Reflection in Historical Evolution
Years of curiosity and recent days of retirement spent in reading
and contemplation of the origin and development of religion have
led me to formulate a bit of way-station theology for myself.
I have been greatly influenced and encouraged by Teilhard de
Chardin's thoughts on the religious implications of progress in
general, the Vatican's current position, as voiced by John Paul
II, on the scientific validity of the concept of evolution, and
John XXIII and Vatican II's views on the role of progress in
theology.
In reflection of the thoughts of Teilhard de Chardin, Richard
Kropf writes in "Evil and Evolution":
Just as the general theory of biological evolution has
become the working model for the majority of modern
scientific endeavor, so too I believe, as did Teilhard
de Chardin, that any area of human thought, be it
sociology, psychology, history, even philosophy or
theology, must take the evolutionary structure of our
world and our development into consideration.
The Church of my faith has recently expressed sympathy for such a
consideration: In an October 22, 1996 addressed to a plenary
assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II
allowed that the theory of evolution "is no longer a mere
hypothesis." He declared:
It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been
progressively accepted by researchers, following a
series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge.
The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the
results of works that was conducted independently is in
itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.
In recognition of the evolutionary nature of faith, John XXIII,
in Encyclical Pacem in Terris Paragraph 5 issued April 11, 1963,
stated, "The search for truth and goodness is never a ready made
nor a `once and for all' discovery but rather a growing and
dynamic search in historical evolution." De Ecclesia Constitution
of the Church of the Second Vatican Council in Article 8 of the
Constitution of Revelation of the Church proclaims, "The Church,
we may say, as the ages pass, tends continually towards the
fullness of divine truth, till the words of God are consummated
in her."
A Faith in Existence, Life, and Awareness
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning God,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:1-5
In "The Modern Temper," Joseph Wood Krutch expands on William of
Ockham's 14th-century view that man knows nothing outside of
particulars to be real, and that the mind of man can therefore
not know the being of God. Krutch writes:
It is only when the thinker discovered how small are
the things he can do that he succeeded in doing
anything at all, only when he renounced the effort to
find the key to heaven that he was able to keep
chimneys from smoking and only after he had stopped
believing in the possibility of eternal life that he
learned how the gout might be prevented.
In the unending cycle of things, the reverse of Krutch's
contention is just as evident. It is only after toiling-man
learned how to keep chimneys from smoking and discovered how gout
might be prevented that he enjoyed the time and comfort to focus
his thinking more keenly on the root meaning of it all.
I have come to root my religious beliefs in what I know
personally to be most true, the "particulars" of my life and
times. I cannot accept religious contentions that require me to
assume things that exist outside of these particulars or that
operate in a manner separate from the ways of the present, or of
the past as revealed in recorded history, scientific
investigation, and common experience. Angels, evil, show-offish
miracles, and much that goes bump in the night, hold no more
mystery or import to me than do tricks of the sleight of hand.
Primitive understandings, misunderstandings and superstitions
served early mankind's needs, but many do not fit with what we
know to be true today --- nor today with what will be known
tomorrow. Even the most sacrosanct of contentions of early
believers --- like the misdirected astronomy that held the earth
be the center of our solar system --- were but steps and missteps
along mankind's path to ever greater understanding.
The relatively advanced knowledge of the present times brings to
our awareness miracles of a nature different from those that were
assumed in times when mankind understood little of the conditions
and forces that affected life and death. Current knowledge
allows us to focus our faith in miracles that are more basic,
more real and more compelling --- such are the miracles of (1)
existence, (2) life, and (3) awareness.
EXISTENCE: It amazes me that there is a something --- existence.
I can understand how there could be absolutely nothing, a total
void, but this is not so. There exists a universe.
Our current understanding of this universe indicates that matter
is energy, and time and space proceed in mirrored image of each
other. And, all at base constitutes continuous process --- cause
upon cause upon more cause. Reminiscent of Ockham's observation,
psychologist B.F. Skinner contended that mankind, even with the
most powerful of scientific efforts, cannot know ultimate cause
--- such is beyond science. Although Skinner was an agnostic,
his observation on "ultimate cause" admits the existence of an
essence that precedes all. This essence and essence of essence
is God the Father of Existence.
LIFE: It further amazes me that within existence, there is life.
It is difficult if not impossible to adequately define what this
miracle of life is, but we know that it exists. Such an essence
can exist in the germ of a seed that can rest there for hundreds
of years and then sprout forth in new abundance. This promise of
miraculous inception, conception, sustenance and renewal is Jesus
Christ the Son of Life, the essential presence in the celebrated
Eucharist of bread, and watered wine at Mass.
AWARENESS: Atop these two miracles rests a third, that of
awareness --- an incomprehensible capacity to comprehend. We can
know and know, and know that we know, but the essence and
personal nature of such awareness is encompassed in an ultimate
understanding and persona that goes before and beyond us, the
Holy Spirit of Awareness.
The Father, the Son, and the Spirit form a triune essence that
makes possible all personal existence, life and awareness. This
is the Great Personal Trinity that essentials the being of the
children of God.
It is the Trinity of Existence, Life and Awareness that I, as a
20th-century person, can commune with. This is the One I reach
out to in worship services, prayers of thanksgiving, cries of
anguish, periods of meditation, service to others, and moments of
awe. This is who I respectfully contemplate when reading the
primitive Scripture that is loosely sketched in my Bible, and
when observing the Tradition that has been passed down to me by
the Church.
This is a personal and essential God that lovingly gives rise to
all that is personal, essential, and loving in me, and all
reaches of the universe --- the God of all times, and the God of
these times. This is the God that I comprehend directly through
enjoyment and celebration of existence, life and awareness ---
the God of the excitement of bright beginnings, the comfort of
loving nurture, and the fulfillment of apt conclusions. This is
the God of infinite grandeur whose inchoative flux is perceived
as weal and woe by a limited humanity.
This is the real God evidenced by unswerving faith in what we
know to be lastingly tangible and true. The One from whom cycles
all that humanity embraces as most dear: love and compassion, joy
and good humor, expectation and reward, dignity and respect,
beauty and appreciation, peace and tranquility, and comfort and
good will. It is from the Father, with the Son and through the
Spirit that we share faith in these good things with friends,
neighbors, loved ones, and occasional strangers.
This is the Wondrous Image of Certainty reflecting back to me the
certainty of my own existence, life, and awareness.
This is the Presence of God that descends to me from the awe of
Neanderthal man; the wonder of Cro-Magnon man; the imagination of
Akhnaton; the faith of Abraham, Moses, Peter, Paul, Mark, Justin,
Augustine, Aquinas, Ignatius and Newman; the doubt of Galileo,
Darwin and Einstein; and the love, respect and tolerance of
Teilhard, John XXIII, and my family. This is the God that I
celebrate and seek communion with through the Body of Christ, the
Church.
The comfort I take from the church of my faith, and there is
much, I draw more from Tradition than I take from Scripture
alone. Tradition is a dynamic force that has but one static
anchor, God. It allows us to hold fast to God's infinite
grandeur as we hurtle, at God's speed, through a world of
changing nature and nurture, science and technology, community
and commerce, and living and learning.
Though the Church allows for two founts of faith, one Tradition
and the other Scripture, in actuality I believe that there is but
one, Tradition. Tradition gave rise to Scripture many decades
after there was a faith in Jesus as Christ. As John Newman and
Fulton Sheen observed, the Bible comes from the Church, the
Church does not come from the Bible.
There was no Bible in the upper room at the inception of the
Church, but the upper room of inception found its way into the
Bible. All that was before, during, in and after the upper room
is the Tradition from which the Church draws its canon of Sacred
Scripture, takes its works, and administers its sacraments.
Though respectful of all the sacraments of the Church, it is the
Holy Eucharist that most accommodates my religious need to be
drawn into sacred spaces where I find poetic communion with my
God.
It saddens me that the post-Vatican-II Mass has been striped of
much of the ritual and symbolism that evolved down through the
ages. Too many Church celebrants now seem bent on replacing all
poetic and artistic accouterments of the Mass with a rendering of
prayer and Scriptural recitation and explanation in as dreary a
form of straight prose as is humanly possible.
However, at base the Mass has not changed since the Church's
earliest celebrations of "remembrance." Those familiar with the
Mass of today will easily recognize its practice in the times of
St. Justin Martyr (c100-165 AD). In his "First Apology," Justin
describes a Mass at which a baptism is administered:
But we, after we have thus washed him who has been
convinced as has assented to our teaching, bring him to
the place where those who are called brethren are
assembled, in order that we may offer hearty prayers in
common for ourselves and for the illuminated [baptized]
person, and for all others in every place, that we may
be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth,
by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers
of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an
everlasting salvation. Having ended the prayers, we
salute one another with a kiss. There is then brought
to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of
wine mixed with water, and he taking them, gives praise
and glory to the Father of the universe, through the
name of the Son and the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks
at considerable length for our being counted worthy to
receive these things at His hands. And when he has
concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people
present express their assent by saying Amen. This word
Amen answers in the Hebrew language to "so be it." And
when the president has given thanks, and all the people
have expressed their assent, those who are called by us
deacons give to each of those present to partake of the
bread and wine mixed with water over which the
thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are
absent they carry away a portion.
I see the ritual consecration of the Eucharistic species as a
celebration of the initial transubstantiation of matter into
life. This happened an eon ago, was held as incarnate in the
paschal lamb of Jewish tradition, marked as the Paschal Lamb of
the incipient Church, and is scripturally described (drawing on
tradition and likely the synoptic Gospels) by the Church's first
modernist(s) in the Gospel of John: As he, she or they wrote for
John the Baptist in John 1:30, "He is the one of whom I said, `A
man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me because he existed
before me'"; and for a challenged Jesus in John 8:57-58, "So the
Jews said to him, `You are not yet fifty years old and you have
seen Abraham?' Jesus said to them, `Amen, amen, I say to you
before Abraham came to be, I AM'"; and for Jesus in prayer to our
Father in John 17:1, "Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the
glory that I had with you before the world began." That which
"existed before," and is "I AM," and was "before the world began"
is the Essence of Life --- Jesus Christ the Son of Life, the
Vernal Lamb of infinite beginning.
A bit of bread, a drop of water and a cup of wine possess the
life sustaining essence not found in a chunk of rock or a mound
of dust. If not a piece of bread and cup of watered wine, what
would the Son of God look like in any form that I could see or
comprehend?
Threaded through the Mass, and in harmonic accord with the
celebration of the Eucharist, is the pageant portrayal of the
journey of all of God's children through existence, life and
awareness --- at God's speed, a journey of light over darkness.
In calling the faithful to weekly Mass ("`the hour' of Jesus'
Passover, which reaches across and underlies all history"), the
current "Catechism of the Catholic Church" references the words
of St. Hippolytus (c160-235 AD):
Life extends over all beings and fills them with
unlimited light; the Orient of orients pervades the
universe, and he who was "before the daystar" and
before the Heavenly bodies, immortal and vast, the
great Christ, shines over all beings more brightly than
the sun. Therefore a day of long, eternal light is
ushered in for us who believe in him, a day which is
never blotted out: the mystical Passover.
But alas, rituals of the Mass do not create that which they
celebrate any more than poems create that which they verse about.
Rituals and poetry are like the laws of science. As B.F.
Skinner observed, "The laws of science don't affect what they are
laws about."
However, when I am tuned in, both the poetry and ritual of the
Mass vibrate in my experience in a manner that straight prose and
perfunctory agendas do not. They are of the nature of that which
is art to me --- they stretch my awareness beyond my
understanding in a manner that I somehow understand. They
confirm the godly essence of existence, life and awareness.
In closing, for what is written above and for all efforts to move
forward in faith, I ask for tolerance with words that St. Justin
Martyr used in concluding his "First Apology:"
And if these things seem to you to be reasonable and
true, honor them; but if they seem nonsensical, despise
them as nonsense, and do not decree death against those
who have done no wrong, as you would against enemies.
God's speed and blessing, maybe that of light,
Sam Osborne
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