TAKING REASON BACK FROM DITCHKINS

(for some of us, "Ditchkins" is an unfriendly portmanteau name for the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, virulent enemies of religions they did not, and do not, understand or try to.)

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When the then Pope Benedict XVI gave this lecture at Regensburg (Ratisbon) University in September 2006, a brief clip from it was (deliberately) misunderstood and used as propaganda by Al Qaeda sympathisers. In fact, it is a magistral analysis of the role of reason in faith, and as such still of the greatest importance in an age when cultures can no longer ignore each other. It's long for a blog post, but well worth reading and pondering -- either onscreen or copied, pasted and printed out. The translation from the German is mine.

Faith, Reason[1], and the University

It is a  moving moment for me to stand at the University’s lectern once more and once more to be permitted to give a lecture. In doing so, my thoughts go back to the years when, after a wonderful period in the Freising Academy, I began my activity as an academic in the University of Bonn. It was still, in 1959, a professors’ university. For the individual chairs there were neither assistants nor secretaries; on the other hand, there were very direct relations with the students and especially among the professors mutually. We met in the common rooms before and after lectures. The contacts with the historians, the philosophers, the philologists, and of course also between the two theological faculties were very lively. Each term there was a so-called Dies academicus [a ‘university day’] at which professors of all the faculties introduced themselves to the students of the whole university. There, in that way, a real experience of the ‘universitas’ was made possible. That within all the specializations which often rendered us speechless to one another, we form a whole; that we work inside that whole of united reason  with all its dimensions, and that we thus share in a collective responsibility for the right use of reason  -- that came alive there.

The University was also absolutely proud of its two Faculties of Theology. It was evident that they also, in so far as they inquire into the reason of faith, perform a work which necessarily belongs to the whole of the universitas scientiarum; even if not everyone could share the faith of which the relation to reason as a whole was the theologians’ concern. Nor was this inner coherence in the cosmos of reason disturbed when one colleague was heard to say how odd it was that in our university there were two faculties which concerned themselves with something that did not exist, i.e. God. That even faced  with radical scepticism it remains necessary and reasonable to inquire about God with reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith, was uncontested in the University as a whole.

All this came to mind again when I recently read the volume, edited by Professor Thomas Khoury from Münster, of the discussion the learned Byzantine Emperor Manuel II. Paleologos held in 1391, in winter quarters in Ankara, with an educated Persian about Christianity and Islam and their respective truth.  The Emperor himself noted down the discussion during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; so it is understandable that his own remarks are represented in much greater detail than the replies of the Persian scholar. The dialogue takes in the entire structure of faith as contained in the Bible and the Koran, and focuses especially on the image of God and man, but also again and again, necessarily, on the relation between the ‘three Laws’: Old Testament – New Testament – Koran. Now in this lecture I should like to discuss just one point – and in the structure of that dialogue a marginal one --, which fascinated me in the context of the theme of faith and reason, and which functions as the point of departure for my reflections on that theme.

In the seventh round of discussion, edited by Professor Khoury, the Emperor takes up the subject of the jihad (holy war). The Emperor certainly knew that in Sura 2.256 it is written, ‘No compulsion in matters of faith’: this is one of the early Suras from the time when Mohammed himself was still powerless and threatened. But the Emperor of course also knew the determinations[2] contained in the Koran – of later origin – about holy war. Without going into details like the different treatment of ‘those who possess the scriptures’ and ‘infidels’, he turns to his interlocutor simply with the central question of the relation between religion and violence, in an astonishingly brusque way. He says, ‘So show me what Mohammed has brought that was new, and all you will find is what is bad and inhuman: like his decree that the faith he preached must be propagated by the sword.’  The Emperor then goes on to explain in detail why propagation of faith by violence is absurd. It is in contradiction to the nature of God and to the nature of the soul. ‘God takes no pleasure in blood, and not to act reasonably is against the nature of God. Faith is the fruit of the soul, not of the body. So he who wants to lead someone to faith, needs skill in good speaking and clear thinking, but not violence and threats…to convince a reasonable soul it is not one’s arm one needs, not blunt instruments, nor any other of the means by which one can threaten someone with death.’

The decisive sentence in this argument against conversion by force is this: ‘Not to act reasonably is against the nature of God.’ The editor, Thomas Khoury, adds this note: ‘For the Emperor, as a Byzantine educated in Greek philosophy, this sentence is evident. For Muslim doctrine, on the other hand, God is absolutely transcendent. His Will is tied to none of our categories, even that of reasonableness.’ In this context, Khoury cites a text by the well-known French Islam scholar R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn goes so far as to declare that God is not even bound by His own word, and that nothing forces Him to reveal the truth to us. If He wanted it so, Man could be forced to commit idolatry.

Here there appears a division in the understanding of God and thus in the concrete realization of religion, which today presents a direct challenge to us. Is it only Greek to believe that acting against reason is against the nature of God, or is this valid always and in itself?  I think that this is where the profound harmony becomes visible between what is ‘Greek’ in the best sense of the word on the one hand and a Biblically-based faith in God on the other. Inflecting the first verse of Genesis, John opened the prologue to his Gospel with the words, ‘In the beginning was the Logos’. ‘Logos’ is both Reason and Word – a reason that is creative and can communicate itself, but precisely as reason. In this, John has given us the definitive word of the Biblical understanding of God, in which all the often laborious and tortuous ways of Biblical faith find their goal and their synthesis. In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos is God, the evangelist tells us. The concordance of the Biblical message and Greek thought was not an accident. The vision of St Paul, to whom the roads in Asia Minor were closed and who at night in a vision saw a Macedonian and heard him cry ‘Come over and help us’ (Acts 16: 6-10) – this vision may be interpreted as a condensation of the inherently necessary coming-together between Biblical faith and Greek questioning.

Moreover, this coming-together had been going on for a long time. The mysterious divine Name of the burning bush, which distinguished this God from the gods with many names and declares of him simply the Being, is already a challenge to myth, inherently analogical to the Socratic attempt to overcome and go beyond myth. The process that began in the burning bush comes to maturity, within the Old Testament, during the Exile, where the God of Israel, now without land or cult, proclaims Himself as the God of heaven and earth, and introduces Himself with a simple formula that continues the word of the burning bush: ‘It is I’. Hand in hand with this new recognition of God goes a kind of enlightenment, which expresses itself drastically in mockery about the gods, who are only the work of men’s hands (cf. Psalm 115). Thus in the Hellenistic era the Biblical faith inwardly reaches out (in spite of all its virulence toward the Hellenistic rulers who wanted to force conformity to the Greek way of life and the worship of its gods) to the best of Greek thought, to meet in a mutual contact that is fulfilled especially in the late Wisdom literature. Today we know, that the Alexandrian Greek translation of the Old Testament, the ‘Septuagint’, is more than a mere (and perhaps not very estimable) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and in its own right an important step in the history of revelation, in which this encounter [between Biblical faith and Greek thought] is realized in a manner that became decisively significant for the origin of Christianity and its spread. At its most profound, this concerns the encounter between faith and reason, between true enlightenment and religion. It was truly out of the inner nature of the Christian faith, and at the same time out of the nature of the Hellenism which had fused itself with that faith, that Manuel II could say, ‘Not to act “with the Logos” is against the nature of God.’

In all honesty it should here be noted that in the Late Middle Ages tendencies developed in theology which wrench open this synthesis of the Greek and the Christian. Over against the so-called Augustinian and Thomist intellectualism, with Duns Scotus there appears a position of voluntarism, which eventually led to saying that all we knew of God was his ‘voluntas ordinata’ [His ordered Will]. Beyond that lay God’s freedom, in virtue of which He might have created and done the contrary of everything He had done. Here we see a sketch of positions definitely approaching those of Ibn Hazn, and which could lead to the image of a God of Arbitrariness, Who is not bound even to truth and good. God’s transcendence and otherness are pushed so far that our reason, our sense of the true and the good, are no longer a true reflection of God, Whose abyssal possibilities behind His actual decisions for ever remain inaccessible to and hidden from us. Contrary to this, the faith of the Church has always maintained that there exists between God and us, between His eternal creating Spirit and our created Reason, a real analogy: even if in it the dissimilarities are infinitely greater than the similarities, the analogy and its language are not therefore cancelled (cf Lat IV). God does not become more divine by our interpreting Him in a pure and impenetrable voluntarism: the true God is the God, Who has revealed Himself as Logos and as Logos has acted, and acts, for us out of love. True, love ‘passes’ understanding and as such perceives more than simple thinking (cf Ephes. 3:19), but it remains the love of the Divine Logos, which is why Christian Divine Service is…Divine Service, which is in harmony with the Eternal Word and with our Reason (cf. Rom. 12:1).

This inward encounter which has happened between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical questioning is a decisive event, not only in terms of the history of religion but in terms of the history of the world; and today also it lays a duty upon us. When one sees this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, in spite of its origin and important developments in the East, has eventually taken its historically decisive stamp in Europe. We can also say, conversely: this encounter, to which is added also the heritage of Rome, has created Europe and remains the foundation of that which one can rightly call Europe.

The thesis that the critically-purified Greek heritage is an essential part of the Christian faith is opposed by the demand for de-Hellenization of Christianity which since the Early Modern period has increasingly dominated theological conflicts. On closer observation one can distinguish three waves of the de-Hellenization program which, while they are related, nevertheless differ clearly from one another in their foundations and goals.

De-Hellenization first appears in conjunction with the 16^th-century Reformation’s chief concerns. Vis-à-vis the scholastic theological tradition, the Reformers saw themselves as confronting a systematization of faith that was completely determined by philosophy: as it were a hijacking[3] of faith by an alien [system of] thought. As a consequence, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word, but embedded in a philosophical system. Contrary to this, the [Reformers’] ‘sola scriptura’ [‘by Scripture alone’] seeks the pure original form of the faith, as it exists from the beginning in the Biblical Word. Metaphysics appears as an alien parameter, from which faith needs to be liberated so that it can once more be entirely itself.  In a radical move which the Reformers could not foresee, Kant realized this agenda in his statement that he had had to put thought aside to make room for faith. In so doing, he anchored faith exclusively in practical Reason and denied it access to Reality as a whole.

The liberal theology of the 19^th and 29^th centuries brought with it a second wave in the de-Hellenization program, of which Adolf von Harnack is the outstanding representative. In the days when I was a student, and even in the early days of my academic activity, this program was strongly at work even in Catholic theology. Pascal’s distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was its point of departure. In my 1959 Bonn inaugural lecture I attempted to engage with this. I do not want to go into all this again here. But I should like at least very briefly to attempt to characterize what is distinctly new in this second wave of de-Hellenization compared to the first. In Harnack’s work, the central concept is the return to Jesus the simple human and to his simple message, which precedes all theologizations and all Hellenizations: this simple message, supposedly, represents the true pinnacle of mankind’s religious development. Jesus (he claims) has turned his back on worship in favour of morality. He is finally represented as the father of a philanthropic moral message. In reality this attempts to re-harmonize Christianity with modern Reason, precisely by liberating it from apparently philosophical and theological elements like belief in Christ’s divinity and in the Trinity. So far, the historical-critical interpretation of the New Testament brings theology anew back into the cosmos of the University: theology, for Harnack, is essentially historical and as such strictly scientific.[4] What it determines by the critical method about Jesus, is so to speak an expression of practical Reason, and as such justifiable also within the whole that is the University. In the background is the modern self-contraction of Reason, as it had been classically represented in Kant’s Critiques but was now being further radicalized by the thinking of natural science. This modern concept of Reason is based on a synthesis, confirmed by the success of technology, between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, to put it succinctly.  On the one hand is advanced the mathematical structure of matter, its inner rationality, so to speak, which makes it possible to understand and to use it in its outward form: this basic premise is what one might call the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature.  On the other hand the concern is for nature’s functionality-potential for our purposes, in which only the possibility of verification or falsification in an experimental context furnishes the decisive certainty. The emphasis between these two poles can lie on one side or on the other. A thinker as strictly positivist as J. Monod has referred to himself as a convinced Platonist or Cartesian.

This brings with it two fundamental orientations which are decisive for our question. Only that form of certainty that proceeds from the conjunction of mathematics and empiricism  is permitted to be called scientific. That which claims to be Wissenschaft [science and/or scholarship] must adopt this criterion. And so the human-directed disciplines also – history, psychology, sociology, and philosophy – attempt to approach this canon of scientificity. For our present reflections it is important, moreover, that the method as such excludes the question of God and presents it as an unscientific or pre-scientific question. This, though, places us before a contraction of the range of Wissenschaft and Reason, which must be questioned.

We will return to this. For now, we must remark that in any attempt, determined by this outlook, to derive theology ‘scientifically’, there will be left of Christianity only a miserable remnant. But we need to say more: man himself is diminished by it. For the genuinely human questions, those of the Whence and the Whither of us, the questions of religion and ethics can then find no place in the space of the collective, scientifically circumscribed “Reason”, and must be relegated to the subjective. The subject decides, with his own experience, what seems to him religiously tolerable, and the subjective ‘conscience’ is finally made the only ethical authority. But in this way ethics and religion lose their power of creating community and fall into arbitrariness. This condition is dangerous to humanity, as we see by the pathologies of religion and reason that threaten us, and which necessarily erupt where Reason is so narrowed that questions of religion and ethics are no longer its concern. The ethical remnants of the rules of evolution or of psychology and sociology are simply not adequate.

Before arriving at some conclusions from all this, I need briefly to point to the third wave of de-Hellenization, which is currently active. Vis-à-vis the encounter with the multiplicity of cultures it is fashionable to say that the synthesis with Hellenism that occurred in the ancient Church was a first embedding of Christianity in a culture[5], to which one may not bind the other cultures. They should have the right to reach back beyond this embedding to the simple message of the New Testament, then in their turn to embed it in their own cultural spaces. This proposition is not purely and simply false, but nevertheless crude and inexact. For the New Testament is written in Greek and carries in within it that contact with the Greek spirit which had matured in the preliminary development of the Old Testament. Of course, there are layers in the development of the early church which do not have to enter into all cultures. But the fundamental decisions that concern precisely the coherence of faith with the seeking of human reason, these belong to this faith itself and represent its proper development.

And so I come to my conclusion. The self-criticism of modern reason I have rather crudely sketched in no way comprises the idea that we should now go back beyond the Enlightenment and reject the insights of modernity. The greatness of the modern spiritual development I entirely acknowledge: we are all thankful for the great possibilities it has unlocked for man, and for the advances in humanity that have been given us. For the rest, the scientific  ethos is a will to obedience vis-à-vis truth, and as such the expression of a fundamental attitude that belongs to the basic determinations of Christianity. What is meant is not a return, not a negative criticism, but what is at stake is a widening of our understanding and our use of Reason. For in all the joy at the new possibilities of man we also see threats, which arise from these possibilities , and we must ask ourselves, how we can master them. We can only do so, when reason and faith meet in new ways; when we conquer the self-authorized contraction of reason to that which can be experimentally falsified, and when we once again open to reason its full scope. In this sense, theology belongs to the University and to its far-reaching dialogue of Wissenschaften. not only as a historical and humanities discipline, but as actual theology, as the inquiry into the Reason of Faith.

Only thus will we be prepared for the genuine dialogue of cultures and religions that we so urgently need. In the Western world the opinion often dominates that only positivist Reason and the forms of philosophy belonging to it are universal. But the world’s deeply religious cultures see precisely this exclusion of the divine from universality of  Reason as a rejection of their inmost convictions. A Reason that is deaf to the divine and relegates religion to the territory of subcultures is unprepared for the dialogue of cultures. Moreover, as I have tried to show, modern scientific Reason with its inherent Platonic element implies a question which transcends it and its methodical possibilities. It [this Reason] must simply accept the rational structure of matter, like the correspondence between our mind and the rational structures that reign in nature, as givens upon which its methodology is based. But the question why this should be so, nevertheless exists, and science must pass it on to other levels and manners of thought – to philosophy and theology. For philosophy, and in a different way for theology, attending to the great experiences and insights of humanity’s religious traditions, but especially to the Christian faith, is a source of knowledge and insight, the refusal of which would entail an impermissible narrowing of our listening and of our response. I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In the earlier dialogues many false philosophical opinions had been touched on; and now Socrates says, ‘It would be entirely understandable if someone was so infuriated by so much falsehood that for the rest of his life he would hate and spurn all talk about Being.’  But in this way he would neglect the truth of that which is and incur great harm. The West has for a long time now been threatened by this aversion from the fundamental questions of its Reason, and can only incur great harm from this. The courage to explore the scope of reason, not a denial of its greatness: that is the program with which a theology committed to Biblical faith enters into today’s debate. ‘Not to act according to reason (with the Logos) is against the nature of God’, Manuel II, out of his Christian concept of divinity, said to his Persian interlocutor. Into this great Logos, into this breadth of Reason, we invite our interlocutor in the dialogue of cultures.  To find it, again and again, is the great task of the University.

  

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[1] The German ‘Vernunft’ is classically translated as ‘reason’ but is used in common speech to mean ‘intelligence’. I will translate it with both, according to the context; but it’s important to remember that in either case, the other is also present.

[2] ‘Bestimmung’ is a complex word, which can mean anything from ‘diagnosis’ to ‘decree’. I have chosen ‘determinations’ as a workable mean.

[3] Benedict’s German term is ‘Fremdbestimmung’, which dictionaries translate as ‘heteronomy’: it means having one’s destiny determined by outside influences. While ‘hijacking’ is unacceptably colloquial, it seems an economical and understandable rendering.

[4] From here on, English-speaking readers are bedevilled by the notorious German word Wissenschaft and its adjective wissenschaftlich. ‘Wissenschaft’ directly translates Latin ‘scientia’; but in English ‘science’ has come to mean natural science, in a development that forms much of the topic of Benedict’s lecture. On the humanities side of the divide, we speak of ‘scholarship’, but this is not an ideal translation. I here wield the various renderings according to my sense of the meaning, but will occasionally retain the German word. Caveat lector.  

[5] Benedict uses ‘Inkulturation’, lit. ‘inculturation’, which I have tried to unpack.

PAX VOBISCUM

We have all heard about the "peace of God, which passeth all understanding", and we are used to hearing "peace be with thee/And with thy spirit" in the Eucharist. But what is this peace the Bible talks about? There is an exhaustive lexical and contextual analysis here: http://biblehub.com/greek/1515.htm, which I won't attempt to reproduce. But it's a huge word, with a range of meaning as wide, but also as coherent, as a rainbow.

First, there is, well, peace. Not war. Those of us old enough to have been born before or during World War II have a visceral feeling about, and for, peace in that sense. In his novel The Empty Room (1942), Charles Morgan shows some people in England talking about the distant past and a hoped-for future. One evening, says one of them, some friends will sit together, talking in a garden, and one of them will say, with wonder and contentment, "A June night, and no war." Perhaps there are people in Syria today who feel the same way. It is eirènè, the fundamental meaning of that lovely Greek word, and the reason that the Dutch princess born during WW II was named Irene. Peace as a public condition, a condition of not-war, is never to be taken for granted. It is huge, a privilege, and should be savoured daily by those fortunate enough to live in it.

Then, there is peace as a condition between people. Here, the meaning is closer to harmony: an absence of strife, of quarrel, of awkwardness, of hostility. It is an emotion elevated to a condition, which means that it is felt by the heart rather than, or prior to, being understood by the mind. It is the peace sometimes seen in very old long-married couples whose love has over the decades been distilled to a fine and almost silent essence. It is the peace between true friends engaged together in some activity long known, long practiced and long loved. And notice that both these examples remind us that peace between individuals often has time as a component element.

There is the peace of science, or of scholarship. This is a peace experienced individually. It is the peace found by someone working tranquilly at some project within one's competence and which, again, requires time to mature and complete. It is a peace I have experienced while working in great research libraries: Duke Humphrey's 15th-century library in Oxford's Bodleian, the 17th-century Manuscript Room of Paris's Bibliothèque nationale. It is a peace composed in part of a going out of one's self, of losing oneself in a subject, in the life of another age, in the patient search for a clue. A similar peace is found, we are told, by writers, novelists for the most part, when they are engaged upon a lengthy task in propitious surroundings. The great Dutch poet Adriaan Roland Holst experienced it during the six long winters, in the1930s, when, in his little thatched cottage behind the North Sea dunes, he worked concentratedly on his masterpiece, the long, dense poem known as A Winter By The Sea.

Such peace  touches, and sometimes becomes, a peace of the spirit. This peace is known by some philosophers, by some contemplatives, by those who in one way or another have reached a true wisdom. In some societies such men and women are revered as sages; in others, they live unknown in corners of the world, sometimes with a small group of pupils, sometimes alone, quietly engaged in some trade and encountered by chance. I have known a watchmaker like that; a former paratrooper; a retired journalist who studied mysticism; and a professor of Indian philosophy. In some, this peace of wisdom can be and is expressed in words; in others, it communicates itself intangibly, mysteriously but unmistakeably.

All peace that is not cowardice is good. But it does not really, not truly, not completely pass oour understanding. It is not the peace of God. What, then, is?

Reading the Bible, Old Testament and New, one sees little peace. Humanity seems always at war with itself; Israel with its neighbours; Israel with its God; heroes with other heroes or with bloodthirsty monsters; brothers with brothers, fathers with sons; and the Serpent with everyone. Where, then, is the Peace of that God the Scriptures describe, explain, and adore? We find it, sometimes, in the Psalms. The Psalmist, nominally King David, finds peace in the Law,  which shows him a way through a trackless desert. He finds peace in adoring God, in being, as he says, an olive tree in the house of the Lord. And above all, remember that the term we are seeking occurs in a blessing; may the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7). One translation has guard for keep, which helps us understand. The peace of God, then, is something that keeps us, that guards us, that protects us from harm. It does so in Christ Jesus: which is a whole story unto itself. We are in Christ when we are a part of him; for since the Resurrection he is present wherever those who love God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are present -- as a congregation especially, in the Eucharist especially, but in prayer, in meditation, in contemplation also. And since he is Love, in the Spirit he not only neighbours us with his presence, but he surrounds us, he enfolds us; and when this happens, each time it happens (because in this mortal life it is never once and for all, not yet), we have come home. That is the peace of God: our homecoming to the relation he always intended, to the hearth of the Father's house.

A LION AMONG SCHOLARS

I was going to compose a post on St Jerome, whose feast it is today; then I received my weekly e-mail from St Matthias' Church in Somerset, New Jersey, with an excellent piece on Jerome. So I will reproduce that rather than add any clumsy compilation of my own, with thanks to St Matthias. I will also, however, replace their Bellini painting by my favourite Rembrandt sketch of the holy man, where he is shown reading with spectacles and wearing a gardener's hat, while his attendant lion looks out over the landscape, doubtless to spy out critics of the Vulgate. He may have been waspish by nature, but he is the patron saint of scholars and deserves our affection and respect.

Most of the saints are remembered for some outstanding virtue or devotion which they practiced, but Jerome is frequently remembered for his bad temper! It is true that he had a very bad temper and could use a vitriolic pen, but his love for God and his Son Jesus Christ was extraordinarily intense; anyone who taught error was an enemy of God and truth, and St. Jerome went after him or her with his mighty and sometimes sarcastic pen. 

He was above all a Scripture scholar, translating most of the Old Testament from the Hebrew. He also wrote commentaries which are a great source of scriptural inspiration for us today. He was an avid student, a thorough scholar, a prodigious letter-writer and a consultant to monk, bishop and pope. St. Augustine (August 28) said of him, "What Jerome is ignorant of, no mortal has ever known." 

St. Jerome is particularly important for having made a translation of the Bible which came to be called the Vulgate. It is not the most critical edition of the Bible, but its acceptance by the Church was fortunate. As a modern scholar says, "No man before Jerome or among his contemporaries and very few men for many centuries afterwards were so well qualified to do the work." The Council of Trent called for a new and corrected edition of the Vulgate, and declared it the authentic text to be used in the Church. 

In order to be able to do such work, Jerome prepared himself well. He was a master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Chaldaic. He began his studies at his birthplace, Stridon in Dalmatia (in the former Yugoslavia). After his preliminary education he went to Rome, the center of learning at that time, and thence to Trier, Germany, where the scholar was very much in evidence. He spent several years in each place, always trying to find the very best teachers. He once served as private secretary of Pope Damasus (December 11). 

After these preparatory studies he traveled extensively in Palestine, marking each spot of Christ's life with an outpouring of devotion. Mystic that he was, he spent five years in the desert of Chalcis so that he might give himself up to prayer, penance and study. Finally he settled in Bethlehem, where he lived in the cave believed to have been the birthplace of Christ. On September 30 in the year 420, Jerome died in Bethlehem. The remains of his body now lie buried in the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. 

A TIME OF GIFTS

     I have long liked to think of Epiphany as the feast of faith for scholars. We have no idea who the three chaps from the East were, or even where they came from. They are variously known as “wise men”, “three kings”, and in the French version “mages” or “les rois mages”. Some people have thought of them as coming from Persia. In the 7^th century they were given names: Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar. In the 16^th century they were given ethnic origins: Balthazar was European, Melchior was African, and Caspar was from the Far East. Their gifts betoken grandeur and sanctity: myrrh, I had read, prefigured Jesus’ death and entombment, but it was also an ingredient in the chrism of sanctity. And myrrh, apparently, grows naturally in Yemen.

     Two things are certain: they were not Jewish – they were Gentiles – and they appear to have been scholars, royal or no, magi or no. The Church has decided that Epiphany shall be the feast of the Gentiles, and quite rightly reads Paul on the subject. But I like to think of it as the feast of scholars. There have been times and places when to be a scholar seemed a natural opposite of having faith in God. Ditchkins notwithstanding, this is less true now. (For those not in the know: “Ditchkins” is a portmanteau name for the late Christopher Hitchens and the all-too-current Richard Dawkins, and all who sail in them.)

     It is currently fashionable to adore Pope Francis (I concur, on the whole) and retroactively to deplore Pope Benedict XVI. But scholars, of all people, should not fall into that trap, whether we are Roman Catholic or not. Benedict was one of the supreme scholars of our time on the topic of faith’s relation to reason, which is the topic of topics for scholars and their relation to God.

     Meanwhile, let us bring our own presents to the Child – not, probably, as grand as gold, incense and myrrh, but the fruits also of a journey across a desert.

HELP!

“Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:24) Boy, does that express what many of us feel. There is that awful feeling, when in unguarded moments you look at the whole  faith thing with your scholarly mind, that the entire structure is a fantasy, that the available evidence suggests that in all probability we wink out like a blown candle at the moment of death, that the universe exists in space and time but has no meaning whatsoever, that the Old Testament proposes to us a deity we would not want to know much less worship, that the New Testament pays tribute to an astonishingly admirable man around whom have been built a number of untenable theories, and that the whole thing is a tottering card-house of wishful thinking.

Right. Then what? You can argue against this: I have heard arguments for the Defence that are not entirely fanciful, though none of them would hold up in a scholarly, much less a scientific, world. (On the other hand, the so-called “scientific” arguments of the Ditchkins school are mere scientism and do not hold up in a truly scientific world either.)

Something I read recently helped me through this, at least for the time being. Whether you feel God’s presence, or His answer to your prayer, is unimportant. The point is that He is answering it whether you feel it or not. He is present whether you feel Him or not. He loves you, and wants to come and live with you, whether you feel it or not. At the moments when you feel it’s all a load of codswallop, He hears you thinking and feels a rueful sympathy, saying to Himself, “poor So-and-So: I do understand how (s)he feels – but (s)he will get over it in time, if I hang in there.”

A bit of us knows this: so the best we can do is be totally honest when talking to Him, and saying, like the father of the epileptic, “Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief.” And I rather suspect He will.