Posted on 11/07/2005 2:23:36 AM PST by Crackingham
In the mid-1980s I was a member of a Vatican body with the impressive title International Committee of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Each year we had a meeting with Pope John-Paul II; on one occasion he gave us lunch and served a light white wine from, I think, a papal vineyard. The other members of the committee included a splendid Ibo lady, the head of the Catholic Women’s Movement in Nigeria, an Indian nun, a Japanese Jesuit and a Francophone president of an African nation who believed that French culture and a sound classical education would be the best answer to Africa’s educational problems. I enjoyed our discussions, which were almost always held in French.
The idea, which came from the Pope himself, was far-sighted. We foresaw what has subsequently been called the “clash of civilisations”; we tried to relate that conflict to the widely differing cultures of the billion members of the Roman Catholic Church. We discussed the impact of particular developments in modern science but so far as I can remember we did not try to deal with the central problem of the relationship between science and religion; that seems to have come now. Our chairman was Cardinal Paul Poupard, an admirable example of the cultivated French intellectual in the Roman Curia; he is still the head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Whether the council still has an international committee I do not know, since I left it nearly 20 years ago. Last week the cardinal was giving a press conference before a meeting in Rome of scientists, philosophers and theologians; this week they will be discussing the difficult subject of infinity. Cardinal Poupard had a beautifully trained French mind and inner loyalty to the Catholic faith. Nothing he says is said without careful thought. At the press conference he was discussing the issue of evolution, which is the critical dividing line between science and religion. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species shook religious belief when it was first published in 1859 in a way that Isaac Newton’s equally important Principia had not shaken the faith of 1687. In The Times Martin Penner reported the cardinal’s argument. He had said that the description in Genesis of the Creation was “perfectly compatible” with Darwin’s theory of evolution, if the Bible were read properly. “Fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim.”
He argued that the real message of Genesis was that the Universe did not make itself, and had a creator. “Science and theology act in different fields, each in its own.” In Rome, the immediate reaction was that this was a Vatican rejection of the fundamentalist American doctrine of “intelligent design”. No doubt the Vatican does want to separate itself from American creationists, but the significance surely goes further than that. This is not another Galileo case; the teachings of the Church have never imposed a literal interpretation of the language of the Bible; that was a Protestant mistake. Nor did the Church condemn the theory of evolution, though it did and does reject neo-Darwinism when that is made specifically atheist.
Indeed, one can go back nearly 1,500 years before Darwin and find St Augustine of Hippo, the most commanding intellect of all the early doctors of the Church, teaching a doctrine of evolution in the early 5th century. In one of his greatest works, De Genesi ad Litteram, he stated that God did not create an organised Universe as we see it now, but in the beginning created all the elements of the world in a confused and “nebulous” mass. In this mass were the mysterious seeds of the creatures who were to come into existence. Augustine’s thought does therefore contain the elements of a theory of evolution, and even a genetic theory, but does not have natural selection. St Augustine has always been orthodox. He did not foresee modern science in AD410, but he did have an extraordinary grasp of the potential evolution of scientific thought. Cardinal Poupard’s address to the journalists should not be seen as a matter of the Roman Church changing its mind and accepting Darwin after 145 years.
It is a precautionary statement, distancing the Church from the American attack on Darwinism that Rome considers to be neither good science, nor good theology. It will also be taken as an indication of the priorities of the present Pope Benedict XVI.
The Passover/Seder meal wasn't an historical accident doomed to muddy preceptions of Christs words. The Passover became the Eucharist. All Jewish history and custom pointed forward to the Messiah, and prefigured His Coming.
What I mean is: Christ didn't have to awkwardly work around the Passover meal. He fulfilled it.
Since the meal and its ritual was foreseen from the start, the "historical accident" criticism doesn't apply. This was a Jew, intended to be a Jew, speaking as a Jew. He didn't have to wait till Gentiles took over the show to discover what He was really about.
Let me put this clearly. If someone believes that animals and trees (and sagebrush and gila monsters and kumquats) have immortal souls which last into eternity - they are incorrect. Man is not "king of the animals": he is Man, a being with free will and an immortal (and damnable) soul. As Man is only a million years old (tops): some special creation is called for: we cannot evolve immortal souls.
Or, another way of putting it, is that the bible shows that all Christians are always getting the body and blood of Jesus Christ, all the time. There isn't any need for a manmade event on top of that to bring it about, any more than Eskimos need shipments of ice to keep things cold.
The creatures described in the Genesis account as "nephesh" could have souls. But that's confined to what we would call the animal kingdom; we never see a plant bestowed with a "nephesh". So, there may be cats in heaven but they won't have anything to scratch.
The people around Christ when he first adumbrated the Eucharist knew clearly what He was about. "Can this man give us his flesh and blood to drink?" ... and when most of his followers had left him he turned to Peter and the remaining Disciples."And you, My Friends, Will you now leave me?"
There was no misunderstanding. The people who heard Christ knew He was claiming to offer them his Flesh and Blood to eat and drink. Most of them left him. "This is a hard saying and who will bear it?"
The Eucharist - the Sacrifice of the Mass - wasn't some accretion made up by Gentile greeks: Christ claimed it and insisted upon it from the first. "Unless you eat of the Flesh of the Son of Man, and Drink of his Blood, you shall not have Life within you".
LOL. But I think Nephesh referred to a "living principle", not to having an immortal spirit? Better biblical scholars than I need to pile in here, I think.
The sacrifice of the Cross would be regarded as even more impossible, as it speaks of an infinitely greater event than a man they can see who can turn into a piece of food they can munch. Gentiles had indeed come up with the latter in some of their religions (what C.S. Lewis calls a Corn King). But Isaiah had prophesied the former infallibly by the Holy Spirit.
History's own time line shows that it isn't Jews who first started talking about Jesus that way in their doctrine; it was Gentiles.
"It's funny how Protestants insist that every single word of the Bible is literally accurate but when you ask them if they believe that the bread and wine literally becom God's Body and Blood on the altar they say "oh, that was just a metaphor"."
Not all Protestants insist theat the Bible is literally true. That's just ruse to make them look like idiots. There is a difference between being literal and being true. The Bible is Truth but the Bible is not always literal. There are parables, poetry, and analogies, for example. They are easy to identify.
Thank you. It's amazing how people seem to have "fundies" or "creationists" all labelled and categorized and then object when someone seems to categorize evolutionists.
ping
And by its very exclusivity, the "have to attend a Catholic held earthly Eucharistic service" interpretation comes at a contradiction with the biblical assertion that the Jewish saints are saved along with the new church. And even the RCC makes its own noises about how some may be visited with these graces despite never attending a Catholic service. These people obviously get life, from Christ.
If, however, you recognize that the body and blood is something that all Christians get, all the time, and that the purpose of the communion ritual is to remind them of this in the same manner that the seder did, then the problem vanishes.
No-one is saying that the Eucharist is more important than the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, nor His Incarnation. They are all part and parcel of what God has done for us. What I am saying is that Christ said certain things about His Body and Blood, and that they are not accretions after the fact. We are to eat His Body and drink His blood. It is a hard saying, but He said it.
I have a client! Later...
Metaphor is a fair means of Bible expression. Hence some hold a day to mean an age, and all recognize that when, e.g., God "hides His face" we are not talking about a physiognomy receding behind some barrier made of atoms. How one metaphorizes several creations into one, however, is a problem.
Well clearly it is hard, because the Gentile church has historically refused to believe it.
No Adam and Eve means no initial rebellion from God's instruction, and hence no original sin.
No original sin -- means no need for redemption through a Savior..... which means no Jesus Christ.
Whether or not St. Augustine wrote about something quasi-evolutionary is irrelevant. The current "mainstream" crop of evolutionists are anti-religion. They would have me forfeit my faith in a Creation by God, and instead substitute their faith in a mysterious, unproven, unobservable process by which one organism supposedly morphs into another. (Despite all the CONTRADICTORY scientific evidence, I should add.)
No thanks -- I'll stick with Jesus Christ.
Uh, the creation of the universe is not "evolution". And there is nothing whatsoever antagonistic about evolution and multiple "acts of creation". In fact, believing in both evolution and the Bible pretty much requires it ("God-guided" evolution).
I fail to see how having an asteroid strike the earth and wipe out the dinosaurs because God decided that his "evolutionary plan" was headed down the wrong path is any LESS miraculous that the "standard fundamentalist concept". The difference is that one says God works mostly according to the laws he set down with the creation of the universe (which is pretty much the Roman Catholic view)---the other says he uses "instant magic".
Sorry, but if that is what you believe--you are NOT a "fundie"---whose belief setting is the "language absolutist" idea that creation happened in seven 24-hour days. Once you depart from that language absolutism, you are in there with us "parable Biblicists", who believe that the Bible cannot be interpreted "exactly as written", but requires interpretation based on both Church tradition and our current "state of knowledge" about the universe.
And what makes you think that the REAL "act of creation" WASN'T the infusion into that man-like animal of that exact "rational soul", and that up 'til that point, the "sub-man' was not "self-aware" or "God-aware"??
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.