On June 20th, 2013, Giovanni Giudici, the Bishop of Pavia, pronounced the cure of Danila Castelli to be miraculous, 24 years after her pilgrimage to Lourdes. Her cure, and the 68 other cures proclaimed miraculous, began as simply one more of the more than 7,000 cures that have been reported to the Medical Bureau of the Sanctuary at Lourdes. While all of the cases are marvelous in their own way, only this small fraction survived the many stages of extensive investigation, both medical and ecclesial, so as to eventually be considered “unexplained according to current scientific knowledge” by the Lourdes International Medical Committee and finally pronounced miraculous by the bishop of the cured pilgrim. It might seem incongruous to many common conceptions of the relationship of faith and science that a site of religious pilgrimage would have a dedicated medical bureau, with a procedure for the scientific study of purportedly miraculous cures, but really, it is perfectly reasonable.

The very idea of a miracle, an event that happens by divine power outside the normal ordering of nature, is absurd for some. Our ever growing understanding of the universe reveals a tightly woven network of scientific laws that govern all of reality, leaving no room for and no evidence of exceptions. The fear is that allowing even one true miracle would ruin the very order and structure that science is built upon. There is no room for the miraculous in this worldview, so many will not even consider the possibilities.

Some Christians, impressed and intimidated by the advances of science, take the exceptionless character of scientific explanation for granted, and they restrict the idea of miracles to personal transformation and conversion, or perhaps try to find some small space for physical miracles between the fuzzy lines of quantum mechanics. While it is certainly true that personal conversion is beyond any natural power, it is by God working through, not against, our natural free will. Further, God absolutely can work through the seeming confusion of quantum systems, but this is an action of his providence working through, not contrary to nature. These redefinitions in concession to science strip the very idea of the miraculous of its depth and power.

In truth, there need not be a conflict between the scientific order and the miraculous when both are properly understood. Moreover, when the possibility of both is affirmed, they provide a richer and more marvelous picture of reality. I would argue that the existence of miracles is a great benefit to the project of modern science and that the existence of modern science is a great benefit to our understanding of miracles as well.

Considering the relationship of miracles to scientific order, there is the obvious fact that we need to know something about what normally occurs in the world to recognize when something marvelous happens, so the better we understand the natural order, the easier it is to identify the truly miraculous. On the other hand, the existence of miracles, by definition, makes necessary a limit to the power of science to fully explain all of reality. But there is more to the relationship of science and the miraculous than defining mutual limits and cordoning off proper realms.

The order and structure that scientists find in nature does not simply prevent false positives in our search for miracles; it also opens us up to new levels of wonder in the miracles we are blessed to encounter and an even deeper appreciation of miracles of the past, most especially in the Scriptures. St. Thomas Aquinas lays out a number of ways to classify miracles, based on their relationship to the natural order, and he does not hesitate to speculate on the process by which certain effects are brought about. The more we understand the natural order, the better we can understand the particular manifestation of divine power in each miracle, and probe the way God worked with, around, or in spite of nature. These efforts are not aimed at explaining—or worse, explaining away—every detail of the mystery of miracles, but at deepening our appreciation of the variety of ways God chooses to work in the world.

From the other perspective, the existence of miracles does not change the process by which scientists seek out particular natural truths, but it does safeguard the goal of that seeking and the truths that are attained by it. The possibility of real events beyond the power of scientific explanation ensures that scientists approach their subjects with a proper humility. It need not, and should not, change the fact that they expect to find a marvelous order and structure in nature, but it prevents them from falsely claiming too much. This is not a claim that they will find holes in their explanations, but that the very order they discover points beyond the purely physical and, eventually, to the God who created that order in the first place.
 
 
This article was written by Br. Thomas Davenport, who studied physics at the California Institute of Technology and went on to earn a PhD in physics from Stanford University. Originally published at Dominicana Journal. Used with permission.
 
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The agnostic has said in his heart, “If God exists, why doesn’t He make it more obvious, such that it could not be doubted?” Surely, with so much riding on God’s existence (theism, the moral law, salvation, etc.), he could do a little more to make it obvious! Given the stakes, the fact that God fails to make his existence more patent is yet further proof that he doesn’t exist. Travis Dumsday summarizes this objection — often termed the argument from divine hiddenness — as follows:

"[O]n standard theisms, God supposedly loves us, and so desires our ultimate well-being. But that ultimate well-being necessarily involves having a positive relationship with God, and in order to have such a relationship one must first believe that God exists. So if God really existed and really loved us, He would make sure that all of us believed in Him. Yet the world is full of rational persons who blamelessly fail to believe in God. Consequently, one must give up some aspect of standard theism, and the aspect it is most sensible to drop is the very idea that God exists."

In the spirit of topsy-turveydom, I think that what atheists take to be an argument against the existence of God actually shows the deep wisdom of God’s chosen manner of making himself known. The lynchpin in the argument is the profound correspondence between the mode of revelation and how human beings are made. The one is addressed to the other.

Revelation is not addressed to mere minds, but to embodied persons. God, like every good communicator, takes into account the audience and shapes his message accordingly. In standard theisms, God addresses us as embodied souls that come to the knowledge of truth in stages, in a kind of sacred history. Within that history he uses everything in his power to communicate well to the chosen object of his predilection. He employs theophanies and angelophanies. He uses prophetic instruments. His revelation is rife with analogy, metaphor, parables, and imagery. Just like a good 2nd grade teacher who communicates the same point in myriad ways equally accessible to her classroom filled with visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners, God appeals to man according to each of his faculties. So, while mystical revelation may make the occasional guest appearance in Biblical literature (2 Cor. 12:2), the normative mode of revelation spans the full breadth of human experience, ranging from prophetic callings to miraculous healings (Ex. 3:1-22, Isa. 6:6-9, Mark 8:22-26).

So, rather than zapping all brains with an intuitive knowledge of his existence — an act that would risk dehumanizing the object of his love in a certain sense — God chooses to enter the sanctuary of each individual heart in a manner that is profoundly personal and distinctly human. He is the master teacher, the perfect pedagogue, who orders all things sweetly. And so, far from being a strike against God’s goodness, the economy of revelation is, I contend, tailor-made for human maturation.

The suitability of divine revelation to the human person has implications for our interactions with one another. In order to be known, human beings, too, must reveal something of themselves to the other. The divine hiddenness should serve as the pattern for a “human hiddenness,” and our friendships and relationships can benefit inestimably from the saving influence of the divine pattern.

Contemporary culture promotes self-disclosure, often in harmful ways. For instance, in one of the more extreme cases — casual sex — we observe how moving too quickly can short-circuit the normal course of growth in trust, dependence, friendship, and love. Social media can offer another occasion for deranged exhibitionism in which very little distinctively human discourse transpires. In both of these examples, hasty manifestation that doesn’t reflect the full breadth of human life and love actually hamstrings real, genuine development. The random hookup and the social media abuser treat one aspect of human life as if it were the whole and so fail to communicate as persons to persons.

But, with God as the pattern for integral human growth, our own “revelation” stands a better chance of achieving the communion for which we’re all ultimately destined. Rather than foisting all of oneself on one faculty or the other, in a kind of take-me-as-I-am desperation, the example of the divine courtesy invites us to appeal as persons to persons. With modesty protecting the inmost center of the heart, we learn to approach the other as other, as irreducible, and as human. In so doing, we lay the foundation for true communion and new vistas of shared love.
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Gregory Maria Pine, O.P., who entered the Order of Preachers in 2010. He is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville where he studied humanities and mathematics.

“Reality is everything that exists. That sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? Actually it isn’t.” Thus begins Professor Richard Dawkins’ recent  book, The Magic of Reality. In order to explain reality, Professor Dawkins takes us on a tour of modern science by contrasting its explanations with those we find in myths and fables: “These are the stories we all remember with fondness from our childhood, and many of us still enjoy when served up in a traditional Christmas pantomime—but we all know this kind of magic’s just fiction and does not happen in reality.”

“This kind of magic” he calls “supernatural” magic, and he contrasts it with the “magic of reality,” that is, modern science. “The magic of reality,” he goes on to say, “is neither supernatural nor a trick, but—quite simply—wonderful. Wonderful, and real. Wonderful because real.”

Dawkins’ point is simple: modern science gives true accounts of reality, while mythical stories give false accounts. I think we can all agree with this to a point, but as the saying goes, “the devil is in the details.” In this case, the details lie in what he means by “modern science” and what he means by “mythical story.” His notion of modern science is common enough: data gathered through our senses by means of experiment and organized in models which best represent what we observe. This definition is fairly straightforward and unproblematic; anyone who has been through school is familiar with it. The problem comes in his notion of mythical story.

For Dawkins, anything which is not testable in modern scientific terms is classified as a mythical story—something which is a false account of reality. Now it is certainly true that there are plenty of mythical stories out there, and he gives a number of them in the book, some very colorful and fantastic. My personal favorite is the Australian myth concerning the origin of the Sun’s rising and setting: two lizards use a boomerang to drag the Sun from East to West! This is a mythical story which is clearly not true in any realistic sense. But in his list of mythical stories, Dawkins also includes some which are not so easily categorized: the Virgin Birth and the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. I can understand why he would not classify these as modern science, but they are certainly in a different category than the boomerang lizards.

Dawkins’ problem seems to be that his vision of reality is too narrow. You cannot expect to know reality accurately if you put everything into just two categories, modern science and mythical story. There are parts of reality which do not fit into either: something can be true and real even though it is not tested in the laboratory. St. Augustine makes this clear in On the Trinity:

“Far be it from us that we should deny that we know what we have learned through the testimony of others. Apart from them, we do not know there is an ocean; we do not know there are the lands and cities that famous reports describe for us; we do not know that the men and their deeds existed that we learn about by reading history; we do not know the things that are reported every day from whatever quarter and are confirmed by indications that are consistent and in agreement [with one another]; finally, we do not know in what places or from what people we arose. For all these things we believe on the testimony of others.”

Professor Dawkins is right that the real is wonderful, and wonderful because it is real. It is just that his notion of the real is a bit too restricted. I applaud him for using the notion of wonder in relation to modern science; too many people see science merely as a useful tool for solving problems and making use of the natural world. Although it is true that, through science, countless lives have been saved and the quality of our lives has been vastly improved as compared to ancient times, Dawkins rightly emphasizes that utility should not eclipse wonder. There is something magical about knowing the workings of the natural world and seeing its rational order unfolding in our world, and Dawkins’ book does a great job of showing children this “magic.” Where I cannot follow him is in denying truth or reality to things that are beyond scientific measurement and verification, like history and revelation. While these forms of knowledge are not science (in the modern sense of the term), at the same time they do not fit neatly into the category of mythical stories.

To borrow a line from Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth,” Professor Dawkins, “than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Bonaventure Chapman, O.P., who entered the Order of Preachers in 2010. He received an M.Th. in Applied Theology from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, where he studied for the Anglican priesthood.
 
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Materialism has always had a difficult time dealing with death, because it has to claim that death is not a big deal. If there is nothing more to life than the matter of the body, once the body dies there is nothing left to “experience” death.

The ancient atomists were explicit in this claim, with Epicurus stating:

"Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not."

While it is debatable how palatable this line of argument can really be when facing one’s own death, it is particularly impotent for comforting those who mourn a deceased loved one. If death truly is the end, then the loss that is felt is not imagined, but complete and final.

For those who espouse a strictly materialist worldview, any attempt to comfort the mourning must be scientific; this is exactly what Aaron Freeman proposes in a segment for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” He argues that the First Law of Thermodynamics, the law of conservation of energy, provides a context to give grieving family members the knowledge that their loved one is not completely gone but that his energy is a permanent part of the cosmos, or that her impact on them is not over but that the energy of those interactions carries on in our lives. Most importantly, this is something that those grieving need not simply have faith in. The conservation of energy can be and has been experimentally tested across all ranges of physics, so mourners can examine the evidence for themselves and find how sound it is.

Originally aired almost ten years ago, this little reflection bubbles up every once in a while on blogs or on Facebook. Freeman is right to point out the beauty and interconnectedness of the material world and how we can have an impact on it. It can be astounding to realize that the atoms that make up our bodies were originally formed in the heart of stars that have long since died, or that the breath you just took probably shared some air molecules with the dying breath of Socrates, Julius Ceasar, or even Jesus Christ. Physics can give us an amazing picture of the universe and of our place in it. But to claim that this is all we need for true comfort in the face of death is simply unreasonable.

What Freeman presents about the conservation of energy and about the fact that the energy that animated us in our lifetimes will never fully be lost is true. Nevertheless, just as we do not mourn the loss of nail clippings or hair trimmings, it is not the body or energy as such that we miss, but a human person. We long for the whole person, both the body and that intangible principle that made that body the unique person we so loved, their soul. In death there is a stark change, a true loss, for the body that was once given a unity and a purpose by the soul is now simply a collection of parts that are each going their own way. Freeman admits this but tries to put a positive spin on it in his closing line:

"According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen."

But no one can honestly deny that something real truly is gone, namely the very order that makes you a person. The energy that suffused our loved one in life and that they used to make us laugh and cry and love, though not completely gone, has lost that unity and purpose, that order, that we so prized in their life.

The image that we somehow “merge” with the universe in death as the energy that we expended in life and the molecules that made up our bodies carry on an independent existence can only be comforting if we convince ourselves that all we are when alive is a particular collection of molecules with a particular pattern of energy. It is only by cheapening our understanding of and value for human life that this image can hope to comfort.

True comfort in mourning cannot rely simply on the material, on talk of the persistence of energy and physical parts. It must include reference to the soul, that principle of life that, by its very nature, orders us to something beyond the physical.

Catholics look to the promise that death is not a loss of the soul, that they can still be united to their loved ones in the Body of Christ and that they will one day be restored to the fullness of their personhood, body and soul, in the new creation.
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Thomas Davenport, O.P., who entered the Order of Preachers in 2010. He graduated from Stanford University with a PhD in Physics.
 
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When most people think of Albert Einstein’s contribution to physics, the theory of relativity is what comes to mind, and rightly so. What most don’t realize is that his Nobel Prize was actually awarded for explaining the photoelectric effect, a result which contradicted the classical understanding of light and helped lead to the development of Quantum Mechanics. Despite his major contributions to its development, Einstein was famously uncomfortable with the way randomness and uncertainty became so integral to the understanding of that new theory, often summed up in his quote, “God does not throw dice.”

This objection, however offhand it may seem, resonated with many physicists of the time. The glory of classical physics was how neat and tidy everything was. It offered the promise of determinism: if we could know perfectly the state of the universe at one moment and the laws that govern it, we could extrapolate forwards and backwards perfectly as far as we like. Despite the recognition that this ideal was well nigh impossible, there was comfort in the promise, and each step we took at least brought us closer to that perfection. The claim was that perfect knowledge of the natural world, the sort that is attributed to God, would ultimately be expressed in a deterministic mathematical formula.

The difficulty that Quantum Mechanics presented for Einstein and many others, physicists and non-physicists alike, is that the best picture of the physical world that it allows seems partial and incomplete. It implied that it is not just practically difficult but theoretically impossible to completely describe the current state of the world, let alone extrapolate forwards or backwards as we please. As bad as the loss of “perfect” knowledge of the world was for physicists, it further called into question the nature of God’s knowledge of the world. If some aspect of the natural order was inherently uncertain and unknowable what does this imply for God? Is God’s knowledge subject to this randomness, is he simply reacting to the whims of nature?

The image of God awaiting the results of a chance outcome is rightly viewed as absurd, but the solution was not a recovery of classical determinism. Even independent of the results of Quantum Mechanics, that view was philosophically flawed, and the attempt to understand God’s knowledge using it was even more so.

If physics could actually give us a complete description of the now and from that extrapolate forwards and backwards, then the past, present and future are logically the same and all equally “present.” In a sense, nothing “new” ever happens because everything is subject to absolute necessity. Every effect is completely defined by its cause, a picture of the world that is arguably static rather than dynamic, detracting from the very notion of time. There are a host of subtle problems this raises about necessity and contingency and what it even means to be a cause, but the most obvious difficulty with this view is that it leaves no room at all for free human activity.

Additionally, thinking of God’s knowledge in this way cripples the idea of His providence. If everything in nature simply happened necessarily based on what came before, it would seem reasonable to say that God’s knowledge is just the perfect working out of the complicated physics problem of the universe. As creator He knows how all things will work together and His providence simply becomes this human kind of foresight and His governance simply becomes setting things up to run perfectly. The danger inherent in this is to see God as the external Architect who only works on and understands the world on a natural level, more powerfully and perfectly than we ever could perhaps, but still on a natural level.

It took many years and much experimentation and calculation before the reality of the quantum world sunk in. Physicists eventually became comfortable with the success of Quantum Mechanics and settled into a new status quo that accepted a randomness and indeterminism underlying physics. Even those who sought alternative interpretations of Quantum Mechanics that might save determinism recognized that they had to bring in other phenomena that destroyed the crisp, clean classical worldview. Unfortunately, the damage done to the understanding of causality and of God’s providence by classical determinism remains.

Even if the natural world “throws dice” in its most fundamental interaction, this may simply be a physical manifestation of the inherent contingency of all material things. This idea would not have been so foreign to Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, who saw both necessary and contingent causes in the world around them. More importantly, this loss of absolute necessity does not threaten God’s absolute knowledge of the created order, for his knowledge is not limited to the particular mathematical and formal descriptions that we are able to develop in the sciences. God’s providence, His wise ordering of everything to its proper end, is above every natural cause. The certainty of God’s knowledge does not limit his power to create natural objects that can act in a truly contingent way. Einstein was right that “God does not throw dice,” but He knows perfectly the natural order that He created to do just that.
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Thomas Davenport, O.P., who entered the Order of Preachers in 2010. He graduated from Stanford University with a PhD in Physics.
 
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Pablo Picasso’s Tragedy (1903) depicts three figures huddled on a beach—presumably a family. We see nothing of the ‘tragedy’ itself, however; no trace of specific disaster remains, and we are left to speculate about what series of events may have led to their misfortune. The focus of the painting centers us on the figures themselves.

The man and woman are turned inwards in an inherently familial pose, but the distance between them and their downcast eyes reveal their inability to comfort each other. The child, too young to understand the meaning of his own experience, places a hand on the man and looks pleadingly in the direction of the woman. Neither have anything to offer him, and this feeling of impotence must only increase their own suffering. Here ‘tragedy’ functions as a subject in the painting not in reference to any single event, but simply as the human experience.

Picasso is not alone in choosing to depict forms of human suffering and loss, and there is something fitting about this. Even after the fall, it seems that art is still inclined towards a kind of imitation of nature. Good art resonates with our experience of the natural world and with our own human nature as well. It does not flinch in the presence of failure, personal weakness, or moral evil. In point of fact, what is often so disedifying about pseudo-art or kitsch is not so much its technical mediocrity as its lack of honesty. Of course, an undifferentiated portrayal of negative experience can also lead to an insufficient humanism or naturalism. Worse still would be a deliberate focus on ugliness. The seeming danger for Picasso is not the first of these pitfalls, but the latter two.

The subject of Picasso’s work is something that should be inherently undesirable. There is nothing beautiful about tragedy. Although we may be slow to say so, the sight of others’ suffering has the power to repulse and to send us searching for a distraction. Nonetheless, there is something intuitively beautiful about Picasso’s Tragedy that strikes us as paradoxical only on second thought. The painting seems to exert an immediate draw that transports us directly onto Picasso’s gray-blue beach, bringing us close to the figures and to their nameless tragedy as well; it is only on further reflection that we realize how strange it is to be attracted by something so plainly awful.

Picasso draws our attention directly and simply to their pain itself, with no outside referent to distract or to offer impartial resolutions. When considered critically, there seems to be nothing attractive about this. And yet Picasso has presented tragedy simpliciter, and we are drawn by it not as we might be by a depiction of pleasant scenery, but as a father might be drawn by the suffering of his son. Picasso has portrayed the human experience of tragedy in such a way that we feel no revulsion—no burning need to distract ourselves from the human suffering before us. Tragedy is here framed in such primary and universal terms that it necessarily resonates with us all, evoking not pious sympathy, but real empathy.

The presence of beauty in a painting like this will always remain somewhat elusive, but perhaps a trace of an explanation can be found in Picasso’s authentic humanism. Picasso manages to elicit that which is most human in each of us by drawing us into another’s experience of something with which we ourselves are only too familiar.

Picasso was not a religious man, and there is no hint of theological horizon present here. His secularism extended even to his parents, who did not raise him as a practicing Catholic. And yet in spite of this, his work seems to be open to something greater. Perhaps it was the cultural Catholicism of his native Spain which imbued him with a certain anthropological honesty that was receptive to the motions of grace, if only subliminally.

Tragedy in the natural sense is survivable; no misfortune, however great, can completely discourage a person from seeking the good. But, in the eyes of Catholics, God alone can undo the knot of tragedy itself, reestablishing us in the newness of grace. Perhaps Picasso would not have anticipated it, but when his Tragedy is viewed through the lens of faith, our natural empathy can take on a supernatural character.
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Reginald M. Lynch, O.P., who entered the Order in 2007. He attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where he studied philosophy and religious studies.

I once heard it suggested that there’s a sort of joke hidden in the Latin original of the Summa Theologiae that didn’t make it into the commonly used English translation: “the proof from authority is the weakest form of proof,” we read in the Benziger edition (I.1.8.2us), and yet we don’t see the words that follow in the Latin text: “secundum Boëtium.” In the original Latin, you see, Thomas argues that the argument from authority is the weakest form of argument on the basis of the authority of Boethius.

While we may certainly savor the irony, two things should be pointed out so as to grasp the real meaning of this assertion. First, although in human affairs the argument from authority is the weakest form of argument, it is still an argument; that is, the testimony of authorities can be of great assistance in our quest for truth, as we attempt to use our reason to distinguish truth from error. Further, although in matters of human reason the argument from authority is the weakest, when we are dealing with matters of divine revelation (to which no one can reason unless he is God), the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest form of argument.

In the Christian tradition, there has been a balanced appreciation both of the value of authority as well as of the fact that the truth transcends the person who speaks. As Pope Benedict tweeted before rescinding the papacy, "We do not possess the truth, the truth possesses us." We can glean truth from anyone who speaks it, whether they are an authority or not. On the Catholic views, in matters of faith, persons endowed with the charism of proclaiming the truth about Jesus Christ possess a unique authority as ministers of Christ, and yet they too are servants of the truth, they too have learned the message they proclaim from Christ and not from their own ingenuity.

Nevertheless, for both Catholics and atheists, when it comes to convincing people of the truth, whether it be about matters of faith, reason, or science, it can sometimes be helpful to omit an explicit mention of the source of our argument or reasoning. The reason for this is that for some people, the authorities in question or even authority in itself is suspect. If we have decided, for instance, that Christians are naïve and outdated, then we will not be inclined to grant a particular Christian authority a fair hearing nor see that person as a helpful guide on our quest for truth.

In the late 6th century, St. Martin of Braga formulated a phrase which summarized this tradition: “Do not let the authority of a speaker move you, consider what is said, not who says it.” (Ironically, the text containing this admonition circulated under the putative authorship of Seneca, presumably enhancing its authority.) In a famous text on study spuriously attributed to Thomas Aquinas (and yet surely expressing something true about his mindset), a similar sentiment is expressed: “Do not consider who the person is you are listening to, but whatever good he says commit to memory.” To adduce another authority, The Imitation of Christ likewise joins this chorus: “Inquire not who may have said a thing, but consider what is said.”

In this context, it is interesting to consider St. Thomas’s treatment in his commentary on the Letter to the Hebrews about the question of whether Paul himself had written the epistle. Observing that there is no mention of the name of the author in the epistle itself, Thomas suggests that Paul may have written anonymously “because his name was odious to the Jews, since he taught that the observances of the law were no longer to be kept, as is clear from Acts 15:2. Consequently, he concealed his name, lest the salutary doctrine of this epistle go for naught.” Paul, in other words, was for this particular audience an anti-authority, a shady character; nevertheless, because his message was so important, he willingly effaced his own authority so as to enable his message to have a fair hearing.

Today, it is often necessary to remind both Christians and non-Christians that they should consider the testimony of those who do not share their perspective. Despite our disagreements, those on the other side of the intellectual divide may have insights into truth worthy of our consideration. In other words, do not let the anti-authority of the speaker move you, but consider what is said, not who says it. If the truth really is at stake, it will ultimately prevail.
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Innocent Smith, O.P., who entered the Order of Preachers in 2008. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where he studied music and philosophy, and St. Gregory's Academy.
(Image credit: Inquisitr)

I enjoy reading Edward O. Wilson much more than Richard Dawkins, and recently I started to ask myself why this might be. Both are good writers and present difficult scientific concepts in easy-to-understand language. Both work in the controversial area of sociobiology and the evolution of human beings. Both are post-Christian thinkers with little interest in the nuances and delicacies of theological reasoning. What separates these two men? And, even when I don’t agree with him, what makes Wilson so appealing and interesting? I think it comes down to the fact that, while Dawkins is a biologist, Wilson is a naturalist.

In Wilson’s autobiography, Naturalist, he tells the story of his development as a scientist, focusing particularly on his vigorous fieldwork from an early age. He vividly describes his first encounter with nature as a boy of seven:

"I stand in the shallows off Paradise Beach, staring down at a huge jellyfish in water so still and clear that its every detail is revealed as though it were trapped in glass. The creature is astonishing. It existed outside my previous imagination. I study it from every angle I can manage from above the water’s surface."

He continues with many, many stories about his early encounters with the natural world—not always benign!—and ends by asking:

"Why do I tell you this little boy’s story of medusas, rays, and sea monsters, nearly sixty years after the fact? Because it illustrates, I think, how a naturalist is created. A child comes to the edge of deep water with a mind prepared for wonder...Hands-on experience at the critical time, not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist."

While Dawkins may have an excellent grasp of various biological concepts, theories, data, and systems, Wilson has what I think St. Thomas Aquinas would call a certain level of wisdom—the organizing and ordering aspect of knowledge that leads one deep into the truth of the world. Wilson has spent incalculable hours in the field, watching and observing, collecting and synthesizing, and the result is a superior knowledge of living things. He demonstrates this integrated knowledge not only through his detailed drawings and observations (quite good for a non-artist), but also in such creative work as “The Anthill Chronicles,” a sort of Homeric epic found in his first novel, Anthill. Again, E. O. Wilson is not just a biologist; he is a naturalist.

In analogous sense—if the reader will pardon the comparison—we might say that St. Thomas is not just a theologian; he is a supernaturalist. And this is one reason he has had, and continues to have, such a profound impact on Catholic theology.

In the Second Article of the First Question of the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas considers whether theology is a science—“science” being used here in the philosophical sense of “sure and certain knowledge derived from perfectly known principles.” He answers:

"Sacred doctrine is a science. We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like. There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic. So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed." (ST I, 1, 2)

Sacred science, or theology, is a science for St. Thomas because it has sure and certain first principles. But these first principles are not grasped by human reason—that would make theology, at best, a sort of philosophy—but by faith and in the light of faith. The principles of theology are, in fact, the knowledge of God and those blessed ones (the saints and angels) who look on God in the beatific vision. We, wayfarers along the journey of life, cannot see the principles of theology with complete clarity because we cannot see God before we enter into his glory. We can, however, have certain knowledge of theological truths, like the Trinity and the Incarnation, by means of faith—the acceptance of the revelation of God on the authority of God. And this revelation is found most completely in the person of Jesus Christ.

Thus, for a follower of St. Thomas, theology cannot be a matter of natural reason alone. The virtue of faith is essential to doing theology in the truest sense because only God and the blessed know these things certainly and entirely. So, while one who reasons through theological issues without the light of faith might be called a “theologian” in some limited sense, he is far from doing theology, properly speaking. It is the supernaturalist, I would claim—one who has the virtue of faith and continues to develop this faith through prayer, meditation, and the graces of the sacraments—who is the real theologian.

I like to think, then, that if St. Thomas were here with us today, he would find a kindred spirit in Professor Wilson—though of course he wouldn’t agree with all of his conclusions. Perhaps, developing this spirit further, he could even introduce Wilson to the wisdom beyond human understanding that is sacred doctrine. “Theology,” he might say, “does not destroy the naturalist, but brings him to perfection.”
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Bonaventure Chapman, O.P., who entered the Order of Preachers in 2010. He received an M.Th. in Applied Theology from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, where he studied for the Anglican priesthood. Article used with author's permission.
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Recently, Cardinal George Pell publicly debated atheist Richard Dawkins on the subject of God’s existence. When Mr. Dawkins was asked about the cause of the universe, and how something could come from nothing, he replied that while his own theory cannot sufficiently answer this question, any answer would be better than something as complex as God. “'Nothing' is very, very, simple,” Dawkins says, “but God as a creative cause is very complex.”

Dawkins’ point is that an immaterial God has to be at least as complex as the material universe he creates that, therefore, God’s existence would itself require an explanation, just as the existence of the universe does. In point of fact, however, the Christian philosophical and theological tradition has always conceived of God as uniquely and utterly simple, i.e., without any division or complexity. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, deals with this question in the First Part of his Summa Theologiae, and he explains why God, as the source of existence itself, must be simpler than the universe he created.

To see how this is true, we need to look at some concrete material beings, like cows. All cows share one thing in common: the fact that they are cows. This is their common “cow nature,” or what defines them as cows. But on top of this common cow nature, each cow has certain characteristics that make it “this particular cow.” One cow, Bessie, has a different spot pattern, for instance, or weighs more than her sister cow, Molly. These and other particular traits account for the fact that “this cow Bessie” and “that cow Molly” are not identical, despite the fact that they have the same nature.

This holds true for everything material in the universe. Even the smallest and simplest things, like electrons or quarks, still have some traits that make them more than just their natures. When we say “this cow”, “this electron,” or “that quark”, we mean something more than what defines any cow, any electron, or any quark. This is because a material thing is individuated from other material things simply by having matter and particular qualities.

In God, however, this does not happen. Whereas Bessie and the quark differ from their cow or quark natures by virtue of individual traits, everything that God is or does is identical to what he is, i.e., to his divine nature. For God, there is no difference between essence and existence. God is so simple that he is nothing but his divine nature. When God acts, thinks, loves, and creates, he does this just from what his nature is. As the cause of the universe and the source of all existence, God doesn't receive his existence from anything. Instead, God exists through himself; it is his essence to exist; he is the necessary Being that grounds the existence of all contingent beings. Of course, we cannot understand what it means to be “existence itself”, but we do know that something identical with its own existence must be the most simple and most actual being possible.

Responding to the same question about the cause of the universe, Cardinal Pell said of Dawkins’ response that it "dumbed down God and souped up the universe." Mr. Dawkins rejects God because he thinks a complex universe must have a complex cause. But the complexity of the universe does not imply that God is complex; it only implies that God’s simplicity transcends material limits. If God had created just one material thing, that one creature would not have sufficiently expressed his perfection. A whole universe of different kinds of material things, on the other hand, more fully reflects the divine goodness. Of course, the entire created order is only a pale reflection of divine perfection. Nevertheless, it still shows forth the splendor of its Maker. The heavens still proclaim the glory of God.
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Athanasius Murphy, O.P. He is a graduate of Providence College and studied Humanities and Philosophy there. Article used with author's permission.
 
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When something stops working, our first reaction is often to find someone who knows how to fix it. Whether it’s a car, a computer, or a toaster, most of us aren’t inclined to try and tinker around with some machine that we are just as likely to make worse as better. We are all pretty good at telling when something isn’t working right, but it’s far more difficult to discern why. Clearly this piece of technology is designed to do some useful task, and when it stops doing that task, we need someone to reorder its parts to get it working again.

In certain ways this is exactly how many people look at the natural world as well. Many natural things obey observable patterns or standards. Squirrels tend to gather nuts for the winter; apple seeds tend to grow into apple trees; and water tends to flow downhill. If one of these normal trends fails, we notice, even if we don’t call a mechanic to look under the hood of the withered apple tree. While we may have some inkling as to what might have gone wrong to interrupt the process, true knowledge of the process is left to the experts. And for a long time, those experts have been telling us that nature, just like the machine, is simply a matter of understanding the parts.

We are basically told by these experts that our intuition that natural things move towards some end or purpose is just a convenient way of looking at things—a pretty picture to dress up our ignorance. The alternate model proposed is that one simply break the natural process down into its parts to see how each works, both individually and with the other parts, to produce the apparent purpose. By this process we can banish any talk of natural ends from our discussion of science.

There are a whole host of philosophical and scientific problems that this trend in modern thought raises and ample grounds to question the reasonableness of the project of denying natural ends. For instance, if you are going to explain away something that looks like a natural end by claiming that it is simply the purposeless motion of its parts, then you had better hope that the parts themselves don’t demonstrate motion to an end. Inevitably, parts are broken down into other smaller parts and the question only temporarily forestalled. The apparent purpose of the apple seed growing into an apple tree is slowly stripped away as we descend down to more and more fundamental layers of explanation. The descent passes through organs, cells, molecules, and atoms until we get to the fundamental particles of nature at which point the claim is that any semblance of a natural end has been seemingly ground into nothingness.

The problem is that the ends never actually go away. Electrons and quarks and any other particles we care to consider may not act like any normal macroscopic objects, but that does not mean they do not have natural ends. Quantum Field Theory is far from intuitive, but the motions and interactions it describes follow a coherent order and structure, despite the fact that it comes with a good dose of quantum “weirdness.”

One great example of the weird teleology of particle physics is the quark. As best we can tell, the protons and neutrons that make up the nuclei of all atoms are themselves made up of smaller particles that we call quarks. One particularly odd thing about the quarks is that, while we are confident they exist in abundance, we have never directly observed them in the way we have observed the particles they make up. The problem is that the “strong” force that binds several quarks into a “bound state” like a proton or neutron gets stronger as you try to separate one quark from the rest, unlike the electromagnetic or gravitational forces, which weaken with distance. At some point, as more and more energy is expended trying to keep hold of that one quark in the proton, there is enough energy in the system for new quarks to be created. Some of these new quarks will form a new bound state with the escaping quark and one will replace it in the original proton. We simply never find a lone quark, only bundles of quarks

Whether quarks are truly fundamental particles or are themselves made up of something smaller, one thing should be clear: they have a natural tendency towards something beyond themselves—a bound state with other quarks. That is to say, they have a natural end. So, for all the efforts of some people to explain away natural ends, modern science simply won’t oblige.
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Thomas Davenport, a Dominican student brother of the Province of St. Joseph. He graduated from Stanford University with a PhD in Physics. Used with permission.
 
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