New Post: "Preparing for Easter--50 Devotional Readings by C.S. Lewis"

Hello all.   A new post on The American Catholic: "Preparing for Easter--50 Devotional Readings by C.S. Lewis, Session 1, Ash Wednesday to 18 September.
C.S. Lewis is my favorite Christian apologist.

Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles?

The Israelites Gathering Manna (Clerck)
from Wikimedia Commons

“Miracles always relate to the faith. That is why a belief in miracles is not a vacation from reason, a little holiday from the tedious demands of rational responsibility. Not only is it reasonable to believe that miracles can and do happen, it is unreasonable to think they cannot and do not occur.”― Ralph M. McInerny, Miracles—a Catholic View

"The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern into which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern."        --C.S. Lewis, Miracles

INTRODUCTION 

Some 22 years ago when I was being catechized, preparing to enter into the Church, I was much troubled by the Eucharistic phenomenon, transubstantiation.   As a physicist, I could not understand how the wafer could become the flesh of Christ and the wine His Sacred Blood.    The wise old priest who was instructing me asked: “Do you believe in the miracle of Christ’s Resurrection?”    I answered, “Yes, of course—that’s why I’m going to become a Catholic.”    He then said, “Well, if you believe in one miracle, why not a second, or more?”   And that answer made a lot of sense to me.   

So the first property of a miracle is that it is related to faith in God, as an act or sign from God.   Miracles are presumed to be rare events, supernatural—that is, not wrought by natural law.    Certainly not all rare events are miracles.    Winning the lottery is a rare event.   But if you needed that win to pay for a cancer medication, then you might consider it a miracle.   We’ll see below what evidence the Church needs to certify a rare event—a medical cure or other phenomenon—as a miracle.    

And finally, I'll try to show, in both a personal and broader context, that science does not create roadblocks to a belief in miracles--if we assume God exists, is omniscient and omnipotent, then he can, as C.S. Lewis suggests, feed a new event into the pattern of natural law, bring down manna from heaven to feed the Israelites.

HOW THE CHURCH JUDGES MIRACLES

I'll not discuss specific miracles ;  the various types and categories are well covered on the internet  (see the given links):

• Old Testament
• New Testament--Jesus
• New Testament--Apostles
• Historical--Marian Apparitions
• Historical--Eucharistic Miracles
• Historical--Healing Miracles

The Catholic Church has to be very cautious in endorsing miracles.   Should a Church approved miracle turn out to be due to natural, rather than supernatural causes, or--worse yet--to be the product of fakery, the Church will wind up egg on her face.   The supposed miracle will be cited by non-believers as additional evidence against the truth of the Church's theological and moral stance.

A general protocol for approval of "Private Revelations" is given by the Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Doctrine of the Faith (SCPDF).   The first stage is approval by the bishop of the local diocese;  he may seek the aid of a committee of experts.  Further approval is given by the SCPDF, either using a permanent commission, as in the case of healing miracles required for canonization, or an ad hoc commission.

These agencies can return three verdicts on whether the event is truly miraculous, not to be explained by natural laws: yes, no, can't decide (translating from the Latin).    Whatever this judgment, and the final judgment of the SCPDF, might be, it should be emphasized that other than those miracles which are part of Doctrine or Dogma (e.g. the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary), the faithful are not required to believe in miracles, although they are encouraged to do so.

 Different Types of Miracles

Stature of San Juan Diego,
who saw Our Lady of Guadaloupe

Marian Apparitions (paraphrased from the linked source)
1)  There must be moral certainty, or at least great probability, that something miraculous has occurred, something that cannot be explained by natural causes, or by deliberate fakery.

2)  The person or persons who claim to have had the private revelation must be mentally sound, honest, sincere, of upright conduct, and obedient to ecclesiastical authority.

3) The content of the revelation or message must be theologically acceptable, morally sound and free of error.

4) The apparition must yield positive and continuing spiritual assets: for example, prayer, conversion, increase of charity.

Not all Marian apparitions have been approved.  The most noteworthy example is that of Medjugorje.

Eucharistic Miracles
Eucharistic miracles occur when the host, previously consecrated, either issues blood or is transformed into human tissue.   One of the oldest (8th Century A.D.) occurred at Lanciano Italy.   The host was transformed into cardiac tissue, and subjected in 1970-71 and 1981 to histological analyses.   The results corresponded in blood type (AB) to that found for the Shroud of Turin.   Remarkably, the tissue remained uncorrupted for the 1100 years after the miracle occurred.  

The most recent in Legnicka, Poland occurred  in 2013 when a host was dropped and then found to bleed.    Examination by pathologists confirmed that it was most likely cardiac tissue.

These results are hotly contested by atheists who claim that they are either the result of fraud or that the internet reports of their occurrence are made up (including several in Buenos Aires when Pope Francis, then Archbishop Bergoglio, supposedly certified the miracle.)   Given the reluctance of Church officials to certify miracles which might be revealed as fraudulent or natural (see the section on Healing Miracles below), it seems unlikely that this objection is valid.   Whether all internet reports are totally accurate is another question.

Healing Miracles for Canonization
The process of canonization requires that the candidate for sainthood be responsible for at least two miracles.    The miracles must be the result of prayer to the saint-to-be and only to him or her.   Moreover, the miracle must involve a disease or injury that medical authorities say is totally without hope of cure.  A committee of doctors (not all of whom need be Catholic) must examine the medical circumstances of the cure and certify that it is indeed miraculous.

A good example is that given by the canonization of Pope St. John Paul II.   Three months after his death a French nun suffering from Parkinson's disease (the same affliction that Pope St. John Paul II suffered from) prayed to him and woke up one morning in perfect health, even though she had been unable to move her legs before.    The second cure, after his beatification, was that of a Costa Rican woman who had been told by her doctors that her brain aneurysm gave her only a month to live.

We emphasize that the evaluation process for such miracles and for other miracles at shrines, such as Lourdes, is extremely rigorous.   A group of doctors have to certify that there has been no previous medical treatment that could give a cure--that is, 0 % chance according to conservative diagnosis for a cure.   There is no way to argue that fraud is involved in these cases or that something outside of "natural law" has not occurred.

CAN A SCIENTIST BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?

Very briefly, the answer to that question is YES!   Let me explain in detail.  In the first place, it should be evident from the material above that the Church applies rigorous and scrupulous standards in evaluating miracles.  Mother Church does not want to be embarrassed when fraud or natural causes are proven to be the cause of what are supposed to be miraculous events.

Secondly, if I were to answer no, I would have to assume that science explains everything, that "Naturalism" (or materialism or scientism) is the only explanation  for all things and processes;  in other words,  I would accept that the so called laws of nature are just that, prescriptive, rather than descriptive attempts to give a mathematical picture of some aspects of our world.    I would have to assume there is no "veiled reality" in quantum mechanics, and that a physicist who told me "I understand quantum mechanics" is neither a liar nor a fool.

If I believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient, I also would have to wonder why God could not, as C.S. Lewis proposed, feed new events into nature to create what seems to us to be a miracle.   The so-called laws of nature, to repeat, are descriptive not prescriptive.   God can't make 2 + 2 = 5, but he can curve space  so that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle do not add up to 180 degrees.  

Accordingly, my faith in miracles does not contradict my belief that science is a wonderful  tool to understand the world, to help us appreciate the beauty described in Psalm 19A:

 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.  

Indeed, to take this a step further, to realize that the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in science is itself a sort of miracle,

The Theology of Science-Fiction: II Paradise Not Lost?

Yoda, does he have a soul?

"If there are many planets inhabited by sentient creatures, as most astronomers (including Jesuits), now suspect, then `each one of such planets (solar or non-solar)' must fall into one of three categories:

(a) Inhabited by sentient creatures, but without souls; so to be treated with compassion but extra-evangelically.

(b) Inhabited by sentient creatures with fallen souls, through an original but not inevitable ancestral sin; so to be evangelized with urgent missionary charity.

(c) Inhabited by sentient soul-endowed creatures that have not fallen, who therefore

• (1) inhabit an unfallen, sinless paradisal world;
• (2) who therefore we must contact not to propagandize, but in order that we may learn from them the conditions (about which we can only speculate) of creatures living in perpetual grace, endowed with all the virtues in perfection, and both immortal and in complete happiness for always possessed of and with the knowledge of God.' "  James Blish, quoting Gerald Heard, from David Ketterer's Covering 'A Case of Conscience'

WHO HAS A SOUL?

The quote above outlines what SF might say about the theological state of non-human intelligent life, but it leaves questions to be answered.    Certainly one would not try to convert Deep Blue, the computer that beat Gary Kasparov in chess, nor would one (I hope) send a missionary to the local S.P.C.A.     What then is the requirement that one be fallen, saved or in a state of grace?   The quote distinguishes between intelligent life with and without souls ("sentient creatures, but without souls").     But what, when it comes down to it, are the hallmarks of having a soul?  

I'm going to use some quotes from an earlier post, "Would Yoda have a Soul?" that explore this question.

"The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual...soul refers to the innermost aspect of man, that by which he is most specially in God's image:  'soul' signifies the spiritual principle in man...it is because of the spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes  a living, human body;  spirit and body in man are not two natures united but rather their union forms a single nature."  Catechism of the Catholic Church, excerpted from paragraphs 362, 363, 365.

Now that is a complete statement, but it doesn't make the properties of a soul explicit.   What do these properties entail--belief in a deity?   a moral/ethical code?   wonder about the meaning of it all?   As Brother Guy Consulagmo, a Vatican astronomer, put it when discussing alien life:

 "Going back to the Middle Ages, the definition of a soul is to have intelligence, free will, freedom to love or not to love, freedom to make decisions..." 

And here's what C.S. Lewis has to say:

 "By this (rational souls) I include not merely the faculty to abstract and calculate, but the apprehension of values, the power to mean by 'good' something more than 'good for me' or even 'good for my species'." (from Religion and Rocketry in The World's Last Night)

Finally, what about souls for non-biological entities--computers, robots, biological intelligence implanted into brains?   I'll deal with that issue in the next post on this topic.

As we'll see below,  SF has treated all these categories

PARADISE NOT LOST

Let's start with C.S. Lewis's magnificent "Space Trilogy" (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength).   I won't attempt to reprise the plot or characters (go to the link), but rather focus on the elements that display Lewis's theological construct for his SF universe: a pyramidal theological structure of deity and creatures that seems to be a mixture of mythology and Christianity, as depicted below:

•  GOD (Maledil, and his son--the son of Maledil on Thulcandra--and the Third)
•  Oyarsa  (archangels,  Lords of each planet)
•  Eldila (angels, immaterial beings) 
•  hnau (rational, mortal, material beings)

The Oyarsa, lords of each planet, are very much like the gods of the ancient Pantheon.   The Oyarsa of Mars is masculine (but not male), of Venus feminine (but not female), of Jupiter, multigendered, ...[I call to mind Gustav Holst's "The Planets].   

On earth (Thulcandra) the "bent" Oyarsa, Satan, has fought God and tempted the first humans to disobey God; thus comes The  Fall--Thulcandra becomes the "silent planet", interdicted from relations with all the others and humans become, like Satan, "bent".   

On Mars (Malacandra) there are three intelligent species (hnau)*:   the Sorns (Seroni), who are the philosopher/scientists;  the Hrossa, who are the poet/musician/story-tellers;  the Pfifitiggri, the artisan/engineers.     All three species live together in peace, supplying talents and services that are missing in their own species.  They have a common language and a common theology, believing in Eldila (who are present to them), the Oyarsa of Mars, and the supreme being, Maledil.     They believe in an ordered existence, the rule of God (Maledil) and have no fear of death;  they know when they will die and that they will be transported to a Heaven in outer space.   The quotes below give a better account than mine:   

"And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back--if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?”  said by a Hrossa,  talking about death.

  “They cannot help it,' said the old sorn. 'There must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves? Beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau by eldila and eldila by Maledldil. These creatures have no eldila. They are like one trying to lift himself by his own hair-or one trying to see over a while country when he is on a level with it-like a female trying to beget young on herself.”   said by a Sorn, talking about the state of Hmans (humans).  

The hnau of Malacandra were tempted by Satan, but the temptation was overcome by the Oyarsa of Malacandra:

 "Many thousands of thousand years before this, when nothing yet lived on your world, the cold death was coming on my harandra. Then I was in deep trouble, not chiefly for the death of my hnau - Maleldil does not make them long-livers -but for the things which the lord of your world, who was not yet bound, put into their minds. He would have made them as your people are now - wise enough to see the death of their kind approaching but not wise enough to endure it. [emphasis added] Bent counsels would soon have risen among them. They were well able to have made sky-ships. By me Maleldil stopped them." said by the Oyarsa to the scientist, Weston (the villain)

 "Yes," said Oyarsa, "but one thing we left behind us on the harandra: fear. And with fear, murder and rebellion. The weakest of my people does not fear death. It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of Maleldil you would have peace. "  said by the Oyarsa in reply to Weston's comment that they (the Malacandrian hnau) will all die soon. 

Perelandra (Venus) is the Garden of Eden before the fall.   There is a wealth of plant and animal species inhabiting the sea and floating islands, and over them a humanoid queen and king (albeit green).   As in the Garden of Eden, God (Maledil) gives them a paradise but also a prohibition: they may not stay overnight on the one fixed bit of Perelandrian land.   Satan sends Weston, possessed by a demon, to tempt the queen to violate the prohibition.  Weston is overcome by the agent, Ransom, sent by Maledil to prevent the Fall.  After this, there is a glorious dance by the Queen, King and all the fauna and flora of Perelandra to celebrate the coming of a true paradise,     Here's the crucial theological issue: doing what God wills is not only good for us, but also shows our love for Him.  Thus, disobedience in what might seem a small matter--staying overnight on the fixed land, despite His prohibition--is not a small matter, because we thus attempt to assert our better knowledge of how we should act.  Ransom (the hero), trying to dissuade the queen from Weston's temptation, argues why God should be obeyed:

 "I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your eyes also. Is love content with that? You do them, indeed, because they are His will, but not only because they are His will. Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless He bids you do something for which His bidding is the only reason?” Perelandra, p. 59

In summary, the first two books of Lewis's Space Trilogy stress:

• the rule of God gives us what is good;
• before the fall we would know when we would die, but that we would also know that heaven awaits us, so that "Death has lost its sting";
• we show our love for God by obedience to his commands.

OTHER VISIONS

C.S. lewis's vision  is that of c) in the beginning quote, "inhabited by sentient soul-endowed creatures that have not fallen".    What about a) "sentient creatures, but without souls" and b) "sentient creatures with fallen souls"?    I'll discuss the SF examples of these briefly, because I don't think they make the strong  theological points of the Space Trilogy.

In category a is "A Case of Conscience",  by James Blish.  For plot and further commentary by Br. Guy Consolmagno,  the Vatican Astronomer, please use the link.  It deals with Lithians, a reptilian species who behave according to an inborn, "hardwired" ethical system,  but who have no religious beliefs.   They are visited by a team of scientists, including a Jesuit missionary (whence the judgment of Lithian ethics), The missionary concludes that the Lithians are the work of Satan, created as a convincing argument that belief in God is not necessary in order to behave ethically, as humanists and atheists propose.  Can one imagine intelligent, self-aware beings not wondering about the purpose of their lives, how everything came to be,  putting forth the "why" questions?   Thus the basic premise of the novel does not seem very plausible to me.   And perhaps the injunction given in the beginning quote, "to be treated with compassion, but extra-evangelically", might have been the better course (although destructive of the novel's plot).

In category b are "The Sparrow" and "Children of God", by Mary Doria Russell.   It deals with the interactions of a Jesuit priest (again the Jesuits!) with two alien species who are sentient, but with a faulty moral code.   Critics have argued that the works deal with "faith under fire".  That may be so, but there are no good theological arguments put forth.    Indeed, the Jesuit missionary loses his faith after being tortured and sexually abused by the dominant species; there is no vision of redemption or suffering for Christ.    

There are other instances of alien intelligences adapting or transforming the Christian religion and interacting with the Church, given in references for Part I of this series.   Most have a strongly anti-religious bias.  An extreme example is that given by George R.R. Martin in "The Way of Cross and Dragon".   A huge cephalopod is an Archbishop of the transformed Church, "The One True Interstellar Catholic Church of Earth and the Thousand Worlds", who sends an Inquisitor out to determine whether a cult promoting the "Gospel According to Judas Iscariot" is heretical.    The tone of the short story is anti-religious--the Inquisitor is successful in prosecuting the heresy but loses his faith, becoming convinced that he is the Prince of Liars.

MORE TO COME

The next in this series will deal with: can computers, robots and implanted intelligences have souls?
If yes, what then?

*Images of the creatures in the Space Trilogy can be seen in the following links:
Hrossa, Pfifitriggi, Sorns (Seroni)

For References, please see Part I of this Series

                                    

Suffering--a Catholic|Jewish perspective*

Job's Despair (Wm Blake)
from images wikinut

 "Whether we will or not, we must suffer...There are two ways of suffering — to suffer with love, and to suffer without love. The saints suffered everything with joy, patience, and perseverance, because they loved. As for us, we suffer with anger, vexation, and weariness, because we do not love. If we loved God, we should love crosses, we should wish for them, we should take pleasure in them." St. John Vianney, Catechism on Suffering

"One must not think that a person who is suffering is not praying. He is offering up his sufferings to God, and many a time he is praying much more truly than one who goes away by himself and meditates his head off, and, if he has squeezed out a few tears, thinks that is prayer."--St. Teresa of Avila 

"Our people have experienced suffering in its many forms, as a nation as well as individually. Every so often, someone suggests a reason for suffering. This is presumptuous, because while there may be various reasons for suffering, they are largely unknown to us." Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, The Mystery of Suffering

Lent soon will be over, and Good Friday, which celebrates the Passion of Our Lord, will be upon us.    A comment on Catholic Answers Forum to the effect that Christians and Jews have different perspectives on suffering has given me cause to ponder.   Is this true, and if so, what are the differences and what are the similarities?   I'll  have to add that I was a cultural, not a religious Jew, so that some of my knowledge was acquired after my conversion to Catholicism (and partially through my wife, a cradle Catholic and historian of all things Judaica).

Let's start off by considering the differences.   The most important, I believe, is the notion (not accepted by all Jewish faithful) stated in Rabbi Dr. Twerski's quote above, and much earlier in the book of Job:  the reason for suffering is mysterious, because we cannot know the mind of G-d.   To this must be added historical evidence that "Schverzer sein a Yid" (Yiddish for "It is hard to be a Jew").    Even in the happiest of occasions, a Jewish wedding, the groom smashes the glass cup under his feet as a commemoration of the destruction of the Second Temple.   Historical testimony to Jewish suffering is given by the persecutions and massacres culminating in the Holocaust--indeed, the terms  "ghetto", "pogrom", "holocaust" have gained a usage for more universal suffering than just Jewish.     I refer readers to an article by Marc Krell, Suffering and the Problem of Evil , which gives a much better account of the history of Jewish suffering and the several theodicies engendered in response  than I could in this brief post.  

Lazarus and the Rich Man
From Orthodox Christian Meditations

   One point I will add to his article:  no explanation other than that given in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31), namely, that the arms of Abraham await those who have greatly suffered in their earthly life,  can possibly suffice to justify God's allowing the Holocaust to occur.   In fact there is a strain of Jewish  Talmudic teaching that does credit heaven (as a Garden of Eden) as recompense for earthly suffering:

"Rabbi Ya'akov taught: This world is compared to an ante-chamber that leads to Olam Ha-Ba, (the World-to-Come)" (Pirkei Avot 4:21). That is, while a righteous person might suffer in this lifetime, he or she will certainly be rewarded in the next world, and that reward will be much greater. In fact, in some cases, the rabbis claim that the righteous are made to suffer in this world so that their reward will be that much greater in the next (Leviticus Rabbah 27:1)."  (See Heaven and Hell in Jewish Tradition)

This compensation theodicy and the notion of suffering found in the writings of Deutero-Isaiah, the hymns on The Suffering Servant, are links, a commonality between the Jewish and Catholic concepts of suffering:

" Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.   But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.  ... for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken... Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin... by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities."  Isaiah 53:3-11 (KJV)

A theodicy  proposed by the Medieval sage,  rebbe Rashi, after the massacres of the Crusades, held that the Jews, not Jesus, suffered for the sins of the world.   To the extent that all of us to a degree suffer for the sins of the world, that may be true, but it omits a very important part of the suffering of Jesus:  it was by this that He procured our salvation, and thus fulfilled the prophecy of Deutero-Isaiah.

And therein is one great difference between Jewish and Catholic interpretations of suffering.   To discuss others I'm going to rely on the thoughts of  Bl. John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter Salvici Doloris and of  C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain.    One view of suffering in the Old Testament was as a punishment for sins, but this explanation is only partially successful, and recognized thus in Job.    In Salvici Doloris, John Paul acknowledges the punishment aspect of suffering, but adds another dimension:

 "Suffering must serve for conversion, that is, for the rebuilding of goodness in the subject, who can recognize the divine mercy in this call to repentance. The purpose of penance is to overcome evil, which under different forms lies dormant in man. Its purpose is also to strengthen goodness both in man himself and in his relationships with others and especially with God. " Bl. John Paul II, Salvici Doloris 

In more homely terms, C.S. Lewis echoes this:

"While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him.  What then can God do in our own interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us and take away the sources of false happiness (emphasis added)?   It is just here, where God's providence seems at first to be most cruel, that the Divine humility...deserves most praise."  C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain 

On a personal note, I can testify to this:  it was through suffering that I came to a Twelve-Step Program and thence to the Catholic Church.

As  said in Salvici Doloris, Christ's love for us saves us from that most extreme suffering, an eternity without God, damnation.   We are called therefore to participate in the suffering of the Passion, to "offer it up" continually and happily.   When I recite the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery,  I preface it with a prayer, offering up my sins, faults and failures that they might make the Cross less burdensome, for the Passion exists always, not just at an instant in time.  St. Teresa, in the quote given above, acknowledged that suffering is a form of prayer.

Suffering is a necessary consequence of Free Will.    If we are not automatons, constrained to do good only, then we must have the capacity to do evil and thereby to suffer from evil done by others.   And even with inanimate non-sentient entities, God so chooses a framework of physical laws that will ultimately be for our good, but that may also entail natural catastrophe.   Voltaire, when he gloated over the deaths of tens of thousands in the Lisbon earthquake (to contradict Leibniz's best of all possible worlds), did not consider that many of those dead would be eventually in heaven.   It is by the vision of an eternal paradise that we are enabled to endure earthly suffering.

"In the Cross He showed us how to bear suffering.  In His resurrection He showed us what we are to hope for."  St. Augustine, On the Creed 9

*Note: The notation Catholic|Jewish has a special meaning for me; a conditional probability is denoted as P(B|A),  that is the probability of event B given that event A occurs.