I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.
I had to wait to just about the very end of the book to find my theme quote:
“… when we find ourselves backed into a corner, it’s usually because we’re coming at things from our own point of view, rather than God’s”
Guy Consolmagno and Paul Mueller, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: . . . and Other Questions from the Astronomers’ In-box at the Vatican Observatory, 283.
That has been my own personal odyssey for about six years or so, reading the stories of women in the Bible from as close as I can get to God’s point of view as recorded in the story. What is God doing, and saying? How is God responding, what is God initiating, who is God paying attention to, and what does that mean? It is astonishing, really, how very differently these stories read when God is the reference point. So, though that was not the point, really, of any of this book, it is a quote that jumped out to me.
Teilhard
After he introduced Teilhard I was taken by surprise that Paul did not agree with Teilhard’s two points, but wanted to use them as a jumping off place for his own point (like I did with Paul’s quote above). “Love is not a zero-sum game. Love doesn’t exclude—it includes” (279). Paul introduced this theme disarmingly, early on, “You’ll find no mention in the Creed that God is Love. That’s a very important Christian belief. But since it wasn’t controversial or divisive, the Church didn’t bother making a dogmatic proclamation on that issue” (100). When I read that, it stopped me in my tracks. I had never really thought about it.
But now that I am thinking about it, I think this is controversial now. In fact, I think this very fact was controversial from the start, considering the Acts 15 Jerusalem Council, but not stated in those terms. But no, it never made it into a creed.
Why is that? Really?
By the way, Paul gave a breath-taking summary of Polanyi’s entire thesis on page 18. I read that and thought, “I wish I was friends with these guys. They are fascinating!”
Jesuit Spirituality
I had not realized that Jesuit spirituality centered around “finding God in all things,” that sounds amazingly forward-thinking (259). Both authors speak of God with reverence and also intimacy, and they seem unfazed by what unnerves conservative evangelicals. At just about the center of the book, in their discourse on Galileo, Guy brought up the real problem with the Copernicanism: “It didn’t work as a metaphysical metaphor, the way the medieval cosmology had” (141). There are a number of semiotic moments in this book (such as stories being user-friendly, 181), but this one has continued to make me think.
I have been contemplating the wave if deconstruction/reconstruction happening in my particular tribe of exvangelicals, and this comment may offer some insight.
Deconstruction / Reconstruction
The Church has historically rejected anything that undermines the Church’s interpretation and metaphors. Psychology and psychiatry, even neurobiology has to be rejected because it suggests that the internal workings of a person are not just about sin but about woundedness, dysfunction, maladaption, disorders, and illnesses. Science has to be rejected because it appears to undermine the literal reading of certain (key) biblical passages, which have in turn been used to drive home (key) teaching points. In fact, every single one of the flat-earthers I know are fundamentalist Christians.
Paul offers such wise counsel, “So if Christianity finds it helpful to make use of a particular scientific theory or concept to symbolize or give expression to some fundamental belief, it needs to be ready to make an adjustment when science moves on” (148). And now we’re back to Primal Intelligence—the need for resilience and creativity.
Certainly, a big part of de/reconstruction has to do with a false belief that is not only held strongly but has migrated to the supporting center of faith (“If I give to God I will get rich” let’s say, or “If I’m good, God will be good to me.”). At some point, the false belief doesn’t hold up. But because it was faith’s load-bearing wall, the whole thing caves in.
But another big part is the cognitive dissonance that happens when the Church rejects and repudiates truth because it does not fit in with the Church’s interpretations and metaphors. I cannot find the quote right now, but the authors both remark on the unity of truth, and the importance of the Church receiving all truth as true (I add James 1:17).
Still, I take Guy’s caution to heart. It requires “pretty strong proof to get people to toss out what seemed obviously true and start over again” (30). So not only does the Church need to be resilient, able to find God in all things, able to embrace truth wherever it is found, able to be creative in understanding and interpreting scripture, but every individual within the Church, every person who makes up the church, needs to be discipled into this way of thinking and being.
Wait! What?
In fact, I had my own “wait, whut?!” moment while reading Paul’s remark
“The idea of God being all-powerful entered Christianity from Greek philosophy. The God of the Hebrew scriptures is very powerful, powerful enough. But the Hebrew scriptures don’t make any sort of big deal about God being all-powerful”
Guy Consolmagno and Paul Mueller, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: . . . and Other Questions from the Astronomers’ In-box at the Vatican Observatory, 191.
Neither Paul nor Guy spend more time on that bold statement. But I was raised on the omnis (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent), and it would take some powerful proof indeed to shake me loose from that doctrine.
Where would you like to see the Church embrace a truth that is currently being rejected?
The Church’s Reluctance to Embrace Scientific Truth
My point about Galileo has to do with the Church’s reluctance to accept the Copernican cosmology—that the sun was the center of the galaxy, not the earth—because that messed up certain Church interpretations and metaphors.
The idea that the Bible is a scientific authority on cosmology was threatened, as several passages implied a fixed earth , such as Psalm 104:5, Ecclesiastes 1:5 (which are easily enough reinterpreted to align with with Copernicus’s theory), and Joshua 10. It was feared that by removing the Earth from the center, the cosmology appeared to make humanity less central to God’s creation, contradicting a literal reading of human significance. The Church was also committed to interpreting the Bible in line with the “unanimous consent of the Fathers” and traditional, established interpretations.
Mutuality in the Early Church
We see something of this reluctance today. My first and biggest issue is that of the full equality of women, of the complementarity of the sexes without the overlay of hierarchy, and particularly in the form of patriarchy, now disguised as complementarianism. Jesus called women as disciples and sent them on apostolic missions. Paul continued in Jesus’s tradition, though I think Paul’s mind was changed along the way by Lydia.
The early church recognized women as deacons, elders, and bishops through the fifth century. There is a woman elder buried in what was Augustine of Hippo’s church, right next to Augustine’s original burial place. Over time, the Church erased women from leadership in the church, but it failed to fully erase women leaders from the record (though a few early popes did try).
Science of the Brain
But I also have an issue with the Church’s reluctance to accept advances in Psychology, Psychiatry, and Neurobiology, because that would mean the Church would have to rethink our approach to the subject of sin.
And I think the Church is still, largely, highly resistant to the advances of science for the same reasons that the Copernican cosmology was rejected.
