Category: Theology

A Second Response to Peter Kwasniewski

Peter Kwasniewski, responding to my previous post, says:

Jimmy Akin wrote a reply to some stray comments of mine on Facebook, and I therefore owe him and my readers at least a brief response. (In the coming days, you can expect to see a more robust rejoinder or two made to all of our critics; it will be worth the wait.)

He then says:

There are two problems with Akin’s argument.

Let’s look at both of them.

 

Kwasniewski’s First Argument: The Possibility of Observing the Commandments

He writes:

1) The letter certainly contains charges that fulfill even Mr Akin’s definition of the requirements for the delict of heresy. Most obviously the first one:

“A justified person has not the strength with God’s grace to carry out the objective demands of the divine law, as though any of the commandments of God are impossible for the justified; or as meaning that God’s grace, when it produces justification in an individual, does not invariably and of its nature produce conversion from all serious sin, or is not sufficient for conversion from all serious sin.”

This rests on the dogmatic pronouncement of the Council of Trent, session 6, canon 18:

“If anyone says that the commandments of God are impossible to observe even for a man who is justified and established in grace, let him be anathema” (DH 1568).

The initial quotation (“A justified person has not the strength . . .”) is not a quotation of Pope Francis. It is a construction of the authors of the Open Letter, whose meaning they attribute to Pope Francis. They only later quote Pope Francis’s words in an attempt to justify their initial paraphrase, and they do not provide argumentation as to why we should take his words in the sense they attribute to him.

This is a flaw in the drafting of the Open Letter. It would be better if they had used Pope Francis’s own words and contrasted them directly with the quotation from Trent, providing exegesis as to why we must understand something Francis said as contradicting Trent. This they do not attempt.

They also fail to provide the needed analysis of Trent’s statement. The use of the penalty of anathema, in this case, indicates that Trent is making an infallible definition. However, as I document here, it does not indicate that Trent is saying this matter is divinely revealed and thus a dogma. More than a mere use of “anathema” is needed for that.

It is possible for the canon to be understood as asserting a truth known by reason or “founded upon” Scripture without being directly contained in divine revelation (see my previous documentation). I can think of arguments on both sides of the issue.

Whatever conclusion one might draw based on them, this canon will not sustain a successful charge of heresy against Pope Francis.

To see why, we need to do the work that the authors of the Open Letter failed to do—i.e., to conduct an exegesis of the relevant texts.

In the first place, we need to understand Trent. As is regularly underscored in textbooks on magisterial statements, the decrees of ecumenical councils must be understood in terms of the problems that they were addressing. The same is true of Scripture. Only after this step is completed can we relate what they have to say to problems raised in later ages.

So, what was Trent combatting in this canon? Basically, there were Protestant authors who were saying that it was altogether impossible for a justified man to observe God’s commandments. Some went as far as saying that every single thing a person did was mortal sin.

Trent’s concern is to reject this error and affirm that it is possible for “a man who is justified and established in grace” to observe God’s commandments.

Note the inclusion of the phrase “and established in grace.” This means that factors in addition to justification are needed for a man to observe God’s commandments. This is proved by canon 22, which reads:

If anyone says that without God’s special help a justified man can persevere in the justice he has received or that with it he cannot persevere, let him be anathema (DH 1572, emphasis added).

In other words, the just man requires God’s “special help” (Latin, speciali auxilio) to observe the commandments. This is what is meant in canon 18 when it refers to the just man being “established in grace.” Trent thus is not saying that justification alone provides this ability.

Trent also is assuming the usual conditions needed for mortal sin are met. It is talking about people who are capable of performing human acts, and who thus have adequate consent and knowledge. It is not talking about people who are deprived of the needed consent or knowledge.

There is no guarantee here that God will ensure that the just always have the knowledge and freedom needed to avoid objectively grave sins. For example, there is no guarantee that a baptized child below the age of reason—who is justified by virtue of baptism—will always be able to avoid objectively grave sin. God does not guarantee, and Trent does not mean, that a baptized three-year old will always have the knowledge and freedom needed to resist the urge to run into oncoming traffic or eat something labelled “poison.”

Neither is there a guarantee that these will be the case for people at later stages of life. People can go senile. They can go insane. They can get brain damage. They can be incompletely or even erroneously catechized. There are all kind of things that can cause a just person to be deprived of the knowledge and freedom necessary to objectively observe the commandments.

None of those situations are covered by Trent’s definition, which is meant to deal with the situation of a just man who is established in grace, who possesses reason and is capable of performing human acts—i.e., who has sufficient freedom and knowledge.

So how does that relate to what Pope Francis said?

When the authors of the Open Letter attempt to document the error they attribute to him in the quotation above, they cite four texts (see Open Letter [A] 1, 9-11).

Three of these are quotations in which the Pope says things about Martin Luther and the Reformation. None of these even mention the issue at hand—whether it is impossible for a just man established in grace to observe the commandments. They are therefore inadequate to proving a charge of heresy on this point.

The remaining one is this:

Saint John Paul II proposed the so-called “law of gradualness” in the knowledge that the human being “knows, loves and accomplishes moral good by different stages of growth.” This is not a “gradualness of law” but rather a gradualness in the prudential exercise of free acts on the part of subjects who are not in a position to understand, appreciate, or fully carry out the objective demands of the law (Amoris Laetitia 295).

Here Pope Francis refers to John Paul II’s discussion of the law of gradualness in Familiaris Consortio 34. One can ask whether Pope Francis understands this principle in exactly the same way as John Paul II, but that’s not our question here. Our question is whether Pope Francis contradicts canon 18 of Trent’s Decree on Justification.

So, what can we say about that?

Unfortunately, the authors of the Open Letter have truncated Pope Francis’s remarks in a way that hides relevant context from the reader. To quote him more fully, he says:

This is not a “gradualness of law” but rather a gradualness in the prudential exercise of free acts on the part of subjects who are not in a position to understand, appreciate, or fully carry out the objective demands of the law. For the law is itself a gift of God which points out the way, a gift for everyone without exception; it can be followed with the help of grace, even though each human being “advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God and the demands of God’s definitive and absolute love in his or her entire personal and social life” (Amoris Laetitia 295, emphasis added).

The authors of the Open Letter omitted Pope Francis’s words stressing that God’s law is the same for everyone and that it can be kept with the help of grace! That’s precisely what Trent was saying!

This omission is so significant, given the error Pope Francis is being accused of, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was deliberately left out to deprive the Open Letter’s readers of information that would be damaging to the authors’ case.

Where Pope Francis goes beyond canon 18 is in calling attention to the fact that there are some situations, particularly at early stages of moral catechesis, where people “are not in a position to understand, appreciate, or fully carry out the objective demands of the law.”

But Trent didn’t deny that. It never said that the moment you’re justified you’re guaranteed divinely infused catechesis about the whole law of God. If that did happen, we wouldn’t need children to memorize the commandments or learn their meanings and applications as part of their catechism classes.

Trent assumed in canon 18 that we’re talking about a person who has the knowledge and freedom needed to place an authentically human act.

So, what if you get bad catechesis early in life and thus a late start on mature moral development?

In that case, you need to recognize the truth of God’s law, which “points out the way . . . for everyone without exception” and “can be followed with the help of grace,” even if this means that one “advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God and the demands of God’s definitive and absolute love in his or her entire personal and social life.”

That last quotation, which Amoris Laetitia gives, by the way, is also from John Paul II. It’s from Familiaris Consortio 9.

The Open Letter thus wholly fails to sustain a charge of heresy against Pope Francis on this point.

 

A Side Question from Louie Verrecchio

Although the authors of the Open Letter do not cite Amoris Laetitia 301 in relation to their first charge of heresy, Louie Verrecchio thinks it relevant. He quotes the passage as follows:

A subject may know full well the rule [divine law concerning the mortal sin of adultery], yet have great difficulty in understanding its inherent values, or be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin. (AL 301)

Given the analysis of Trent that we have already offered, part of the solution to Louie’s query is clear: When section 301 refers to the possibility of someone having “great difficulty in understanding its [the law’s] inherent values,” there is no conflict with Trent. The Council did not define that people will never have incomplete or bad catechesis, resulting in a malformed conscience.

But what about the statement that it’s possible a person may “be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin”?

What might that mean?

This could have been expressed more clearly—e.g., with the addition of a relevant example—but it is possible to imagine situations that the pope would see as fitting this description.

For example: Suppose that a person has been raised culturally Catholic but given no catechesis at all. Let’s suppose that it’s a woman from one of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. She marries a man, but he beats her, and she divorces him. She then marries another man, without an annulment, and they have several children. He then starts beating her, too. She thinks about leaving him also, but he makes it clear that if she does so, he will kill both her and the children. In fact, she realizes that she will be in danger if she even stops sleeping with him.

At this point, out of desperation, she turns to God and has a religious conversion. She begins attending religious education classes at her local parish and discovers that she’s been living out of conformity with God’s law all this time.

There is certainly a way through this situation that—however difficult it may be—does not involve her sinning.

But at her present stage of moral catechesis, she may believe that her moral duty to protect the children and provide for their welfare is such that she believes it would be a sin for her to stop sleeping with this monster. She may thus believe that she is in “a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin.”

The situation I have proposed is extreme, but extreme situations help make points clear. That’s why they’re used in thought experiments.

Of course, however difficult it may be for her to discern, there is a way for her to deal with this situation without sin. God’s law never creates true double-bind situations.

But his permissive will allows situations to exist where it is very difficult to discern and follow the right path.

I take that to be what Amoris Laetitia means. Indeed, the context is one in which the document is discussing difficult situations that make it difficult to fully follow God—a process of discernment that “must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized” (AL 304).

Given all of these factors, an orthodox reading of AL 301 is entirely possible. One cannot show from the text that Pope Francis is intending to teach that God’s law contradicts itself in such a way that there is literally no non-sinful option in some cases.

But if he’s not saying that, then he’s not saying that it’s impossible to keep the commandments.

AL 301 is thus not a suitable basis for sustaining a charge of heresy, even if canon 18 of the Decree on Justification is taken as establishing a dogma rather than just an infallible truth. You’d need something much more explicit and unambiguous to sustain a charge of heresy.

 

Kwasniewski’s Second Argument: Understanding Dogma

For his second argument, Kwasniewski writes:

2) Akin supposes that for a truth to be held of Divine and Catholic Faith, it must be expressly taught by the organs of the extraordinary magisterium as divinely revealed, but this is not so.

It’s not so, and Kwasniewski is misrepresenting me. The extraordinary magisterium does not have to be involved. The ordinary and universal magisterium can do it.

A truth should also be held with Divine and Catholic Faith if it is taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium as divinely revealed . . .

Correct. At this point, Kwasniewiski inserts a footnote, which reads:

He [Akin] verbally concedes this point but then restricts the definition of the ordinary and universal magisterium to a consensus of the episcopate so explicit that it would actually end up forming part of the extraordinary magisterium.

I do no such thing. The criteria for the ordinary and universal magisterium defining a point are as follows:

Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held (Lumen Gentium 25).

Kwasniewski appears to confuse two issues: (1) the degree of consensus that exists among the bishops and (2) whether they are meeting in an ecumenical council. The latter is what is relevant to the bishops exercising the extraordinary magisterium; the former is not. There is no degree of consensus among the world’s bishops—however high it may be—that would turn an act of the ordinary and universal magisterium into an act of the extraordinary magisterium.

His assertion that I restrict the ordinary and universal magisterium “to a consensus of the episcopate so explicit that it would actually end up forming part of the extraordinary magisterium” appears to indicate that he does not know what these terms mean.

To resume:

. . . — and such truths are not (as Mr Akin falsely supposes) limited to those truths taught AS divinely revealed by the episcopate dispe[r]sed  throughout the world . . .

Once again, Kwasniewski misrepresents me. I do not suppose that the ordinary and universal magisterium is capable only of defining something as divinely revealed. It’s not. It can also define various non-revealed truths, and it can define revealed truths as true–without defining them as divinely revealed (as Ratzinger and Bertone indicate it did with papal infallibility prior to Vatican I, which raised that infallible teaching to the status of a dogma).

However, if it does so, then it does not have to be held by divine and Catholic faith, only Catholic faith.

If you’re going to sustain a charge of heresy based on the ordinary and universal magisterium, you must show that the ordinary and universal magisterium has defined a truth “proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn magisterium of the Church or by its ordinary and universal magisterium” (CIC 750 §1; cf. 751)—i.e., a dogma.

I would note that, in the Open Letter, the signatories nowhere appeal to the ordinary and universal magisterium. The term does not appear anywhere in the document. If they are reconfiguring their case to appeal to the ordinary and universal magisterium (as I, frankly, expected they would once criticism of the document started), then I take this as a recognition of the weaknesses and inadequacies of the initial case they presented.

. . . but also include anything taught directly in the literal sense of scripture (because both the ordinary and universal magisterium and the extraordinary magisterium have taught the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture), the unanimous scriptural interpretations of the Fathers (from which a Catholic may not dissent, according to the definitions of Trent, Pius IV, and Vatican I), the unanimous consensus of the faithful concerning divine revelation (Lumen Gentium 12), and even the “universal and constant consent” of theologians concerning divinely revealed truth (Pius IX, Tuas libenter).

There are several problems here:

  1. Things taught in the literal sense of Scripture require divine faith—because they are divinely revealed. They do not require divine and Catholic faith if the Magisterium has not defined their sense. The fact that the Magisterium has defined the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture does not mean that it has defined what an individual passage of Scripture means in its literal sense. Therefore, divine and Catholic faith does not apply to such truths, only divine faith.
  2. Trent issued a disciplinary decree (not a doctrinal definition) that required Catholic authors not to hold positions “contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though such interpretations were never (intended) to be at any time published.” It did not define that the Fathers (who included non-bishops) could infallibly define doctrines apart from the exercise of the Magisterium of their day. Pius IV required adherence to this principle, and Vatican I renewed the same decree, but neither defined that the Fathers—as a body—could infallibly define things. The Magisterium of their day—either extraordinary or ordinary and universal—could do so, but that’s a distinct and only partially overlapping body.
  3. The supernatural discernment of the faithful discussed in Lumen Gentium 12 is not exercised independently of the Magisterium. If you want to show that a matter has been infallibly defined, it has to be the Magisterium that does it, not the faithful conceived of separately.
  4. Kwasniewski flatly misreads Tuas Libenter. In it, Pius IX states that divine faith must be extended “to those matters transmitted as divinely revealed by the ordinary Magisterium of the whole Church dispersed throughout the world”—and which are therefore “for that reason, held by the universal and constant consensus of Catholic theologians as belonging to the faith” (DH 2879, emphasis added). In other words, Catholic theologians have always accepted what the ordinary and universal Magisterium has said belongs to the faith as belonging to it. He doesn’t say that orthodox theologians can themselves define that something belongs to divine revelation, apart from the Magisterium, or that the Magisterium always infallibly defines a sufficiently agreed-upon theological opinion. Kwasniewsky has the causal arrow pointing the wrong way.

Given the number of misrepresentations and misunderstandings we have documented—including of basic terms—it will be interesting to see the response that Kwasniewsky says is forthcoming from the signatories.

A Response to Peter Kwasniewski

Peter Kwasniewski—a philosopher and one of the signatories of the Open Letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy—has briefly responded on Facebook to my post On Charging a Pope with Heresy. He writes:

Jimmy Akin’s article at the NC Register, attempting to show why the Open Letter fails, will likely mislead many because of his know-it-all tone and seemingly watertight argument.

By his exceedingly narrow definition of dogma, Akin shifts the goal posts to such an extent that a vast number of actual condemnations for heresy in Church history would be excluded by it. Indeed, by his definition, the resurrection of Christ would not be a dogma, because it has never been solemnly defined as such; thus the denial of it would not constitute a heresy. Good news for modernist theologians!

On the other hand, even a kid brought up on the Baltimore Catechism would be able to say that someone who says that (e.g.) sinning is sometimes the best God asks of some people is a heretic.

On Michael Liccione’s page on Facebook, Kwasniewski states:

It’s [Kwasniewski’s previous response is] not an attack on his [Akin’s] person — I do not know him personally — but on his ridiculous definition of dogma and heresy. By his definition, many of the condemnations made by the Church Fathers would be rendered pointless. We can parse out canonical niceties until the cows come home, but if you need a doctorate to know what is and is not Catholicism — on rather basic issues like whether there is more than one religion on Earth that God positively wills, or whether cohabiting non-spouses can go up for Communion — then the whole project has failed, and we might as well hang up our hats and go to bed.

I would make several points in response.

I’m not going to engage Kwasniewski’s paraphrases of positions he attributes to Pope Francis. I agree that there have been any number of poorly phrased statements that need proper clarification. That is not the issue at hand: The charge of heresy is, and as I’ve shown, the signatories of the letter fail to prove their case.

I have not “shifted the goal posts” in any way. I explained the Church’s definition of the term heresy, and I have backed it up by quoting the relevant passages of its documents. That is why my piece offers a “seemingly watertight argument.” The actual goalpost shifting is by the signatories of the Open Letter, who have adopted a sloppy and overbroad understanding of heresy in order to make their case.

The Church’s definition of heresy does not exclude “a vast number of actual condemnations for heresy in Church history.” It embraces all of the magisterial condemnations for heresy where that term is used in its established sense.

By saying that “the resurrection of Christ would not be a dogma, because it has never been solemnly defined as such,” Kwasniewski neglects the fact that it was defined by the solemn Magisterium of the Church at the First Council of Nicaea (325) and the First Council of Constantinople (381), which is why it is part of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which the Church uses in its profession of faith. The entire Creed is thus a statement of dogma.

Ratzinger and Bertone, in their 1998 Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei, list “the articles of faith of the Creed” (n. 11) as truths “which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed” (n. 5)—i.e., as dogmas.

I would add that, even prior to I Nicaea, the Resurrection had been infallibly defined by the ordinary and universal Magisterium—a possibility that Kwasniewski also fails to discuss.

Kwasniewski’s statement that “even a kid brought up on the Baltimore Catechism would be able to say that someone who says that (e.g.) sinning is sometimes the best God asks of some people is a heretic” is a cute rhetorical flourish, but it does not correspond to the facts.

A “kid brought up on the Baltimore Catechism” could plausibly deduce that something is problematic about the statement in question, but the Baltimore Catechism does not identify this as a heresy, and it does not train children to be experts in diagnosing heresy.

By stating that the definitions I have offered for dogma and heresy are “ridiculous,” Kwasniewski reveals either (1) that he does not know how the Magisterium uses these terms or (2) that he considers the Magisterium’s use to be “ridiculous,” in which case his problem is with the Magisterium, not with me.

The use of these definitions in no way renders “many of the condemnations made by the Church Fathers” pointless. They retain their full force.

Kwasniewski complains about parsing out “canonical niceties,” but this is precisely the area that he and his co-signatories have ventured into by writing—in their words (in the Open Letter)—“to accuse Pope Francis of the canonical delict of heresy.”

You can’t accuse people of canonical delicts and then complain if you are being held to a canonical standard of proof. That is moving the goal post.

As I said before, it’s one thing to ask for clarifications, voice concerns, or express disagreement, but it’s another to start making charges of the canonical crime of heresy. When you do that, you’d better be able to prove your case, but Kwasniewski’s responses indicate that he can’t.

Some Clarifications Regarding the Open Letter

Recently I published a piece called On Charging the Pope with Heresy, which looks at the main problem with the recent Open Letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy—namely, that it fails to make its case.

So far, the most thorough engagement with the piece that I’ve seen is by Louie Verrecchio.

He thoughtfully and charitably asks if I could provide a few clarifications, and I’m happy to do so.

First, though, I’d like to add one of my own . . .

 

On the Matter of Credentials

At the beginning of my piece, I noted that none of the signatories of the Open Letter had doctorates in the relevant fields of canon law and sacred theology and that none appeared to be ecclesiologists or had published books on the Magisterium and how it exercises its infallibility.

A number of people, including Louie, took this as disparaging the signatories, but this was not my intent.

The National Catholic Register asked me to discuss the signatories’ credentials, and I agreed that this was needed because various press outlets were presenting them as highly respected scholars who would have expertise in this area.

In fact, only one of them is prominent as a theologian, and this isn’t his area of specialization.

I thus included the reference to help provide context for ordinary readers in understanding the degree of expertise the signatories have in this area, to keep them from overestimating the matter.

Also, because they aren’t experts in ecclesiology, it was my way of letting them off the hook, which is why I said that it made some of the flaws in the letter understandable.

Noting that someone is not an expert in a subject is a matter of fact that in no way disparages the person or diminishes their expertise in other areas or their other contributions.

Also, my critique of the letter’s contents did not involve their level of expertise. I did not argue that their charges should be dismissed because of lack of credentials. I never make that argument, for anyone, on any subject. That’s the ad hominem fallacy.

People’s arguments need to be met on the merits, and after providing this bit of context, that’s what I did: Look at the merits of the argument they made.

The need to consider the merits is something that I’m very aware of. As an autodidact, most of my own expertise in different subjects is through independent study, and this happens to be an area I’ve specialized in. I’ve even published a theological manual on the topic.

Thus, I would never argue that someone’s argument should be dismissed because they aren’t credentialed in an area.

However, enough people misunderstood my intention that I realize I could have done more to clarify the reason I brought up the subject.

It’s my fault for not doing so.

Now, let’s look at the clarifications Louie requested . . .

 

The Nature of Heresy

Louie’s discussion deals with the nature of heresy, so it will be helpful to note a few points up front.

The term heresy has had several meanings over the course of Church history.

Originally, the Greek word hairesis meant “sect,” “party,” “school,” “faction” or the views characterizing such a group—i.e., “opinion,” “dogma” (see A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., by Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich [BDAG]).

The adjective hairetikos thus meant “factious,” “division-making” (BDAG).

Thus, when Paul tells Titus,

As for a man who is factious [Gk., hairetikos], after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him (Tit. 3:10).

He means don’t waste your time on someone who persists in being divisive after you’ve warned him a couple of times.

In later centuries, the term heresy came to be applied—broadly—to any position that was in some way in conflict with Christian teaching and practice, but it didn’t have the technical meaning that it does today.

This has to be taken into account when reading older Christian documents, because we can’t impose on them a modern, technical meaning that the term had not yet acquired.

Today, the term heresy has a very technical meaning, which I document and explore in my original post. I go into even more detail in Teaching With Authority.

To put it concisely, today heresy is a canonical crime in which, after baptism, a person obstinately refuses to believe (i.e., doubts or denies) a dogma.

This is the sense of the term that is relevant if you want to charge a contemporary person—such as the pope—with heresy.

So, we need to know what dogma is.

 

The Nature of Dogma

Like the term heresy, the term dogma has had several meanings in the history of theology.

Originally, the Greek word dogma meant “ordinance,” “decision,” “command” (BDAG). That’s why Luke can say:

In those days a decree [Gk., dogma] went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled (Luke 2:1).

It also could refer to a tenet or statement of belief—i.e., “doctrine” or “dogma” in a loose, pre-modern sense (BDAG).

In later centuries, the term dogma came to refer to Christian teaching in general, without referring to a specific kind of teaching. This also has to be taken into account when reading older documents, when the term was still a synonym for doctrine (Latin, doctrina).

However, by the 18th century the term had come to refer to a subset of doctrines that must be believed “with divine and Catholic faith.”

This is, in essence, the set of beliefs that are contained in divine revelation (requiring divine faith) and that have been infallibly defined by the Magisterium as being part of divine revelation (requiring Catholic faith).

The upshot is that, today, the word dogma is used for those truths that the Magisterium has infallibly defined to be divinely revealed.

Heresy, then, is the obstinate, post-baptismal refusal to believe such a truth.

However, the Magisterium sometimes infallibly defines a truth without defining that it is divinely revealed. In that case, it is an infallible doctrine but not a dogma.

So, how can we tell which it is?

 

Infallible Doctrine or Dogma?

In my original piece, I wrote:

Note that just because something is infallible, that doesn’t make it a dogma. The Magisterium has to have infallibly said that it is divinely revealed for that to be the case.

Louie then says:

I would invite Mr. Akin to correct me if I have misread his position, but he seems to be treating the phrase “divinely revealed” almost, if not entirely, formulaically; as if a General Council that fails to explicitly state as much fails to teach dogmatically.

I’m not entirely sure what he means by “formulaically.” However, there is no set formula that the Magisterium must use, but it must in some way indicate not just that the matter is to be held definitively but that it is to be believed as a matter of theological faith, and thus is contained in divine revelation.

This is what I meant when I wrote:

But to create a dogma, the Magisterium needs to go further and, in some way [emphasis added], indicate that a truth is divinely revealed (e.g., by saying “is divinely revealed” in the case of a positive expression of dogma or by saying “is heretical” in the case of a doctrinal violation).

“Is divinely revealed” and “is heretical” are two possible ways of indicating this, but they are not the only ones. Saying things like “is a matter of faith” would also work, and there are other possibilities as well. As with papal infallibility, there is no set form of words that has to be used, but the concept has to be communicated in some way.

This gets us into how that happens in practice . . .

 

The Implications of “Anathema”

Louie writes:

My first thought upon reading his article up to this point is that when a council; e.g., the Council of Trent, employs the formula anathema sit, this alone is enough to inform the faithful that the truth in question is sufficiently based in revelation as to be considered divinely revealed; i.e., dogma.

I understand this impulse, and it’s a reasonable proposal when first considering the matter.

However, an examination of the historical record reveals that it isn’t the case.

As I discuss in Teaching With Authority (§§480-488), the term “anathema” literally referred to a special kind of excommunication, and it could be applied to non-doctrinal offenses.

For example, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) imposed anathema on Christians who sent ships to trade with certain countries “for a period of four years.”

That’s not a doctrinal matter at all; it’s a disciplinary infraction, as indicated by the sunset clause of four years. It’s not like Christian doctrine is going to change in four years, such that what’s intrinsically wrong now will cease to be when we hit the four-year date.

Some uses of the penalty of anathema thus do not establish doctrines. However, anathema was the strongest penalty that could be applied, and so when it is applied to a doctrinal matter, the Magisterium may be seen as invoking the supreme level of its teaching authority—i.e., infallibility.

That still leaves open the question of whether it’s defining that a doctrine is true or whether it’s defining that a doctrine is divinely revealed.

We can demonstrate that anathema is not always used to do the latter. This is clear when it’s used to define things that aren’t divinely revealed. For example, consider this canon from the Council of Trent:

If anyone says that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine remains together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and denies that wonderful and unique change of the whole substance of the bread into his body and of the whole substance of the wine into his blood while only the species of bread and wine remain, a change which the Catholic Church very fittingly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema [emphasis added] (Decree on the Eucharist, can. 2; DH 1652).

This canon appears to make two definitions:

  1. In the Eucharist, the whole substance of bread and wine is changed to Christ’s body and blood so that the bread and wine do not remain.
  2. The Catholic Church very fittingly calls this change transubstantiation.

The second of these points is not a matter of divine revelation. The term transubstantiation was not coined until the 1000s, and so the term is not part of the deposit of faith that Christ gave to the apostles. The fittingness of the term for this miraculous change is thus what specialists refer to as a “dogmatic fact” rather than a dogma.

Thus, writing in 1896, Sylvester Hunter, S.J. stated:

In the same way [as other dogmatic facts had been defined], the Council of Trent (Sess. 13, can. 2; Denz. 764) defined that the word transubstantiation was most fit to apply to the change of the elements in the Eucharist (Sylvester Joseph Hunter, Outlines of Dogmatic Theology, 3rd ed., vol. 1 [New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1896], §221).

Therefore, from the mere use of the word anathema—even when it is applied to a doctrinal matter—we can’t infer that it’s establishing a dogma (something that belongs to divine revelation and thus the “primary object of infallibility”) rather than a dogmatic fact or another part of the “secondary object of infallibility.”

So how can we tell?

 

Clear and Less-Clear Indicators

If the Magisterium uses a phrase equivalent to “is divinely revealed” then it’s a slam-dunk that a dogma rather than just an infallible teaching is being established.

The same is true if a phrase equivalent to “is heretical” is used—provided we’re looking at a document written after the term heresy acquired its modern meaning.

If we’re looking at a document written when heresy could either mean what it does today or just mean opposed to Christian teaching and practice in a more general way, then the matter is less clear.

This can be a very tricky matter, and it has to be dealt with cautiously, on a case-by-case basis because, as we’ve said, there is no single phrase or set of phrases that has to be used.

The Magisterium needs to somehow teach that the doctrine is divinely revealed—otherwise, the modern definition of “dogma” is not met—but the matter can be difficult to discern in practice.

My sense is that, going forward, the Magisterium will be making it abundantly clear whether something is revealed, but in looking at older documents, before the present distinctions were made, the matter is more difficult to discern.

So, are there any case studies we can look to for guidance?

 

Two Helpful Examples

In 1998, Joseph Ratzinger and Tarcisio Bertone issued a Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei.

Because it did not carry papal approval, it does not itself qualify as a document of the Magisterium, but it represents the opinion of the top two doctrinal officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and thus it’s an extremely helpful guide.

In it, they offer two examples of matters that are (or were) infallible truths but not dogmas.

The first concerns the infallibility and primacy of the Roman pontiff. They write:

[T]he doctrine on the infallibility and primacy of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff was already recognized as definitive in the period before the [First Vatican] council. History clearly shows, therefore, that what was accepted into the consciousness of the Church was considered a true doctrine from the beginning, and was subsequently held to be definitive; however, only in the final stage—the definition of Vatican I—was it also accepted as a divinely revealed truth.

Thus, prior to 1870 it was already an infallible teaching that the pope could exercise infallibility and that he held the primacy of jurisdiction over the Church. Then, in 1870, Vatican I elevated these truths to the status of dogmas.

The second matter concerns women’s ordination. They write:

A similar process can be observed in the more recent teaching regarding the doctrine that priestly ordination is reserved only to men. The Supreme Pontiff [John Paul II], while not wishing to proceed to a dogmatic definition, intended to reaffirm that this doctrine is to be held definitively, since, founded on the written Word of God, constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. As the prior example illustrates, this does not foreclose the possibility that, in the future, the consciousness of the Church might progress to the point where this teaching could be defined as a doctrine to be believed as divinely revealed.

Thus, they hold that John Paul II confirmed that the ordinary and universal Magisterium has already established that the reservation of priestly ordination to men is an infallible truth.

But, they indicate, it’s not yet a dogma.

This is fascinating, because they even say it’s a truth “founded on the written word of God, constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church.”

They thus draw a distinction between being “divinely revealed” and being “founded on” divine revelation. Presumably, this involves the distinction between something required by divine revelation but not contained within it (e.g., as a dogmatic fact) and something that is directly contained in divine revelation.

In view of these two examples, it seems to me that highly reputable theological minds today are being very careful about declaring something a dogma as opposed to an infallible teaching.

Consequently, in cases of doubt, the prudent course would be to assume that something is merely an infallible teaching.

The burden of proof would be on one to show why it is a dogma, especially in the absence of a clear indicator like “is divinely revealed” or “is heretical” (in the modern sense).

I hope this clarifies my understanding of the more theoretical matters that Louie asks about in his post. He also asks about a concrete issue raised in the Open Letter. However, this post is already long, so I will try to do another one on that subject.

I want to close by thanking Louie for his thoughtful and charitable interaction with my original post.

On Charging a Pope with Heresy

There are multiple problems with the recent Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church that charges Pope Francis with heresy, but here we will focus on the core problem: the letter fails to sustain the charge of heresy.

This fault is likely due to the lack of familiarity that the nineteen signatories have with the details of the concept.

A cursory review of the list of signatories indicates that none have doctorates in the relevant fields of canon law or sacred theology, though a few have licentiates (the equivalent of master’s degrees).

None seem to be specialists in ecclesiology—the branch of theology that deals most directly with the Magisterium of the Church—and none seem to have published a book on the Magisterium and how it engages its infallibility.

From this perspective, some of the flaws in the letter may be understandable, but from another perspective, they are not.

If you are going to charge anybody with heresy—but especially if you are going to charge a pope with it—you need to prove your case, and this letter doesn’t.

 

What Heresy Is

According to the Code of Canon Law, “heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith” (CIC 751; cf. CCC 2089).

For heresy to occur, the following conditions must be met:

  1. The person committing it must be baptized
  2. Afterwards, he must refuse to believe (doubt or deny) a particular truth
  3. He must do so obstinately
  4. The truth in question must be one that is to be believed by “divine and Catholic faith”

 

What Divine and Catholic Faith Is

“Divine and Catholic faith” is a term of art that is explained in the previous canon:

A person must believe with divine and Catholic faith all those things contained in the word of God, written or handed on, that is, in the one deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and at the same time proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn magisterium of the Church or by its ordinary and universal magisterium (CIC 750 §1).

This requires some unpacking, but for a truth to require divine and Catholic faith, the following conditions must be met:

  1. It must be divinely revealed (i.e., be found in Scripture or Tradition)
  2. The Magisterium must have proposed it to be divinely revealed
  3. The Magisterium must have done so, either by (a) the solemn magisterium or (b) the ordinary and universal magisterium.

“The solemn magisterium” means an infallible definition issued either by a pope or an ecumenical council.

“The ordinary and universal magisterium” means an infallible exercise of teaching performed by the bishops in union with the pope, even though they are not gathered in an ecumenical council.

Consequently, a truth that requires divine and Catholic faith is a truth that, one way or another, the Magisterium has infallibly defined to be divinely revealed.

We have a name for such truths: dogmas.

 

What Dogma Is

A dogma is a special kind of Church teaching. Any time the Church authoritatively teaches something, it is a doctrine (Latin, doctrina = “teaching”).

Within the set of doctrines is a smaller set of teachings that have been infallibly defined by the Magisterium. These are infallible doctrines.

Within the set of infallible doctrines is a smaller set that consists of those infallible teachings that the Magisterium has infallibly defined to be divinely revealed. These are the dogmas.

Note that just because something is infallible, that doesn’t make it a dogma. The Magisterium has to have infallibly said that it is divinely revealed for that to be the case.

The distinctions between these categories, as well as examples of doctrines that belong to them, are discussed in a 1998 commentary by Joseph Ratzinger and Tarcisio Bertone.

They are also discussed, at length, in my book Teaching With Authority: How to Cut Through Doctrinal Confusion & Understand What the Church Really Says.

To give one example of how a doctrine can be infallible but not a dogma, Ratzinger and Bertone note that the Magisterium has infallibly defined that the priesthood can only be conferred on men, but it has not yet defined that this truth is divinely revealed.

Consequently, the reservation of the priesthood to men is an infallible doctrine but not a dogma—at least not yet.

 

Preliminary Consolidation

Putting the above together, the following conditions need to be met to sustain a charge of heresy:

  1. The person committing it must be baptized
  2. Afterwards, he must refuse to believe (doubt or deny) a particular truth
  3. He must do so obstinately
  4. The truth in question must be a dogma—that is, a truth the Magisterium has infallibly defined to be divinely revealed.

This is where the flaws in the Open Letter come in.

 

Failing to Demonstrate that Dogmas are Involved

The Open Letter lists seven propositions that the signatories take to be heresies, or denials of dogmas.

To support each claim, they cite various biblical passages and Church documents.

The biblical passages are neither necessary nor sufficient to demonstrate a dogma. They are not necessary because a dogma can be based in Tradition rather than Scripture.

They are not sufficient because, at most, they show that a truth is found in divine revelation. They do not show that the Magisterium has infallibly defined it to be divinely revealed.

This means that, to demonstrate a dogma, we need to focus on the Church documents.

Unfortunately, many of the documents they cite are simply not relevant to this endeavor. Many do not contain any infallible definitions, and nobody has ever claimed that they do.

Others do contain infallible definitions, but it is not clear that they give rise to dogmas. Remember: To be a dogma, the Magisterium must infallibly define that a truth is divinely revealed, not just that it is true.

In some cases, the documents use language indicating infallibility (e.g., the word “anathema,” though one has to be careful about this word, as it is sometimes used without making a definition, see Teaching With Authority §§480-488).

But to create a dogma, the Magisterium needs to go further and, in some way, indicate that a truth is divinely revealed (e.g., by saying “is divinely revealed” in the case of a positive expression of dogma or by saying “is heretical” in the case of a doctrinal violation).

The signatories of the Open Letter make no attempt to do the needed work. They either do not quote the language used by Church documents or they do not argue that the language they do quote shows that a truth has been infallibly defined as divinely revealed.

Instead, they cite passages as if the sheer number of them proves their case, which it doesn’t.

Indeed, it isn’t even clear that the passages they cite mandate the specific propositions they have in mind.

This is sloppy. It may sound impressive to someone not familiar with this area, but it is simply inadequate to the task they are attempting.

 

Failure to Demonstrate the Allegation

In addition to failing to demonstrate dogmas, the Open Letter also fails to demonstrate that Pope Francis obstinately doubts or denies dogmas.

One of the requirements for doing this is showing that his statements or actions cannot be understood in another sense.

If they can be understood consistently with dogma then the obligation of charity—and Pope Benedict’s “hermeneutic of continuity”—requires that they be taken this way.

Many of the Open Letter’s charges deal with the issue of divorce and civil remarriage, as discussed in the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, but as Cardinal Gerhard Muller has shown, the relevant statements in this document can be understood in harmony with Church teaching.

You can’t make a successful charge of heresy as long as this is the case.

Neither does the piling up of questionable staffing decisions—which the Open Letter does at length—prove the case. Staffing decisions are influenced by multiple factors, and you can’t cherry pick the data to support a claim of heresy, especially when the person in question is on record supporting Church teaching (e.g., regarding homosexuality).

 

Summing Up

The Open Letter has many other flaws, but its chief one is that it fails to make the case that the present pope is guilty of heresy. To do that, it would need to show the following:

  1. The Magisterium has infallibly defined some specific truth
  2. It has infallibly defined that this specific truth is divinely revealed, creating a dogma
  3. The pope has been baptized (that’s easy)
  4. The pope’s words or actions indicate that he refuses to believe the dogma
  5. His words or actions cannot be understood in a way consistent with the dogma
  6. He does so obstinately

If you can’t do those things, then don’t waste the public’s time.

In particular, don’t waste our time citing irrelevant documents that don’t prove your point, and don’t waste our time—as the signatories of the Open Letter do—with loopy charges regarding a pastoral staff that the pope has carried or a cross he has worn.

It’s one thing to ask for clarifications, voice concerns, or express disagreement, but making charges of heresy is another matter.

It’s gravely reckless and irresponsible to charge anyone with an ecclesiastical crime as serious as heresy if you can’t prove it, and it’s even worse to do so with regard to the pope, given the scandal, confusion, and risk of individual schism that it will create for the faithful.

Secret No More

After reading the secret, the Holy Father realized the connection between the assassination attempt and Fatima. He has since consistently attributed his survival of the gunshot wound to the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima. 

For years I have had a special devotion to Our Lady of Fatima. Of all the recent Marian apparitions, Fatima has spoken to me the most. Like millions of others, I had often wondered about the contents of the “third secret of Fatima,” which is more properly termed the third part of the secret of Fatima.

When the Holy See released the text of the 83-year-old third secret June 26, it was as part of a booklet prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith titled The Message of Fatima (MF). I wasn’t the only one surprised at its contents. It did not contain prophecies of the end of the world, of a great apostasy, or many of the other things it had been rumored to contain. However, I was not disappointed. (Relieved would be a better word.) And it gave me a new appreciation of the Church’s struggle with Communism and of the current pontiff by showing me the view from heaven.

What Happened at Fatima, Portugal

Lucia dos Santos—the only Fatima seer alive today—is in many ways the “core” visionary of Fatima. She says she experienced supernatural visitations as early as 1915, two years before the famous appearances of the Virgin Mary. In 1917, she and two of her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, were working as shepherds tending their families’ flocks. On May 13, 1917, the three children saw an apparition of Our Lady. She told them, among other things, that she would return once a month for six months.

At Our Lady’s third appearance, on July 13, Lucia was shown the secret of Fatima. She reportedly turned pale and cried out with fear, calling Our Lady by name. There was a thunderclap, and the vision ended.

The children again saw the Virgin on September 13. In the sixth and final appearance, on October 13, a dramatic outward sign was given to those gathered to witness the event. After the clouds of a rainstorm parted, numerous witnesses—some as far as 40 miles away—reported seeing the sun dance, spin, and send out colored rays of light.

Meanwhile, as World War I raged across Europe, an epidemic of Spanish flu swept the globe. It erupted in America and was spread by soldiers being sent to distant lands. This epidemic killed an estimated 20,000,000 people. Among them were Franciso and Jacinta, who contracted the illness in 1918 and died in 1919 and 1920, respectively. Lucia entered the convent.

On June 13, 1929, at the convent chapel in Tuy, Spain, Lucia had another mystical experience in which she saw the Trinity and the Blessed Virgin. Mary told her, “The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father in union with all the bishops of the world to make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means” (S. Zimdars-Schwartz, Encountering Mary, 197).

On October 13, 1930, the bishop of Leiria (now Leiria-Fatima) proclaimed the apparitions at Fatima authentic and worthy of assent.

The Secret Is Written Down

Between 1935 and 1941, on the orders of her superiors, Sr. Lucia wrote four memoirs of the Fatima events. In the third of these, she recorded the first two parts of the secret, explaining that there was a third part she was not yet permitted by heaven to reveal. In the Fourth Memoir, she added a sentence to the end of the second part of the secret: “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc.” This sentence has been the basis for much speculation that the third part of the secret concerned a great apostasy. Sr. Lucia also noted that in writing the secret in the Fourth Memoir, “With the exception of that part of the Secret which I am not permitted to reveal at present, I shall say everything. I shall not knowingly omit anything, though I suppose I may forget just a few small details of minor importance.”

Upon the publication of the Third and Fourth Memoirs, the world became aware of the secret of Fatima and its three parts, including Our Lady’s request that Russia be consecrated (entrusted) to her Immaculate Heart by the pope and the bishops of the world. On October 31, 1942, Pius XII consecrated not only Russia but the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. What was missing, though, was the involvement of the world’s bishops.

In 1943, the bishop of Leiria ordered Sr. Lucia to put the third secret of Fatima in writing. She did not feel at liberty to do so until 1944. It was then placed a wax-sealed envelope on which Sr. Lucia wrote that it should not be opened until 1960.

The “Third Secret” and the Popes

The secret remained with the bishop of Leiria until 1957, when it was requested (along with photocopies of Sr. Lucia’s other writings) by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. According to Cardinal Bertone the secret was read by both Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI (see MF, “Introduction”). “John Paul II, for his part, asked for the envelope containing the third part of the ‘secret’ following the assassination attempt on 13 May 1981” (ibid.). He read it sometime between July 18 and August 11.

It is significant that John Paul II did not read the secret until after the assassination attempt was made on his life. He notes in Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994), “And thus we come to May 13, 1981, when I was wounded by gunshots fired in St. Peter’s Square. At first, I did not pay attention to the fact that the assassination attempt had occurred on the exact anniversary of the day Mary appeared to the three children at Fatima in Portugal and spoke to them the words that now, at the end of this century, seem to be close to their fulfillment” (221).

After reading the secret, the Holy Father realized the connection between the assassination attempt and Fatima. He has since consistently attributed his survival of the gunshot wound to the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima. “It was a mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path,” he said, “and in his throes the Pope halted at the threshold of death” (Meditation from the Policlinico Gemelli to the Italian Bishops, May 13, 1994).

As had Pius XII, John Paul II decided to consecrate not only Russia but also the entire world to her Immaculate Heart. After he read the third part of the secret in July, he decided to journey to Fatima on May 13, 1982, and there performed the Act of Entrustment.

This act, however, did not appear to satisfy the requested consecration, and so, “on 25 March 1984 in Saint Peter’s Square, while recalling the fiat uttered by Mary at the Annunciation, the Holy Father, in spiritual union with the bishops of the world, who had been ‘convoked’ beforehand, entrusted all men and women and all peoples to the Immaculate Heart of Mary” (Bertone, MF).

“Sister Lucia personally confirmed that this solemn and universal act of consecration corresponded to what Our Lady wished (‘Yes it has been done just as Our Lady asked, on 25 March 1984’: Letter of 8 November 1989). Hence any further discussion or request is without basis” (Bertone, MF).

The Fall of Communism

After it became public that there was a secret of Fatima and that it mentioned Russia, many pondered Fatima in the light of Russian Communism.

Nineteen seventeen was a year of turmoil for Russia. Besides fighting in World War I, the country experienced two civil wars known as the February Revolution and the October Revolution. The former led to the creation of a provisional government that proved unstable. On October 24–25, less than two weeks after the final appearance of Our Lady of Fatima, the second revolution resulted in the creation of the Soviet government.

In the ensuing years, Russia expanded its sphere of influence, exporting Communist ideology and revolution to other lands and martyring Christians wherever it spread. Once Pope John Paul II’s 1984 consecration took place, first the Soviet bloc and then the USSR itself crumbled from a variety of social, political, and economic factors.

As the Pope himself noted, “And what are we to say of the three children from Fatima who suddenly, on the eve of the outbreak of the October Revolution, heard: ‘Russia will convert’ and ‘In the end, my [Immaculate] Heart will triumph’ . . . ? They could not have invented those predictions. They did not know enough about history or geography, much less the social movements and ideological developments. And nevertheless it happened just as they had said” (CTH, 131; emphasis in original).

Though he did not reveal the third part of the secret until this year, six years earlier John Paul II hinted at its contents. Immediately after he meditated on the fall of Communism in connection with Fatima, he went on to write:

“Perhaps this is also why the Pope was called from a ‘faraway country,’ perhaps this is why it was necessary for the assassination attempt to be made in t. Peter’s Square precisely on May 13,1981, the anniversary of the first apparition at Fatima – so that all could become more transparent and comprehensible, so that the voice of god which speaks in human history through the ‘signs of the times’ could be more easily heard and understood” (CHT, 131-132).

By the year 2000, the Holy Father felt able to reveal the final part of Fatima’s secret, since “the events to which the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima refers now seem part of the past” (Sodano, MF, “Announcement”). The pontiff selected the beatification of Francisco and Jacinta on May 13, 2000 in Portugal as the occasion to announce this fact.

Interpreting the Secret

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the CDF, points out that the key to the apparition of Fatima is its call to repentance and conversion (MF, “Theological Commentary”). All three parts of the secret serve to motivate the individual to repentance, and they do so in a dramatic way.

The first part of the secret—the vision of hell—is the most important, for it reveals to individuals the tragic consequences of failure to repent and what awaits them in the invisible world if they are not converted.

In the second part, Mary says, “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.” Speaking of devotion to the Immaculate Heart as a means of salvation is not part of our cultural vocabulary and is easily misunderstood. Some anti-Catholics have even taken it as a false gospel replacing the gospel of Christ. It is no such thing, as Cardinal Ratzinger explains:

“According to Matthew 5:8, the ‘immaculate heart’ is a heart which, with God’s grace, has come to perfect interior unity and therefore ‘sees God.’ To be ‘devoted’ to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this attitude of heart, which makes the fiat —‘your will be done’—the defining center of one’s whole life. It might be objected that we should not place a human being between ourselves and Christ. But then we remember that Paul did not hesitate to say to his communities: ‘imitate me’ (1 Cor. 4:16; Phil. 3:17; 1 Thess. 1:6; 2 Thess. 3:7, 9)” (op. cit.).

After explaining the vision of hell, Mary spoke of a war that “will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI.” This latter war, of course, was World War II, which Sr. Lucia reckoned as having been occasioned by the annexation of Austria by Germany during the reign of Pius XI (J. de Marchi, Temoignages sur les apparitions de Fatima, 346).

Sr. Lucia understood the night of the “unknown light” mentioned by Our Lady to be January 25, 1938, when Europe was witness to a spectacular nighttime display of light in the sky. In her third memoir she wrote, “Your Excellency is not unaware that, a few years ago, God manifested that sign, which astronomers chose to call an aurora borealis. . . . God made use of this to make me understand that his justice was about to strike the guilty nations.”

Much has been made of the statement “Russia will be converted.” Many people have assumed this meant the Russian people as a whole would become Catholic. But the language of the text does not require this: The Portuguese word converterá doesn’t necessarily mean converted to the Catholic faith. It can mean simply that Russia will stop its warlike behavior, and thus “there will be peace.” This interpretation seems to be the one understood by John Paul II in a passage cited above from Crossing the Threshold of Hope.

The Third Part

In reading the third part of the secret, it is important to understand that its imagery is similar to that of many prophecies in the Bible in four key ways.

First, its depiction of events is non-literal. When it describes the pope’s ascent to the foot of a cross, it can be seen as symbolic of the continual struggle of the pope to follow Christ.

Second, it compresses events that occur over many years and in many places into a single image. The third secret of Fatima is essentially an icon of the twentieth-century conflict between the Church and Communist Russia. And, like any icon, the elements that it shows us must be meditated upon in a kind of timeless fashion.

Third, the third secret is written according to the language of appearances. It describes things as they appeared in the vision, not necessarily as they are in reality. We see this mode of speech (called “phenomenological language”) in the Bible, for example, when Scripture speaks of the sun rising and setting. The sun appears to move around the earth, though in reality it is the motion of the earth around the sun that causes this phenomenon.

Fourth, scriptural prophecies often can be changed by the response of human free will. For instance, when Jonah preached destruction to Nineveh and it repented, God spared it. Similarly, in Scripture, God declares, “If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it” (Jer. 18:7–8).

In one crucial respect, the secret of Fatima is unlike any of the biblical prophecies: It is not divinely inspired. While it is the product of God’s grace, God does not guarantee the exact wording or even every element of the text the way he does with the statements of Scripture.

In a letter to John Paul II date May 12, 1982, Sr. Lucia wrote: “The third part of the secret refers to Our Lady’s words [in the second part]: ‘If not, [Russia] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated’ (13-VII-1917)” (MF, Introduction).

In interpreting the third part of the secret, the angel with the flaming sword clearly represents the judgment that would fall on the world were it not for the intercession of Mary (and, of course, the intercession of others, though here it is Mary with whom we are concerned). For many years it was rumored that the third part of the secret involved the possibility of a nuclear war. If there is anything in the text that suggests this, it is the flames of the sword, which Sr. Lucia noted “looked as though they would set the world on fire.”

In Scripture, fire tends to be an image of judgment or conflict in general. In his commentary on the angel’s flaming sword, however, Cardinal Ratzinger seems to allude to nuclear war: “Today the prospect that the world might be reduced to ashes by a sea of fire no longer seems pure fantasy: Man himself, with his inventions, has forged the flaming sword” (ibid.). In the 1984 consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the second of Pope John Paul II’s specific petitions was, “From incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us” (Sodano, MF, “Introduction”).

The angel then signifies the means by which the judgment is averted: “Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’”

The seers then saw in the unapproachable light of God a reflection of someone who, Lucia says, ‘we had the impression . . . was the holy father.’”

With the pope were others climbing a mountain to a rough-hewn cross. Mountains are traditional places where man meets with God, the difficult process of ascending the mountain suggesting the perseverance required to follow God. The ruggedness of the cross depicted in the vision evokes the harshness of the sufferings of Christ and those who share in his sufferings.

The journey of the pope and those with him through the half-ruined city suggests that the Church must pass through the destruction that accompanies war, and it evokes the suffering of the pontiff in witnessing this destruction but being unable to stop it. This reflects the experience of many twentieth-century popes.

Then comes the part of the vision reflecting the attempted assassination on Pope John Paul II. It shows that he, like numerous other members of the Church, must face the possibility of martyrdom in the conflict between the Church and Russian Communism. (There are, in fact, significant indications that the would-be papal assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, was on a mission sponsored by the Russian secret police, the KGB.)

There are two.aspects of this part of the secret that will be seized upon by those who wish to challenge the Holy See’s interpretation. First, the killers are described as a group of soldiers using guns and arrows, not as a lone gunman who is not a soldier.

The response to this objection is simple. The third part of the secret simply describes one group of people killing another group. The soldiers in the vision represent all those who have been used by Communists to martyr or attempt to martyr Catholics, and those being killed represent all Catholics who suffer in this way at the hands of Communists. The vision thus indicates that the Holy Father will himself be a victim of this violence, though without indicating the particular means by which it will be brought to bear upon him.

Critics of the Holy See’s interpretation will also point to the fact that Pope John Paul II did not die. To this there are a couple of responses:

(1) If in the vision Lucia saw the pope being shot and falling over, she might well have thought that he had been killed even though in reality he would only be gravely wounded.

(2) The intercession of Mary may have changed what would have happened. “That here ‘a mother’s hand’ had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets and faith more powerful than armies” (Ratzinger, MF, op. cit.).

In the final image of the two angels, an aspersorium can refer to a stoup, basin, or vessel used to hold holy water, or it can refer to the.aspergill used to sprinkle holy water. Either way, the angels using the blood of the martyrs to sprinkle the souls going to God gives us a powerful symbol of salvation, of the honor shows to the martyrs by God, and of the significance of their blood. Cardinal Ratzinger points out: “Therefore, the vision of the third part of the ‘secret,’so distressing at first, concludes with an image of hope: No suffering is in vain, and it is a suffering Church, a Church of martyrs, which becomes a sign-post for man in his search for God” (op. cit.).

Apologetic Fallout

Having looked at the entire secret of Fatima, it remains for us to assess a few questions and apologetic issues that remain in the wake of the release of its final part:

1) Has the Vatican revealed the whole of the secret?
Yes. Any accusation to the contrary is simply not credible. John Paul II clearly believes that the third secret of Fatima is crucial to understanding his own pontificate. He is specially invested in the third secret, and, if he says that he has released the full text of the document, then he has. No one with an accurate appraisal of the moral character of John Paul II could think otherwise.

2) Why does the end of the second part of the secret not flow seamlessly into the third?
Because the third part was written more than three years after the first two. Though the three parts describe a single event, they were not composed as a single narrative. For whatever reason, when Sr. Lucia wrote down the third part of the secret she chose not to write it in a way that fit seamlessly with her previous narrative.

3) Wouldn’t it have been of use for people to have known the secret much sooner? 
Sr. Lucia herself explained: “It may be . . . that some people think that I should have made known all this some time ago, because they consider that it would have been twice as valuable years beforehand. This would have been the case, if God had willed to present me to the world as a prophetess. But I believe that God had no such intention, when he made known these things to me. If that had been the case, I think that, in 1917, when He ordered me to keep silence . . . He would, on the contrary, have ordered me to speak” (Third Memoir, 115).

This highlights the error of those who have insisted that the Virgin Mary demanded that the third part of the secret be read to the world by 1960 at the latest. When queried about this, Sr. Lucia replied: “It was not Our Lady. I fixed the date because I had the intuition that before 1960 it would not be understood but that only later would it be understood” (Bertone, MF, “Conversation”).

4) To what does the triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart refer?
Cardinal Ratzinger explains, “The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart, has changed the history of the world, because it brought the Savior into the world ” (op. cit.).

5) Are other interpretations of the “third secret” possible?
Since the Holy See has not infallibly defined the subject, other interpretations are possible. This does not mean that other interpretations are rational—at least if they depart from the main lines of the interpretation given by the Holy See.

The reason has to do with the nature of private revelation. Since it is principally for the benefit of the individuals directly involved, they are the most likely to interpret it properly. In this case, both Sr. Lucia and the Holy Father are in agreement that the interpretation offered in The Message of Fatima is the correct one. Those of us who are not principals have little reason to question the judgment of those for whom the revelation was given.

Bottom line: If they’re satisfied, we should be.

Getting Fatima Right

In 1915, as World War I raged in Europe, a Portuguese girl saw something strange in the sky.

The girl—Lucia dos Santos—was seven years old and lived near the town of Fatima. One day, as she was tending her family’s sheep along with three other girls, they began to say the rosary and saw a strange sight.

In the second of four memoirs she would write, Lucia recalled: “We saw a figure poised in the air above the trees; it looked like a statue made of snow, rendered almost transparent by the rays of the sun.” She also wrote, “It looked like a person wrapped up in a sheet.”

They did not know what to make of the sight, and it vanished when they finished praying. The same thing happened on two more occasions.

The angel of peace

In the spring of 1916, Lucia and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Martos (then 7 and 6) began seeing an angel.

It appeared as “a young man, about fourteen or fifteen years old, whiter than snow, transparent as crystal when the sun shines through it, and of great beauty.”

The angel identified itself as “the angel of peace” and as the guardian angel of Portugal. Lucia understood it to be the same figure she had seen in the sky.

The angel appeared to the children on three occasions, taught them prayers, and during the last appearance showed them a host and chalice that hung miraculously in the air. It then gave them Holy Communion.

‘I am from heaven’

On May 13, 1917, the three were again tending their sheep when they perceived what they thought was a flash of lightning. As they hurried home, there was another flash, and they beheld a beautiful woman in a hemlock tree that grew in a field known as the Cova da Iria.

“We beheld a Lady all dressed in white. She was more brilliant than the sun and radiated a light more clear and intense than a crystal glass filled with sparkling water, when the rays of the burning sun shine through it” (Fourth Memoir).

When asked where she was from, the Lady replied, “I am from heaven.” She requested that the children return to the spot once a month for six months.

She also informed the children that they would go to heaven, and she asked if they were wiling to offer themselves to God and bear the sufferings he would send them, in reparation for sin and the conversion of sinners. They replied they would.

She also told them: “Pray the rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war.”

“Jesus wishes to make use of you”

When the Lady reappeared the next month, Lucia asked her to take the three children to heaven, and she replied, “I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon. But you are to stay here some time longer. Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved. He wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.”

This prediction was fulfilled. In 1918, toward the end of the war, a global flu pandemic took the lives of millions. Among them were Francisco, who died in 1919, and Jacinta, who died in 1920. Lucia would not die until 2005 at the age of 97.

A secret revealed

At the July apparition, the Lady promised that, in October, she would identify herself and perform a miracle so that all might see and believe.

She also gave the children a secret, which included a vision of hell that caused Lucia to cry out. Afterward, the Lady said:

“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.

“To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc. . . . Do not tell this to anybody.”

Arrested

The children were prevented from returning to the site on August 13 because the local mayor—an opponent of the apparitions—had the young visionaries arrested. Despite threatening them, he was unable to get them either to admit that they were lying or to reveal the secret.

Pilgrims who had gathered at the site of the apparitions reported strange phenomena. Some said they saw a blue and white cloud descend and then ascend again, some reported lightning, and some reported seeing our Lady.

‘A chapel that is to be built’

Since the children had not been able to come to the site of the apparitions on August 13, the Lady appeared to them a few days later.

When asked what should be done with money that pilgrims were leaving at the apparition site, she indicated that two processional litters should be made for the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, adding, “What is left over will help toward the construction of a chapel that is to be built here.”

On September 13, large crowds of pilgrims greeted the children and urged them to present their petitions to the Lady.

As the children and the crowd prayed the rosary, she appeared, this time promising, “In October our Lord will come, as well as Our Lady of Dolors and Our Lady of Carmel. Saint Joseph will appear with the Child Jesus to bless the world.”

The miracle of the sun

On October 13, the Lady said, “I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue always to pray the rosary every day. The war is going to end, and the soldiers will soon return to their homes.”

According to Lucia, the Lady opened her hands, “made them reflect on the sun, and as she ascended, the reflection of her own light continued to be projected on the sun itself.”

Lucia then called for people to look at the sun, and an event called “the miracle of the sun” occurred. Although not everyone claimed to see the phenomenon, numerous individuals reported that the sun appeared to change colors, spin, and “dance” in the sky.

In the wake of this event, the children reported visions of St. Joseph, the Child Jesus, and our Lady in various guises, including Our Lady of Dolors and Our Lady of Carmel, as had been promised.

First Saturdays devotion

In the July 1917 apparition, the Lady had indicated that she would request a devotion involving the First Saturdays of the months.

This request was made on December 10, 1925, when Lucia was a novice among the Dorothean Sisters. On that day, Sr. Lucia experienced an apparition of the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus, in which Mary said:

“All those who during five months, on the first Saturday, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say a rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes, meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the rosary for the intention of making reparation to me, I promise to assist them at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for the salvation of their souls” (Documents on Fatima & the Memoirs of Sister Lucia, 279-280).

On January 15, 1926, she experienced an apparition of the Child Jesus, asking if she had spread this devotion, which has come to be known as the First Saturdays devotion.

Consecration requested, apparitions approved

The July 1917 apparition also indicated a request would be made for the consecration of Russia, and this was done on June 13, 1929. On that night, Sr. Lucia experience a vision of the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary, in which Mary said:

“The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the bishops of the world, to make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means” (Documents on Fatima & the Memoirs of Sister Lucia, 393-394).

On October 13, 1930, the bishop of Leiria, Portugal—in whose territory Fatima lies—granted formal approval for the 1917 apparitions, declaring “as worthy of credence the visions of the children in the Cova da Iria, parish of Fatima, of this diocese, on the thirteenth day of each month from May to October 1917” (Documents on Fatima & the Memoirs of Sister Lucia, 290).

“An unknown light”

In the July 1917 apparition, the Lady stated that the war (World War I) would end but that a worse one could break out in the reign of Pius XI, who would not be elected until 1922. The sign presaging this event was to be “a night illumined by an unknown light.”

On the night of January 25-26, 1938, an extraordinary display of the aurora borealis was widely visible in Europe. In her Third Memoir, Sr. Lucia interpreted this as the sign indicating the new war was close.

World War II broke out the following year.

The third part of the secret

Between 1935 and 1941, Sr. Lucia wrote a series of four memoirs concerning the 1917 apparitions and her cousins.

In the Third Memoir, she revealed the first two parts of the secret they had been given on July 13, 1917: the vision of hell and the material concerning Russia and the pope, along with the forthcoming requests for the First Saturdays devotion and the consecration of Russia.

However, she did not reveal the third part at that time. On January 3, 1944, at the request of her bishop, Sr. Lucia did record it, placing the text in a sealed envelope, which in 1957 was transferred to the Holy See.

Before giving the sealed envelope containing the third part of the “secret” to the then bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Sr. Lucia wrote on the outside envelope that it could be opened only after 1960, either by the patriarch of Lisbon or the bishop of Leiria. Archbishop Bertone therefore asked: “Why only after 1960? Was it our Lady who fixed that date?” Sr. Lucia replied: “It was not our Lady. I fixed the date because I had the intuition that before 1960 it would not be understood, but that only later would it be understood” (The Message of Fatima; all subsequent quotations are taken from this document).

When 1960 came, the Holy See chose not to reveal the third part of the secret.

Assassination attempt

On May 13, 1981—the anniversary of the first Fatima apparition—a Turkish man named Mehmet Ali Agca shot John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square. The pope almost died from the wound, but surgeons were able to save his life.

Though Agca has repeatedly changed his story, it is widely thought he was acting on behalf of Communist forces wishing to neutralize the Polish pope, who went on to play a key role in the downfall of Soviet Communism.

On July 18, 1981, John Paul II read the third part of the secret for the first time and learned what it contained.

The consecration performed

As early as 1942, Pius XII consecrated the entire world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and in 1952 he specifically consecrated Russia.

Following the assassination, while he was still recuperating, John Paul II had a special act of entrustment performed on June 7, 1981, and it was repeated in Fatima on May 13, 1982.

However, there was a question of whether these fulfilled the request made by the Virgin Mary, as she had asked that the pope perform the consecration “in union with all the bishops of the world.”

Consequently, “in order to respond more fully to the requests of ‘our Lady’ . . . on 25 March 1984 in St. Peter’s Square, while recalling the fiat uttered by Mary at the Annunciation, the Holy Father, in spiritual union with the bishops of the world, who had been ‘convoked’ beforehand, entrusted all men and women and all peoples to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

Subsequently, in a letter dated November 8, 1989, Sr. Lucia confirmed that the consecration had been done, writing, “Yes, it has been done just as our Lady asked, on 25 March 1984.”

The fall of communism

The Cold War, which began in the wake of World War II, was a tense period. It saw various conflicts; national borders were redrawn (“various nations will be annihilated”), and the world itself was threatened by the prospect of nuclear war.

In 1989, the Soviet bloc collapsed, and in 1991 the Soviet Union itself dissolved, with the Communist Party losing power in Russia.

Beatification and disclosure

In 2000, John Paul II beatified Francisco and Jacinta. He also decided that the time had come to release the third part of the secret, and the Holy See issued The Message of Fatima, which contained it along with supporting documents.

The third part of the secret turned out to be a vision of destruction in which an assassination attempt was made on the pope. Others also were martyred.

Interpreting the secret

The first part of the secret was a vision of hell, the ultimate consequence of human sin, and the second and third parts contained references to how human sin would play out in the course of the twentieth century.

The Lady referred to the end of World War I and the outbreak of World War II.

According to Sr. Lucia, “The third part of the secret refers to our Lady’s words: ‘If not, [Russia] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.’”

The third part of the secret therefore seems to refer in a special way to the Cold War and the persecution of the Church by atheistic Communism.

“The vision of Fatima concerns above all the war waged by atheistic systems against the Church and Christians, and it describes the immense suffering endured by the witnesses of the faith in the last century of the second millennium. It is an interminable Way of the Cross led by the popes of the twentieth century.”

The assassination attempt on John Paul II on the anniversary of the first Fatima apparition, along with his act of consecration and his role in the fall of Soviet Communism, seems to indicate that he, in a special way, was tied to the fulfillment of the prophecy.

John Paul II regarded the fact he survived the assassination attempt as a special grace. “Sr. Lucia was in full agreement with the pope’s claim that ‘it was a mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path and in his throes the pope halted at the threshold of death.’”

The significance of Fatima

The Church teaches that private revelations like Fatima do not have the same status as the public revelation God has given us in Scripture and Tradition.

The latter requires the assent of faith, but private revelations—even when approved—do not. The “ecclesiastical approval of a private revelation has three elements: the message contains nothing contrary to faith or morals; it is lawful to make it public; and the faithful are authorized to accept it with prudence.”

The purpose of private revelation is to help people live the Faith in particular circumstances, such as the conflicts that affected the Church in the twentieth century. However, even when these circumstances are past, apparitions can have an enduring value going forward.

In The Message of Fatima, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote:

Insofar as individual events are described, they belong to the past. Those who expected exciting apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the future course of history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does not satisfy our curiosity in this way, just as Christian faith in general cannot be reduced to an object of mere curiosity. What remains was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of the “secret”: the exhortation to prayer as the path of “salvation for souls” and, likewise, the summons to penance and conversion (ibid.).

What the in the World Is the Multiverse?

If you listen to debates about the existence of God, there is a word that has been appearing more and more in recent years: the word multiverse.

Unless you’re a science fiction or comic book fan, this term is likely unfamiliar. What does it mean, and what does it have to do with the existence of God?

Let’s start with what it means.

What is the multiverse?

From the sound of the word, you might guess that the multiverse is some kind of alternative to the universe, and you’d be right.

The idea is that the physical universe that we see around us might not be all there is to reality. There could be other realms as well. These have been called other universes, parallel universes, and alternate universes.

That’s ironic, since the term universe used to mean “everything that exists.”

If you insist on that meaning, then these realms beyond the physical universe that we see couldn’t be other universes, because the universe would be everything that is. Instead, they would have to be other, unseen parts of the universe.

But this is not the way the language has been developing, and today terms like parallel universeand alternate universe are common in both science and science fiction.

Other even looser expressions (e.g., parallel worlds, alternate realities, other dimensions) are also used to refer to basically the same things: realms other than the visible universe that we see around us. The claim that we live in a multiverse is the claim that there are multiple universes that can be grouped into a single, overall “multiverse.”

Could a multiverse exist?

It depends on how you are using terms. If you use universe in its classical sense, to refer to everything that exists, then, no, there could not be a multiverse. But there could still be many realms other than the part of the overall universe that is visible to us.

But if you avoid quarreling about words (cf. 1 Tim. 6:4, 2 Tim. 2:14) and accept the way the terms are used currently in scientific circles then, yes, there could be a multiverse. God is omnipotent, and if he chooses to create more than one realm of existence, he can do that.

Why, then, does the concept come up in arguments against God’s existence?

Constants

We’re all familiar with Einstein’s famous formula E=mc2. In this formula, E stands for energy, mstands for mass, and c stands for the speed of light.

E and m can change. The amount of energy and the amount of mass that something has can vary over time. But c cannot change. The speed of light is a constant. In a vacuum, the speed of light is always 186,292 miles per second—no more and no less.

The speed of light is just one constant that governs our universe. There are many more: things like the strength of gravity, the mass of the electron, and dozens of others that most people have never heard of. Scientists do not understand why these constants have the values that they do, and this is a source of concern.

For example, one constant that is related to the speed of light is known as the fine-structure constant. In 1985, the Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote that this number “has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.”

He continued: “It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the ‘hand of God’ wrote that number” (QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, p. 129; emphasis in original).

Magic numbers from God?

Here is where the question of God comes into the picture: It appears that the physical constants of our universe are finely tuned to allow for the existence of life. If the constants were different, it would prevent life from forming or surviving.

For example, if the strength of gravity were too weak, then matter would not clump together to form stars. On the other hand, if it were too strong, then every star—including our sun—would swiftly become a black hole. Under either scenario, we wouldn’t be here.

Physicists tell us that not only gravity but multiple other constants in our universe have just the right value to enable life to exist. If any of these constants had a slightly higher or lower value, life would be impossible.

The odds of having all the constants come up with just the right values for life is fantastically low, and that creates the appearance that the universe was intelligently designed—that the constants were set by an intelligent designer. It’s thus possible to make an argument for the existence of God based on the design we see in the constants that physicists have discovered.

How could skeptics try to get around that?

A parallel from biology

For a long time, many people argued for God’s existence based on the apparent design we see in the life forms around us. Animals and plants seem designed to live in the environments that they inhabit, and their body parts seem tailored to do just what the animal needs to do in order to survive.

This was noted by Charles Darwin in his study of the finches that live in the Galapagos Islands. On the islands where the finches had one kind of food source, their beaks would be shaped one way to enable them to get at that food. Where the available food was different, the beaks would be also. It was as if the beaks of individual species were tailored to the kind of food they had available.

Some might have looked at this and argued that God miraculously intervened in nature to design the finches’ beaks in this way. But Darwin proposed something else. He suggested that there were impersonal processes in nature that produced the appearance of design without miraculous intervention by a designer.

Over time, Darwin’s proposal came to be widely accepted. Darwin did not disprove the existence of God. Neither did he prove that God never intervenes miraculously in the world. But it is now widely held, even by churchmen, that much of the apparent design we see in life forms can be explained through evolution rather than direct intervention.

Those in the Intelligent Design movement still argue that there are examples of intelligent design in the life forms we see around us, but the argument has to be made in a more sophisticated way than it used to be.

For skeptics this raises a possibility: If Darwin’s ideas about evolution could explain the apparent design of life forms, could something similar explain the apparent design of our universe?

Enter the multiverse

Darwin’s views on evolution included the idea that the world was much older than was commonly believed and that this ancientness allowed a great deal of random mutation to take place.

Some of those mutations were advantageous to survival, and so the life forms that had them lived to reproduce. By this means, over vast stretches of time, you could get animals that looked like they had been finely tuned to their environment.

Advocates of the multiverse often make a parallel claim: Suppose there is a vast, perhaps even infinite, number of other universes. And in all of them the constants are set differently—at random. If so, then even though most universes would be barren and lifeless, in a few of them the constants would randomly come up just right for life to exist. By chance, they say, we happen to live in such a universe.

On this view, the design of our universe is only apparent, not real, and there is no need for a designer.

Physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow made precisely this claim, including the parallel to Darwinian evolution, in their 2010 book, The Grand Design: “Just as Darwin and Wallace explained how the apparently miraculous design of living forms could appear without intervention by a supreme being, the multiverse concept can explain the fine-tuning of physical law without the need for a benevolent creator who made the universe for our benefit” (ch. 7).

A cop-out?

Is this line of reasoning legitimate? Or are advocates of the multiverse simply proposing it as a way of avoiding the implications of a designed universe?

Physicist Lawrence Krauss has an interesting take on the issue. In his 2012 book A Universe from Nothing, he writes:

In discussions with those who feel the need for a creator, the existence of a multiverse is viewed as a cop-out conceived by physicists who have run out of answers—or perhaps questions. This may eventually be the case, but it is not so now. Almost every logical possibility we can imagine regarding extending laws of physics as we know them, on small scales, into a more complete theory, suggests that, on large scales, our universe is not unique (ch. 8).

In other words, Krauss is prepared to admit that proposing the multiverse could be a cop-out eventually, but he argues that it isn’t at present. Instead, he thinks that—for now—there are good reasons to think there is a multiverse; but he’s prepared to admit if these don’t pan out that some physicists might hang onto the multiverse idea as a way to avoid dealing with the question of a Creator.

He deserves credit for that admission, but is he right that we currently have good reasons to believe in a multiverse?

Reasons of caution

As a non-physicist, I’m not in a position to evaluate the arguments Krauss has in mind, so I’m not even going to try.

If there is a multiverse, fine. If there’s not, fine. Either way, it does not affect God’s existence (for reasons we will see). As an observer of the physics scene, though, it is clear that there are reasons for caution.

First, there is a crisis in physics at the moment. Many freely talk about it.

“What really keeps me awake at night,” physicist Steve Giddings says, “is that we face a crisis within the deepest foundations of physics. The only way out seems to involve profound revision of fundamental physical principles” (“Crisis at the Foundations of Physics,” edge.org).

A period in which that kind of reevaluation is going on is not the time to be particularly confident about the existence of vast numbers of unseen universes.

Second, many of the advocates of the multiverse—including Krauss, Hawking, and Mlodinow—adhere to a particular view in physics known as string theory. We don’t need to let the details of this theory detain us, but one particular fact is relevant: String theory makes very few testable predictions.

Since testing the predictions of a theory is how science moves forward, critics of string theory warn that their colleagues risk building a house of cards, constructing an elaborate theory that can’t be confirmed by experiment and thus may well be false.

Third, non-string theorists often seem cool to the idea of a multiverse. In the introduction to his 2013 book Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe, Lee Smolin—a physicist and a prominent critic of string theory—writes:

The notion that our universe is part of a vast or infinite multiverse is popular—and understandably so, because it is based on a methodological error that is easy to fall into. Our current theories can work at the level of the universe only if our universe is a subsystem of a larger system. So we invent a fictional environment and fill it with other universes. This cannot lead to any real scientific progress, because we cannot confirm or falsify any hypothesis about universes causally disconnected from our own.

There are thus reasons to be cautious about the idea of the multiverse, for we have no proof of it, and the arguments that suggest it are dependent on particular theories—in a time of scientific crisis.

Science of the gaps

Skeptics sometimes accuse Christians of holding a simplistic “God of the gaps” view.

What they mean by this is that Christians are too quick to attribute anything science doesn’t understand to God. (“Why does this finch have a beak shaped like this? God did it.”) In other words, believers propose God to explain the gaps in our scientific knowledge.

One application of this, they might argue, is proposing God as the one who set the constants of our universe so that life could exist. Perhaps there is no designer, they could say. Instead, perhaps there is an infinite number of universes with random constants.

But there is a countercharge that can be made: By proposing an infinite number of universes with random constants, skeptics are taking a simplistic “science of the gaps” view. Instead of taking the evidence of design seriously, they are proposing a vast number of unobservable universes that we have no proof exist.

Unless they can swiftly back up the claim scientifically, they are vulnerable to the “cop-out” charge Lawrence Krauss discussed.

But even if scientists could prove that there are other universes out there—even a vast number of them—would that get around the apparent design of our universe?

More of the same

Suppose that there are other universes, but suppose that they all have exactly the same laws and constants that ours does.

In that case, we’d be presented with an even more impressive appearance of design. Not only would our universe appear to be designed for life—all the other universes would appear to be as well!

So it isn’t just more universes that would be needed to avoid the appearance of design. The random changing of physical constants is needed as well, the same way random mutation is needed to explain the appearance of design in living organisms.

Skeptics would thus need to prove two things: (1) the existence of a large number of other universes and (2) that the constants in those universes are randomly shuffled.

Supposed they proved this. Suppose that they provided a natural explanation for the apparent design of our universe. That would only raise another question.

Who built the cosmic slot machine?

Even if there were a huge number of universes whose constants were set randomly—by the spinning reels of some cosmic slot machine—that would still leave the question: Why?

Why are there all these universes? Why are their constants set randomly? What’s causing that to happen?

Physicist Paul Davies acknowledges the problem when he points out that that the higher-level laws that would be needed to make a multiverse operate would “themselves remain unexplained—eternal, immutable transcendent entities that just happen to exist and must simply be accepted as given. In that respect the meta-laws have a similar status to an unexplained transcendent god” (“Stephen Hawking’s Big Bang Gaps,” The Guardian, Sept. 3, 2010).

If there were higher-level laws causing a vast number of universes with randomly set constants, we’d still need to ask why those laws are there.

In other words: Who built the cosmic slot machine?

The multiverse argument does not do away with the need for God any more than the phenomenon of biological evolution. If it ends up being true, this would merely push the question of God back one step.

Or—to put it another way—it would merely shed light on one of the steps between us and God, on a new aspect of God’s creation.

But, fundamentally, there still needs to be a sufficient reason for everything that exists and everything that happens.

“It’s just random” will not do.

Randomness is only the appearance of non-design. We say something is random when we can’t explain why a particular case turned out the way it did, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason.

To say “It’s just random” and leave it at that is to give up on finding the reason for something. It’s to look at the gaps in our knowledge and stop asking why particular things are the way they are.

That’s not what science is about. Nor philosophy. Nor theology.

And so, even on the idea we are living in a vast sea of universes, we can’t escape the question of God.

Did Jesus Have a Miraculous Birth?

You might think that the question we are asking has an obvious answer, since Jesus was conceived without a human father. That, of itself, makes his birth miraculous, doesn’t it?

It does, but we are actually asking something different: Did the process of the birth itself—presumably nine months after conception—involve a miracle?

The New Testament does not address this question, but, as we will see, it has been discussed from surprisingly early times.

Basically, two types of miracles (and usually both) have been proposed in connection with Jesus’ birth:

  1. Mary did not experience labor pains.
  2. Jesus did not pass through Mary’s birth canal. Instead, he passed from her womb the way he passed through the walls of his sealed tomb.

On what basis have these been proposed?

 

An Argument from Genesis

One basis for Mary being free from labor pains has been seen in Genesis 3:16, where God tells Eve—and, by extension, future women:

I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.

The argument is that, since Mary was immaculately conceived, she was not under this curse and thus would not experience labor pains.

The argument has some weight, but the biblical text does not require that Eve would have experienced no pains at all. God says that he will “greatly multiply” (Heb., harbeh arbeh) her pains, which could suggest that there would have been pain even in an unfallen state.

Some theologians have proposed that an unfallen Adam and Eve would have experienced no pain, but this is a matter of theological speculation. (In Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott lists the view as sententia communis or “common opinion,” p. 104.)

What Scripture indicates entered the world for the first time upon the fall was human death (cf. Gen. 2:17), not any and all pain (note also Jesus’ sufferings in an unfallen state).

 

An Argument from Revelation

At the other end of the Bible, in Revelation 12:1-2, John sees a great sign in heaven:

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.

This symbol, in part, refers to the Virgin Mary, for the woman gives birth to “a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (Rev. 12.5)—that is, she gives birth to Jesus.

Since she is explicitly stated to have labor pains, some have proposed that the Virgin Mary did experience labor pains in giving birth to Jesus.

While this is a natural interpretation of the text, it also is not certain.

First, Mary experienced post-birth sufferings in connection with being the mother of Jesus (Luke 2:34-35), most notably when she saw her Son hanging on a cross (John 19:25-27). Given the prominent role of symbolism in Revelation, it could be that Mary’s post-birth sufferings as the mother of the Messiah are here depicted rather than literal labor pains.

Second, while the image of the woman in Revelation 12 does point to the Virgin Mary, it also points to other things, like other symbols in Revelation (cf. Rev. 17:9-10). Thus the symbol also points to Israel and the Church.

The birth pains, therefore, might not apply to Mary but to one of these other referents, such as the pains that Israel endured as part of its national experience when the Messiah appeared (think: Roman oppression).

 

A Physiological Argument

One also can propose a physiological argument for an absence of birth pains: If Jesus didn’t pass through Mary’s birth canal then there would be no need for her to experience labor pains.

The cause of labor pains are the forceful contractions that are intended to push the child through the birth canal, so if Jesus didn’t go through the latter then there would be no need for contractions and thus no need for labor pains.

This argument also has weight, but it depends on the timing of Jesus’ departure from the womb. If it happened early enough, then there would be no labor pains. However, if it happened late enough then such pains would have resulted.

The physiological argument brings us to the second miracle that has been proposed in connection with Christ’s birth—his exiting Mary’s womb without going through the birth canal—so what is the evidence for that?

 

Virginity In Partu

Church teaching holds that Mary was a perpetual virgin, meaning that she was a virgin before, during, and after Jesus’ birth.

The fact she was a virgin in the act of giving birth is referred to as her virginity in partu (Latin, “in bearing,” “in giving birth”).

Thus the Second Vatican Council taught that “at the birth of our Lord,” Jesus “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it” (Lumen Gentium 57).

Historically, this has been understood as meaning that Jesus did not injure Mary’s hymen, the presence of which was taken in biblical times as proof of virginity (cf. Deut. 22:13-17), though this is not a medically sure test for reasons we will not discuss.

On the assumption that Jesus did not injure Mary’s hymen, would this show that he did not pass through her birth canal?

It could mean that, and that has certainly been the common historic understanding, but God is omnipotent, and if he can miraculously take Jesus out of the womb altogether, he also could miraculously preserve Mary’s hymen through a vaginal birth.

 

What Does Church Teaching Require?

In his book Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, German theologian Ludwig Ott proposes that the teaching that “Mary bore her Son without any violation of her virginal integrity” is defined as a matter of faith “on the ground of the general promulgation of doctrine” (p. 205).

In other words, he argues that it is a dogma (something that has been infallibly defined as a matter of divine revelation) by the ordinary and universal magisterium rather than by a decree of a pope or council. However, he then states:

The dogma merely asserts the fact of the continuance of Mary’s physical virginity without determining more closely how this is to be physiologically explained. In general, the Fathers and the Schoolmen conceived it as non-injury to the hymen, and accordingly taught that Mary gave birth in miraculous fashion without opening of the womb and injury to the hymen, and consequently also without pains (cf. S. Th. III 28, 2).

However, according to modern natural scientific knowledge, the purely physical side of virginity consists in the non-fulfilment of the sex act (“sex-act virginity”) and in the non-contact of the female egg by the male seed (“seed-act virginity”) (A. Mitterer). Thus, injury to the hymen in birth does not destroy virginity, while, on the other hand, its rupture seems to belong to complete natural motherhood. It follows from this that from the concept of virginity alone the miraculous character of the process of birth cannot be inferred, if it cannot be, and must not be derived from other facts of revelation. Holy Writ attests Mary’s active role in the act of birth (Matt. 1:25; Luke 2:7: “She brought forth”) which does not seem to indicate a miraculous process.

But the Fathers, with few exceptions, vouch for the miraculous character of the birth.

From this one might conclude that, although Jesus was miraculously conceived, he didn’t experience a miraculous birth—either in terms of Mary not having labor pains or in terms of not passing through her birth canal.

On that view, the Fathers who advocated a miraculous birth simply made a mistaken inference based on how virginity was understood in their time. Mary remained a perpetual virgin even if Jesus had a totally normal birth.

However, before adopting such a conclusion, one should be aware that this isn’t an idea that only arose in later centuries. It’s early.

Amazingly early.

 

The Protoevangelium of James

For example, a document known as the Protoevangelium of James (also called the Infancy Gospel of James) attests to Christ’s miraculous birth. It was probably written in the mid-second century (c. 150).

According to the Protoevangelium, when the holy family was on the way to Bethlehem, the following happened:

And they came into the middle of the road, and Mary said to him: Take me down from off the ass, for that which is in me presses to come forth (ch. 17).

This would suggest that Mary experienced at least some discomfort, though not necessarily the sharp pains of labor. The miracle itself occurs afterward, and it occurs in two parts.

First, after finding a place for Mary in a cave in Bethlehem and making sure she is taken care of, Joseph goes in search of a midwife. While doing so, he sees an amazing vision in which time seems to stop for a moment (ch. 18). However, this is something that accompanies the birth and does not directly pertain to the birth itself.

Second, upon finding a midwife, Joseph takes her back to the cave and the following occurs:

And they stood in the place of the cave, and behold a luminous cloud overshadowed the cave. And the midwife said: “My soul has been magnified this day, because my eyes have seen strange things—because salvation has been brought forth to Israel.”

And immediately the cloud disappeared out of the cave, and a great light shone in the cave, so that the eyes could not bear it. And in a little that light gradually decreased, until the infant appeared, and went and took the breast from his mother Mary (ch. 19).

This does not directly say that Jesus didn’t pass through Mary’s birth canal, but it suggests that since the great light fades and the baby Jesus seems to appear without a normal birth.

 

The Odes of Solomon

An earlier and more explicit reference to a miraculous birth is found in the Odes of Solomon, which is a collection of 42 early Christian hymns that were written in the second half of the first century—perhaps fifty years after the Crucifixion. According to the Odes:

So the Virgin became a mother
With great mercies.

And she labored and bore the Son but without pain,
Because it did not occur without purpose.

And she did not seek a midwife,
Because he allowed her to give life.

She bore with desire as a strong man.
And she bore according to the manifestation;
And she possessed with great power (Odes of Solomon 19:7-10).

The translation of this passage is difficult, and scholars have rendered portions of it differently. For example, some have taken the statement that Mary bore Jesus “with desire as a strong man” to mean that she gave birth as a deliberate act of will and that the birth did not come upon her suddenly, with her playing a passive role like a normal woman experiencing the onset of labor.

However that may be, what is not in doubt is that the passage says that Mary “bore the Son without pain.”

We thus have first-century testimony to a painless birth.

 

The Ascension of Isaiah

Another first century document that records a miraculous birth is the Ascension of Isaiah. Based on clues it gives, this work appears to have been composed in A.D. 67.

According to it, the birth of Jesus took place two months after Joseph received Mary into his home:

It came to pass that when they were alone that Mary straight-way looked with her eyes and saw a small babe, and she was astonished.

And after she had been astonished, her womb was found as formerly before she had conceived. . . .

And the story regarding the infant was noised broad in Bethlehem.

Some said: “The Virgin Mary hath borne a child, before she was married two months.”

And many said: “She has not borne a child, nor has a midwife gone up (to her), nor have we heard the cries of (labor) pains” (Ascension of Isaiah 11:7-14).

Here Jesus suddenly appears, without passing through the birth canal, and Mary’s womb is found as it was before, which presumably means that she was no longer large with child (though it also could mean an examination of her hymen was carried out; see Protoevangelium of James 20).

We also have an explicit statement that she did not experience labor pains.

The author of this document appears not to be aware of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This is not surprising since, by my estimate, Luke was written only eight years earlier and Matthew was written even more recently.

In any event, the author seems to be reporting traditions that were circulating about Jesus’ birth just 34 years after the Crucifixion, which is very early indeed.

 

Conclusion

The late Cardinal Avery Dulles pointed out that there is flexibility in Church teaching regarding the precise way in which Jesus was born an in which Mary’s virginity in giving birth is to be understood:

The Church, Cardinal Dulles said, “has not committed itself to any particular physical theory” of virginity in partu, and therefore the possibility that Mary “could have suffered some pains in birth” may be “compatible with Catholic doctrine.” The cardinal also pointed out that further doctrinal development and magisterial teaching could clarify the question one way or the other (source).

However, before we use that flexibility to adopt the view of Jesus’ birth that is easier from a modern perspective (i.e., a non-miraculous interpretation), we need to bear in mind that we are already standing in the presence of a miracle (a virginal conception!) and we have amazingly early testimony regarding a miraculous birth.

While the details of the three documents differ, they all attest to something extraordinary happening at Jesus’ birth, and in A.D. 67 the Ascension of Isaiah refers both to a lack of birth pains and to Jesus not passing through the birth canal!

Does Paul Say That God Punished Jesus?

Recently we looked at a view of the atonement which holds that God literally punished Jesus on the cross—that the Father “poured out his wrath” on Christ as he hung on the cross.

This view is known as penal substitution, and its advocates claim that it is taught in the Bible.

For example, they claim it is taught in Isaiah 53 and its discussion of the Suffering Servant.

However, when we looked at this passage, we found that it isn’t a good basis for penal substitution.

Now let’s look at three texts from St. Paul which are often used as proofs for the view.

 

God “Made Him To Be Sin”

The first passage is 2 Corinthians 5:21. Here, after exhorting his readers to be reconciled to God, Paul writes:

(21) For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God

The first thing to be said about this passage is that it’s among the most difficult things Paul says to understand, and hard verses make bad prooftexts. If exactly what a verse means isn’t clear, you can’t use it to prove a technical point.

There are also a number of specific problems with using it to prove penal substitution:

  1. The verse doesn’t mention anything about punishment. There isn’t a reference to anger, wrath, or condemnation. You have to presuppose that Paul is thinking about God being angry with Jesus and punishing him for our sin (i.e., you have to read into it what you’re trying to prove).
  2. The verse doesn’t mention Jesus’s death on the cross. While it’s possible that Paul is thinking of his death, he doesn’t refer to it, and some scholars have thought that he’s thinking of the Incarnation as the moment that Christ was “made sin,” for he elsewhere refers to God “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3).
  3. The verse says that God “made” Jesus “sin.” If you understand “sin” in its normal sense then the verse is a poetic expression of some kind. Jesus is a Person, and he did not literally become sin (an abstract concept). Similarly, we do not literally become “the righteousness of God” (another abstract concept).
  4. Many scholars have proposed that Paul means God made Jesus “a sin offering.” This is because the Greek word for “sin” (hamartia) is used as a translation of the Hebrew word khatta’t, which means both “sin” and “sin offering.” Thus the Greek Septuagint frequently uses hamartia to mean “sin offering” (Exod. 29:14, 36, Lev. 4:20, 21, 24-25, 32-34, 5:6, 7-9, 11, 6:17, 25, 30, 37, 7:27, 8:2, 14, 9:2-3, 7-8, 10, 15, 22, etc.).

Because of these ambiguities, this passage cannot be used to prove penal substitution. You can assume it and read it into the text, but you can’t prove it from the text.

 

God “Condemned Sin in the Flesh”

In Romans 8:1-4, we read:

(1) There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

(2) For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.

(3) For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, (4) in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

The key part of this is the statement that God “condemned sin in the flesh,” which advocates of penal substitution hold to be a reference to God punishing Jesus on the Cross.

This passage also has a poetic feel to it, and it certainly includes non-literal elements. Physical flesh (Greek, sarx) did not literally weaken the Law of Moses, or any other law. Laws belong to a fundamentally different and abstract category than physical flesh, which has no ability to literally weaken them.

Neither, with respect to the phrase “sinful flesh,” is physical flesh literally sinful. Sinfulness is a quality that persons have, not a quality of meat.

Similarly, there is a metaphor involved in saying that Christians “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Actually, we do walk using our leg muscles.)

These non-literal elements become clearer when one realizes that Paul uses the term “flesh” metaphorically as a reference to fallen human nature, though scholars have found it difficult to determine the precise nuances with which he uses it.

As before, it’s difficult to use a text incorporating ambiguous, poetic elements to establish a technical point, and this is especially true when the key, ambiguous and poetic element is part of the crucial phrase: God “condemned sin in the flesh.”

That could mean any number of things. Just what “flesh” is being referred to? Christ’s physical flesh (i.e., his physical body)? The physical flesh of mankind in general? Fallen human nature as the abstract concept in which sin is depicted as residing?

The first is what advocates of penal substitution need Paul to be saying, but given the way he uses the term flesh, the last is more likely what he means: That is, God condemned the sin that is part of human nature.

Then we need to deal with the meaning of “condemned” (Greek, katakrinô). Advocates of penal substitution need this to mean “punished,” but that’s not what the term means.

As the standard reference work A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3rd ed.) by Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich notes, the basic meaning of katakrinô is “pronounce a sentence after determination of guilt.”

This could mean a number of things, but it need mean no more than God issued a legal finding that sin is wrong/a bad thing/abhorrent/something to be rejected—and even that appears to be as a legal metaphor since we don’t literally have a courtroom setting.

This is seen, with particular clarity, when we consider the time that Paul points to when he says God issued this finding. He says God did it “by sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Although he also says God did this “for sin” (peri harmartias; i.e., concerning sin or with reference to sin), the point at which God sent his son was the Incarnation, not the Cross.

Thus what advocates of penal substitution need this passage to say is “God punished Jesus in his physical body on the Cross,” but it doesn’t say that.

Given the known meanings of the terms, the key part of the passage more probably means: By sending his Son in the likeness of sinful humanity at the Incarnation, in order to deal with sin, God expressed disapproval of the sin that is part of fallen human nature.

This passage thus also is not a successful prooftext for penal substitution.

 

Jesus and “the Curse of the Law”

Finally, in Galatians 3:13-14, we read:

(13) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree”—(14) that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

“The Law” that Paul refers to is the Law of Moses, as illustrated by the quotation he gives. It is from a passage in Deuteronomy that deals with how the Israelites were to treat the bodies of men after execution for their crimes:

(22) And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, (23) his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance (Deut. 21:22-23).

According to this translation, “a hanged man is accursed by God,” and consequently “his body shall not remain all night upon the tree” because otherwise this would “defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.”

It is not clear why letting the body remain on the tree overnight, as opposed to a shorter time, would defile the land. Perhaps the thought is that any hanging of a man on a tree defiles the land, but leaving the body for a longer time does so in a more egregious way.

Alternately, the defilement may come not by the hanging of the body but in the denial of proper burial, which according to Jewish custom was done on the same day. Some have thus translated the phrase for “accursed by God” (quillat elôhim) as “an insult to God,” “a repudiation of God,” or “an affront to God” (so the Jewish Publication Society’s Tanak Version). As the Jewish Publication Society notes:

The present translation reflects a rabbinic explanation that the criminal’s body may not be maltreated since that would be an offense against God in whose image even the criminal was created (JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy, at 21:23).

Also, it should be noted that, unlike the case of Jesus, hanging on the “tree” (the Hebrew word can mean just a wooden stake or structure) was not the method of execution. Crucifixion was not practiced in ancient Israel. The text presupposes that execution has been carried out by the normal means—stoning or the sword—and what is envisioned is a display of the body after death for purposes of deterrence or posthumous humiliation.

With this as background, how does Paul apply the passage to Jesus’ situation? Several points should be made:

  1. The passage is not an exact fit for what happened to Jesus since in his case the method of execution was crucifixion; his body was not simply displayed after he was executed by other means.
  2. Paul adapts the quotation to avoid saying that God cursed Jesus. In the Septuagint, the passage says “all who hang on a tree are cursed from God” (Lexham English Septuagint), but Paul conspicuously removes the reference to God, apparently precisely to avoid saying that God cursed Jesus.
  3. Instead, Paul identifies the source of the curse as the Law of Moses. He says that Jesus redeemed us from “the curse of the Law” so that “the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles.” He then goes on in the following verses to describe the Law as an inferior and only partial expression of God’s will: “This is what I mean: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. . . . It was ordained by angels through an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one; but God is one” (Gal. 3:17-20).
  4. The passage in Deuteronomy is a minor piece of legislation that does not sum up or serve as a capstone to the Mosaic Law. It is an obscure passage that has been employed here because it mentions a curse and has a partial similarity to the situation of Christ’s death. It thus represents an accommodated application rather than a direct one of the kind needed to make a key point about the nature of the atonement.

What advocates of penal substitution need Galatians 3:13 to say is that God cursed Jesus—and even that might not be enough, because to curse someone could merely mean passing a negative legal sentence rather than actively punishing. Yet Paul conspicuously avoids saying this and instead identifies the Law as the source of the curse.

In view of the discontinuity between Jesus’ situation and the one envisioned in Deuteronomy, Paul’s avoidance of the needed statement, and the general ambiguity of the passage, it is not a solid basis for the claim that God literally punished Jesus.

We thus see that none of the three passages we have considered provide proof of penal substitution, which is already very problematic on other grounds.

God Under Another Name?

A reader writes:

Old Testament scholars like Knauf and Romer make a case for YHWH being a storm god related to Qos and Edomite religion, based on a linguistic case.

If their theory was plausible and you had to accept it, how would you reconcile that with your faith? Assume that their arguments are very convincing. How would you reconcile that with orthodox theology?

Since most people aren’t very familiar with the Edomites, let me begin my response with some background . . .

 

Meeting the Edomites

The Edomites were a people who lived in a region to the south of Israel. The Old Testament indicates that they were related to the Israelites. Their patriarch—Edom, also known as Esau—was the brother of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. The two peoples are thus deemed as being related by blood.

Just as Jacob and Esau had a sibling rivalry, so did the peoples that descended from them, and they often found themselves in competition and conflict, though they also had a shared sense of kinship that endured.

Thus one of the criticisms of the Edomites in the book of Obadiah is that they took advantage of Israel’s distress and even raided Jerusalem, despite the fact that they were kinsmen (Obad. 10-14).

This sense of kinship indicates a shared heritage that would likely includes religious elements. Thus we find archaeological evidence of the worship of Yahweh in Edom. Bert Dicou explains:

Evidence for an old connection of YHWH with Edom can also be found in extra-biblical sources. Some inscriptions found in Kuntillet ’Ajrud, mentioning the ‘YHWH of Teman’ besides a ‘YHWH of Samaria’, may even be interpreted as suggesting that in Edom (at least, in Teman) around 800 bce (the time of the inscriptions) YHWH was worshipped, since the expression ‘YHWH of Samaria’ clearly refers to YHWH as present in his cultic centre in Samaria (Edom, Israel’s Brother and Antagonist, 179).

 

The Deity Qos

The major Edomite deity was named Qos, and scholars have wondered about the relationship between Qos and Yahweh. Unfortunately, the Old Testament gives us virtually no positive information, although some have tried to mount an argument from silence. Dicou explains:

A problem within the religion history of Israel and its neighbours is the puzzling absence of the most important Edomite god, Qos, in the Old Testament. Whereas the gods of the other neighbours are rejected as well as mentioned by their names, neither happens to the Edomite god or gods. . . .

This can possibly be explained by assuming that Edom’s Qos did not differ very much from Israel’s YHWH—which must have made it difficult to reject him. It has been asserted that there are important correspondences between YHWH and Edom’s god Qos (176-177).

 

Same God, Different Name?

One possibility is thus that Qos and Yahweh are the same God being referred to by different terms.

This would not be surprising, as in the Old Testament itself, Yahweh is referred to by multiple terms: El, Elohim, Adonai, etc.

The same is true of other deities in the Old Testament. Thus the generic term Ba’al (Hebrew, “Master”) is also called Hadad, Chemosh, etc.

We often see how the same deity could be called by different terms across linguistic barriers. Thus the Latin-speaking Romans referred to the same deity by the names of Jupiter and Jove that Greek-speakers referred to as Zeus.

Even today, language barriers result in Christians all over the world using different terms for God:

  • Spanish-speaking Christians refer to God as Dios
  • Polish-speaking Christians refer to God as Bog
  • German-speaking Christians refer to God as Gott
  • Arabic-speaking Christians refer to God as Allah
  • Finnish-speaking Christians refer to God as Jumala
  • Hungarian-speaking Christians refer to God as Isten

You get the point.

Given all this terminological diversity, it’s quite possible that the Israelites and the Edomites, at least at times, simply used different terms for the same deity.

This is all the more plausible since the Edomites didn’t speak exactly the same language as the Israelites, and even in Hebrew, God can be referred to with terms as different as El and Yahweh.

Maybe in Edomite he was Yahweh and Qos.

This would explain why Qos isn’t condemned in the Old Testament the way other foreign deities are.

 

Yahweh a Storm God?

The reader referred to the idea that Yahweh and Qos may have been storm gods, but we need to be careful here.

In the Old Testament, Yahweh is not presented simply as a storm god. He is the God of everything, and everything includes storms.

Storms are very powerful, and thus they make a good metaphor for divine power. It’s thus no surprise that various Old Testament books use storm imagery in connection with Yahweh.

Despite the use of storm themes in the Old Testament, the biblical writers did not conceive of Yahweh simply as a storm god.

For them, he was the everything God—the Creator of the entire world—and they also use fire themes, harvest themes, healing themes, birth themes, death themes, battle themes, and many others. But that wouldn’t let us reduce Yahweh to simply being a fire god, a harvest god, a healing god, a birth god, a death god, or a war god.

 

Yahweh vs. Ba’al

There’s also another reason to be careful about thinking of Yahweh as principally a storm god: When the Old Testament uses such imagery in connection with him, it is often part of a deliberate attempt to subvert Ba’al worship.

In the Canaanite pantheon, Ba’al was the storm god. In Canaanite mythology, Ba’al also famously had a conflict with the sea god, Yam, who he conquered.

During much of the Old Testament period, Israelites were tempted to worship Ba’al (and the other Canaanite deities), but the prophets make it very clear that Yahweh and Ba’al are two different deities.

That’s why—if you’ll pardon a storm-related pun—they thunderously denounce Ba’al worship.

We thus find the biblical authors using Ba’al-related imagery to subvert Ba’al worship. By using storm imagery for Yahweh, they are saying, “Ba’al isn’t the true lord of the storm; Yahweh is.”

Similarly, the biblical authors subvert Ba’al worship when they make it clear that it was actually Yahweh who set the boundaries of the sea (Job 38:10-11, Prov. 8:29, Psa. 104:9, Jer. 5:22)—the Hebrew word for which is also yam.

We thus have to be careful that we recognize what the biblical authors are doing with storm imagery and not simply reduce Yahweh to being a storm god.

 

Revelation, Loss, and Clarification

The Bible depicts God and man as experiencing an original unity. This implies that God revealed himself to us at the dawn of our race.

However, as the Old Testament makes clear, our knowledge of God became disfigured by sin, and the worship of other gods was introduced.

The disfigurement became so bad that, prior to the time of Abraham, the ancestors of the Israelites worshipped the Mesopotamian deities (Josh. 24:2, 14-15).

But God began to rebuild knowledge of himself by calling Abraham and giving him new revelation. This knowledge was further clarified with the revelation given to Moses, and later through the prophets and other biblical writers.

We thus see a process whereby the original knowledge of God was largely lost, but God began to reintroduce knowledge of who he was and thus clarify our understanding of him.

This process was gradual and messy. At first, many of God’s people worshipped other deities in addition to him (Gen. 31:34-35, Lev. 17:7, Josh. 24:14). This continued even after God brought the Israelites into the promised land.

But through the prophets’ repeated calls, God made it clear to the Israelites that this must stop, and by the end of the Babylonian Exile, the practice was definitively ended.

 

Avoiding Overreach

One of the difficulties that scholars have in piecing together how this process worked is the small amount of information we have about this period in history.

Aside from the Old Testament, we have little literature about Israel and its immediate neighbors (Edom, Moab, Midian, etc.), and the Old Testament does not give us a great deal of information about many of these questions.

As a result, scholars are often left to simply guess at many issues pertaining to these early periods.

For example, one scholar (M. Rose) has proposed that Qos was not the same deity as Yahweh, and his worship was introduced only later. Dicou explains:

Rose maintains that only in later times, namely the eighth or seventh centuries bce, did the god Qos, of Arabian origin, come to be known in Edom. Nothing is known about the god who was worshipped before Qos, but it is not unlikely that it was the same god as the one of the Israelites, namely, ‘YHW’ (178).

In other words, the Edomites may have originally worshipped Yahweh, but later Qos was introduced and became their most popular deity.

How would that transition have happened? We don’t know.

Would it even have been clear to the Edomites from the beginning that Yahweh and Qos were different deities? We don’t know that either.

Scholars of religion have noted that there can sometimes be confusion about the identity or non-identity of deities, and it can go back and forth.

Sometimes—for some worshippers—Deity X will be regarded as the same as Deity Y. But other times—for other worshippers—Deity X and Deity Y will be clearly distinct.

Thus in different streams of Hinduism, the deities are sometimes considered to be separate, but in other streams they are all considered aspects of a single, ultimate God.

Closer to home, the God of the Bible was regarded by the first Christians as one, but heretics like Marcion and the Gnostics came to think of the God of the Old Testament as a fundamentally different being than the God of the New Testament.

A modern example of the same phenomenon can be seen in the fact that many Christians today are willing to acknowledge that God is also worshipped by Jews and Muslims, even if they have an incomplete or partially erroneous understanding of him. But others will vigorously deny that Muslims worship the same God as Christians.

The same phenomenon happened in the ancient world. Not everybody had the same understanding of whether this god was the same as that god.

Therefore, some Edomites may have understood Yahweh and Qos to be the same, but others may have disagreed, and the popularity of the two viewpoints may have gone back and forth over time.

We just don’t know.

This is why we have to be careful to avoid overreach—to avoid going beyond what the evidence allows us to say with confidence.

Scholars may legitimately speculate about how the identification or non-identification of various gods developed over time, precisely how the worship of these gods arose and when, etc., however we must always bear in mind that these are just speculations.

The truth is that we don’t have the evidence we would need to be sure.

 

“Not Without Witness”

Although the biblical evidence—as well as the archaeological record—makes it clear that man’s knowledge of the Creator was strongly disfigured, the New Testament establishes the principle that he did not leave himself without witness.

In Acts, Paul explains that he did so at least through the creation itself:

In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways; yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14:16-17).

He makes a similar point in Romans:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made (Rom. 1:19-20).

And thus people in various cultures have reasoned their way to the existence of the Creator. This included figures in polytheistic Greece, some of whom Paul quotes:

Yet he is not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your poets have said, “For we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:27-28).

If God cared enough to make it possible for us to always learn about him through creation—what is sometimes called “general revelation”—then it is reasonable to suppose that he also always continued to give “special revelation”—that is knowledge about him disclosed through visions, prophecies, etc.

This would apply even in the dark times before Abraham and Moses and even in communities other than Israel.

Thus we find figures like the Jebusite king Melchizedek, who “was priest of God Most High” (Gen. 14:18), the Midianite priest Jethro, who rejoiced at what God did for Israel under Moses (Exod. 18:9-12), and the Mesopotamian prophet Balaam, who prophesied for Yahweh (Num. 22:8-24:25).

We thus see a knowledge and worship of the true God outside of Israel in these early times.

At our remote date, we cannot know the details of this knowledge and worship. It may have—and in fact almost certainly was—partial and at times confused, for that is what we see within Israel itself, as the struggles of the prophets indicate.

However, we can say that God always preserved a knowledge of himself, however dimly he was understood in a particular age, and however hybridized his worship came to be with pagan ideas.

We may be thankful that he did lead the Israelites along the path he did, that he did restore knowledge of himself, that he did clear away pagan confusions, and that he finally gave us the full revelation of himself in Jesus Christ, his Son.

 

Summary

With the above as background, I would offer a short summary of the response to the reader’s initial query as follows:

  • The speculations about Yahweh and Qos being storm gods who were related is, in fact, not at all certain.
  • However, even if it could be proved, there are a number of ways to square this with an orthodox Christian understanding:
    • Yahweh and Qos may well have been the same deity being worshipped under two names.
    • Yahweh may have been the earlier deity and Qos only introduced later.
    • God has always preserved knowledge of himself in the world. Even though it has been partial and overlaid with misunderstandings, God eventually clarified it and gave us his definitive revelation through his Son.