Fate, Freedom, Obedience, Tyranny, Slavery

[Excerpt from a letter to a student.]

Again, great questions.

1. As for the question of whether 'fate' is a concept that can work in Christian thought, it depends what one means. Many people use that word in many different ways. I don't think that fate is really a Christian idea, in most cases. However, some people basically mean Providence when they say Fate. Providence is a very Christian idea.

I think you are right to feel a little revolted by the idea of fate as a blind deterministic force of nature. That idea evacuates the kind of divine/human interaction in shaping history which we have been discussing. Fate without God is nothing more than a materialist determinism based on random interactions of energy. It cuts out free will entirely, and absolves us of any need to try to control our actions or feel badly about our sins. An appealing idea to some, but not really an orthodox Christian idea.

Christians have, since the earliest days, asserted that we must work out our own salvation with "fear and trembling". Why be fearful if it is already predetermined and unchangeable?

You are right to say that the question of God's will is tied up in all of this. How much of our suffering is the fault of humans (in spite of God's will), and how much of it is the result of God's will?

We know that sometimes God does actively intervene in people's suffering. Consider the Israelites in Egypt. God allowed them to suffer slavery under the Egyptians because they needed tribulation to turn them away from their impious way of living. So that enslavement isn't the direct result of God's special intervention in time, but is something that he allowed to happen. The Egyptians are still guilty of the wickedness that accompanied the enslavement, but God knew that it would be good for the Israelites to learn something from the experience of suffering as well. God used that enslavement -- and act which is fundamentally opposed to the freedom that God wants for human beings -- in order to turn wickedness into goodness. That is how Providence tends to work. It doesn't make wickedness any less wicked, but it uses the wickedness that humans choose to do and turns it toward the greater good. As Paul says in Romans (9:17), "The scripture says to Pharaoh: 'I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth'".

But what about the moments when God DID intervene in that story? We read that God "hardened Pharaoh's heart" -- which sounds like pretty direct intervention in a moral choice. But in other places, Exodus states that Pharoah hardened his own heart (8:15; 8:32; 9:34). What's up with this contradiction? It is a nice embodiment of the very paradox of free will and divine rulership that we have been discussing.

There are many ways to try to puzzle this out so that it will make sense to our limited minds. Some of them weaken the sense of "hardened" by saying that what is really meant there is that God allowed a hardening of heart to which Pharaoh was already inclined (which would remove the seeming contradiction with those passages which say Pharoah hardened his own heart). Or we could give more emphasis to the activity of 'hardening' in order to try to make the argument that we have no free will (which would, as I have said before, conflict with the countless situations in which humans are called to choose God, to repent, to pursue goodness instead of evil, to take responsibility for their own actions). Or we could say that this is merely a reflection of the confusion of the sacred writer. Or we could leave the paradox alone and say that the sacred writer deliberately left the paradox in there in order to provoke readers to contemplate the mysteriousness of the relationship between divine and human freedom.

One interesting explanation that I have read calls our attention to the sovreignty of God and the vassalship of humans before the divine monarch. God the king issues commands and orders that are binding on us, he may even do things to make it more likely that such orders will be followed (like putting up barriers to keep people from driving off the road unless they are really determined to do so). But the responsibility of obeying those laws is ultimately up to us. Even if it is impossible for us to physically drive off of a road surrounded by concrete, we can still rebel against the king's command in our hearts. Pharaoh had already rejected God in his heart, but God has the power to soften or harden those barriers to action (like putting up or taking down roadside barriers) whenever He wants to.

Of course this explanation isn't perfect, but we will always fall a little short when we try to put divine realities into human terms. With mysteries like these, we must do our best to understand, but never expect our knowledge to be as perfect as God's. The spark is not as great as the flame that cast it.

But I don't think this means that ANY answer is OK, either. I think that any answer which tries to completely shut out either half of the paradox (God's freedom or ours) is heading in the wrong direction by denying the fundamentally mysterious character of much of divine reality as articulated through scripture and apostolic tradition.

2. The question of unjust rulers is another great one. I recently had a heated discussion about this in my Christianity and Literary Studies group for graduate students. Again, lots of different positions on this are possible, and much of it depends on the specific situation. We know that Jesus instructs us to "render...unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" and that Paul and the early Church Fathers are pretty unanimous on the issue of obedience to the legitimate authorities. But what belongs to Caesar? What should this obedience look like?

We might want to notice from the outset that the Pharisees are talking about a particular kind of 'rendering' -- that of tribute. Tribute wasn't really the same as taxes because it implied subjugation to a conquering ruler. That is part of what makes their question so tricky. To give money when it could be taken as a sign of subservience to a pagan ruler is different from just getting rid of one's money. The coin becomes a highly-charged symbol and the act of rendering takes on a political, and possibly spiritual, meaning.

When a ruler has an unlimited appetite and considers even the lives and consciences of those he rules as things that belong to him, what is one to do? We must begin by remembering that Jesus made a deliberately two-part statement, and that we cannot forget the second part. Caesar is not God and has no authority over the things that belong to God. We might contrast Caesar's power with the kind of power to bind and loose in heaven that Jesus gave to the Apostles.

When Caesar makes demands upon us that trespass on the territory of the spiritual, we are under no obligation to obey him. Thus, the early Christians were most justly disobedient when their secular rulers ordered them to renounce Christ and worship pagan gods. They were most justly obedient when the Apostles and their successors gave them instructions regarding worship and ecclesiastical discipline (as, for example, when the Apostles instructed Jewish Christians to allow gentiles to become Christians without being circumcised).

But what about regimes that do not demand worship of pagan gods, but which are fundamentally oppressive of some or all people. This is a tough one, and numerous contradictory interpretations of scripture are possible here. As usual in such cases when scripture is ambiguous, I turn to the successors of the Apostles for authoritative teaching.

The Church has always repudiated the violations of human dignity that accompanied slavery in its various historical forms, though Christians have been obligated to tolerate it in some cases (read, for example, the Pauline epistle to Philemon). But the question must always be viewed in the particular circumstances of the persons involved in order to find a proper response to the particular tyranny of the day.

As Pope Leo XIII put it in his 1891 encyclical, "Human dignity is the standard of the law" (Rerum Novarum; by the way, Leo XIII was instrumental in the eventual abolition of slavery in Brazil). The political sphere ought to be ruled by the fundamental rights of human persons, not the other way around. When the state is not doing these things, there is little reason to obey it.

However, there is often reason to avoid violent resistance to the state. In many cases, violent resistance will actually result in fewer rights for people and counter-violence against the innocent and weak. So prudence must also come into play. That is the reason for the basic guidelines that I articulated in an earlier note.

This is what the Catechism has to say on the matter:

"Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate, unless all the following conditions are met: 1) there is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights; 2) all other means of redress have been exhausted; 3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders; 4) there is well-founded hope of success; and 5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par.2243).

These guidelines are authoritative and take into account both scripture and many centuries of Christian reflection upon the proper relationship between the individual Christian and the political state within which she finds herself.

Here are a couple of interesting links discussing Catholic teaching on these issues in greater detail:

www.geocities.com/r_traer/Religion/Christian/Catholic/catholics.fhr.htm

www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/CNPOLREL.HTM

3. As for slavery in America, yes, we can most certainly agree that it was one of the most diabolical events in the history of the world. As soon as the Americas were discovered, the Catholic hierarchy condemned the practice of slavery there and issued anathemas against it (Pope Eugene IV was one of the earliest to address the unique problem of slavery in the 'modern' world -- he was writing in the 1400's). There has never been a good reason for Christians to support slavery, though toleration of injustice is sometimes the path of Prudence. Remember, even the great revolution led by Dr. Martin Luther King was based on nonviolent resistance.

Did God allow slavery to happen to Africans and Native Americans in order to punish them like the Israelites? I doubt it. They had never heard of Yahweh and so could hardly be punished for not being faithful Jews or Christians.

Has He taken a huge evil and turned it toward the good? I think so. He has shown us in a vast mirror the horrific reality of our capacity to dehumanize and led us to the path of liberation from racism and slavery. Let's hope that human societies can hold onto that vision and never forget what we are capable of doing. Sadly, the nature of sin is such that we forget very easily those things which we should work hardest to remember.

I have to run now or I would say more!!
pax
drg

Sex, Body, and the Catholic Priesthood

**Excerpts from a recent letter to a friend**

[...]

As for women priests... well that's a complex issue. On the one hand, I could reply that just as men can't become nuns, women can't become priests. But that doesn't really respond to the core question of the importance of sexual difference in the hierarchical ordering of the Church. I'll do my best to make the case as strongly (polemically?) as possible. I'm still struggling with this issue myself so I'll try to give voice to the strongest traditional arguments I have found.

In order to see why it makes sense for the Catholic church to maintain the ancient way of ordaining and consecrating its different kinds of ministers, one has to understand first that Catholicism is a fleshly religion. It proposes the idea that our bodies and souls are inseparably interconnected, and that the things of the flesh are meant to disclose the nature of God in all His glory. Bodies matter -- we will even have them eternally at the end of time. One's sex is important, regardless of whether 'gender' can be somewhat fluid. God the Creator chose to make sexual difference (He didn't have to, since He certainly has no actual sex or gender Himself) and as such we ought to respect it as we ought to respect the natural order in general -- as a mode of revelation and of a proper distribution of differences which maintain a delicate system of natural balance. Like biodiversity and the environment, sex difference ought to be understood as beautiful and necessary, not as something to be tampered with or exploited for our own gain of power or money or pleasure.

This difference emerges historically in the institution by Jesus of the office of the priesthood. Catholic priests work sacramentally 'in the person of Christ' (of course, God could have chosen for Jesus to be a woman, but He didn't), and in real history have not been women. It could have been otherwise, but it wasn't. We cannot go back and change the fact that Jesus had many amazing women as followers, and still chose not to give any women the powers that he gave to the Apostles. This of course doesn't mean that men are better than women, or that priests are better men than laypeople, just that physical difference serves as a real and persistent disclosure of some very important things about God and the various ways in which He has provided for the maintenance of the human community. The role of women in the Church and in human society in general is too complex for me to fully address here. Take a look at some of the resources on this page if you really want to learn more: http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~nmcenter/women.html

Now, the radical shift in typical ways of thinking about gender which has characterized the last 50 years or so is a really new phenomenon, so there is still much work to be done in articulating for this age what the best way of understanding the Church's unchanging position on gender might be. Each age requires a fresh encounter with the timeless doctrine of the Church. One interesting attempt to begin articulating in greater detail some of the basics to which I was gesturing above is here: http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9304/novak.html.

I'm not yet totally convinced that this is necessarily a core immutable doctrine of the Church, but Novak makes a strong case that, unlike the language of the Mass or other elements of practice which can be altered to fit one's circumstances, tinkering with the male priesthood would bring a host of other theological consequences which would pull apart the rational fabric of Catholicism.

Let me say also that the issue of power tends to be a key issue in this debate. [My fiancee], for example, finds it a little offensive that only men can wield the substantial power of the episcopal offices of her religion. It is easy to sympathize with this, and from one perspective the fact that I am male undermines anything I have to say about it. Rationally speaking, however, I think one might say that this understandable feeling is ultimately not a Christian attitude because all Christians, men and women, are called not to seek power, but only to use it justly when necessary.

Of course this seems a little crazy to modern Americans (myself included). In a democracy, this becomes rather problematic because everyone is obligated to serve at some level in the governing of our nation. But again, this is an obligation, a duty which one accepts, not a proper end in itself. Our whole political life is oriented around the concept of equal representation at all levels of civil and economic life. These are excellent political goals and have been commended countless times by the Vatican and by the American bishops.

But why should the Church be different? Ultimately, the Church does not organize itself according to the passing modes of the political cultures in which it finds itself. Some measure of political justice is possible in any number of political systems (tribal, feudal, socialist, democratic), and the Church has no ability to choose one as the best. It is ordered toward a different kind of goal than are political institutions. Its goal is the salvation of souls, not the acquisition of temporal power. Often, people need to relinquish all power in order to acquire this. Often, the temporal power of the Church has led to the corruption of those who have striven for it. The Church is under no obligation to make this temptation available to all. Its only power is to preserve the structures of authority that were established in it by Christ and the Apostles. We see that this structure is the one best oriented to the salvation of souls, regardless of its absurdity from the perspective of modern democratic ideologies. Thus, the very question of sex equality in ecclesiastical offices discloses a problematic way of thinking which seeks power, rather than seeking to relinquish it.

Certainly, this way of talking will seem like so much obfuscation or naivety when viewed through a secular political lens. It can easily be interpreted as a way for men to maintain power and keep it from the hands of women by feeding them a line about looking for salvation in the next world in exchange for oppression in this world. If one assumes ahead of time that power is all and that eternal salvation is a myth, then it only follows to think that Catholicism is a great patriarchal sham. But of course, one has to already have rejected the fundamental principles of Catholicism (that love, not power, is the proper ultimate goal of all things; that life in this world is not the end of our existence; the list goes on.).

And so we are back to the issue of fundamental axioms and the ways in which the faiths of various secular models of reality make most forms of Christianity seem quite irrational, while the fundamental axioms of Christianity make most secular models of reality seem equally irrational. Faith is a matter of where you lay your foundations. Reason is only possible when founded on non-logically accepted axioms. All thought encodes a leap of faith, as it were. The only difference is in where one is leaping.

I could talk more about why I find some axioms more appealing than others, but maybe that is the subject for another time -- assuming you haven't gone to sleep by this point!
Well... that's the best I can muster at this point. Do take a look at the Novak article and at some of the Catholic feminists at the other website. They can fill in lots of the blanks that I have had to leave unfilled.
[...]
Best wishes,
pax
drg

in the world, but...

"[Christians] reside in their own nations, but as resident aliens. They participate in all things as citizens and endure all things as foreigners... They obey the established laws and their way of life surpasses the laws... So noble is the position to which God has assigned them that they are not allowed to desert it." (Epistula ad Diognetum, ca. 130AD)