer world, but will never find contentment so pure, or love so comforting. Yet our Creating Mother offers this same comfort all our lives. The answer to our unrest, and all our tireless quests for pleasure and beauty waits at the nourishing breast of God.

Oh Love, let me rest in Thee!

SCIENCE SHOWS OUR CREATOR

In this treatise I wish to point out how the progression of scientific discovery leads us to realize that we are created beings, and how the more we learn about the workings of the world, the more clear it becomes that there is an orchestrator behind it. Christians and scientists have always pitted themselves against one another, and I believe this is quite foolish. The Christian should embrace science as the language of God, and the scientist should learn to see the beautiful hand of love in every detail of our world.

Over the last half millennium, as one scientist after another explains a new facet to the workings of the universe, people point to the new discovery and declare that we are getting closer to explaining away the need for a Creator. Meanwhile, the Christian world reacts negatively to each discovery, blindly declaring it false. The most obvious example of our time is Darwin, but it started long ago. Galileo was imprisoned and excommunicated for his teachings on the universe. Newton was written off by Christianity as well for his discoveries of matter and gravity.Yet each scientific discovery suggests to me a new aspect of the love with which this world was created. It baffles me that Christians work so hard to argue proven scientific theory when it only shows God to be more wonderful and majestic by understanding the tools with which God worked! Those confident in their faith in God have no need to fear science. Science is the language of God. The more layers of science we uncover, the more we learn about the complexity and marvel of creation!The amazing thing to me is that each discovery, especially of the 150 years since Darwin, seems to get us to the verge of finishing the work, proving where we come from, and then… suddenly, the answer is a whole new question, opening up a new field of science! Copernicus raised scandal by suggesting that the earth was not the center of the universe, but rotated around the sun. But now we know that both earth and sun are speeding away from a central point in the universe, a center which Copernicus never imagined! How much grander the placements and orbits of the stars means now that we know about the Big Bang!The church feared Copernicus’ discoveries because it seemed to diminish the importance of humanity’s creation. Yet how much more loving is it to know that we are surrounded by a universe vastly beyond our comprehension or ability to explore? It may reduce humanity’s pride to think of ourselves as only a tiny speck in the universe, but it certainly does not reduce creation’s love. Or take Newton’s physics and laws of matter. As matter was dissected into smaller and smaller parts, leading us to learn about atoms, protons, electrons, and photons, science seemed close to the answer. What were the building blocks for all of matter? Then the discoveries of the early twentieth century led us to learn that matter is as much energy and wave as it is particle, with a complexity and mystery vaster than what we had ever dreamed. Newton was turned on his apple-bruised head! The world of Quantum Physics, while providing an answer to one problem, opened up fields of new questions. When we answer those, who knows what new fields will be opened!Does it reduce the value of creation or God’s awesomeness to know that matter is not what we once thought it was? Rather, we should marvel anew at the beauty that is at work in every smallest bit of matter. The building blocks of the world are not dead weight, but vibrant, living energy. How better could God infuse himself into each tiniest particle of the universe? 

What about Darwin’s theory?  Does it really reduce God to think of the process of evolution as having taken a long time? In 1859 when “Origin of Species” was published, biology was thought to be fairly simple. But biology has come a long way since then. We now know the magnificent complexity of micro-biology, and the functioning beauty of the living cell. The scientific world has sought to fit these discoveries into Darwin’s theory of mutation over many generations, and the Christians have sought to disprove it all! In reality, neither approach can work.

When Darwin first put forth his theory of mutation through multiple generation, cells were seen as little more than small packets of slime. But biologists such as Louis Pasteur, Camillo Golgi and others taught us the complexities of micro biology, and the magnificent beauty of the living, working cell. The scientific world has sought to fit these discoveries into Darwin’s theory, and the Christians have sought to disprove it all. Both efforts are terribly naïve.

So how does a cell work? What makes it so fascinating and beautiful? Within a cell are hundreds of proteins, each designed for specific functions. All of them combine to make the cell behave in such a way that your organ or limb then behaves in the way you expect it to. Let us look at one example of what happens within a cell, this example within the nerve cell of a finger after touching a hot surface, as described by Professor Gerald Schroeder in the sixth chapter of his book, The Hidden Face of God, published in 2002 by Simon & Schuster:

 

 

You’ve touched something too hot for comfort. The heat stimulates the sensitive endings of the nerve, inducing it to rapidly send the message to its target receivers, in this case the spinal cord. The signal, a cascade of ions, travels from the receiving dentrite, past the cell body, and on toward the axonlike extension. At this point the action potential is generated that, as a wave, transmits the signal the length of the axon to the synaptic terminals at its end. Since the axon terminal does not actually attach to the target neuron’s dendrite… the nerve has the electrical action potential within the axon stimulate the release of chemical neurotransmitters into the synaptic gap. The electrical signal has become a chemical signal. These neurotransmitters have been “conveniently” stored in organelles called Golgi apparatus near the axon’s terminals. The Golgi package the neurotransmitters at their point of manufacture in the cell body and then, with the help of motor proteins, transport them and other essential molecules from within the cell body, down the axon, to the location of use near the cell membrane. The Golgi, upon command, release the neurotransmitter into the synapse, where it diffuses across the opening, attaches to the target dendrite, and in doing so triggers a secondary neural signal to start on its way… The trip from the cell body where the Golgi and neurotransmitter are made to axon terminal can be up to a meter distant, [and would take] about two days when traveling via motor protein… [But] when called into action, the Golgi move within a millisecond. The Golgi fuses with the inner surface of the axon synaptic membrane, and then, in a process known as exocytosis, bursts through on the outside, into the synaptic gap.

 

I know this is a bit complex. But that is the point. When I think of this process I visualize something that looks more like a big factory than my own little nerve cell. It is stunning to think of it all taking place each time my fingers strike the key on which I am writing. It all occurs within a split second. And consider that a million such processes are being carried out by the cells of your body right now. Your cells are actively breaking down nutrients into ATP, using that energy to build various proteins, just like the Golgi and motor proteins described above, so that they will be ready for action as soon as they are needed.

Think of all the instances, just in this one process described, when small parts of your cells seem to act with knowledge and intelligence in performing their tasks. The design is so intricate. If it was not created with knowledge, then knowledge must have been written into the system. In other words, the laws of science pre-destined intelligent life. Yet to say that such complexity is written into the laws of the universe would be just as amazing as the complexity we observe. Who gave the Golgi, the axons, the neorotransmitters in your finger their knowledge? If it was the laws of science, then how did the laws of science acquire its knowledge?

I would advise everyone who thinks that their bodies could have come about by chance to really make a full examination into the world of molecular biology. I would highly recommend Schroeder’s book which I quoted above. The ingenuity of it is absolutely stunning!

How carefully God ordered everything in our bodies. For a human being to engineer the complexity of a single cell would be an invention unsurpassed by any other. To think of even one cell coming about by pure chance defies logic.

The more I learn about the inner workings of my body the more I am stunned by its order and complexity. Little of this complexity was known when Darwin suggested that varying species came about by random mutations. Much of it was not even known when Richard Dawkins, one of the last century’s primary proponents of random evolution, first argued that it all came about by chance.

 

Find the most complicated machine, or appliance in your house. Examine it for awhile, then think about the possibility of someone who knows nothing about it taking its parts, laying them on the floor, stirring and arranging them in a variety of ways, heating and cooling the solder at random, and eventually the machine comes to be in its present, not only functional, but well designed and beautiful form. This exercise, of course, is ridiculous! Fifteen billion years would not suffice for it to work. Yet this is not far off from Dawkins’ model of random evolution! And your body is a million times more complicated than the appliance.

 

But maybe it did all come about by chance. Maybe the elements were pre-disposed to combine in such ways to make this complexity happen. Before you confess to such a theory, remember that we are bound by the laws of our world. If there is no power that is outside of and greater than our world, then we must imagine such things coming about in the world as we understand it to operate. And where in the world, in nature, do you find any example of complexity arriving out of chaos? Where has it ever been shown that elements could spontaneously manifest into complex forms? When left alone, nature decays, rather than creates. The only example we see in nature of the opposite is from a parent to a child.

 

But does the theory of random evolution demand it to happen any more than once?
Darwin stated that given enough time a species can beget a vastly different species through mutations and generations of intermediate varieties. Darwin’s theory is widely supported by the fossil record for the evolution within a particular genome (dogs evolving into other types of dogs), within families (an ape evolving into a man), but nowhere do we find evidence of one phyla giving rise to another (a sponge evolving into a fish). This latter type of evolution is purely speculative.
Darwin theorized that it could happen, given enough time.

 

But in the years since, notably in the work of Elso Barghoorn during the 1970s, and through the analysis of the Burgess fossils in the 1980s, it was proven that life forms developed over a rather short period of time. The first single-celled organisms came to be between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago, and more complex organisms came into existence about 530 million years ago. This period, when multi-celled life begins to appear in the fossil record, is known as the Cambrian Age. The ideal conditions on earth at this time gave rise to every additional phyla (animal group) that has survived to the present day. Some phyla died off in the ensuing Ordovician Ice Age, and the rest have come to represent all the species we know today. This huge diversification of life has come to be known as the “Cambrian Explosion.” The climates were warm, wet and mild, and ocean currents moved freely, baring the significant build up of ice formations. The Cambrian Age only lasted 53 million years, a “blink of an eye” in geological terms, yet all the complexity of multi-celled organisms came into being at this time.

 

These discoveries prove that the chance manifestation of complexity which we see nowhere else in the natural world did not just need to happen once. It needed to happen numerous times within this “short” period. The type of progeny which Darwin describes relies on a much longer stretch of time.

 

So, knowing that time was too short for all the new phyla in the Cambrian Age to have come from a common ancestor, could these species have come to be without the benefit of a parent: the kind of chance manifestation of complexity which Richard Dawkins claims could develop naturally? This would require cells to form and combine on their own. Think again of the experiment with the household appliance, and the forces of nature being the maker attempting to put the parts together. Let us just look at the possibility of one single protein evolving on its own (not to mention a whole cell!).

 

The average protein consists of 288 amino acids, of which 12 are different types of amino acids. The absence, addition, or replacement of a single amino acid in the structure of the protein will ruin it. Every amino acid has to be in the right place and in the right order. Now 288 amino acids could be arranged in a number of ways approximating ten to the three hundredth power. Since we know that only the exact amino acid chain is viable, the chances of creating these viable proteins are approximately one in ten to the three hundredth power. Furthermore, one protein cannot survive in nature on its own, without a cellular structure to protect it from outside forces. The human body contains an estimated 100,000 proteins. Even given an ideal setting, with a rapidly evaporating amino acid concentrated Cambrian pool, the chances of even one viable protein forming by accident is microscopic! (Schroeder: “Rationality vs. Randomness,” 2000)

I wonder how discouraged Dawkins, or other “neo-evolutionists” who argue that chance brought it all about would be if they tried to put together a mathematical probability equation for their theory. The scientists who pay more attention to mathematics realize how unlikely it is for ten to the three hundredth power to occur a hundred thousand times! Then think that it has to happen in all the new phyla that came about during this period, and that it only has 53 million years to complete the work. There is no way to make a mathematical case for this theory.

 

Rather, the details prove the careful work of the God who created us. The beauty of science is to begin to understand the language with which our Creator works and to see in even more detail the marvel of it all.

 

Surrounding all these details of biological evolution is the over-arching reality that existence is balanced on a preverbal knife-edge. On a micro level (species), one cell, or even protein altered could kill an organism; at its onset, that alteration would have precluded the species from having ever existed. On an intermediate level (earth), a slight atmospheric or temporal alteration would wipe out life on this planet; and with all the evolution that has occurred over the last fifteen billion years, it is hard to imagine the atmosphere would not have even briefly been altered in a deadly way. On a macro level (universe), if we believe in the standard model big bang theory (which the expansion of the universe and stretching of time strongly suggests), if conditions were such that the “bang” propelled things even a micro-degree faster, the solar systems would have burned themselves up as soon as they formed; if it had been a micro-degree slower, the gravitational forces would have crushed the systems before they had the remotest chance to form. This slim balance of life does not suggest randomness but order. Where in life or our experiences do we see any evidence of order arising out of chaos? Science fits so perfectly to existence. How can something so precise be utterly random?

 

Most amazing of all if the simple fact that existence is, the To Be, or Sum of life—the emergence of something from nothing. The marvel is not how well the laws of science fit existence but that there is an existence to fit it to.

 

Even if we claim that science had laws which forced the precision and urged matter toward complexity and life, how did the laws of science arise? That presents us another puzzle just as unsolvable as the first.  Just as any find work of human hands, be it a building, a work of art, a symphony of music point us to the genius of their maker, so the world points us to the genius of our maker. We spend so much time analyzing the effects. Shouldn’t we follow the advice of St. Thomas Aquinas and take more of an interest in the cause? All things being came to be from another. All things in motion were put in motion by another. (Summa Theologiae: An Deus Sit) At the beginning there must necessarily be a force that is outside the laws of science which force these causes and effects.

 

We find it very difficult to admit to the existence of the divine because it is so outside our realm of thought. Our laws of science can only explain so much, but they cannot get us beyond the hump into the metaphysical realm. And so we keep trying to explain away God with the science he created. God does not fit into the scientific method. The scientific method makes the claim to truth being the simple facts that we can observe. In Latin, Verum est Factum. There is no room for mystery, or for a set of rules beyond the reach of our measurements.

 

I have tried to present these theories to some scientists who write the whole thing off before they even consider my arguments because it does not adhere to the scientific method. It is not a theory which can be tested and proved.

 

Yet does science always even fit the scientific method?

For the answer, let us leave biology and take a closer look into the field of quantum physics. There we will find how the scientific method has led us astray, and perhaps an answer to how we must approach our queries into the divine.

At the onset of the twentieth century the entire study of physics was turned upside down, mostly by the work of Max Planck and Albert Einstein, who discovered the fact that Newton’s laws, which work very well when applied to large particles of matter (let us call them macro particles), break down when applied to a single atom (quantum particles). This brought about the study of quantum physics. Let us look at the surprising results that we achieve from experiments with quantum particles.You may be familiar with what is known as the “Two Slit Experiment.” Due to restrictions on the space of this post, I am unable to provide visual examples, but I will attempt to describe the effect as best I can. In the experiment, Atoms are fired one at a time at a screen with two slits cut vertically from each other. There is another screen set on the other side to pick up the interference pattern. Now if light were shown against the slits we would expect the interference pattern to show up as a series of fuzzy lines because of the wave quality of the light. The astonishing thing is that atoms, shot one at a time at first seem to be hitting the far screen in a random pattern, but after many have been fired, they begin to show the same sort of interference pattern as the light. The end result of this experiment is one of the proofs that quantum particles, though they leave the test gun and are recorded on the far screen as localized particles, actually behave as waves and seem to go through both slits at once. What scientists have come to believe about both light and the components of atoms is that both behave as particles and waves simultaneously.  The particle aspect is the localized actualization of a potential created by the wave. Thus, we can never be completely sure where we will find the quantum particle at any point in measurement.Needless to say, scientists have attempted to observe this phenomenon at work. But something very strange happens when they do this. If any sort of detector is placed near the first screen to “watch” the atom going through the slits, the interference pattern disappears, and the atoms appear in two groupings on the other side, as we would expect if we were sending macro particles through instead. The simple act of watching causes the atom to behave as a particle throughout the test, and never as a wave. This has confounded physicists for decades.The act of detecting the quantum particle actually changes its nature. This is unavoidable, because if we were to shine a single photon of light at an atom, the photon would interact with the atom, changing its behavior, in some cases even its atomic makeup. Remember that the photon, just like the atom, has the properties of both a particle and a wave. The photon becomes entangled with the atom. For this reason, in our observation of quantum particles, we are never able to know everything about both their location and their movement at any time. Einstein theorized with his 1935 Gedanken Versuch that we can observe the atom’s particle nature or its wave nature with near complete accuracy at any time, but not both. Thus, we encounter a failure in our ability to predict the behavior of an atom. We can determine the probability of an atom’s location or velocity, but we cannot pinpoint it for sure.Yet, even understanding that the measuring system, by means of entanglement, alters the behavior of the quantum particle, nearly a century later we do not know why it causes the interference pattern (seemingly the entire wave aspect) to disappear. We cannot explain what goes on behind the so called quantum curtain. Niels Bohr argued that it was useless to theorize what happened in the absence of a measuring device, since the only way we can learn anything about quantum behavior is if we accept the interaction it has with the measuring device; the observer is central to the behavior of the atom, photon, or electron. This is a simplistic summary of the Copenhagen  Interpretation, spearheaded by Bohr. It is pretty much saying that if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, it does not make a sound! I am not so quick to give up, and I expect that time will lead us to further discoveries in our ability to measure the quantum system, but Bohr’s interpretation does lead us to the heart of the problem. We, the observer, our measuring device, even the very surroundings we are giving to the experiment, are soundly entrenched in the macro plane. We are subject to classical Newtonian laws of physics. Meanwhile, the tiny quantum particle we are playing with is obeying different laws altogether. When we attempt to measure it, we are subjecting it to laws it was never meant to obey, and terminology by which it was never meant to be described. We cannot understand how anything can behave simultaneously as a particle and a wave, nor can our measuring systems, and thus have we inadvertently forced the quantum particle into a macro world. The only way we could truly measure the quantum particle would be with quantum measuring systems and a truly quantum observer. Obviously this is impossible, and so for now we must be content to accept that the truth is a mystery. Verum est Mysterium. It is there. We must believe it. But for now, we cannot see it. The scientific method gives us no help when observing quantum particles.The two important conclusions we are forced to draw from our observations of quantum particles is, A: we cannot be sure that the rules we know for one system will apply to another system and, B: truth is sometimes more than the facts, even in science. 

Do you see the similarities we face when discussing the realm of the divine? God is in a metaphysical realm while we try to observe him with physical laws. It is impossible. God made the rules, yet put us in a different system, subject to different rules. Similarly, since we and all matter are made up of millions of quantum particles, we could say that the quantum particles “made” the classical, Newtonian laws with which we then attempt to view the quantum world. We do not understand how an atom can be both wave and particle, yet the truth is that we, who do not understand, would not exist if this were not so! Similarly we do not understand God, the metaphysical realm, or what happens to us after death. We cannot fit God into our understanding just as we cannot fit a quantum particle into the observance of a macro system.

Every new discovery in science has shown us a closer look at the image of our Creator, and the great loving care with which it was all crafted. Our selfishness attempts to explain away the need for the genius behind it, but all of nature, all of science confess the creative energy and the tremendous love with which we and all the gifts we share were made. Science was written by God, not vice versa. God is shown by the laws he created, yet if he could be explained by those laws, he would no longer be God. That God does not fit into our rules is not an argument that there is no God, but rather an argument that there is! 

JESUS OF NAZARETH – MAN OR GOD?

In recent years, much has been suggested that attempts to disprove the divinity of Jesus. People are comfortable viewing him as a historical figure, a wise teacher perhaps, but God? It is no longer vogue to suggest that this man was indeed divine, even for Christians. The notion does not fit easily into our modern consciousnesses.

Was he only a man, born through natural procreation, dying by crucifixion, whose profound teachings inspired the following movement of Christianity, or was he in fact, while being man, also God incarnate, the only begotten son of God, who, though dying by crucifixion, also rose from the dead? Let us examine both view-points from their historical perspectives and how they appear today, looking into the progression of human thought at both points in history. I will then reference what the gospel writers have to say on the subject and their authority (or lack thereof) as historical scribes. And finally, what do our conclusions mean in our lives. 

DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTOLOGY 

How did our Christology come about? At the time of Jesus’ life, the questions more regarded his mission than his divinity. Though his disciples did not understand during his lifetime, after his death they grasped that his salvation was spiritual rather than political. If they did not believe this then they would necessarily have viewed his death as a failure and ceased to follow him. Yet they did follow him, even unto martyrdom. What inspired these men and women to sacrifice their entire lives for the legacy of a dead man… a legacy which differed strongly from the one they expected during his life? In the years following Jesus’ death, years which saw the rapid growth of Christianity even under extreme persecution, it became necessary for Christians to discuss and eventually agree on what Jesus’ life really meant and who he really was. Two opposing viewpoints were in play: divine Christology, which saw Jesus as God incarnate, sent as a redeemer to the world, and the view that Jesus was either a very righteous man, or a lesser form of God, but that the redemption was in the message. The word was from God, but not as John’s gospel so succinctly puts it “The word was God.” Does it really matter?  Must one believe that Jesus was and is redeemer through his death in order to believe in the redemption of his message?

The answer seemed to be put to rest at the Councils of Nicea and  Chalcedon. Jesus was declared to be Christ, God incarnate. The relationship between Father and Son was described as homoousios, which translates as “one in being,” (Karl Rahner: Lexicon for Theology & Church), and that was that for about thirteen hundred years.Now let us not be naïve to suppose that this dogma arose free from a political agenda, or that any of the gospel writers were writing unbiased history. John, the last gospel, is most often discussed with regards to its political agenda, written in response to the gnostics and others who were promoting an almost Buddhist view in the late first century: that Jesus had managed to achieve a god-like state through his goodness, and that by following his example, we could do the same. We will look more closely at the gospel of John and the circumstances of its authorship later on. But the three synoptic gospels were no less written to make certain claims to their audiences. Mark, and Matthew were written primarily to be read by the Jewish community, so they attempted above all to show Jesus as the Messiah, or “Son of Man,” to use the term of the Jewish prophets. They wished to show that in spite of his death (whether or not he rose), his redemption was real. His resurrection provided the proof. The Jews at the time were not concerned with divinity in their Messiah, so much as his authority and power.This being said, the synoptic gospels do make specific claims to Jesus as the son of God in a way that is unique to him. The conception accounts in Matthew and Luke certainly do this, and all four gospel writers recount his baptism with a voice from heaven saying “This is my beloved son.” Mark, the first gospel writer, opens in his very first sentence by naming Jesus as the son of God. This was not a common term in Judaism. Nobody was referred to as a son of God in this manner. Perhaps most convincing of all is the descriptions given of Jesus prayer language, in which he calls God Abba. This would be like us saying Daddy. This type of dialogue was unheard of in Jewish culture. These examples are not meant to be a proof for Jesus’ divinity, but to point out that if we are to accept any of the gospel writers’ words, we must realize that they all viewed him as The Son of God.Around the time the first gospel was being written, Paul the evangelist opened up the entire Mediterranean and near East to Jesus’ message so that by the time John wrote his gospel, he was concerned with a much broader audience than only the Jewish world. He was writing to those learned in Greek and Roman thought as his audience for whom the terms “Messiah” and “Son of Man” would have no meaning or be misunderstood (as they are widely misunderstood today). Some have said that John’s gospel “Hellenized” Jesus, by using images of divine lineage.Yet it is Matthew and Luke, not John, who give Jesus his mythical quality with their accounts of the angel appearing to Mary. The Hellenization, if you will, had already taken place before John.Yet we must keep in mind that the learned world had by this time moved away from the mythology of ancient
Greece. Those stories had faded into the realm of folk tales. The learned world was more interested in Aristotle than Zeus. We were the determiners, governed by the laws of mathematics and science, of our own effects. And wisdom was to recognize how. Everyone could be like unto a God through learning and goodness. A mortal Jesus fit very nicely in this mold, for it professed a beautiful message of love without requiring belief in the seemingly unbelievable. Jesus’ Godship, the Virgin birth, and the resurrection were seen as myth. By using the phrase “God’s only begotten son,” John boldly challenges Aristotle with the very language of Hellenistic mythology, saying that there can be divinity in the modern world and God can come in direct contact with man.

Recently, other books written at the time have come more to light, known as the “Gnostic Writings.” Most popular of these is the Gospel of Thomas. Elaine Pagels’ celebrated book “Beyond Belief” looks into the political environment at the time, and alleges that John and Thomas wrote their gospels in conflict with one another. The church, she suggests, chose John’s book over Thomas’, and that has affected our view of Jesus ever since, but had Thomas’ book been accepted instead, we would have viewed the other three gospels in a completely different light. (chap 2. 2003) The problem with this theory is that John’s gospel is consistent in spirit with the three synoptics, it simply goes further in some areas and with some claims. It is well written, cohesive, and the speech of Jesus in chapters 13 through 18 contains some of the most profound theology ever written. Also, the crucifixion account gives us more detail than any of the others. Thomas’ book, conversely, presents a Jesus that is not always consistent with the earlier gospels, his book is not cohesively written, and some of the sayings attributed to Jesus do not make sense with the things we know about him. The choice not to include Thomas’ gospel in the canon was not so much political, but because it did not meet the literary standard of the New Testament.The leaders of the church took hold of Johannian theology and declared any view of Jesus other than his divinity to be heresy. Thomas’ book was lost to us for centuries. Yet, interestingly enough, this theology of “son of God,” and “King over the world,” though countering Aristotle, actually fit in well with the long standing Roman assertion that King and God were the same. Perhaps this was why Nero feared Christians so much, or why Pilate wrote “King of the Jews” on the cross as Jesus’ execution sentence. The Priests of Jerusalem objected strongly to this placard, knowing its significance in the Roman world. When Constantine converted, Jesus’ kingship was essential. With it, the hierarchy and political states of the church were established in Constantinople and Rome. 

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD: VERUM EST FACTUM

 But Aristotle would not stay quietly in his grave forever. With the Renaissance came new ideas of how humanity interacted with the world and themselves. Galileo and Newton explained the mysteries of the universe and matter. The age of enlightenment dawned as such revolutionary thinkers as Voltaire and Descartes suggested that humanity controlled its own way to the divine.
Newton’s groundbreaking research in physics led us to believe that everything could be known through mathematics and science. Darwin helped us to understand our own origins and the history of the world. By the end of the nineteenth century, humanity believed the statement of eighteenth century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico: Verum quia Factum: truth is the facts we have made.We have come to live by the scientific method, proving truth by observation of multiple experiments and the facts produced thereby. To paraphrase Vico: Verum est Factum  (Truth is Fact). Through the scientific method we have come to an age where we do not believe in miracles, or mysteries, only in what is observable. The philosophy today is actually markedly similar to the philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world at John’s time.

Our problem here is that, as Pope Benedict XVI points out, we are unable to apply the scientific method to history. (Ratzinger: “Introduction to Christianity,” part II, I, C, 1968)  There is no way to reproduce the facts to make them truth. We must choose to rely on the word of those who lived through the events of the past… or not. Ever since the age of enlightenment history has been under much greater scrutiny, and in a large part for good reason. After all, history is always written by the winners: winners of war, and winners of thought. Certainly John’s gospel represents the “winning” idea. Much of our recent skepticism about history has helped us to better decipher the events of the past, but it has also allowed us to “pick-and-choose” which historical authors we believe, and which we disregard. It has become popular, even respectable to challenge formerly accepted history with new perspectives. Surely for any text written so long ago as those in question, cases can be made against their authenticity. But our modern mind is sometimes quicker to believe a new theory on minimal evidence, then the old theory whose evidence, though not without fault, remains strong.The authors of scripture come under the strongest scrutiny. But if only age were the question, why do we not question the validity of Plato and Socrates, or Seneca and Cicero? Certainly it is impossible to prove via the scientific method that John, Luke, Mark and the other Biblical authors actually witnessed the events of which they wrote, but the historical evidence for the validity of these texts (not necessarily the truth of their content, just the actuality of their historical context) is clear. We can trace an unbroken lineage from our time directly back to the time these documents were written. Of the four gospels, John is the one most often argued to have different authorship. But if you read the gospel, the author has to be John, or someone attempting to attribute the work to John. (This is the only way to interpret the use of the “Beloved Disciple” designation. It has to be someone from within Jesus’ inner circle of friends, evidenced by language which is too specific to come from anyone other than an eye witness. Obviously, John’s name gives the book authority, coming from an original disciple. But any of the other male disciples who might have written it would have had the same authority, so they would have put their own name on it. Which leaves us to wonder if it was written by one of Jesus female disciples, such as Mary Magdalene, which has been suggested. (Who next! Francis Bacon?) First of all, she did not have access to the education it would have taken to write this book, and though it is clear any female author would have had motivation to give the work a male name, it would have been a very difficult forgery to pull off in the late first century, for John, among others, was still around, and would have protested. We have, through contemporary writers, evidence of John living in
Ephesus after the time of Paul’s death. In the second century, some sixty or seventy years after the book was supposed to be written, multiple independent sources, among them Theophilos of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons, make reference to John the son of Zebedee as the author of the fourth gospel. The fragments we have found of these and other second century authors were not closely related, suggesting a common tradition that must have preceded them by some time, likely a generation or two, judging by the length of time it took texts to be reproduced and travel at that time. This would put the tradition of Johannine authorship back to the beginning of the second century, very shortly after the time John was living in Ephesus. (Daniel B. Wallace, Th.M.,Ph.D: “The Gospel of John: Introduction, Argument, Outline,” 2005) This is the same type of evidence we use to determine validity in all realms of the field of history. As I said earlier, today’s historians gain more popularity by suggesting alternative interpretations. Certainly, revisionist history has in many cases opened our eyes to new truths. But in this case, the historical evidence against Johannine authorship pales compared to evidence for it. There is no way to categorically prove history, but based on internal and external evidence, the most reasonable conclusion is that John the son of Zebedee wrote the fourth gospel.But even if we accept the historical validity of John and the other New Testament books, we are certainly free to disagree with the opinions of the authors. So in this age Christians are free to point out John’s agenda for his take on Christology and, when discussing Paul’s teachings about the cross, point out that Paul did not actually know Jesus, and that nowhere in the three synoptic gospels does Jesus declare himself unequivocally to be God. In our age of Verum est Factum it would certainly be easier to embrace a view of Jesus as a great teacher, a moral pioneer, whose message of love can indeed redeem humanity. The incarnation, virgin birth, and resurrection do not fit the scientific method at all. It is hard to believe these mysteries today. 

 THE MEANING OF PENTECOST: VERUM EST MYSTERIUM

But what has become of the scientific method and the philosophy of Verum est Factum? Has science really eliminated mystery?If modern science has taught us anything, it is that we cannot always trust formulae as simple as the scientific method. Quantum physics has especially opened our eyes to the fact that the rules for one practice or system do not necessarily apply to another. When our experimentation falls short, we need to have faith that the truth is there beneath our abilities to test it, based on what we see played out in the world we know. But the scientific method does not answer the questions of quantum mechanics, just as it fails to answer the questions of history. In Quantum theory, the problems arise when attempting to apply the laws which work very well for a macro world to a quantum system. In the same way, we cannot measure the metaphysical realm with the laws of the physical realm. The truth remains a mystery. Verum est Mysterium. We do not understand how Jesus can be simultaneously both God and man, yet that mystery is central to the Christian faith. It is futile to try to test the history of Jesus with the scientific method.The Christology of John and the early councils takes us one step further and says Mysterium est Factum! (Mystery is Fact). In other words, we must have faith in what cannot be seen. Any modern physicist would agree with this statement.

Let us return now to the period of the early Christian church and try to really determine whether or not Jesus was divine. The significant event which establishes it is the resurrection, and the significant event which promulgated it is Pentecost. Pentecost can be looked at one of two, and only two, ways. Before this meeting in an upper room a few weeks after Jesus’ purported ascension, his followers seemed to understand very little about how to continue and spread his message. Luke’s book of Acts tells us that this group was divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit to go and preach Jesus’ message, his resurrection, even the glory of his death. They then did this, many even to their own martyrdom. The other way to view Pentecost is that they gathered there in the upper room, mourning Jesus’ death and wanting to continue his message. So they either invented or convinced themselves to believe a resurrection that had been staged by Peter, John and Mary Magdalene, and agreed one and all to stick to this story, for the sake of Jesus’ message, even unto death. John was so emphatic in his gospel of Jesus divinity because he was in on the hoax. Pentecost has to mean one of these two scenarios. There is no in between that makes any historical sense at all.

Now the problem with the latter scenario is that it falls out of line with what the disciples all thought Jesus’ mission was during his lifetime—to liberate Israel from Rome. Yes, his message was powerful, but they did not understand it at the time. Perhaps as years went by they would have understood, and begun to preach it, but in the few short weeks between crucifixion and Pentecost, they would have felt let down and disheartened by the death of their leader. This would have surely trumped all comprehension of the message. If you look at all the other great moral teachers of the world, it took a long time after their deaths before their movements really began to take hold. Since many years had passed, myth became intertwined with the message. The difference with Jesus is that it took weeks, not decades and centuries! This is really much more astonishing than we often realize. The only way this shift in understanding could have occurred so quickly was through an event as profound, unbelievable and inspiring as the resurrection.Furthermore, if it was a hoax, at all in doubt, some of the group would have deserted the cause, at least faded into the background. It would be sheer madness to lay down your life for a message you had made up, for no visible gain If Peter made up the eyewitness report he gave to Mark of the empty tomb and risen Jesus, would he have been willing to be nailed upside down to a cross for that story? What could give Peter, who denied Jesus before his death, the strength to die for him except an event as powerful as the resurrection? Perhaps we could dismiss one man as a lunatic, but there was also Andrew, who died on an X-shaped cross in Greece, James who was beheaded by Herod Agrippa, Philip, who was also crucified in Asia, Bartholomew, who was skinned alive in Albanapolis, and Simon and Jude, who were both martyred in Persia. All of them died because they preached the message of Jesus and declared him to be the way of salvation.People do not go to their deaths for lies. If it had been made up, someone would have at least had a deathbed admission, but no one from that upper room did. Some might think that any such admission would have been covered up by the early church, but remember that the church had no political authority until the fourth century. The Jewish and Roman authority would have made sure to spread any rumor of a Christian hoax.

We must also examine Jesus himself. Why would he have chosen crucifixion unless he felt it was his purpose, and what meaning can his death have unless he is something more than only man? And make no mistake, he chose to be crucified. When he was praying at Gethsemane the night before and the soldiers came to arrest him, he could have escaped. The back-side of the Mount of Olives leads away from Jerusalem, into the desert. Jesus was familiar with the desert and knew how to survive in it. A mob coming up the hill with lanterns and torches, as John’s gospel describes them, would have been seen while they were still climbing the hill. Jesus and his three friends would have had plenty of time to retreat down the other side of the hill and escape. Later, when Pilate questioned him, he could have defended himself, but he remained silent. Pilate wanted to acquit him. This attitude would have been pure madness unless his words were true, that to die was his redemptive purpose. “Verily I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) Likewise his message of salvation, through himself, would be absurd and vain unless he had a special authority on which to speak. He consistently references his authority as coming from the Father. We must believe that his authority was real, if we are to believe anything he said.  A thorough reading of each gospel text makes us realize that we cannot simply take his moral teachings and forget about the rest of the things he said and did. If his words were not true, he must have been both a psychopath and a brilliant weaver of deceit. A normal man of the remarkable morality we attribute to Jesus would not say these types of things. C.S. Lewis says “we must make our choice. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (“Mere Christianity,” book 1, chap 3, 1943) Truly, what lunatic could single handedly turn world morality on its heel?

There is one other option we may consider: that Jesus of Nazareth is a folk character. That Mark, Peter, Paul, Luke, John, etc. came up with these remarkable moral teachings, perhaps at a gathering such as Pentecost, and invented the story and the person of Jesus (perhaps a real man who had been recently crucified), in order to give their teachings some credibility. Thus, the mythic quality of his life makes some sense. Again, however, we must look at the motivations these people would have had to suffer unto death for a new message that had been invented. Why would the Roman and Jewish leaders have feared the movement, which talked about a king that was already dead, unless said king had already stirred things up before his death? The words of Jesus written by the gospel authors are too fantastic to be invented and followed. They could have couched the message in something much easier if the whole thing were invented. Why point the entire religion toward this man if he were only a myth. It would be an inconsistent message. If you look at any of the other religious leaders whose messages are similar to Jesus, they point their followers away from themselves. This is necessary for their salvific messages to carry any weight. Peter himself attempted to dispel this idea in his second letter when he wrote: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (Second Peter, 1:16) The fact that a man named Jesus was crucified by Pilate, and that he wrote “King of the Jews” above his cross is known through historical sources unattached to the Christian writers. Furthermore, we would have had much more argument amongst the early Christians on the real meaning of their religion, especially if they constructed something as fantastic as the “Only begotten son of God.” The minor disputes of Peter and Paul, or John and Thomas are small compared to what they would have been if Jesus had not existed. The idea that Jesus was a myth is more historically implausible than the notion of a Pentecost hoax. 

DIVINE: MYSTERIUM EST FACTUM   So the alternative is to believe that the resurrection really occurred, and this means Jesus was divine. Surely, what mortal could perform such a trick? If he had the power to rise from the dead, then his power was from God. And if his power was from God, we cannot suppose that he was mistaken about his relationship with God—the relationship of son to father, in a unique, intimate way (John 3:16, Mark 1:11, 14:36, Matthew 16:16, etc.). Yet the meaning of his incarnation and resurrection was not immediately understood by his followers. Instead, they preached on his message and followed his example of good deeds. Only through Paul, and then John, did the meaning of the cross begin to take hold in Christian theology, and it should be noted that the Christian leaders took a long time and great argument before they accepted the teachings of Paul. Rather, the man who really gave us our Christianity as we know it, was John. Even though Paul wrote his letters first, without the acceptance of John’s gospel, I am not sure Paul’s writings ever would have been accepted in the Christian canon.From the very beginning and throughout both his gospel and his three letters, John points to Christ’s divinity and the redemptive quality of the cross. Some literalists, Christians who hold to a version of verum est factum, focus on the other three gospels and dub John a “mystic.” But John is as much a literalist as any historian of the time. Look at his detailed eye-witness account of the crucifixion. Yes, he had an agenda, but it was in regards to a man he had personally known, and whose mother he cared for. This is another point which gives John his authority. A short time after Pentecost, John disappears from the scene for awhile, for he took Mary, Jesus mother into his home and cared for her (John 19:27). He does not reappear on the scene until many years later, presumably after Mary’s time on earth has ended. But consider the implications of John’s declaring Jesus divinity, having Mary in his house! Who would know better than her what special qualities Jesus had? We have no better authority on Christology than his own mother, and if John was considering or even already working on his gospel while she was alive, they must have discussed it. If Jesus was not God then John lied, and if John lied we have little on which to base what we think we know about Jesus.

But even so, what motivation would John have had to lie, first at Pentecost in his resurrection account, and later in his gospel, after years of one on one conversations with the Blessed Virgin Mary herself? Why re-emerge on the Christian scene years later with his controversial book if he did not believe it? After all the earlier martyrdoms, he had to know he was risking his life by publishing his work. There was nothing personally to be gained. It was not like today, when lucrative publishing contracts await controversial books. Furthermore, from a purely secular approach, John shows himself to be the most virtuous of the twelve male disciples. When Jesus, his friend, is going to be executed, only John stays with him till the end. And Jesus’ final commission to him (which he gives simply as a dying man to a loyal friend, not as God), to care for his mother, is met with acceptance and joy, though it removed John from the action of the early church after the first few chapters of Acts, a scene in which John no doubt would have loved to be a part. There is no evidence of duplicity or deceit in John’s life (some self-righteousness, we must admit, but not deceit, and always loyalty). It is difficult to imagine him intentionally writing falsehoods about Jesus, his dear friend.To sum this all up, if we believe the message Jesus’ followers spread in the time shortly after his death, then we must accept the validity of the gospel authors, based on the same type of historical evidence with which we have gathered all the other world history we know. If we accept these writings then we must believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and if we believe that he rose from the dead, then we must believe the authors when they describe him as the son of God. Our reluctance to accept this comes from our modern reliance on the scientific method, which has been promulgated by the age of enlightenment, but as we have seen in such fields as quantum physics, the laws (factum) which we apply to the world as we know it do not always work to describe the world we cannot see (quantum). Similarly, God cannot be governed by the laws of science he created. Knowing this, why should it surprise us that God could incarnate as a human being?

So if it is all true, that Jesus, as God incarnate died as a redemptive gesture and rose from the dead, what does this really mean for us? Jesus told us that salvation is through him, and if we are to follow him, we are to do as he commanded. This, simply broken down, means to love God and one another. God’s unending love is waiting for us, and whenever we give love to those around us, especially those who are difficult to love, we are in turn giving our love to God. This is the heart of Jesus’ message. By believing what his disciples have told us, by sharing in the spirit of truth that came upon them at Pentecost, we believe not only in the Jesus who is God, but the God who suffered not to become man, and by so doing, proved his phenomenal love.