Two decreases in tension between faith and science

Over the past two hundred years or so, one new tension point arose for the relationship between Christianity and science due to scientific progress—namely, evolution. At the same time, several tension points disappeared due two other instances of scientific progress.

The first instance of this scientific progress was the general abandonment of the Aristotelian eternal world model of the universe with Big Bang cosmology. In the middle ages, Jewish, Islamic and Christian thinkers struggled with the tension between the science/philosophy of the day strongly tending towards a universe that always existed and the theological commitment to a creation a finite amount of time ago. That problem is gone.

The second instance is our scientific understanding of the continuity of organic development from zygote to embryo to infant to adult, which has made quite implausible the old view of discontinuous transition in utero from vegetable to animal to human. This old view was the dominant scientific view of human origins until fairly recently, and it had serious tensions with Christian theology.

The first of these embryological tensions was with Christian moral views about abortion. While traditionally Christians opposed both contraception and abortion, abortion was morally seen as a form of homicide. But on the discontinuous transition view, abortion prior to human ensoulment would only be contraception.

The second embryological tension was a technical problem in Christology. Suppose that in the Incarnation we have the vegetable, mere animal and rational animal sequence. Then Aquinas observes there are two possibilities, neither of which is theologically appealing.

First, it could be that God becomes incarnate as a vegetable or a mere animal. But this seems, as Aquinas says, “unbecoming”. And he seem to be right. The Incarnation reveals to us the person of the Logos, and it would be unbecoming that the Logos become a non-personal being.

Second, it could be that the Incarnation happens only at the beginning of the third stage of development, namely once everything is ready for a rational animal. But then Aquinas says “the whole conception could not be attributed to the Son of God”. Indeed, don’t we even have a tension with the Apostles’ Creed line that Christ “was conceived by the Holy Spirit”? For on this option, Christ was not conceived at all. What was conceived was a vegetable, not Christ. (Indeed, none of us were conceived on this view.) Moreover, one might worry that then there would be a sense in which the flesh of Christ would pre-exist the Incarnation. And that makes it difficult to say that the Word became flesh—for the flesh that Scripture says he “became” would already in a sense have been there, and one can’t become this flesh, since this flesh already has its own identity. (Granted, there may well be some Aristotelian metaphysics one can do to lessen this last worry.)

Aquinas solves the problem by supposing that Christ is conceived fully formed in Mary’s womb, and hence has the rational soul from the first moment of his existence. But this solution is itself problematic. Absent gradual development from a zygote, is this conception at all? If God were to create an adult human either ex nihilo or out of some pre-existing matter, we would not consider that a conception. But neither should we then consider it a conception if God creates a fully-formed fetus, even if he does that out of the pre-existing matter of Mary. So we still have a problem with the Apostles’ creed’s “was conceived by the Holy Spirit”. Moreover, it seems that this deprives Mary of a significant chunk of her motherhood.

But the problem entirely disappears once we think that the human beings begin their existence at conception. Christ is conceived by the Holy Spirit, presumably in that Mary’s ovum is transformed into a zygote by the infinite power of the Holy Spirit, which zygote is the Christ who then grows in utero like we all do.

(Catholics also note that the new scientific understanding of human embryonic development also helps with the doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception—for only a rational being can be immaculately conceived, since original sin or freedom from it can only apply to a rational being.)

The Theotokos and personhood

Catholics and the Orthodox insist that Mary is the Theotokos—the Godbearer. The child in her womb was God.

It follows that this child she bore in her womb was a person. For the child was God by virtue of the Incarnation, and the Incarnation consists precisely of the union of two natures in one person. Moreover, the Incarnation is a process of God becoming a human being. So that person in her womb was also a human being.

Thus, the human being Jesus, while in Mary’s womb, was a person. Now, Jesus is like us in all things but sin. So, while we are in our mothers’ wombs, we already are persons.

A theory of personhood or personal identity that requires human persons to have developed human mental functioning—like Warren’s theory of personhood or Locke’s theory of personal identity—conflicts with the Catholic and Orthodox teaching on Mary the Mother of God.

Popular devotions

It is good to participate in a popular devotion because the devotion is popular (of course, this is defeasible: theological unsoundness would be a particularly important defeater). When one participates in a popular devotion because it is popular, one is thereby united in will with the community in which the devotion was popular. This is true even if the devotion involves something kitschy or a little garish, and such cases highlight the need to see the devotion from the point of view of the community which gives the devotion its life.

When the devotion is centered on a saint, that deepens the community aspect by extending it beyond death.

From this point of view, I think I can now understand the ways in which we pay respect to Mary under many appellations like "Our Lady of Czestochowa", "Our Lady of Mount Carmel" and "Our Lady of Perpetual Help." For the different appellations connect one with the different overlapping communities (ethnic, monastic, etc.) that are inspired by that aspect of our Lady's character and life. And part of the

richness of the life of a large vibrant community like the Church (or a nation, for that matter) are the overlapping smaller synchronic and diachronic communities found within it. Just as it is good to have particular friends, it is good to identify with multiple particular communities. All if this fulfills us as the social animals we are.

Thus, those Christians, especially Catholics, who focus on the horizontal aspects of the Christian life, who take the notion of community as central, should love popular devotions. (One thinks here of Fr. Andrew Greeley as an example of this love.)

Epistemic theories of the atonement

Every orthodox Christian agrees that:

1. Salvation occurs at least in part because of Christ's death on the cross.

The "at least in part" is because Christ's earlier life and subsequent resurrection no doubt play a role. It is also uncontroversial that this has something to do with atonement and sin, but there are many theories here. Epistemic theories say:

2. The explanatory connection between Christ's death on the cross and the salvation of an individual always involves the individual's epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

For instance, it may be that Christ's death expresses to the sinner the weight of the sinner's sin and seeing the free acceptance of the penalty transforms the sinner. Epistemic theories as I defined them need not hold that the epistemic encounter is the whole story. Someone could, for instance, hold that there are two essential components to atonement, one of them an epistemic component and the other a penal substitution component. Such a theorist would count as an epistemic theorist.

But there is a plausible argument against this:

3. Nobody is saved except because of Christ's death on the cross.
4. Some are saved who have no epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.
5. Hence, the explanatory connection between Christ's death on the cross and salvation does not always involve an epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

And so, it seems, epistemic theories of atonement are false.

I think (3) is a central part of Christian orthodoxy, assuming that by "nobody" we mean no human beings other than Christ (contextually restricted quantifiers!). One way to see this is to consider the debate over Mary's Immaculate Conception. The doctrine says that Mary was conceived without original sin. Probably the deepest theological objection to the doctrine has centered on arguments that the doctrine is incompatible with (3). If rejecting (3) were an option for a Christian, the defenders of the doctrine would have had ample motivation to reject (3). But they didn't—instead, they offered theories that attempted to reconcile (3) with the Immaculate Conception. It is not my point to evaluate the arguments for or against the Immaculate Conception (though of course I do accept the Immaculate Conception) but simply to note that both sides admitted that (3) is non-negotiable.

Now, it may seem that (4) directly contradicts the epistemic view (2), and hence begs the question. That's not quite right. Claim (2) is that whenever there is an explanatory connection between Christ's sacrifice and salvation, that connection is at least in part epistemically mediated. As far as that goes, this is compatible with the possibility, denied by (3), that some are saved without any such explanatory connection.

Why accept (4)? Because of the following three classes of persons:

• Jews and gentiles who were saved prior to the time of Christ.
• Those who are saved without ever hearing about Christ's death.
• Those (e.g., at least baptized infants) who are saved despite dying prior to having developed an ability to have an epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

In each of these types of cases, it certainly seems that we have (4).

I want to consider now one kind of reply. We could modify (2) by restricting the quantifiers. For instance, we could apply (2) only to those who have achieved the age of reason and positing that all who die prior to the age of reason are saved, thereby ruling out the third class of cases as offering an argument for (4). This would be an unacceptable variant of Pelagianism. The person who died in infancy would be saved not by Christ, but by natural causes—namely, the causes of death. If some who die in infancy are saved—and certainly at least those baptized people who die in infancy are saved—even they had better be saved only by Christ.

Or we could, if we were willing to bite the bullet on the case of infants in some way, restrict the quantifiers in (2) not to apply to those who died prior to Christ's death, thereby ruling out the first class of examples as offering an argument for (4). I think this, too, is a kind of Pelagianism. Moreover, consider the weirdness of supposing that an Inuit who died at 2:59 pm on Good Friday could be saved not by the cross, while an Inuit who died two minutes later needed to be saved by the cross.

Another move one might make would be to deny that, at least since the time of Christ's death, anyone is saved without ever hearing the Gospel. This is a hard-line response to my argument. For sociological reasons, I suspect this response to my argument is not going to be that popular. I suspect that most of the people who take a hard-line on those who die without hearing about Christ's death take some substitutionary sacrifice theory of the atonement. This is not because there is a good logical connection between these two views—indeed, substitutionary sacrifice theories of the atonement appear to me to be our best bet for explaining how one can be saved without expressly hearing the Gospel—but simply because the kind of tough-mindedness that inclines one to a hard-line on salvation outside the apparent boundaries of the Church is apt to incline one to a substitutionary sacrifice theory.

A different response is that a transformative epistemic encounter with the crucifixion occurs after death for those who are saved despite having died without hearing about Christ's death. Such a view would not only be committed to post-death purgation—i.e., to purgatory. That is not a problem. But it would, further, require the thesis that baptized infants who die prior to hearing about Christ's sacrifice go to purgatory, if only for an instant, and that view simply seems wrong. For one, it downplays the effects of baptism.

One might, however, suppose a miraculous epistemic encounter prior to death. God can miraculously make it possible for an infant, or even embryo, to understand the central doctrines of Christianity, whether explicitly or more vaguely. That this view posits a miracle is no objection. Salvation always involves a miracle. I do not know how plausible this way out will be for particular epistemic theorists. But I think in the end this is the only satisfactory account available to them.

So, unless one wants to posit a miraculous raising of intellectual abilities—and I do not reject this option—epistemic theories of atonement should be rejected.

But I don't think the substitutionary sacrifice theorist is off the hook either. For the above argument gives us a necessary condition for a theory of atonement: it must explain the connection between Christ's sacrifice and the salvation of an infant. If the theory is that Christ is paying the penalty for the individual's sin, then that theory will not be sufficient to account for the salvation of infants who have never committed any sins.

There are two separate issues here, I think. One is the issue of overcoming personal sin. That issue does not come up for the infant, as far as we know (I am inclined to some epistemic caution on this point). The other is the issue of attaining salvation. Many Catholic theologians have said that lack of personal sin is insufficient for salvation. A supernatural love is necessary and sufficient for salvation, a love that can only come from grace. Atonement is not only atonement for sin. It is, as its corny but apparently genuine "at-one-ment" etymology indicates, a matter of uniting us with God. While sin keeps us from union with God, union with God is not constituted by the absence of sin. It requires something more than absence of sin. And for fallen humanity, even in the case of non-sinful members such as infants, this "something" more must be held to come from the Cross. A puzzle or maybe even mystery, then, is how it is that the "something else", the supernatural agapê, comes from Christ's sacrifice. I am inclined to think that a crucial component here is that by our membership in the Body of Christ, Christ's sacrifice is our sacrifice, and the agapê of his sacrifice is our agapê.

A variant of the genetic fallacy

Consider the following argument form:

1. p is believed because of argument A.
2. If A is a good argument, then q.
3. Not q.
4. Therefore, not p.

This is a kind of cross of the genetic fallacy with a denial of the antecedent (in the conditional: If A is a good argument, then p). For example:

5. The Immaculate Conception (the doctrine that Mary was saved by grace alone in the first moment of her existence) is believed because of the argument that Jesus would be subject to original sin if Mary was.
6. But if Mary's original sin would have infected Jesus, then the original sin of Mary's parents would have infected Mary, and so on, and hence all of Mary's ancestors would need to be without original sin.
7. But not all of Mary's ancestors are without original sin.
8. Therefore, the Immaculate Conception is false.

Notice, however, that there is an argument form in the vicinity of (1)-(4) that is better. Namely, we replace (4) with:

9. Therefore, the belief that p is not justified.

However, if we do that, we need to read (1) as saying "p is only believed because of argument A". But people are not very good at figuring out the reasons why they themselves believe something, and are much worse at figuring out why others believe something (that explains why so much political discussion is heated—for it is often difficult for people to figure out why someone might take a political position that disagrees with theirs, unless that person is stupid or vicious). So if the implied epistemic agent in (1) and (9) is someone other than the person offering the argument (1)-(3),(9), the argument is likely to be unsound in step (1). I think that when the argument form is found in the wild, it is common for (1) to fail.

Furthermore, it is important to keep constant the epistemic agent constant between (1) and (9).

I think the Marian case likely screws up on all of these counts. First of all, in (5) the epistemic agent is likely some ordinary believer or at best an incautious rookie apologist. In the analogue of (9), the epistemic agent is the Church. Second, even in the case of the ordinary believer or the rookie apologist, (5) ceases to be true if we read "is believed" as "is only believed", because in fact the ordinary believer and the apologist believe in the Immaculate Conception not just on the basis of their flawed argument, but primarily on the basis of the Church's authority.

Moreover, arguments of the form (1)-(3),(9) are often annoying to the interlocutors. I remember a job interview where a candidate tried to convince me that I only rejected his or her view because of thinking about a topic under the influence of a certain other position. This bit of mind-reading not only was incorrect (I can be accused of many things, but not of that particular influence; I rejected the candidate's view cause the conjunction of its claims obviously entailed some absurd proposition that we were both committed to the denial of), but I found it annoying and a bit offensive, and the other members of the interview committee did not like it either. That was a somewhat different version of the genetic fallacy, but the genetic fallacy is generally annoying.

There are places for arguments of the form (1)-(3),(9). But when one gives such arguments, danger is all about.

It is not good for a man to be alone

Christ is in heaven, with a glorified body. Glorification does not destroy what is essentially human. A glorified body, thus, has a mouth, eyes, ears, and all that. There is more to it than that. But what normal human beings have, Christ has in heaven. But there would be something unnatural, something lacking in the glorification, if Christ had a mouth and ears, but there was no fellow human being there for him to talk to. Our bodies exist in large part for interaction with others (that our bodies are signs of our being-for-others is a central insight of John Paul II's theology of the body). A single embodied human being just does not make all that much sense.

But if there is a fellow human being in heaven for Christ to be in human communion with, then who is this fellow human being? It is right and proper to confer honor upon our parents. Thus, his mother is a very plausible candidate. There would be something unfitting about his conferring that honor on someone other than his mother, and not on his mother, given the commandment of filial devotion, unless his mother were not a disciple of his—which, the Christian tradition insists, she was. (Indeed, I think it is right to read the New Testament as presenting her as the paradigmatic disciple.)

Objection 1: This argument proves too much. For a glorified body also includes reproductive organs, and so a parallel argument would show that to live a full, glorified human life requires reproduction.

Response: Probably, reproduction is only a natural function of a human being for a limited portion of the human being's life. Moreover, there is a way in which we can transcend the physically reproductive life through spiritual reproduction—through devoting our lives in celibacy to spreading the Gospel. But some form of bodily interaction with other human beings—whether through talking or hugging or just looking in another's eyes—seems essential to a naturally fulfilling human life at just about all its mature (and maybe even immature) stages.

Objection 2: The need for bodily communion is satisfied through Christ's giving of himself to us bodily in the Eucharist.

Response: Christ's giving of himself to us in the Eucharist does not seem to make use of any of the natural faculties of his glorified body. There is a kind of natural bodily communion with others that is called for.

Objection 3: Mary survived at least some time past Christ's ascension into heaven. So if Mary is the only one assumed into heaven, for a while Christ was bodily alone in heaven, only surrounded spiritually by the souls of those he brought out of Sheol.

Response: Maybe then we have to say that more people were assumed bodily into heaven. Moses and Elijah are good candidates on Scriptural grounds. But the argument that it would unfitting for Mary not to be assumed as well if anybody is, given the special honor to be paid to parents, still remains. Or, maybe, we should say that there is nothing deeply unnatural in a human being's being alone for a while, even for a couple of years. But to be alone for a significantly greater amount of time would be unnatural.

Objection 4: Maybe time runs at a different rate in heaven, and it'll only be five minutes of heavenly time between Christ's ascension into heaven and the Last Judgment.

Response: Could be. I think such a difference in the rate of time, though, weakens the way in which Christ is in human communion with us. But I acknowledge that the different-rate hypothesis is a viable one, and hence weakens the argument.

Fittingness arguments, like the one I offer, are not meant to be conclusive. But they do increase the probability of the claim. Or, at least, the argument could help explain why it is that the doctrine of Mary's assumption is not something weird, unexpected and ad hoc, if the doctrine actually can be seen as helping to solve a genuine problem, the problem of Christ's bodily aloneness.

The deposit of faith

Consider the following objection to the Catholic faith (this is based on something I got by email): Catholicism includes a large number of detailed and substantive doctrines that do not seem to be derivable from God's revelation as completed by around the time of death of the Apostles, even though the Catholic Church herself claims that revelation was completed by around the time of death of the Apostles.

Consider, after all, something like the doctrine that Mary was free of original sin from the first moment of her conception. This is a detailed and substantive doctrine that seems to go far beyond the information given in Scripture and what we know about the faith of the first century Church from non-Scriptural sources. The objection is an incredulous stare at the possibility that such doctrines could be derived from revelation as completed by around the time of death of the Apostles. But:

1. Twenty simple axioms of Euclidean geometry generate an infinity of detailed and substantive theorems. These theorems are such that there is no prima facie way to see that they would follow from the axioms. It can take centuries and centuries for humankind to discover that they can be derived. It should, thus, be no surprise at all that we can derive from a set S of propositions new propositions that are details and substantive, and that seem to go far beyond S. This is particularly true when S is not a list of twenty axioms, but includes about 27,570 verses of the Old Testament, about 7956 verses of the New Testament, as well as decades of Apostolic preaching which Catholics think became embedded in the tradition of the Church, particularly in her liturgy.

2. Furthermore, unlike the development of geometry which is as far as we know is typically done by the unaided human intellect, the development of Catholic doctrine is claimed to be done by the human intellect guided by Holy Spirit.

3. Moreover, the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church not only contain particular doctrinal axioms from which we can derive further propositions, but contain ways of reasoning or rules of inference that embody an understanding of how God deals with the world. Prominent among these is typology. In the New Testament and the Church's liturgy, we learn that God works through parallels. The people of Israel pass through the sea; Christians pass through baptism. Adam sins and from his sin comes death; Christ conquers sin and from his conquering sin comes life. The New Testament (Luke 24:27) says that all of the Old Testament scriptures tell us about Christ. Thus there may be substantive ways of reasoning embodied in Scripture, liturgy and theological practice, ways of reasoning that include typological reasoning. These ways of reasoning are, plainly, more than just formal rules of logic. They are based, rather, on an understanding of God as acting in certain ways (maybe with certain motives), as producing a certain kind of deeply interconnected history.

And new insights might well come from this. Christ corresponds in an important way to Adam; but Mary in the Church's understanding corresponds in an important way to Eve. Just as Eve was created without sin, so, too, Mary was created without original sin. Now it is true that prima facie one might have tried different typological correspondences--one might, for instance, make Mary's being conceived in sin be parallel-by-contrast to Eve's being sinless (as Christ's raising us is parallel-by-contrast to Adam's bringing death on us). Working out a deep understanding of the typology here, and connecting it with many other aspects of Christian doctrine, is going to be difficult. It may take centuries, thus, for the Church to settle on a particular understanding, e.g., to see that the parallel between the new creation in Christ and the old creation in Adam does in fact call not just for Christ the new Adam to be without original sin, but Mary the new Eve as well, but of course with her freedom from the weight of original sin flowing from Christ's redemption, just as our Church's freedom from the weight of original sin does.

Conclusion: It should be no surprise if from a very large body of axioms, which includes substantive rules of inference, one could derive many doctrines that one is individually surprised by.