Science and Faith and the Catholic Church

As I have mentioned many times before in this blog, I was born to a Jewish mother and a German father neither of whom were very interest in religion. When I looked at Christianity I did so with fresh eyes. I don't attribute any of my insights to my having a superior intellect than my predecessors or contemporaries. I just didn't make the texts say things that weren't there.

There is a hilarious story in the rabbinic tradition where Rabbi Ishmael ridicules Rabbi Akiva by saying that he is like someone shouting at the Torah telling the text to shut up while he 'interprets' its correct meaning.

This is how I view contemporary scholars and theologians.

It isn't as if these scholars are 'men of science.' If you press them they will tell you that they don't believe 'that science can solve everything' or penetrate the deepest mysteries of God. They do this because they think that this is what the Church Fathers believed. But I ask each of you, do any of you really, really believe that the Alexandrian tradition shared this hostility to science and reason.

I am certain that they did not and for this reason - their reliance on 'philosophy' the queen of the sciences - they were branded as 'heretics.'

The point is that I was always attracted to the Alexandrian tradition even before I began to make sense of its true nature. There was just something 'sensible' and refreshingly rational in the writings of Clement, Origen and later figures. Without sounding too biased, they shared a typically Jewish interest in developing arguments through a variety of methods - i.e. allegories, logical inquiry etc.

In any event I first came into contact with Origen when I was trying to divine what Celsus was saying about Christianity. Celsus was a mid second century critic of the religion whose testimony is of great interest to those who want to 'disprove Christianity.'

In any event even if you don't want to harm Christianity Celsus' testimony is invaluable because it gives you a surprisingly refreshing perspective. Here is an outsider who is clearly not a believer giving us an impression of what Christianity looked like to contemporaries in the age.

The point here is that even atheists in this age have inherited certain presuppositions about the religion which comes as a result of European Christians having effective control of history for the last millenia or so. You know that 'Christianity' always claimed that Jesus was Christ, that it was always represented a moral system that was completely compatible with European society etc.

Many of the things that Celsus' work (or the fragments thereof) impressed upon me was his repeated allusion to Jesus' inability to convince Peter and Judas to follow his authority. This is strange, Celsus says, and raises questions about the orderly church that follows. He asks, how could the followers of God Almighty not have been scared into submission by his manifestation of his presence? Something doesn't make sense here.

Of course Celsus' original arguments were for the most part directed against Marcionites and their belief that Jesus deliberately established Simon Peter to mislead the Jews into the folly associated with the Jewish revolt and ultimately the destruction of the temple religion. Peter was the 'stumbling block' that Jews were prophesied to 'stumble over' according to the Marcionites and Celsus takes them to task for arguing that their 'Good god' would deliberately deceive people.

That argument not withstanding what impresses me most about Celsus' argument is that none of us would have looked at the gospel this way without his fresh set of eyes. Even if we are atheists we have learned to think of Peter as the head of the Church and see his example as something less than a damnable offense. Yes, Peter failed Jesus we have been told but he ultimately embodies the principle of redemption, that no matter what we do wrong God will somehow forgive us if we simply believe that Jesus was the Christ and all the rest that the European Church believes on our death bed.

Of course, this doctrine of redemption by merely confessing the right creed would have been utterly surprising to the first Christians. Yet by the time Christianity became associated with the Empire truth didn't matter as much. The 'confession of faith' became more important as the religion became a tool of social order - or at least that's how I see it.

In any event the fact that the gospel develops a scenario that God himself couldn't convince Peter to stick with him to the end, to even stay awake as the soldiers are coming, to even join him in carrying cross (like John Mark) even to his trial and death is one of the most curious features of the gospel. Celsus picked up on this because he was a learned literary critic. The reason most religious scholars don't is because - quite frankly - they are quite the opposite.

I won't stand here defending the Marcionite interpretation of the gospel right now. I just want the reader to be aware of how unusual the idea is that Peter SHOULD be the head of the Church. Everything about Mark's original gospel (the text which is claimed by the Roman Church to be Peter's text!) argues against this.

Peter is described as being 'of Satan' for God's sake!

Again, I don't ask my readers to accept the Marcionite interpretation. I just want them to see how incredibly strange the Catholic argument really is.

How did Peter get his authority when 'his gospel' isn't really his and makes him look like a malfeasant or worse yet - an instrument of Satan? Again, I can't answer this in one post but the point is that is necessary to keep this oddity as a principal feature of the gospel and the motivation of Mark as gospel writer (something that Theodore Weeden brings to the fore in his brilliant analysis of the gospel).

All I want to do in this post is contrast the idea that God Almighty couldn't convince his own disciples while they stood in his divine presence (the Protestant emphasis of 'Jesus the man' prevents us from considering the effect that God's 'presence' should have had on its beholders) with the universal praise that Church Fathers heap upon Irenaeus.

A hundred and fifty years after Jesus there is more unity in the Church rather less. This is simply incredible.

Just think of it. Without Blackberrys, television, mass communication and the internet the entire Church does not openly utter a voice of dissent against Irenaeus - the man who JUST HAPPENED to hang around the Imperial court of the most wicked Emperor in history - manages to achieve something that Jesus could not - universal agreement on the doctrines and principles of faith.

In essence then Irenaeus achieved something that even God could not.

The twelve disciples who were lucky enough to be in the presence of God dissented and rejected his teachings but even when bishops are separated from Irenaeus by an ocean they agree with teachings completely.

That is incredible as I said.

And no one should cite the 'authority of John' or 'the authority of Polycarp' to me because Irenaeus goes so far as to obscure his indebtedness to Polycarp by identifying him only as 'the Elder' throughout most of his text.

Irenaeus had a higher authority than the saints, the Holy Spirit and God Almighty. He managed to appeal to the authority of the real ruler of the world - Caesar - in order to achieve results in the Church.

No wonder Catholics bless those who rule over them. They never lost sight of their roots ...