The Good of Doubt

When I was in college, I felt compelled to find an answer to moral relativism and nihilism, a search which led me to Catholic faith and the moral philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Alasdair MacIntyre. (With some over-zealous missteps thrown in too).

Later, another paradox imposed itself on my consciousness: I believe the Catholic faith is true. I also believe that my faith calls me to love all persons. Not everyone is a Catholic. How do I love and respect those who disagree?

After some soul searching and reading, the answer appears that we love a person precisely by respecting his or her autonomy and ability to reason and seek truth. We propose, but leave conversion to the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t mean we approve of all actions; it does mean that we love a person despite disapproving of some of his or her behavior. After all, all of us have areas of repeated error.

This process of questioning and reconciling two seemingly disparate truths goes on through out our entire lives, I think. At least it applies to the part of our lives where we think about things, which I hope will be most of my life.

Many if not most believers will go through a period (or periods) doubt throughout their life in the faith.

It isn’t bad or weird or wrong. It is an invitation to further study, to the potential deepening of faith. I believe that every person has his or her own set of essential questions: existential quandries that make or break the possibility of belief.

Objections Series: Killing in the Old Testament: How Can It Be Just?

[This post appeared originally in my series on The Truth and Charity Forum]

One of the most troubling objections made to the Faith is regarding the instances in the Old Testament when God commands the killing of human beings who have committed no obvious wrong. There is the commandment that Abraham kill his son Isaac, though God ultimately rescues the young man (Gen. 22). There are also the commands to slaughter entire groups. In 1 Samuel, God commands King Saul as follows:

‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” (1 Samuel 15:2-3).

Admittedly, this is one of the most difficult aspects of the Faith because it stems from a very natural proclivity towards valuing human life. And it bears mentioning that this is a secondary or even tertiary consideration after the question of the existence of God in general and the meaning of Scripture have been broached. To understand the Christian answer, both prior aspects are required. We believe in a loving God who is the source of all goodness and truth, even of all life and existence itself. The Catechism, drawing on the Old Testament and New, says:

“God, ‘HE WHO IS’, revealed himself to Israel as the one ‘abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness’. These two terms express summarily the riches of the divine name. In all his works God displays, not only his kindness, goodness, grace and steadfast love, but also his trustworthiness, constancy, faithfulness and truth. ‘I give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness.’ He is the Truth, for ‘God is light and in him there is no darkness’; ‘God is love’, as the apostle John teaches (1 John 1:5, 4:8).” (CCC 214)

Theologically, the answer to the question about the supposed murders lies in the application of natural law, “If murder is always wrong, how can God command it?” Natural law is man’s guide to goodness through reason, which St. Thomas Aquinas says is “promulgated by the very fact that God instilled it into man’s mind” (ST I-II, 90, 4). By it, we know that killing innocents is wrong; this is also the fifth of the ten commandments.

However, the Natural Law has both primary and secondary precepts, the latter of which God can rescind according to specific circumstances, the former of which He cannot as it would create a contradiction in His unity (Summa I-II, 94, 5). As God is the source of the bindingness of laws, it belongs to Him to make these laws valid. In the case of killing innocents, killing is forbidden because God both creates and destroys all human life; it does not belong to man to take this upon himself. Because God is the true author of life, He can delegate that authority, to beyond that.

“Woman, what does your concern have to do with me?” The Reason Christ Is Not Being Rude to His Mother at the Wedding at Cana

I don’t often do biblical commentary posts, but this exchange from the Wedding at Cana had troubled me ever since I read it years and years ago. But this thought came to me recently about explaining it, and my husband said I should write it down, which is saying something. I offer an explanation and then a re-telling that might resonate more with modern listeners.

We all know the story of the Wedding at Cana; it is where Jesus does his first miracle; he famously turns water into wine. But there is a difficulty, on a surface reading, it really seems as though Our Lord is blowing off his mother. “Woman, what does your concern have to do with me?” he asks.

John 2:1-5 reads: On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does your concern have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Jesus response to Mary in this translation sounds like a rhetorical question to our American ears, as though he does not actually mean it. It can seem like Christ is assuming the answer in the question and saying instead: “Your concern has nothing to do with me; it isn’t time for me to reconcile the world yet.”

Such a reading is troubling. Our Lord seems snippish and disrespectful. However, from what we know of the Faith and the rest of the Gospels, there is no good reason to believe that Our Lord is being insincere or rude.

How, then, can we read it in a way that makes sense with the whole of the Faith, a way that is true to the person of Christ Jesus, which is how the Faithful are meant to read Scripture? We can read it instead with the understanding that he truly means each of the words he speaks. On such a reading, he is sincerely asking Mary to explain how her concern affects him; he sees that she is worried, and is sitting there, giving her the space to make a request of him. In short, he is presenting the opportunity for her to intercede because he loves her and sees that she is upset.

Such a reading would mesh well with what we know about Christ’s divine and human knowledge.

Faith Objections 3: How I Came to Trust the Bible

Why should I trust the Bible given all its translations, its ancient age, and its occasional difficulties in harsh figures or unintelligible cultural differences?

You should trust the Bible if you make a sincere effort to understand its contents and it finds a meaningful place in your conception of truth and goodness; God does not force anyone to believe. Here is the account of how I came to trust the Bible.

I was raised in a Christmas and Easter Protestant family. We had a Bible; I didn’t think it was weird, but I never read it. My mom read us a children’s translation at night when I was young but it didn’t constitute serious reading through my teenage years. Yet when the Gideons were out distributing tiny orange-covered copies of the New Testament on my way home from school, I took one. I even read some of it, mostly from Matthew’s Gospel, which was the first book in this edition as it contained only the New Testament.

The writing style of the biblical writers is different from emotionally expressive and highly explanatory modern writing, and I found the person of Jesus to be a harsh and intimidating one. I read such passages as, “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matt. 5:30) and was bewildered and a bit nervous.

In school, I also learned a few scraps about the Middles Ages and the copying of manuscripts, including of the scriptural texts. I learned about the printing press and the various translations the Bible went through and how Martin Luther translated it into German so that the common people could read for themselves instead of being told the great book’s contents. Somehow or other, I drew the conclusion that the text must be so muddled so as to be unreliable. Who could know what words the original authors actually wrote or what they intended the reader to take from them?

Well, when I started trying to take the Bible seriously and not simply write it off, I learned that I had some misunderstandings about the text.

Read the whole article where it appeared originally on the Truth and Charity Forum. http://www.truthandcharityforum.org/why-should-i-trust-the-bible-objection-series-3/

5 Principles for Interpreting Scripture Catholic-ly (and what literal interpretation really means)

For everyone who has read or tried to read the Bible, it’s not always easy. Often times, the word of God is an enigma and we can end up more confused than before beginning. Sometimes things don’t seem to fit together.

Fortunately, the Second Vatican Council outlined a few principles to help us out in interpreting the Scriptures.

These are 1) that Scripture must be read as whole, in light of both the Old and New Testaments; 2) that Scripture should be read in light of the Church’s constant Tradition; and 3) the Scripture should be read with a mind to the analogy of Faith, which is the coherence of the Catholic Faith as a whole.

1)  Reading Scripture as a whole means reading it with a mind to the unity of the testaments. For instance, when we read the Levitical laws about sacrifices in the temple, the Catholic should understand that we are no longer under the old law. Jesus instituted the new covenant which supersedes it. St. Paul goes to pains the letter to the Galatians to explain that we are under the new law. He writes “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’’” (Gal. 5:14). We still read the Old Testament with respect and we see the Old Law with an eye to how God was preparing his people for reception of His Son and the New Law, but we understand that we are not required to offer physical, animal sacrifices in the temple anymore. Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross is the sacrifice to end all others, and now we follow Him and His new covenant as the definitive revelation of God.

2)   Second, Scripture is to be read in light of the Church’s constant tradition.