Darwin as a Church Father – Part 3: Thomas Aquinas (Conversations with Darwin Book 9)

Speaking the Truth in Love

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To make Darwin look like a crude proponent of eugenics, Prof. Both are ethical transcendentalists of a Kantian variety who assert that human morality shows the ability of human beings as rational creatures to transcend their nature.

Both assert a radical dichotomy between natural facts and moral values. Wiker asserts, however, that any notion of God as Creator is incompatible with Darwinian evolution, but he does not explain why this must be so. Wiker implying that God was unable or unwilling to create a fully gifted universe at the beginning that could unfold naturally without any gaps requiring miraculous interventions later?

Like Augustine, I find such a literal reading of Genesis 1 to be absurd.

It can hardly be surprising that Darwin was a racist, given the prevalent views of his contemporaries. To contextualize his racism is, of course, not to excuse it, but it is not impossible to separate his scientific ideas from his prejudices. One can appreciate his ingenious ideas of modification by descent and natural selection without agreeing with his misapplication of those ideas to humankind. Rather than impugning the theory of evolution per se, these passages stand as a stark reminder to the scientist to confine his or her theorizing to matters empirical.

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Darwin is right, however, to observe that past societies have permitted behaviors that now seem shockingly immoral, such as infanticide. In this vein, I am stimulated by Edward T. Allow me first to say how pleased I am to have received such well-articulated responses to my article. Therefore, human reason, as a distinctly evolved trait, is distinct only per accidens.

Even more distressing for Prof. Thomas in his account of natural law? Darwin was quite clear: First, it contradicts the essentially non-teleological nature of his more fundamental principle of natural selection. On evolutionary grounds, natural selection has no goals, and that includes no moral goals. Second, since natural selection is the fundamental principle, on Darwinian grounds, if sympathy happens to develop by natural selection, and the expression of sympathy contradicts the better survival of the group, then so much the worse for sympathy. Third, the embrace of sympathy as the moral principle is opposed to the natural law anyway.

Sympathy is rooted in the capacities to feel pleasure or pain, and to recognize them in others. As Darwin points out, the capacities for pleasure, pain, and sympathy are not distinctly human. At least the following two. In regard to human beings alone, sympathy is a loose cannon on a very large deck. The feeling of sympathy could just as easily bring someone to become an escort at an abortion clinic as it could bring someone to pray outside that same clinic; sympathy could just as surely lead someone to affirm homosexual marriages as to deny them; sympathy could just as quickly lead to the conclusions of the euthanasia movement as to the anti-euthanasia movement.

Unlike the natural law, sympathy is morally protean. Even worse, the elevation of sympathy and its extension to animals means that other animals must be weighed in the moral balance with human beings. If intrinsic, then Darwin was rightly tarred; if extrinsic, I treated him unfairly. The case of Darwin is clearly different. The racism is intrinsic to his account of natural selection, and that is why it arises in his application of natural selection to human races in the Descent of Man.

Since, according to Darwin, the races themselves have arisen through natural selection, and further, since both intelligence and moral capacity are variable heritable traits, then Darwin rightly concludes different races will have different intellectual and moral capacities. If I were a Darwinist, I could not think otherwise, however unpalatable for current tastes.

Indeed, I believe that the presence of equivalent intelligence and moral capacities spread equally among all the races is a proof against Darwinism and for natural law, for natural selection could never have spread such capacities so uniformly. Thus, I am not a racist, because I am not a Darwinist. If a Darwinist is not a racist, then he will have to come up with a very good reason for the remarkable convergence of human intelligence and moral capacity among races so long isolated and evolving.

In almost every regard Thomas G. As the author shows, such a theology, far from establishing a solidarity between God and the human race, only represents the triumph of that kind of lachrymose sentimentality that has unleashed such havoc on theology and preaching for at least two centuries now. However, Father Weinandy has unfortunately ignored one problem lurking within the tradition that must be addressed if the deleterious effects of this trend are to be avoided.

In other words, although God is pure act, He has at least this potential: This dilemma led Gottfried Leibniz into some notorious antinomies. For that reason the question of act and potentiality inside the Godhead needs reexamining, a project that the greatest theologians of the twentieth century have not shirked from undertaking. Again, for that same reason Fr. For what von Balthasar has done in his own reflections and proposals on this knotty issue is to take seriously the dilemmas bequeathed by the tradition.

Thus, although I agree with most of Fr. No doubt the space of his article forbade an extended treatment of these giants, but his book-length monograph managed to dismiss both these men in a footnote and in the same footnote to boot! In fact, however, or at least in my opinion, Barth and Balthasar represent a confrontation with the tradition that has to be addressed if Fr.

Weinandy is to succeed in challenging, and eventually undermining, the idea of a passible God. Readers who wish to pursue these issues in Balthasar at a technical level should read G. I was shocked to read Thomas G. Fairbairn and Bertrand B. It is hard for me to understand such an omission in any article that deals with theopaschism.

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I am pleased that Father Edward T. I wish I were as confident about the effectiveness of my book in bringing about such a welcomed end. But his confidence does give me hope! My lack of attention to such an issue may be problematic, as Fr. Oakes insists, but it is not an issue that I was aware of at the time of writing my book, and even if I had been, I would not have treated it.

My book is simply not concerned about the issues Fr. It seems to me that it is a topic for a book that he should write and not a topic for a book that I should have written. More to the point, Fr. Oakes believes that I should have given, in the light of the issues he raises, more attention to Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Again, there is some truth to this. Nonetheless, sorting out Barth and von Balthasar on the impassibility and passibility of God in relationship to human suffering would entail, again, another major study. I note where such studies can already be found.

Oakes should be happy that I at least lumped them together in one, though quite long, footnote. Moreover, returning to Fr. Thus, while he examines in some detail, often quite critically and insightfully, much of the contemporary writing on the subject of a suffering God, one is left frustratingly ambivalent about his own unresolved and so, for the most part, unarticulated position.

Cyril did insist against Nestorius, and rightly so, that, because of his incarnate state, the Son of God, who is truly God, really did suffer, but he equally insisted that the Son of God did not suffer as God but as man. Nonetheless, within this understanding Cyril was a theopaschite. This I stated in my article as well as in my book. Damian means that Cyril, in insisting that it was truly the Son of God who suffered, was the first to treat the issue of theopaschism, this is true in the sense that he provided the most mature expression and resolution to this issue within patristic Christology.

His statement merits great interest and respect. Those two words have never, to my knowledge, been used to insist upon Christian self-denigration. I would be curious to know one reference he could cite to make such a statement stick. This does not negate the need of coming together that Fr. Neuhaus wishes to advance. But such crudities do not alleviate inherited suspicions. Richard John Neuhaus tends to minimize the differences between Jewish and Christian religious thought, even to the extent that he seems to deny that we are dealing with two distinct religions.

Although this is still a minority view, it is nevertheless eagerly pursued by some Christian authors, though utterly rejected by the vast majority of Jewish writers. Father Neuhaus seems to believe that since Jesus was born into a Jewish family he remained Jewish in thought. I reject this idea because people can see the errors of their previous ways, repent, and become better persons for it thereafter.

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He saw himself as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy therefore salvation is of the Jews, rather than the Samaritans and as a messenger of universal truth. He openly confronted the hypocrisy of the then ruling classes of the Jewish religion and this is why he was killed. He was neither a Pharisee nor a patriotic Zealot as some authors would now want to have it, because his kingdom was not of this world. The idea that Christianity still needs Judaism and that it would disappear if, for some reason or other, Judaism no longer existed also seems flawed.

Although this need was present in the first three centuries of our era, the reasoning is no longer valid. On the contrary, one could argue that the persistence of Judaism is actually due to the Christian religion, which kept the Hebrew Bible alive and dispersed it far and wide.

The prophet Muhammad also accepted the validity of Hebrew scriptures, and I believe that no one would say today that the Muslim religion would disappear if some Arabs succeeded in eliminating Jews the world over. To believe, as so many do, that genuine dialogue can occur without honest discussion of theological differences is patently absurd. Yet there is one glaring omission from his article and from the Jewish-Christian dialogue in general.

That remnant is alive and well at this present time too, though often ignored by the Church and despised by Jewish community leaders. There are tens of thousands of Jews here in the United States and all around the world who embrace Jesus as their Messiah and continue to live as Jews. We are a growing number who long for a place at the table. I once pleaded with a friend who is a Christian leader in the dialogue to include Jewish believers in Jesus in his plans for an upcoming meeting. I contend that by ignoring us both sides are happily avoiding the crux of the theological debate, thereby obviating the genuineness of the dialogue.

If it is true, as Fr. Neuhaus says, that there is no plural to the people of God, why insist on excluding us? Jewish believers in Jesus stand as a bridge community between the two faith traditions. Just to read the Gospel according to St. You begin with the claims, you begin with what is taught, you begin with what is said, you begin with what is shown, and then you think about it, and you test it, and then you come to the conclusion whether or not you want to believe it.

But then when you do believe it, the claim is that you enter into an area where your faith convictions can also then be tested relative to knowledge. So if you would read the gospel of St. But what is interesting is that in the same Gospel according to St. Because we could also put into our reflection today not only faith and reason but love. To believe, to know, and to love. Those are package plans.

According to Christian theology, they cannot be separated. First of all, belief, faith. The scientists call us to believe certain things, but they also call us to believe certain things on the basis of what they present to us as knowledge. Do you believe in the theory of evolution? Do you believe in quantum physics? Do you believe in the theory of relativity of Einstein? And you can even ask: Do you believe that the creation as we know it is billions of years old and not simply between six and ten thousand years old?

On the planet earth it even is contrary to common sense, because of our limited experience of time and space. I know that it sounds unreasonable that parallel lines could meet somewhere, that space is curved, that something can weigh a different amount on a planet earth or on some other planet in the galaxy. I know that seems contrary to knowledge, but stick with me.

So many scientists would say: He seemed even to have trouble with what he himself was seeing. He got sick to his stomach, he threw up every day, he felt like a man committing murder. So then he wrote it all up and asked you to read it. But did he ask you to read it and simply to believe it? Well, on one level, he did. He also invites us to see for ourselves. He also invites us to look at the evidence. I would claim that I know it. I have such certitude because of the data that I have studied and all the phenomena that I have experienced, I can even say that I know this.

I make an act of faith in this data, this testimony. Augustine would almost use an argument like some modern scientists. I have no reason to believe that these apostles were lying. I have no reason to believe that the Scripture is a hoax. It seems to be written by very respectable, reputable, intelligent people who were willing to die for what they believed, or to suffer for it, just like Copernicus and Galileo and Darwin and Teilhard de Chardin suffered, sometimes even from religious institutions, sometimes from scientific institutions—and by the way, it goes back and forth.

There was a time when the religious institutions were persecuting the scientists. In the old days, it was the scientists who would get thrown out of the university. So you could make a case: According to Christian theology, you certainly cannot know Christ and God unless you love them.

You cannot know your neighbor unless you love them. So love is an element here also. But, sticking now to faith and knowledge, everyone who would invite someone to believe something, in some sense is inviting them to test it and to come to know for themselves, so that then they can make their testimony on the basis of their own empirical experience and not simply on the basis of what someone else says.

We Christian people—certainly I as a priest and theologian—would say to any person: Your faith has to be your own at some point. Then you have to come to say: So, for example, in St. Can you spread a table in the wilderness? So the people followed Jesus. He goes into the wilderness, and he feeds them with what is called the miraculous multiplication of loaves. Again, the scholars would tell us that probably the reason for this is that one was done in Gentile territory, one was done in Judaic territory.

The twelve baskets was Judaic territory; the seven baskets was Gentile territory, and that Jesus had to show that he was the Messiah of the Jews and the Gentiles, who were brought into the covenant; and that basically he would give the bread and feed the people—and then launch into the theological discourse about he himself being the bread of life, and then moving from their physical experience—eating bread in the wilderness, eating fish—to coming to the food and drink that lasts forever that he himself is as the bread of life.

You find the same kind of dynamic in the conversation with the Samaritan woman. They start talking about physical water, drinking water, and he ends up speaking about the living water and everlasting life. Or with the man born blind. But then Jesus leads him further, beyond the physical, into the metaphysical, into the theological, and into the realm of God.

They have to decide for themselves. Am I going to believe the theory of evolution or not? Am I going to believe the Christian faith and the Gospel or not? Of course, this leads to the Christian understanding of the holy Eucharist, which is an empirical thing. Christians participate in the Eucharist and believe and even know that they are eating and drinking the very body and blood of Christ when they eat that particular bread and drink that particular cup.

But the point I want to get to now is: Who can listen to it? Who can possibly believe it? Who can accept it? Who can stomach it? Who can stomach the teaching of the Gospel? What could be sweet to the mouth but sour to the stomach or something. Who can heed it? Who can take it? Can you listen to what I am saying? And the vision of reality that my studies have led me to come to are exactly this.

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Are you scandalized by them? Then what if you were to see? What happens if you see me being wrapped up and taken up into the depth of God? They would experience that reality. That would be the point here. No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father. After this, many of his disciples drew back and no longer went around with him, no longer followed him. And then they left, his disciples, and disciples means students, by the way. But then it continues. You have the words of eternal life. We have believed believed and have come to know.

And that shows the process. That shows the process. You have to first believe, and then you come to know. However, that first belief is itself not without knowledge, because what are you asked to believe? Once you believe it, then you come to know it. It goes around together. Tom Hopko is not God. He is not the Son of God. And so from the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

But when you know , you know on the basis of experience, but then knowledge could be just simply—how can you say—practical or abstract, but wisdom is when you have the deeper insight, when you see beyond what the data itself is simply capable of giving in and of itself, where you draw the conclusions on the basis of your own reason and your own experience and your own knowledge and your own faith, into a realm that is beyond what we call nowadays the knowledge of the natural world—trees and plants and worms and animals and even human beings.

So he speaks about knowledge and wisdom and understanding. So you have this right from the beginning here in Colossians that it is the knowledge. Because if a person is vain or proud or greedy or power-hungry, they will never know the truth, and they will even screw up scientific knowledge.

This is as true about science as it is about theology. So you have to be a kind of an honest person, a pure person, a sober person—you could even say a loving person, in order to come to a knowledge of the truth. This is what we have to have, but the claim would be: Here also we could say: He was trying to speak about the relationship between the two, the relationship between what is reasonable and what is belief.

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