Catholic Faith Foundations. David Werning
For if they so far succeeded in knowledge
that they could speculate about the world,
how did they not more quickly find its Lord?
Ratzinger’s argument is not a proof in the sense of a scientific proof, but it is a reasonable response to the notion that matter always existed (which, by the way, cannot be proven either). What Ratzinger does want to provide is an entry point for someone who is searching for God. If a person is able to “see” God through creation, he or she may eventually come to faith.
Another approach to exploring God revealed through creation is, appropriately, not logical argument but art and poetry. The Irish Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) sought to articulate the wonder of God present in the beauty of creation in his poem “God’s Grandeur”:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil
Is bare now, not can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, spring —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
Aquinas’s Five Proofs
Saint Thomas Aquinas is famous for what has been called his five “proofs” of God’s existence. But Saint Thomas did not present his words as scientific proof in the present sense of the term. Rather, Aquinas was providing logical arguments that point to the existence of God. The basic conclusion of each is that God is the Uncaused Cause or First Mover. It is also important to keep in mind that Aquinas’s five “proofs” in the Summa Theologiae (I.Q2.A3) were one part of a grander theological effort. The five “proofs” are:
1. From motion
2. From the nature of the efficient cause
3. From possibility and necessity
4. From the gradation to be found in things
5. From the governance of the world
Revelation through Humans
A second “stage” in God’s revelation of himself involves the existence of human beings, who are a part of creation but unique among creatures. The big difference is that man and woman, unlike matter, can ask themselves, “How did I get here?” They know intuitively that their lives and the lives of their ancestors point to some beginning: an endless series of parents and grandparents and so on is not reasonable. Again, something or someone — outside of creation — must have started everything.
The Church teaches that human beings have a kind of deep memory of having been created by God. Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, states that from “the very circumstance of his origin man is already invited to converse with God” (19), and the Catechism teaches that God invited the first humans “to intimate communion with himself and clothed them with resplendent grace and justice” (54). This deep memory is the very source of humanity’s search for meaning and for believers’ desire to be reunited with God. But if an individual’s existence speaks of God’s existence, then why are there some people who do not believe?
What about Evolution?
One question raised by the teaching of God revealed in all of creation is how scientific theories related to evolution and the origins of human life fit in with Catholic doctrine.
One of the most thorough treatments of this question by a pope is found in a 1996 message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Saint John Paul II. Here is an excerpt from his message:
In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.…
And to tell the truth, rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the theories of evolution. The use of the plural is required here — in part because of the diversity of explanations regarding the mechanism of evolution, and in part because of the diversity of philosophies involved. There are materialist and reductionist theories, as well as spiritualist theories. Here the final judgment is within the competence of philosophy and, beyond that, of theology.
The magisterium of the Church takes a direct interest in the question of evolution, because it touches on the conception of man, whom Revelation tells us is created in the image and likeness of God. The conciliar constitution Gaudium et Spes has given us a magnificent exposition of this doctrine, which is one of the essential elements of Christian thought. The Council recalled that ‘man is the only creature on earth that God wanted for its own sake.’ In other words, the human person cannot be subordinated as a means to an end, or as an instrument of either the species or the society; he has a value of his own. He is a person. By this intelligence and his will, he is capable of entering into relationship, of communion, of solidarity, of the gift of himself to others like himself. St. Thomas observed that man’s resemblance to God resides especially in his speculative intellect, because his relationship with the object of his knowledge is like God’s relationship with his creation. But even beyond that, man is called to enter into a loving relationship with God himself, a relationship which will find its full expression at the end of time, in eternity. Within the mystery of the risen Christ the full grandeur of this vocation is revealed to us. It is by virtue of his eternal soul that the whole person, including his body, possesses such great dignity. Pius XII underlined the essential point: if the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God.
As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person. (3–5)
The answer is that something went wrong — the Church calls it the first sin, when humanity turned from their Creator in a fruitless effort to become gods themselves. The irony is that because human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, they cannot completely obliterate their connection to him even though they can (and do) make the effort. Nevertheless, most people continue to grope for ultimate meaning and the source of their being. Saint Paul encountered such people when he visited Athens where he sat with and listened to those gathered at the Areopagus. They were searching for the origin of the universe and even posited multiple gods as the source. Paul compliments their intuition and introduces them to God through Jesus Christ. Some of them scoffed and some “became believers” (Acts 17:16–34).
Paul’s experience in Athens demonstrates an important limitation to keep in mind about the revelation of God through creation, whether it be physical nature or human: it can bring one to the recognition of a divine being, but it does not necessarily end in knowledge of the God of Judaism and Christianity. To know God personally requires hearing about him from his chosen instruments.
Revelation through Christ
The gathering of the Jewish people into one nation is a third “stage”