The Incarnation of the Son of God
However joyful the angelic host of the midnight hours, however contemplative the shepherds’ simple gaze of dawn, the full scope of Incarnation is only glimpsed in the noon light of the Johannine “Prologue.” God’s Word dwells in our midst, has become fully incarnate, in the life, death and transfigured humanity of the Messiah.
Incarnation, then, is a process that embraces the fullness of human existence and desires the transformation of all humanity.
Paul powerfully proclaims Incarnation’s magnitude and hope:
“The risen Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death … When all things are subjected to Christ, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15: 25, 26, 28).
This fact is a challenge to us to live Christmas everyday of the year. This is the challenge of Christianity in everything that we do. Merry Christmas (365).
A thought today on the feast of Stephen. Yesterday we celebrated the birth of Jesus, the bringer of new life and redemption. Today we find Stephen getting himself killed for believing in Jesus. The life of faith is a life that demands living with paradoxes galore. Lusting for certitude is lusting after a false god.
Of course, putting this in terms of “lusting” rather prejudices the issue from the start. Paradox and certainty are surely not contraries. The discourse that got Stephen killed (Acts 7) contains a lot of claims he seems to be making with some certitude, not least of all his exclamation at the end: “I see an opening in the sky, and the Son of Man standing at God’s right hand,” and something like this certainty surely inspired his dying prayers: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
One has Cartesian certitude about a claim when the contradiction of that claim is itself untenable. Paradox consists in holding together two of more claims whose conjunction invloves apparent contradiction. If Cartesian certitude is compatible with paradoxes, that is news indeed!
Ah, so you were talking about lusting after Cartesian certitude. As described, it certainly is not exclusively Cartesian. Contradictories can’t both be true, an element of reason whose denial would itaelf be self-contradictory. The discovery of apparent contradiction gets the intellectual and rational juices going in order to address the apparent contradiction, as, for example, by asking how can both these things, apparently contradictory, be true? We do this kind of thing all the time, and there’s nothing wrong with doing it. Scientists do it; philosophers do it; theologians do it. That all three must at times admit that they cannot resolve a paradox is laudable modesty.
Speaking of contradictions, St. Paul’s saying, “. . . so God may be all in all” has always struck me as heretical if taken literally because it seems toe to mean that all will eventually be identical with God.
Does anyone know if the problem is with the translation, perhaps an idiom that ought not to be translated literally? Or . . . ?? It makes Paul sound like some sort of pantheist.
I just reported on a thought that I had. Was it “laudably modest?” It certainly got more juices going that I expected.
Forgive me, Bernard. It must have been the holiday juices that got me going.
Holiday juices aside, I do not see that certitude (of the non-Cartesian variety) and paradox cannot co-exist in the tension of faith; as this from the “Victimae Paschali Laudes:”
Mors et vita duello Death and life have clashed
conflixere mirando: in a miraculous duel:
dux vitae mortuus, The Leader of Life is dead,
regnat vivus. yet reigns alive.
So I am in concord with Komonchak of 12/26/09 at 12:15 p.m.
No harm, Fr. Komonchak! No foul. I’m neuralgic about misplaced claims to having achieved Cartesian certitude. Such claims all too often either lead to obtuse dogmatism or perversely, provoke scornful skepticism, neither of which does much for making our faith credible to doubters or non-believers. At least, that’s my experience.
I don’t follow, Bernard. Should belief walk around with its fingers crossed, in order to avoid scandalizing doubt?
Sorry, Kathy. So far as I can tell, you’re right. You don’t follow.
A paradox is something we do not expect to be true, something contrary to our expectation. One of the many meanings of “doxa” is expectation. The ancient Stoics formulated some of their teachings as paradoxes, e.g., only the wise man is free.
Bernard, perhaps you wouldn’t mind saying more about what you mean by “obtuse dogmatism.” I suppose you don’t mean simply holding a claim to an article of faith, without simultaneously admitting the possibility that the claim is untrue. But perhaps you could spell this out.
Bernard: The juices are flowing again. Can we all stipulate that we’re not interested in “misplaced claims,” “Cartesian certitude,” “obtuse dogmatism,” and “scornful scepticism”? But at some point we might give some attention to well-placed claims to a certainty grounded in the Word of God and even expressed as dogma, that is, as Church-defining, and if that still evokes scornful scepticism, we needn’t consider that all the problem lies on our side.
Kathy, briefly. One can have Cartesian certitude that some assertion A is true if and only if the assertion not-A is logically impossible. Using Descartes’ example. I can have this certitude when I assert “Whenever I think, I exist.” The contradictory assertion is logically impossible.
When you and I assert, as we do, that there is a person, namely Jesus, who is both truly God and truly human, we cannot have Cartesian certitude because it is not logically impossible for some Jack or Jill to assert that there is no such person. On the other hand, they cannot assert with Cartesian certitude that there CANNOT be such a person. To do so they would have to know more about God than they possibly can.
Fr. Komonchak, I do appreciate that there is a quite proper use of the term ‘certain’ to describe the firm conviction that we have concerning the truths of our faith. So I do recognize the propriety of claiming that we hold these doctrines without any reservation. My main concern is that we not speak about our faith in a way that implies that those who do not share it must be either morally or intellectually at fault because of their non-belief. To imply this is, so far as I can see, to treat faith as something attainable by proper reasoning alone. My under sanding is that, should God withdraw His gift of faith, I would lose it. So I possess it always as gift and not as personal acquisition. If that understanding is wrong, I am prepared to be corrected.
Bernard: In your reply to Kathy you write: “One can have Cartesian certitude that some assertion A is true if and only if the assertion not-A is logically impossible.” I think one can be certain of something even though its contradictory is not logically impossible. E.g., I am certain that the earth revolves around the sun, but it is not logically impossible that the earth does not revolve around the sun.
And, with regard to Descartes, I incline to agree with interpreters who maintain that his famous “Cogito” argument rests upon performative self-contradiciton rather than on logical impossibility: it is a species, in other words, of the old Aristotelian tactic: “Get the sceptic to say something.”
Two points, Father. First, this is not the place to go into details about Descartes interpretation. Nonetheless, Descartes’ hyperbolic doubt does appear to be devised to find an “Archimedean” point or fulcrum which could serve to leverage one Cartesian certainty into a systematic apodictic science immune to skepticism.
Second, the revolution of the sun is an empirical matter, one which it makes little sense to doubt in the absence of any compelling empirical evidence to the contrary. But, by definition, empirical matters are all matters which are contingent and so could, logically, be otherwise.
In short, the term “Cartesian certitude” is a technical term which does have important epistemological uses. As such, I believe it is relevant to careful talk about the status of beliefs of all sorts and the quality of the evidence that supports them.
Perhaps I’m being perversely obtuse. I hope not.
My main concern is that we not speak about our faith in a way that implies that those who do not share it must be either morally or intellectually at fault because of their non-belief. To imply this is, so far as I can see, to treat faith as something attainable by proper reasoning alone. My under sanding is that, should God withdraw His gift of faith, I would lose it.
Bernard,
Well, this certainly makes sense to me, if not to anybody else. I remember a grade-school nun’s story of a man who had intellectually mastered Catholic though but did not have the gift of faith. He was alleged to have said of the Eucharist something along the lines of, “If I believed what you believe, I would fall on my face before the Eucharist and never get up.”
Over on Vox Nova, there was a harsh denunciation by someone identifying himself only as “Joe” of Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx as “a heretic, along with Kung, Rahner, Congar, et. al. Only by the grace of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit did Josef Ratzinger–a former “liberal” Catholic himself–return to orthodoxy. He knows the minds of the heterodox, and hopefully will rid our Church of this scourge. The passing of Schillebeeckx (and I refuse to call him “Father”) is proof that the Church is being renewed one funeral at a time. Hopefully, Schillebeeckx had a deathbead conversion and saved his soul.” I would assume most on dotCommonweal would want to distance themselves from this kind of “certainty.”
What strikes me as interesting about this kind of thinking is that if Schillebeeckx, who was questioned (but never disciplined or silenced) two or three times by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is a “heretic” deserving condemnation, then what are Jews, Lutherans, Anglicans, Muslims, and Buddhists? If having questionable ideas while remaining in the Church is grounds for thunderous condemnation, what about those who — explicitly or implicity — reject Catholicism altogether? Are they rejecting “sure and certain truths”?
Mr. Nichol: Please see my stipulation above. Anyone of us can conjure up or cite examples of obtuse dogmatism or, as you call it, “this kind of ‘certainty.’” Yes, they exist. But is this all that can be said on the subject of certainty?
Truths are “sure and certain” in minds that are “sure and certain” about them. To cite Bernard Lonergan, truth is not so objective that it doesn’t need to reside in minds.
Bernard: The truth of “the incarnation of the Son of God,” the theme of this thread, is also contingent and therefore not logically necessary. The gift of faith is not something prior to one’s believing; one’s believing is the gift of faith, which ceases to exist should one cease to believe. It’s not a matter of God’s withdrawing something, which then causes one to cease to exist.
Please see my stipulation above. Anyone of us can conjure up or cite examples of obtuse dogmatism or, as you call it, “this kind of ‘certainty.’” Yes, they exist. But is this all that can be said on the subject of certainty?
Fr. Komonchak,
I muddled my message by dragging in the comments about Fr. Schillebeeckx. Briefly, what is “sure and certain” to Catholics is often rejected by Jews, Muslims, Lutherans, Anglicans, Buddhists, and so on. Are they to be regarded as rejecting what is “sure and certain”? And what does it mean to speak of faith as a gift? Is it offered to all and rejected by those who do not have it? And what about certainty that must be at least modified to be credible in present times? Wasn’t the story of Adam and Eve taken to be literal truth within the Catholic Church until quite recently? (And even now it seems the Catholic position is that there existed a man and woman who were the parents of the human race.) How is certainty affected when the belief in the story of Adam and Eve switches from a belief in literal truth to a belief in truth conveyed in figurative language?
Father, thanks for the clarification concerning the gift of faith. Concerning your citation of Lonergan (whose work I do not know) I’d want to make several distinctions. What you cite is compatible with what I’ve said on my two postings earlier today. Or so it seems to me.
Mr. Nichol: Your first question seems to question whether some people may reject what other people regard as “sure and certain.” I don’t know why this should be considered odd. I suspect it happens every day, with respect to countless questions. One often sees to happen on this blog.
Your second question seems to set up this sequence: God, his desire to give the gift of faith, his giving this gift, its rejection by those who don’t believe, its acceptance by those who do, the believing of the last-named. In response, a couple of things. God “wants all men to be saved and to come to know the truth. And the truth is this: ‘God is one. One also is the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all’” (1 Tim 2:4-5). The ordinary means by which people come to know this truth is by the preaching of the Gospel. The great majority of human beings who have ever lived and who are living now have not had the Gospel preached to them, and so could hardly be considered to have rejected faith in it. Of those who have heard the Gospel (even when announced by Jesus himself!), some have come to believe and some have not. The believing of the former, like all other things good and beautiful, is the gift of God. The principal cause of that believing, of faith, St. Thomas said, is the inner impulse of the Holy Spirit. If someone so moved by the Spirit were not to follow and respond to that movement, their not believing could very well be guilty.
Your third question seems to question whether certainty is possible if it needs to be modified in order to be made credible in other times. This seems to imply that one cannot be certain about something that one later discovers to be false. I think this often happens. I could make a judgement I regard as sure and certain only to discover later that there were other data to be considered, or a better explanation to be offered of the same data, and then one could become sure and certain that one had been mistaken. In other words, as I understand the word, certainty is a quality that attends judgements, and judgements reside in minds. It is not a quality of the object believed, or of the proposition, as you seem to be taking it. (One can be certain, for example, about a probability, e.g., that something will probably happen.)
In other words, as I understand the word, certainty is a quality that attends judgements, and judgements reside in minds. It is not a quality of the object believed, or of the proposition, as you seem to be taking it.
Merriam-Webster gives two meanings for certainty:
1 : something that is certain
2 : the quality or state of being certain especially on the basis of evidence
There are many meanings for certain, but one of them is
3 b : known or proved to be true : indisputable
So I would say based on those two definitions that when something is called a certainty, the statement is being made about the thing itself, and not about a judgment we make about it. In a sentence like, “The Catholic Church is one of the few institutions in the modern world which speaks of certain truth and absolute right,” I would say that what is described as certain is the truth the Catholic Church teaches. The truth itself — not an individual who holds it to be true — is certain. So when Msgr. George A Kelly said, “The Catholic Church is one of the few institutions in the modern world which speaks of certain truth and absolute right,” he was asserting what I am discussing here — that the Catholic Church claims to know the Truth by which not just Catholics must live, but by which everyone must live, and anyone who disagrees (say, on same-sex marriage, or stem-cell research) is simply and objectively wrong. Period.
So when I said, “Briefly, what is ‘sure and certain’ to Catholics is often rejected by Jews, Muslims, Lutherans, Anglicans, Buddhists, and so on,” I was not describing the feeling of certainty experienced by the Catholics. I was referring to the claims of the Church that some things are indisputably true, some things are indisputably wrong, and it is the right of the Church and individual Catholics to act accordingly.
I have a question that has arisen because of something I read looking through By What Authority? by Richard R. Gaillardetz for clarification of these issues. He says, “What the doctrine of infallibility promises us is that the Church will never be in error in matters pertaining to our salvation [emphasis in the original]. This seems to me quite different from the usual statement about infallibility in “faith and morals.” Something like the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven (or some precise explanation of exactly what that means) could reasonably be within the realm of “faith and morals,” but exactly how it would be a matter pertaining to salvation I am not so sure. Whether or not there were to individuals who are the parents of the human race likewise would be within the realm of “faith and morals,” but it would not seem to me to be a matter essential to salvation, even granting that there is a profound truth revealed in the story of the disobedience of Adam and Eve. It would be the truth that was important, not the story that conveyed the truth. This formulation of infallibility seems to me to be much more modest than what I was taught.
If I say that something is a certainty, I am saying that I am certain about it. So even in this case, the objective reference derives from the subjective reference. If I say, “That Australia is an island is a certain truth (to use Kelly’s phrase),” this means that I have no doubt in making that judgement. If I make that judgement, and you deny it, your judgement implies that mine is “simply and objectively wrong. Period,” and mine implies the same thing about yours: it is “simply and objectively wrong. Period.” All of us live our lives on the basis of lots of certain truths, that is, things we are certain about. To be certain about things is hardly a monopoly of the Catholic Church, pace George Kelly.
I have never seen Richard Gaillardetz’s rephrasing of the more usual “matters of faith and morals” as “matters pertaining to our salvation.” Both of these phrases are far too broad as stated, and need to be specified, not least of all by taking into account the other conditions for infallible exercises of the teaching office.
May I jump in just one more time to comment on Fr. Komonchak’s remarks. That does not imply that I either accept or deny what David Nikol says. Three points.
1. Fr. Komonchak says that we can have “sure and certain” beliefs that turn out to be wrong. Apparently the phrase “sure and certain” refers to a person’s subjective state of mind. I have no quarrel with this usage, but this is not the meaning of Cartesian certitude. This latter kind of certitude refers to objective evidence which is in principle available to every person capable of thought, evidence that is complete and irreformalbe, evidence that it would be irrational to deny.
2. Fr. Komonchak also says that certainty in his sense can be a characteristic of some judgments, not of “of the object believed or of the proposition.” At least since Frege, the question of the relationships among judgments, states of mind, propositions, and expressions of propositions in the words of some particular language has bee hotly debated. I don’t have a comprehensive position on all the parts of this complex question.
3. When talking about our faith, it is useful to recall both the distinction and the connection between (a) BELIEVING IN (i.e., having trust in, relying upon, etc.) someone, and (b) BELIEVING THAT something is the case.
I can sensibly believe in someone, e.g., my wife, even though I am ignorant of or mistaken about some things about her, e. g., whether her lungs are healthy, whether she wants a new coat, etc. But I can’t sensibly BELIEVE IN her unless I BELIEVE THAT she exists, is a person, cares about what happens to me, etc.
There are, of course, important differences between BELIEVING IN a human person and BELIEVING IN the Triune God, as well as differences between the relevant sorts of BELIEFS ABOUT them. But the analogy does hold.
Finally, thanks to all these comments, I’ve learned some things. I thank all of you.
Bernard: A threefold distinction developed in the theology of faith, expressed in Latin thus: Credere Deo; credere Deum; credere in Deum. The first of these means believing God in the sense of trusting God; the second means believing things about God, e.g., that God exists, is Three-in-One, etc.; the third refers to believing as a movement towards God, a usage that we don’t seem to have in English.
Thanks, Father. I have to confess that I did not know of “credere in Deum.” Though I don’t understand it, I hope to find out what it means.