Catholic Thought discussion

Second Homily: The Meaning of the Biblical Creation Accounts
Genesis 1: 20 – 24
There are two realizations, first:

As Christians we read Holy Scripture with Christ. He is our guide all the way through it. He indicates to us in reliable fashion what an image is and where the real, enduring content of a biblical expression many be found. Ant the same time he is freedom from false slavery to literalism and a guarantee of the solid, realistic truth of the Bible, which does not dissipate into a cloud of pious pleasantries but remains the sure ground upon which we stand. Our second realization was this: Faith in creation is reasonable.

The Reasonableness of Faith in Creation
Ratzinger summarizes this section beautifully:

God himself shrines through the reasonableness of his creation. Physics and biology, and the natural sciences in general, have given us a new and unheard-of creation account with vast new images, which let us recognize the face of the creator and which make us realize once again that at the very beginning and foundation of all being there is a creating Intelligence. The universe is not the product of darkness and unreason. It comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love. Seeing this gives us the courage to keep on living, and it empowers us, comforted thereby, to take upon ourselves the adventure of life.

The Enduring Significance of the Symbolic Elements in the Text
Part of the fabric of creation are numbers. In particular the numbers three, four, seven, and ten.
10: “God said” appears ten times in the creation account and the Ten Commandments
7: it governs the whole, seven days, each phase of the moon is seven days [four phases make one complete cycle or one month]

It becomes clear that we human beings are not bounded by the limits of our own little “I” but we are part of the rhythm of the universe, that we too, so to speak, assimilate the heavenly rhythm and movement in our own bodies and thus, thanks to this interlinking, are fitted into the logic of the universe. In the Bible this thought goes still further. It lets us know that the rhythm of the heavenly bodies is, more profoundly, a way of expressing the rhythm of the heart and the rhythm of God’s love, which manifests itself there

For some reason my comments on this homily don't want to post! Let me try again. Testing...

Attempt #4!

I found the numbers part of his homily fascination. I wish that he had written more on the subject.

This is so on target:

"Today we can see without any difficulty the horrible consequences of this attitude. We sense a threat that does not lie in the distant future but that encounters us in the immediate present. The humility of faith has disappeared, shattered on the arrogance of activity. From this there is devised a new and no less ruinous view—an attitude that looks upon the human being as a disturber of the peace, as the one who wrecks everything, as the real parasite and disease of nature. Human beings no longer have any use for themselves; they would prefer to put themselves out of the way so that nature might be well again. But this is not how to bring healing to the world, for we go against the Creator when we no longer want to exist as the human beings that he wanted to exist. It is not thus that we heal nature, but rather thus that we destroy both ourselves and creation by removing from it the hope that lies in it and the greatness to which it is called." (From pg. 37)

Also, going backwards a bit to page 32, his words regarding activity stood out to me. The "slavery of activity" as he put it.

I especially loved the thought that "He created [the Universe] so that love could exist." and it just shows that we were made for love and that creation is beautiful by way of everything being connected (like we are to the heavenly bodies).

We stumbled upon the question of creation and sin in a course I'm doing when the priest asked us the question: "Would God have become human if Adam and Eve did not sin?", and I know that this homily does not focus on sin, but I think that... He created us so that love could exist and so that He could enter into that love as one of us.

Sorry for being absent. I've been busy with a number of thigs. Let me touch on all three sections of this homily.

In “The Reasonableness of Faith in Creation” Pope Benedict seems to set up a syllogism:

It is reasonable to think that the universe had a beginning.
It is reasonable to see the universe has a design.

Therefore it is reasonable to believe the universe had a creator. Here is how he concludes the section:

God himself shines through the reasonableness of his creation. Physics and biology, and the natural sciences in general, have given us a new and unheard-of creation account with vast new images, which let us recognize the face of the Creator and which make us realize once again that at the very beginning and foundation of all being there is a creating Intelligence. The universe is not the product of darkness and unreason. It comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love. Seeing this gives us the courage to keep on living, and it empowers us, comforted thereby, to take upon ourselves the adventure of life.

Ellie’s second paragraph reminded me of a very interesting passage I read years ago, not written by one of our popes, but just the same a novel slant on our discussion.

This question was put to several distinguished scientists: If a space vehicle landed, and you were one of the scientists selected to step forward and speak to the visitors from outer space, what is the first thing you would ask them? I’ve never forgotten one scientist’s reply; he said, ‘’I would ask him, are you also flawed?’’

It is interesting how Pope Benedict points out the symbolism of the Genesis text as opposed to reading it literally. He says:

But this does not imply that the individual passages of the Bible sink into meaninglessness and that this bare extract alone has any value. They, too, express the truth—in another way, to be sure, than is the case in physics and biology. They represent truth in the way that symbols do—just as, for example, a Gothic window gives us a deep insight into reality, thanks to the effects of light that it produces and to the figures that it portrays.

This is essentially saying what I said about the literalness of the Old Testament. There is a Truth in the narrative but it is not a literal truth. The Truth is deeper and instructive, providing, as he says, “a deep insight into reality.” I’ve never heard anyone else use the stain glass window as an analogy before.

The numbers in Genesis are very important I think, especially as he highlights the importance of the number seven. The numbers other than seven provide insight into the metaphysics of reality, but the number seven provides rhythm into life and worship. Here is how he puts the significance to the number seven.

The number that governs the whole is seven; in the scheme of seven days it permeates the whole in a way that cannot be overlooked. This is the number of a phase of the moon, and thus we are told throughout this account that the rhythm of our heavenly neighbor also sounds the rhythm of our human life. It becomes clear that we human beings are not bounded by the limits of our own little “I” but that we are part of the rhythm of the universe, that we too, so to speak, assimilate the heavenly rhythm and movement in our own bodies and thus, thanks to this interlinking, are fitted into the logic of the universe. In the Bible this thought goes still further. It lets us know that the rhythm of the heavenly bodies is, more profoundly, a way of expressing the rhythm of the heart and the rhythm of God’s love, which manifests itself there.

And further down he ties it to worship.

This rhythm is itself at the service of a still deeper meaning: Creation is oriented to the sabbath, which is the sign of the covenant between God and humankind. In a short while we shall have to reflect more closely on this, but for the time being, as a first step, we can draw this conclusion: Creation is designed in such a way that it is oriented to worship. It fulfills its purpose and assumes its significance when it is lived, ever new, with a view to worship. Creation exists for the sake of worship. As Saint Benedict said in his Rule: Operi Dei nihil praeponatur—“Nothing must be put before the service of God.” This is not the expression of an otherworldly piety but a clear and sober translation of the creation account and of the message that it bears for our lives. The true center, the power that moves and shapes from within in the rhythm of the stars and of our lives, is worship. Our life’s rhythm moves in proper measure when it is caught up in this.

The rhythm itself connects us to God through worship.

The part where he discusses the modern desire of man to remove himself from nature so that it could thrive again reminded me of the Pixar movie WALL-E.

In some ways, the movie seems to send the message that, indeed, humans are a huge problem and the world might be better off without them. And yet, I think that it has a message at the end that aligns with what Pope Benedict XVI is saying: human beings are created with a special mission to be caretakers of the earth, and the earth cannot flourish without them.

(I tend to process and retain information in relation to stories and songs, so I thought I'd share a little from a less academic point of view.)

Thanks! I haven't seen that one. Bambi gave the message that humans were destructive, so it's nice to hear that this one didn't.

The section Exploiting the Earth? was fascinating and perhaps convicting to me, especially as one who is an engineer by profession. This section is a meditation the command in the first chapter of Genesis for mankind to “subdue the earth.” He will go on to disagree on how it has been taken, especially in modernity. Here is what he says:

It lies, they say, at the root of this culture of exploitation: The directive given to humankind to subdue the earth has opened the way fatefully to that bitter state of affairs that we now experience. In conjunction with ideas of this sort a Munich author has canonized the expression, enthusiastically taken up since he first used it, “the grace-less consequences of Christianity.” What we had previously celebrated—namely, that through faith in creation the world has been demythologized and made reasonable; that sun, moon, and stars are no longer strange and powerful divinities but merely lights; that animals and plants have lost their mystic qualities: all this has become an accusation against Christianity. Christianity is said to have transformed all the powers of the universe, which were once our brothers and sisters, into utilitarian objects for human beings, and in so doing it has led them to misuse plants and animals and in fact all the world’s powers for the sake of an ideology of progress that thinks only of itself and cares only for itself.

Pope Benedict says that mankind has misinterpreted God’s command completely. He points out that God in the next chapter of Genesis does mean exploitation of the earth.

The Creator’s directive to humankind means that it is supposed to look after the world as God’s creation, and to do so in accordance with the rhythm and the logic of creation. The sense of the directive is described in the next chapter of Genesis with the words “to till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). An allusion is made here to the terminology of creation itself, and it signifies that the world is to be used for what it is capable of and for what it is called to, but not for what goes against it.

So there is a distinction that Pope Benedict is making between the use of the earth with man in harmony with it and the exploitation of the earth with man objectifying it and demythologizing it. The first is in harmony with God and nature; the second is a horrific distortion of what God intended. Then Pope Benedict goes through an outline of how this began in the Renaissance and has escalated to our modern day. He brings his thesis to a climax.

Here we find the very thing that threatens our age formulated with the rarest clarity. Previously human beings could only transform particular things in nature; nature as such was not the object but rather the presupposition of their activity. Now, however, it itself has been delivered over to them in toto. Yet as a result they suddenly see themselves imperiled as never before. The reason for this lies in the attitude that views creation only as the product of chance and necessity. Thus it has no law, no direction of its own. The inner rhythm that we infer from the scriptural account—the rhythm of worship, which is the rhythm of the history of God’s love for humankind—is stilled. Today we can see without any difficulty the horrible consequences of this attitude. We sense a threat that does not lie in the distant future but that encounters us in the immediate present. The humility of faith has disappeared, shattered on the arrogance of activity. From this there is devised a new and no less ruinous view—an attitude that looks upon the human being as a disturber of the peace, as the one who wrecks everything, as the real parasite and disease of nature.

Wow, man in harmony with nature has become a “parasite and disease of nature.” A couple of thoughts here. (1) This is about as environmentalist as anything Pope Francis has said. We have gotten used to in the last ten years Pope Francis exhortations on environmentalism, and I admit I have tended to roll my eyes when he said it, but this from Pope Benedict is about as strong as anything I remember Pope Francis saying. I have not read Pope Francis’ encyclical on the care for environment, Laudato Si', but maybe I should. It also makes me wonder where in the magisterium concern for the environment first came.

(2) This thesis in Pope Benedict’s homily recalls to mind JRR Tolkien’s sense of the sacredness of nature. I may have to come to the conclusion that this care for the earth is more Catholic than I realized. (Side note: we’ll be returning to our recurring long term read, The Lord of the Rings right after this book unless Kerstin wants to have a short Christmas read first.)

(3) As an engineer I must push back somewhat on this antimodernist theme that has developed over recent years in certain Catholic circles. You can’t just state the bad without stating the good. What about all the modern medical developments that has saved, improved, and extended our lives? What about the release from the drudgery of hand washing clothes, modern plumbing, walking or riding a horse across the city, limited to living within a handful of miles for your whole life, inexpensive books and entertainment, and free time instead of having to work 18 hours a day six days a week even if you get Sunday off. I enjoy gardening but if I had to live as a farmer my life would be infinitely worse. In my view, and with all due respect to Popes Benedict and Francis, there has to be a balanced achieved. No we should not exploit the earth but it is unreasonable and detrimental to human flourishing to be forced to live in the manner of say someone prior to the 15th century.

Mariamoocarrot7 wrote: "The part where he discusses the modern desire of man to remove himself from nature so that it could thrive again reminded me of the Pixar movie WALL-E.

In some ways, the movie seems to send the m..."

Thank you Mariam. I've summarized Pope Benedict's thoughts in this part of the homily. Feel free to disagree with any part of my comment. I appreciate feedback.

And welcome to Catholic Thought book club. Look around our past files and get a feel for how we proceed here. If you have any questions let me know.

I think a lot of the environmental activism falls into this trap where humans are considered a blight on everything touched. At least this thought popped into my head while reading his homily. The same with certain animal right groups. I am a mommy to nine (!) rescue cats and a dog, and I care for all of the wild birds and animals visiting my yard, but I don't share this extremist view of either group. There are always bad apples, but not everyone is destructive.

So sorry this took so long! We've had some major computer issues, all now successfully resolved. I'll post the last part tomorrow.

Creation and Worship

Creation is designed in such a way that it is oriented to worship. […] Ultimately every people has known this. The creation accounts of all civilizations point to the fact that the universe exists for worship and for the glorification of God. This cultural unity with respect to the deepest human questions is something very precious. […] In these traditions there is preserved a primordial human knowledge that is open to Christ. The danger that confronts us today in our technological civilization is that we have cut ourselves off from this primordial knowledge, which serves as a guidepost and which links the great cultures, and that an increasing scientific know-how is preventing us from being aware of the fact of creation.

We can say that God created the universe in order to enter into a history of love with humankind.[…] God created the universe in order to be able to become a human being and pour out his love upon us and to invite us to love him in return.

The Sabbath Structure of Creation

In the creation account the sabbath is depicted as the day when the human being, in the freedom of worship, participates in God’s freedom, in God’s rest, and thus in God’s peace. To celebrate the sabbath means to celebrate the covenant. It means to return to the source and to sweep away all the defilement that our work has brought with it. It also means going forth into a new world in which there will no longer be slaves and masters but only free children of God – into a world in which humans and animals and the earth itself will share together as kin in God’s peace and freedom.

I mentioned how Israel suffered during the exile inasmuch as God, as it were, denied himself and took away his land, his temple, and his worship. […] What this means is that the people had rejected God’s rest, its leisure, its worship, its peace, and its freedom, and so they fell into the slavery of their activity and thereby enslaved themselves. Therefore God had to give them the sabbath that they denied themselves. In their “no” to the God-given rhythm of freedom and leisure they departed from their likeness to God and so did damage to the earth. Therefore they had to be snatched from their obstinate attachment to their own work. God had to begin afresh to make them his very own, and he had to free them from the domination of activity. Operi Dei nihil praeponatur: The worship of God, his freedom, and his rest come first. Thus and only thus can the human being truly live.

Frances wrote: " I’ve never forgotten one scientist’s reply; he said, ‘’I would ask him, are you also flawed?’’

Wow! No other question is needed.

Since Manny has pretty much covered the gist of the last part of this second homily I will move forward to the next one.