Seek First the Kingdom - The March of Hope - Chapter 6
The World View of the Kingdom
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Joan of Arc, my designated spiritual leader, protector, and guide for this March to the kingdom, was calling my happy troupe of saintly companions and me to break camp at the gates of the Church. It was time to journey into her mystical and astonishing land.
St. Joan's leadership motivated me to break out of my lifelong spiritual inertia and leap toward the first mighty footprints of those saints and Fathers of the Church who went before me. We are lost on our own; we must follow in the footsteps of the Fathers and our saintly friends to find our way. The Protestant mind will tell you that you need nothing but the Bible and a personal relationship with Jesus; his friends in heaven are not allowed to journey with you. The modern skeptical mind will say that you need intellectual growth and material science to lead you. But the safe path that mystically edifies both alternatives is the two-thousand-year-old way of the Apostolic Fathers and the saints on the Path of the Dogmatic Creed of Roman Catholicism.
I started above to introduce the notion that the first few chapters of the book of Genesis were of the utmost importance to us in our world today. As I conclude this section, I want to revisit that thought and introduce this new worldview that will animate us for the rest of our journey. Most of the firestorms of religious ridicule, mockery, and blasphemy in modern culture derive from completely misusing reason regarding these introductory chapters of the Bible. I am equally convinced that most Christians engage in a misguided defense of them.
Few arguments in the modern world better define the catastrophic cultural, philosophical, and theological conflicts between the secular world and the believing Christian world than those over the subject of creation. Here we have what the materialists consider a beachhead in their war to destroy religion and impose atheism as the dominant cultural philosophy. They genuinely believe that scientific discovery has made a sham of the story of creation. They relentlessly mock faith as finally undone, if only imbecile religious folks would open their minds.
However, a significant Achilles Heel for these materialists is that they, along with most in our modern culture, believe that scientific achievement is synonymous with intellectual attainment. In other words, atheists tend to think that since we can go to the moon and produce ever more impressive medical advances, we must have a superior intellect to Middle Age or Dark Age thinkers who knew nothing of our scientific achievements. This superficial understanding of the hierarchical role of scientific and technological achievement carries over in the debate about our beginnings, even if only latently and subconsciously.
Here is how this happens.
The atheist points to the scientifically determined age of the universe and boasts the apparent fact that this directly contradicts the biblical statement that the earth was made in six days. They rely on scientific knowledge in the material realm without any attempt, or at least with only wrong attempts, at philosophical reasoning, which is, by definition, non-material. Material science, in their mind, has indeed trumped scripture. And as regards a strict, literal, material scriptural interpretation of Genesis 1, it undoubtedly has.
It would appear to them that religion had lost a significant beachhead in the battle. Once the creation story goes, the original sin concept is just a little behind. With that, it is only a matter of time before the rest falls, most notably the value of Christ dying on the cross for, no sin, no need to be saved from it. You can see the battlefield map of the atheists with the lines drawn straight to Christ on the cross.
This view of theirs is akin to the English capturing northern France in the Hundred Years War, leaving the rest of France demoralized and hanging on hopelessly awaiting the inevitable fall of the entire country. We finally see how Eastern New Age, though spiritual, can team up with un-spiritual atheism to steamroll over Christian culture. Just as the French House of Burgundy aligned itself with the English in the Hundred Years War to conquer northern France, New Age aligned itself with atheism to try and defeat Christianity. New Age gives a spiritual-sounding alternative to the creation story and original sin, thus attempting to destroy the claims of the scriptures and the need for a saving Christ. No more sin or need for Jesus, at least not the real one who died on the cross and rose from the dead. Eastern New Age will give us alternatives that speak seductively of things spiritual, but these philosophies are nothing more than minions to the doctrines of the atheists, just as the Burgundians were French but were nevertheless aligned with the enemies of France.
But Joan of Arc was to the fore. As I continued on my spiritual journey, visiting the Blessed Sacrament as often as possible, trying to make that a daily event, I could sense the powerful presence of that great saint in my life. I had always known that Thérèse of Lisieux played a significant role in my conversion and was always very devoted to Joan of Arc. As I faced a war similar to France in my spiritual life, Joan also began significantly influencing my life. I attribute her with guiding me, at the instruction of Our Lady, to my new worldview. The Anglo-Burgundian alliance did not conquer France, nor was I to be by our secular, materialistic, and Eastern New Age foes.
What, then, is the alternative view here? How is it that religion can be saved? The beachhead has been captured by the enemy. To answer this, we must put things in their proper order. We must honor scientific knowledge but properly subjugate it to reason, thereby edifying scientific achievement and consummating it with God's point of view.
Go back to the story of the great king Gilgamesh in the Forward to this book. Imagine, again, a world with "no religion too." Continue to imagine the mythologies and wild stories about our beginnings that developed in the early years of humanity. Like the king, people everywhere without formal religion or dogmas, developed concepts about how they came into existence and for what reason. There was every kind of superstition and frightening legend. It was to counter those myths and misconceived stories that God inspired the writers of sacred scripture to write those opening lines, whereby God could tell all generations the truth about creation, our place in it, and the purpose of it all.
Most modern materialists mock the Bible, particularly the first few chapters of Genesis, as being a "myth." They need to be made aware that the biblical story of creation was given to us to refute ancient myths.[1] Where would I get such a strange notion in light of the apparent scientific evidence to the contrary?
The enemies have planted their flag of darkness on the beach and sing songs of “Science and Reason!” or “I believe in Science, not God!” They have campaign slogans such as, “Faith and Reason – NO!” “Science and Reason – YES!” They are prepared to take over the land.
The problem in this scene is not that they are unthinking. The trouble is that they have taken the wrong beachhead. The firm ground they have won is not the tremendous strategic importance they think it is. They believe that their victory is now assured due to the sheer weakness of the religious foe’s argument, which cannot withstand the apparent fact that science can better answer questions about the origin of the universe than the ancient Bible. The Bible served its purpose perhaps centuries ago, but we must now make room for the new truth, that is, scientific truth.
But the issue for the materialists is that they need to understand the proper hierarchy of values that leads to a sound intellectual understanding of truth. They do not understand that there are truths outside and above the empirical, material world. This darkness has misguided them in their strategy. They took Greenland when they thought they had stormed the beaches of Normandy.
To this point, Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, gave a series of four very important homilies in 1981 at the Liebfrauenkirche in Munich that represented, as he calls it, a “creation catechesis” for adults. Reading through these homilies was essential to my journey with St. Joan of Arc to a new worldview. He outlines the intellectual and doctrinal framework that sits outside and above materialism in these discourses.
He begins early in the first one with a very thought-provoking proposition that sheds light on the core irritations of the modern dialogue:
“The new historical thinking wanted to read every text in itself, in its bare literalness. Its interest lay only in the exact explanation of particulars, but meanwhile it forgot the Bible as a whole. In a word, it no longer read the texts forward but backward – that is, with a view not to Christ but to the probable origins of those texts. People were no longer concerned with understanding what a text said or what a thing was from the aspect of its fulfillment, but from that of its beginning, its source. As a result, from this isolation from the whole and of this literal-mindedness with respect to particulars, which contradicts the entire inner nature of the Bible but which was now considered to be the truly scientific approach, there arose that conflict between the natural sciences and theology which has been, up to our day, a burden for the faith. This did not have to be the case, because faith was, from its very beginnings, greater, broader, and deeper. Even today, faith in creation is not unreal; even today it is reasonable; even from the perspective of the data of the natural sciences it is the “better hypothesis”, offering a fuller and better explanation than any of the other theories. Faith is reasonable. The reasonableness of creation drives from God’s Reason, and there is no other really convincing explanation.”[2]
I came to sense as I discovered these hidden homilies that our future Pope was carefully guiding the flock in Munich to a different outpost, a solid rock unknown by secularists and atheists in this discussion of faith and reason. The scriptures were giving us reason, not scientific theories. What was thought in the pure secular view as the beaches of Normandy, the critical beachhead on the battlefield, turned out to be something else. The atheists were missing the target.
He points out the cosmic significance of the “math” in the creation story. These mathematics are to the physical world what God is to us: spiritual. God reveals to us that he has created all matter, including the physical laws that govern it and the very soul and mathematical rhythm of the material world.
“I would like to seize upon two elements here. The first is that the Biblical creation account is marked by numbers that reproduce not the mathematical structure of the universe but the inner design of its fabric, so to say, or rather the idea according to which it was constructed…the number that governs the whole is seven; in the scheme of seven days, it permeates the whole in a way that cannot be overlooked. This is the number of a phase of the moon, and thus we are told throughout this account that the rhythm of our heavenly neighbor also sounds the rhythm of our human life. It becomes clear that we human beings are not bounded by the limits of our own little “I” but we are part of the rhythm of the universe, that we too, so to speak, assimilate the heavenly rhythm and movement in our own bodies, and, thus thanks to this interlinking, are fitted into the logic of the universe. In the Bible this thought goes still further. It lets us know that the rhythm of the heavenly bodies is, more profoundly, a way of expressing the rhythm of the heart and the rhythm of God’s love, which manifests itself there.”[3]
I was now truly beginning to understand that perhaps God’s message in the creation story was critical in any age, including our own. It was also becoming apparent that this message transcended the current debate, not contradicting a particular scientific viewpoint or discovery. In other words, God was telling all people of all generations, of any specific level of scientific understanding, what the purpose of creation and our existence were.
God created us; we have absolute freedom in and by the Creator God. There is only one thing forbidden to us, to decide on our own, apart from God, what is right and wrong (the forbidden tree in the garden). Our problems stem from the fact that our first parents, and through them, we too, have willfully rebelled against that which is God’s alone (to decide what is right and what is wrong). We are impoverished as a result, having now lost our freedom to slavery in sin, but God loves us still and has promised a redeemer, a new Adam, through another woman, a new Eve. This revelation is not contrary to scientific discovery; it is the spiritual explanation, the spiritual “reason,” behind all that science discovers in the material realm. This is “super-science” because God is “supernatural.” This demonstrates how the reason constituting the Bible is hierarchically superior to the natural, scientific approach of Biblical exegesis.
Another idea struck me with great joy. God’s message to us in the first few chapters of Genesis is not only “super-science” (meaning and purpose, rhythm and inner mathematical beauty, problem definition, the promised solution), but it now seemed absolutely brilliant in its form. How could anyone possibly convey such deep and intrinsically meaningful information in one short story that transcends all times and all levels of scientific achievement? How could God make sure that all people of all times understood the same message, one that did not depend on technological achievement, which would thus disadvantage those in earlier times? How does one tell a universal story and one that transcends time? The creation story blossomed for me with true supernatural drama and majesty. From then on, the first few chapters of Genesis became a source of incredibly fulfilling contemplation for me.
Yes, the atheists and materialists, who believe that they have dealt a death blow to religion with their astounding proclamation that the world was not created in six natural days, have ended up storming Greenland in an attempt to take over France. The world was not made in six rotations of the earth relative to the sun; I’ll give them that. I will cede Greenland. But they have missed the entire point and are deprived of one of the most awe-inspiring stories in the Bible. It is the story of creation from the highest order of reason and intellect, God’s Reason and Intellect.
Once the proper and authentic order of reasoning was set forth for me, all else, my entire worldview, began to change. The hierarchy of knowledge and reasoning must start with God. God has something to say. God has a point of view. We would benefit significantly by paying attention to it. The atheist ends up in Greenland by incorrectly making the material world of empiricism the highest order of reasoning. The rest of us end up in paradise by making God’s point of view the highest order and the beginning point for reason.
And now, with our new vision intact, we set off to explore that beautiful land that sits through the gateway and over the mountain’s ridge.
[1] For example, see: Ratzinger, Joseph. (1986). In the Beginning…; a Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall. Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. pp. 12-13.
[2] Ratzinger, Joseph (Pope Benedict XVI). (1986). In the Beginning…; a Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall. Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. P.17.
[3] Ibid, pp. 26-27.