New Search for Ultimate Reality

This Café Table is titled a New Search for Ultimate Reality.

Marie Schickel Rottschaefer is the facilitator.

Its goal is to give a brief overview of developments that have relevance for us in the early 21st century, particularly in seeking solutions for pressing people and planet problems.

NCRcafe New Search Discussion Number Three, January 3, 2007

Greetings confreres. It’s good to be back at the table with you. I hope that you had very happy winter holidays. I want to remind those who are here at the table for the first time and want to understand the continuity of the discussion you can go to the last post (Dec 3, 2006) and then click “Spirituality and Culture” at the top to get the previous listings. They date back to Oct. 27, 2006. Again, if you ask a question or make a comment and I fail to respond it in no way reflects a disregard for your question or comment. Logistically I may not be able to respond. I need to remind you again that “New Search’s” purpose is primarily information giving or education for action. It is not a platform for debate and rebuttal. You may agree or disagree, and discuss among yourselves. But my purpose is educational as reflected in the goal (see above).

In Discussion # 2 November 17, 2006, the last paragraph was titled Change Has Consequences. I want to put the follow-up on hold because I’d like to discuss Professor Sheehan’s article more. I realize that it may be unrealistic for most of you to acquire the suggested readings that I recommend. Therefore, if there is something that I want particularly to emphasize, I may try to retell it at least in part. Such is the case with Thomas Sheehan’s groundbreaking article “Revolution in the Church”(The New York Review of Books June 14, 1984) which is a book review of Eternal Life? Life after Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem by Hans Kung translated by Edward Quinn. Doubleday 272pp. Another reason I want to go over it is that it emphasizes points that are basic to the purpose of New Search.

A quick summary review of Discussions # 1 and # 2 with further explanation: the Axial Age is one indicator that perhaps Christianity is a link in the chain of evolution of humanity’s search for Ultimate Reality.

We are in a New Search for Ultimate Reality because we have come into a new age i.e. the twenty-first century. This new age has two distinctive characteristics never before experienced in human history: the probable end of the Axial Age and multiple interconnected global crises.

Christianity as a part of the axial age religions appears to have run its course. There are many signs of both intellectual and moral problems that reflect not only the disintegration of Catholicism but also of Christianity as a whole. The original pillars of scripture and tradition have in large measure collapsed.

Discussion # 2: We are attempting to look at Christianity from the outside rather than the usual view from the inside. In other words, we look at Christianity not from the perspective of the believer, of the person who accepts the doctrines unquestioningly, but from the perspective of people who examine this religion in the light of its evolutionary history, its primeval development created by the biblical basis and early tradition, and its plausibility both philosophically and scientifically.

Now to Discussion # 3: What does it mean to say the original pillars of scripture and tradition have collapsed? One example of historical change regarding scriptural interpretation is seen in Thomas Sheehan’s article mentioned above. This article is well worth focusing on but there is much more recent (and past) information that deals with enormous change regarding some of our presuppositions of Christianity.

Let’s look at this article. In1943, Pope Pius XII produced his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. This document gave scripture scholars permission to use contemporary scientific methods in their work. Thus began what Sheehan calls the dismantling of traditional Roman Catholic theology. As I understand Sheehan, the courage and wisdom of this supreme head of the Catholic Church set in motion the most vigorous renewal since the high Middle Ages (the period of European history in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries). Pope Pius’ ability to question his position catalyzed Catholic theologians’ and exegetes’ (biblical interpreters) production of the most advanced scriptural scholarship -- until recently the work mainly of Protestants -- and used it for a radical rethinking of their faith.

What was the dismantling of traditional Roman Catholic theology? According to Sheehan, the emergence of a radically new Catholic theology based on modern exegesis of the Bible has changed the intellectual landscape of what was a harmonized, homogeneous countryside. Sheehan goes on to say that now it is common for Catholic seminary teaching to assert that Jesus of Nazareth did not claim to be divine, or the Messiah, that the Gospels attribute to him, and that he died without believing he was Christ, the Son of God, not to mention the founder of a new religion.

Sheehan continues. The scholars who are reevaluating who Jesus was are not atheists, liberal Protestants of the 19th century, nor supporters of Rudolf Bultmann’s skepticism about Jesus’ own self-understanding and life. No, rather, these scholars are Roman Catholic exegetes and theologians, faithfully secure at the heart of their infallible Church. Yet the folk religion of most practicing Catholics still reflects the pre-revolutionary fare of a conservative hierarchy.

So how did the revolution come about? It was Pius’ encyclical that promoted scholarship and cancelled four decades of strictly enforced conservatism in Biblical matters of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (circa 1905-1915). In the early 20th century Catholic scholars were obliged to hold the literal and historical truth of Biblical stories such as the story of Adam and Eve. This belief emanated from the notion that the Bible was the inspired word of God. If the scriptures were verbally inspired and therefore inerrant, they had to be taken literally in every detail as God’s revelation of eternal truth.

But the mid-20th century scholarly freedom in Biblical exegesis promotion was reconfirmed during the Second Vatican Council and even furthered to sensitive questions of New Testament research. What a change for the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the assembled hierarchy! In 1964 and 1965 these leaders went on record saying that the Gospels were not exact historical records or eyewitness accounts of what Jesus had said and done. Rather, they were products of second and third generation believers whose commitment of faith skewed their memory of Jesus.

Another interesting development, the Vatican Council also permitted Catholic exegetes to work with their non-Catholic counterparts in the scientific investigation of the scriptures, thereby ending a longstanding denunciation of Protestant higher criticism summarized in the encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893). More 1/24/07.