Science and Certain Theories of Sean Collins

Sean Collins discusses faith and science:







James Chastek makes a similar argument:























We Didn’t Really Mean It

The Holy Office later published an interpretation of its 1897 ruling on the letter of John:

At this response there arose on June 2, 1927, the following declaration, at first given privately by the same Sacred Congregation and afterwards repeated many times, which was made a part of public law in EB n. 121 by authority of the Holy Office itself:
“This decree was passed to check the audacity of private teachers who attributed to themselves the right either of rejecting entirely the authenticity of the Johannine comma, or at least of calling it into question by their own final judgment. But it was not meant at all to prevent Catholic writers from investigating the subject more fully and, after weighing the arguments accurately on both sides, with that and temperance which the gravity of the subject requires, from inclining toward an opinion in opposition to its authenticity, provided they professed that they were ready to abide by the judgment of the Church, to which the duty was delegated by Jesus Christ not only of interpreting Holy Scripture but also of guarding it faithfully.”

It seems reasonable to take this more or less at face value. However, it is not really an interpretation of the meaning of the earlier ruling, but rather of its motive, and one that basically undercuts the original ruling.

Why was it necessary for this interpretation to be given privately “many times” before it was published? The original ruling essentially said that one could not even call the authenticity of the text into question. This would leave people who desired to be obedient to the ruling with no alternative but to firmly assert the authenticity of the text. Since many Catholic scholars could see that this went against the facts in manifest ways, there were consequently many who appealed in private for an interpretation which would permit them to question the authenticity of the text.

Even if we accept the basic honesty of the explanation, however, the original ruling exists in a broader context, of which the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission statement on Genesis is one example, which suggests a more general idea: the “audacity of private teachers” is doing damage to the Church, and therefore such audacity must be repressed. Regardless of whether repression was the correct response, the first part was true: damage was indeed being done. Audacity however was no necessary part of this process, since seeking the truth would do just as well.

Modernism Responds to Pius X

Earlier I quoted Pope Pius X against the Modernists:




Agnosticism its Philosophical Foundation




They remark in the note on the name “Modernist”:









« Utrum tuto negari, aut saltem in dubium revocari possit
« unum sunt? »
Omnibus diligentissimo examine perpensis, praehabito que
DD. Consultorum voto, iidem Emi Cardinales respondendum
mandarunt: « Negative ».


Pope Pius X complains in Pascendi:














As the Heavens are Higher than the Earth

Job accuses God:

It is all one; therefore I say,
    he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.
When disaster brings sudden death,
    he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked;
    he covers the eyes of its judges—
    if it is not he, who then is it?

Ezekiel 18 seems to say something very opposed to this:










How often is the lamp of the wicked put out?
    How often does calamity come upon them?
    How often does God distribute pains in his anger?
How often are they like straw before the wind,
    and like chaff that the storm carries away?
Let their own eyes see their destruction,
    and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
For what do they care for their household after them,
    when the number of their months is cut off?
Will any teach God knowledge,
    seeing that he judges those that are on high?
One dies in full prosperity,
    being wholly at ease and secure,
his loins full of milk
    and the marrow of his bones moist.
Another dies in bitterness of soul,
    never having tasted of good.
They lie down alike in the dust,
    and the worms cover them.

Oh, I know your thoughts,
    and your schemes to wrong me.
    Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’
Have you not asked those who travel the roads,
    and do you not accept their testimony,
that the wicked are spared in the day of calamity,
    and are rescued in the day of wrath?
Who declares their way to their face,
    and who repays them for what they have done?
When they are carried to the grave,
    a watch is kept over their tomb.
The clods of the valley are sweet to them;
    everyone will follow after,
    and those who went before are innumerable.
How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
    There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.




For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.








Mary Magdalene

St. John begins to tell us of the discovery of Jesus’s resurrection:


It is not quite clear what the other disciple believed, given that “as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” St. Augustine interprets this to mean that they believed what Mary had said:


In any case, whether it was this or something else, St. John continues:


St. Augustine comments on the fact that Mary stayed at the tomb while the others returned home:


While St. Augustine finds it curious that Mary continued to look, he gives the explanation himself when he says that she “was fastened to that place by a stronger affection.” If we are looking for something, we will look more and harder to the degree that we care about it more. If we lose something and care about it a lot, we might very well search the same places repeatedly, even multiple times. Of course, this is usually because we think we might have missed it, but sometimes we even search again in places where there is no realistic possibility of having missed it. And in the case of Mary Magdalene, she could believe it possible that she missed some remaining clue. In any case, the very fact that she cared more than the others explains her behavior sufficiently; there is no need to rationalize every aspect of it.

In this account, Mary is the one who announced to the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” The Ambrosian rite describes this,

O worthy conversion, that merited to receive so great a gift, that she who was formerly deservedly held fast in the jaws of the ancient dragon, now rejoicing in complete freedom, should merit to be the first to announce the Lord’s Resurrection to the Holy Apostles.

In this way a close connection is made between Mary’s love and the fact that she was the first to recognize the resurrection of Christ. One who cares more about something, is more likely to find it.

Ratzinger’s Response

Ratzinger  begins to respond to the difficulties he has raised:





















Image and Reality

A number of the issues we have discussed can be considered in parallel. There are significant differences between them, but we have given three situations where there was one understanding, at least in the early Church and sometimes later, and after time there was a different understanding. The three issues are the genre of Genesis, the time of the end of the world, and the number of the saved.

The cases differ significantly. In regard to Genesis, it is fairly certain that it was interpreted mainly literally throughout most of Christian history, but there were also some exceptions, at least for some passages. There are literary reasons for supposing that it should not be interpreted in this way, and I presented some of them in the linked post, but in practice the change in understanding came about because the facts were inconsistent with supposing that it was a literal historical account. Fr. Harrison objects exactly for this reason: according to him, it is completely unreasonable to change your understanding of the text to conform to the facts. Nor is the change universal; many ordinary Christians and Catholics would still understand the text in a historically literal way. But this is surely not the current understanding of the Magisterium, nor is it objectively reasonable.

In regard to the time of the end, it is likely that the understanding that it would be soon was nearly universal in the early Church, but this cannot be demonstrated with certainty, since this understanding had to change very quickly in order to remain in conformity with experience. The changed understanding itself would thus be universal, although some take this farther than others; thus James Chastek in the linked post argued that the Second Coming is something that happens after human history has already been concluded, but not everyone would say this.

In regard to the number of the saved, the issue was surely much less important. Christ himself at least on one occasion seems to have refused to answer the question: one should not be concerned about how many are saved, but to strive for salvation. And the idea that most people are lost was surely not universal. Origen for example argued that all will be saved. And likewise, I have given only the example of Pope Benedict XVI currently arguing that most people are saved, while it is not clear how common this opinion is. Nonetheless, I have included this because of significant similarities. The Catholic doctrine of the Last Judgement implies that there is a deep truth behind the human tendency to divide people into good people and bad people. According to the doctrine, people will in fact be divided in this way, and the division will last for all eternity. But the human tendency is a bit different. As I suggested in the linked post, people frequently tend to make such a division on the basis of religion and politics and similar matters. Democrats might say that Republicans are heartless evil people; Christians might say that atheists are sinful and immoral people who have rebelled against God. Such a division is sometimes even taken so far that it is incorporated into a person’s idea of religious doctrine: thus for example some people hold a rigid understanding of the idea that there is no salvation outside the Church, and some Muslims say that all non-Muslims go to hell.

In this sense, the natural human tendency is surely deeply flawed. Just because people do not agree with you, or just because they do not belong to your communities, does not mean that they are evil people. If anything, it is obvious that most people are not deeply evil. On the one hand, this provides ammunition for people who would engage in Bulverism against the Christian doctrine; they can say that the doctrine may simply be a result of this flawed tendency. On the other hand, it provides an argument in favor of Pope Benedict XVI’s position, and in fact it is more or less the argument that he makes. This is why I have included it: Christ said certain things, which understood in a fairly simple way seem to imply certain things about the time of the end and the number of the saved. Likewise, Genesis says things which similarly can be taken to imply certain facts about the history of the world. Over time, everyone realized that what seemed implied about the time of the end, simply could not be the case. Many people realized that what seemed implied about the history of the world could not be the case, and at least some people realized that what seemed implied about the number of the saved is unlikely to be the case.

These surely differ in their doctrinal weight. The number of the saved is probably unimportant in a doctrinal sense, even if it might be important to us personally. The other two seem somewhat more important, but it not difficult to argue that such changes do not involve the substance of any doctrine. As I have said previously, one would not describe a contradiction as such as a development. So “the world will not end soon” cannot be a development of “the world will end soon,” but it would not be unreasonable to say that Christians went from one to the other through an improved understanding of the meaning and history of the Church, even if it was one that was forced upon them by the facts. In this sense, it is not unreasonable to understand all of these things in conformity with Newman’s idea of development of doctrine.

But something seems missing here. All of the facts may be consistent with Newman’s idea, but that does not mean that they are not consistent with anything else. And if anything, they seem more suggestive of the hypothesis that Newman rejects, that “Christianity has ever changed from the first and ever accommodates itself to the circumstances of times and seasons,” and which seems to imply that Christianity is not supernatural. To a non-Christian, these facts look like the early Christians were just ignorant, and their ignorance was overcome through the normal progress in the knowledge of truth. And to the extent that they received their religion from Christ, and even to some extent apparently these specific ideas, it looks like Christ was ignorant as well.

Pope Benedict XVI discusses a similar situation in his homilies on Genesis, published as the book In the Beginning:



Do these words, then, count for anything? In fact a theologian said not long ago that creation has become an unreal concept. If one is to be intellectually honest one ought to speak no longer of creation but rather of mutation and selection. Are these words true? Or have they perhaps, along with the entire Word of God and the whole biblical tradition, come out of the reveries of the infant age of human history, for which we occasionally experience homesickness but to which we can nevertheless not return, inasmuch as we cannot live on nostalgia? Is there an answer to this that we can claim for ourselves in this day and age?

He is discussing the specific issue of the truth of Genesis, and thus his response is tailored to this:

One answer was already worked out some time ago, as the scientific view of the world was gradually crystallizing; many of you probably came across it in your religious instruction. It says that the Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such. It is a religious book, and consequently one cannot obtain information about the natural sciences from it. One cannot get from it a scientific explanation of how the world arose; one can only glean religious experience from it. Anything else is an image and a way of describing things whose aim is to make profound realities graspable to human beings. One must distinguish between the form of portrayal and the content that is portrayed. The form would have been chosen from what was understandable at the time – from the images which surrounded the people who lived then, which they used in speaking and thinking, and thanks to which they were able to understand the greater realities. And only the reality that shines through these images would be what was intended and what was truly enduring. Thus Scripture would not wish to inform us about how the different species of plant life gradually appeared or how the sun and the moon and the stars were established. Its purpose ultimately would be to say one thing: God created the world. The world is not, as people used to think then, a chaos of mutually opposed forces; nor is it the dwelling of demonic powers from which human beings must protect themselves. The sun and the moon are not deities that rule over them, and the sky that stretches over their heads is not full of mysterious and adversary divinities. Rather, all of this comes from one power, from God’s eternal Reason, which became – in the Word – the power of creation. All of this comes from the same Word of God that we meet in the act of faith. Thus, insofar as human beings realized that the world came from the Word, they ceased to care about the gods and demons. In addition, the world was freed so that reason might lift itself up to God and so that human beings might approach this God fearlessly. In this Word they experienced the true enlightenment that does away with the gods and the mysterious powers and that reveals to them that there is only one power everywhere and that we are in his hands. This is the living God, and this same power (which created the earth and the stars and which bears the whole universe) is the very one whom we meet in the Word of Holy Scripture. In this Word we come into contact with the real primordial force of the world and with the power that is above all powers.

After this description of a response to the problem, he says that there is still a problem:

I believe that this view is correct, but it is not enough. For when we are told that we have to distinguish between the images themselves and what those images mean, then we can ask in turn: Why wasn’t that said earlier? Evidently it must have been taught differently at one time or else Galileo would never have been put on trial. And so the suspicion grows that ultimately perhaps this way of viewing things is only a trick of the church and of theologians who have run out of solutions but do not want to admit it, and now they are looking for something to hide behind. And on the whole the impression is given that the history of Christianity in the last four hundred years has been a constant rearguard action as the assertions of the faith and of theology have been dismantled piece by piece. People have, it is true, always found tricks as a way of getting out of difficulties. But there is an almost ineluctable fear that we will gradually end up in emptiness and that the time will come when there will be nothing left to defend and hide behind, that the whole landscape of Scripture and of the faith will be overrun by a kind of “reason” that will no longer be able to take any of this seriously.

Along with this there is another disquieting consideration. For one can ask: If theologians or even the church can shift the boundaries here between image and intention, between what lies buried in the past and what is of enduring value, why can they not do so elsewhere – as, for instance, with respect to Jesus’ miracles? And if there, why not also with respect to what is absolutely central – the cross and the resurrection of the Lord? This would be an operation whose aim would be, supposedly, to defend the faith, inasmuch as it would say: Behind what is there, which we can no longer defend, there is something more real. Such an operation often ends up by putting the faith itself in doubt, by raising the question of the honesty of those who are interpreting it and of whether anything at all there is enduring. As far as theological views of this sort are concerned, finally, quite a number of people have the abiding impression that the church’s faith is like a jellyfish: no one can get a grip on it and it has no firm center. It is on the many halfhearted interpretations of the biblical Word that can be found everywhere that a sickly Christianity takes its stand – a Christianity that is no longer true to itself and that consequently cannot radiate encouragement and enthusiasm. It gives, instead, the impression of being an organization that keeps on talking although it has nothing else to say, because twisted words are not convincing and are only concerned to hide their emptiness.

This concern is much like that of Ross Douthat in his comments regarding communion for divorced and remarried couples.

I will give Ratzinger’s response to these issues, and offer some comments on it, in the next post, or possibly later.

Chastek on Morality in the Old Testament

James Chastek discusses the morality in the Old Testament:

If our objection to the divine origin of Scripture is to call it a book of crude bronze-age genocidal goat herding patriarchal peasants, then do we expect something with a truly a divine origin be the finest fruit of a perfectly enlightened age, composed by leisured aristocrats, and reflecting the noblest, purest moral ideals and actions? Even if all these traits were compatible (non-patriarchal aristocracy?) an honest look at history tells us that such age would be marred by its love of its own atrocious actions and beliefs.  Our rhetorical jabs would just shift from whatever monstrous moral practices happen at the hands of goat-herders to the the ones that happen at the hands of enlightened, leisured aristocrats and college professors.

Is this missing the point, though? Sure, maybe out mocking of goat-herders is a little xenophobic and elitist, and maybe any culture God chose to reveal himself though would have its own vices and faults. But isn’t the heart of the objection that since God is “morally perfect” his revelation should be morally perfect? Isn’t this practically a tautology?

Of course any culture that God chose to reveal himself through would have its own vices and faults. And even if a revelation was morally perfect, there is enough disagreement about morals that people would criticize the revelation in moral terms anyway. But even the latter fact does not answer the objection, as Chastek acknowledges here, because the fact that people would criticize it anyway, does not mean that it in fact is morally perfect.

He continues:

Not necessarily. Instead of trying to justify the apparent moral degradation of Scripture we might investigate the hypothesis that some moral degradation is integral to its own account of revelation. Since it is complete in Christ, revelation is not just God’s speaking to human beings but speaking with a human voice. Given that God wanted to save human beings, and not just start again after the fall with a non-fallen creation (which would make both salvation and revelation unnecessary) he was committed to speaking with a fallen voice until such time when he would speak though his new creation in Christ. Demanding moral perfection of the revelation before this new creation would destroy the way in which Christ fulfills the Scripture as not just a revelation to humanity but through humanity.

Ultimately one would have to flesh out this thesis in order to give it a full consideration. What does it mean in particular for the Old Testament? Does it mean that parts of it are false? If not, what is the alternative?

And what does it mean for the New Testament? If revelation is complete in Christ, does it mean that the New Testament is in fact morally perfect, even though the Old Testament is not? As implied by Chastek’s first paragraph, people can and do criticize the morality found in the New Testament as well. For example, although Christ proposes an improved morality, he does not specifically distinguish what he is saying from pacifism, and consequently some early Christians were pacifists. Pacifism is not a perfect morality, and even if Christ might have personally understood this, he failed to make the distinction publicly, or at least failed to have it recorded. Likewise, many people have criticized St. Paul’s attitude to slavery, or the details of his view on the relationship of men and women.

As I said above, people would criticize even a morally perfect revelation. Consequently one possible response to such issues in the New Testament is to defend it in every respect, saying that in fact it is morally perfect. But this is possible much in the way that it is possible to defend the Old Testament in every respect, as for example saying that since God is the author of all, he has the right to command genocide, and that if it is commanded, people should carry it out. This answer is not impossible in itself. But if we do not wish to accept it because it is not a very reasonable position, I would suggest that the same thing is probably true about the New Testament, but with a difference of degree. The difference between the morality in the Old Testament and the morality in the New is not the difference between an imperfect morality and a perfect morality; it is the difference between a more imperfect morality and a less imperfect morality.

Whether one agrees that even the morality of the New Testament is imperfect, or asserts that it is perfect in contrast to the Old Testament, the resulting position will be consistent with holding the truth of the Christian religion. However, either response will have a price, basically because either response is a response to a legitimate objection. As for the exact nature of the price, I may revisit this issue in the future.

Marcion of Pontus

Marcion of Pontus, at the end of the first century AD, considering that Jesus proposed to improve on the Old Testament, and considering the nature of some of the content found in the Old Testament, proposed a radical break between the New and Old Testaments. His writings are lost, but descriptions of his theory remain. St. Irenaeus says in Against Heresies:



Similarly, Tertullian says in his work Against Marcion,


He had, moreover, in one Cerdon an abettor of this blasphemy—a circumstance which made them the more readily think that they saw most clearly their two gods, blind though they were; for, in truth, they had not seen the one God with soundness of faith. To men of diseased vision even one lamp looks like many. One of his gods, therefore, whom he was obliged to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming his attributes in the matter of evil; the other, whom he laboured so hard to devise, he constructed, laying his foundation in the principle of good. In what articles he arranged these natures, we show by our own refutations of them.

Apart from theological problems with asserting the existence of multiple gods, a major problem with this theory is that it is contrary to Jesus’s own words about himself, as when he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

Consequently, as Irenaeus says in the quoted passage, it was necessary for Marcion to eliminate a great deal from his canon of Scripture. Of the Gospels, he accepted only that of Luke, and had to do a great deal of editing to make it conform to his opinion. He did the same thing with the epistles of St. Paul.

Earlier we quoted Newman on Protestantism:



According to Newman, if you wish to take seriously the religion proposed by Christ and the Apostles, you have to take seriously the Christianity of the first, second, and third centuries, which leads right to the requirement that you take seriously the Christianity of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, and so on. Taking this process seriously without inserting some radical break means accepting medieval Christianity, the Council of Trent, and Catholicism. To the degree that Newman is right, in order to be a Protestant one must insert some radical break into history. In this sense, Marcion could be said to be one of the original Protestants. Just as the reformers said, “Look at how corrupt the Church of Rome is, we need a real break from that,” Marcion said, “Look at how corrupt the Old Testament is, we need a real break from that.”

There is a similar problem with both attempted ruptures. Christ fully accepted the Old Testament, and in fact says that “the scripture cannot be annulled,” so rejecting the Old Testament means rejecting the religion of Christ. Similarly, the Protestant rejection of Catholicism implies rejecting historical Christianity, which likewise implies rejecting the religion of Christ.

Killing Your Son

In his response to Pascal’s wager, which we discussed earlier, Richard Carrier objects to the story of Abraham and Isaac:

For example, in the bible Abraham discards humanity and morality upon God’s command to kill his son Isaac, and God rewards him for placing loyalty above morality. That is probably evil–a good god would expect Abraham to forego fear and loyalty and place compassion first and refuse to commit an evil act, and would reward him for that, not for compliance.

Sometimes people will respond to such episodes by saying that all things belong to God, and therefore he cannot be blamed for killing anyone, or for ordering others to kill. But this response is not to the point: if you hear a voice that seems to be from God, and which tells you to kill your son (or anyone else for that matter), you should assume that you are insane, hallucinating, or in some other way deceived, rather than assuming that God in fact wants you to kill someone. In this sense, Carrier’s complaint is valid.

In any case, it is very likely that one of the main points of the account is that sacrificing one’s children is bad, and that God does not wish it. In this sense, the biblical author is likely in agreement with Carrier, but it does not bother him to tell the story in this fashion regardless. This is perhaps for argumentative purposes: those who would sacrifice children would perhaps argue, “God is the greatest of all, and worthy of the greatest of sacrifices, such as our children, rather than mere beasts.” There would seem to be something lacking in the response, “We care about our children too much to do that, so God will have to put up with something less.” Instead, the biblical author responds that we would be willing to give up our children, if God wanted that, but that he does not want it.

In other words, Carrier takes the account too literally to understand the point of it, even when it is in agreement with him.