One of the greatest achievements of the late Pope John Paul II was the assembling of representatives of many religions at Assisi, to pray for peace. The gatherings — in 1986 and 2002 — offered a compelling image of Man in Search of God, people of all types divided by serious differences but engaged in a common quest, in the hope of a common destiny. The meetings were controversial: Some commentators believed that they represented an erosion of the difference between truth and falsehood (even then-Cardinal Ratzinger was troubled by some of the implications of the 1986 meeting).
Today, Pope Benedict XVI hosted a third Assisi meeting, and used the occasion not just to praise religions, but also, quite forcefully, the work and thought of agnostics:
In addition to the two phenomena of religion and anti-religion, a further basic orientation is found in the growing world of agnosticism: people to whom the gift of faith has not been given, but who are nevertheless on the lookout for truth, searching for God. Such people do not simply assert: “There is no God.” They suffer from his absence and yet are inwardly making their way towards him, inasmuch as they seek truth and goodness. They are “pilgrims of truth, pilgrims of peace.” They ask questions of both sides. They take away from militant atheists the false certainty by which these claim to know that there is no God and they invite them to leave polemics aside and to become seekers who do not give up hope in the existence of truth and in the possibility and necessity of living by it. But they also challenge the followers of religions not to consider God as their own property, as if he belonged to them, in such a way that they feel vindicated in using force against others.
These people are seeking the truth, they are seeking the true God, whose image is frequently concealed in the religions because of the ways in which they are often practised. Their inability to find God is partly the responsibility of believers with a limited or even falsified image of God. So all their struggling and questioning is in part an appeal to believers to purify their faith, so that God, the true God, becomes accessible. Therefore I have consciously invited delegates of this third group to our meeting in Assisi, which does not simply bring together representatives of religious institutions. Rather it is a case of being together on a journey towards truth, a case of taking a decisive stand for human dignity and a case of common engagement for peace against every form of destructive force.
(I am quoting this text from an e-mail I received from Robert Moynihan of Inside the Vatican; the full text is available here.)
This is a valuable message for a world in which some atheists’ hatred (of religious believers) and some religious believers’ hatred (of atheists and of followers of other religions) is ever more conspicuous. The pluralism of belief is, in some mysterious way, part of God’s plan for mankind; Pope Benedict today offered a helpful analysis of one aspect of that plan. Faith and doubt are both gifts of God, and agnostics therefore have their own special calling, their role to play. And of course, there is no very strict dichotomy here: In believers, there is an element of doubt, and in agnostics, there is an element of faith. Each person has his or her own particular gifts in this regard, and each carries his or her own individualized responsibilities. In my own case, I used to fault God for not giving me more religious faith — and then I came to realize how unreasonable I was being. I have many atheist friends who are more loving, do more for other people, than I; my complaint to God therefore amounted to a declaration that You see how poorly I am doing in meeting my current responsibilities. You are therefore greatly to blame for not giving me more responsibilities. God gives His gifts on His own schedule, in accord with His own inscrutable designs, and the basic attitude we should cultivate is to trust that He knows what He’s doing.
Our wrestlings with God are an attempt to see “through a glass, darkly.” Moments of illumination do come along — and the Pope’s speech today was one of them. (Incidentally, the organizer of today’s Assisi meeting was Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana — the same fellow whose office released the notorious document on economics earlier this week. I hold no particular brief for that document — I think it’s rather naive and unhelpful — but to dismiss Cardinal Turkson as just the leader of “a rather small office in the Roman Curia” and “the lower echelons of the Roman Curia” is to give one’s rhetorical desires rather too free rein. As today’s Assisi conference demonstrates, Cardinal Turkson is more respected by the Pope than those phrases would suggest. And not just by the Pope: Liberal and conservative Catholics alike view him as a serious candidate to succeed Benedict in the papacy. As I said, I’m no fan of that particular document. But to dismiss it as insignificant, as some have done, is wishful thinking.)
Great post Michael - especially considering all the "denominational" bickering recently. This helps put it all in context.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo think that God, who is omnipotent and omniscient, gives a hoot about what particular sect we belong to, or, in fact, any sect at all, is preposterous. Yahweh laid down a very general set of rules, the Law. We couldn't handle it. He then sent Judges, and finally, Kings, even though he obviously was not in favor of this. He merely wanted us to do a simple thing: love Him.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThen Jesus elaborated on the Law, showing the Way, trying to incorporate a living system of proper conduct and belief while not getting bogged down in the Law. The lawyers didn't like it, so we still live with the Law vs. the Way.
Viewed as a whole, it is merely a contest between Man ordering God and God ordering Man.. God wants us to be good. Man inherently wants to be evil, or self-serving, which is much the same thing. When we ask, "What did God do wrong", we ask an improper question. He didn't. You did. Once we think anything we could possibly do would affect God, we have lost our way. The only way we can be good is to be right with God. Thus, the Way.
I think God looks at the fruit, and determines whether the tree was any good; whether it should merely become firewood or be tended carefully, with ample water and care, for eternity.
I have seen groves of the best trees gone to seed and rot, but I have also beheld the most beautiful, bounteous fruit trees growing wildly. Their fruit is sometimes better than all the rest, who live in the grove, but they are very rare and special. You will find many more productive trees in a well cared garden. It is the proper place for such things.
But, no. I do not think God despises a beautiful wild tree. I think he treasures them most of all.
Respectfully, I think you miss Jesus' essential mission.
"Then Jesus elaborated on the Law, showing the Way, trying to incorporate a living system of proper conduct and belief while not getting bogged down in the Law."
Jesus didn't just "show" the Way, Jesus claimed to *BE* the Way -- and the Truth, the Resurrection and the Life.
Jesus claimed that He came to give His life as a ransom for many, and He claimed that His blood was to be shed for the forgiveness of sin.
"The only way we can be good is to be right with God."
Indeed, but the Bible is clear that God has reconciled us to Himself through the death of Christ on the cross, and we accept His salvation through faith in HIS work rather than attempt to earn that salvation through our own works.
"I do not think God despises a beautiful wild tree. I think he treasures them most of all."
The Bible is clear that all have sinned and have fallen short of God's glory, that none are righteous. Jesus Himself taught that there is no one good but God.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFrom what I've read of Saint Francis is:
a)His utter humility
b)His ability to both convert the unbeliever and spread the Gospel.
c)His constant preaching of salvation
In many ways Saint Francis was a reformer (like most clerics who started orders). He gave up his status and inheritance and formed a great order out of thin air. He attracted both sinner and saint to Christ's salvic message. He was a mere Brother and not an ordained Priest. Yet, he constantly stressed the need for the sacraments (especially confession). What is unfortunate is how he has become trivialized in recent decades. He wasn't a ecumenical, well at least not in the sense that he is treated today. His belief in the sacramental life and the power of Christ's Priesthood stands in direct conflict with those Christians who wish to make him of "thiers". And he lived in an age where the dangers of Islamic agression were all too real. His answer to those who doubt or do not believe would not be some sappy nostrums; his love for Sinners was too great to not preach The Truth.
If anything, Saint Francis taught us Faith is not measured by only outward acts. There is a story of Saint Francis that occured during his missionary life. He was approaching a village when he was met by very angry villagers. That morning they caught a married women in flagrante delicto with the village priest. When Saint Francis entered the village the villagers threw the priest at Saint Francis' feet. Saint Francis took the priest's hands and kissed them; he said, "I kiss the hands that bring me Christ."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSaint Francis wasn't trying to reform anything---he was an obedient son of the Church and it took some convincing for the Pope to grant his request to found his order.
Blessed Mother Teresa did much the same in following her calling.
These were not schismatics---they were called by God to do something within the Church and they pursued their calling---as the saints have always done.
The concern with St Francis' rule was that it was too austere and the fear was the brothers would fall into despair at the difficulty of it. If a group of people in a parish today suddenly declared they were going to give up all their possessions and live by begging our own reaction would probably be to dissuade them out of genuine concern for their welfare. If it appeared to be their calling, though, we'd get out of the way.
This is what the Pope did.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"But they also challenge the followers of religions not to consider God as their own property, as if he belonged to them, in such a way that they feel vindicated in using force against others"
This strikes me as rather a non sequitur. What is it doing there in the middle of the discussion?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHardcastle--
In a sense, what's being argued is the idea that God exists outside of his believers or nonbelievers. And in such a position, he's not able to be objectified as a tool to be used in debates *against* non-believers/practitioners of other faith/other group X.
The best example off the cuff would be that you can't appeal to God as somehow "being on your side" in a manner that implies God as object, to be used as such.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExcept that he throws in that bit about force. He seems to be trying to come up with a criticism of believers to parallel that of atheists. But the criticism doesn't seem parallel; it seems off the subject, contrived for balance.
Anyway, to go with your interpretation, I don't think people who are caught up in debates about the existence of God tend to argue that "God is on their side." Not that nobody ever says such a thing -- but it would be an odd argument to make in that context, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone make it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHere's the average day at NRO:
Post on Pope
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePost on Occupy Movement
Post on GOP candidates
Post on Catholicism
Post on Economics
Post on Pope
Rejoinder to Post on Catholicism
Post on Krauthammer
Post on Democrats
Post on Pope
Mike: You raise some really good points here, that faith and doubt are at a dynamic tension in the history of salvation, and, I would add in our individual histories as well. I think of Abraham whose faith led him to give up all he knew for the unknown, based on a promise; yet whose doubt of God's power to fulfill this promise caused him to attempt to fulfill God's promise himself, with the slave Hagar. This tension is at the heart of the apparent contradiction of Jesus urging a doubting Thomas to inspect His wounds while proclaiming blessed those who do not see and yet believe; of the parable of the tares, which God allows to grow alongside the wheat that is ground up into the His Son's Body.
The Bible is full of this ying yang of belief and doubt, in fact the glory of the Cross is that through the death of one man comes life for all. The pope's ecumenism at Assisi, far from the watered-down witness that critics feared, is more authentically Christian than most of us dare to acknowledge.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"There is more faith in honest doubt/Believe me, than in half the creeds."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Internet can be a lonely place for agnostics.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI just wish agnostics would come to Christ and know His salvation. I bear no ill will toward agnostics that are sincerely seeking the truth. I just hope and pray that they will find the truth.
He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.
Matthew 12:30
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJohn 14:6
Yes, but:
"For he that is not against us is on our part." (Mark 9:40.)
Kind of the opposite of "if you're not for us, you're against us," no? "If you're not against us, you're for us."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEither Jesus was inconsistent, then, and we cannot trust what He said, or the Bible isn't trustworthy, and we cannot KNOW what He said, or the two statements aren't incompatible.
The context of the two statements shows what Jesus meant: in Matthew, He rebuked those who attributed His works to demonic powers, and in Mark, He accepted those who worked in His name even outside of an organized heirarchy.
Only a superficial reading of the passages bring them into conflict.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnderstood. The point is that "you're either for us or against us" (which seems, at first glance, to say "if you're not in our organized hierarchy, you're against us," and is often used to make that point) has to be read in conjunction with the idea that those who are not actively aiding the Enemy are on Christ's side.
Alternatively, this may actually be a case of two writers recording Jesus' statement differently, just as Acts and Galatians contain inconsistent descriptions of what Paul and his companions saw and heard on the road to Damascus. If you're of the "inspired men rather than inspired words" school, an occasional minor inconsistency in the Bible isn't a problem. We don't worship a book, after all, but the God whose dealings with man it undertakes to record.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDuck, "the idea that those who are not actively aiding the Enemy are on Christ's side" isn't what that passage teaches, since the context is about those who are actively working in Christ's name.
There's no reason to conclude that Matthew and Mark are recording the same statement differently, since they're noting two entirely different circumstances -- and the two statements AREN'T contradictory.
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"If you're of the 'inspired men rather than inspired words' school, an occasional minor inconsistency in the Bible isn't a problem."
There's a big reason not to be in that school: Jesus apparently wasn't in that school. He affirmed Scripture to the smallest penstroke and appealed to what the text says as if it was the final authority.
Consider Mark 12:26-27, where Jesus proved the reality of the resurrection of the dead from a verb tense -- "I am" the God of Abraham, not "I was."
Or consider Matthew 19, where Jesus attributed to God Himself a passage from Genesis 2 that wasn't an explicit statement from God.
Sure, that's all in reference to Jewish Scripture, but Jesus' hand-picked Apostles treated their own writings as additional Scripture, to be read in assemblies just like the Torah. (See, e.g., II Peter 3:15-16, where Peter discusses Paul's letters and "the other Scriptures.")
About this:
"We don't worship a book, after all, but the God whose dealings with man it undertakes to record."
That's true, but I don't appreciate the implication, which I've seen from a number of theological liberals. Inerrantists DO NOT worship the Bible: we trust the Bible, not because we believe it IS God, but because we accept that it's FROM God.
The Bible itself doesn't suggest that it's a merely human record of man's experience of God: instead, one can only conclude that it claims to be a divine record of God's revelation to man -- that's certainly how Jesus and HIs Apostles treated it.
The logical conclusion for a person who downgrades the text to merely human authorship, is that the text is blasphemous: that it attributes to God things He did not say, ultimately taking His name in vain.
The written word is merely from God while the living Word *IS* God, but a comparison can be made to C.S. Lewis' famous trilemma.
Jesus claimed to be God. Either Jesus was deranged for making that claim, or demonic, or he was right; what's excluded is the modest compliment that Jesus was merely a good teacher.
The Bible claims to be authored by God -- that all Scripture is breathed out by God (expired) rather than merely breathed in by man (inspired) -- and the book is either hopelessly wrong, irredeemibly evil, or absolutely correct in that claim. There's no middle ground where one can say that the book is to be revered but is not divinely authored: its own claims seem to preclude that possibility.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMichael, The Holy Father was not praising agnostics just putting forth the long held belief that even those who err; sinners, non believers, heretics etc can have some role in God's plan. It may be to bring both to salvation, but it is hardly praising sin, heresy or disbelief.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe pluralism of belief is, in some mysterious way, part of God’s plan for mankind;
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For those of us who think God is sovereign, to speak of His plan is one thing. Nothing escapes His plan.
However, by plan one does not mean His direct, approving 'will', for to err in that way would be to have God approve of false religion and idolatry.
As Paul said to those pluralists on Mars Hill, "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men everywhere to repent: because he has appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he ordained, whereof he has given assurance to all men in that he has raised him from the dead"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSomething Tolkien said and we should remember: "...the Writer of the Story is not one of us."
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