SDG – Page 13 – Jimmy Akin

Calling Priests “Father” in English

Since the subject came up in the combox of Jimmy’s post on calling priests "father" in Latin, a few quick thoughts on the subject of the custom of calling priests "father" at all.

Protestants who object to this practice (not all do object, of course) focus their objections on Jesus’ words in Matthew 23:9. Here’s the passage in context:

[1] Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples,

[2] "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;

[3] so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.

[4] They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.

[5] They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long,

[6] and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues,

[7] and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men.

[8] But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren.

[9] And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.

[10] Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ.

[11] He who is greatest among you shall be your servant;

[12] whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

How are we to understand this passage? Does Jesus really mean to absolutely forbid his followers to call men "father"? If not, what does he mean? What can we say about this?

As Christians who take the Bible and Jesus’ words seriously, we should be cautious about too quickly or easily concluding "He didn’t really mean what he said." It is certainly true that Jesus’ teaching included a lot of figurative and non-literal language. Classic examples include "I am the door" and "You are the salt of the world." There are also cases where we would likely go astray if we sought literally to follow Jesus words, e.g., cutting off limbs and plucking out eyes in order to avoid sin.

On the other hand, Jesus also meant what he said a lot too, even when some people try to make out that he didn’t really mean it. "Love your enemies," for instance. And "If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." There are those who would like to explain away his warnings about the outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth. But he meant that too.

As Catholics, too, we take Jesus literally at points where many or most Protestants spiritualize or otherwise water down his teaching: "My flesh is food and my blood is real drink," for example. (Note the unusually insistent language: He doesn’t say "I am a real door" or "You are real salt.") And "He who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery."

What of the present case, "Call no man on earth father"? Is that a dramatic, parabolic expression, or a literal proscription?

Perhaps the first point to note is that it is not only calling men "father" that is discussed here. Verse 9 mentions calling men "father," but the adjacent verses immediately preceding and following, 8 and 10, likewise forbid the titles (translations vary) "teacher" ("rabbi") and "leader" ("master") on the identical grounds that we have one teacher and leader, the Christ. Yet even among Evangelicals that object to the Catholic custom of calling priests "father," it is common to encounter terms like "worship leader" and "Bible teacher."

Of course this doesn’t prove that Jesus didn’t mean what he (literally) said. It could be that Evangelicals and Catholics are both guilty of violating Jesus’ teaching here.

On the other hand, if we do take Jesus’ teaching here as a literal prohibition, it looks like we may also have to ding both St. Paul and St. John for breaking Jesus’ teaching in holy Scripture itself.

St. Paul, speaking to the Corinthians, calls himself a "father" to them (1 Cor 4:15), since he fathered them in the Gospel. It’s true that St. Paul’s usage doesn’t exactly parallel the Catholic usage of calling any priest "father," since St. Paul considers his role in bringing the Corinthians to the Gospel a unique one, and contrasts it with the countless "instructors in Christ" they may have. To follow St. Paul’s usage exactly, we might call a priest "father" who brought us to Christ, but not other priests.

However, the point is not that St. Paul’s usage provides an exact precedent for the Catholic usage. Rather, it is a data point in our effort to understand Jesus’ prohibition on calling men "father." Although Jesus says "call no man on earth father," St. Paul calls himself the Corinthians’ father and encourages them to think of him in that way. At the very least, this suggests that we should not understand the unique divine Fatherhood Jesus cites as excluding any and all spiritual fatherhood on a human level.

Also worth noting is the usage of St. John in 1 John 2:13-14, where he addresses "fathers." Note that throughout the letter John addresses his readers as "children" or "little children," certainly not meaning literal minors only; "childen" is a metaphor, presumably in the same spirit as Jesus’ teaching that we must "become as little children"; similarly, it seems likely that "fathers" is likewise addressed not to biological fathers only, but to elders or leaders in the community, i.e., to spiritual fathers.

Granting this, however, isn’t the same as explaining Jesus’ words in Matthew 23. Toward this end, let’s consider another passage in Matthew’s Gospel, from the Sermon on the Mount, that I think is similar in construction and spirit, and which in fact addresses the same spiritual condition:

"Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:1-4)

So far so good: but now compare this verse, also from the Sermon on the Mount:

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16)

See the problem? Which is it? Are we to let our light shine before men so that they can see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven? Or are we to beware of practicing our piety to be seen by men, to the point of giving alms in secret? We can’t possibly do both — at least, not at the same time. Are we supposed to alternate between one and the other? If we make a point of doing good deeds like almsgiving in secret, how can men see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven?

Interpreted as literal prescriptions of specific acts, Jesus’ teachings here seem flatly contradictory. I think it’s safe to say, though, that the real point of these exhortations is, for one thing, the actual likely consequences in any particular situation, and more importantly the attitude of the heart.

Note how 6:1-4 begins with a warning relating first of all to motive, not action: "Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them." What follows is meant, I think, in the spirit of a cautionary parable, a vivid pictoral exhortation addressing the temptation of practicing piety in order to be seen by men: Don’t even let people see what you’re doing; do it in secret, and then your father will reward you.

Not entirely unlike the teachings about chopping off limbs and plucking out eyes, it says, "Prefer this behavior to a sinful alternative." This is not of course meant to suggest that we should not literally do good deeds in secret — we should. But neither is it meant to suggest that doing good deeds in a visible way is necessarily sinful behavior. On the contrary, it can be meritorious behavior, as Matthew 5:16 makes clear.

The structural and thematic similarities of Matthew 6:1-4 and Matthew 23:5-10 are striking. Both begin by explicitly addressing an attitude of the heart, of motive; in Matthew 23 the warning is against the attitude of those who "love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men." (See also verses 11-12, which return to the theme of humility.)

In both passages, the heart attitude involves aspiring to the honor of men, and in both cases Jesus exhorts us to see where we really stand before our Father in heaven. In Matthew 6:1-4, we are urged to aspire to the honor of God; in Matthew 23:5-10 we are urged to remember that God’s honor is unique.

Finally, in both passages Jesus exhorts a course of action contrary to this temptation: Don’t even use titles like teacher, father or leader, for only the Christ is your teacher and leader, and only God is your Father. Like the exhortation not to let men see our good deeds, I take this as a vivid pictoral or parabolic example dramatizing the humility we are meant to have. It is not meant actually to forbid us to use titles like teacher, father and leader, any more than Matthew 6:1-4 is meant to forbid us to do good deeds in a visible way, as long as our motives are right.

What would make the parallel complete, of course, would be if we had a countervailing example elsewhere in Jesus’ teaching, in which, say, he exhorts those who are teachers, or fathers, or leaders to glorify God through their carrying out of their responsibilities.

Lacking that, though, the examples of 1 Cor 4:15 and 1 John 2:13-14 seem to me to suffice to establish that there is nothing per se wrong with calling or being called father (or teacher or leader), as opposed to loving the honor of such titles.

Christian Priesthood and Sacrifice: Part 2

SDG here. In my first post, I noted that while it is true that the NT writers do not use the word "priest" in relation to Christian ministers, it is equally true that — with the obvious exception of Hebrews — they also avoid using it in relation to Jesus.

In fact, in the NT the word "priest" overwhelmingly means one thing: the Levitical priesthood. (There are only a few passing references to the universal priesthood of all believers, and perhaps only a single reference, in Acts, to priesthood in a pagan context.)

This does not mean that the NT does not present Jesus as a priest. It does, and not only in Hebrews. Although only Hebrews uses the word itself, the theology of Christ’s priesthood in Hebrews is found throughout the NT.

Above all, Hebrews sees the priesthood of Christ in relation to Psalm 110:4: "The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."

Although this specific verse is quoted in the NT only in Hebrews, Psalm 110 is the single OT passage most quoted in the NT. Significantly, Jesus himself implicitly applies Psalm 110 to himself, challenging the Pharisees to explain the Messiah’s precedence over his own father David in the opening verse:

"What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David."

He said to them, "How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

‘The LORD said to my Lord,

Sit at my right hand,

till I put thy enemies under thy feet’?

If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?"

"The LORD" God here speaks to "my lord" the Davidic king, the son of David who is also somehow his lord. Since Jesus assumes that his hearers recognize this to be the Messiah, it follows that it is also the Messiah to whom the LORD God speaks in verse 4: "The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.’"

Jesus thus implies that the Messiah, the Christ, is a priest — not in the usual sense of the Levitical priesthood, but of an older order, the priesthood of Melchizedek aspired to by King David and the Davidic monarchy.

This, however, raises another notable point: Although Jesus effectively implies that the Messiah is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, the term "Messiah," like that of priest, is one with which Jesus avoids openly identifying throughout much of his ministry. In fact, when others recognize him as the Messiah, he orders them to secrecy (the so-called "Messianic secret"; cf., e.g., Mark 8:27-30, Matt 16:16-20, Luke 4:41).

A similar reticence seems to emerge at his trials, where Jesus gives the affirmative but ambivalent response "You say that I am" in response to questions ranging from "Are you the Christ?" (Matthew 26:63-64) to "Are you the Son of God?" (Luke 22:70) to "So you are a king?" (John 18:37).

These responses are apparently affirmative (Mark’s Gospel has Jesus saying simply "I am"), but also seem to express some level of reservation or evasion, perhaps a disclaimer regarding misunderstanding. I like the rendering in The Miracle Maker: "These are your words." Jesus seems to be saying something like: "Yes, it is true to say that I am [the Christ, the Son of God, a king], though what I mean by that and what you mean may not be the same thing."

A well-known triple formula (noted in the combox of my first post) acclaims Jesus as "prophet, priest and king." "Prophet" correlates with his messianic role (the "prophet like Moses"). "Priest" is the term under discussion. As for "King," Jesus was acclaimed "king of the Jews" by the Magi at his birth, and died under a titulus bearing that title; yet although he preached constantly about "the kingdom" of God or of heaven, he had very little to say about being a king, except in that ambivalent response to Pilate.

Although each of these terms is rightly ascribed to Jesus, and although he claimed them all in different ways, Jesus also distanced himself from each of them in certain ways as well. Disclaimers like "My kingdom is not of this world" offer a reasonably clear window into this ambivalence, certainly as regards "king" and "Messiah." In the first-century Judaism of Jesus’ day, such language was implicitly understood as a political and military challenge to the Roman empire; and whatever challenge Jesus’ teaching might have had for the Roman empire, he was not a revolutionary in the usual sense. Jesus was the heir of David, not of Judas Maccabeus.

But it was more than that. If Jesus’ mission could be understood in terms of the Davidic and messianic hope of Psalm 110, it must also be understood in terms of the still older archetype to which, in that very psalm, the Davidic monarchy itself aspires: the royal priesthood, or priestly kingship, of Melchizedek, "king of Salem" and "priest of God Most High" (Gen 14:18).

Although Psalm 110 attests the hope of the Davidic monarchy for a restoration of this double office of priest and king, it was a hope never completely fulfilled in the Davidic kingdom. The Davidic kings did exercise some priestly functions, particularly in the early years, but the priestly function remained with the Levitical establishment, where it resided since Exodus 32.

It would be a mistake to reduce Jesus’ mission to any Old Testament type. Only Jesus is Jesus: He is unique, the one and only Savior. He is not simply the son of David, the Messiah or even the new Adam.

Still, the primeval blend of priest and king represented by Melchizedek, reaching back before such specifically Hebrew institutions as the Levitical priesthood and Davidic monarchy — a priestly kingship with one foot in the pre-Abrahamic world of the early chapters of Genesis — clearly represents an important touchstone in NT thought for understanding Jesus’ mission, one going back to Jesus himself.

In this connection, it’s helpful to remember that both the Levitical priesthood and the Davidic monarchy were institutions with origins in sin and rebellion. The origins of the Levitical priesthood are directly connected with the worship of the golden calf; the Davidic monarchy succeeded to the kingship of Saul, crowned by Samuel at the insistence of the people in spite of God’s warnings. Neither of these provisional and concessionary institutions is an adequate background to understand Jesus’ mission. If Jesus is a king and a priest, he is in a way less like Aaron and Levi, or even David and Solomon, than like Melchizedek.

All of this, though, is a nuance liable to be lost in a world in which words mean what people use them to mean. For first-century Jews, a "priest" was a Levitical priest — period. A king was either someone like Herod or Caesar, or else someone who would challenge the rule of these foreigners and restore the kingdom to Israel. For Jesus to openly claim titles like "king" or "priest" would inevitably have meant something to his hearers Jesus didn’t intend.

This continued to be the case in the early decades of the New Testament church. The process by which the Church’s sense of its own identity as a phenomenon separate from Judaism (or of Judaism’s emerging identity as a phenomenon separate from following Christ) has been much studied; here it’s enough to note that there was a process. In the very earliest days, the Christians continued worshipping in the Temple; as time went by, the Church continued to understand itself in relation to Judaism, though that relationship was increasingly one of opposition as well as continuity.

Although in time the language of Jesus as "our high priest" would be unreservedly embraced by the early fathers, especially after the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, the Levitical and Temple establishment continued to dominate the early Christians’ understanding of "priesthood" for decades. Jesus laid the foundations by quoting Psalm 110, but it was still a bold leap for the writer to the Hebrews to identify Jesus as "our high priest."

(To be continued)

Christian Priesthood and Sacrifice: Part 1

SDG here with the first post in a series on Christian priesthood and sacrifice.

Among the doctrines of the historic Christian faith rejected by the Protestant Reformers was the understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice offered by a ministerial priesthood.

Although this language of priesthood and sacrifice was ubiquitous in the early Church, going back to the earliest days of the apostolic and post-apostolic church, and was both widespread and uncontroversial, Protestantism from its inception has considered considered it unscriptural.

For the New Testament writers, Protestants contend, the only Christian priesthood is the high-priesthood of Jesus Christ (especially in Hebrews) and the universal priesthood of all believers (cf. 1 Peter 2:9, Revelation 5:10); the only sacrifice is that of the Cross.

It must be acknowledged that the New Testament writers had the word "priest" (Gk hiereus) available to them; indeed, they used it to refer to the Levitical priesthood as well as the priesthood of Christ and of all believers. Yet for Christian ministers they appear to have scrupulously avoided this usage, preferring instead terms such as "elder" and "bishop" for church leaders, and never once designating such leaders as "priests." This usage cannot be dismissed as inadvertent; it is clearly intentional.

This is indeed a striking fact. Yet the usage of the apostolic and post-apostolic Christ is equally striking and equally intentional. The Fathers possessed and venerated the sacred scriptures, yet they unhesitatingly chose language that went beyond the NT record: From the beginning, Christian ministers were called priests (Gk hiereus, Lat sacerdos), and sacrificial aspect of the priesthood was explicitly developed in relation to the Eucharist.

This language of priesthood and sacrifice applied to Christian leadership and Eucharistic worship can be found from Clement, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and so on. Moreover, Christian history records no resistance, opposition or resistance on the part of any Father to this widespread usage.

From the facts briefly described so far, it appears only two conclusions are possible:

(a) Either the usage and theology of the apostolic and post-apostolic Church departed very early and very thoroughly from the biblical pattern, so much so that a covenant ordinance was converted into a sacrificial rite and a presbytery into a ministerial priesthood without anyone apparently noticing; or else

(b) the usage of the apostolic and post-apostolic Church represents the theology but not the language of the NT; in which case it is necessary to explain why the NT writers so carefully avoided terms readily available to them.

In seeking a solution, it should be noted from the outset that the biblical data has been somewhat oversimplified. It is true that the NT writers had the word "priest" available, and used it readily for the Levitical priesthood. Yet within a Christian context the word "priest" does not seem to have caught on particularly easily in any connection — either with respect to the priesthood of Christ or the universal priesthood of believers.

Although it figures prominently in Protestant thought and is equally valid in Catholic theology, the universal priesthood of all believers is mentioned only fleetingly in two late NT books, 1 Peter and Revelation.

More strikingly, and crucially, throughout the NT the word "priest" is never once applied to Jesus Himself in any book but one — that one, of course, being the gigantic and enormously significant exception, the book of Hebrews.

Unquestionably, the magnificent treatment of Christ’s priesthood in that book more than makes up for the silence elsewhere, and (insofar as the canonicity of Hebrews is accepted as a settled matter) establishes this doctrine as unquestionably scriptural. Still, it leaves the question: Why did all the other NT writers consistently avoid applying the term to Christ?

It is not that the theology of Christ’s high-priesthood is contrary to the rest of the NT, or even that it is simply unknown to the other writers. Rather, the priesthood of Christ is present, though implicitly, in the teaching of Christ Himself and of the rest of the NT, and made explicit only in Hebrews.

But this only refocuses the question in a new form: Why teach the theology but scrupulously avoid the term? Why were the NT writers (with one major exception) so reticent to call Jesus a priest?

In considering this question, we may cast light on the NT church’s preference for the language of the presbyterate and episcopacy over the priesthood for its own ministers. It may be that whatever is at the root of the reticence here is also the reason that the term was not applied to church leaders.

(Continued in part 2)

Why Muslims Become Christian

SDG here with a Yankee cap tip to Mark Shea for pointing out Sherry Weddell’s in-depth blog post on a recent study of why Muslims convert to Christianity — a timely subject with Magdi Allam’s Easter Vigil baptism by Benedict XVI.

I’ll give the summary of the reasons below from the last link above at Christianity Today Library site, but do check out Sherry Weddell’s blog post for some good commentary… and a great punch line in the combox.

1) The lifestyle of Christians. Former Muslims cited the love that Christians exhibited in their relationships with non-Christians and their treatment of women as equals.

2) The power of God in answered prayers and healing. Experiences of God’s supernatural work—especially important to folk Muslims who have a characteristic concern for power and blessings—increased after their conversions, according to the survey. Often dreams about Jesus were reported.

3) Dissatisfaction with the type of Islam they had experienced. Many expressed dissatisfaction with the Qur’an, emphasizing God’s punishment over his love. Others cited Islamic militancy and the failure of Islamic law to transform society.

4) The spiritual truth in the Bible. Muslims are generally taught that the Torah, Psalms, and the Gospels are from God, but that they became corrupted. These Christian converts said, however, that the truth of God found in Scripture became compelling for them and key to their understanding of God’s character.

5) Biblical teachings about the love of God. In the Qur’an, God’s love is conditional, but God’s love for all people was especially eye-opening for Muslims. These converts were moved by the love expressed through the life and teachings of Jesus. The next step for many Muslims was to become part of a fellowship of loving Christians.

Those are the highlights. The reasons for checking out Sherry’s blog post include her own commentary and insights, but JA.o readers scanning down to the combox will note a very familiar tone in the very very very extensive, yet almost totally insubstantial, rambling, ADD-tinged polemical headlines that follow.

Scanning down, and down, and down… and down… I found myself wondering why Sherry hadn’t just deleted the comment… and then I got to her reply, and laughed out loud.

As Mark Shea says, check thou it out.

P.S. Mark also links to a couple of worthwhile articles on priestly doings among Muslims. Thanks, Mark!

B-16 Mystery Photo

SDG here with a real Mystery Photo culled from the Internet. Who is pretty obvious, and When, judging from the directory path, is recent. Anyone have any insight into Where and What?

A few penetratingly insightful observations:

Wherever B-16 is sitting, it’s a darn huge space with a darn huge, um, wood or metal thing.
I would call it a reredo, if I knew the space were a church, and if I could see an altar anywhere.
The cleric on the right (our right) could be reading from a book of the gospels, so this could be Mass.
It looks to me like Christ, center top, is rising in triumph in the harrowing of hell, or something. Although theoretically he could be descending into hell.
Not entirely sure what’s going on around his head.
The figures around him presumably include denizens of hell.
But there may be other figures too.

Well, that’s all I’ve got to say about that. Any other thoughts, guesses, speculation, opinion, knowledge?

P.S. A friend found this at the Web clearinghouse site Digg. I scanned the comments there to see if anyone knew anything. They didn’t. Warning: Do not head over to Digg to read the comments unless you feel like being offended today. People can be unbelievably moronic/vitriolic/puerile. It actually makes you appreciate how thoughtful and smart combox discussion around here tends to be, odd trolls and all.

Thoughts on Being Catholic (Year 16)

SDG here, at the beginning of my 17th year as a Catholic, with some thoughts in response to a combox post from a reader calling himself John:

My wife and kids and I joined the Catholic Church last Easter, went to mass fairly reliably for the first number of months, then less consistently over the ensuing months. My wife revealed to me a few months ago that she just can’t stand all the pageantry and symbolic acts of the mass; that it seems contrived and unnecessary, and that she doesn’t think she needs to attend confession, that she can simply bring her issues straight to Jesus. She and I agree the preaching (homily) is quite weak at all the services we’ve attended compared to nearly every other type of church we’ve attended, and we don’t get that same feeling leaving church like we did years ago while attending Lutheran services. Our kids are also bored to tears at Mass and really dislike going. We’ve started visiting other churches (baptist, free churches, etc.) but haven’t found one we like. I still feel some sort of attachement to the Catholic Church, but don’t know what to do…any suggestions?

John, you raise a lot of important and complicated issues in a few sentences. One thing that might help me (and others) as we try to offer responses would be to know more about what originally led your family to the Church in the first place. Did you have friends that were Catholic? Were you convinced by the stories and arguments of converts? Did you read books? Were you drawn by the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or by the teaching authority of the Magisterium?

Since the issues you mention are significantly (though not entirely) experiential, for what it’s worth, I’d like to share something of my experiences over the last 16 years.

First of all, let me say that I understand and empathize with your experience of not getting what you want out of going to Mass. While that is very far from my present experience, it has been my experience for long stretches in my past.

My wife Suzanne and I were received into the Church on Easter Vigil 1992, the year after we were married, in what I would consider a far-from-great diocese in a far-from-great parish. (I remember one “homily” consisting solely of a dramatic reading of Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go!) Shortly afterwards, we moved to Philadelphia, where I entered the Religious Studies MA program at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.

Our years in Philadelphia were in many ways a godsend. We had some solid priests, my studies at St. Charles were wonderful, and partly through St. Charles we connected with a vibrant community of Catholic young people in the area. Among other things, we met semi-regularly for Catholic movie nights in which we watched morally and spiritually rich films, prayed night prayer, and sang hymns. Once a month early on a Saturday morning, there was a pro-life prayer vigil that began with Mass followed by a rosary prayed outside a nearby abortion clinic, then back to the church for eucharistic exposition. Often afterwards a number of us would go out for brunch together.

Although we never found a parish where we felt deeply at home, those Philadelphia years were in many ways a blessed time for us, and helped us connect culturally and experientially with the Catholic faith we had originally come to embrace for scriptural, theological and historical reasons.

Then this blessed time ended, and whatever strength we gained was sorely put to the test after we moved to a diocese where we struggled in isolation and agony for years. During that time we visited nearly every Catholic church we could find within a thirty-minute radius. Almost uniformly, the liturgy was more or less miscarried, the music ranged from lame to unbearable, the preaching ranged from insipid to downright heretical, and the architecture was high-school gymnasium/auditorium by way of 1960s décor.

For the most part, we tended to alternate between two parishes with adequate pastors. One was a convert from Lutheranism, a staid and steady fellow with a canon-law background who wasn’t much of a people person but had the great virtue of doing the liturgy with punctilious correctness. It was a well-to-do parish of mostly older parishioners, which for a young family like us wasn’t great from a community perspective, but did have the virtue of bringing a certain dignity and traditionalism to the music and hymn choices, too. However, we never really connected with anyone at that parish, and always felt like visitors even though we were as involved as we could be (we taught seventh-grade CCD, among other things).

The other parish we frequented had a pastor with a lively faith and a good heart, but among other things had a hard time saying no to anyone, and one consequence of this was that the so-called music ministry was pretty oppressive: guitars, drums and aging hippies singing glory-and-praise songs off-key. I vividly recall one bleak Good Friday service with a younger guitarist enthusiastically drumming on his guitar during a rousing rendition of “We Come to Tell Our Story.” My only comfort in that dark moment was that I could dimly relate to Jesus’ Psalm 22 cry on the cross.

Incidentally, at that parish we were befriended by a lovely Catholic family who became our only local Catholic friends at that time in our lives. Shortly after that, they moved to Boston, and we were alone again.

This went on for five years. It was an arid, lonely, miserable time; looking back, I call it our years of wandering in the wilderness. In the grand scheme of things, we were blessed — two kids, a good job (mine) that allowed Suz to stay home with the kids, a house, family nearby, and toward the end the beginning of my work with Decent Films. Still, many, many times I prayed to God to deliver us.

And then, about six or seven years ago, He did.

It happened all at once: A third kid, a new job, a different commute, and suddenly we were looking at houses in a different neighborhood, a different diocese. Before long we became aware how different the diocese of Newark — to which Archbishop Myers was just moving at that time, same as we were — was from where we had been.

Before long, we found a parish home with solid priests and strong community that has gotten stronger over time. We worship in a magnificent 150-year-old French Gothic church with nearly all of its traditional accoutrements intact. We are surrounded by (generally large) Catholic families who love their church (local and universal) and take their faith seriously, Recently we began holding monthly men’s meetings and women’s meetings (we have to take turns because there’s way too many children for the men and women to regularly get together at the same time).

The music has been a great blessing. Our church is known for its Hook & Hastings pipe organ (Thomas Edison, who lived just down the road, did some work on it). Our former music director, a convert from Episcopalianism, was a treasure, and when he retired I was not sanguine about finding someone to fill his shoes. Glory to God, we did (another convert from Episcopalianism!). I’m just coming off four days of Triduum and Easter singing in the choir or cantoring at four Masses plus the Good Friday service, with Latin, polyphony, plainchant, traditional hymns, and not a glory-and-praise ditty in sight. On Easter Sunday we had a small brass orchestra and both children’s and adult choirs (on Christmas we had a small string orchestra). I can truly speak of praising God “with greater joy than ever” in this Easter season.

Our life here isn’t perfect, but it’s richly blessed in so many ways that I can’t begin to thank God for it all. I’m especially glad to be able to raise my children in this environment, to let them grow up in a church that looks like the church is meant to look. (Incidentally, we now have five children, and are expecting our sixth.)

Looking back now at our wilderness years, I believe we were being tested. A vibrant faith community of like-minded believers is a wonderful thing, and I’m profoundly grateful for what we have now. But it’s not something God owes us. Nor is it a sine quo non of the Christian life. We are called to be faithful in good times and in bad.

John, your wife talks about being able to bring her issues straight to Jesus. All right. But is that an argument for not going to a Catholic church? Or for not going to church at all? Why go to any church, since one can take one’s issues straight to Jesus?

Where would you go, anyway? Some evangelical church with 45 minutes of praise songs and/or an hour of Bible class? That might be rewarding (or not), as far as it goes. But it’s not church. I have an MA in religious studies; I’ve taken a lot of Bible classes, and I’m a big fan. But that’s not the historic pattern of Christian worship. And neither is 45 minutes of praise songs.

As regards the “pageantry and symbolism” of the Mass, John, I’d hazard a guess that your wife could possibly be reacting to the lousy way the ritual and ceremony of the Mass has been enacted in her experience. Just wondering, has she read Thomas Howard’s Evangelical is Not Enough? I highly recommend it. Of course it helps that I encountered that powerful little book at a time in my life when I was utterly ripe for it, when I was fed up with reductionist Protestant forms of Sunday gatherings and ready for something richer and fuller. For me, Howard crystalized a thousand and one things I had already begun to work my way toward on my own.

Ritual and ceremony are not contrived and unnecessary, except in the sense that all human culture and experience is contrived and unnecessary. Wedding rings, shaking hands, Christmas trees, birthday cakes, napkin on the left, pallbearers, tuck the children in at night, floral arrangements in church or at a wedding or a funeral, Easter eggs, “Hail to the Chief,” bride and groom cut the cake, stand up for the judge, mortar boards at graduation, hold the door for the lady, kiss each other hello and goodbye and good morning and good night — none of these are pragmatically necessary, and all of it is how we human beings order our lives — if not with these symbols, then with something else.

In ordinary life, what the particular symbols and gestures are often enough doesn’t matter. But to be Christian is to believe, first of all, that the Creator of the world happened to make contact with our race within the context of a specific cultural milieu, in a specific symbolic world sovereignly chosen and carefully shaped and guided for millennia by His Spirit. From circumcision to Passover, from the annual chanting of the psalms of ascents on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to the vestments of the Aaronic priesthood, the world into which Jesus was born was full of pageantry and symbolism.

And then, when our Creator favored our race by taking on our flesh and offering us so great salvation, He left us with symbols and gestures chosen by Himself and not matters of human convention. He took bread and broke it, and wine, and pronounced them to be His body and blood. He commissioned His disciples to go about immersing people in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit fell on Pentecost, He did not proceed to liberate the people from pageantry and symbolism: Three thousand people were ceremonially dunked in water on the first day alone, and they immediately proceeded to devote themselves to the business with the breaking of the bread, along with the apostles’ teaching, fellowship and the prayers (Acts 2:42), particularly on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7).

The Lord left His church in the care of apostles who went about laying their hands on chosen men and appointing them to continue the ministry of the church. The New Testament also mentions anointing with oil and laying on of hands for the sick. The Gospels record set words given by Jesus: This is my body; in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; Our Father who art in Heaven. Given by Jesus, not made up by us.

The book of Revelation describes pageantry and symbolism even in the worship of Heaven itself: thrones, crowns, robes, antiphonal exclamations, prostration. Why should the twenty-four elders not only fall down before the throne of God, but also throw their crowns at His feet, of all things? Does God need or require such lavish outward gestures of worship and self-abnegation? No. But we creatures of bodies and senses and imagination find in such outward acts and symbols the crown and completion of the worship in our hearts.

From the outset the worship of the early church was structured and liturgical. St. Justin Martyr describes it in his mid-second century Apology, only decades after St. John’s death, and there are glimpses of it in the earlier Didache as well as the New Testament. As documented by St. Justin and other early sources, it’s the same basic structure the Church has followed for 2000 years. The brethren assemble on the first day of the week. First comes what we today call the liturgy of the word. There are readings from the Apostles’ memoirs and the prophets, followed by instruction and exhortation from the one presiding. Then comes what we today call the liturgy of the Eucharist. All rise for the prayers; bread and wine are brought; the one presiding offers prayers and thanksgiving, thanking God at length for our being counted worthy to receive the sacred things. Justin cites the words of Jesus at the Last Supper: This is My body; this is My blood. No ordinary food and drink these; they are the body and blood of Jesus Christ. All the people give their amen — what we today call the Great Amen — and the Eucharist is distributed (by deacons) only to the baptized. For those who are infirm and unable to be in attendance, the Eucharist is carried to them.

This is what Christian worship looks like. For some of us, it may come more naturally than others. For all of us, it is essential. I have great sympathy for those who struggle through services with “creative” priests, popcorn music and Protestantized architecture — and all the more for those struggling to raise Catholic kids in such an environment. It is hard to look past all that and see yourself surrounded by angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. And yet there it is: It is in the Eucharistic liturgy, as nowhere else on earth, that we when we lift up our hearts to the Lord we are actually caught up into the eternal worship of the heavenly liturgy.

For those who struggle with seeing it, I can only report that God is faithful and faithfulness is rewarded. Early in our journey to Catholic faith, Suzanne, as yet reluctant and unhappy, wanted to know what would be expected of her: Would she have to pray the rosary, or have statues in her house? No, I told her: Mary must be honored, but the rosary is not strictly obligatory, nor would she have to own statues. Today, Suzanne has sizable collections of rosaries and statues, and what began as her daily rosary with our eldest daughter has become an evening routine for our whole family.

John, I’m glad, truly, that your wife continues to value her faith in Jesus. Obviously I can’t in this post begin to touch on all the apologetical issues, but I do want to say that in what will be very soon forty years of following Christ, I have struggled through many issues, doubts and uncertainties — but one thing I have not found reason to doubt in going on 20 years as a Catholic, one thing I have come ever more firmly to hold as a fundamental conviction, is this: If there is any truth whatsoever to the whole Christian story — if Jesus is who He says He is, and if in this Easter week we can truly celebrate His victory over death — the fullness of that truth is nothing else than the Catholic Faith. Biblically, historically, theologically, Catholicism is Christianity, in its full and complete form. The Christianity that Jesus left on earth, the Christianity proclaimed by the apostles and those who received the faith from them and passed it on to others who then passed it on to others in turn, is a Christianity with a saving water baptism that washes away sins, a priesthood offering a eucharistic sacrifice in which Jesus is really present, an episcopal office reigning in place of the apostles.

Every other Christianity that has come along is truncated, fragmentary, partial in relation to Catholicism. The essence of heresy is to deny, to pick and choose, to pit one truth against another, affirming the part over the whole (“catholic” = pertaining to the whole). Heresy never adds to the whole. It always begins with subtraction. The Arians subtract Christ’s divinity; the Docetists, his humanity. Modernists subtract the divine authorship of scripture; fundamentalists, the human authorship. Pelagians detract from God’s grace and sovereignty; Calvinists (some at least) from human freedom and responsibility. Various monarchian, modalistic and monadic sects, from Islam to Jehovah’s Witnesses and even the Jewish people, deny God’s Triune nature; most Protestant communions subtract the efficacy of the sacraments as well as the authority of the ecumenical councils and of sacred tradition; even the Orthodox subtract the Petrine office of the bishop of Rome.

Of course many of these groups try to spin their denials as positives and Rome’s affirmations as negatives. But these efforts are transparent special pleading. Non-Trinitarians claim that Trinitarians “deny” the oneness of God, but of course we don’t: We affirm both that God is one being and also that He is three Persons. It is they who deny, not we. The Orthodox claim that Catholics effectively deny the principle of conciliarity, but in fact we affirm both conciliarity and also the Petrine office; the denial is theirs, not ours. Protestants say that Catholics deny sola scriptura and sola fide; but in fact it is the Protestant solas, the “onlys,” that constitute denials and fragment the faith; Catholics affirm both the authority of sacred scripture and also that of sacred tradition; both the sufficiency of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice and also the efficacy of the sacraments in communicating the grace of that sacrifice to us, the salutary effects of that grace in our lives and works done in Christ, and so forth.

These are intellectual arguments, but for me there is something critical at the bottom of them that holds me fast to the Church, whether I am blessed with a good parish, as now, or suffer in the wilderness as formerly: I will not exchange or sacrifice any part of the historic Christian faith for whatever potential perks I might hope to get hanging my hat at a different church.

Indeed, having been brought by God to where I am now, I literally could not go elsewhere; there is nowhere else to go. Like St. Peter in John 6, I can only say to the Church that is our Lord’s Bride and Body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all: To whom would I go? You alone have the words of eternal life. It is here that Jesus gives us His flesh and blood to eat and drink, here that the whole Christ is really present, here that the teaching of Christ is proclaimed in its fullness. There is nowhere else to go.

An Actor for All Seasons

SDG here with sad news: Paul Scofield, who brilliantly portrayed St. Thomas More in Fred Zinneman’s A Man for All Seasons, has died.

Scofield originated the role of Robert Bolt’s stage play, adapted by Bolt himself for the screen. He knew the role intimately, and his performance is magnificently layered and sensitive.

Primarily a stage actor, Scofield’s filmography also included Quiz Show, Branagh’s Henry V and the Mel Gibson Hamlet.

Few actors could make decency and integrity as convincing and appealing as Scofield. If his Thomas More isn’t enough for you, check him out as Ralph Fiennes’ father in Quiz Show. He embodies a character for whom principles are not just abstract theories, but concrete realities taken for granted as matter-of-factly as gravity.

He does the same thing as More in A Man for All Seasons, although with more worldly-wisdom about the weaknesses of other men. In that film, the principles he stands for include the indissolubility of matrimony, the Petrine primacy of the Bishop of Rome, the inviolability of an oath, and (perhaps most importantly for Bolt) the binding authority of conscience.

He could also do villains, e.g., the Nazi colonel opposite Burt Lancaster in The Train. But even there he brought traces of corrupted idealism and nobility to the role.

A Man for All Seasons is one of the Vatican film list‘s 15 films in the category of Religion. Bolt’s language, based as much as possible on More’s own words, strives to create what Bolt called "a bold and beautiful verbal architecture." For the rest, Bolt added, "my concern was to match with these as best I could so that the theft should not be too obvious." I my book, as noted in my review, he succeeded.

I first saw this film nearly twenty years ago, before I became a Catholic, and it had an enormous impact on me. It was one of the first films I reviewed, and while my skills as a critic were still in an early stage of development, I don’t think it’s a bad review (though I would write it differently today).

For those who have not lately seen A Man for All Seasons, More’s via dolorosa would make ideal viewing during Triduum.

A new rhyming review

SDG here with my new Seussian review of Horton Hears a Who (opening today).

My habit of reviewing Dr. Seuss adaptations in Seussian anapestic tetrameter began eight years ago with the Jim Carrey How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which I felt deserved to be trashed, if not in the good Doctor’s own voice, at least in a reasonable facsimile thereof.

A couple of years later I continued the conceit with Scooby-Doo, this time writing to the tune of the well-known Scooby-Doo theme song. (This approach permitted only 24 lines in a very limited meter, so I cheated by adding line-by-line annotations. However, it did allow me to sing a review on the air.)

Then the following year I went back to Seussian verse for the Mike Myers The Cat in the Hat.

This time, though, my Horton review is a bit different from these previous efforts.

How?

Three ways: First, the first three were all of live-action films; this one’s a computer-animated cartoon. Second, the earlier Seuss adaptations were both Universal; this one is 20th Century Fox.

Neither of those is the big difference, though (although the big difference is certainly impacted by the first, and possibly by the second).

So what’s the big difference with this review?

IT’S POSITIVE. Never got to recommend a movie in verse before.

Enjoy!

“Christian Ramadan”: Does the Press Get Religion Now?

SDG here.

For years we’ve known that The Press Doesn’t Get Religion. And, usually, when the press doesn’t get religion, Get Religion gets the press. Get Religion is a group blog of religious religion journalists covering religion journalism, and in general they do an excellent job.

I was disappointed, therefore, by a recent blog post from Get Religionista Mollie Zielger Hemingway — who says she “loves analyzing media coverage of the liturgical calendar” — offering kudos to the “reporters” who “found the story” on what she describes as “rebranding Lent as Ramadan” in the Netherlands. She even praises “most reporters” covering this alleged “rebranding” for having “put the story in context.” She also adds that this “rebranding” is “a symptom of a larger condition” that “could use some sensible reporting.”

That’s one thing Mollie and I agree on: Sensible reporting is definitely needed. That’s why God created Get Religion. So where is their “sensible reporting” when it comes to a “story” almost totally devoid of facts — a story that even by usual media standards for religion reporting seems (at least to this non-religion journalist) breathtakingly irresponsible in the disconnect between the claims of the headline and lede and whatever facts appear to lie at the bottom of the stories?

Here’s the DutchNews piece that got Mollie’s kudos for breaking the story. (Actually, this may not be the piece that broke the story, since the first sentence credits another publication; my Dutch is a little rusty, but I think Volkskrant means something like People’s News or Popular News. However, perhaps it’s all the same outfit.) Here’s the headline and lede:

Lent must be as ‘cool’ as Ramadan

The Catholic tradition of fasting at Lent needs to become as ‘cool’ as the Muslim fasting peiod of Ramadan, say Dutch Catholics in today’s Volkskrant.

This year, the church is even promoting the 40-day fast as ‘the Christian Ramadan’. ‘We use the word Ramadan because it is a term young people are more likely to understand than Lent, the organisation Vastenaktie tells the paper.

Mollie also positively cites this follow-up piece in The Telegraph that goes further. Here’s the lede:

Lent fast re-branded as ‘Christian Ramadan’

Dutch Catholics have re-branded the Lent fast as the “Christian Ramadan” in an attempt to appeal to young people who are more likely to know about Islam than Christianity.

The Catholic charity Vastenaktie, which collects for the Third World across the Netherlands during the Lent period, is concerned that the Christian festival has become less important for the Dutch over the last generation.

“The image of the Catholic Lent must be polished. The fact that we use a Muslim term is related to the fact that Ramadan is a better-known concept among young people than Lent,” said Vastenaktie Director, Martin Van der Kuil.

For what it’s worth, the DutchNews piece doesn’t mention “rebranding,” although it does claim that “the church” is “promoting” the Lenten fast as “the Christian Ramadan.” What, exactly, does this mean?

In a Catholic context, when you say “the church” is doing X — at least if you know what you’re talking about — you mean that bishops are doing X, or at least sanctioning it. That is who speaks for the Church: the bishops. If, say, individual Catholics are doing X, you don’t say that “the church” is doing it, you say some Catholics are doing it.

In the case of the Dutch episcopacy, the prospect of someone proposing some sort of boneheaded Lent/Ramadan equivalency might not be entirely out of the question. A ways back Bishop “Tiny” Muskins made headlines by suggesting that Christians use the name Allah to refer to God, which makes a lot of sense — for Arabic-speaking Christians. It makes no sense at all for Christians whose primary language is Dutch or English. Whether this new flap represents similar episcopal thinking, though, remains to be seen.

The Telegraph piece offers the more startling headline — “Lent fast re-branded as ‘Christian Ramadan’” — written in the passive voice with no active subject, leaving it unclear who or what is responsible for this “re-branding.” To be fair, headlines are usually written by editors, not the reporters who are at least meant to be researching facts, but still it presents the alleged “rebranding” as a fait accompli.

At the very least, it suggests that someone with some sort of significant controlling stake in the Lenten “brand” — again, presumably the Dutch bishops, or at least a diocesan PR office or something — has embarked on a concerted campaign to get “Christian Ramadan” into the vernacular while consigning “Lent” to the scrap heap. (That’s what “rebranding” implies: deprecating an old, obsolete brand in favor of the new normative one.)

Then in the opening graf we learn that “Dutch Catholics” are responsible for this “rebranding.” Does this mean the Dutch Catholic bishops? Dutch Catholics in general? Is it a popular grassroots movement? Whatever the facts, these early cues strongly suggest a broad-based Ramadanizing or Islamification of a Christian penitential season.

But wait. After telling us that “the church” was promoting Lent as “the Christian Ramadan,” DutchNews goes on to cite “the organisation Vastenaktie” as saying “We use the word Ramadan because it is a term young people are more likely to understand than Lent.”

Who or what is “the organization Vastenaktie”? DutchNews doesn’t say, possibly expecting Dutch readers to be in the know. It thus falls to the Telegraph to fill in readers outside the Netherlands that Vastenaktie is a Catholic charity. (Possibly with a special Lenten emphasis; “Vastenaktie” looks to mean something like “fasting and action.”)

So, okay, a Catholic charitable organization is concerned that the Lenten fast has lost cultural significance, and is trying to burnish its image among young people. That may be a significant story, particularly the cultural implication about young people being more familiar with Muslim cultural touchstones than Christian ones.

But it’s a far cry from the picture that you might get from the opening sentences of these stories of Lent being “rebranded” by “the church.” Even if Vastenaktie is an official arm of the Dutch church (and I have no idea whether it is or not), you still don’t say that “the church” is “rebranding” the Lenten fast because a Catholic charity has done…

Hm. Come to think of it, what exactly have they done? Exactly what form has this “rebranding” taken? What, specifically, has Vastenaktie done by way of “rebranding” the Lenten fast? Are there to be bulletins and other materials announcing the “Fourth Sunday in Christian Ramadan”? Will Catholics soon be asking each other what they’ve given up for Christian Ramadan?

Let’s see. Put together, both news stories give us a combined total of, um, zero facts in this regard. Zilch. Nada. Not a clue what “rebranding the Lenten fast” is supposed to entail. Just a quote from the organization’s director, talking about the need to “polish” the “image” of Lent and the observation that the Muslim penitential season is better known among young people. Later the Telegraph reporter vaguely mentions “linking” the Lenten fast to Ramadan, but again not a single specific as to what this means.

Perhaps at this point you’re wondering what Mollie was talking about when she praised reporters for putting “the story in context.” That was in reference to the relaxation of Lenten disciplines in the wake of Vatican II and the decline of Lenten observances among Mass-attending Catholics. I guess you could say that’s context. They just forgot to include the story. (Actually, according to comments at Get Religion, it looks like they got the context wrong too: Both stories erroneously claim that prior to Vatican II alcohol was prohibited during Lent.)

FWIW, I Googled Vastenaktie, went to their website, glanced over the homepage in Google translation, clicked on the first thing that mentioned fasting, and found a paragraph on “Christian Ramadan”. Below is an eclectic rendering in English based on a couple of online translation engines and my own ignorant judgment (my family is Dutch, but I learned almost nothing; I would welcome a more informed translation):

Christian Ramadan

A typical wordplay. In the Dutch media there is much attention for non-Christian religions and their practices. Each year Ramadan invariably pulls the front pages of newspapers in our country. By contrast, the Catholic fasting tradition is forgotten in oblivion. Young people especially know the Islamic fast, but not the Christian. The carnival obtains the news… The Catholic fasting tradition is valuable. And the interest grows.

Putting together this paragraph with every single fact from both news stories, as far as I can tell, it looks like a Catholic charity in the Netherlands may or may not be saying something like, “You know how Muslims have Ramadan? Well, Catholics have something like that too! Lent: It’s like Ramadan… except the press talks a lot about Ramadan and ignores Lent, so maybe if we point out the connection, we can get Lent some coverage as well.”

I’m not saying that is all that Vastenaktie has done. Nor am I saying that this much, as far as it goes, is necessarily a good idea in itself. I’m not arguing any of that. I’m not defending Vastenaktie in any way. I’m saying that (1) I have no idea what Vastenaktie has actually done; (2) neither, as far as I can tell, does anyone else; and (3) the way the story is being reported and perpetuated seems wildly incommensurate with the facts that have emerged to date.

Certainly if the paragraph above, and the “wordplay” it suggests, represents the extent of the “Christian Ramadan” business, I’d say we have an instance here, not merely of journalistic incompetence in religion reporting, but of sensational Islamo-controversy-mongering.

That’s the kind of thing I expect Get Religion to be all over, instead of perpetuating.

It isn’t only Get Religion. A number of Catholic and non-Catholic bloggers have blogged on the story, either not noticing the problems in reporting, or possibly figuring it sounded crazy enough to be true. And who knows, it could be. But “could be” is not a story. Maybe someday if someone does some sensible reporting, we might find out.

Mollie commented in her piece that “It’s easy to write the first story.” She might have underestimated the difficulty. Perhaps we’ll know when (or rather if) the first story emerges.

Materialism and the moral argument: comments & responses, part 2

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with one more response to the first round of reader comments on the materialism posts.

[Reader 1] This is well presented so far, SDG. In my experience, the ultimate move tht materialists will make in the face of the sort of argument you’re developing is to bite the bullet and say, in essence, "Fine. If it turns out that the basic moral intuitions we start with turn out to be illusions and all we’re ultimately left with is subjective preference, then we’ll just have to accept that. What you can’t do is use this sort of argument to prove the existence of a God, because the structure of such an argument would be that if God does not exist then the moral situation would be intolerably bad. But that’s a fallacious structure. We have to follow the evidence, and if it turns out that there is no God, and if it turns out that in the absence of a God we have no objective ground for our moral notions, then I guess we have no objective ground for our moral notions." I actually think this is a fair response by the materialist. I believe there are, in fact, good reasons for theism (and Christian theism, in particular), but I’m not sure it’s fair to argue for theism based upon the need to ground morality.

[Reader 2] My point is – suppose that you are right about the consequences of naturalism. Suppose that our moral judgments have a naturalistic origin, this would render them meaningless. All we know about the real world is that we *think* our judgments are meaningful. So this argument that naturalism ultimately undermines these judgments is not really an argument for God’s existence because under both theories – the theory that God gave us morality and the theory that morality evolved naturally we might *think* our judgments were meaningful. It just turns out that if you’re correct about the consequences of naturalism, we would be mistaken in some deep sense in thinking that our lives have meaning (let me again point out that I don’t think this is the case!).

I think we can say something stronger than "we *think* our judgments are meaningful." I think that our apprehension of morality is itself a kind of evidence — not evidence that can be empirically tested or proved, but still evidence of a real sort.

I do think it’s important to accept the limitations of human knowledge — of all kinds. We are finite beings; with the arguable exception of Cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am,") there are very few things we know so immediately that our knowledge excludes all logical possibility of doubt. To that we might also add apprehension of self-evident truths or logical axioms, such as "X = X" and "If A = B and B = C, then A = C.".

Even in those cases, though, there are schools of, um, thought, that essentially deny that consciousness itself has any real existence, that behavior alone is real, and that even the most universal of axioms are really only expressions of how our brains happen to work rather than any sort of meaningful insight.

I — I, I say — I have no use for such lines of thought. I can’t prove empirically that I exist, since anything empirical is merely a form of behavior. And the unprovability of axioms is itself, if not axiomatic, at least proverbial.

Yet this is not because the self or self-evident truths are too dubious for proof, but because "proof" and "evidence" are remote and clumsy ways of approaching knowledge less immediately accessible to us than knowledge of self or of self-evident truths. Empirical evidence is a secondary form of knowledge compared to self-awareness. I am more directly aware of my own self than I am of anything my senses apprehend. The phenomenon of consciousness is the one phenomenon I experience most directly and immediately.

I can’t prove, over against the skeptical epistomologist or even over against the wiseacre who says "I don’t get it," that "If A = B and B = C, then A = C" represents a meaningful insight rather than an arbitrary convention. I can’t prove that the words being formed as I type represent thoughts (true or false is another question entirely), that there is anything going on here other than twitching fingers on a keyboard and patterns of digital information of a certain complexity level being organized, stored and transmitted electronically.

Even to talk about "proving" such things is meaningless, if there is any sense in which any speech is more or less meaningless than any other. Any discussion of "proof" or "proving," even (I think) in the most abstract mathematical sense, by definition at least presupposes the reality of mind and thought and the validity of reasoning, if not the possibility of meaningful knowledge of reality through sense experience and inference and insight. These principles are antecedent to all possible proofs.

I suppose someone might say that mind, thought and reason are postulates that lead to useful conclusions, but I’m not sure that’s the most helpful way of putting it. It seems to me more meaningful to say that we are finite beings whose apprehension of reality is finite and imperfect, but real. Self-awareness, sensory perception, and logical insights are all finite and imperfect but real ways of knowing and exploring reality.

Then there’s the problem of other minds. As a self-aware being, I (substitute yourself here, if you are a self-aware being) am directly aware of myself; I am not directly aware of other selves, nor can I empirically prove their existence. It is possible to build a solipsistic philosophy that explains the whole world in relation to oneself, and this cannot be empirically disproved, for the same reason that I can’t produce an empirical proof that I myself exist.

This, in my view, is not reason to doubt that other selves exist; it is reason to regard empiricism as a limited and imperfect tool for understanding the world. To know other selves, to have relationships with other persons, does involve what could be called a leap of faith, but it’s a warranted leap, as nearly everyone recognizes.

It’s worth noting that solipsism, i.e., skepticism in regard to the existence of other selves, is not the default from which we escape into community only if we can satisfy ourselves by proof or argument that the leap is justified. Proof and argument mean nothing to a two-year-old, but if his mother loves him, the two-year-old implicitly knows it, and her. He has a knowledge of her reality that escapes the empiricist and solipsist who look only at behavior.

In regard to the knowledge of other selves, the leap of faith by which enter into relationships with one other, by which we love and are loved, is a more valid means of knowing the truth of one another than empirical squinting and tally sheets of what we can and can’t prove. No, I can’t prove it. I don’t think "proof" is the right measure here.

In my last post I quoted Lewis on the incompatibility of loving a girl and believing the totality of her being to be reducible to the movement of atoms. To know another person is a form of knowledge that exceeds the scientific method — either that, or else as Lewis says it is merely "a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behaviour of your genes."

I can’t prove scientifically that Suzanne loves me — or, for that matter, that I love her. I can’t prove scientifically that "I love you" is a meaningful statement, apart from a very imprecise adducement of certain behavioral characteristics and physiological events that tend to correlate with accepted declarations of love.

Even if we reduce love to physiology and make it subject to rigorously scientific examination, no one in fact has that kind of scientific evidence regarding even the behavior of his or her beloved. We take love on trust; we go above and beyond the available evidence, rather than, say, hiring a private investigator to tail our beloved 24/7 (to say nothing of lab tests to check our beloved’s physiological responses). Hiring a P.I. or getting a lab test might provide us with more data; it could not increase the knowledge of the beloved that we have on faith and love.

Having said that, it must be acknowledged that the knowledge of others that we come to by making this leap of faith can be in error in particular cases. The beloved we believed loved us in return did not; the one we thought faithful was not. In the Internet age, we may be deluded as to the sex, age, race and other characteristics of the persons we think we know. Someday I expect they may succeed in inventing computer programs capable of passing the Turing test, programs that can "pass" for sentient beings in conversation. (So far that hasn’t happened.)

Yes. We may be mistaken in what we think we know. Welcome to being a finite creature with imperfect apprehension of reality. On the other hand, the impossibility of logically excluding error doesn’t warrant refusing to make any leap. There are worse things than risking the possibility of error. A passenger on a sinking ship cannot then and there establish beyond doubt that the lifeboat will or even can successfully bear him to safety. A castaway on a desert island cannot do lab tests on the stream he finds to establish beyond doubt that the water is safe. That’s life. Do the best you can, pay your money and take your chances.

We apprehend logical axioms, such as "X = X" and "If A = B and B = C, then A = C," by a faculty we call reason, and we take these apprehensions for meaningful insights rather than just how our brains happen to work. We also have the experience of apprehending fundamental moral precepts such as "Do good and avoid evil" and "Be fair to others" by a faculty we call conscience, and take these also for meaningful insights rather than how our brains happen to work.

We don’t experience awareness of good and evil as emotive impulses like any other that may be indulged or ignored as we see fit. Nor do we experience conscience as something we accept purely on the authority of those who taught us. We experience it as binding, as obligatory, as authoritative. We are free to decide to ignore other impulses without regret; when we go against conscience, or even when we find that we have gone against what our conscience now tells us we should have done, we experience various forms of inner conflict such as guilt or regret.

I am convinced, and in the preceding posts I have argued, that if materialism is true, these seeming insights are fundamentally illusory; just as if solipsism is true, then knowledge of other selves is an illusion. If materialism is true, there is self-interest, there is instinct, there are irrationally conditioned feelings, and that’s all. None of these gets us to a moral worldview properly so called. Sometimes it will make sense to follow one or another of them, but none of them is finally binding.

To affirm materialism seems to me akin to proposing in effect that the human race lives in a black-and-white world, yet we all dream in color; we have a shared sense of a dimension of reality that corresponds to nothing real. As another reader put it, "If the universe really is meaningless, how is that we crave meaning? It’s as extraordinary as expecting sight in a universe without light."

In another forum, "Archie the bright," responding to Lewis’s comments about the impossibility of what we call love in a materialist universe, wrote:

Does a flower look any less pretty if you understand the chemistry of anthocyanins? Does a biochemist dislike the taste of filet mignon? And when I am near an attractive girl, I know that my olfactory centres are responding to her perfume and pheromones, but that doesn’t stop my heart beating faster just the same! Sure, that too is perfectly explicable, but explanation does not diminish the pleasure in the slightest!

Leave aside the fact that "Archie" seems to be describing precisely what Lewis meant by the "lowest animal sense" of love. The fact that a man’s hear beats faster in the presence of a pretty girl, while it is not the same as what Lewis meant by love, is still a notable fact in itself. It is evidence about what sort of species we are. As Lewis himself elsewhere wrote, it would be an odd thing if the phenemonon of "falling in love" (or even ordinary animal arousal) happened in a sexless world.

Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search For Meaning went so far as to argue, against Freud, that meaning, not the pleasure principle, represents man’s most fundamental need and desire. Frankl was in Auschwitz, and he has described his time in Auschwitz as an experience of the most ignoble and noble of humanity. On the ignoble side, the camp guards hustling prisoners into the gas chambers; on the noble side, prisoners going to their deaths with their heads held high, the words of the Paternoster or Shema on their lips.

I’ve indicated in previous discussion that belief in life after death is no sine quo non of my outlook on morality and meaning. But when I read Frankl’s description of the prisoners going to their deaths, something in me responds to that — something that I believe, I cannot prove, exceeds Darwinian calculations. My heart says: Yes. A philosophy that does not give one the wherewithal to die like that, if it comes to the point, is unworthy of the human heart.

It seems to me that the leap of my heart at Frankl’s anecdote is also evidence about what sort of species we are. The first movement of the heart is sexual; the second is spiritual.

Like falling in love with a girl, it is not a thing that can be reductionistically explained away to those who have experienced it. If the thing is real at all, it is real about something more than bio-electrical-chemical flutters in our brains.

I respect the consistency of a materialist who says that it is all an illusion, that morality, dignity and meaning are really only emotive reactions of aversion or attraction mistaken for truth-claims about reality. I respect the humanism of a materialist who says that morality, dignity and meaning really mean something. I cannot see that it is possible for a materialist to have both consistency and humanism.

Our apprehension of morality and meaning is immediate enough that even if we hold a philosophy that logically excludes objective morality, willy-nilly we find ourselves talking and behaving as if morality were real anyway (cf. Dawkins’ outrage and Hitchens’ frequent moralizing).

I can’t empirically disprove emotivism, any more than I can disprove solipsism, or any more than I can disprove the views of those who deny the existence of the self and the truth of logical axioms. That doesn’t make me distrust my apprehensions on any of these points. The apprehension itself seems to me a more persuasive indication of reality than the arguments or explanations of its illusory nature.