Theology in a changing world

Bill Toner SJ :: In medieval times theology (‘the science of God’) was regarded as ‘the queen of the sciences’ in the Christian world, since it studied what was regarded as the highest reality, God, the creator and ground of all being. With the rise of empirical method (i.e. the study only of what can be observed) in science, along with the increase in agnosticism and atheism, the status of theology in academia has diminished. In Ireland it hardly exists at all as a subject in most of the secular universities and is mainly studied in religious institutions. ‘Science’ is now generally taken as referring only to the natural and social sciences, such as physics and sociology.

Some Christians may feel that all the main truths about God, and the church he founded on earth, have been established many centuries ago, and that there is little left for theologians to study. It is true that the main tenets of the Christian faith were laid down by the end of the 8th century, notably in Councils held in Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon. There has been a strong assumption that these articles of faith are ‘immutable’, and cannot be changed. Many of them are based on religious faith rather than empirical method. They are believed to be “the word of God”, so they cannot easily be the object of scientific research in the same way that modern scientists make new findings, (and sometimes change them), on the basis of hypothesis, experiment, and observation. So why is there a need for ongoing theological research?

The world of theological study

A rough estimate suggests that there may be over 1,000 Christian scholarly theological journals in circulation world-wide. Clearly there are many theologians who do not accept that the great Councils had the last word on many issues, and that there are lots of unexplored matters to research and write about. In fact, even during the time of the early Councils one point of difference that was bubbling away under the surface played a significant role in the split between the western church and the eastern (Orthodox) church in the 11th century. The eastern church believed that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father, while the westerners believed the Spirit came from the Father ‘and the Son’ (filioque). It was clear that the Councils had not satisfied everyone in relation to this point. Many theologians study ethical issues, as novel moral dilemmas continue to appear.

While it is easy to say that theological doctrine should be unchanging, doctrine is expounded in a world that does change. As Heraclitus said, “you cannot step into the same river twice”. The universe is always in flux. However, throughout the period of the early Councils, not much changed in the life of human beings, in terms of technology, social structure, or knowledge about the world and the universe. The scene in the Bible where Jesus clears the temple of moneylenders, could just as easily have been set in the 10th century A.D., as is true of all the parable stories Jesus told. While vernacular languages continued to develop, the languages of the Church, Latin and Greek, provided a sense of stability and continuity. The intellectual climate of the first millennium A.D. fostered a mindset regarding unchanging principles, in both civic and church matters. This era was marked by the birth of pithy Latin phrases, such as “Roma locuta est, causa finita est” (Rome has spoken, the matter is finished) and “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” (outside the church there is no salvation); these words were used to close off many discussions.

A change in worldview

Before the industrial revolution, cyclical theories of human society predominated. The view of life was very much that described in the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, “the sun rises and the sun goes down… and there is nothing new under the sun… Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us” (Eccl. 1: 5,10).

Although there was a rich tradition of theology in medieval Christianity, its dominant motto was ‘faith seeking understanding’ (St. Anselm). The affirmation of the basic stability of that faith remained central. The appearance of two major heresies, Arianism and Nestorianism, both of which would have changed basic principles of Christian belief, created a defensive mentality in relation to Church doctrine. Theologians of the time were content to write extensive commentaries on the Church’s foundational documents, such as the scriptures and the writings of the early Fathers. They used logic to explore the faith, and wrote extensively on reason, revelation and the problem of evil. as giving insight into religious mysteries, such as the nature of God. The image of an unchanging faith in an unchanging world, prevailed for many centuries.

This was not to last. As many social commentators, notably Karl Marx, have pointed out, developments in technology are one of the key drivers of culture change. The invention of the printing press, and then a massive industrial revolution, changed the way people experienced the world. From the Renaissance onwards, great changes occurred not only in technology, but also in social organisation. Sometimes too there were changes of mood in the general populace. For instance, there was a gradual aversion to ‘cruelty’. The genesis of this is hard to explain, though it might have been due to the refinement of manners that accompanied the artistic awakening of the Renaissance. However, it has to be acknowledged that this aversion to cruelty has waxed and waned over the centuries.

The first major collision of traditional Christian faith with emerging technological change centred around the assertion in 1543 by Galileo, who had built one of the first telescopes, that the earth moved around the sun (heliocentrism), rather than the reverse, as suggested in the Bible. The Bible also states that while the earth was created on the first day, the sun (“the greater light”) was created on the second day; other Bible verses speak of the sun moving across the earth rather than the reverse. Fifty years earlier, Copernicus had also suggested that the earth moved around the sun, but unlike Galileo he suggested it only as part of a mathematical hypothesis circulated to a narrow circle of academics. Copernicus was also a respected cleric, and only published his opinion on his deathbed, so he escaped censure. Galileo went public with his views, was tried by the Inquisition, forced to recant his views, and sentenced to lifelong house arrest. It was 1822 before the Church, in the face of overwhelming evidence, officially accepted officially that the earth moved around the sun.

Social developments and changing attitudes also brought about changes in Church teachings, though very slowly. The Church condemnation, in 1139, of charging interest on a loan, was revoked only in 1830. Slavery was defended by the Church as late as 1866 and this support was only formally retracted in 1885. The burning of supposed ‘witches’, often with support from Church authorities, went out of favour in the late 18th century. The Council of Florence decreed in 1442 that those who died outside the Catholic Church would be condemned to eternal hell-fire; this teaching was not formally revoked until 1964, by the Second Vatican Council.

The Reformation

A huge, if regrettable, impetus was given to theological research by the fracturing of the Church in the 15th and 16th centuries. The main trigger was the Vatican’s request in 1516 to the Bishop of Mainz in Germany to contribute 10,000 ducats towards the rebuilding of St. Peter’s in Rome. The bishop was short of funds and, with the permission of the Pope, engaged the services of a Dominican friar, Johann Tetzel, to sell plenary indulgences (remission of the punishment of purgatory) in order to raise funds. Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar who lectured widely on the gratuity of God’s grace for the forgiveness of sin, wrote to the bishop denouncing the practice of selling indulgences, along with other criticisms of Church practice. The bishop forwarded the letter to the Pope, who, after a long investigation, excommunicated Luther. This led to a deep split in the Church, generally known now as the Reformation, with the two sides loosely described as Catholics (loyal to the Pope) and Protestants (following Luther and other reformers).

In 1545, Pope Paul III convened the Council of Trent, which ran intermittently until 1563, with the object of reaffirming Catholic doctrine. But it was too late, and to this day the fissures in the Church have never been fully healed. On the Protestant side, the changes in doctrine arising from the Reformation went well beyond the original objections of Luther, and opened a vast arena for debate between theologians, and stimulated much research into Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. The Nicene Creed was not abandoned or modified by the Reformers, so theologians concentrated mainly on topics which were not spelled out in the Creeds, such as the role of Scripture, the Papacy and the Church, grace and good works, free will, the nature of salvation and ‘atonement’, devotion to Mary and the saints, the sacraments, clerical celibacy and moral teaching.

Changing Church attitudes to science

In the late 17th century Isaac Newton made many scientific discoveries regarding the laws of gravity, the composition of light, laws of motion, and calculus. Although he proposed that the same laws of gravity that caused apples to fall, also governed the movements of planets, he was not perceived as contradicting Scripture, but rather of demonstrating the marvels of God’s design. In spite of also being very critical of the doctrine of the Trinity, as an Anglican his views on this did not bring him into serious conflict with the Catholic Church.

In the case of Charles Darwin, the Church also seemed anxious not to repeat the mistakes of the Galileo affair, and never issued a formal criticism of Darwin’s theory of evolution, as presented in The Origin of Species in 1859. Darwin’s theory had notable supporters, such as John Henry Newman. The Origin of Species was never placed on the Index of Prohibited Books. There were a few prominent Catholic critics of Darwin’s theory, notably the prominent German theologian Joseph Scheeben. The Catholic journal La Civilta Cattolica, published by the Jesuits in Rome, also ran a lengthy campaign against aspects of the theory. Criticisms focused on the theory that humans had also evolved from lower primates; on the implications regarding the origin of the human soul, which was seen as a spiritual faculty directly created by God, and which could not have evolved from matter; and the fact that Darwin’s theory seemed to diminish or deny God’s role in creation.

In general, Catholic theology of the time was less rigid than its Protestant counterpart in relation to the inerrancy of Scripture (although this was to change radically when Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann came on the scene at the start of the 20th century). In 1884, John Henry Newman wrote, “the Bible contains many statements of a historical nature that have no salvific content in themselves and so need not be inerrant”. It is true that, in 1907, Pope Pius X condemned historical criticism of Scripture; but in 1943 Pope Pius XII encouraged scholars to use the findings of history, archaeology, and philology to discern the intended meaning of the authors.

A fast-changing world

Change now comes at bewildering speed. During the first years of my own life, we survived without a fridge, a TV, a phone of any kind, a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine, or central heating. Like most people of the time, we lived in fear of contracting TB (and of probably dying from it), a disease now easily treated by antibiotics. The rapid pace of change fostered a new mindset, with people accepting frequent change, and often welcoming it.

From the early 20th century on, the Church had generally made its peace with the science community as more and more astounding advances emerged from their research into the cosmos. Yet scientific research into the micro-world raised as many questions as that into the macro.

Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc² (where m = matter or mass) turned our understanding of the material world upside down. For centuries, matter was considered to be largely dead and formless and was contrasted with ‘spirit’. For instance, Pope Pius XII stated that Catholics must believe that the human soul was created by God and was not brought into being through the transformation of matter. Einstein’s equation meant that matter and ‘energy’ were interchangeable. A quantity of matter could be turned into energy. The Nagasaki bomb contained only 6.2 kilograms of plutonium, the weight of an average carry-on under-seat bag on a plane. Yet, through Einstein’s law of E=mc², this was converted into the same amount of energy that would be generated by 21,000 tons of TNT. [1]

Moreover, the research of Einstein, and other scientists such as Max Planck and Heisenberg, into the sub-atomic world, showed that energy, as well as being emitted in waves, is also emitted in discrete packets, now known as quanta . In the case of electro-magnetic radiation, these quanta are known as photons. These photons have very mysterious properties. The most remarkable is that, in certain situations (normally in a laboratory), photons can become ‘paired’ or ‘entangled’ and they can be induced to spin in unison, in opposite directions. In the normal situation these photons would be situated side by side in the laboratory. However, the logic of the mathematics underlying quantum physics suggested that if the entangled photons were separated, by however great a distance, a change in the spin of one photon would simultaneously change the spin of the other photon.

Although Einstein was involved in the discovery of entanglement, he refused to accept what he called “spooky action at a distance” since it violated what for him was a cardinal principle, which is that, with rare exceptions, nothing can exceed the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). Einstein maintained that “hidden variables” must be responsible, though he also allowed for the possibility of “a deeper reality”. But in 1949, the simultaneity of action and effect at a distance was confirmed experimentally by Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu, a female Chinese physicist. To comprehend this in any way at all, one might imagine that a steel rod, say, a thousand miles long, could connect two objects. It the rod is twisted round at one end, presumably it turns instantaneously at the other end, – it does not need the sending of a time-consuming “message”. So there may be “a deeper reality”, or ‘field’, that connects the two photons in some way like this. Carl Friedrich von Weizäcker [2] asserted that taking quantum physics seriously predicts a unique single quantum reality underlying the whole world. Quantum entanglement has now been discovered to solve some mysteries of bird migration, as it creates a way for birds to detect the direction of the earth’s magnetic field.

Entanglement is not the only example of the mysteries of the quantum world. This world even challenges the distinction we make between “is” and “is not”. For instance, unlike the ordinary objects we are familiar with, an electron (another sub-atomic particle) could be in different places at the same time (until it is measured – an added mystery). The best scientists can do is work out a set of numbers that give the probability of finding it at every point in space simultaneously. This inability to pin-point a location is not due to any deficiency in our measurement methods but is a fundamental feature of the natural world at a microscopic level. Another mystery is that an electron can, when not being watched, spin both clockwise and anti-clockwise at the same time, something also that cannot be grasped by human understanding. Some modern theories are now suggesting that the world emanates from a non-empirical background of “potentialities” composed of mathematical forms rather than “hard matter”. (In this context “non-empirical” means based on theory rather than on observation).

Quanta can also pass through solid objects, as somehow their wave-like nature allows them to ‘appear’ on the other side of a barrier, even if they have not enough energy to jump over it. This is known as quantum tunnelling, and it plays a major role in the natural world, notably in photosynthesis (whereby plants use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide for food, and expel oxygen); and in DNA mutation, which, apart from possible positive outcomes, can unfortunately trigger cancer. There are already many invented applications of quantum tunnelling in the human world such as in phone memory, and MRI scanners. Quantum computers also show great promise, though these are not yet operational, because quanta are very fragile, and scientists have not yet found a fool-proof way of preventing them from collapsing into their alternative wave-like form.

Impact of modern science on theology

The discoveries of Darwin, Newton, Einstein, and others must make it clear to theologians that the natural world is quite a different place to the one in which the key events and revelations of the great religions were first recorded in writing. As Ilia Delio remarks, God is always a God for the World, and if the conception of the World has changed so much in our times, it is not surprising that the ancient conceptions of God are less convincing. Many theologians now have at least a cursory knowledge of physics and chemistry, and generally accept the rigour and methodology of modern research. It is rare for reports of scientific discoveries to be questioned by the Church.

In the wake of modern scientific progress, there have been some bold attempts to reshape or reimagine religious truths, notably in the areas of the Nature of God, and Christology. In this regard, probably the main development of interest is that of Process Theology. This field of theology attracted great interest in in the 1970s and 1980s. It went out of fashion for a while in the Catholic Church, but has been given a new lease of life by writers like John B. Cobb Jr., Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki and Ilia Delio [3]. The late Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., of Xavier University, Ohio; and John F. Haught of Georgetown University, also made notable contributors in this area.

Process theology

Historically, process theology originated from a number of different sources [4], but in Catholic circles, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) is considered its most influential exponent, though he was not identified during his lifetime as a “process” theologian. The dominant idea in process theology is that God is really changed by what happens in the world and in the universe. Matter plays a central role. With the coming of quantum physics, we can longer think of matter as just inert ‘stuff’, – quantum physics tells us otherwise. Teilhard writes lyrically of it in Hymn of the Universe,: “I bless you, matter… I acclaim you as the divine milieu, charged with creative power, as the ocean stirred by the Spirit, as the clay moulded and infused with life by the incarnate word”. Process theologians see mind as entangled with matter and matter as entangled with God. Lothar Schaefer [5], in his explorations of quantum reality, underlines the importance of consciousness in the universe as a whole.

For Teilhard, God is seen as the transcendent dimension of matter and cannot be considered apart from it. God grows and changes with matter. In this view, God is neither immutable nor perfect; rather God’s perfection is in the future; God is completed through ongoing life in the process of evolution. The essence of reality is not being but becoming. The presence of God within the entirety of the material and evolving universe reveals that humanity, and the cosmos itself, participates in a divine process towards unification with Christ [6].

Process theology sees God not as the cause of all things, but the goal of all things. If the universe is unfinished, then God is unfinished as well. John F. Haught of Georgetown University asserts that, “It is because God is not-yet that there is room for time”. Delio, who called one of her books The Not-Yet God, adds, “What happens in time is what happens to God”.

One of the assertions in Teilhard that Delio identifies as particularly significant relates as much to spirituality as it does to theology. Teilhard maintains that in traditional theology, God has a real relation to creatures, but creatures do not have a real relationship with God, but only a rational relationship. In a real relationship the two entities affect one another. On the other hand, a rational relationship is one in which the mind can know the other without being affected by the other. For Teilhard, God and the world share a real mutual relationship. Delio notes that Carl Jung [7] held the same view as Teilhard in regard to the relationship between divinity and humanity.

Process theology is not without its critics. The main criticism is that it appears to undermine the classical attributes of God. The traditional Christian view is that God is non-temporal (eternal); is unchanging or ‘immutable’; and is unaffected by the world (impassible). Critics also say that process theology implies an unacceptable diminishment of God’s power, so that God is no longer worshipful.

However, process theology does not deny that God is in some respect eternal (will never die); immutable (in the sense of unchangeably good); and impassible (God’s eternal aspect is unaffected by actuality). Process theologians also respond that it is essential to make a distinction between coercive power and persuasive power. Coercive power is rejected by God. Jesus died for humanity’s sins rather that overthrow the Roman Empire

At different times, authorities within the Catholic Church have criticised certain aspects of this novel interpretation of the universe. But the Church has not condemned process theology in any single document, partly because it is not a single unified school of theology, but rather a disparate collection of radical ideas on the nature of God, considered in the light of a modern scientific view of the world. It is significant for Catholics that Teilhard de Chardin was never formally condemned as a heretic, though he was silenced at various times. None of his writings were ever placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. In 2009 a Vatican spokesman stated that no one would consider him a heretic. Some aspects of his thought have been praised by recent Popes, including John-Paul II, Benedict, and Francis.

Need for a new language

Whatever about the truth of otherwise of process theology, there is no doubt that when theology enters the scientific arena it needs to be armed with a contemporary language that can speak to a younger generation, many of whom look on the writings of Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins as the modern Bible.

Not only that, but it seems clear that the domain of science has grown enormously in the popular consciousness, particularly through television documentaries and science fiction. Even people who have never studied science are familiar with language and concepts such as global warming, black holes, Big Bang, DNA and food calories. Much of the language of Catholic theology and liturgy, which still makes use of mysterious Aristotelian concepts that were never identified empirically, sits uneasily beside the language of contemporary science. The new generation of theologians are at least making an attempt to address this issue”.

FOOTNOTES:

1. In Einstein’s formula E=energy in Joules; m=matter or mass; c=speed of light. The latter is squared because we are dealing with a three-dimensional area.

2. In relation to the world- of quantum physics, an invaluable source was Life on the Edge – The Coming of Quantum Biology, by Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden (Black Swan Publications, 2014). Carl F. von Weizsäcker (1912-2007) was a prominent German nuclear physicist who also had an interest in religion and ethics.

3. A significant boost has been given to process theology in Catholic circles by the contemporary lectures and writings of Ilia Delio, a Franciscan Sister in Washington DC who founded the Center for Christogenesis. Process theology sometimes coming under the umbrella of Open and Relational Theology. There is a Center for Process Studies associated with the Claremont School of Theology in Los Angeles.

4. Particularly Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000).

5. Lothar Schaefer (1939-2020) was professor of Physical Chemistry in the University of Alabama. He presented a view of the universe as interconnected, non-material, composed of a field of infinite potential and consciousness.

6. The most eloquent exposition of Teilhard’s vision is found in The Divine Milieu. This work is one of the main sources of inspiration for Ilia Delio’s, The Not-Yet God (Orbis Books, 2023) to which I am indebted in the writing of this blog. As usual for my blogs, I also garnered snippets of invaluable information from Google, and latterly Google AI Overview, and from the treasure trove that is Wikipedia.

7. In The Not-Yet God, Ilia Delio draws on Carl Jung as much as on Teilhard. However, I have confined my comments mainly to Teilhard.