Happy Feast, Dear Sister!

Today (for three more minutes) is the feast of St. Maximilian Marie Kolbe, the great Franciscan martyr commonly called the Saint of Auschwitz. If you are unfamiliar with the great saint, you can read about here.
 

I mention him because, since it is his feast day, it is also the patronal feast or name day of my dear friend Sr. Maria Kolbe O.P. I first met Sister in early 2011, she had just moved to Australia from the United States. She ministered to students at the University of Sydney and University of Technology, Sydney, for two and a half years before being transferred back to the U.S. At the end of last semester.

I had the honour of giving a speech at her going away party. One of the things I said about her was that she was, above all things, a religious sister, which made her a bride of Christ. This was one of the most notable things about SMK (as several of us, affectionately called her) she was a woman deeply in love with her divine spouse, who then helped to radiate and share that love with others.
 

I went on to say that, while that much was true of any religious sister, in SMK's case, it manifested in a specific way because she was not just a religious sister but a Dominican religious sister. As such, her sharing of God's love was reflected through the Dominican charism of preaching. Sister is a true preacher, not in the sense that she would get in people's face or brow-beat them, in fact she is usually very gentle, but she was constantly bearing witness to the faith that is hers. She is a very friendly person, open to everyone. Whether the person she was protestant, atheist, Muslim or whatever, she always showed a willingness to listen, a curiosity about the person and his or her beliefs, but also a strength in speaking about her own beliefs and the reasons for them.
 

She is a true daughter of St. Dominic, I am very proud to call her my sister and my friend, and I miss her very much.

Science, Philosophy and God

Noted Christian philosopher, Dr. William Lane Craig and atheist scientist, Prof. Laurence Krauss, will be debating at Sydney Town Hall tonight. I will be there. Richard Schumark, of the Centre for Public Christianity has written this piece, in anticipation of the debate.

I think Schumark (if you read this, forgive me, is it Mr. or Dr.?) makes some excellent points. For example, he points to the stupidity and downright intellectual laziness of imagining science and philosophy to be in competition. Science relies upon philosophical conclusions, you cannot, for example, perform an experiment unless you take the laws of logic as given, and those laws could not possibly be scientifically proven, they rellie on philosophy.

I think, however, that Schumark makes some arguments about the relationship between philosophy and science, that are more than a little wide of the mark. He writes:

“In the same way Craig’s claim is necessarily scientific in the sense that he marshals arguments for how all the available evidence points to the likelihood of there being a divine designer and creator.”

That may be true of some of Craig's arguments, but not of most of them. Take, for example, Craig's signature argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument (not, I must stress, and argument I'm a fan of). While Craig does sometimes use scientific claims the bolster his second premise, the argument is not scientific at all. Schumark suggests it is because Craig “...marshals available evidence...” but marshalling evidence is not peculiar to natural sciences but to any rational activity.

Science is based on testable hypotheses. You put forward a scientific theory and then expect the world (or the particular part of the world you are experimenting on) to act one way if your theory is true and a different way if your theory is wrong. Classical theists don't claim the world would act differently without God, we claim that the world wouldn't exist without him. Our claims are no more subject to scientific testing than the laws of logic are.

Schumark, goes on to say that he doesn't think God's existence can be proven with full scientific rigour. If he means that God can't be proven by the scientific method, he's right, however, the claim of classical theists is that God's existence can be proven philosophically, and that these philosophical proofs are more, not less, certain, than scientific ones.

Schumark, however, seems to think that a God whose existence can't be certainly proved is plus for Christianity. He suggest that a God who left “hints” of his existence but no certain proof is more in keeping with a “personal and relational God.” He even quotes, with approval, philosopher Paul Mosser and arguing that this is exactly what we would expect of a God who values relationships first and foremost.

I have to say, I can't see why we would think that. I'm personal and I place a high premium on relationships and when I want a relationship, in either the friendly romantic, or any other sense of the word, with someone, I don't leave cryptic hints that I might exist lying around for that person to find. If possible, I generally walk up to them, say hello and introduce myself, thus, unless they have some reason to fear they are having a psychotic episode, they are generally left in no doubt of my existence.

Also, while Schumark doesn't explicitly say, I assume, given where his article is posted, that he is a Christian. In that case, I have to say that the God he believes in, the one leaving us with hints but no definitive proof of His existence, does not sound to me at all like the God revealed in the scriptures. In, for example, the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, it is declared that God's existence is clearly revealed in creation, leaving unbelievers “without excuse.” It is to this clearly existing God that traditional Christian philosophy points.

I Have Some Cool Friends....

... And some of those cool friends write interesting, thought provoking stuff on blogs. So, in no particular order:

My fellow Campion graduate and philosophy nerd, Alexander Westenburg, has just started a blog. I don't always agree with him (he is, unfortunatly, a Platonist) but he always has something to say that's worth considering. I really like his first post, found here, and hope he will continue blogging.

Monica "MonJon" Johnson, is a theology student at Notre Dame and, in my opion, a very good writter. She's been writting a serise of posts on the rosary and I found her latest post particularly worthy of note.

Last, but by no means least, Laura McAllister is a fellow convert with whom I became friends as a result of reading her blog after MonJon posted some links to the same on FaceBook. Laura has, in my view, really good instincts, for all things Catholic. Her latest post on the liturgy is a must read.

Oh, and, speaking of Campion people who are, unfortunatly, Platonists, but who write cool stuff anyway, I really loved this piece, by Dr. Matthew Tan.

The Death of Christ Means Everything!

So, it's been a while, hasn't it? There are a few reasons I haven't blogged in a while, most of those having something to do with the fact that my health has not been the greatest of late. I've been spurred to blog again by this article, written by Islamic apologist Ijaz Ahmad, responding to remarks by Protestant apologist, James White. The article deals with one of the most important topics imaginable, the death of Christ.

For those unfamiliar with some of the relevant theology the Catholic belief, shared by Protestants and most of the Eastern Churches, is that Christ is one person but with two natures, these natures being the divine and the human. A less formal way of saying this, might be that in Jesus, there are two what's (God and human) but one who (the God-man Jesus Christ). It's important to understand that these natures were not, somehow mixed together, the divine nature remains eternally divine and the human nature is fully human, but these natures are united in a single person.

It is also important to understand that, according to Catholic belief (and again this Catholic belief is shared by protestants and others) the death of Christ was a death that affected the human nature, that is to say that His human soul was separated from His body. However, and this is absolutely crucial, while the death effected His human nature, it is not a nature which dies but a person. In this case, the person who died was God. Therefore, while the divine nature was not directly effected by the death, it is theologically accurate to say that, when Jesus died on the cross, God died.

It has to be said, Ahmad does a poor job of understanding this basic Christian teaching.

Ahmad quotes from The Catholic Encyclopedia, as distinguishing three, position, the Catholic, Nestorian and Monophysite views on the incarnation. I found it annoying that he did not tell us which article in said encyclopaedia (or even which edition) he was citing; doing so would have made it easier to check the context of his citation. He then tells us that in this context “Catholic” means “Trinitarian Christian.” This is quite wrong, both Nestorians and Monophysite's were Trinitarians as well; their heresies don't touch on the question of the Trinity.

Ahmad continues to write: “Christ has two natures, his divine nature known as the Son and his human nature known as the flesh and blood of the Christ. If he died a physical death and this what is being claimed, then the flesh and blood of Christ died, that is the human nature died.”

This is very wide of the mark. “The Son” is not a name of the divine nature but of the whole person. The Bible affirms in numerous places that the man, Christ is the Son of God (Mark 15:39 being a good example). Further, the human nature is not merely flesh (that would be a variant of the ancient heresy of Apollinarianism) but a fully human soul as well.

Once this misunderstanding is made clear, much of Ahmad's argument can be seen to be off-base. For example, his claim that, since only the human nature died, John 3:16 is disproven, since the Son, he thinks, does not die, is shown to be a radical misunderstanding.

Also, Ahmad's claim that death would mean the breakup of the union between God and man are shown to be based on a misunderstanding. At death, the human soul separated from the human body but this involved no separation between the divine and human natures and only Ahmad's failure to grasp actual Catholic teaching obscures this.

You Can Do Better Than This

Those of you who have read my blog for a while will know that I'm something of a fan (for a certain value of fan) of the T.V. Show “The Atheist Experience”. While I obviously have big disagreements with the people running the show, I like the way in which they openly engage in dialogue with all comers. It has occurred to me that, if any of them saw the light, some of these guys would make good Dominicans. I also appreciate the fact that most of the hosts make an effort to fairly represent the views of those they are arguing against.

One of the exceptions to that rule is Don Baker, who co-hosted the most recent episode. Mr. Barker does a semi-regular section on what he calls “the failures of Christianity.” I've seen a number of these sections and quite frankly, he makes no serious effort to understand what Christians are actually saying.

His most recent section is on “The Failures of Scripture” and is found here. He spends most of his time reading from Thomas Paine's “The Age of Reason” and suggesting that this pamphlet presents unanswerable arguments against scripture.
 

Among these arguments is the claim that God wouldn't have given revelation in ancient Hebrew because words change their meanings so some of the words in the Hebrew Bible now mean different things than they once did. Yes, that's true, that's why we have translators and scholars. We are also told that it's ridiculous to believe in an Old and New Testament, since this implies that an all-knowing God changed His mind. Not the slightest effort is made to interact with the Christian belief that it was always God's plan to deal with humanity in successive dispensations. We are also told that, if Jesus of Nazareth had wanted to found a new religion with new scriptures, He would certainly have written it Himself or at least made sure it was written in His lifetime; how this is known, we are not told.

A somewhat better argument comes when it is pointed out that there was a human process, after scripture was written, of discussion and debate to determine which books would be accepted into the canon of scripture. This is a slightly more valid point; the process referred to was a real one, but Don Baker seriously suggests that anyone who believes the Bible is God's word must be ignorant of this process. This is simply false. For a Catholic, who believes in the authority of the Church, the role of the Church in canonising Scripture is frequently appealed to as an argument for the authority of the Church. Even among our protestant friends, while I disagree with them on this issue, it is simply not true that anyone with a knowledge of the history of this project lose their belief.

 

The silliest part of the whole argument, however, comes right towards the end. Mr. Barker quotes, uncritically, Paine's assertion that the New Testament could only have been written by people who believed the earth was flat. I really thought this particular piece of silliness had been thrown on the scrap heap long ago. The spherical nature of the earth was well known long before the time of Christ and was universally accepted throughout the Greco-Roman world by the time the New Testament was written. For Mr. Barker to recycle this rubbish is a sign of how lacking his critical judgement is when it comes to any argument against Christianity.
 

I can imagine some readers will suggest this rubbish is not worth the time to refute. In response to this, first, these guys have a substantial following and are worth responding to. Second, I like this show and want to like these guys and I actually expect better from them.

A Common Question

A protestant brother in Christ wanted to know how Catholics reconcile our beliefe that St. Peter was first Pope and our beliefe in Papal infallibility with St. Paul's rebuke to St. Peter at Antioch, which is recorded in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. This is my reply:

 

Hey Jasawa and thanks for the question. :)
 

First, I don't think there is a clear Catholic teaching on exactly when St. Peter became Pope, but he clearly had that office by the time he presided at the selection of St. Matthias. So yes, by the time the event St. Paul describes in Galatians happened, St. Peter was Pope. And no, St, Paul wasn't wrong; Galatians is Sacred Scripture. If Scripture says Peter was wrong, then he was wrong. Actually, St. Paul's action is used by St. Thomas Aquinas as the primary example that one may, sometimes, correctly rebuke one's superiors.
 

So, does this contradict infallibility? I don't think so. To understand why, we need to look at exactly what infallibility is and also exactly what was St. Peter's error. Vatican I spells out the criterion for an infallible Papal statement, the criteria are actually quite strict. Wikipedia lists them here. One of the criteria is that the Pope has to be speaking in his capacity as pastor of the whole Church. So St. Peter could, theoretically, have been teaching heresy in the dining room at Antioch without contradicting this teaching.
 

However, I don't think we have warrant to conclude that St. Peter was teaching heresy at all. St. Paul writes:
 

11 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

From this passage, it seems to me reasonably clear that St. Peter was, in fact, teaching the correct doctrine but, as a result of the influence of certain men, he was hypocritically failing to live in accordance with that doctrine. This undoubtedly reflects poorly upon the great man, but has nothing to do with infallibility at all.
 

I hope this helps.

Time to Get Out.

This isn’t an easy post to write. It involves implicit criticism of people who I like a lot, but it needs to be said.

Yesterday I chanced upon a recruiting stall for Notre Dame University’s ALP club. The stall was interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, there was no picture of Kevin Rudd or any other ALP figure and nothing promoting the present government’s achievements. The only prominent picture was of Tony Abbot and the recruiting pitch seemed entirely negative. There was no “join us because we stand for these values” or “join us because this government is good”. The message, so far as I can tell, was entirely “join us to stop the bad things Abbot will do if elected.”

I’m no stranger to negative campaigning; I was an active member of the ALP in 1996, when a large part of the campaign message was based on fear of a hidden agenda which, the ALP claimed, a Howard government would implement. (Most of this fear, I should add, turned out to be quite justified.) Even then, however, a typical ALP stall featured a prominent picture of Paul Keating and/or the local ALP candidate and would have some positive material about what the ALP was doing.

The second thing of note was that, among the warnings which this ALP stall was giving about Abbot, one concerns his views on abortion. This is significant; another of my memories of the 1996 election, in the debate between Keating and Howard, the compare, Ray Martin, asked a question about abortion. Both Keating and Howard responded with their personal positions but both were at pains to stress that this is not a party issue and that MPs in both their parties were free to vote as their individual consciences dictated. Both men struck me as being at pains to downplay the issue as one that any voter should consider in voting for or against the government.

Up until now, that has been the accepted pattern. The liberal party has no position on abortion, the ALP, officially has a “pro-choice” policy but also makes clear that this policy is not binding on any member. Traditionally, when the issue did come up, both sides were content to do what Keating and Howard did in 1996; stress that it was a personal matter for each member and downplay it as an election issue.

This seems, on the ALP side, at least, to be changing. When Julia Gillard launched the “Women for Gillard” group, her speech made a point of stressing Abbot’s supposed opposition to abortion as a reason to vote for her (or at least as a reason not to make Abbot P.M. which amounted to the same thing.)

This has, or ought to have, implications for those faithful Catholics and other social conservatives remaining within the ALP. As I noted above, I used to be an ALP member. I am well aware that there are faithful Catholics and other pro-life individuals within the party. Many of these are people I respect; a few of them are good friends of mine. I came to the conclusion a while back that remaining in the ALP just wasn’t a viable plan for a faithful Catholic. I was, and still am convinced that the party was moving in a direction which would eventually lead to the remaining conservative elements in the party being squeezed out. I could understand, however, why many of my brethren in Christ thought otherwise and I respect those who have stood and fought within the party in a consistent manner. As I said, I have good friends in that group.

This election, however, I think the situation has changed dramatically. When Gillard gave her “Women for Gillard” speech, for the first time in living memory, abortion was being urged, by a leader of one political party, as reason for voting for the return of that party to government. How all the pro-lifers in Gillard’s cabinet did not immediately resign is simply beyond me.

If you are an ALP member and a faithful Catholic, or a pro-life person of any other kind, you need to be clear about this. You are no longer simply a member of a party which, on paper, has a pro-choice policy but, in practice, treats the issue as a matter of conscience, you are a member of a party which is making this a campaign issue and you are on the wrong side.

I understand the reluctance of ALP members to leave. For one thing, where will they go? The Greens are even worse on this and other such issues and I fully understand why they can’t stomach the liberal side. I think the DLP has at least the potential to be a real alternative, but I can understand why many are skeptical. Surely, however, staying in the ALP has lost credibility as an option.

PS. I’m aware that there are those who have doubts as to whether Tony Abbot still is as opposed to abortion as the ALP portrays him as being. I’ve avoided direct comment on that because it doesn’t seem directly relevant to the point of this post.

PPS. Some might respond that I am being unfair in treating a speech by someone who isn’t leader anymore and one poster by one university club as representative of the whole party. In partial response to this, I’ll say that this poster was put out by Australian Young Labor and seems to be part of a national campaign.

PPPS. If any pro-choice individuals read this post, it’s obviously not really directed at you. That said, I’d be curious to know how you feel about the pro-life individuals within the Gillard and now Rudd ministries.