Still Running Off at the Keyboard

EVOLUTION

The controversy rages. Discussion in Amy's blog was interesting, but I think not entirely on target for a Catholic.

It matters less to faith whether God chose to populate the earth through a method of Darwinian evolution or a method of Intelligent Design, than it matters whether God is also evolving.

If we argue that beings evolve, how will God be exempted from the category? That He must be exempted is a given within Catholic theology. God--an evolving God--must by necessity be an imperfect God. The idea is untenable. If God, Himself, is evolving, of what possible good would He be, since He would also be full of the imperfections which cause so much difficulty for mankind. God, to be a God worthy of worship, must be static.

The discussion will, of course, come down to ultimate truth. A static God can provide ultimate truth. An evolving God can provide only relative truth--a truth relative to His particular development at this particular time in salvation history.

The Catholic detractors want an evolving God in the worst way, so they can morph doctrine into something more congenial to their own way of thinking. That, I suspect, is what fuels the debate. Can relativism be justified and thus enforced?

A reader sent in a link to an interesting Introduction to Thomas J. J. Altizer's book, published in 1966, titled THE GOSPEL OF CHRISTIAN ATHEISM. Altizer claims that

the Christian, and the Christian alone, can speak of God in our time; but the message the Christian is now called to proclaim is the gospel, the good news or the glad tidings, of the death of God....theology in our time can only refuse to speak of the death of God by ceasing to speak.

And further

Christian theology cannot survive apart from a dialogue with the world, it is increasingly being recognized that dialogue is a mutual encounter: faith cannot speak to the world unless it is prepared to be affected by that world with which it speaks. Moreover, the new theologian is confessing that the Word has ceased to be truly or decisively present in the established and traditional forms of faith.

It's a familiar argument for relativism. Shades of the argument would appear to have permeated the thinking of Pope John XXIII and his decision to open the windows of faith to the winds of the world.

Altizer goes further:

Once and for all the Christian must abandon the idea that theology is a continual elucidation of an eternal and unchanging Word....Only a dead or dying theology could rest upon the principle that the Christian Word is fully or finally present in the past, and surely no Christian could be wholly bound to the past who is open to the presence of a living or eschatological Word. We must not imagine that there is a single essence of Christianity, or an inner core of unchanging faith, or a form of faith meaning all things to all men....a theology that merely speaks a word of the past is not engaged in the true task of Christian theology. Only a theology unveiling a new form of the Word, a form that is present or dawning, in the immediate and contemporary life of faith, can be judged to be uniquely an authentically Christian.

...Such a faith can never identify itself with an ecclesiastical tradition or with a given doctrinal or ritual form.

In other words, folks, we must reject what Christ taught and become instead our own god to ourselves, making it up as we go along. And what is this source to be cited to justify our invention?

No radical Christian believes in the possibility of returning to either the word or the person of the original Jesus of Nazareth. Consequently, the radical Christian rejects both the literal and the historical interpretation of the Bible, demanding instead a pneumatic or spiritual understanding of the Word. Above all, the radical Christian seeks a total union with the Word, a union abolishing the priestly, legalistic, and dogmatic norms of the churches...

Yes. It was proclaimed in the 60s. Seek the Spirit. Abandon the Tradition. Visionary events define the Gospel for the present age.

Perhaps the deepest obstacle to the realization of this new vocation of theology is the priestly convinction that the canon of Scripture is closed, revelation is finished and complete, the Word of God has already been fully and finally spoken...The radical Christian also inherits both the ancient prophetic belief that revelation continues in history and the eschatological belief of the tradition following Joachim of Floris. This tradition maintains that we are now living in the third and final age of the Spirit, that a new revelation is breaking into this age, and that this revelation will differ as much from the New Testament as the New Testament itself does from its Old Testament counterpart....the movment of the Spirit has passed beyond the revelation of the canonical Bible and is now revealing itself in such a way as to demand a whole new form of faith. To refuse such a new revelation of the Spirit would be to repudiate the activity of the Word which is present and to bind oneself to a now empty and lifeless form of the Word. Nor can we expect the new revelation to be in apparent continuity with the old. Now that historical scholarship has demonstrated the chasm existing between the Old Testament and the Christian visions of Paul and the Gospel of John, might we not expect a comparable chasm to exist between the New Testament and a new revelation?

That is the heart of the evolution debate for a Catholic. Can God evolve? Because if He can evolve, doctrine can become a lot more compatible with what I want to do this afternoon.

The problem, of course, is that nasty inconvenient Catholic Church which claims that revelation is closed:

CCC 65: "In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son." Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father's one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one.

In short, Joachim of Fiore and his followers got it wrong. There is going to be no New Age of the Holy Spirit--of Sophia--as Ted Meisner and James Twyman propose. There will be no new revelation which will permit the morphing of doctrine into a feminine God. Contemplation growing out of centering prayer as it is being practiced today will simply step the Catholic out of the faith on the roadway of private revelation.

CCC 67: Throughout the ages, there have been so-called "private" relelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.

Christian faith cannot accept "revelations" that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Chiristian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such "revelations."

The Atheistic Christians don't want to hear it. Those who chase after visions of Mary in tree bark don't want to hear it either. Toronto Blessing rejects it. We have signs and wonders movements overwhelming the faith in too many places. Most of them are antinomian. Discernment of spirits is gravely lacking even in interreligious dialogue circles promoted by Catholic monks. Correction is long overdue.

CCC 66: "The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!