Part I: Faith

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A NEW BIOLOGY: FAITH, FANTASY, AND FACT

INTRODUCTION

It seems a rather silly thing to say, but I have always been fascinated with life. Who hasn't been? After all, I find myself in the midst of life: both my own life and that which oozes, creeps, flies, swims, and, invariably, grows all around me. Although each of us has life, we are also profoundly had by it as well. Regardless of our individual belief systems, mythologies, or scientific information, we humans must acknowledge that life itself is greater than any one living thing. Just as birds have gone on without the dodo and the great auk, life will go on without me when my time comes. We are individual expressions of a reality greater than ourselves; if not in some mystical, spiritual way, then at least we are a part of the greater biocommunity around us. We are also not merely contained in life coincidentally (by the fact that we fall into the mathematical set of all living things); we are held within life integrally (we are intimately related to all living things as part of the web of life, and this relatedness runs right the way through us-- to the very building blocks of DNA). Obviously, life is the subject of this work, life in all of its aspects, the life in me and the life everywhere around me.


With such an obvious, even commonplace, topic, why write at all? As I said earlier, I am indeed fascinated with life, and it is my hope that I am not the only one. Fascination, I believe, is a right attitude to have about the wonder of life. Life, in its width and breath, its diversity and profundity, its immanence to our own existence and its transcendence beyond our limited lives to all that lives, is an analogue of, and, indeed, the creative expression of, the divine. Life, in its ancient mystery, its ferocious tenacity, its vast incomprehensibility and inexhaustible diversity, speaks to an imaginative and basic human tendency to make and share myth. Life, in its observable disectability, its individual measurability, its specific classifiability, allows Homo sapiens to know facts and to collect evidence about life. I hope that my approach to examining life will be a unique one to the extent that it is my way of looking at it. In writing this book, however, I stand, as other authors do, on the shoulders of giants, and I here acknowledge the great debt I owe to them.


The approach that will be taken in this exploration of life will be three-fold, for the ways in which the human psyche encounters life and deals with it are three: as a matter of faith or religious conviction, as fantasy or mythology, and as fact or scientific evidence.


Because human thought is so diverse, allow me to apologize in advance for any errors this work contains, especially in terms of which information appears in each category: faith, fantasy, or fact (truly, now-a-days one man's myth may be another's religious conviction or, even, scientific fact). Please realize that I personally place no negative connotations on any of the three categories. All are equally valid human expressions, and, therefore, all are equally important to this work.


PART I:FAITH

Chapter One
Religious Attitudes Toward Nature and Life

In this chapter we will first set up what is meant by the term religious and continue by exploring the various religious expressions of mankind, past and present, which acknowledge the indwelling of holiness in physical beings. The human encounter with the sacred in life is a mysterious one. When one looks around (especially with the eyes of a member of a technologically and scientifically advanced society), the sacredness which permeates and contains the physical world is not always obvious. In the world and in life there is beauty, order, love, but these things no longer seem to demand for contemporary culture the existence of the spiritual realm. Just as the discovery of the sacred in the world in which I live each day is a mysterious experience, so too is the realization that the sacred is often overlooked. Not only are there those who deny the existence of the holy, those who know it is there often act as though they have forgotten. As a society, when we should be caring for nature, we instead too often catch ourselves pillaging it. Giving nature the honor it deserves as a "dwelling place" of the holy, must begin with the individual. It is only when each of us develops an intimate relationship with the sacred around us that the damage we are doing to the natural world will stop. If we change our attitudes, our behavior will follow. It is not alone to conserve natural resources, however, that the idea of the holiness of nature is important. Rather, it is important because as members of a culture which attempts to set itself apart from the influence of nature in so many self-medicated, climate-controlled, and genetically-engineered ways, we must come to terms with our genuine place in the natural world, without giving up appropriate scientific and technological advances. Moreover, I genuinely believe the development of a sense of awe toward the sacred in nature is the only way to deal with the worldwide ecological crisis into which our current aspiritual attitudes are leading us. Developing a relationship with the holy in nature is not, however, a "quick fix" for the environment or for human spirituality; anyone who has been a party to worthwhile relationships knows that they take a lot of work. Although membership in organized religion is not required for the development of a spiritual sense of nature, we are certainly within the realm of the religious in a general way.

Perhaps it would be best to begin by stating what exactly is meant by the term religious. Something is said to be religious when it pertains to religion, and by religion we mean a human relationship (see Sullivan, pp. 5-8). Beyond that, little can be said without sparking some controversy. The potential controversy becomes immediately apparent when one asks with what is this relationship meant to be? That is, what is the proper object of this relationship? Without getting too entangled, let us examine the 5 kinds of objects and, therefore, the 5 kinds of religion as outlined by John Sullivan, (pp. 28-29):

"Five major distinct kinds of religious object are variously proposed in the literature, as follows:

1. The object of the religious relationship is a number of suprahuman, personal beings, or gods, who are freely active in human affairs in a beneficial way.

2. The object of the religious relationship is an entity of the highest moral character that is not active in any way in human affairs.

3. The object of the religious relationship is the one and only really real, which is not finally distinct from the best in human beings.

4. The religious object is the revealing God, the one and only supreme creator, a personal being of moral excellence, who is freely active in human affairs in a beneficial way, and who has intervened definitively in human history to reveal himself and to establish a visible community as the bearer of true religion.

5. The religious object is an intrahistorical idealized humanity which lies within the active powers and capacities of mankind."

The religious activity which we will examine will be the expression of a human relationship with one of these 5 objects. It may not always be clear, however, exactly which object any one particular religious activity or attitude is directed toward at first glance. Even looking at the objects themselves, it can be seen that at least one, the revealing God, shares characteristics with other objects. Each of these objects demands a different type of human response.(1) And, at least some of these responses took the form of ancient attempts to encounter the divine in nature.

It seems that in prehistoric times, and even in some modern cultures, respect for the natural world is taken to the heights. We are told by some scholars that animism, the belief that at least some members of the natural world (like some rocks, trees, and especially animals) are spiritual beings, that they contain souls or spiritual identities and spiritual power, seems to be the strong conviction in many cultures, both prehistoric and modern. In the case of cultures which still exist, this is observable to the extent that anthropologists or others can experience and understand the culture. In the case of prehistoric man, the pieces of evidence which were left behind are interpreted by modern scholars from today's cultural vantage point, and, therefore, nothing absolute can be said. Much of what is said, is said by way of analogy with those of today's cultures which produce similar artifacts.

Be that as it may, the possibility that our remote predecessors were religious beings is an intriguing idea. Many theologians tell us that to be religious is part of the definition of what it means to be human.(2) If this is so, how far down the trunk of the family tree does humanity as we know it run? Paleoanthropologist, Richard Leakey, approaches the question of humanity from the perspective of consciousness. He states (pp. 302-303):

"The ultimate vicarious experience, of course, is the fear of death, or simply death awareness. In all human societies, the awareness of death has played a large part in the construction of mythology and religion. There seems, however, to be no awareness of death among chimpanzees. Females have been known to carry around the corpse of an infant for a few days after its death, but they seem to be experiencing bewilderment rather than what we call grief. More important, other mature individuals appear to offer no condolence or sympathy to the bereaved mother. The emotional experience seems to go unappreciated by others, and unshared. (...) What can we say about the direct ancestors of hominids, the ancestors common to us and the African apes? ...I suggest that we can say that large-brained apes that live socially complex lives are likely to develop a chimpanzee level of consciousness. (...) With a starting point of a chimpanzee level of consciousness at the threshold of the human lineage, we can begin to think about the trajectory of its development through human history."

Where exactly does this trajectory take us? Much of the time that the genus Homo has been around (not to mention earlier segments of the line of trajectory) must have been devoted to survival, and aside from some rock tools, bone fragments, and a bit of charred earth, there is very little evidence to show what kind of life the earliest members of the genus lived. Debates rage over theories of prowling hunter vs. slinking scavenger, stable homebody vs. haphazard wanderer; were the roots of our family tree astute, intelligent men or slack-jawed bipedal brutes? Scholars may never know for certain.

It is not until Neanderthal man that there is enough evidence to even begin to explore the religious question.(3) The widest span for Neanderthal existence according to current scientific thought seems to be from at least 230,000 years ago for individuals with some characteristically Neanderthal traits (Stringer, p. 69) to about 28,000 years ago (Shreeve, p. 342). This means that Neanderthal could have been contemporary with early moderns (Cro-Magnon, etc.) for 90,000 years! According to some paleoanthropologists, (see Leakey, p. 303) humanity's religious awareness is recognized as far back as the Neanderthals, but this is by no means a universally accepted fact. There are competent leaders in the field, in fact, who say that we simply can't tell to what extent (if any) Neanderthals had a sense of religious awareness, and the discoveries used as evidence of religion may be inconclusive. The most important of these discoveries are supposed Neanderthal burial sites which are now viewed with some doubt. According to Christopher Stringer (pp. 158-160):

"The so-called Middle Palaeolithic (Neanderthal) burials only occurred consistently in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. Just one has been unambiguously identified in Africa: the child burial at Border Cave, which may be as old as 80,000 years. None come from open sites. Strictly speaking it is more accurate to refer to these finds as complete or nearly complete skeletons rather than burials, however closely they seem to foreshadow current practice. (...) In Iraq, the cave site of Shanidar has produced a series of important Neanderthal remains, including the one referred to as the flower burial. The pollen grains in the sediments surrounding the body were interpreted as garlands of flowers strewn across the corpse. But not everyone believes this interpretation, preferring instead the more prosaic explanation that the grains percolated through the sediments or were deposited by animal burrowing. (...) Many of the Neanderthal bodies were in a crouched position, sometimes with head pillowed on an arm. Whether they were arranged or just died in their sleep and were quickly covered over is difficult to determine. ...it (is) difficult to accept claims for such grave goods as intentionally placed stone tools or joints of meat. The goods are just as probably part of the general stone and bone assemblages rather than have any special significance. (...) We conclude that the preservation of complete bodies in open sites during the Upper Palaeolithic (Homo sapiens sapiens or Cro-Magnon) indicates a deliberate custom, closer in concept to what we regard as a burial than the Neanderthal practice, which was probably more akin simply to corpse disposal..."

When it comes to reading human prehistory it all boils down to the interpretation of slim evidence. Many, often even contradictory, readings are possible. So, there is some question as to exactly when religion enters into prehistory. What is certainly known is that by the time humanity began to record its history, religion was already well developed. According to Leakey, who seems to hold out for a comparatively early sense of religious awareness for hominids (pp. 305-310):

"One thing we can be sure about, however, is that once consciousness passed the threshold of self-awareness and death awareness, there welled up in the human mind the Big Question: Why? It is not a straight request for an answer; it is a search for meaning in the midst of uncertainty. ...there has been the sense that the Truth is somehow unknowable, somehow not meant to be known. (...) As a result, mythology and religion have been part of all human history, and, even in this age of science, probably will remain so. (...) The evolution of human consciousness was the forth great biological revolution in the world, a new dimension of biological experience: the self having become aware of itself. With the birth of consciousness was also born the urge to know, in both tangible and intangible realms."

Leakey's comments bring us to another concept about religion: the idea of the evolution of religious awareness. According to this idea man began to become aware of the mystery around him when he first became aware of himself. This sense of mystery among primitive humans was at first quite limited but grew from prehistoric mythologies and fledgling religions based on worshipping and controlling nature into modern religious systems. As far as the concept of eternal questions is concerned, not everyone agrees with the "question-and-answer" theory of religious awakening. Others see genuine experience or the "life well lived" as the purpose for religion: According to authority on mythology, Joseph Campbell (p. 3):

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

Whether sparked by the search for mysterious answers to a set of eternal questions or by the search for an authentic sense of the experience of being alive, many scholars agree that early religion for moderns, Homo sapiens sapiens, is based on animism. According to this idea, sometimes animals were thought of as messengers of the gods and sometimes as the gods themselves.(4) In either case, the ancient animist's goal seems to have been to increase the number and availability of totemic and prey animals. There is evidence that this utilitarian goal may have been the motivation behind early animism just as it is in certain hunter/gatherer cultures today. Respecting the animal spirits brought both lucky animals and meat. If theories are correct, some of the earliest examples of human artistic expression were used in animistic ritual. When in 1879 amazingly sophisticated cave drawings of such animals as wild horses, bison, and wild cattle were discovered in a cave in France, scholars may have been seeing the results of prehistoric rites. At first these were considered art without any practical purpose, however, left behind by early European moderns (Cro-Magnon). But when scientists began to examine similar but much more recent paintings in Australia around the turn of the century, they came up with the idea that these paintings must have served the same "practical" purpose, though they were found so far apart. The Australian paintings were created by the Aborigines, the native people of Australia, and are still being added to today. In Australia the purpose of the paintings of a select type of animals (those which the people feel a connection with as life-giving in a nutritional or spiritual way) was magic and totemic or clan-symbolic ritual. The theory behind the paintings was fairly simple and very practical; at least on one level, it consisted of: paint a kangaroo to communicate with the kangaroo spirit, kangaroos come near enough for you to kill, the hunt is successful, and you and your group prosper. Scholars suggest that stone-age Europeans must have followed the same system (see Leakey, pp. 312-321). If this is so, our remote ancestors spent large amounts of time in dark caves producing art as part of an animistic ritual which was intimately tied to their life experiences and with their very survival as a people.


As can be seen with the account of the Australian rock paintings, this type of belief system has lasted into modern times among peoples who have retained the hunter/gatherer way of life. As Joseph Campbell (pp. 72-73) elaborates:

"As we know from the life of the Bushmen (a modern African tribe) and from the relation of the native Americans to the buffalo, it is one of reverence, of respect. For example, the Bushmen of Africa live in a desert world. It's a very hard life, and the hunt in such an environment is a very difficult hunt. There is very little wood for massive, powerful bows. The Bushmen have tiny little bows, and the extent of the arrow's flight is hardly more than thirty yards. The arrow has a very week penetration. It can hardly do more than break the animal's skin. But the Bushmen apply a prodigiously powerful poison to the point of the arrow so that these beautiful animals, the elands, die in pain over a day and a half. After the animal has been shot and is dying painfully of the poison, the hunters have to fulfill certain taboos of not doing this and not doing that in a kind of 'participation mystique,' a mystical participation in the death of the animal, whose meat has become their life, and whose death they have brought about. There's an identification, a mythological identification. Killing is not simply slaughter, it's a ritual act, as eating is when you say grace before meals. A ritual act is a recognition of your dependency on the voluntary giving of this food to you by the animal who has given its life. The hunt is a ritual."

With this sort of "animal-spirit ritual" probably in all of humanity's past, it is little wonder that animals, as well as other life forms, played a great part in the spirituality of people once they abandoned the hunting in favor of farming in the Near East. With farming came a more stable food supply and the advantage of living in larger groups, and with these came villages, cities, and civilization, but the animal spirits remained. For example, ancient Egypt maintained an extensive kingdom-wide system of temples dedicated to the various local gods which had taken on national importance. The vast majority of these gods were depicted as animals with human bodies or even often times simply as animals. Babylon, too, retained its animal spirits while it advanced its civilization. Later, these and other animal myths will be more fully dealt with, but for now let us examine more modern religious attitudes about the life around us.

Many of the diverse religious systems of the modern world share an important feature in common, namely: a reverential attitude toward nature and toward life. Religious expressions from around the world and from varied cultures demonstrate the lengths that people will go to show respect for, connection with, or even the love of the spiritual side of nature and life.


To the Taoist, for example, the Tao or the Way flows through nature as water flows through a forest. In fact, the natural element thought to be most like the Tao is water. Water gives, flows around obstacles, yet it is strong enough to eventually, gradually wear the largest of obstacles down. The Tao is in all and beyond all; it permeates all of nature, all of life. Water, when allowed to sit still, will clear, and in clearing it is left to reflect the natural grandeur around it. The ideal man for Taoists is also like water; he is the one who is willing to sit still, to reflect the natural world around him and not to overpower it as Westerners so often try to do. He must see himself in a proper context; he is one with the Tao, one with all that is, one with the life around him. In Taoist painting, nature and the natural way of life are writ large, while man, his activities, and even his buildings are small, a natural part of a natural scene. The Chinese story about the man who awoke to find he had been dreaming he was a butterfly and wondering whether he is not now a butterfly dreaming he is a man, shows the Taoist attitude of relativity; one has the impression it really does not matter who is dreaming. The important thing is life, is being part of the flow. Another example of the Taoist's attitude of relativity is the use of the Chinese symbol of yin and yang. This symbol shows the duality of life: light and dark, male and female, good and evil. These seeming pairs of opposites are in fact single realities, however. These things depend on their so-called opposites as is shown in the symbol. They are interrelated, each invading the other at its very core (each is truly a part of the other); they are more than side-by-side concepts, but they are part of the same circle, the same reality. In nature and in life nothing is absolute, and nothing is disconnected from anything else.


In Shinto, the very mountains, rocks, trees are sacred. This sense of the living Earth as spiritual abode permeates traditional Japanese culture. One need only explore a Japanese garden or observe a simple floral arrangement in traditional Japanese style to see the reverence with which life is held. The sound of running water, the golden glint of colored carp in a tree-canopied pool inspire serenity, meditation, oneness with nature and life. The beautiful ceremonial gateways or torii mark holy ground and demonstrate the Shinto attitude of the sacredness of natural places. Just as a medieval Catholic might venture into the dark man-made recesses of a stony cathedral in search of the Divine, the Shintoist seeks out the dark natural recesses of the forest, the craggy rockiness of the mountain, or the majesty of a crystal lake in search of the same sense of holiness.

From India, in both Hinduism and Buddhism, there runs a thread of the sense of sacredness of life. No life should be taken lightly. Here all is ultimately, really, and profoundly ONE. All is an expression of the one Being which alone exists. In meditation the goal is to see that I and the object of my contemplation are the same reality. All fish, birds, frogs, people are but one being. At a fundamental level, in reality, there is no I, there is only Being, Existence, Life.

For Native American peoples, the Earth is a holy place. They have a sense of connection with nature which is enviable. As the date for the arrival of man across the Bering land bridge is pushed further back, it becomes more and more apparent that the Americas and the Americans truly grew up together. They helped form each other in both physical and spiritual ways. Man made his presence in the New World felt by shaping the animal populations and by eventually farming the soil.(5) The New World in turn caused the native cultures to be dependent on her and her gifts, and this influenced the Americans' spirituality. The Earth for them is part of who they are; it is a part of them and they are a part of it. In a real way, the Native Americans felt that they belonged to the Earth, not that it belonged to them. Nature for them is an equal, an older sibling perhaps, who teaches them and provides nourishment, clothing, and shelter for them. The following quote from Chief Seattle, a member of the Duwamish tribe (a people of the Pacific Northwest near Puget Sound) in 1855, has become a sort of paragon of the Native American sense of the spiritual in nature (Vanderworth, p. 121):

"Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks which seem to be dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people."

One of the religions which teaches divine or direct revelation , Islam, honors the created world.(6) In the revealed Koran, Allah's mercy is mentioned ten times as often as his anger, and his love is called more tender than that of a mother bird for her young, in beautiful natural imagery. Also according to Islam's teachings, Allah deliberately created the physical universe to be real, and although it is not perfect (there can be only one perfect being, Allah), it is overwhelmingly good. Because of Islam's deep respect for the material world, Muslim scientific study flourished at a time when Europe was in the midst of the Dark Ages. In fact, when Europe began its renaissance it relied heavily on Arabic language versions of ancient Greek works on science and nature (see Smith, p. 232).


In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the physical universe is closely connected to the spiritual one. This is because of the view that all that exists in the cosmos is the result of the direct and creative act of the personal Divinity. Much more than a divine watchmaker, a cosmic mechanic, God is intimately bound in love to what He has made. All that exists does so not merely because God set the universe in motion at some distant point which is the inception of space and time. All created being exists because God loves it and in so doing continues to create it. Apart from the mind of God (and His love) is nonexistence, is nothing in the strictest sense of the word. God's creative act is ongoing, therefore. It is not a once-and-for-all, completed action. How could the creativity of God be thought of as anything but a moving, continuous, and living reality? The creative action of God is not purely in the past; God's creativity, as a proper characteristic of His divine nature, is eternal just as He is eternal.(7) Creation by a loving and personal God does not contradict a view of evolution by natural selection so long as God is seen as the continuing author of the processes involved (just as He is the author of all).


It is not only in terms of God's creativity, however, that the physical and spiritual realms are interconnected. Creation is also a reflection of the Creator in other ways. Matter points toward God and shows the marks which He has left behind to tell us about Himself.(8) This idea of learning about God by looking at the creation around us is called natural revelation. It is called that precisely because God is thought to reveal Himself to us through what He has made, the natural world. In this way, creation is a sacrament of the Creator.(9) Creation is a visible sign of the invisible Divine Presence. We should approach life and the natural world with a sense of awe and filial devotion. We should show respect for "Mother Nature" because when we do, we show respect for the symbol of and the presence of our creating Father. Although I assert that the ideas of natural revelation and the sacramentality of creation are perfectly valid themes based on the living tradition of the Church and are very useful in developing a contemporary ecospirituality or theology of creation, I certainly acknowledge their misuse by some, especially those who stand against the acceptance of evolution. Natural revelation and the sacramentality of creation are theological ideas which are not intended to make a scientific (biological, geological, etc.) statement about the processes involved in the inception of life or its development. A well-respected and widely-read author on evolutionary themes, Stephen Jay Gould, in an article entitled "An Awful, Terrible Dinosaurian Irony," correctly exposed a Victorian Age attempt to discredit evolution using a doctrine called "natural theology" (from what I can tell, it is identical to what I've been calling natural revelation). Mr. Gould stated (p. 61):

"...and the books did represent a last serious gasp for the venerable but fading doctrine of 'natural theology' based on the so-called argument from design --the proposition that both God's existence and his attributes of benevolence and perfection could be inferred from the good design of material objects and the harmonious interaction among nature's parts (read, in biological terms, as the excellent adaptations of organisms and the harmony of ecosystems expressed as a 'balance of nature.')"

In all likelihood, neither Gould nor I would have had any difficulty with the idea of natural theology to this point. Thus far, it is, strictly speaking, a theological expression of faith in a Creator and an attempt to identify some of His attributes; it attempts to say nothing about natural processes like evolution, for example. There were those, however, who would attempt to do more with the doctrine than should have been attempted. In the 1830's and 1840's, such men as William Buckland (a theologian and geologist) and Richard Owen (an anatomist and the inventor of the term dinosaur) used it in an attempt to disprove progressionistic evolution. According to this theory of evolution, organisms inherently strove for perfection, and when they reproduced, they passed the results of this striving on to their progeny which became more and more perfect over the generations (closer to Lamarck's idea but totally opposed to Darwin's idea of evolution by means of natural selection). Of course, the use of theology as a weapon in attacking biological theories (or for that matter theories in other disciplines, unless such issues as justice, human dignity, faith, or morality are involved) is offensive. Gould describes the situation as follows (p. 64):

"In his preface, Buckland announced an intention to show that 'the phenomena of Geology are decidedly opposed [to] the derivation of existing systems of organic life...by gradual transmutation of one species into another.' He then argued that the superb design of ancient organisms proved the constant superintendence of a loving deity rather than a natural process of increasing excellence, from initial crudity to current complexity. According to Buckland, superb design of giant Mesozoic reptiles 'shows that even in those distant eras, the same care of the common Creator, which we witness in the mechanism of our own bodies...was extended to the structure of creatures, that at first sight seem made up only of monstrosities.' He then inferred God's direct benevolence from the excellent adaptation of the teeth of Iguanodon to a herbivorous lifestyle: we cannot 'view such examples of mechanical contrivance, united with so much economy of expenditure...without feeling a profound conviction that all this adjustment has resulted from design and high intelligence.'"

Contrary to what Buckland seems to have thought, the idea of natural revelation, of creation pointing toward attributes of the Creator, says nothing about evolution. Theology and evolution don't contradict each other. We will come back to this idea when we examine Pope John Paul's statement of October 22, 1996, later in this work.


We must beware of clouding the differences between theology and the other sciences, of attempting to explore themes which are proper to some other discipline using theological speculation as a kind of universal key to all sciences. As Thomas Aquinas said, theology is certainly a science, but uniquely among the sciences, the starting point of the science of theology is faith.(10) This draws a sort of line between theology and the other sciences. All other sciences, whether speculative or descriptive, begin with human initiative and observation, a human response of wonder; according to the Church, theology begins with divine initiative and revelation (either natural or direct), a human response of faith.


While acknowledging the distinction between theological inquiry and inquiry within the other scientific disciplines, the faithful person cannot help but see that it is through created beings we encounter the holy; that it is through creation we see the Creator. In this outlook God is immanent; that is, He is present within that which he made. In fact, God is more intimately present to any one of His creatures than that creature is to itself! Even at my age, I can still do dumb, insensitive, and hurtful things and afterward wonder why I would ever have done them; God knows why even when I don't. He knows me better than I know myself; He is closer to who I am at the core than I can ever be. The physical universe is filled with God's creative presence, indeed, yet He is totally within and totally beyond all other beings simultaneously. As Paul said in his Letter to the Ephesians (4:5), God is "over all, through all, and in all." However, the Christian must draw the line by saying all that exists is not God. There is a real distinction between seeing God's filling presence in the things around us (and, in fact, His presence within us) and equating those things with God. The physical universe is created by the one good God who made it to reflect His own goodness. As it says in the Book of Genesis (1:31), "God looked at everything He had made, and He found it very good."


The goodness, sacramentality, and love in creation may tempt us to see the Divine a bit too clearly in nature. On the other hand, God's transcendence, the fact that He is Other, may lead us to miss God's presence in creation altogether.(11) These twin pitfalls have caused Christians significant problems with their spirituality or theology of creation over the years. The first pitfall is pantheism. According to the pantheist, God and the universe are ONE; the world is God and God is the world. This mistaken idea exaggerates divine immanence to the point of identifying God and the universe. Pantheists take God's intimate presence in creation to show that God and creation are, in reality, one and the same. The second pitfall can lead to another grave danger. When the Divine is seen as beyond the physical world only, it can lead to some strange ideas about the nature of physical being. Despite what the Bible says about the goodness of creation, there have been those who have insisted on the inferiority of the physical and have even suggested that matter is evil. This is dualism in the strictest sense. Dualists insist that spiritual being is better than physical being, so much so that the physical world is evil by comparison. The dualist sees his duty as overcoming the flesh and avoiding its pleasures.


Historically, mainstream Christians and dualists have had many skirmishes, and dualism constitutes a sort of "heresy that wouldn't die" for the Church. An encounter between the two came as early as the second century. Here Christians were exposed to dualism through Gnosticism which was eventually condemned by the Church. According to Gnostics, Jesus could not have been a real man because God would never take on evil human flesh. Therefore, Jesus body must have been some sort of mere shell or disguise used by him in order to blend in. Later, during the third to fifth centuries, the Church dealt with the heresy of Manichaeism. This is an eclectic belief with elements of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Christianity all meshed together in a more or less coherent package. The Manichees held that there are two gods. The first one is the spiritual god of light and goodness; the other is the god who made matter, the god of darkness and evil. According to the prophet Mani, the founder, man has two souls in constant struggle with one another. Here again, Christ's body is a disguise; He came in order to free man's spiritual side from matter. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Church again was called upon to deal with dualism. This time the heresy was known as Albigensianism or Catharism. As Eastern Neo-Manichaean ideas moved West with heretics attempting to avoid mainstream Christian persecution, they sparked an interest among some simple folk which eventually became centered around the town of Albi in southern France. The Albigensians and Cathari abandoned marriage as it was thought to be the original sin of Adam and Eve and cooperated in increasing matter through childbirth. They preferred to have their sexual relationships, if at all, outside of marriage because at least here they were both temporary and secret. Their leaders, called the "Perfected," were said to have encouraged suicide and the killing of children, presumably to decrease excess matter (see Eberhardt, vol. I, pp. 650ff.). Jansenism, which extended from the late sixteenth century to the eighteenth century, was not dualism, strictly speaking, but had some dualistic leanings. For Jansenists, nature, especially human nature, had been totally corrupted by original sin. Because of this, it was thought that exterior things like the natural world and other people were a complete obstacle to Christian life. Here spiritual pursuits are the only ones truly worthy of the Christian who is cursed by his own human nature and human body. Jansenists seemed to assume that very few would make it to heaven, these having been predestined for it by a stingy God. In the so-called Modern Devotion, which is not a heresy nor overtly dualistic, we find the last concern about the natural world as needing to be avoided. This spiritual movement began in the fifteenth century but continues to influence the Church today. In effect it constitutes a kind of sense of personal ownership, if you will, toward things spiritual. In other words, it asks Catholics not to rely completely on a professional clergy to perform religious actions on their behalf, but to develop their own relationship with the divine, especially through the imitation of Christ. One of the first, and certainly the most famous, spokespersons for the Modern Devotion was Thomas a'Kempis, a Dutch member of the Brothers of the Common Life. In the early fifteenth century he wrote a book which has become a spiritual classic, The Imitation of Christ. According to Charles Cummings, there is a danger to be found in this spirituality if taken too far.(12) He states (pp. 11-12):

"We find many sound and valuable teachings in The Imitation of Christ but also tendencies that later ages would exaggerate in unbalanced ways. For example, we can discern a tendency to treat nature and grace as discontinuous: 'The more nature is suppressed and overcome, the more grace is given' (III:54).


(...)The beauty of creation is scarcely noticed by someone who is exclusively intent upon spiritual pursuits. No created thing is allowed to distract this one from the pursuit of perfection. In general, 'Unless a man is clearly delivered from all love of creatures, he cannot fully attend to his Creator' (III:31)."

As truly great as so much of a'Kempis' writing and spirituality are, the two ideas exposed by Cummings are indeed hard to take. After all, the theological principle is that the grace of God builds on nature; it neither suppresses nor overcomes it. God's grace is of a higher order than human nature, but its job is to perfect human nature and not to warp or destroy it. By using grace God raises man to His level, and man becomes God's son by adoption. This in no way harms human nature which remains intact. Instead, grace molds itself to man.(13) Finally, the idea that loving creation somehow limits the human capability to love God seems not to take into account the full capacity of man to love, nor that there are various depths and sorts of human love. Also, one may ask, what comes of Christ's mandatum for His followers to love one another recounted in the Gospel of John (13:34) and elsewhere?

As has been explored in this chapter, man's search for the holiness around him has been a long and a broad one. Just how long it has been is the object of much speculation, however. Some paleoanthropologists believe that religious behaviors go back into the mists of time as far as the first dawning of human consciousness, whenever that may be. Whether it is accurate to say that religious behaviors are hundreds of thousands of years old or only tens of thousands is presently impossible to determine. Suffice it to say that religious activity has been around since prehistory. In Catholic theology, it has been traditional to speak of an inborn desire to search for the holy, a desire which is a part of humanity's very nature, a desire created in man by God Himself as a clue to His existence. Contemporary Aboriginal art used in animistic rituals which is similar to paintings found in caves utilized by early modern man seems to indicate that these people indulged in similar animistic religious behaviors. With the advent of agriculture and the resulting growth of cities and civilizations, animism was not abandoned, but it was instead institutionalized in such successful societies as the kingdoms of Egypt and Babylon.


The breadth of man's search for the sacred in nature and life can be observed in an inventory of some of the religious attitudes of people from around the world. Taoists see the Way in nature; it is only when man becomes one with the natural world around him that he can "clear" or begin to reflect the power of the Tao. In nature all is interconnected, including man and his activities. In Shinto, there is a sense of the sacred within special natural places. For Hinduism and Buddhism, all being is ONE; a sense of disconnection and individuality is an illusion. Native Americans see the Earth as a holy place and see themselves as intricately tied to it. Finally, the Judeo-Christian tradition sees the physical universe as the free and loving gift of a personal Creator. This gift is ongoing, just as the Creator is ongoing. Creation is fashioned to be good; the Church has been called upon many times in history to reaffirm this in its dealings with the dualists. Although the cosmos is a sacrament and a reality that is full of God's presence, it is not God Himself.

Notes For Chapter 1

(1) According to Sullivan, the 5 objects correspond to the 5 kinds of religion, namely: Ceremonial Religion, Moral Religion, Mystical Religion, Revealed Religion, and Secular Religion. In addition to each of these kinds of religion having its own proper object of relationship, each also has a specific kind of human activity proper to it. Sullivan lists these on p. 29, and the numbers correspond to those above for the objects:

"1. Religious activity consists of actions and words that express a real and continuing dependence on the beneficent activity of suprahuman personal beings or gods.
2. Religious activity consists of the exercise of the sociomoral virtues in imitation of, or in conformation with, the ultimate moral being.
3. Religious activity consists of an inner quest for realization or unification with the one really real that entails a process of disengagement from the otherness and individuality of the human.
4. Religious activity consists of a complex, divinely aided human response to a unique divine initiative: the elements of this response are faith in the revealing God and obedience to divine commands that require distinct ceremonial activities, sociomoral living, and the love of God and man.
5. Religious activity consists of all human activity that effectively and consciously cooperates in the realization of idealized humanity in history."

(2) It has been traditional in exploring religions to talk about a universal desire, hunger, or even need on the part of people to seek out the mysterious, the spiritual, the sacred, in short to look for God. This desire has been considered inborn by Western theologians, placed within mankind by God as an internal reason for people to seek Him out. Religious leaders have spoken about the desire to look for God as a part of created human nature (a part of what makes us who we are at the core). However, this inborn desire, what some nonreligious philosophers have called the existential vacuum, people sometimes attempt to fill with other things such as sexual intimacy, drugs, material wealth, and even with such obviously noble things as human love, honor, courage, or service to others.

(3) By the way, there is a significant amount of doubt as to where exactly Neanderthals fit into the evolution of the genus Homo; some have described them as advanced Homo erectus, archaic Homo sapiens (subspecies: neanderthalensis), or a dead-end species called Homo neanderthalensis which does not figure into the genetic make up of modern humans at all. Theories as to why one never sees a Neanderthal on the street today vary from murder by (or being outcompeted by) better equipped moderns to intermarriage with moderns whose large numbers swamped (or at least diluted) the genetic input of the Neanderthals.

(4) This may sound strange to us because the world in which we live is thought to have been domesticated by humanity; for early people the world was a wild place. Keep in mind the idea of natural revelation which says that we can see God in experiencing the natural world around us (this idea will be taken up again later in the chapter). According to some opinions, there may be less real difference than we think, between the Christian idea of seeing God in nature and the animistic view. Traditionally, two kinds of revelation have been talked about. The first type of revelation according to Christian theologians, is called natural revelation. This type of revelation deals with God showing Himself to humanity through the natural world in what he has made as Creator. Here again, what is reveled to one depends on one's interpretation because it is based on the "tracks" of God left behind after the creative act. One might see the beauty of creation in sunshine, birdsong, mountain, or tree. On the other hand, one might see the orderliness of the universe by studying creation scientifically. Although beauty and order can both point to the Divine, they would do so differently to different people or cultures. This is where the second type of revelation comes in. This type is called divine or direct revelation. This type of revelation deals with God showing Himself to humanity directly through His Word. This Word, according to Christians, comes in two forms: the Word of God in human language (the Bible) and the Word of God in human nature (Jesus).

(5) There is a current theory among mammalian paleontologists that the extinction of at least some of the American megafauna (such creatures as mammoths, woolly rhinos, or giant ground sloths) can be either directly or indirectly attributed to the actions of early man as he hunted his way through the New World. If this theory is accurate, man certainly helped to shape his new environment (Could this be some sort of pre-Columbian moral lesson which Native Americans have profited from but which most of us continue to ignore as our activities cause the extinction of so many creatures?). As far as agriculture is concerned, man certainly had an influence on those living things he farmed. His artificial selection of "domesticated" fowls and grains, etc. changed them. For example, in those areas where the best kernels of corn were offered to the Earth by being planted in it, ears of corn became larger and more productive than in those areas where this cult did not flourish, the locals instead eating the best and planting the remainder.

(6) Islam, Judaism and Christianity are known as religions of "The Book." That is, they are religions which believe that the personal God directly shows Himself in human language and that this revelation has been recorded and preserved.


(7) Because He is the eternally perfect Being, the whole of God's action can be thought of as constantly present to Him. Therefore, the creation of the universe is an act which is always in the "now." It should be remembered that all of His acts, the creation as well as the Incarnation, Redemption, and eschaton (the end times) are all present in eternity to the Divine. For God, existence is eternally "all at once" in a way that we who are subject to space and time cannot hope to understand, much less explain.

(8) See earlier note on "tracks" of God left behind in the creative action.

(9) A sacrament here is a visible sign or symbol of some greater reality. Nature shows us God. It is a sign which speaks of God's ongoing creativity, His continuing love, and His willingness to reach out to us through the beauty and order of the cosmos. The Church itself is also seen as this type of sacramental sign of God's presence on Earth. Obviously, this is a definition of sacrament in a less strict sense than Catholics use to describe the 7 sacraments of the Church (fairly formal moments of encounter with God which are very specific in the Catholic mind). The traditional definition of this formal type of sacrament is an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace.

(10) Anselm of Canterbury defined theology as faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). By the way, philosophy is traditionally described as the handmaid of theology, and by that it is meant that philosophy is the tool through which theological reflections are made and the language through which theological assertions are expressed.

(11) The term Other in theology is designed to express the fact that God is beyond this world in which we live. God, as First Cause or Unmoved Mover, is beyond the creation He has made. He was pre-existent; that is, He was "before" there was time. Both time and space have their existence as we do; they are creatures of God and are subject to Him. God can be "off the timeline" in effect. God, as a pure spirit, can be nowhere and everywhere; he can be outside of time ("no-when" if you will) and in every moment simultaneously.

(12) The portions quoted by Cummings come from a'Kempis' work and are cited by number as to book and chapter

(13) For a fuller explanation of grace and nature see Meagher, vol. II, p. 1542.


PART I: FAITH

Chapter Two
Biblical Creation Myth

For some reason it is still suspect in certain Christian circles to speak of biblical myth. Perhaps this has to do with a pair of widespread misconceptions: the first involving the nature of biblically revealed truth, the second being an inadequate definition of the term myth. Before proceeding with an examination of Genesis accounts of the creative act, it may be well to spend a few moments examining the issues surrounding the two misconceptions.


As a self-revealing expression of God, the Bible has everything to do with truth. God is Truth. This showing of self has other dimensions, however. It not only gives us insights, revealed by God, as to who this Truth is, it also shows us about the human response to the revealing God. In this sense, the Bible is truly a divine and a human document at the same time. In keeping with the long standing tradition of the Church, Scripture is said to be inerrant. That is, the Bible is thought to be protected from error as an effect of being divinely inspired. The human authors of the various texts, however, are not thought of as mere scribes of the Divine when it comes to the understanding of this inspiration. The authors brought to the task of writing their own personalities, writing styles, and worldviews. These human writers truly are the authors of Scripture as much as is God. Their intended meanings as well as the consideration of the literary genres they have chosen must be taken into account when determining the truth in any Bible passage.(1) The biblical writers in expressing the truths that they wished to share used varied literary forms including: saga or the ancient stories of the heroes (containing etiological stories which explain the origins of place names, cultic practices, or peoples), historical narrative or written accounts and analysis of human activity (thought to be analogous to, but certainly not identical with, our own modern scientific view of history), visionary or prophetic reportage or accounts of encounters with God (often used in establishing a person as prophet), admonitions or warnings (referred to as woe oracles), as well as myth or the ancient stories of divine activity (this, too, can include etiological material such as the origin of the practice of resting on the Sabbath). These various genres speak to the truth in different ways, and no two can be interpreted or read in the same fashion without causing confusion on the part of the would-be interpreter. When interpreters stray from this course by attempting to read everything as scientific or modern historical fact, they quickly run into problems, often even within the biblical text itself. The truth as expressed in the Bible is not intended to be read as is a modern science or history textbook. The truth contained in Scripture is not about the mundane but about the Divine and man's relationship with the Divinity. Biblical truth is faith truth; it is the story of God's showing of Himself and the faith response of the ancient Israelites and of the early Christians.


The second misconception, the inadequate definition of the term myth, is not surprising given some of what has been written about myth. The inadequate and even false definition of myth is that it, by its nature, must be both untrue and told from a polytheistic outlook. In this way of thinking myth is seen as the direct opposite of the Christian concept of divine revelation which is faith truth on the highest level as well as being uncompromisingly monotheistic. Although it is true that many ancient myths are told in a way which implies that the tellers meant them to be taken with a grain of salt, and that these stories spring from a distinctly polytheistic mindset, these two characteristics seem to be coincidental to the fact that these stories are examples of myth. Instead, myth can better be defined as an attempt to explain some deep, even mysterious, truth in human language. In this sense, myth has quite a bit in common with the Bible's attempt to express that which is beyond human comprehension, namely: God. The term myth comes into English from the Greek word mythos. Originally, the term meant a story or narrative but eventually came to be associated exclusively with stories of the gods which later educated Greeks saw as fictional. This may explain some of the negative nuances given to this word. We must get beyond these nuances. According to one source (Meagher, vol. 2, pp. 2477-2478):

"Modern study of myth has thoroughly revised the concept, appreciating in it a method of religious thought and expression that performs the same function for religion that music and pictorial art perform for the aesthetic apprehension of reality. (...) Many modern biblical scholars see this mythological way of thought and expression as entirely compatible with the dignity and truth of Sacred Scripture. They consider it appropriate and meaningful to designate certain biblical passages...as in some sense mythological in character. This use of myth in application to biblical passages is not intended to deny reality to the events about which the biblical myth speaks, but rather to focus attention upon the religious meaning the myth endeavors to draw from the event."

Once it is accepted that the current definition of the term myth is in no way contradictory to the concept of Scripture as truth and that myth is not of necessity polytheistic, one can begin to see the usefulness of mythological thinking in Bible study. Those parts of the Bible that do contain mythic literature become much more clear and meaningful once this fact is realized. Let us make a start where the first of the two Genesis creation myths begins.(2)

"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.


Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness. God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night.' Thus evening came, and morning followed-- the first day.


Then God said, 'Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other.' And so it happened: God made the dome, and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it. God called the dome 'the sky.' Evening came, and morning followed-- the second day.


Then God said, 'Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so the dry land may appear.' And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared. God called the dry land 'the earth,' and the basin of water he called 'the sea.' God saw how good it was. Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth vegetation: every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree on earth that bears fruit with its seed in it.' And so it happened: the earth brought forth every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree on earth that bears fruit with its seed in it. God saw how good it was. Evening came, and morning followed-- the third day.


Then God said: 'Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years, and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth.' And so it happened: God made the two great lights, the greater one to govern the day, and the lesser one to govern the night; and he made the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw how good it was. Evening came, and morning followed-- the fourth day.


Then God said, 'Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures, and on the earth let birds fly beneath the dome of the sky.' And so it happened: God created the great sea monsters and all kinds of swimming creatures with which the water teems, and all kinds of winged birds. God saw how good it was, and God blessed them saying, 'Be fertile, multiply, and fill the water of the seas; and let the birds multiply on the earth.' Evening came, and morning followed-- the fifth day.


Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth all kinds of living creatures: cattle, creeping things, and wild animals of all kinds.' And so it happened: God made all kinds of wild animals, all kinds of cattle, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. God saw how good it was. Then God said: 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.'


God created man in his image;
in the divine image he created him;
male and female he created them.


God blessed them, saying: 'Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.' God also said: 'See, I give you every seed bearing plant all over the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; and to all the animals of the land, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the ground, I give all the green plants for food.' And so it happened. God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed-- the sixth day.


Thus the heavens and the earth and all their array were completed. Since on the seventh day God was finished with the work he had been doing, he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation.


Such is the story of the heavens and the earth at their creation."

This excerpt from Genesis (1:1 - 2:4a) constitutes the first creation account found in the Bible. Although it comes first in order, however, it is actually more recently written than the myth in Genesis 2:4b-25 according to biblical scholars. Its source seems to be Israel's Priestly tradition, and it deals not only with the creation but is arranged as an etiological explanation for the seventh day Sabbath. Together, the Priestly, the Yahwistic, and the Elohistic traditions form almost all of Genesis.(3)


When reading the myth, a couple of things become immediately apparent. First of all, the story seems to be told in the form of a hymn or liturgical song. Poetic language is used throughout the account as are phrases which seem to serve the same purpose as musical refrains. The phrases, "And so it happened," and, "God saw how good it was," seem to be used in this way. The second thing which becomes obvious on reading the story is that it is somehow "telescoped" into a six-day format. There are eight creative actions on the part of God which are indicated by the phrase, "Then God said..." Each day in the story has God performing one creative action except the third day (on which God creates dry land and separately creates vegetation) and the sixth day (on which God creates the creatures of the land and separately creates mankind). It seems likely that an earlier song was reconfigured to fit the six-day work week needed for the purpose of giving an etiological explanation for the day of rest which was part of the Israelite tradition.


The next interesting thing about this creation story is that God creates by His Word. He "speaks" creation into existence; He says it and it becomes so. The whole concept of Word of God is very significant for Christians. In speaking of the eternal Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Gospel of John (1:1) says, "In the beginning was the Word; the Word was in God's presence, and the Word was God." Here the Evangelist recalls the creation story with the phrase, "In the beginning...," and continues by saying that nothing came to be except by the Word. In the Genesis story, God uses His Word to bring order out of chaos, that is, to bring being out of nonbeing. The Hebrew word bara (to make) applies only to divine creativity and does not imply recombining pre-existent matter. In other words, the making of the universe by God is set apart from human "making" which is actually somehow modifying something that is already there. Traditionally, God is said to make the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing, and this is in keeping with the Hebrew text. First God makes light and then proceeds through sky, sea, and land in a sort of stage setting in preparation for the characters which will be next created. The first characters, the first "moving" beings, are the plants of the earth, which spring forth from it by the Creator's command, and the celestial bodies: the sun, moon, and stars.(4) Next, God creates the beings of the water and the beings of the air: the fish, etc. and the birds. On the sixth day God makes land animals and then turns his attention toward man, who He makes in His own image and likeness. According to the Hebrew, man is created in God's own appearance as an exact copy [selem] and in His mere resemblance [d'mut]. Presumably, neither term is quite right to convey the priestly intention on its own; the truth must be somewhere between man as photocopy and man as distantly akin.(5) Next, God gives mankind some instructions on what to do with all that was made. Man is told to fill the earth and subdue it and that he has dominion over other creatures. What this boils down to is that man has a custodial relationship with the earth, he has control over it and power over it, but these are obviously relative (man couldn't break the laws of physics, for example, in the exercise of his dominion over other created being). Man's dominion also demands that he act responsibly toward the rest of creation as God's steward. In effect, we are God's stewards over creation, with the obligations that entails, and not masters of creation in our own right.


The second creation myth in Genesis is found in the second chapter (2:4b-25) and focuses much more emphatically on the creation of man. This story constitutes an older mythic tradition and has the Yahwist material as its source.

"At the time when the Lord made the earth and the heavens-- while as yet there was no field shrub on earth and no grass of the field had sprouted, for the Lord God had sent no rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a stream was welling up out of the earth and was watering all the surface of the ground-- the Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being.


Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and he placed there the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made various trees grow that were delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.


A river rises in Eden to water the garden; beyond there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is the Pishon; it is the one that winds through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is excellent; bdellium and lapis lazuli are also there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that winds all through the land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it is the one that flows east of Asshur. The forth river is the Euphrates.


The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it. The Lord God gave man this order: 'You are free to eat of any of the trees of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.'


The Lord God said: 'It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.'


So the Lord God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be a suitable partner for the man.


So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said:


'This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
This one shall be called woman, for out of her man this one has been taken.'
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.
The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame."

This mythic story lacks the poetic flow of the first story and its liturgical formulation. Instead, this story tends to meander and is, in fact, probably a tying together of many ancient threads. Here God is anthropomorphic; that is, He is presented as more like a human craftsman than a divine Creator. He fashions man out of pre-existing matter, clay, in much the same way that a human sculptor might mold a figure. The lack of theological advance, demonstrated by the anthropomorphism, confirms the greater age of the tradition.


The myth describes the garden, at Eden, where man is brought to dwell by God. In the midst of the myth, there is a description of the four-branched river of Eden which interrupts the flow of the narrative and further demonstrates the blending that occurred before the story took its final form. Although scholars have various theories (see Laymon, p. 5), only the last two names can be certainly identified with modern geographical locations. In this myth, too, man is given custody of and responsibility for his fellow creatures. He is asked to tend the garden by God and to name the animals that God makes to keep the man company. Again and again, God's created beings fail to be fitting companions for the man, and one can almost feel the frustration as God tries to please his new gardener. Again, a more sophisticated theology would preclude the inclusion of this sort of trial-and-error creative effort. Finally, God comes upon an idea that simply cannot fail, and He creates a helpmate for the man out of the man's very flesh. This companion, at last, meets with the man's approval. There follows the use of a pun on the Hebrew words ishsha (woman) and ishah (her man or her husband). The myth of creation ends with a Yahwistic blessing of the married state and an insight into the innocence of the new people. This end is an artificial one, however, as the narrative continues on with the story of the Fall and original sin.


These two creation stories, in some way, should be foundational for a new Christian attitude toward creation. In order for the stories to do this, Christians must remember that we are created in God's image and likeness and that we, therefore, "stand in" for Him in a real though mysterious way. We are His appointed custodians in caring for the Earth; we are not our own masters in this but are God's servants, here to ensure that no gift of God's creativity is lost. The Church focuses on what is the core of the creation stories for Christians, what we need to believe, and there are two things: that God made everything out of nothing and that He created all things to be good. So, in addition to remembering our custodial relationship with the earth, we must also keep in mind the intrinsic goodness of it as a gift of God.

Notes For Chapter 2

(1) This approach to the interpretation of Scripture was advocated by Pope Pius XII in his 1943 encyclical, Divino Afflante Spiritu and was reaffirmed in the Second Vatican Council's document on divine revelation, Dei Verbum (III:12). It should be noted, however, that although Pius encourages exegetes to examine literary genres, he seems to object to the idea that myths, especially those adopted from other cultures, can be found in the Scriptures (see his 1950 encyclical, Humani Generis). Contemporary Catholic Bible scholars, on the other hand, seem to freely discuss Old Testament myths and especially the "mythopoeic" thinking of the Israelite authors. For a broader discussion of this issue, see The Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond Brown, et al. (77:23-31).

(2) All Bible quotes are from the New American Bible unless otherwise noted.

(3) According to modern Bible scholars, Genesis is mainly an intertwining of three traditions. Although each of the three draws on earlier oral material, evidence shows a likely date for the writing down of each tradition. The Priestly tradition was recorded sometime after 539 B.C. and deals with such concerns as chronology, genealogy, etiology of ritual practices, and covenant relationships with God. The Yahwist tradition was written down sometime around 950 B.C. and is made up of material which originally used the name "Yahweh" or "I am" for God (usually translated as Lord). The Elohist tradition was solidified in document form at about 750 B.C. and deals with dreams and revelations and uses the term "Elohim" (usually translated as God). For more detailed information see The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary On the Bible (Laymon, pp. 1-3).

(4) The term "moving" beings should be distinguished from mobile being which is a technical philosophical term which refers to being that can "move itself." Mobile being would include the plants, that move through growth, as well as the higher orders of sentient being, like the animals which can sense their surroundings, and rational being: man.

(5) For more on image vs. likeness see the discussion in Brown, 2:20.


PART I: FAITH

Chapter Three
A Summary of the US Bishops' Statement on the Environment

In 1991, the Catholic bishops of the United States published a statement entitled: Renewing the Face of the Earth: An Invitation to Reflection and Action on Environment in Light of Catholic Social Teaching. This is quite a mouthful and it represents a large undertaking on the part of the bishops. In formulating their statement, the bishops began by using a comment made by Pope John Paul II in 1989 (Grazer, p. 1):

"Faced with the widespread destruction of the environment, people everywhere are coming to understand that we cannot continue to use the goods of the earth as we have in the past.... [A] new ecological awareness is beginning to emerge.... The ecological crisis is a moral issue."

The bishops continue by expanding upon the idea of the environmental crisis as a moral challenge which faces Catholics as well as all people of good will. Even though the seriousness of the environmental problem we face is still a matter of contention between various experts and special interest lobbyists, the bishops point out that one need only look around to see that at least some damage is being done. Polluted air, water, beaches, or lost farmland, wetland, forest all show the consequences of human action. Although they are of grave importance, environmental issues must not be thought of as divorced from, or larger than, other very real problems and issues. According to the bishops' document (Grazer, p. 1):

"Environmental issues are also linked to other basic problems. As eminent scientist Dr. Thomas F. Malone reported, humanity faces problems in five interrelated fields: environment, energy, economics, equity, and ethics. To ensure the survival of a healthy planet, then, we must not only establish a sustainable economy but must also labor for justice both within and among nations. We must seek a society where economic life and environmental commitment work together to protect and to enhance life on this planet."

The bishops state that by entering the dialogue on the environment and ecological issues, they wish to accomplish six goals: examine and highlight the ethical dimensions of the crisis; link questions of ecology and poverty, environment and development; stand with those persons most impacted by environmental abuse and tradeoffs between environment and development; promote a vision of justice and sustainability; invite reflection on the religious dimensions of the issue; and, finally, begin a broader conversation. Above all, the bishops seek to explore the connections between caring about the person and caring about the earth. They state (Grazer, p. 2):

"The web of life is one. Our mistreatment of the natural world diminishes our own dignity and sacredness, not only because we are destroying the resources that future generations of humans need , but because we are engaging in actions that contradict what it means to be human. Our tradition calls us to protect the life and dignity of the human person, and it is increasingly clear that this task cannot be separated from the care and defense of all of creation."

Although the bishops imply that humanity must sacrifice its current desires and instead focus on the common and long-term good of many generations when it comes to using natural resources, they also warn that often times the very sacrifices which are designed to help all of mankind exact a much higher price on those who are living nearer the economic edge, such as workers and the poor. Such issues as overcrowding and unequal land distribution often contribute to soil degradation, deforestation, and migration to marginal land in the poor's effort to survive. Therefore, it is only when sustainable economic policies which include all people are developed that real progress can be made in conservation. Any new economic policies must also, however, include a reduction of stress on the environment and must be in keeping with sound ecological policies and goals for the future. Ecological and environmental issues are a sort of tightrope for Catholics. Nature is not wholly there to be exploited, to be used up by humanity, for the good of society and to the detriment of our fellow creatures or of people on the fringes. Nor is nature a museum piece, according to the bishops, which must be preserved inviolate at all costs despite the needs of humanity. Obviously, the Church teaches that the truth of the matter is somewhere between these extremes.


In attempting to offer modern society a plan of attack against some very complicated and prickly environmental problems, the bishops offer the Church's teachings based on its traditional views of social issues and environmental ethics. Responsibility in forming a future plan of action for conservation and utilization of natural resources requires that certain themes be kept in mind (see Grazer, p. 4); according to the bishops, these themes are: a God-centered and sacramental view of creation as a ground for human accountability, a respect for human and all life, a sense of global interdependence and desire to work toward the common good, an ethical sense of solidarity which promotes a just structure for the world-wide sharing of goods, an understanding of the purpose of created things and consequent equability of use, an option in favor of the poor which promotes a compassionate system of conservation and utilization, and, finally, a sense of authentic development which both respects human dignity and seeks sustainability of resource use.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to pause and explore some of these themes. Although it has already been dealt with in a previous chapter, the first theme which deserves our attention here is the sense of the sacramentality of the created universe. We must remember that as creatures ourselves, not one of us can divorce himself from the physical universe. This physical universe is the context in which we exist, and it is also the context in which we meet God. God speaks to us and shows Himself to us in and through created nature. Created nature is the most simple and basic form of revelation to mankind of a living, loving, creating God. In what He has made, God shows us something of who He is; it is in the context of this material world that the Creator teaches us our first catechetical lessons. These basic lessons can be derived from studying the world around us; they are, the Creator is good just as creation is good, and the Creator appreciates beauty and order for there is beauty and order in creation (or, to put it in more current and ecologically relevant wording: "...the excellent adaptations of organisms and the harmony of ecosystems expressed as a 'balance of nature.'" --Gould, An Awful, Terrible Dinosaurian Irony, p. 61). Creation is a sign and symbol of God and His love for us; that is, creation is a sacrament of the Divine Presence. A sacrament, in this sense, is a physical representation which points to a greater reality. The universe is the physical expression of God's love for us. As such, it is worthy of our care, respect, and our conservatory efforts. As beings who dwell within the sacrament, we must begin to see ourselves as part of creation, and our role within creation must be that of the steward who is intimately bound to that which he cares for. We must come to realize that as part of creation we cannot be lords over it!


As good stewards we must also remember that we have an obligation to care for all of God's creation; this includes all of our fellow beings, human or otherwise. Respect for human life and all of the natural world are really the same thing; the two are so intimately joined that they cannot be separated. The bishops point out that Pope John XXIII, in his 1963 encyclical letter Pacem in Terris, emphasized world-wide interdependence by extending the traditional idea of the "common good" from the local to the world community; this sense of universal common good and solidarity must be the impetus in establishing a global environmental ethic. Hand in hand with a sense of the universal common good there is also an acknowledgment of the universal purpose of created things; God gives creation to sustain all people without regard for their economic status or country of origin, and, presumably, God gives all of creation to sustain the other world species as well. As goods become scarce and the environment is stressed further, justice toward the poor and workers must be maintained. These groups cannot be asked to make sacrifices to improve the environment without concrete broad support from the world community. Also, authentic development of resources does not mean unrestrained economic or technological development; to be truly authentic, it must maintain a balance between human progress and respect for nature.

The entire bishops' document takes the form of a sort of reminder of various problems involved with the ecological crisis that humanity faces. There is an attempt made to lay out the situation as well as to suggest some possible paths toward a solution (paths which take an ethical approach and which acknowledge the ultimate sacredness of the natural world), but the bishops do not pretend that they have all the answers. Instead, they call for cooperation among the various groups concerned so that an authentic and workable solution can be possible.(1)


Without a doubt, establishing a world-wide, environmentally-sensitive, sustainable economy with justice for all people is the big priority, but it is a priority which is beyond the control of (perhaps, in any practical way, even beyond the comprehension of) the average concerned citizen. This is the big picture, so big in fact that the best minds of the world community must come together in order to fully define the parameters of the problem-- let alone fix it. When it comes to this truly big picture, only an international, unchauvinistic, and unselfish spirit of cooperation will suffice. Can this spirit be relied on? It must be; there is no alternative.


Also, as I see it, the ecological catastrophe toward which the modern world has been hurtling since the dawn of industrialization has as much to do with ignorance or misunderstanding of the consequences of starting a gasoline engine or throwing away a piece of paper as it does with equity between peoples and nations. Here the average concerned citizen can do something, however. He can read, learn, think, and even pray until his attitudes about consumerism and waste change to the point of being "environmentally friendly." With a change in attitude, a change in behaviors will follow.

Notes for Chapter 3

(1) According to pages 9 and 10 of the bishops' document, these groups include: scientists, environmentalists, economists, experts, teachers and educators, parents, theologians, scripture scholars, ethicists, business leaders, representatives of workers, Catholic faithful, environmental advocates, and policy makers and public officials.

PART I: FAITH

Chapter Four
A New Papal Biology

Popes have been tolerant of science's teaching of evolution for some time. This tolerance has gone something like this: evolution and Biblical faith do not rule each other out; they are not even necessarily at odds with each other. Both of these "could" be true, each in its own field of expertise. In other words, living things could evolve from one species to another by means of adaptation to environmental pressures and competition (natural selection) as science claims; at the same time, the fundamental Biblical teaching of the universe as God-created and overwhelmingly good can be equally true. Scientific truth and faith truth can be true in their respective realms at the same time even if they seem on the surface to contradict one another. Each of these truths is of a different sort. Scientific truth should never be a matter of "faith" alone; it must be observable and provable. On the other hand, Biblical truth should never be read as though it were scientific or historical truth; the Bible is a statement of faith and not a science book or a history book.


The papal tolerance has grown over time (we'll come back to this point), but its starting point sometime before Pope Pius XII's 1950 encyclical, Humani Generis, would be claimed by some to have been a reversal from earlier Church teaching. For example, the First Vatican Council, 1869-1870, under the more-than-watchful eye of Pope Pius IX , condemned a certain restricted (not to say strange) notion of evolution which held that finite being somehow emanated or evolved from the divine substance in a sort of spontaneous generation as opposed to God creating in a free act of His will out of nothing.(1) As the conciliar documents state (Documents of Vatican I, Canon I: On God the Creator of All Things, numbers 4 and 5).

"If anyone says that finite things, both corporal and spiritual, or at any rate, spiritual, emanated from the divine substance; or that the divine essence, by the manifestation and evolution of itself becomes all things or, finally, that God is a universal or indefinite being which by self determination establishes the totality of things distinct in genera, species and individuals: let him be anathema.(2)


If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced , according to their whole substance, out of nothing by God; or holds that God did not create by his will free of all necessity, but as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself; or denies that the world was created for the glory of God: let him be anathema."

Although some have seen this as a condemnation of the idea of evolution in its entirety, it seems hardly that. It is a condemnation of the idea of evolution within God, that His substance or essence evolves into all things. In addition, the statement demands that the substance or essential character of all things was created out of nothing by God. That is, it demands that what something is at its core, at the level of being in the philosophical sense, was strictly made ex nihilo by God. Clearly, this idea is beyond biological considerations. The statement makes no mention of a purely biological notion of evolution, the only notion which should concern us here. After all, not everything called evolution or darwinism must be irrevocably linked. Take for example the theory of social darwinism, a philosophical Jenny Haniver(3) which took Charles Darwin's ideas in combination with the social climate of the industrial age and stressed competition and survival of the fittest within human society. According to this abhorrent idea, social, economic, even racial "misfits" should be out competed and eliminated for the betterment of the human species; this should be done without remorse as a duty to humanity. Obviously, this idea was used as a means for the powerful to gain even more power, and it is not a natural corollary to biological darwinism. The outdated theory of social darwinism is in disrepute while more and more evidence of Darwin's idea of natural selection accumulates.(4) Just as a condemnation of social darwinism must not be a condemnation of Darwin's ideas on natural selection; a condemnation of evolution in the realm of theology or philosophy must not be construed as a condemnation of biological evolution by the Church.


In fact, Pope Pius XII spends pages talking about the ways in which the notion of evolution are not acceptable to the Church before he reaches the modern biological sense of the word and says (Humani Generis):

"...the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter-- for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation, and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith."

Here, Pope Pius sets the stage for official Catholic open-mindedness when it comes to biological evolution all the way back in 1950. This falls far short of endorsement or approval on the part of the Church, but it allows, even encourages, a dialogue between scientists and theologians on an issue that concerns them both, the nature and origin of humanity. Pius is a cautious man and a scholar and wants evolution explored by experts in secular science and in sacred theology in a complete and careful manner, because for him in 1950, the jury is still out. Finally, he reserves for the Church the right to make any judgments where Sacred Scripture or dogma are concerned.


Since 1950, a sort of dialogue between science and theology has continued, occasionally, even within one person. Here I refer to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a scientist and theologian. Teilhard de Chardin, in his book Man's Place in Nature, first published in 1956, begins in a purely biological vain with a discussion of the combination of matter eventually leading to the beginnings of life and ends with his now famous Omega point (p. 121):

"And it is at this point, if I am not mistaken, in the science of evolution (so that evolution may show itself capable of functioning in a hominised(5) milieu), that the problem of God comes in-- the Prime Mover, Gatherer and Consolidator, ahead of us, of evolution."

Because of the dialogue, when I was a Catholic school student at various levels in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's conflict between evolution and theology were never an issue. Each was held to be true without taking away from the other. It was not until I began to have contact with fundamentalist Christians and tripped across the idea of scientific creationism that I realized that some religious people thought of science and faith as being in conflict. When I began my career as a Catholic high school teacher in Central California, I discovered that some of my Catholic students and their parents had leanings toward strict creationism as well. Although the Church had indeed begun a dialogue with science, no conclusion had been reached, and the best I could honestly tell my students was that the Church allowed belief in evolution or in strict creationism. This led to some very interesting debates whenever we opened the book of Genesis.
Pope John Paul II has gone beyond the boarders of mere tolerance or even dialogue, however, and has reached a virtual endorsement of biological evolution. In a statement made on October 22, 1996, he first reminds his listeners that the Church has considered evolution a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation and study, since the time of Pope Pius XII.(6) Then, in reference to evolution, he states (Truth Cannot Contradict Truth, p. 2):

"It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought for nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory."

This is as far as the statement goes in directly endorsing evolution: however, the remainder of the speech talks about the significance of evolution to other fields such as philosophy and theology in such a way that presumes its acceptance as proven fact when it comes to the development of species, including the human species with regard to the physical body. The Church continues to assert that the spiritual soul is immediately created by God. With humanity, according to Pope John Paul II, we are talking about a different sort of being, a being which is both spiritual and physical.


In speaking of the application of evolutionary ideas to humanity's spirit, the pope states (Truth..., p. 3):

"With man, then, we find ourselves in the presence of an ontological difference, an ontological leap, one could say. However, does not the posing of such ontological discontinuity run counter to that physical continuity which seems to be the main thread of research into evolution in the field of physics and chemistry? Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again aesthetic and religious experience, falls within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator's plan."

Here the pope acknowledges scientific expertise when it comes to the observation, the description, and the measurement of life and in the correlation of species to the time line. In effect, he is saying that scientific study and not biblical study will provide the answers when it comes to the origins and development of life on earth.(7) While withdrawing from the realm proper to scientific inquiry, however, he also asserts the Church's right to explore what is proper to philosophical and theological inquiry. Namely, he states that although scientific observation and experimentation may add to knowledge when it comes to the signs of what constitutes humanity, the moment of transition to the spiritual is beyond scientific observation. It is, therefore, proper to philosophical and theological study instead. How could there be a better solution than that?


Just as the pope acknowledges that science can add something to the definition of humanity and should, therefore, not be totally shut out from such study, he also points out the Church's interest in biological evolution because the Church is directly concerned with the human person as a unity (not just as a soul or as a body alone). As we have seen in an earlier chapter, humanity was created in God's image [selem] and likeness [d'mut] according to Genesis. According to Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, (Abbott, p. 223) mankind is, "...the only creature on earth which God intended for itself..." Pope John Paul II clarifies this by saying that mankind has value per se; because of his intellect and his will he is capable of relationship, of communion. This does not mean that the rest of life is somehow contrary to, or in spite of, God's will, but it means that for mankind is reserved a special relationship with God. He continues (Truth..., p. 3):

But even more, man is called to enter into a relationship of knowledge and love with God himself, a relationship which will find its complete fulfillment beyond time, in eternity. All the depth and grandeur of this vocation are revealed to us in the mystery of the risen Christ. It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body.

In other words, it is the special mission of relationship with Him and with one another, for which God gave us an immortal soul, that raises up all that we are as people, even our physical bodies.(8) This relationship is not meant to somehow take away from the rest of physical creation; all of creation is related to the Creator necessarily. Humanity, however, has become God's sons and daughters by adoption.(9)

Notes for Chapter 4

(1) Pius seems to have called nearly all the shots at the First Vatican Council. In fact, when he was asked what tradition there was in the Church which would allow him to be proclaimed infallible on matters of faith and morals by the council, he responded by saying in Italian, "Io sono la tradizione!" ("I am tradition!").

(2) Anathema: literally, the Greek term for an accursed thing. It is a statement of excommunication from the Church.

(3) A Jenny Haniver is the name given to biological specimens which are made to look like something they are not. For example, a monkey's torso artfully sown onto the tail of a fish to form a "merman" when dried, or a skate or ray cut, stretched, and dried to appear to be some fantastic sea creature are both examples of Jenny Hanivers.

(4) Social darwinism has not fallen into disrepute and disfavor only for good reasons of morality, but it simply does not work. The advancement of human society has always been in cooperation and not in competition.

(5) Hominisation is the point at which being begins to reflect on itself, the point at which being becomes human.

(6) The speech was made to the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences which was re-established by Pope Pius XI in 1936. It is made up of scholars in various fields of science whose job it is to keep the Church informed of the many scientific developments which occur. Their chosen topic for this assembly was the origin and evolution of life (see Truth Cannot Contradict Truth, p. 1).

(7) Of course this is not a rejection of the Bible, but it is a reminder that the Genesis creation stories are intended neither as science nor history in the modern sense.

(8) This relationship of unity with God and among people is called kingdom. The kingdom is "at hand" as St. John the Baptist said (see Matthew 3:2); that is, it has already begun (for Catholics, the holy who have gone before us are already in God's presence). The kingdom is also in process, however, and will not be complete until the end of time when all the elect are part of it.

(9) According to St. Paul, this adoption comes by faith in Christ (see Galatians 3:26).


PART I: FAITH

Chapter Five
Christ as the Apex of Universal Themes and as a Foundation for Eco-Spirituality

Universal Themes

As was discussed earlier, God has created humanity with a sort of universal thirst for Him. This thirst goes beyond a vague, unidentifiable longing, according to at least some theologians. These hold that in humanity there is an innate sense of certain universal symbolic themes which resonate within the human psyche in a special way, a way which speaks to the divine spark at the core of all peoples.(1) Some of these symbolic themes can be identified as follows: 1) a special birth or other setting aside of an individual as special 2) a sacred or ritual meal which constitutes a sacrifice of unification 3) a cycle of resurrection and renewal which is of benefit to the community. Although it has been stated that these ideas are universal, they are so in terms of their ability to touch the human soul; it should be noted that not every culture of every time conducted rites or told stories which specifically contained all the elements above. Yet there is an unmistakable thread that runs through human religion, storytelling, and myth which shows each of the above elements at one time or another throughout recorded history. In these elements there is a sanctification of such everyday biological processes as birth, the taking of nutrients, and death. In these themes, nature and mystery meet and are inextricably intertwined.

Those heroes whose stories contain one or more of the symbols listed can be called Christ types by Christians, for whom Jesus is the apex and fulfillment of these universal themes. Those heroes whose stories more closely parallel the life of Jesus are thought of as more "typical" of Christ. The theological theory here is that human culture has somehow experienced and recognized the universal themes, sometimes in the lives of real individuals, and created myths and rituals around them. We'll come back to some examples of these types later. For now, let's take a look at the accounts of the life of Jesus in relation to the themes.


First, Jesus was born of a virgin in very special circumstances. Even before His birth, He is set aside for service to His Heavenly Father as the Anointed One; He is "announced" by a heavenly messenger and conceived by the Holy Spirit. The Father preserved Him from the fate of the innocents murdered by Herod and sent His family in safety to Egypt. As a boy he is called to teach the elders in the Temple of Jerusalem, the very center of Jewish worship, and as a young man the very heavens opened up to acclaim Him as God's Son when He is baptized by John in the Jordan River.


When it comes to the theme of a sacred meal, the accounts are full. As a pre-figuring of the Eucharistic meal, Jesus multiplies loaves and fish to feed a vast crowd, and when the crowd has eaten its fill there remains enough to feed the Apostles as well. Here there is abundance, even extravagance, as Christ lavishes food on His followers to show them the generosity of God. But here God is generous in the food that will not last, later He will give His followers eternal food and drink. In the Gospel of John, unlike the synoptic Gospels(2), there is no mention of the Eucharist at the Last Supper; instead, Jesus explains the eternal food and drink that He will give in what is called the discourse on the Bread of Life at another point in the Gospel. He says (John 6:53-56):

"Let me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who feeds(3) on my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood real drink. The man who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him."

Now we come to Last Supper itself, but it is impossible to talk about it without bringing in notions of the Jewish Passover as well as the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. Jesus' celebration of the Last Supper was first and foremost a Passover Seder meal.


The Seder was born of an ancient culture which had both agrarian and nomadic elements. Long before any Exodus from Egypt was supposed to have happened, two cults emerged. These cults pre-figure the Hebrew Passover and come together to give it its ritual character. The first of these cults expressed itself in a very ancient feast called massot. This Canaanite celebration was an offering to their gods, the Baals, of the first fruits of the annual barley harvest (in mid to late summer). As part of the ritual, unleavened bread (matsisah) was consumed over a period of days. The other cult, also quite ancient, resulted in the practices associated with the pesah, a blood ritual in which sacrifices were made and the flocks and tents were smeared to promote fertility in the spring. At some point the Canaanite harvest celebration and the nomad's fertility blessing were combined to form one festival. With the Exodus came the institutionalization of this combined feast as well as a formal etiological explanation of its origins with the story of the tenth plague and the death of the Egyptian first born who were not protected by the "new-and-improved" blood ritual (see Brown, 3:26). This new version of the ancient rituals takes on a new meaning for Israel; it is a reminder of the pivotal point of history for them, the bringing of the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt with its promises of homeland and self-determination. It is this new rite of freedom from slavery that Jesus celebrates in the first century at a time when Israel is anything but free. Within hours He would be on trial for His life before the official of an occupying nation. But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves.

Not to put too fine a point on it, whenever the Seder ritual is celebrated in a Jewish home, a child is supposed to ask, "Why is this night different from every other night?" The question speaks volumes when it asks about this night (instead of Passover night or the night of the Exodus, etc.); the implication is that the ancient moment of freedom and this night are somehow the same night, somehow joined across the millennia in one ritual act. As it is symbolically for all the Jews, it is in fact for Jesus. As God, all things are present to Him, the ancient moment of freedom as well as His Passion, Death and Resurrection. Remember, at the conclusion of the Passover meal Jesus celebrated the first Eucharist, the first offering of His own body and blood to the Father for the remission of sin as well as the first offering of His body and blood to the Apostles to be consumed by them. He can make this sacrifice, a sacrifice which is once and for all and is perfect, the night before He will make it in time precisely because all things are present to Him. By the same token, Christ does not die again nor is it a new sacrifice every time the mass is celebrated throughout the world; it is the one sacrifice of Christ, is His single Passion, Death, and Resurrection which is made actually present to us across time. We are mysteriously caught up in the moment of salvation at every mass.

This brings us to the third theme in the accounts of the life of Jesus: Resurrection. After He was betrayed, suffered, and died, Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. His sacrifice and resurrection constitute a unity, a single salvific event, as has already been hinted at. This salvific event, called the Paschal Mystery, has as its object and purpose the sanctification of all of humanity. Through Christ we are saved and we shall share eternal happiness with Him.

Now it is time to shift gears for a moment and examine first some expressions of the universal themes in general and then to explore some of the specific Christ types which have been identified in ancient mythology and in the Hebrew Scriptures. In a general way, any human story which involves a special birth or election, a sacred or sacrificial meal, or a cycle of new life falls within the realm of our universal themes. This truly makes the themes and the symbols they contain widespread in human experience, but let us attempt to narrow the field by looking at some examples.


Cultures seem to create hero stories quite naturally. Often the hero is the founder of the culture or of the community that is telling the story; sometimes this hero is an actual person, sometimes a mythological one. Many of these heroes have a special, not to say strange, birth and upbringing. Take, for example, the story of the founders of ancient Rome, Romulus and Remus; as infants, so the story goes, they were raised by a she-wolf as wild children. Because of this, the brothers grew up to be fierce warriors, clearly a statement meant to illustrate the Roman character in general.(4) Another such "special birth" narrative involves Lao Tzu the founder of Taoism. Here Lao Tzu is born to his mother as an already old man which shows the wisdom he will bring into the world. In terms of the sacred or sacrificial meal, a couple of examples come to mind although they may seem a bit strange at first.


Many years ago, I read an article in a religious or anthropological magazine about a group of northwestern Native Americans who practiced a bear cult. The bear was their clan totem, and they thought of themselves as having a special relationship of identification with him. In other words, they identified with the strength and courage of the bear and attempted to become more like him, but the tribe's relationship with the bear did not end in admiration and imitation alone. Periodically, a bear cub would be captured by the tribesmen and raised by them. The cub would live as a member of the tribe, eating, drinking, and sleeping with the family of his captors. Finally, on the appointed day, the bear would be ritually slaughtered and consumed by the members of the tribe in a communion ceremony which consisted of a taking in of the admirable qualities of the bear as well as a thanksgiving for his generosity.(5) One cannot help but see the parallels with Jesus' incarnation and later sacrifice on our behalf.


A second example is perhaps the older because no "stand in" has been used. That is, no sacred animal takes the place of the victim who is to be sacrificed and consumed. Here, the human victim is sometimes a member of the community and sometimes a worthy adversary who has been captured or, in some cases, killed in war. In some systems, even the consumption of dead family members is encouraged. In ritual cannibalism, just as in the bear cult above, contagious magic is the goal. Here what is desired is the "infection" of those who partake in the ritual feast with the desirable characteristics of the dead. Often, only those organs which are thought to house the desired traits are used in the rituals.

In exploring the concept of resurrection cycle let us turn to the great types of Christ which are found in mythology and the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Myth of Osiris: Fertile Muds and Underworld God

Isis (Auset)(6) and her twin brother Osiris (Ausar) were married (apparently a practice encouraged among Egyptian royals) and served as the mythic queen and king of Egypt. Unfortunately they had a jealous younger brother named Seth (Set) who wanted to be pharaoh himself. The young brother had a coffin carved to the king's exact measurements then declared that he would give it as a gift to whoever fit it exactly. Of course, it fit the king when he tried it, and the evil brother slammed the lid shut and threw his royal brother into the Nile. As the now dead king's body floated toward the sea it fertilized the flooded valley and gave it new life just as the great river continues to do each year to this day. Finally, the coffin landed on the shore of a distant land where a great perfumed tree grew around it. In the meanwhile, since the queen-goddess represented the very throne of Egypt, she was forced to fight off the advances of her younger brother who wanted to marry her so he could become pharaoh. But she was loyal to the dead king and went on a long quest to find his body. By the time she came to the far land, the tree had been carved into the pillar of a great palace. After some time she told the local king her story and begged him to give her the pillar, and he agreed. On her way home, she slept with the dead king's body and bore him a son, the hawk-headed Horus (Hor). Eventually the younger brother caught up with the "happy," but very strange, family and chopped up the body of the old king. The faithful queen was able to find all of the pieces except one and reassembled the king who would, by the way, never be a father again. Now, the king was alive again but became the king of the dead because his life-giving force was gone.


The theme of life from death in this story makes it clear that it is an ancient


resurrection myth with a uniquely Egyptian twist. Osiris is king of the dead because his body is no longer whole, he can no longer give life; for the Egyptians the preservation of the body after death becomes very important because it ensures continued existence in the next life which is an idealized version of this one and which the dead Egyptian is free to enjoy once he is judged worthy, and has spoken the correct spells and incantations . With the body preserved through mummification, the dead Egyptian becomes identified with Osiris himself as god of the underworld

The Myth of Dionysus: Seasonal Cycle and a Sharing of Self

With the birth of Greco-Roman mythology the human-faced god becomes the rule rather than the exception that he was in ancient Egypt. There are many Greek myths; here again we find the resurrection theme. The myth of Dionysus is often paired with that of the corn goddess, Demeter, so that there is a male and female aspect to the two "cycle" myths of ancient Greece. The male, Dionysus, can be seen as a Christ type and is the vine god of ancient Greece. Dionysus' major contribution to Greek culture seems to be eat, drink, and be merry as well as the invention of theater which was to be used as worship. As the god of the vine, he represented a seasonal cycle of life to death and back again. In the spring the vine brings forth tender shoots which grow all summer and produce the grapes to make the wine, but in the fall the vine withers and dies, only to repeat the cycle the next spring. Many have seen a foreshadowing of Christ in Dionysus because he gives his worshippers his very body, the grapes, and blood, the wine, to consume and because of the resurrection symbolism associated with him. In addition, one way in which Dionysus was worshipped adds to the connection with Christ. It is said that the women who worshipped him would roam about the countryside in an ecstatic frenzy until an animal or even a small child was captured, torn apart, and eaten in a communion with Dionysus who shared himself and his power with those who took part in such "sacramental" meals (see Cary, pp. 288-289).

The Hebrew Patriarch Isaac: Special Birth and Sacrifice

When seen in the proper light, there are some truly striking parallels between the story of Isaac and the life of Jesus.


God made a covenant or contract with Abraham, the founder of the Hebrews, according to which Abraham would be the father of a great nation, but by this time Abraham had begun to despair of this ever coming to pass. His wife was growing old, and so he took the slave of his wife and had relations with her. She became pregnant and bore him a son named Ishmael. Shortly thereafter, his wife became pregnant as well, after it was predicted by a troop of messengers from God. Sarah, Abraham's wife, bore him a son named Isaac. As Isaac grew he became the apple of his father's eye, and all of Abraham's hopes for the future rested on him. One day God called Abraham aside and instructed him to make a holocaust, a burnt sacrifice, of his favorite son. Abraham was heartbroken but did not dream of disobeying God. He instructed his son to carry a load of sticks and wood up the mountainside toward the place of sacrifice. As the boy struggled with the load, Abraham walked behind steeling himself for the moment of truth. When the two reached the appointed spot, God saw that Abraham truly intended to go through with the sacrifice and sent an angel to stop him. Abraham was instructed to substitute a ram which he would find on the mountain. Thus, God showed Abraham that he did not crave the spilling of human blood in sacrifice but preferred faithful obedience instead.


Isaac, like Jesus, has a special birth. While Jesus is born of a virgin, Isaac is born of an old and barren woman, and angelic messengers announce both pregnancies. Both Isaac and Jes