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Silent,
I am researching a major article on this matter at the moment. I
hope to have it published in the next month or so. A few weeks ago
during the time my father was in hospital I shared with the board
that I passed a lot of my time in the hospital sitting with him
reading a series of papers published by the Gregorian University
entitled Special Divine Action – Key Issues in the Contemporary
Debate (1965-1995). It was written by then Australian priest,
Fr Paul Gwynne OMI, who returned to Australia after doing this piece
of research and was rector of one of the seminaries on the East
Coast. I understand he has subsequently left the priesthood. His
research is probably the single best study anywhere in the world
of the enormous spread of theological opinion, from across the board,
on this whole area of miracles and the ways in which we are seeking
to understand the relationship God has to us, and that we have to
God. There IS, when you are able to have access to this high quality
research which the Church sponsors at the very highest levels, an
enormous range of opinion amongst the best theological minds on
these sorts of questions that you are asking and which I was referring
to in my post.
My current endeavour arose out of a series of interviews I did some
months ago with another eminent theologian, Dr Gerald O'Collins
SJ. He is another Australian and is one of the leading Christologists
and is Professor of Systematic and Fundamental Theology at the Gregorian.
I don't think I'm being unkind to Dr O'Collins to suggest that he
sent me the study in order to convince me of the "error" of some
of my ways and thinking. Unfortunately his giving me access to this
study has had precisely the opposite effect. (I've known Fr O'Collins
for a long time. He was a scholastic [Jesuit priest in training]
at the school I attended as a boy in short pants.)
A transcript of one of the interviews I conducted with Fr O'Collins
can be found HERE
and some previous posts from this discussion board are archived
HERE.
Obviously these are very deep questions you are asking and I won't
be able to do full justice to them in a quick answer here.
One of the things I was surprised to learn from this study is that
there are a significant number of eminent theologians who, like
myself, are actually sceptical that God runs around intervening
in his Creation like some dyspeptic magician on steroids, or even
the "occasional and for good reasons" sort of interventions that
Dr O'Collins was seeking to convince me might be allowable. Some
of them are eminent names that many people here would recognise
as contributors to the big debates in the Church in the last half
century. And they are not all radicals and lefties. They, like me,
would argue that this is the wrong picture of God and, for that
matter of the Saints, or of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or of our dead
rellies in heaven. (I'll leave out the saints, the BVM and our dead
rellies for the rest of what I write here but put that last sentence
in to indicate that this extends further than just our perception
of our relationship with God.)
By the way, I am not claiming to be a theologian in these matters.
My professional training was as a Physicist and I am doing this
present research as a journalist. There are four main factors that
motivate this present research. (i) Firstly my professional background
in the sciences and trying to reconcile what I have learned there
with my equally strong interest in the spiritual and theological.
I do believe in God, both as Creator and as a personal guide and
mate. I'm trying to reconcile all the Church says about these things,
with what we are learning from what science is telling, with what
I myself am discovering in this developing personal relationship
I believe I have with God. (ii) Secondly, I'm motivated by this
BIG problem the Church seems to have in the modern world where so
many do not believe in her anymore and in the religion that I do
believe has a heck of a lot to offer humankind. I'm trying to understand
"what went wrong?" In this I join with people such as Pope John
Paul II and his call, in such places as his Apostolic
Letter on Faith and Reason – Fides et Ratio (1998)
– where he called for greater dialogue and discussion between
scientists and theologians, and philosophers and theologians. (iii)
Thirdly, I simply think this is probably the "best story" yet to
be told at the moment and a lot of people are becoming very interested
in it. (iv) Fourthly, I am, at the end of everything in my life,
literally interested in the pursuit of the truth and, specifically,
what is "the truth" in these matters — is God some kind of
magician or conjurer mixing up his "Wizard of Id" brews in heaven
that cure Aunt Bessie's tumour or isn't that picture true and we
have to find some better picture, or explanation, to give to Aunt
Bessie?
What I am going to give you now is probably the best answer I can
give to your questions. It is really the conclusions I'm coming
to in my research rather than the detailed arguments as to how I
have arrived at these conclusions. I will basically set them out
as a series of dot point hypotheses:
MY CORE HYPOTHESIS
- I believe there was/is a Creator of everything whom we endeavour
to condense into this term G-O-D.
- I believe that Creator not only started everything but he/she/it/this
Mystery was the architect of everything. God is the one who invented
everything, including the laws of science and nature that enable
"everything" to hang together. (Science is not some invention
of humankind. Humankind, through science, discovers the laws and
mind of God.)
- I believe G-O-D is essentially a Mystery to us. This Mystery
exists both within and external to the four dimensions of length,
breadth, depth and time that are the boundaries to everything
that humankind can know and exist in (at least during our time
of temporal existence). We do perceive though, imperfectly, that
there is "something" beyond the boundaries of what we can know
and directly experience. Theologians have traditionally referred
to this as "the Supernatural".
- I believe God exists both within the natural and within the
supernatural. In traditional Churchese: God is omnipresent and
omniscient.
- I believe as part of his Creative plan God did call one part
of his Creation into a special relationship with him. I don't
know if we human beings are the only part of Creation that God
has called into this special relationship. There may be other
sentient forms of life in the vastness of the Cosmos which we
have not yet discovered or explored who may have a similar
relationship to God to the one we are called to. For the moment
though, and as far as we can presently determine, human beings
are the part of the animate or inanimate parts of creation who
have this special relationship to God. The "special relationship"
is that we are invited by God to participate in
the unfolding of creation. We make decisions and are given choices
that affect and mould in some way the future of Creation in some
dynamic and, I would suggest, intensely personal way
with this Mystery we call God.
- I believe the stories of the Old Testament are inspired writing
from human beings given to us by God which are not only seeking
to explain the unexplainable of "This Mystery we call God", they
are actually inspired by God for that very purpose. In
particular the OT, and especially Genesis, is seeking to set out
for us both an understanding of God as original Architect and
Creator and some beginning understanding of the "dynamic relationship"
God calls us into both with himself and with Creation (the physical
environment, the "other" creatures, and "our neighbours").
- I believe though the Old Testament picture was incomplete. It
needed to be "completed" by a particular and very personal message
from God. That "personal" message was eventually given to us in
the Messiah promised in the OT understandings and is in fact the
Son of God whom we worship as Jesus Christ.
- I believe we were created "in the image and likeness of God".
Furthermore I don't just believe this is some "cute phrase". It
is "a seminal idea" that provides direction both to the whole
Creation enterprise and to the personal journey of every human
being and sentient participant in the Creation enterprise.
- I believe that through the original "choice" given to us, and
described apocryphally in the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden
of Eden, the choice we collectively made (i.e. all humankind/sentient
life has to take some responsibility for that decision even though
it may have been made on our behalf by our "first parents")
we are flawed or imperfect.
- I believe the role Jesus Christ plays in the Creation enterprise
is he is personal emissary (God-made-Man messenger) from God who
both "models" (through his life, passion, death and resurrection)
and "explains" (through "the Word") the "Way" for us to regain
our "perfection". In other words through the journey of our lives,
and through "the Way (of thinking and acting)" like Christ we
can again become "perfect" and "all-knowing" and "all-powerful"
"and omniscient" as God is all of these things. God invites us,
through our life journey to become God-like also. This is what
all the language of "getting to heaven", "salvation", "redemption"
and all these concepts are about.
- I believe this gift of "participation" and "relationship" God
calls each of us into is awesome, exciting, daunting and something
that is, in our present state, ultimately beyond full understanding
simply because of its humungous nature. It is something that transcends
the four dimensions of our being: the physical, the emotional,
the intellectual and the spiritual. The ultimate objective of
this "participation" and "relationship" is what we try and describe
as "holiness". I think that word is useless today though as it
has lost its true meaning through all this nerdy pious crap that
has come to be associated with it. It's about achieving "balance,
equilibrium and wholeness" across those four dimensions of being
but, ultimately, it is about us literally again being able to
fully share in the Divine or Beatific Vision. In other words,
in the state called heaven where all this happens, we will again
"see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and intuit" as God "sees, hears,
smells, tastes, touches and intuits". That is our ultimate destination
and objective. That is what we all "yearn" for at the most fundamental
part of our being.
- I believe all of the foregoing, when it is reasoned through
and meditated upon, does lead to an inescapable conclusion that
because of the participative nature of the relationship that God
calls us into, that God cannot and does not break the laws of
his own creation. If he were to do that it fundamentally stuffs
up, or causes a disjunction in, the nature of the relationship
he has with us. It turns him into one who "plays favourites" or
"is unpredictable" or is himself "serendipitous" rather than the
serendipity being part of the nature of his Creation and our participation
in it. God, as originator and architect of all, does not "play
favourites", is not unpredictable but is equanimous - he "loves"
each part of his creation and each of us equally. God does not
"whisper" secret messages in some peoples ears, either directly
or via his saints, that are exclusive for certain people. His
Creation and "love" are offered to all of us without fear or favour.
We though are also given this awesome gift, and responsibility,
as to whether we cooperate in the Divine Plan or choose to do
our own thing. There is a cost but not a punishment for us choosing
to do our own thing. There is a particular to-be-sought-after-result,
but no "reward" (as in elephant stamps), for choosing to be participants
in the Divine Plan of Creation.
Silent, and any others interested in this, and this is the bit
I don't have the space or time to explain at the moment but am just
basically presenting as a conclusion, there are a couple of implications
that do flow out of all this. One is that God is not "sitting up
in heaven" like the Wizard of Id mixing up chemical or biological
"brews" or "waving some magic" wand that causes physical changes
to the laws of his creation at his whim. I believe God has to
obey all the laws of his creation just as we do. If he were to "break,
suspend, or change" any of those laws the whole dynamic of life
would actually break down. All of Creation "hangs together" very
delicately. I do believe though that God is in dynamic
relationship with us. This means that we act and God reacts
to our actions. And that we can react to God's actions and he welcomes
that interaction. That is an intrinsic part of his Creative
Plan.
The part of this study I am working through at the moment is "how
then does this dynamic relationship work if he is
not some kind of Wizard of Id magician?" Some theologians,
in the studies that I have read, argue that there is a "mental"
intervention by God. In other words, God suggests things to us.
In my work I think I might be extending that to suggest that he
works through the subconscious — both collective and individual.
All of this still allows, at least in some sense, for the possibility
of "miracles" but it is not miracles in the sense of "Wizard of
Id magic". It is "miracle" in the sense that we actually participate
in our own "inventing and healing and creativity" even if a heck
of a lot of the time we ourselves might not know what in the dickens
we are doing or how we achieve certain results or end up thinking
some brilliant solution to something or other. It's, as it were,
"the God factor" that makes the difference not the "Wizard of Id"
factor.
My apologies that I can't be more forthcoming than this at this
stage. I'd be happy to try and answer any specific further questions
based on all of this though but cannot guarantee that I will have
adequate answers.
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