St. Justin Martyr, a second century philosopher and Christian apologist, once reflected that Platonic philosophy added “wings” to his mind.¹ He was referring to the way that Plato’s theory of ideas freed his reason, allowing his thoughts to rest not just upon the sensible things of this earth, but rather permitting him to contemplate the unseen yet essential realities that undergird and give meaning to all of existence.

Justin is a witness to the way that truth can lift our minds and let us soar to the heights of wisdom. However, according to Pope Benedict XVI, the prevailing approach to truth today resembles a windowless bunker more than it does the freedom of a bird soaring in open skies.²

We are an intellectually one-sided society. While we pride ourselves (and rightly so) on the great achievements we have made in the fields of science, especially the trifecta of biology, physics, and chemistry, we have forgotten what St. Justin Martyr and other great thinkers like St. Augustine knew so well and found so life-giving: truth is much broader, deeper, higher, and richer than mere scientific fact.

Today we are guilty of thinking that the highest form of truth is data. This mentality is evident in our informal conversations and can be especially found in the works of the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, who, for example, reduces the intellectually fruitful idea of human love to a chemically-induced brain state.³

We are more dedicated to dividing things into their smallest quantifiable units than with learning what they mean as a whole.

This is the bunker into which we have put ourselves, a myopic view of human reason that considers scientific certainty and practicality alone to be worthwhile and valid, while all other modes of thought, like philosophy and theology, are considered to be ambiguous and inconclusive enough that it is better not to waste time with them anyway.

Our understanding of reason’s scope is severely limited. We have a concrete roof over our heads that prevents our minds from rising to contemplation of God, and at the same time the walls of our bunker shield us from the deeper questions of meaning that constantly assault our consciousnesses, justly demanding our attention. But how did we get into this intellectually intolerant, close-minded bunker mentality? And, more importantly, how do we get out?

How We Got into the Bunker

Probably one of the single most significant intellectual events of human history was the 18^th century Enlightenment, which brought about a number of exciting advances in the technological fields and opened up broad new avenues of scientific exploration. But the Enlightenment was also the point at which human thought began taking decisive steps down the stairway which leads to the bunker of reason that we live in today.

Especially under the influence of Rene Descartes, thinkers like David Hume and, later, Auguste Comte, declared the age of “speculative thought” (metaphysics and theology) at an end; they considered themselves the harbingers of a new age of the primacy of science. Science, they said, was at last gaining the competency to adjudicate moral matters and provide direction for man’s true purpose: the mastery of nature and of himself. Each of these three thinkers represents a step further down into the bunker of restrictive reason in which we live today.

Descartes’ rationalism is a constitutive piece of Enlightenment thought and is one of the first steps into today’s bunker of reason. He advocated the “practical philosophy” of math and science with the aim of making men “lords and masters of nature”.⁴ Descartes prized the role of human thought more in its capacity for making than for meaning.

Then, in a philosophical move sometimes known as “Hume’s fork”, Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume took human thought on a second step into the bunker of reason when he argued that all the objects of human reason or enquiry can be divided into two kinds, “Relations of Ideas” and “Matters of Fact”. The former category contains the sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic. The latter category contains synthetic propositions based on experiences to which one is accustomed, such as, “The sun will rise tomorrow.”

However, all Matters of Fact are dependent upon relationships between cause and effect, and Hume holds the skeptical position that there is no real logical necessity that certain observed effects will always come from associated causes. Therefore, according to Hume, there is in fact no real way of knowing anything other than the first category of reason, the sciences.⁵ Hume is one of the founding fathers of empiricism, an approach to human reason that says that truth can only be found when there is empirical (sensible) evidence to apprehend.

Aided by the growing influence of the intellectual trends of the Enlightenment, a third and decisive step into the bunker of reason was taken by the 19^th century French thinker, Auguste Comte. Comte proposed what he called “positive philosophy”, an approach to reason which recognizes as truthful only those pieces of knowledge that are positive facts. For Comte, logic is the sole vessel of truth.

Comte claimed that the history of human thought moves through three general states. First, there is the theological state, then the metaphysical, and finally the positive state. It is only in the third state that humans can actually be said to have knowledge and get at the truth.⁶ Theological and metaphysical ideas belong to an age when humans didn’t know any better and basically made up ideas about the universe since they were without the aid of science.

According to Comte, theology is the innocent but ignorant childhood of the human mind, while metaphysics represents the slightly more serious—though no less empty—youth of human thought. And the positivistic approach to reason is, of course, adulthood, human reason come to full stature. Comte concludes, “All competent thinkers agree with [Francis] Bacon that there can be no real knowledge except that which rests upon observed facts.”⁷

With this succession of thinkers, human thought has been gradually narrowed down such that it consists only of science and logic when it once was directed to responding to questions of ultimate meaning. We have entered the bunker of empirical fact and slammed the door shut behind us, sealing ourselves off from thoughts of heaven and from any type of rationally inquiry that does not yield factually certain results.

How We Can Get Out of the Bunker

The first step necessary for getting out of the bunker of restrictive reason is to realize how the thinkers who got us in here are wrong.

Therefore, when looking at the conclusions of the rationalists, skeptics, empiricists, and positivists, we should ask: is this really the great achievement of human reason—that it is no longer concerned with anything but dry facts? Can science really answer all of man’s exigent questions? Are all non-scientific questions ultimately meaningless or unanswerable?

In truth, the life of every man and woman is marked by questions and challenges that are deeper and of far greater significance than practical questions of science and math. Questions about the meaning of death, love, and the existence of God are part of the heritage of human thought not because pre-historical humans did not have modern scientific tools but because these questions belong to human nature and thus stretch across the boundaries of time.⁸

By emphasizing practical thought over reflective thought, Descartes and his successors displaced certain important human questions. For example, the meaning of death used to be an important point of reflection for humans, but today death is often just thought of as a biological fact. Yet, those who are committed to intelligent, contemplative thought about human existence cannot let such a significant reality be swept aside so easily. After all, death is not just a biological phenomenon irrelevant to human meaning but is, in the words of Pope Benedict, a “human phenomenon of all embracing-profundity.”⁹

Death raises questions of human purpose: Why must we die? Does anything happen after death? How do I interpret the death of a loved one? These questions occupy our thoughts; they define our relationships with others, the scope of our plans, our sense of meaning in life, and thus our very existences. So to offhandedly reject death’s philosophical and theological relevance as we often do today is intellectually reprehensible.

Hume and Comte put all their trust in empirical data and the pure objectivity of the rational subject, but one must have pre-scientific notions of truth before one can trust empirical facts. G.K. Chesterton writes, “Reason is itself a matter of faith.”¹⁰ That is, I only trust that empirical facts are true because I believe that I am capable of knowing the truth. This conclusion is not scientific but philosophical. So there is a priority of philosophical—even creedal—truth over empirical fact. The former precedes the latter and cannot be blithely ignored.

Philosophy must ground science and oversee it, or else science becomes detached from questions of meaning and its own purpose. The reflective question, “What is truth?”—and all that comes with answering it—is deeper than the fields of biology, physics, and chemistry, since our work in those scientific fields must be grounded in our understanding of truth and the meaning of our endeavors.

How many of us today spend any amount of time considering the attainability of truth and other questions of meaning? Perhaps we remain in the bunker of safe, certain, scientific reason and neglect such questions simply because they are hard to resolve. Or perhaps it is because modern technological means can provide us with thousands of answers to these questions. And the plurality of available answers is almost overwhelming enough to cause one to believe that there simply are no answers and that he or she must choose a path arbitrarily or ignore questions of meaning entirely. We sometimes think, “If no one can agree on it, there must be no good answer.”

However, when tempted by this intellectual apathy, perhaps we can learn from St. Justin Martyr, who not only found liberation in discovering answers to many of his questions but was pushed to seek for truths even deeper than Platonic philosophy. And he eventually found them.

In Laudato Si, Pope Francis shows us how we can begin to follow the path of St. Justin and free our minds from the bunker of restrictive scientific reason. He writes that we must refuse to resign ourselves to the dull, calculative approach to the world that prevails today and must instead “continue to wonder about the purpose and meaning of everything.”¹¹ To be really human is to wonder at the meaning of our lives and the beauty and tragedy that surrounds us. Wonder bursts the prison of calculative reason and sets before us the exhilarating questions of human existence: “Who am I?” “Why do I exist?” “Where am I going?”

This blog post is not the place to offer answers to man’s great questions of meaning, but it is the place for me to urge you not to believe the lie that there are no answers to be found. These questions don’t belong to just a certain body of “intellectuals” but to every man and woman. So let’s allow ourselves to be awash in wonder at everything that is incalculable in human life and reclaim the place of reflective thought. Let us together step out of the bunker of restrictive reason and into the light of day, stretch our wings, wonder, seek, and find.
 
 
(Image credit: Inhabitat.com)

Ridley Scott’s The Martian is a splendidly told tale of survival and pluck, reminiscent of the novel Robinson Crusoe and the films Life of Pi and Castaway. In this case, the hero is Mark Watney, an astronaut on a mission to Mars who is left behind by his crewmates when he is presumed dead after being lost during a devastating storm. Through sheer determination and an extraordinary application of his scientific know-how, Watney manages to survive. For example, realizing that his food supplies would run out long before a rescue mission could ever reach him, he endeavors to produce water and, through some creative fertilizing, grow an impressive crop of potatoes. At another critical juncture in the narrative, as his life hangs in the balance, Watney says, “I’ll just have to science the s*** out of this!”

In time, NASA officials, through a careful observation of surveillance photos, realize that Watney is still alive and they attempt to contact him. Some of the most thrilling and emotionally moving scenes in the film have to do with these initial communications across tens of millions of miles. Eventually, the crew who left him behind discover that he is alive and they contrive, with all of their strength and intelligence, to get him back. The film ends (spoiler alert!), with the now somewhat grizzled Watney back on earth, lecturing a class of prospective astronauts on the indispensability of practical scientific intelligence: “You solve one problem and then another and then another; and if you solve enough of them, you get to come home.” This summary speech communicates what appears to be the central theme of the movie: the beauty and power of the technical knowledge the sciences provide.

But I would like to explore another theme that is implicit throughout the film, namely, the inviolable dignity of the individual human being. The circumstances are certainly unique and Watney himself is undoubtedly an impressive person, but it remains nevertheless strange that people would move heaven and earth, spend millions of dollars, and in the case of the original crew, risk their lives in order to rescue this one man. If a clever, friendly, and exquisitely trained dog had been left behind on Mars, everyone would have felt bad, but no one, I think it’s fair to say, would have endeavored to go back for it. Now why is this the case? Much hinges upon how one answers that question.

The classical Christian tradition, with its roots in the Bible, would argue that there is a qualitative and not merely quantitative difference between human beings and other animals, that a human being is decidedly notsimply an extremely clever ape. Unlike anything else in the material creation, we have been made, the Scriptures hold, according to God’s image and likeness, and this imaging has been construed by most of the masters of the theological tradition as a function of our properly spiritual capacities of mind and will.

With The Martian in mind, let me focus on the first of these. Like other animals, humans can take in the material world through sense experience, and they can hold those images in memory. But unlike any other animal, even the most intelligent, humans can engage in properly abstract thinking. In other words, they can think, not only about this or that particular state of affairs, but about fundamental patterns—what the medieval called “forms”—that make things what they are. The sciences—both theoretical and practical—depend upon and flow from precisely this kind of cogitation. But truly abstract thinking, which goes beyond any particularity grounded in matter, demonstrates that the principle of such reflection is not reducible to matter, that it has an immaterial or spiritual quality. And this implies that the mind or the soul survives the dissolution of the body, that it links us to the dimension of God. Plato showed this in a simple but compelling manner. When the mind entertains an abstract truth, say that 2 + 3 = 5, it has in a very real way left behind the world of shifting impressions and evanescent memories; it has, to use his still haunting metaphor, slipped free of the cave and entered a realm of light. And this explains why the very science so celebrated by The Martian is also the solution to the moral puzzle at the heart of the film. We will go to the ends of the universe to save an endangered person, precisely because we realize, inchoately or otherwise, that there is something uniquely precious about him or her. We know in our bones that in regard to a human being something eternal is at stake.

In the context of what Pope Francis has called our “throwaway culture,” where the individual human being is often treated as a means to an end, or worse, as an embarrassment or an annoyance to be disposed of, this is a lesson worth relearning.

Pope Francis just landed yesterday in America, and today he's being welcomed at the White House. Much of the country has turned its attention to his visit.

Whatever you might think of the Pope Francis, it’s hard to deny the fact that people are listening to him; if not his words, certainly his example.

I heard someone say, when Pope Francis embraced that man covered with tumors, the world changed! Beautiful.

Among those being moved by Pope Francis are atheists. I recently spent time hunting down comments from atheists posted on secular news sites. Here are fifteen, though if I kept looking I’m confident I could have found 1,000:

1. I’m an athiest and do not believe, but I love this new Pope, Pope’s are put on a pedestal and seem untouchable, this Pope, from the get go, has been a people person. You can almost feel the love radiating from him. So from one human to another, he shows such compassion and humility. Love him. – Sarah, England, UK.

2. I’m an atheist, but i believe he is a great example of how religious folks ought to be – Cort R

3. As an atheist (not speaking for all of them), I’m a huge fan of this pope. I think people need to find their own reason to be good to others. For some, it is god (whichever flavor he/she/it may be). Others find that they want to be good for other reasons. I’m just glad that the big C found a leader willing to try his best to not just preach to his crowd, but try to show them how.

4. On the other hand, some people use god as their excuse to be a d*ck. So I’m not sure if this is an example of the pope acting like a good god, but rather he is a good person and his faith only amplifies the goodness of his own character. – Wesley_Song

5. Left the church many years ago. Don’t believe in god mainly due to the Catholics and southern baptists is was raised around. This pope embodies the teachings of the church I actually liked. He’s pro something. He takes careof the less fortunate. Wonder what our nation wld be like if all the Catholics and baptists followed his lead and voted for people who cared about the poor?? Go ahead pope. Show the way – Cellstrom.

6. I don’t even believe in God. But, this guy, as a human being, just rocks. – Ironhand43

7. He’s setting a new standard for future popes to follow. I’m an agnostic, but this guy has truly awed me with his actions. So unlike other popes in my lifetime (even JP2, who seemed okay to me). – Rob_Cypher

8. I was raised Catholic but am now an atheist, but I’m growing to respect this man more and more. He’s actually following Christ’s teachings… imagine that! – Alex D

[In response to Alex D was this comment,] Me too! I am returning to the church because of this fine priest! – tau4444

9. A good person is good regardless of religion. I do believe this pope has actually publicly recognized this fact and for that (as an atheist) I applaud him. He seems a very good man. My respect for him grows by the day. – Marc T

10. As an atheist, let me say that I wish more people in general, religious or otherwise, followed this man’s example. The world would be a better place for it. – Thank4Watching

11. As an atheist, I’m impressed, I feel jaded about a lot of religions these days . . . [but] it looks like this pope is making an effort to do some good in the world rather then take advantage of it. – Theoricus

12. I’m an Atheist, and even I have respect for this guy. If he can get Christians to actually act like christians, maybe I won’t have such an issue with “organized” religion. – John S

13. As an atheist, I’m officially changing my opinion of him from ‘admired’ to ‘loved’. This is precisely the “walking the walk” the world needs, especially from its religious population. – Michael Kirby

14. As an atheist this pope does many great things, I still disagree with the church as a whole but as a person this pope gets it. He is a great role model as a person not a living deity. – Vendictavis

15. I don’t believe in gods and myths, but this man is truly a man of his word and someone everyone could look upon as a role model. I just wish that more holier than thou types could be like this man, if so the world would be a better place.Walks what he talks. – Joe Bigg

What do you think about Pope Francis?

 
 
(Image credit: Philly Mag)

Have you heard about Pope Francis’ recent comments about God, evolution, and Creation? If so, chances are you’ve heard wrong.

Here are four things you should know:
 

1. Pope Francis is Not an Atheist

Amazingly, the popular news site Independent Journal Review (IJ Review) ran — and as of this writing, is still running — the following headline:

“God is not a Divine Being”? We’re supposed to believe that the pope got up, denied that God was actually God, and that everything just went on as business as usual?

Obviously, this story is false. It’s the result of two things: bad translating, and atrocious journalism. What Pope Francis actually said that God wasn’t a “demiurge,” the pagan idea of a “god” who forms the world out of chaos. [The IJReview article relied upon an earlier Raw Story piece that originally ran the same bad translation; unlike IJReview, they've since corrected the record.]

In other words, God isn’t like a demiurge, forming the world out of chaotic raw materials. He’s infinitely bigger than that, creating the entire universe ex nihilio, from nothing. This is a ringing endorsement of God’s Deity, not a denial.

Here’s the original comment, in context, which makes it clear he neither said nor meant that God was less than Divine:

"God is not a demiurge or a conjurer, but the Creator who gives being to all things. The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to another, but derives directly from a supreme Origin that creates out of love. The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it. The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of Creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve."

Does that sound like a denial of God’s deity? Even if you don’t know what the word “demiurge” — or the Italian word “demiurgo” — means, context and common sense should clue you in that Pope Francis isn’t announcing his newfound atheism in the middle of a speech he’s given in honor of the unveiling of a statue.

Given how absurd the IJReview headline is, you might think, “there’s no way anyone would fall for that.” But you’d be wrong: the IJReview piece currently has over 300,000 views and has been shared on Facebook 45,000 times.
 

2. Pope Benedict XVI Was Not a Fundamentalist Protestant

The IJReview headline was bizarre in how extreme (and obviously wrong) it was. What’s becoming all too routine, in contrast, are the articles breathlessly claiming that Pope Francis is making a radical break with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. There are countless examples of this, including this lede from The Independent (UK):

"Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI."

Again, this is culpably ignorant journalism. Benedict has an entire book on the subject of how we should understand Genesis, creation, and evolution, taken from his essays and homilies. Nowhere does he take an opposite view of what Francis is saying here. In fact, he presents the argument for the compatibility of evolution and Creation in an arguably more provocative manner:

"Currently, I see in Germany, but also in the United States, a somewhat fierce debate raging between so-called “creationism” and evolutionism, presented as though they were mutually exclusive alternatives: those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God.
 
This antithesis is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favor of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical question: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man?"

So Benedict is directly calling out the position the Independent accuses him of holding, calling it absurd. (Of course, the Independent doesn’t actually back up its claims about Benedict’s views; rather than referring to his countless public statements on Creation and evolution, they rely on nebulous and unnamed “experts,” “some” of whom claim this about him).

So Francis’ comments are anything but a radical break from Benedict XVI’s views on this matter. Again, an ounce of common sense should have clued reporters to this: Francis is giving these comments at the unveiling of a Benedict XVI bust at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. And they think that he’s going to choose this time and place to attack Benedict’s views on faith and science?

But the issue is broader than the opinions of Benedict and Francis. John Paul II said much the same thing on evolution, as have basically every pope since Pope Pius XII. It was Pius who issued the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, explaining what Catholics could and couldn’t believe about our human origins (as the encyclical’s Latin title suggests). In that encyclical, he said,

"the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter – for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God."

This is also the position of the Catechism (CCC 283-84). There are certain things that Catholics must hold to, including that (a) God created the universe from nothing; (b) evolution isn’t just random and unguided [as if God created the universe and then abandoned it]; (c) the human soul didn’t “evolve,” even if the human body did; and (d) Adam and Eve existed. That leaves a lot of room for Catholics to hold to varying interpretations of Genesis 1-3 and of the scientific data.

So Catholics aren’t required to believe in evolution (contrary to the Independent’s claim that Francis “declared” evolution true), but they’re free to, as long as they also hold to the truths of the faith.
 

3. The Secular Media Isn’t a Reliable Source for Catholic News

To recap, Pope Francis is just reiterating the basic Catholic position on both God and evolution. This is a total non-story, other than media distortions that amount to out-and-out falsehoods. So why do stories like this exist? Here’s one possible clue:

Sometimes, fallacious and misleading news stories are based on innocent mistakes. Other times, they’re motivated by an ideological agenda (and certainly, the media has not been shy about trying to claim Francis as a liberal, and pitting him against Benedict and the entire pre-2013 Catholic Church). But it’s broader than that. The Independent is liberal, IJReview is conservative. But both are (a) more concerned about getting clicks than the truth, and (b) clueless on religion. Seriously, if you rely on secular news sources to get religious news (especially Catholic news) correct, you’re bound to get misled.
 

4. A Bonus...

The guy most scientists credit with formulating the Big Bang Theory? A Catholic priest.
 
 
Originally posted at ChurchPOP!. Used with permission.
(Image credit: CBS News)

Your brightness is my darkness.
I know nothing of You and, by myself,
I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You.
If I imagine You, I am mistaken.
If I understand You, I am deluded.
If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.
The darkness is enough.
- Thomas Merton

If God exists, why doesn't he make it more obvious? Why doesn't he stop more evil, answer more prayers, or perform a steady stream of miracles - or better yet, all of the above? Why all the darkness and silence, especially in a world in such desperate need of clarity and hope?

For atheists and agnostics this is a common enough sentiment; what is striking though is how often holy people have dwelt on these very same questions. In fact, the Bible itself is saturated with a piercing sense of God's obscurity. How do we make sense of this parallel between belief and unbelief?

First, a quote:

"But if I go east, he is not there; or west, I cannot perceive him; The north enfolds him, and I cannot catch sight of him; The south hides him, and I cannot see him. Yet he knows my way; if he tested me, I should come forth like gold. My foot has always walked in his steps; I have kept his way and not turned aside...Therefore I am terrified before him; when I take thought, I dread him...Yes, would that I had vanished in darkness, hidden by the thick gloom before me."

With all the terror, dread, and gloom, this seems like something out of a chain-smoking existentialist’s novella. But it is in fact Biblical - the book of Job.

This sense of divine hiddenness is central in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, God himself declares from a cloudy throne: "It's like those miserable Psalms. They're so depressing!" Maybe the comedic crew wrote this line with Psalm 10 in mind:

"Why, Lord, do you stand afar
and pay no heed in times of trouble?
Arrogant scoundrels pursue the poor;
they trap them by their cunning schemes.
The wicked even boast of their greed;
these robbers curse and scorn the Lord.
In their insolence the wicked boast:
"God does not care; there is no God.""

Or Psalm 88:

"But I cry out to you, Lord;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
Why do you reject my soul, Lord,
and hide your face from me?
...My only friend is darkness."

There's countless other examples (Psalm 30, Psalm 44, Psalm 63), and not only in those "depressing" Psalms. In 1 Kings we read a striking passage about God approaching Elijah not in a strong wind, earthquake, or fire, but a kind of "silent sound." The prophet Isaiah contemplated God's darkness in contradistinction to more meddlesome deities: "Truly you are a hidden God." Even the Hebrew word for God (YHWH) signified the unutterable.

In the New Testament, one might suspect that this would all change - and it does, but it also doesn't, not even for God incarnate. In a truly mind-bending episode, Christ, hanging from the cross, quotes Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" The Psalm continues:

"Why so far from my call for help,
from my cries of anguish?
My God, I call by day, but you do not answer;
by night, but I have no relief."

This passage is a strange thing for a Christian; it appears, as GK Chesterton put it, that God himself is abandoned by God. "Let the atheists themselves choose a god," Chesterton mused. "They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed himself for an instant to be an atheist."

The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar describes this mission of God into godforsakenness with great insight:

"Active faith means following Jesus; but Jesus' mission leads him on a course from heaven deeper and deeper into the world of sinners, until finally on the Cross he assumes, in their stead, their experience of distance from God, even of abandonment by God, and thus of the very loss of that lucid security promised to the "proven" faithful. This paradox must be borne..."

And we see that "loss of that lucid security" not only in Biblical passages and theological works, but in the lives of countless believers. Saint Anselm, an 11th century archbishop and originator of the ontological argument, wrote:

"I have never seen thee, O Lord my God; I do not know thy form. What, O most high Lord, shall this man do, an exile far from thee? What shall thy servant do, anxious in his love of thee, and cast out afar from thy face? He pants to see thee, and thy face is too far from him. He longs to come to thee, and thy dwelling place is inaccessible. He is eager to find thee, and knows not thy place. He desires to seek thee, and does not know thy face. Lord, thou art my God, and thou art my Lord, yet never have I seen thee...Why did he shut us away from the light, and cover us over with darkness?..."

We see a more profound case in notable mystics of the Church: in Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross' "dark night of the soul" in the 16th century; in the last days of Therese of Lisieux in the 19th century ("If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into," she told her fellow nuns); and even in Mother Teresa in the 20th century (who described forty-five years of inner emptiness, feeling "neither joy, nor love, nor light...").

Some of the greatest theological art is also focused exactly on this tortuous journey through darkness. Dostoevsky, Graham Greene, and Flannery O'Connor all wrote with a profound sense of both God's action and absence; the work of Polish painter Jerzy Nowosielski revolves around "an immense metaphysical black hole" and the darker aspects of human experience; and Shusaku Endo, a Catholic novelist, wrote the book Silence (slated for film development by Martin Scorsese) about 17th century Portuguese missionaries who wrestle with God's silence in the midst of great suffering:

"I cannot bear the monotonous sound of the dark sea gnawing at the shore. Behind the depressing silence of this sea, the silence of God...the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent."

Even popular songs expressing the darkness and silence of God are so much more interesting (and popular) than sanguine worship songs meant to pacify. In a song of the same name and theme as Endo's book, the Jewish singer Matisyahu sings:

"Bring my broken heart to an invisible king
With a hope one day you might answer me
So I pray don't you abandon me.
Your silence kills me;
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Is it wrong to think you might speak to me?
You might speak, would it be words and what would you say?
It's so heavy, a heavy price to pay
Your silence"

"Testin' Me" by Stones Throw artist Dudley Perkins, Tom Waits' "God's Away on Business," and The Roots' "Dear God 2.0," all capture a similar lament:

"Dear God, I’m trying hard to reach you
Dear God, I see your face in all I do
Sometimes, it’s so hard to believe it...
If your love's still around, why do we suffer?"

The atheist might respond that this plethora of modern cases shows that this is a modern phenomenon. Maybe the "God of darkness" is just the fallout of a post-Christian God evanescing under closing gaps of scientific knowledge - that he appears to be a distant shell of his former glory because science has explained so much of what was once attributed to the divine.

But remember, our investigation began millennia ago. This obscurity of the God of Abraham has been with us from the beginning, and not just on the periphery, but right there on center stage. When we read tweets from someone like Matisyahu in a Jacob-like grapple with God ("I have never stopped asking this question. Are you real? Are you listening? Who are you?"..."I am not impressed with answers. A question that comes from deepest depths is worth more then a mountain of answers"), we're not seeing a gap-less God of the gaps or an artsy affectation, but a supreme truth of faith: that it's a long day's journey into night.

Is this something rotten at the core of faith itself, then, whatever the century? Is the darkness and silence not a drawing forward from beyond the veil of the world, but just what it is - darkness and silence?

Nietzsche thought so. In Dawn, he wrote:

"A god who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make sure his creatures understand his intentions —could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out frightful consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of truth? Would he not be a cruel god if he possessed the truth and could behold mankind miserably tormenting itself over the truth?... they as yet know nothing of a Duty of God to be truthful towards mankind and clear in the manner of his communications."

Bertrand Russell is said to have put the matter much more pithily. Below, philosopher Peter Kreeft recounts the famous story about Russell's deathbed quip, and introduces some of the classical responses to the problem of divine hiddenness:

Michael Novak, in his book No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers, is wise enough to move beyond these answers, good as they are. Novak focuses instead on the plain fact that this darkness and silence is common ground for us all - whatever it amounts to, whatever it means, we all share it. (He confesses early in the preface: "It was crystal clear to me even at age twelve that life is far more horrible than anybody had heretofore suggested. Unbelief, atheism, and cursing the darkness might for me and for all turn out to be the more honest way.")

"Serious and devout believers from the time of Elijah and Job have known about the darkness in which the true God necessarily dwells," Novak writes. "Darkness is the normal mode of Jewish and Christian belief."

For Novak, as for Kreeft, this darkness fosters "the true relation between the Creator and the creature," which is more hide-and-seek than lost-and-found, in both directions:

"God hates to be too obvious about things. He writes pretty darn good mysteries into almost everything He does. Our fun lies in the detection. Who would be attracted to God if He didn't drop a hint, or plainly plant a clue? And then cover it up again? We have to work for it. Use our brains a little. Keep pursuing the hidden God. God is pursuing us...but we keep running from Him. There is a little verse that presents God as "The Hound of Heaven":

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind.

That poem nails the reality."

But Novak's final point, the point of the book, is that "the line of belief and unbelief is not drawn between one person and another, normally, but rather down the inner souls of all of us." We aren't so different after all:

"Both the atheist and the believer stand in similar darkness. The atheist does not see God - but neither does the believer...we all stand in darkness concerning our deepest questionings...withal, a certain modesty should descend upon us. Believers in God well know, in the night, that what the atheist holds may be true. At least some atheists seem willing to concede that those who believe in God might be correct. Sheer modesty compels us to listen carefully, in the hopes that we might learn."

This is an especially good caveat for the faithful. Pope Francis wrote in his first encyclical Lumen Fidei (or "The Light of Faith"): "One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, since believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth which embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey..."

In other words, faith does not mean knowing God through and through and tapping a stockpile of straightforward answers. Instead, it's an ontological light burning in the same existential darkness that scandalizes the atheist. "Faith is not a light which scatters all our darkness," Francis reminds us, "but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey."

The believer can and should be struck by the same darkness and the same profound questions that trip up the atheist. The atheist, on the other hand, can be struck by the lightning of grace and the thunder of desire, given the assurance of things hoped for. But even then, the darkness remains; the soul will still see by a mirror, at night; the eye will not see, nor mind visualize, what God has prepared; she will continue to journey and climb, a child of the light but still a child. But on the wings of grace, that "deep but dazzling darkness" is enough, and her cup overflows.
 
 
Originally posted at By Way of Beauty. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: Bushma)

Yesterday morning, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science Facebook page posted the following bombshell:

"According to the new laws, revealing or receiving confidential Vatican information is now punishable by up to two years in prison, while newly defined sex crimes against children carry a sentence of up to twelve years. Because all sex crimes are kept confidential, there is no longer a legal way for Vatican officials to report sex crimes."

This was startling stuff, and of course it wasn't long before Dawkins' devoteees began to chime in. One fan compared the Vatican to Islamic Sharia law:

"Catholic law, as with Sharia law, should NEVER be above the law of the land! If Vatican officials want to report the crimes of priests, surley [sic] if they leave the Vatican, they are no longer bound by their medieval laws, and can report with complete immunity to those barbaric laws?"

Another atheist commenter sees this is as just one more reason why Catholics should be leaving the Church:

This is why people should be flocking away from Catholicism, but nooooo. Who cares if your children are safe, as long as you have a spot in Heaven! Stuff like this is why even if I could bring myself to believe in a sky wizard, I would refuse to worship a God so messed up!

As of this morning, this post had 4,584 "likes" and was shared more than 7,804 times on Facebook. Atheists definitely know how to get the word out.

The only problem is that this article came from a parody web site (similar to the Onion) called Newslo. The site describes itself this way:

"Newslo is the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the web. Readers come to us for a unique brand of entertainment and information that is enhanced by features like our fact-button, which allows readers to find the line between fact and commentary."

Unlike the Richard Dawkins Foundation Facebook page, Newslo has a button you can select that highlights the bits in an article that are fact-based. At the time of this writing there is no indication that the Dawkins Foundation was aware that this bit of Vatican "news" is not.
 
 
Originally posted at Catholic Answers. Used with permission.
(Image credit: Charisma News)

On Friday, Pope Francis released his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, which means “The Light of Faith.” Even though the encyclical is addressed to “the bishops, priests, and deacons, consecrated persons, and the lay faithful,” I hope that non-Christians will read it as well. Why? Because Francis explains in stark terms the differences in how “faith” is understood by believers and non-believers.

He begins by explaining that to Christians, faith is illuminating, and is described by Christ as a light:
 

1. The light of Faith: this is how the Church’s tradition speaks of the great gift brought by Jesus. In John’s Gospel, Christ says of himself: "I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness" (Jn 12:46). Saint Paul uses the same image: "God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts" (2 Cor 4:6).
 
The pagan world, which hungered for light, had seen the growth of the cult of the sun god, Sol Invictus, invoked each day at sunrise. Yet though the sun was born anew each morning, it was clearly incapable of casting its light on all of human existence. The sun does not illumine all reality; its rays cannot penetrate to the shadow of death, the place where men’s eyes are closed to its light. "No one — Saint Justin Martyr writes — has ever been ready to die for his faith in the sun".[1]
 
Conscious of the immense horizon which their faith opened before them, Christians invoked Jesus as the true sun "whose rays bestow life".[2] To Martha, weeping for the death of her brother Lazarus, Jesus said: "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" (Jn 11:40). Those who believe, see; they see with a light that illumines their entire journey, for it comes from the risen Christ, the morning star which never sets.

 
In stark contrast, non-believers tend to envision faith as a “blind leap,” or as a turning-away from the light of reason:
 

2. Yet in speaking of the light of faith, we can almost hear the objections of many of our contemporaries. In modernity, that light might have been considered sufficient for societies of old, but was felt to be of no use for new times, for a humanity come of age, proud of its rationality and anxious to explore the future in novel ways. Faith thus appeared to some as an illusory light, preventing mankind from boldly setting out in quest of knowledge.
 
The young Nietzsche encouraged his sister Elisabeth to take risks, to tread "new paths… with all the uncertainty of one who must find his own way", adding that "this is where humanity’s paths part: if you want peace of soul and happiness, then believe, but if you want to be a follower of truth, then seek".[3] Belief would be incompatible with seeking. From this starting point Nietzsche was to develop his critique of Christianity for diminishing the full meaning of human existence and stripping life of novelty and adventure. Faith would thus be the illusion of light, an illusion which blocks the path of a liberated humanity to its future.

 

3. In the process, faith came to be associated with darkness. There were those who tried to save faith by making room for it alongside the light of reason. Such room would open up wherever the light of reason could not penetrate, wherever certainty was no longer possible. Faith was thus understood either as a leap in the dark, to be taken in the absence of light, driven by blind emotion, or as a subjective light, capable perhaps of warming the heart and bringing personal consolation, but not something which could be proposed to others as an objective and shared light which points the way.
 
Slowly but surely, however, it would become evident that the light of autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future; ultimately the future remains shadowy and fraught with fear of the unknown. As a result, humanity renounced the search for a great light, Truth itself, in order to be content with smaller lights which illumine the fleeting moment yet prove incapable of showing the way. Yet in the absence of light everything becomes confused; it is impossible to tell good from evil, or the road to our destination from other roads which take us in endless circles, going nowhere.

 
What I’ve observed is that many of the people who understand faith in this way seem genuinely unaware that this isn’t how believers view faith. If that describes you, or those you know, it behooves you to read this encyclical. It’s relatively short (only four chapters), well written, and thorough, quoting from Nietzsche, Dante, Martin Buber, the Church Fathers, Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Guardini, Wittgenstein, Aquinas, Bonaventure, John Paul II, and T.S. Eliot, amongst others. Who knows? It just might change the way you approach the topic of religion.
 
 
Originally posted at Shameless Popery. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: News.va)

Shortly after we posted the excerpt, the publisher, Image Books, asked if I'd like to give away some copies at Strange Notions. At first I was hesitant, thinking the book would only appeal to our Catholic commenters, but the more I thought the more I realized it would be helpful for our atheist commenters, too. Understanding the Pope's background and thinking is crucial to understanding the Catholic Church today, so even atheists should find this book interesting and insightful.

Thanks to Image Books, I have FIFTEEN copies to giveaway. Whether you're a Catholic or an atheist, read below and learn how to enter!
 

On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century

by Jorge Mario Bergoglio

Image, 256 pages, hardcover
Released on April 19, 2013

From the man who became Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio shares his thoughts on religion, reason, and the challenges the world faces in the 21st century with Abraham Skorka, a rabbi and biophysicist.

For years Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Argentina, and Rabbi Abraham Skorka were tenacious promoters of interreligious dialogues on faith and reason. They both sought to build bridges among Catholicism, Judaism, and the world at large.

On Heaven and Earth, originally published in Argentina in 2010, brings together a series of these conversations where both men talked about various theological and worldly issues, including God, fundamentalism, atheism, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and globalization. From these personal and accessible talks comes a first-hand view of the man who would become pope to 1.2 billion Catholics around the world in March 2013.
 

 
I'm using Rafflecopter to help with the giveaway, which is cool because it gives you multiple entries for commenting, posting on Facebook, sharing on Twitter, etc. Click below to enter:

(If you're reading this through email or RSS and don't see the giveaway widget, click here.)

 
The winners will be randomly selected next Friday and the books will be sent out, free of charge, shortly thereafter.

In the future we'll be giving away more books and resources, so subscribe via feed reader or email to ensure you never miss your chance to win.

(Since we're covering the shipping costs, only residents within the continental United States are eligible to win.)

Yesterday, the Internet buzzed about some recent remarks from Pope Francis. A headline at Huffington Post read: "Pope Francis Says Atheists Who Do Good Are Redeemed, Not Just Catholics". A similar Reddit article became yesterday's second most-shared piece.

But was the headline right? Did the Pope really suggest that all atheists are redeemed? And if so, is this a shift in Catholic teaching?

To answer those questions we must first note the Gospel passage Pope Francis preached on when he made the statement, Mark 9:38-40:
 

"John said to Jesus,
“Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name,
and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.”
Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him.
There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name
who can at the same time speak ill of me.
For whoever is not against us is for us.”"

 
Jesus' point here is that it's wrong to think people can't do good simply because they aren't Christian. As Pope Francis explained, “This [belief] was wrong...Jesus broadens the horizon...The root of this possibility of doing good—that we all have—is in creation."

From this passage and quote we discover that Pope Francis was primarily concerned with the possibility of goodness, not redemption. But then he continued:
 

"[A]ll of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can..."The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!...We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there."

 
What should we make of the claim that "The Lord has redeemed all of us...Even the atheists"? Well first, this is nothing new, and therefore hardly "news." The Catholic Church has maintained for two-thousand years that Christ's sacrificial death was for all (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:15 and 1 Peter 3:18.) As the Church teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
 

"At the end of the parable of the lost sheep Jesus recalled that God’s love excludes no one: “So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” He affirms that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many”; this last term is not restrictive, but contrasts the whole of humanity with the unique person of the redeemer who hands himself over to save us. The Church, following the apostles, teaches that Christ died for all men without exception: “There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer.” — (CCC, 605)

 
However in Catholic thought, Christ's redemptive sacrifice on the Cross is not the same thing as salvation. Salvation is the result of accepting Christ's redemption and applying it to our lives. Catholics know that Christ died for our sins but that we must receive that free gift by trusting in him, accepting his proposal of love, and following him with our life.

So while it's true that Christ redeemed all people, even atheists, that doesn't mean all atheists have accepted this gift or will be saved.

Perhaps an example will help clarify the difference between redemption and salvation. Suppose you destroyed your friend's car causing $10,000 in damage. You're taken to court, and the judge sentences you to five years in prison for the crime. But then I burst in and tell the judge, "My name is Brandon Vogt. I'm this man's friend and I want to pay his penalty. Whatever it costs to fix the car and make things right, I'll pay it." The judge agrees.

Now even though I offer to pay the charge and "redeem" you, you still have a choice. You can either accept my offer and become a free man or you can reject my offer and choose to go to jail. The choice, of course, would be yours.

Christ's redemption of all mankind is analogous to me paying off your $10,000 charge (to "redeem" literally means "to buy back" or "to restore.") Catholics understand that Christ paid the debt for every person, but we still must choose whether to accept that act of redemption—it's not forced on you. You make your choice by whom you give ultimate allegiance: God or yourself, selfless love or self-imposed prison.

Finally, what about the last part of the HuffPost headline? Is it true that all who do good are redeemed? The answer, again, is "Yes" since all people are redeemed by Christ's sacrifice. Whether you live a good life is completely irrelevant to redemption. As Mark Shea writes:
 

"All who do good, and all who do evil, and all saints, and all Nazis, and pirates, and Communists and Mormons, Swedenborgians, and Satanists, and plumbers, and students who are getting Fs, and little kids and old coots, and profoundly brain-damaged folk and really brilliant scientists, and tall, and fat, and short people, and Muslims, and atheists, and Jews, and Buddhists and everybody else with a pulse are redeemed. Stalin is redeemed along with St. Damien of Molokai, Jack the Ripper and St. Francis of Assisi are both redeemed."

 
Catholics believe Jesus Christ died for every human being without exception. This redemption has nothing to do with our goodness, and everything to do with God's overwhelming generosity. Redemption is universal, salvation is not. Redemption is a proposal we must accept and salvation is the result.
 
 
(Image credit: PopeResigns.net)

Before he was elected Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio spent fourteen years as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. During that time he built a strong friendship with Abraham Skorka, an Argentinian rabbi and biophysicist. Together they promoted interreligious dialogue on faith and reason, seeking to build bridges among Catholicism, Judaism, and the world at large.

Last month, Image Books released the English translation of On Heaven and Earth, originally published in Argentina in 2010. The book contains several conversations between both men where they discuss various theological and worldly issues, including God, fundamentalism, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and globalization. From these personal and accessible talks comes a first-hand view of the man who would become pope to 1.2 billion Catholics around the world in March 2013. In the excerpt below, the two men share their thoughts on modern atheism and agnosticism.
 

Cardinal Bergoglio (Pope Francis):

When I speak with atheists, I will sometimes discuss social concerns, but I do not propose the problem of God as a starting point, except in the case that they propose it to me. If this occurs, I tell them why I believe. But that which is human is so rich to share and to work at that very easily we can mutually complement our richness. As I am a believer, I know that these riches are a gift from God. I also know that the other person, the atheist, does not know that. I do not approach the relationship in order to proselytize, or convert the atheist; I respect him and I show myself as I am. Where there is knowledge, there begins to appear esteem, affection, and friendship. I do not have any type of reluctance, nor would I say that his life is condemned, because I am convinced that I do not have the right to make a judgment about the honesty of that person; even less, if he shows me those human virtues that exalt others and do me good.

At any rate, I know more agnostic people than atheists; the first are more uncertain, the second are more convinced. We have to be coherent with the message that we receive from the Bible: every man is the image of God, whether he is a believer or not. For that reason alone everyone has a series of virtues, qualities, and a greatness of his own. If he has some vileness, as I do, we can share that in order to mutually help one another and overcome it.
 

Rabbi Abraham Skorka:

I agree with what you have said; the first step is respecting your fellow man. But I would add one more point of view. When a person says, “I am an atheist,” I believe he or she is taking an arrogant position. He who doubts has a more nuanced position. An agnostic thinks that he or she has not yet found the answer, but an atheist is 100 percent convinced that G-d does not exist. It is the same arrogance that leads some to assert that G-d definitely exists, just like the chair I am sitting on.

Religious people are believers, but we do not know for certain that He exists. We can perceive Him in an extremely profound sense, but we never see Him. We receive subtle replies from Him. According to the Torah, Moses was the only person to have spoken directly, face to face, with G-d. As for everyone else—Jacob, Isaac, etc.—the presence of G-d appeared to them in dreams or by some messenger. Even though I personally believe that G-d exists, it is arrogant to say that He exists as if it were just another certainty in life. I would not casually affirm His existence because I need to live the same humility that I demand of the atheist. The right thing to do would be to point out—as Maimonides did in his thirteen principals of faith—that “I believe with complete faith that G-d is the creator.”

Following Maimonides’ line of thought, we can say what G-d is not, but we can never be sure of what G-d is. We can talk about His qualities and attributes, but in no way can we describe His form. I would remind the atheist that the perfection of the natural world is sending us a message. We can gain an understanding of how it works, but not its essence.
 

Cardinal Bergoglio (Pope Francis):

The spiritual experience of encounter with God is not controllable. One feels that God is there, one has the certainty, but he cannot control God. We are made to subdue nature; that is what God commands. We cannot, however, subdue our creator. As a result, in the experience of God there is always an unanswered question, an opportunity to be submerged in faith.

Rabbi, you said one thing, which in part, is certain: we can say what God is not, we can speak of His attributes, but we cannot say what He is. That apophatic¹ dimension, which reveals how I speak about God, is critical to our theology. The English mystics speak a lot about this theme. There is a book by one of them, from the thirteenth century, The Cloud of Unknowing, that attempts again and again to describe God and always finishes pointing to what He is not. The mission of theology is to reflect and explain religious facts, and among them, God.

I would also classify as arrogant those theologies that not only attempted to define with certainty and exactness God’s attributes, but also had the pretense of saying who He was. The book of Job is a continuous discussion about the definition of God. There are four wise men that elaborate this theological search and everything ends with Job’s expression: “By hearsay I had heard of you, but now my eye has seen you.” (Job 42:5) Job’s final image of God is different from his vision of God in the beginning. The intention of this story is that the notion that the four theologians have is not true, because God always is being sought and found. We are presented with this paradox: we seek Him to find Him and because we find Him, we seek Him. It is a very Augustinian game.
 

Rabbi Abraham Skorka:

I believe with complete faith that G-d exists. As opposed to the atheist who is sure that He does not exist and does not entertain any doubts, I implicitly reveal a margin of uncertainty by using the word “faith.” At a minimum, I have to acknowledge what Sigmund Freud wrote: that we need the idea of G-d to temper our existential angst. Nevertheless, after having done an in-depth analysis of positions that negate the existence of G-d, I still believe. When my work was done, I still felt G-d’s presence. I retain a certain amount of doubt in any case since this is an existential problem and not a mathematical theory, although there is some room for doubt in mathematical theories as well.

That said, when we think about G-d we have to do so with special terminology. Everyday logic does not apply. Maimonides put forth that idea long ago. Agnostics will continue to create their famous paradoxes. For example, if G-d is omnipotent, surely He could create a rock that He Himself could not lift; but if He created such a rock, that would mean He is not omnipotent. G-d is above and beyond any logic and its paradoxes. Maimonides explains that He knows everything in its complete form. We have only limited knowledge. if we had the same understanding that G-d has, we would be Gods ourselves.
 
 
Excerpted from On Heaven and Earth by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka. Copyright © 2013 by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka. Excerpted by permission of Image, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
(Image credit: The Telegraph)