On Contending for the Credibility of Christian Resources
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
(photo: Vatican Media )
On December 31, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died at the age of 95. Hailed as the “greatest scholar to rule the church since Innocent III,” Benedict was referred to as “God’s Rottweiler” for his tenaciousness on behalf of church doctrine. There have been many obituaries of his life, but as he wrote in his first encyclical, “The lives of the saints are not limited to their earthly biographies but also include their being and working in God after death.”
Like many others, I have taken time over the last several weeks to read and sit with some of Pope Benedict’s work, including his first encyclical, which I read in full at the suggestion of CCPL board member, Chris Crawford. The encyclical focuses on “the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.” As one obituary noted, the encyclical “was on love — not only God’s love for humankind, but, surprising many readers, also sexual love between married men and women.” It takes on the argument that “Christianity had poisoned eros” made by Nietzsche and others. The claim is taken seriously. Doesn’t the “church blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator's gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine?”
The encyclical might have surprised readers for its inclusion of sexual love, but this decision seems, to me, to be at the very heart of Pope Benedict XVI’s life and papacy. The Christian claim of reality is quite extraordinary. It encompasses both highs and lows, the muck and the glory, the heavens and the earth. So, the Pope responds to Nietzsche, Christianity does not poison eros. Instead, “Christian faith…has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility.”
The Christian faith has the capacity to accompany us in love and in death. Upon his passing, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s spiritual testimony was released. It is relatively brief, and worth reading in full. I was particularly struck by this paragraph:
What I said earlier of my compatriots, I now say to all who were entrusted to my service in the Church: Stand firm in the faith! Do not be confused! Often it seems as if science - on the one hand, the natural sciences; on the other, historical research (especially the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures) - has irrefutable insights to offer that are contrary to the Catholic faith. I have witnessed from times long past the changes in natural science and have seen how apparent certainties against the faith vanished, proving themselves not to be science but philosophical interpretations only apparently belonging to science - just as, moreover, it is in dialogue with the natural sciences that faith has learned to understand the limits of the scope of its affirmations and thus its own specificity. For 60 years now, I have accompanied the path of theology, especially biblical studies, and have seen seemingly unshakeable theses collapse with the changing generations, which turned out to be mere hypotheses: the liberal generation (Harnack, Jülicher, etc.), the existentialist generation (Bultmann, etc.), the Marxist generation. I have seen, and see, how, out of the tangle of hypotheses, the reasonableness of faith has emerged and is emerging anew. Jesus Christ is truly the Way, the Truth, and the Life - and the Church, in all her shortcomings, is truly His Body.
This final exhortation does not reflect an avoidance of “science.” Indeed, the natural sciences are affirmed as helpful to understanding reality and the “specificity” of faith. But, “out of the tangle of hypotheses, the reasonableness of faith has emerged and is emerging anew.” Amen!
It makes me think of an excellent op-ed from Dr. Molly Worthen that ran in The New York Times on Christmas Eve. Here’s how the op-ed opens:
Josh Brown directs the program in neuroscience at Indiana University Bloomington. He has published dozens of articles on topics like the neural basis of decision making in the brain. He has wire-rimmed glasses and a calm, methodical way of speaking. And after almost two decades of keeping relatively quiet, he is now speaking openly about his most surprising research finding: He believes that God miraculously healed him of a brain tumor.
Zak Tebbal
Brown and his wife, Candy Gunther Brown, who is also an academic, “seek out stories of healings that are impossible to account for by natural means, based on current medical knowledge (although they believe that God mostly heals through modern medicine).” Worthen explains, “Polls suggest that about half of American scientists and three-quarters of doctors believe in a higher power. But the Browns are among the few who refuse to compartmentalize their faith — who treat God’s supernatural action as a legitimate object of research.”
Read the whole article. It’s one of the most stunning essays I’ve read in a mainstream publication in some time.
Since CCPL launched three months ago, people have asked me what it means to “contend for the credibility of Christian resources in public life.” Does it mean that we present the most palatable Christianity, a Christianity that is most likely to appeal to current sensibilities and priorities? No.
To contend for the credibility of Christian resources in public life does not mean that our mission is to make Christianity credible. Christianity, life with and for Jesus, is credible.
At CCPL, we contend for the credibility of Christian in public life resources through the proclamation and demonstration of the reality that the way of Jesus holds up in public life. The Christian faith requires no defense; it defends us. Our public life is changing, yes, but this is no cause for frantic desperation or anxious embattlement. This is a time for joyful confidence in a God who moves in and through human history, a God who so loves the world.
The credibility of the faith has emerged and is emerging anew. Take heart! Stand firm! God loves you, and you can share that love with others, in public life, for the public good.