Man's Freedom, Creation

A personal being is capable of loving someone more than his own nature, more than his own life. The person, that is to say, the image of God in man, is then man’s freedom with regard to his nature, “the fact of being freed from necessity and not being subject to the domination of nature, but able to determine oneself freely” (St. Gregory of Nyssa). Man acts most often under natural impulses. He is conditioned by his temperament, his character, his heredity, cosmic or psycho-social ambiance, indeed, his very historicity. But the truth of man is beyond all conditioning; and his dignity consists in being able to liberate himself from his nature, not by consuming it or abandoning it to itself, like the ancient or oriental sage, but by transfiguring it in God.

The goal of freedom, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus explains, is that the good belongs in truth to him who chooses it. God does not wish to remain in possession of the good He has created. He awaits from man more than a blind, entirely natural participation. He wants man consciously to assume his nature, to possess it freely as good, to recognize with gratitude in life and in the universe the gifts of divine love.

- Vladimir Lossky, "The Creation"

HT: Glory to God for All Things

Pied Beauty - my last 24 hours

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

On the Influence of Parents, Brain Floaters, and the Hilarity of Mis-Punctuation à la Jon Stewart

A few days back, my wife, Laura, asked my seven-year-old daughter what she wanted to be when she grew up. Anna said, "I want to be a teacher. And then when I lose my job I want to be an artist."

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Evangelization, St. Francis of Assisi, Evolution and Contraception have been on my mind lately - a semi-unrelated list of subjects I've been thinking about. Aimee Milburn got me thinking about Evangelization, of course, and it's been popping here and there on my radar screen since.

I'm reading Chesterton's St. Francis of Assisi and am continually floored by this saint who has always had such a phenomenal presence in my life, in my mind; I can't think of a moment in my life when I was not aware of him. It's hard to think of many who have made so great a contribution to my philosophy of life and faith, and who have been content to teach me of such things quietly from the margins.

I've been watching some videos and reading some books on evolution, and Christian thought about evolution. It's quite fascinating as I've never taken an in-depth look at evolution before in my life. (I think that's a shame, by the way. Not because evolution is all that, but because, rather than simply learning characterizations, I should have been educated, should have educated myself, about one of the most influential theories of the past millennium.) Recently I've watched a special titled Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial about the debacle just a couple of short years ago in Pennsylvania about evolution and intelligent design in the public schools. And currently I'm working through a PBS series mysteriously titled Evolution. Along with those videos I've read or am reading Cardinal Schönborn's Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith, and Creation and Evolution: A Conference with Pope Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo. I'm also reading an interesting book by a former Seventh-Day Adventist, now an agnostic, Ronald L. Numbers, titled The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design which attempts to trace the history of the young-earth-creationist movement. I'll let you know on how well I think he did if and when I make it through the book. I've owned Darwin's On the Origin of Species for some time and will also be taking a gander at it. Let me know of other materials you know of that would be worth my while.

And on the contraception front, there's a sardonic view of the prophetic truth of Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae in this month's First Things. I know speaking of contraception stirs up a whole mess, but this article is an interesting look back at a now-40-year-old document, and the consequences of our ignoring it. And it's shameful for those of us who are Catholics who have not been sturdy enough defenders of the faith in respect to our sexuality - not to stir the pot or anything.

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Finally, I wanted to share this clip from the Daily Show from last night. The whole clip is quite funny, but what tickled me in particular was a piece near the middle of the clip where Stewart talks about Indymac's collapse and their offer of "water" to their customers, whose line rambles down the sidewalk. It's hilarious and serves as an important reminder to use punctuation properly, or at least more properly.

Compendium, 1, 1, 1: "Man's Capacity for God" (5)

5. How can we speak about God?

(Catechism 39-43, 48-49)
By taking as our starting point the perfections of man and of the other creatures which are a reflection, albeit a limited one, of the infinite perfection of God, we are able to speak about God with all people. We must, however, continually purify our language insofar as it is image-bound and imperfect, realizing that we can never fully express the infinite mystery of God.

This morning, before my only-off-site-school-attending child left with her mother, she asked me a series of questions about animals and plants and, specifically, the carnivorous variety. She said a boy had told her of a plant called a flytrap that ate flies. She wondered why they were. What can you say to the ontological musings of a 7-year-old? When she reaches past facts and material knowledge to grab at causes and purposes, what do you say? I first explained, as best as I could, the science - what the plant gained by eating flies and how it went about its business; then I tackled the Why with a question of my own: Is the world more or less interesting because of the Venus flytrap? And what does this plant teach us about God? It teaches us more than we can know probably, but certainly it shows that he is creative and expresses joy in creating. Certainly it tells us that he is a lover of dappled things. Just as a work of art, a poem or an aria, reflects its creator, so does creation, the natural order, reflect its Creator. Which brings us back to man's capacity for God: We need oceans and mountains and galaxies that we might understand something about depth and breadth and height. It is difficult to know something other than what is. And what we are able to know builds on what we already know. We would be, to some degree, diminished without flytraps.

Of course, beside our ability to know stands our limitations of knowing. Our understanding can only fail to comprehend the One whom the universe cannot contain, He Who Is (as icons have wrapped around the head of Christ). So while we do our best to compass the revelation of God, we must not err by saying too much. For God is also Other, stretching out into and beyond the incomprehensible.

On the other hand, our finiteness does not mean that we can know nothing, that we can only be uncertain, or that our doctrinal formulations/understandings have gotten it wrong. The Church teaches what the Church knows and cannot teach what she does not know. Therefore while our language is imperfect, the truths or realities it communicates doesn't change, though our understanding of those realities may grow. And while our understanding of the deposit of faith that has been delivered to us by Christ through the apostles may grow or mature, the tree conforms to the seed. The acorn does not produce a raccoon.

Let me finish with one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and his praise for "Pied Beauty":

Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Compendium, 1, 1, 1: "Man's Capacity for God" (3-4)

3. How is it possible to know God with only the light of human reason?

(Catechism 31-36, 46-47)
Starting from creation, that is from the world and from the human person, through reason alone one can know God with certainty as the origin and end of the universe, as the highest good and as infinite truth and beauty.

4. Is the light of reason alone sufficient to know the mystery of God?

(Catechism 37-38)
In coming to a knowledge of God by the light of reason alone man experiences many difficulties. Indeed, on his own he is unable to enter into the intimacy of the divine mystery. This is why he stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error.

The certainty spoken of here does not mean scientific certainty - there are no proofs of God that can be verified in a laboratory. The certainty spoken of here is a reliance on man's reason, and the assertion that faith is reasonable. This principle has been key in the ministry of Pope Benedict XVI, that faith and reason are not incompatible, but rather are informed by one another. The Catechism says, " 'Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason.' Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God's revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created 'in the image of God' " (34).

Man can know God, as St Augustine puts it, by questioning nature. But that does not mean that the road to faith is without obstacle, or that all men will come to know God through the study of nature. There are many, many obstacles for each of us to come to know God, to share in his life. Thanks be to God, however, that he continually and faithfully draws all men to himself regardless of the difficulties.

God and Evolution

There is an interesting article in the latest issue of First Things titled "God and Evolution." In it, Avery Cardinal Dulles writes of three categories of Christian belief about evolution: (1) Theistic Evolution - a kind of neo-Darwinism where evolution adequately explains most everything that exists, and where God's presence is not greatly required, (2) Intelligent Design - à la Behe and Johnson - that there are irreducible complexities in creation that require God's hand, and (3) a teleological view of evolution, which believes that God's involvement in evolution is quite present, overseeing and guiding the process in nearness. (Cardinal Dulles also teases out what the Catholic Church does and does not say about evolution - and the freedom of belief within Catholicism.)
     And I've probably slaughtered each view. My apologies. I'm not well-versed in evolutionary beliefs, I confess, growing up as a staunch six-day creationist. I know even less about the philosophies/thought surrounding them, which is, perhaps, why I find this perspective so fascinating.
     I was raised with, and believed in, a literal six-day creation view of the cosmos. This whole concept of evolution still startles me when I read of it in, and the acceptance of it by, the Church. Not that I deny it - that startles me all the more - but belief in a literal six-day creation and a young earth was core-and-foundation sort of stuff for me. At the same time, I understand the creation narratives more broadly, I hope, than I have before and I'm no longer convinced that they need be taken literally. There is a great deal to be said for understanding the literariness of the Scriptures, and the creation narratives certainly are not to be excluded. There is also something to be learned from the Church's past mistakes in regards to science and belief.
     But I'm thinking out loud. I would love to hear your input. What do you think of God and evolution? Or are you a Creationist through and through? I realize this may be a bit of a non-issue for many of you, but beginnings and endings lie quite large on the landscape where I live. It is simply my milieu of belief and the milieu of my family: My father-in-law a conservative pastor, my brother a biologist and very strong defender of a literal six-day creation. (While my becoming a Catholic, for him, may not have quite pushed me into hell, even considering this issue might. ;) )