Caricature Christianity

[Warning: long read :)]⁰

As I have said previously, I am a great fan of Dr. Yuval Noah Harari’s MOOC “A Brief History of Humankind,” which I have found not only entertaining and informative, but also thought-provoking and which I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone. Dr. Harari’s style is engaging and masterful, the examples he uses are vivid (e.g., “The human race is no more than a herd of sheep that ended up with tanks and atomic bombs because of an evolutionary accident.”), his presenting alternative theories throughout the course is greatly illuminating and enriching and his use of the concept of “fiction” is a powerful didactic device that draws attention to the mental/material categories in a novel and forceful way.

Had I been writing this post before the course’s tenth lecture, it would have been 99% panegyric (with the 1% criticism reserved for the presentation of the sex/gender distinction not as fiction, given how that term is used throughout the course). Without taking away from the excellence of the first 9 lectures, I do have serious misgivings about the tenth, entitled “The Law of Religion,” where I consider Dr. Harari’s presentation of Christianity to be a caricature instead of an attempt at synthesis and summary. What makes this the more disappointing is that he is clearly a highly intelligent and learned person, very capable of speaking about religion in an informative and balanced way, as he demonstrated with the excellent exposition of Buddhism in Segment 3 of the lecture.

Even though I was not going to write about my experience of Lecture 10, I have changed my mind after being encouraged to do so by my überbestie JMGR - so you can consider this to be both a “work made for hire” and an attempt to present my grounds for calling it a caricature in more than the 140 characters of a tweet. Before delving into the details, I’d also like to say that the following will be my attempt to present what I, as a Christian, believe and that its justification by reference to established Christian doctrine will be omitted (each of the following points meriting long blog posts individually). The format I’ll use is to go through a number of claims that Dr. Harari makes about Christianity, each immediately followed by my own account. Here I will not be exhaustive (and hopefully not exhausting either), e.g., glossing over the treatment of Christian persecution by the Roman Empire, and try to focus on the most substantial claims.¹

First, Dr. Harari claims that Christians believe “that you could make deals with the supreme power of the universe in order to recover from illness, to win the lottery, or to gain victory in war.” This, to my mind is a caricature of prayer, which is presented as a bargaining process: I’ll say these prayers, do some penance, go to mass, etc. and in exchange god will grant me a wish. This is nothing like what my relationship with God, or prayer are for me. I believe God loves me and has a plan for me that starts in every present moment. Prayer is the maintaining of a relationship with God, both by listening and being disposed to discerning his plan and by speaking and sharing my joys, worries and needs with him. Such sharing is not the demanding of an overriding of the Laws of Nature, but instead a silent conversation, an opening up, a turning towards. It also brings with it what Dr. Harari presented so well about Buddhism - an acceptance of both joys and sorrows, of successes and defeats, all of which are received in the context of the above prayer, which - together with a seeking of God in all around me - is the basis of my being Christian.

Second, Dr. Harari presents Christianity as incapable of coexisting with other religions:

“A religion that recognizes the legitimacy of other faiths implies either that its god is not the supreme power of the universe, or that it received from the one and only god only part of the universal truth. [...] Monotheists could not live with these ideas. Monotheists usually believed that they are in possession of the entire message of the one and only god. They were compelled to discredit all other religions. If our religion is true, no other religion can also simultaneously be true.”

This, to my mind, is fundamentally a caricature of the concept of God itself and of epistemology too. It first assumes that God is wholly knowable, then that Christians believe they fully know such a fully knowable God and finally that they know that they have such full knowledge. I dispute all three assumptions. Not only is knowledge fundamentally incomplete, indirect and limited even when it comes to my self, let alone to another or a world around me, or to a God whom I believe to be both more immanent and transcendent than anything else. Every single person, their experiences, insights and beliefs are of interest to me and an opportunity to look for the traces of God’s presence. At the same time it does not mean that I believe Christianity to be incomplete, on the contrary, or that I, conversely, have to believe it to have exclusive access to the Truth and to God.

Third, Dr. Harari presents Chirstian saints as being connatural with the gods of polytheism:

“Homo sapiens tend to divide the world into we and them and sapiens want to be in contact with powerful entities that will help us against them. So the idea that there is only one supreme power in the world that cares about everybody equally this was very difficult even for Christians […] to fully adopt and understand. Consequently Christianity [...] created an entire new pantheon of saints and people simply began to worship [... them] just as previously they worshipped all kinds of different gods. […] So when England and France […] go to war […] it is believed that Saint Martin helps the French and Saint George helps the English - just like the old gods.”

The irony here that it is precisely the saints who are a strong argument in support of the belief that God “cares about everybody equally.” To me the saints are my fellow Christians, who have lived lives that mirror Jesus’ own life to a particularly high degree and who are therefore examples for me to follow. Not only does the vast variety of backgrounds from which they come (social, ethnic, educational and cultural) support the claim for the universality of God’s call, but their own care and love for their neighbors does too. Since I believe that these saints are now alive in the immediate presence of God, having a relationship with them through prayer is logically consistent with the relationship I have with God himself.

Fourth, Dr. Harari presents the “problem of evil” as follows:

“The problem of evil […] asks why is there evil in the world, why is there so much suffering in the world, why do so many bad things happen even to good people. [...] For monotheists the problem of evil is extremely difficult. Monotheists have to perform all kinds of amazing intellectual acrobatic tricks to explain how an all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good god allows so much suffering in the world. [...] One answer that monotheists try to give is: “This is god’s way of allowing for human free will. If there was no evil in the world, humans could not choose between good and evil and hence there would be no free will.” This is one of these intellectual tricks that monotheists use to answer the problem of evil.”

Again, this strikes me as a caricature: there is a glaring problem with Christianity, so Christians come up with shaky stories to fool themselves. My objection here is not that the “problem of evil” is a challenge, but that presenting it as something that Christians deal with via self-delusion is a caricature. There is no satisfactory explanation for the “problem of evil” - all that I, as a Christian have are some intuitions. Of these, the argument from freedom is a strong one and I fail to see how it can be categorized as a “trick.” It still does not explain why there is evil and suffering in the world though, but only how freedom and the necessity of real choice are linked. Why could God not have done it in a different way is a valid question though! Another, strong intuition to me as a Christian is Jesus’ own life, where the acceptance of suffering - a suffering by a supremely innocent person who was scared of it - plays a pivotal role. All I can say about suffering is that it is linked to the freedom that lets me establish genuine relationships with my fellow humans and with God, that Jesus having endured it also points to its importance, but I can certainly not claim to be in a position to explain or justify it.

Fifth, to sum up his position with regard to Christianity, Dr. Harari has the following to say:

“Monotheism is a kind of mishmash, a kind of bringing together all kinds of monotheist, dualist, polytheist and animist legacies, constantly influencing and changing each other, all coexisting with each other under one big divine umbrella. The average Christian believes in the monotheistic god, but also believes in the dualist devil, in the polytheist saints, and in the animist ghosts and demons.”

Eh ... no ... I believe in no ghosts or demons, the saints are my brothers and sisters - not gods, and the devil is no equivalent “opposing power” to God (as would follow from Dr. Harari’s dualist definition) but simply the personification of a turning away from God while possessing full knowledge of His being God.

And breathe ... :)

Needless to say, I am happy to provide references for how what I have said about my own beliefs above is official Catholic teaching and how it is consonant with the beliefs of Christians also from past centuries. At the same time I am not claiming that no Christian has ever held some or all of the beliefs that Dr. Harari, to my mind mistakenly, presents as being universally and fundamentally Christian - certainly they have: in the same way in which some have used microwaves to mistreat cats, without thereby rendering microwaves primarily instruments of cat torture ...

---

⁰ Many thanks to my überbestie PM for his nihil obstat. :)
¹ I am skipping the part about heaven and hell only because its exposition is factually holey (not holy :)), where to Dr. Harari’s statement: “There is no trace of [heaven and hell] in the Old Testament” I only have three words to say: Daniel 12:2 ... Seriously though, there would be things to say about his claim that such beliefs are dualistic, but their refutal would take us too far off-track and I’ll leave them for another time.

Athena and/or Jesus?

The other day I watched a greatly edifying and enjoyable video of Eugenio Scalfari and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi having a chat about a variety of topics in the context of the Courtyard of the Gentiles initiative launched by Pope Benedict XVI - a forum for dialogue between catholics and non-believers. What struck me in particular was a train of thought triggered by Scalfari commenting on Ravasi quoting him as having said that he was “in love” with Jesus. To this Scalfari responds:¹

“Maybe it is an exaggerated phrase, but it is true. I have been following the life and preaching of Jesus ever since I was a kid, since I abandoned the faith. I grew up in a Catholic family [...] but then I met Athena, together with Italo Calvino, with whom I shared a desk for three years at school ...”

This follows the pattern I have seen so many times among my friends: I grew up a Catholic (or member of another church), but then I realized that belief in God was not reasonable and I became an atheist or agnostic. Scalfari tells the same story: upon encountering Athena (the Greek goddess of wisdom) his religious beliefs crumbled. Faced with a choice between faith and reason, he opted for the latter and while he still admires Jesus, he does so without any accompanying - irrational or at least arational - religious beliefs.

I particularly liked the posing of the above process with rationality personified by Athena, as it gave it a symmetry that less poetic accounts lack, and I was looking forward to Ravasi’s response, as this was a statement that he was sure to react to:

“[You tell the story of how you] made the choice of Athena, in a certain sense abandoning the choice of Christ in that moment at least. I think though that this choice, these two choices are not necessary and divisive, that they would split a person. Because I am firmly convinced, I personally, that, even though I have made the choice of Christ, I have not renounced my choice of Athena. Athena, reason, has always interested me.”

Ravasi then - very compellingly - proceeds to expand on Pope Francis’s speaking about the Truth in relational terms in his letter to Scalfari, and then shares the following, personal reflection:

“I, for myself, can’t say that I have the Truth, that I have God. I, every day, have to return - and in some moments it is likely that I drift into a territory where the heavens seem devoid of divinity ... [pause] Precisely because there is this dimension of the subject [pointing at himself], that is limited and that walks in a reality that exceeds me. This is why I believe that the element of seeking, searching is fundamental.”

I believe Ravasi is absolutely spot-on here - faith is not an alternative to reason, but a position that requires reason for the sake of remaining authentic. Ravasi presents his relationship with God as a dynamic, persistent search for the infinite, transcendent-immanent by a limited and finite self contained by it. This is no rejection of reason, blind adherence to tradition or irrational ignorance of evidence that are often the objections leveled at faith, but a sincere, dynamic relationship with God, as experienced through the limited, fallible, imperfect consciousness of a human person.

Having focused on Ravasi - whose fan I admit I am, I would also like to express my admiration for Scalfari, who comes across as a highly intelligent, sincere and compassionate person and whose atheism I don’t in any way find issue with. If anything, the fact that shines through their conversation is that both are open and honest about their own understanding of reality and that both value the other’s thoughts and find inspiration in them.

To conclude, I’d like to share my motivation for this post, which was my überbestie, PM’s saying that he didn’t get why I keep talking about faith and reason as being opposed, when in fact they are not. This certainly made me stop, since I completely agree with him, and I in fact proceeded to read up on more formal treatments of rationality, reason and faith, with the desire to get to some low-level mixup that would explain the mistaken perception of this fictitious opposition. I very quickly realized though (how could I not have seen that straight-away?!) that such efforts lead me down the well-trodden, lengthy and criss-crossing paths of epistemology and ontology, for whose considerations the terms “reason” and “rational” were a lax shorthand. Not wanting to attempt a synthesis of a vast field of investigation here, I’d just like to argue again that faith and reason are not opposed - they are both means for making sense of our conscious experiences in ways which I (and the Catholic Church) believe to be complementary and fundamentally incapable of contradicting each other in their perfect instantiations.

Seeing the sincere experiences of Scalfari and many of my friends, who arrive at a different conclusion - i.e., of faith being opposed to reason - instead leads me to an examination of conscience. Why is it that the Church and I fail to present the inherent compatibility of faith and reason compellingly enough? Has too much baggage accumulated over the centuries? Have ulterior motives obscured the profound purity and rationality of Christian faith, motivated by insecurity and lack of trust in God’s love? Maybe the answer lies in personal dialogue though, instead of an attempt to address the question via some new systematic exposition. And Pope Francis’ clear, blunt and razor-sharp directness will help too, of that I am sure ...

---

¹ This is around 21:50 in the video (in Italian) and Ravasi’s reaction around 43:00.

The tyranny of absolutism

Walking home this evening I felt like Douglas Hofstadter may have felt when coming up with the central idea of his spectacular Gödel, Escher, Bach book. Unlike his realization about a “golden braid” linking the thoughts of Kurt Gödel, M. C. Escher and Johann Sebastian Bach, which all shed light on infinity, I felt like I saw a way to connect the seemingly opposed words of Popes Benedict XVI and Francis with regard to relativism.

Benedict XVI famously attacked relativism in his sermon during the opening mass of the conclave that elected him, saying:

“To have a clear faith, according to the creed of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. While relativism, that is, allowing oneself to be carried about with every wind of “doctrine,” seems to be the only attitude that is fashionable. A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the “I” and its whims as the ultimate measure.”

The message here is very clear - the arbiter of truth and falsehood as well as good and evil has become the individual, with no intrinsic meaning left for these concepts beyond what each person chooses to invest them with for themselves. It is not only a relativity of meaning but also a solitude - I have my truth and you yours and that is the end of the story. In his book-length interview with Benedict XVI (“Light Of The World”), Peter Seewald, gets Benedict to elaborate on the above idea, when he says:

“It is obvious that the concept of truth has become suspect. Of course it is correct that it has been much abused. Intolerance and cruelty have occurred in the name of truth. To that extent people are afraid when someone says, “This is the truth”, or even “I have the truth.” We never have it; at best it has us. No one will dispute that one must be careful and cautious in claiming the truth. But simply to dismiss it as unattainable is really destructive.

A large proportion of contemporary philosophies, in fact, consist of saying that man is not capable of truth. But viewed in that way, man would not be capable of ethical values, either. Then he would have no standards. Then he would only have to consider how he arranged things reasonably for himself, and then at any rate the opinion of the majority would be the only criterion that counted. History, however, has sufficiently demonstrated how destructive majorities can be, for instance, in systems such as Nazism and Marxism, all of which also stood against truth in particular.

[…] That is why we must have the courage to dare to say: Yes, man must seek the truth; he is capable of truth. It goes without saying that truth requires criteria for verification and falsification. It must always be accompanied by tolerance, also. But then truth also points out to us those constant values which have made mankind great. That is why the humility to recognize the truth and to accept it as a standard has to be relearned and practiced again.”

Essentially, Benedict says that just because we cannot possess the truth, it does not mean that “the” truth does not exist. Our access to it is imperfect and tolerance and caution are called for, but denying its existence (just because of our epistemological constraints) is a dangerous path to follow. The picture from the above is very clear - relativism (making one’s “I” the ultimate arbiter of truth) is a tyranny and a reliance of one’s self is dangerous.

Fast-forward to this morning’s interview¹ with Pope Francis talking to Eugenio Scalfari and take a look at what he has to say on the subject:

“Scalfari: Your Holiness, is there is a single vision of the Good? And who determines it?

Francis: Each of us has their own vision of Good and also of Evil. We have to encourage him to proceed towards that which he thinks is Good.

Scalfari: Your Holiness, you have already written it in the letter you addressed to me. Conscience is autonomous, you said, and everyone must obey their own conscience. I think that’s one of the most courageous passages spoken by a Pope.

Francis: And I repeat it here. Each one has their own idea of Good and of Evil and must choose to follow Good and fight Evil as they understand them. This would suffice to make the world a better place.”

“Each one has their own idea of Good and Evil […] as they understand them.” But, this sounds precisely like the relativism (the “I” being arbiter of truth) that Benedict denounced and declared a destructive danger. Are Francis and Benedict disagreeing here? Is Francis changing Church teaching?

I don’t think so. Instead, I believe, that their apparent opposition flows from the different perspectives from which they speak about truth and good and evil. Benedict describes what you’d see from God’s perspective: truth is absolute and denying its existence and substituting one’s whims for it, just because humans can’t access it, is a mistake. Francis, instead looks at the picture from the perspective of the individual: trust your conscience’s discernment between good and evil and choose good. Each human has a conscience by means of which they can discern (to varying degrees of faithfulness - “At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror” as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12) a reflection of the absolute truth. It is the same landscape, but Benedict looks down from the mountaintop while Francis looks up from the valley.

Applying this to myself, I can simultaneously believe in absolute truth and goodness, while being aware of my own inability to grasp them fully (or even with a known level of (in)accuracy). This epistemic constraint in no way undoes the meaningfulness of pursuing goodness and truth and instead makes tolerance and dialogue necessary. It also means that - as Francis said in the same interview - “Proselytism is pompous foolishness that has no sense. We must get to know each other and listen to each other and grow our understanding of the world around us.” I believe we are all accessing fragments of the one Truth,² which makes me want to know what you have understood as much as deepening my understanding of my own faith.

---

¹ The English translation sadly has some serious issues at the time of this post’s writing (the tile itself being seriously mistranslated), as a result of which I started from it but made adjustments based on reading the Italian original.
² This is consonant with Francis saying, still in this same interview that “I believe in God. Not a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God.”

Just war?

[Warning: long read :)]

Jesus was a pacifist. To deny this in the face of his own words - “But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.” (Matthew 5:22), “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44), “But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.” (Matthew 5:39) and “Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) - would be sheer dishonesty.

How about the Church though, has it stuck to Jesus’ pacifist position? Let’s see what it says in the Catechism:

“(§2304) Respect for and development of human life require peace. Peace is not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity.

(§2307) The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war.

(§2308) All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war. However, “as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.” (Gaudium et Spes, 79 § 4)

(§2309) The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition. These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

(§2314) “Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.” (Gaudium et Spes, 80 § 3)”

While the above does talk about circumstances under which war is justified, it is a last resort, acceptable under the simultaneous satisfaction of specific conditions listed above, and has self-defense as its purpose, with indiscriminate destruction and the devastating effects of modern means of warfare ringing alarm bells. During the progress of such self-defense (the only possible trigger for just military action), the Catechism further emphasizes that “The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. “The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties.” (Gaudium et Spes, 79 § 4)” and proceeds to warn against the abuses so endemic in war and against the accumulation of arms. Finally, the Catechism draws attention to the root causes, of which war can be a symptom, and calls for their treatment:

“(§2317) Injustice, excessive economic or social inequalities, envy, distrust, and pride raging among men and nations constantly threaten peace and cause wars. Everything done to overcome these disorders contributes to building up peace and avoiding war.”

And Pope Francis, where does he stand? There can be no doubt here that he, like Jesus, is an absolute pacifist:

“War is madness. It is the suicide of humanity. It is an act of faith in money, which for the powerful of the earth is more important than the human being. For behind a war there are always sins. [… War] is the suicide of humanity, because it kills the heart, it kills precisely that which is the message of the Lord: it kills love! Because war comes from hatred, from envy, from desire for power, and – we’ve seen it many times - it comes from that hunger for more power.” (Homily at Domus Sanctae Marthae, 2 June 2013).

“We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves. As if it were normal, we continue to sow destruction, pain, death! Violence and war lead only to death, they speak of death! Violence and war are the language of death! […]

My Christian faith urges me to look to the Cross. How I wish that all men and women of good will would look to the Cross if only for a moment! There, we can see God’s reply: violence is not answered with violence, death is not answered with the language of death. In the silence of the Cross, the uproar of weapons ceases and the language of reconciliation, forgiveness, dialogue, and peace is spoken. […]

violence and war are never the way to peace! Let everyone be moved to look into the depths of his or her conscience and listen to that word which says: Leave behind the self-interest that hardens your heart, overcome the indifference that makes your heart insensitive towards others, conquer your deadly reasoning, and open yourself to dialogue and reconciliation. Look upon your brother’s sorrow and do not add to it, stay your hand, rebuild the harmony that has been shattered; and all this achieved not by conflict but by encounter! […]

Let the words of Pope Paul VI resound again: “No more one against the other, no more, never! ... war never again, never again war!” (Address to the United Nations, 1965).” (Prayer Vigil for Peace, 7 September 2013)

And Francis is not alone is his radical stance against war, Blessed Pope John Paul II said that “War should belong to the tragic past, to history: it should find no place on humanity’s agenda for the future” and that “Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.” Benedict XVI too was clear about war being a failure: “War, with its aftermath of bereavement and destruction, has always been deemed a disaster in opposition to the plan of God, who created all things for existence and particularly wants to make the human race one family.”

So, you may ask, what is the point of writing about the attitude of Jesus, the Church and recent popes with regard to war, when it is so obviously pacifist and admitting of military self-defense only under almost theoretical, extreme conditions and applying to specific parts of an armed conflict? Sadly there are other, vocal proponents of a very different take on this topic, who - to my mind unbelievably - present their positions as Catholic and who tend to trace them to statements like the following one by George Weigel, who feels supported by Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas:

“Thus those scholars, activists, and religious leaders who claim that the just war tradition “begins” with a “presumption against war” or a “presumption against violence” are quite simply mistaken. It does not begin there, and it never did begin there. To suggest otherwise is not merely a matter of misreading intellectual history (although it is surely that). To suggest that the just war tradition begins with a “presumption against violence” inverts the structure of moral analysis in ways that inevitably lead to dubious moral judgments and distorted perceptions of political reality.”

With Jesus and the Church’s position having been stated with such force and clarity over the last decades, I won’t even go to the trouble of addressing positions like Weigel’s point-by-point and would just like to note that they are akin to reading St. Paul and arguing in favor of slavery today. Positions that may be textually consistent with the source they claim justifies them, but that both miss the original author’s intentions (just think about what slavery would be like if “master” and “slave” followed St. Paul’s advice¹) and the fact that the Church is the living Mystical Body of Jesus that has considerably matured over the last 2000 years.

---

¹ “Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ, not only when being watched, as currying favor, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, willingly serving the Lord and not human beings, knowing that each will be requited from the Lord for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. Masters, act in the same way toward them, and stop bullying, knowing that both they and you have a Master in heaven and that with him there is no partiality.” (Ephesians 6:5-9) A classic “infiltrate and destroy from within” tactic if ever I saw one.

Bátyóka

In Hungarian there are separate words for older versus younger brother or sister and only a word for sibling and the - from a Hungarian perspective - generic “brother” and “sister” are rarely used. There are also words for up to the eleventh ancestors and tenth descendants and such granularity is something I haven’t seen in other languages. A further quirk of Hungarian is the application of “aunt” and “uncle” to senior acquaintances who are not blood-relations and the use of “my son” with reference to any person for whom one cares - I was always struck by the tenderness with which my grandad lovingly addressed my grandmother in this way. And finally, there is the generous use of diminutive suffixes, sometimes of multiple levels, expressing affection - e.g., “apa” - father, “apuka” - daddy, “apucika” - little daddy. All of these features of granularity and attribution of universality to intra-familiar relationships in the Hungarian language, I believe, underline their importance already by virtue of how one speaks about them. Universal brotherhood and specificity of relating to an individual person are hardwired and latent even before one opens one’s mouth or formulates a thought.

As a result of the above, a single word - “bátyóka” (“little older brother”) - suffices to express great love and affection, and my uncle, who completed his earthly pilgrimage yesterday evening, was universally known not only as “bátyóka” but as “Bátyóka.” Being the older brother who is considered with great love and warmth has become his name and all of us in our large, extended family only ever referred to him as such.

Bátyóka has lived a heroic life during tumultuous periods of the 20th century and has been the beloved elder brother not only to his biological family, but also to the countless people he served, guided and protected as a priest during decades of absurd oppression by a criminal Communist regime. His parishes always seemed to me, as a child, like oases and even at a young age it was crystal-clear to me that the way his parishioners related to him was by a bond of love rather than obedience or respect.

Meeting Bátyóka, you’d never have guessed that he had a doctorate in theology from Rome, as it would be his kindness and genuine interest for you as an individual that would strike you immediately. If the conversation turned to topics of faith or reason, his sharp intellect and vast knowledge would almost surprise you, as it wouldn’t have been him to steer the conversation in their direction.

Others could tell you much more about Bátyóka’s life, but all you’d learn from it are the details of the following fact: he was a follower of Jesus par excellence. This I knew from a very early age and continued experiencing on every occasion of meeting him since.

As I write this, on the day after Bátyóka completed his earthly life, I have tears in my eyes. They are not tears for Bátyóka though, who is now united even more closely with Jesus, the love of his life, and more than ever alive and closer to me as a member of Jesus’ Mystical Body, but for me, as I will miss seeing him, laughing at his incessant stream of jokes, being struck by the wisdom he so liberally shared with all and having him around as my “little older brother.”

Benedict XVI - Odifreddi: searching for Truth, with gloves off

[Warning: long read :)]¹

If you are even remotely interested in the dialogue between faith and reason, between religion and science, the last fortnight has to be among the most electrifying periods in the history of mankind. Not only did it kick-off with the beautifully sincere and profound move by Pope Francis in his letter to the atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari, but it saw the publication of “the” interview that Pope Francis gave to Jesuit media and in which he spoke about science in terms that, to my mind, take the Church’s appreciation of science further than ever before. And if that wasn’t enough, today saw the publication of extracts from an 11-page letter that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote to the Italian atheist mathematician Prof. Piergiorgio Odifreddi, in response to his book “Caro Papa ti scrivo: Un matematico ateo a confronto con il papa teologo” (“Dear Pope, I write to you: An atheist mathematician confronting the theologian pope”).

Looking at the two letters (or, more precisely, the extracts from Benedict’s versus the full text of Francis’), Francis’ and Scalfari’s style is like a polite, yet illuminating, exchange between two gentlemen over a cup of tea, while Benedict’s and Odifreddi’s exchange is like a bare-knuckle fist-fight between a pair of prize-winning boxers who in the end sincerely shake hands and respect each other, but without giving an inch during the fight itself.

To begin with, let’s take a quick look at Odifreddi’s opening move - his 204-page book, addressed to Benedict as “between colleagues” - from a maths to a theology professor. Early on, Odifreddi identifies a point in common with Benedict’s thought, by pointing to the following passage from Benedict’s Regensburg address:

“the experience […] of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason”

While Odifreddi identifies this - the adherence to reason - as a common point of departure, he quickly objects to Benedict’s excessive use of it (“your almost obsessive use of the word “reason,” repeated around forty times, akin to a musical motif or continuous base”) and to the “scandalous” words from Benedict’s sermon before the conclave that elected him:

“[H]aving a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine”, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”

While being critical of Benedict’s words, Odifreddi argues that “both religion and science are perceived as antidemocratic and absolutist” as a result of their focus on “ultimate truths” and then proceeds to arguing against a series of passages from Benedict’s “Introduction To Christianity” and his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy.

Since it is the full, fine detail that is key to understanding the nature of what is going on between Odifreddi and Benedict, let me just pick out a single point of contention (from among many important and interesting ones that I hope to return to soon!),² which Benedict objected to most forcefully and which the following passage from Odifreddi’s book sums up nicely:

“There is little to say about the historical Jesus, literally, because there are virtually no traces of him in the official history of the period. In total, there are only few tens of lines about him in the works of Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius and Flavius Josephus. Some are of uncertain interpretation, like the “Chrestus” of Suetonius. Others are of dubious authenticity, like the interpolation of Flavius Josephus. […] If, therefore, Jesus truly existed, he must have been irrelevant to his contemporaries, beyond the narrow circle of his relatives, friends and followers.”

Odifreddi further accuses Benedict of side-stepping questions of fact by saying to him: “you seem uninterested in (or seem interested in not) discussing the historicity of the Gospels and the facts that they report” and attributes to him an opposition to historical-critical methods of Biblical interpretation, by quoting Benedict as saying that they “can effectively become an instrument of the Antichrist.”

Benedict’s response here is as sharp as the jab he received:

“What you say about the figure of Jesus is not worthy of your scientific status. If you put the question as if nothing were, ultimately, known about Jesus, as a historical figure, as if nothing were ascertainable, then I can only firmly invite you to become more competent from a point of view of history. To this end I particularly recommend to you the four volumes that Martin Hengel (exegete at the Protestant Faculty of Theology of Tübingen) has published with Maria Maria Schwemer: it is an excellent example of historical precision and of vast breadth of historical information. […] Further I have to forcefully reject your affirmation (pp. 126) according to which I have presented historical-critical exegesis as an instrument of the Antichrist. Discussing the account of Jesus’ temptations, I have only recalled Soloviev’s thesis, according to whom historical-critical exegesis may also be used by the Antichrist - which is an unquestionable fact. At the same time, however, I have always - and in particular in the foreword to the first volume of my book on Jesus of Nazareth - made it evidently clear that historical-critical exegesis is necessary for a faith that does not propose myths using historical images, but demands true historicity and therefore has to present historical reality in its affirmations also in a scientific way. Because of this, it is not correct either that you say that I have been interested only in meta-history: on the contrary, all my efforts have had as their objective to show that the Jesus described in the Gospels is also the real, historical Jesus; that it is a matter of history that really took place.”

Uff … I have to be honest and admit that I was at first a bit uneasy about the tone of both Odifreddi and Benedict, neither of whom are pulling punches and both of whom are blunt to say the least. Looking more closely though, and reflecting on my professional experience as a scientist, I recognize that this is the tone and strength of academic argument and doing anything less would be dishonest on the part of both the professor and the ex-professor. This is a very different context from the Francis-Scalfari one and it demands the unforgiving rigor, precision and detail of the quotes shown above. Treating Benedict like any other academic shows Odifreddi’s respect for him (which he is explicit about when saying “Having read his Introduction to Christianity, […] I realized that the faith and doctrine of Benedict XVI, unlike that of others, were sufficiently solid and fierce that they could very well face and sustain frontal attack.”) Benedict is equally complimentary about Odifreddi, when he tells him that he “considers very positively the fact that you […] have sought such an open dialogue with the faith of the Catholic Church and that, in spite of all the differences, in the central themes, there is no lack of convergence at all.”

What this, academic, dialogue is truly about is put best - and to my mind beautifully lucidly - by Odifreddi, who says that:

“[The aim], obviously, was not to try and “convert the Pope,” but instead to honestly present to him the perplexity, and at times incredulity, of a mathematician with regard to faith. Analogously, the letter from Benedict XVI does not try to “convert the atheist,” but to direct at him his own, honest, symmetrical perplexity, and at time incredulity, of a very special believer with regard to atheism. The result is a dialogue between faith and reason, which, as Benedict XVI notes, has allowed both of us to confront each other frankly, and at times also bluntly, in the spirit of the Courtyard of the Gentiles that he himself has initiated in 2009. […] Divided in almost everything, but joined by at least one objective: the search for Truth, with a capital “T”.”

Wow! I have to say I am very impressed with Odifreddi (having come to this clearly as Benedict XVI fan) and I look forward to seeing his next steps in this full-contact dialogue. In many ways, I believe, that the most important thing to take away from this first encounter is the seriousness and complete transparency, with which both parties approached the challenge of dialogue - a dialogue that is not a watering-down or a “playing nice” but a striving for Truth, regardless of how vast the abyss may appear between its opposing cliffs. It would be a mistake to get stuck on whether I happen to agree with one side or the other, as it would miss the masterclass in serious dialogue that we have just witnessed. In many ways, I read Odifreddi’s closing thoughts as a transposition - from an intra-Christian to a Christian-atheist setting – of Francis’ call to an ecumenism that starts now, while there are clear differences between the parties, when he says in “the” interview: “We must walk united with our differences: there is no other way to become one. This is the way of Jesus.”

---

¹ Apologies, again, for the rough translation from Italian - once “official” translations are available, I’ll point you to them.
² I can’t not mention the following zinger from Benedict, which points to the widespread use of “science fiction” in science, in response to Odifreddi’s claiming that it was religion that practiced the genre. Benedict here says, referring to Heisenberg and Schrödinger’s theories, and adding Dawkins’ “selfish gene” to the list, that “I’d call them “science fiction” too, in the good sense: they are visions and anticipations, to arrive at true knowledge, but they are, indeed, only imagination with which we try to get closer to reality.” :) I agree and I’ll definitely pick this line up in a future post.

Science grows Church’s understanding

⁰

As was immediately clear from a first reading, “the” interview given by Pope Francis last Thursday to Jesuit magazines is a text rich both in spiritual and intellectual treasures and will be a prominent trigger of reflection for a long time to come.

Today I’d like to take a closer look at a passage from it that has immediately caught my eye, but that received little attention so far. It addresses the relationship between science and religion in a, to my mind, very positive way:

“[H]uman self-understanding changes with time and so also human consciousness deepens. Let us think of when slavery was accepted or the death penalty was allowed without any problem. So we grow in the understanding of the truth. Exegetes and theologians help the church to mature in her own judgment. Even the other sciences and their development help the church in its growth in understanding. There are ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective, but now they have lost value or meaning. The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong.”

While the opposition between science and religion certainly does not apply to the Catholic Church - with Blessed Pope John Paul II’s landmark encyclical Fides et Ratio being a categorical statement of the mutual benefits of faith and reason and with Pope Benedict XVI having spoken of the necessity of dialogue between science and faith ¹ - Francis’ positioning of science as “helping the church in its growth in understanding” is a significant move. Like with many of Francis’ statements, it could be argued that they contain nothing new (Fides et Ratio already saying that “science can purify religion from error and superstition”) or that they are only new in style - and in some sense that is true, since he is firmly rooted in the Church, but it would, I believe, also miss an important nuance.

While I have always read Fides et Ratio as positioning faith and reason as separate, but mutually “strengthening” entities,² here I see Francis presenting theology and science as two activities whose results both help the Church, the former leading to mature judgment while the latter resulting in increased understanding. This is a picture that does not place theology in a privileged, internal position with regard to the Church, and science as an external, while admittedly positive, activity, but positions both as engines of progress that deepen our humanity.³

While the above is clearly my reading and attempted unpacking of Francis’ condensed thought, I believe it is compatible with another of the important points he makes in “the” interview, namely that the Church is the “faithful people of God,”⁴ and that “‘thinking with the church’ [does not mean] only thinking with the hierarchy of the church,” that it “does not concern theologians only.” Seen in this way, “[t]he church is the totality of God’s people” and is therefore formed as much by theology as by science. Science becomes an internal concern of the Church - the People of God - and its advances and insights form her teaching from within.⁵ In many ways this also reminds me of Francis’ address to Brazil’s “leaders of society” during his visit in July, where he emphasizes that Christianity “combines transcendence and incarnation” and “faith and reason unite, the religious dimension and the various aspects of human culture – art, science, labour, literature…”

The above sketch, which I don’t believe I am bolting on to Francis’ thought, strikes me as a natural evolution of the solid foundations that John Paul II laid down, and I am curious to see whether it will find support in his future teaching.

---

⁰ I don’t mean to distract, but note the fractal in this 13th century illuminated illustration!
¹ “In the great human enterprise of striving to unlock the mysteries of man and the universe, I am convinced of the urgent need for continued dialogue and cooperation between the worlds of science and of faith in the building of a culture of respect for man, for human dignity and freedom, for the future of our human family and for the long-term sustainable development of our planet. Without this necessary interplay, the great questions of humanity leave the domain of reason and truth, and are abandoned to the irrational, to myth, or to indifference, with great damage to humanity itself, to world peace and to our ultimate destiny.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Address To The Pontifical Academy Of Sciences, 8 November 2012)
² As Lumen Fidei puts it in §32.
³ Echoing the affirmation in Fides et Ratio that “Men and women have at their disposal an array of resources for generating greater knowledge of truth so that their lives may be ever more human.”
⁴ The definition presented in Lumen Gentium, as Francis points out.
⁵ This is not a conflation of the two - theology and science - but a recognition of their equal import for the Church’s progress.