In Layman's Terms: On Creation and the Fall of Man

*Quick housekeeping note: as you are well aware, this series has long since ceased being weekly, or even biweekly. For the foreseeable future, therefore, consider it a "when it's done" series. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

           When last we left our story (way back when), God had created the Heavens and the Earth and the high angel, Lucifer, had fallen out of Pride, taking many of the other angels with him and introducing death and decay into the world. Today, we’re going to talk some more about that creation and about the coming of that particularly strange creature, Man. 

            “And God created Man to his own image; to the image of a God He created him; male and female He created them.”

-Genesis 1: 27

            Now, there are four major ‘steps’ in Creation. These are the points where a strictly materialist interpretation of the world breaks down, as ‘natural’ laws as we understand them are wholly inadequate to account for them. Today we’ll be talking about the first three.

            

            Step One: Nothing to Something

            The first, and most obvious step is the change from non-existence to existence.

Before: No Things

After: Things!

             We talked a little about this in our first post; it is entirely absurd to posit the idea of nothing becoming something through natural laws (even if we allow that natural laws don’t count as ‘something’). As The Sound of Music taught us, nothing can come from nothing. It’s like the old computer joke of wondering how long someone will sit and look at a ‘loading’ screen: no matter how long you sit there, the computer will not just spontaneously start working again. 

No, you didn't, Ted.

            And so the first act of Creation is the change from nothing into something. Or, what might be more accurate to say, the appearance of ‘things not God.’ Since God alone is eternal and absolutely real, the first step beyond that is the creation of things that are not absolutely real; things that are separate from and contingent upon God.

            Here let me point out that Christianity is not Pantheism; we don’t believe that everything is God (somehow). We believe that everything expresses God in some way (as noted earlier), but God alone is God; every creature is distinct from Him, in the same way that a book is distinct from its author or a child is distinct from its father.

            So from ‘nothing’ was brought forth, by some unimaginable means (Fr. Lemaitre called it ‘The Big Bang,’ which is good enough for our purposes), what we call ‘the Universe.’ That is, the matter and energy that we live in and use on a day-to-day basis and which so fascinates us.

Now, what are matter and energy? Well, basically, they are the tools by which we participate in creation. Matter and energy are not the sum total of creation; we perceive within ourselves things that are neither matter nor energy (generally we give them names like ‘spirit’ or ‘personality’). But they are the normal means by which we act. When we wish to communicate with others, we manipulate sound waves to convey meaning. When we wish to harm, we apply energy to other people using bits of matter, such as fists or bullets, as conduits. When we wish to think, we manipulate our brains to form images and concepts in our minds.

Now, that’s an odd point there. A materialist would say that all thought is nothing but synapses firing within the brain in response to stimuli. We would agree that this is indeed thought, but thought cannot be nothing but that, since the question is ‘whence come those stimuli’? That is, we think by making parts of our brain send signals to each other, but what makes it do so? Materialists like to point out that we can stimulate sections of the brain in the laboratory, making people feel happy or sad or think of cheese, but they never seem to ask the question “so what stimulates the brain outside the laboratory?” What force allows us to make our brain shift, at will, from considering the problem of God to the problem of how we’re going to ask out the cute girl behind the Starbucks counter and vice-versa?

We’ll return to this point, but for right now let us acknowledge two things; the first great step of creation is the transition from ‘no universe’ to ‘universe,’ and that while this universe appears to be made up of matter and energy, in our own experience something more is involved, since something allows us to manipulate that matter and energy at will.

Step Two: Non-life to Life

So, the universe is made, with all its beautiful stars and planets and moons and asteroids and quarks and whatever else. But, so far, it’s dead; lifeless. Until, somehow or other, another unimaginable change takes place and life appears on at least one of those planets. 

What is life? Life is when a created thing can somehow contribute to creation; it can alter its position in space, it can manipulate the matter around itself, and it can reproduce itself. Dead matter cannot participate in creation; it can only ‘follow orders,’ so to speak; move when it’s been moved. The Earth was formed not because it was a living thing, but because it basically ‘fell’ into place. Gravity pulled bits of gas and matter together, which in turn had been knocked into place by other bits of matter, and the end result (much like those big balls of clay we all made during art class) was a planet. Living things, on the other hand, are necessarily creative. They can change their environment. They can move without being moved. Most importantly, they can make more living things.

It is this latter capacity that makes life such an overwhelmingly drastic shift in creation. Dead things cannot generate more dead things; a rock cannot make another rock, nor can a cloud of gas produce another cloud of gas. A rock can be split, or melted down and combined with another rock, but it cannot generate a similar rock while remaining more or less as it is. But living things can. And they do this via the mind-bendingly complex substance known as DNA.

Take it away, Mr.Coulton!

Picture a tiny computer composed of four different proteins present in every single unit of life, containing within itself all the information needed to copy the particular composition of matter that comprises this particular creature. Now, the idea that DNA, the Platonic ideal of information storage and transfer that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates combined could never hoped to match, developed solely by accidental chemical reactions is so laughably inadequate that you would make Friar William of Okham (he of the razor) cry just by suggesting it.

See?

            So, life began as nothing more than little single cells, barely large enough to contain their DNA. From there, they slowly grew, over the course of millions of years through some unknown process (call it evolution if you like), first into multi-celluar organisms, then into large, complex structures, and finally into what we call ‘animals:’ those unfathomably complex, active, fertile, and endlessly fascinating bits of life.

            Another major shift (that is on the borderline of needing its own category) was the emergence of sexuality; Male and Female. Life could reproduce itself from the very beginning (that’s part of the definition of life), but sexuality brought something quite new to the table. Here, rather than just copying the DNA of the parent, two sets of DNA are brought together, mixed up, and used to create something unlike either parent. Life, you might say, was branching out; getting creative.

            But there was more, much more. With sexuality came the idea of complementality and cooperation. With sex, creatures were forced to look beyond themselves, to acknowledge (after their own fashion) that they were not and could not be the center of the universe. With sex came the great mystery of the fact that a given species could no longer be represented by only one individual, but instead would always require two. No individual fish could be a complete fish, nor could any individual spider be a complete spider. The totality of any sexual species is only found in the relationship between the sexes. It’s an image of the Trinity; as God is three persons in one, so each sexual species is two distinct beings in one. Thus the interplay of distinction and unity, which is found in the core of existence, where the distinction does not separate and the unity does not subsume, found its expression in life.

            We also see that, in sexual creatures, creation depends on cooperation; neither the male nor the female can create on their own (okay, okay; Parthenogenesis, but even that’s typically just an emergency procedure to re-introduce males into the population). Thus, life could no longer be simply competitive; there had to be some form of giving, of sacrifice, of common-purpose.

In short, with sexuality came the first shadow of love into the world.

Now, don’t think I’m getting anthropomorphic here: this earliest drive to reproduce that sent the little proto-Juliet in proto-Romeo’s arms (er, flagellum) in all likelihood had nothing of commitment or affection to it (indeed, it’s quite possible that proto-Juliet ate proto-Romeo when they were done). My point, though, is that here we had the first instance of something like the self-forgetful openness and gratuity that is found in God. The smallest seed of love had entered the world at last.

And so life continued to grow at a new and faster pace. Fish emerged, and with them came vertebrae. The fish took to land, acquiring the four-limbed, one-headed, two-eyed template that would be copied again and again on practically all land-based vertebrates. The arthropods (bugs) also took to land, and even to the air. The cycle of life and death was in full swing; each individual, each species, and even each class and order would emerge, create offspring through the mystery of sex, and then die, bequeathing the world to their issue, who in turn would repeat the cycle.

In this way emerged the different dynasties: the mighty Gorgonopsids rose and fell. The Dinosaurs took their place, crafted the mightiest and longest empire the world had ever or would ever see, and then in a flash they were gone as well. The Birds, the Dinosaurs’ heirs, briefly strove to take their fathers’ place, but the Mammals, descendents of the Gorgonopsids, who had lain hidden for all the long millennia that the Dinosaurs ruled, rose up and reasserted their dominant place in the world.

And it was from the Mammals that a most curious creature emerged. At first it was nothing more than a modified version of the already-venerable primate family, adapted for life on the plains rather than the trees. Indeed, it seemed like a somewhat ungainly offshoot, doomed to a short life. It was slow compared to most of its predators. It had pathetically small teeth and no claws to speak of, and it was an awkward, gangly thing, running about erect on its hind legs, scavenging from the kills of other predators or hunting for berries and roots in the forest. In short, here was one of those creatures that nature had dealt a poor hand; a being that had managed to slip through the cracks of survival via luck or circumstance, but which would have no staying power, and would soon slip back beneath the waters of extinction, having left nothing but a few bones in the grass.

Then the third shift happened.

Step Three: Animal to Man

This poor creature’s only real weapon was that it had an unusually well-developed brain. It could use rudimentary tools, form simple plans, and, in short, survive by its wits. But then, one day (or it might have been over the course of many days), a change took place. One of these creatures became aware of itself. His eyes were opened. He suddenly showed new powers of understanding and control. Predators would not touch him. Prey animals were unafraid of him. He could see meaning in the world about him, and so began to assign names to things. Things that before had only sent simple signals to his brain (“danger” “food” “drink” “companion” “unknown”) now were seen as things in themselves; things with names (“lion,” “fruit,” “water,” “wife,” “forest”). Most importantly, he could understand himself as an “I;” as a unique individual, as more than just the body.

This scene shows something like what must have taken place.

And for the first time, he truly saw the world around him. Water was not just a source of refreshment, but something beautiful to look at and fun to play in. The forest wasn’t just a place of danger, but a place of adventure and mystery. Perhaps this can best be conveyed by the fact that, for the first time, he looked up. Animals don’t look up unless they think they might see food, or a predator. There’s no other reason for them to. But this creature looked up and he beheld the stars and the moon above him. Who can imagine, what pen or tongue could tell of his amazement, of his wonder at what he saw? How can we begin to dream of what that first day was like when he first experienced beauty, and so became Man?

Now, we don’t know whether this shift happened in only one individual or in a community (though virtually every account of the event has it happen to only one at first), but the important thing is that it took place. An animal had crossed the immeasurable gulf and become Man.

Assuming that it was only one individual at first, he (let’s call him ‘Adam’) was quickly joined by another, this one a female (‘Eve’). When this happened, the seed of love that had been planted when the very first protozoa had become sexual beings finally blossomed into full flower. Sex had come a long way since then; in its highest forms it had grown to include monogamy, affection, and sacrificial impulses. But only now, with the coming of Man, could it truly take on its full meaning. Now that Adam had become conscious of himself as an “I,” he could be fully conscious of Eve as also a “you.” Now he could see her as she was; a mystery as infinite as himself, which he could spend eternity attempting to comprehend.

For there was one more aspect of Man’s awakening; he became aware of God. Adam and Eve were intimately and uniquely connected with God; they could discern His presence wherever they were, they could ‘hear’ Him speaking to them, and most important of all they were keenly aware of His will and perfectly inclined to follow it.

A couple more points about Adam and Eve. Their initial state was much different from anything we have ever experienced. What we experience is a perpetual struggle between our animal instincts and our higher, more spiritual nature. Now, I want to be clear: the point is not that our animal instincts are evil, and our spiritual nature is good. Either can be turned to good, and either can draw us into evil. The point is that they are in conflict; our animal instincts draw us to pleasure, food, sex, and so forth, while our spiritual nature encourages us to reason, contemplation, understanding etc. In Adam and Eve, the higher nature was in complete control and the animal instincts were directed by the reason. So, while their instincts remained, they were always directed toward rational ends and they were never overwhelmed by passion or cravings into overindulgence. This is why, in Genesis, it describes them as being “Naked without shame.” (Genesis 2: 25). They were in such control of their passions that they were never even tempted to see each other as anything less than what they were, and, as such, had no temptation to lust.

Another element in their original state was that they had much more power over nature than we do. Obviously, we don’t know exactly what the extent of these powers were, but from evidence found among the Saints I think we can gather a rough idea. For instance, we can suppose that, among other things, Adam and Eve never got sick, they could communicate to some extent with the animals, and they probably could fly.

I spoke earlier about the great mystery of will, of the ability of the soul to act on the body, of spirit to move matter, as seen in the human brain. Well, in Adam and Eve this capacity of the soul to move matter extended beyond their brains to the rest of their bodies, allowing them much greater freedom of movement and action than we enjoy, along with greater awareness and presence within their bodies. To put it bluntly, they experienced things in a much more intense manner than we do (and yes, that means exactly what you think it means).

Finally, Adam and Eve’s bodies were free from the death and decay that had plagued the world since its creation. They never got sick, they never got injured, and they would never know mortal death. As for what would have happened at the end of their time on Earth, we can only guess, but I believe that they would have met the same fate as Mary or Elijah; when their Earthly time was ended, they would have been assumed, body and soul, into Heaven.

But, as you probably guessed, they never got that far. We don’t know how long it was that they enjoyed this state, nor what precisely led to their fall from it. Genesis, of course, tells the famous story of the tree of the forbidden fruit, and the tempting Serpent, but I think we can call that more allegorical than literal. In any case, Satan was still at work in the world, as he had been from the beginning, and he set to work on Man. However it happened, he managed to tempt Adam and Eve into going against God’s will, which, again, they knew and were inclined to follow. They were tested, and thanks to the Devil’s influence, they failed the test.

It was the Second Great Fall. Just as the Devil’s fall threw the whole of creation out of synch, so Adam and Eve’s had equally drastic consequences. Their two natures were ‘jarred loose’ you might say, the animal from the spiritual, so that they were no longer in accord and it would take massive effort to achieve even a semblance of the unity they enjoyed before. With this their animal natures could run rampant, unrestrained by reason, and their spiritual natures could likewise conceive of pride and envy, despising both the lower instincts and worshiping the “I” without perceiving the “you.” In other words, they now knew good and evil, having before only known good.

 Their souls lost all power over their bodies, save for their brains, and so death and decay in the form of illness and injury were able to enter their bodies. The microbes, kept at bay by their perfectly controlled wills, broke in and began to infect them. Their understanding with the animals was severed.

In short, Adam and Eve became as we are now. Their natures were broken and corrupted. For the first time, sin; the corruptive force that drove the angels out of heaven, had entered the world. Death had been a part of the world from the beginning, but without rational beings – without Man – sin could not exist. Now, with Man’s fall, the world knew sin.

As for what, exactly, caused this fall, we honestly don’t know. It might very well have been a tree they were forbidden to eat from. The Devil’s lie “Thou shalt be like God” almost certainly is more or less verbatim, as that same lie has troubled us ever since. The thing to take away is that Adam and Eve were told that they could make themselves like God by disobeying Him, and, unfortunately for us, they believed it.

And so Adam and Eve were ‘thrown out of the Garden,’ so to speak. By choosing to reject God, they lost the unique experience of Him they had enjoyed. Now, bereft of the unique control over their bodies and their passions, they had to make their own way in the world and survive more or less in the same way their animal ancestors had, only with the added bitterness of remembering what they had lost and the added comfort of what remained.

For Adam and Eve were not wholly corrupted. They retained their knowledge of God, their awareness of beauty, and their ability to love: all broken and imperfect, of course, but still real and still able to inspire them. Moreover, God had inscribed a promise on their hearts; that He had not abandoned them, and that He would one day redeem them from the state they had fallen into.

Up next: Man Ascendant. 

Vive Christus Rex!

In Layman's Terms: On God

           This week begins a series of posts in which I will attempt, to the best of my ability, to explain the Catholic worldview from start to finish "in layman's terms." This is not so much an attempt to prove or demonstrate it, but more just a chance to lay it out in the open for all to see.

                 

Please keep in mind that I am not a trained theologian or a priest; just a humble layman with a blog, so if I get something wrong please just pass over it with a contemptuous guffaw and turn instead to more learned sources.

                  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the Beginning. Through Him all things were made, and nothing that was made was made without Him.

                  -John 1:1-2

                  Everything begins and ends with God. Now, there are a lot of misconceptions of God floating around (and, oddly enough, it tends to be these that atheists reject: there aren’t very many ‘true’ atheists in the world, atheists who reject God as Christians understand Him). For one thing, God is not a thing like us. He’s not a Zeus-like deity; a merely superhuman figure living above the world and meeting out rewards and punishments as He sees fit. He’s not the Invisible Man in the sky.

That would be this fellow

                  God isn’t some invisible ‘force’ operating in the world (the ‘flying spaghetti monster’), or even something operating outside the world. He is not something like a super-powerful ghost, or the android Amazo, or Dr. Manhattan; simply an unfathomably powerful being operating in the world.

                 

As I understand them, atheists conceive of God as something like that; as an invisible, super-powerful ‘boogeyman’ that flies around the world punishing people who have sex before marriage: sort of a cross between Superman and Jason Voorhees.

Just to be clear, this is not what we mean by 'God.'

 

                  So what do we mean by God?

                 

Well, it’s hard to really put a label on God, because anything we call Him will necessarily convey something much less than He actually is. Let me put it this way; St. Thomas Aquinas was quite possibly the most brilliant theologian who ever lived. His life’s work was the massive Summa Theologica, in which he presented some of the most exalted, beautiful, and supremely intelligent ideas about God. A couple years before his death, while he was still working on his masterpiece, he was praying in the chapel and entered a state of ecstasy (a kind of elevated trance in which the subject is so caught up in contemplation of the Divine that he doesn’t notice anything else). When he came out of it, he said that he had had a vision of God, and that everything he ever wrote – some of the finest, most careful philosophy and theology ever conceived by the mind of man – was “all straw” compared to what he had seen. He never wrote another word, but spent the rest of his life in prayer.

                 

Try to keep that story in mind throughout this post.

                 

In the Book of Exodus, God gives His name as “I Am” (sometimes rendered “I Am Who Am”). God is the One who Is; who exists.

                 

But, you say, couldn’t that be applied to…well, anything at all that exists? Not necessarily. Think of it this way; can you say that the computer you are reading this on exists? Of course. Would you be able to say the same thing in a hundred years? Well, probably not. If I sent you back in time a hundred years, would you be able to say the same thing? Of course not.

(Sorry, that was mean)

 

                  So, your computer exists conditionally; it only exists up to certain point. A hundred years ago it didn’t exist, and a hundred years from now it probably won’t exist any longer.

                  And, if you think about it, everything we know of follows the same pattern; you yourself once were not and one day you’ll be either turning to dust in the ground or sitting pretty on a future anthropologist’s shelf. The Pyramids have been around for 4000 years, but at one point they didn’t exist and one day they will go the way of their fellow wonders of the ancient world. The Earth itself was once nothing but a cloud of gas and vapor and one day will get incinerated by an expanding sun (or whatever the current prediction of doom is).

                  So everything we know of only exists up to a certain point: if you could see all of time, you could pick out a point when everything we know of today does not exist. And existence is conditional: the Earth only came into being because gravity worked on the particles, which only were in a position to be worked on because the Big Bang went off, and your computer only came to be because Steve Jobs got fired from his first job.

"You'll never amount to anything, Jobs! Do you hear me? Anything!"

                  But wait a second: if existence is conditional, and if everything that exists didn’t exist at some point, then how could anything at all exist? Obviously, there must be something that exists unconditionally and absolutely; something that always was, is, and will be. Basically, if there ever was a point where there was nothing, when nothing at all existed, then nothing ever could exist. Some people try to get around this by saying “well, given the laws of physics, then you could create from nothing…” but that’s just silly. “Nothing” means “nothing:” the laws of physics don’t exist! And even if they did, there’d be nothing for them to work on; they’d just sit around in the nothingness congratulating each other on their reasonableness for all eternity with nothing else to do.

  

                  God, therefore, is the principle of existence; He is that which Is unconditionally. Everything that exists comes from Him and points back to Him.

                  But there’s more to it than that.

                  God is not just neutral ‘existence:’ He is supremely good. God is pure love, pure beauty, and pure truth. I’ll get into this more in the next post in this series, but Catholics believe that goodness is essentially synonymous with ‘existence.’ A thing is good to the extent that it exists, is real: love is more real than hatred, beauty is more real than ugliness, truth is more real than lies. God, as the source of all existence, is also the source of all goodness.

Therefore, whenever we see something that we call ‘good:’ a beloved friend, a beautiful landscape, a wise saying, a newborn baby, etc. what we are really seeing is a reflection of God. Everything that is good is of God, and what we feel when we experience goodness is an echo of what we will experience in the presence of God.

                  There’s a beautiful Celtic song called Long, Long Before Your Time, in which a man tells his child the story of his life-long love for his wife, who died giving birth to the child. The last verse runs:

“So you ask me why I look so sad

On this bright summer’s day

And why the tears are in my eyes

And I seem so far away.

It’s just you seem a lot like her

When your eyes look into mine,

And you smile so much like she did

Long, long before your time.”

                  Every experience of goodness that we have on Earth is like that; a reminder of the God who made us and for whom we always long. You see, God has inscribed the desire for union with Him into every human heart, and when we experience goodness it rubs that longing raw again.

                  God is the source of all existence and, as such, the source of all goodness. Once you understand that, there’s a kind of shift in your mind. The question “does God exist” seems quaint and almost absurd to you; like asking someone whether they were born or not. It’s so obvious it hardly bears mentioning.

                  So the question moves from the existence of God to the question of what God is like. Here Catholics and other Christians differ sharply from their fellow theists by positing a Triune God; a God in Three Persons. Not three gods, not a god with three identities, but a single, perfectly simple God encompassing three distinct persons.

                  Head spinning yet?

                  Don’t worry; you’re not supposed to be able to really understand it. This is one of those things about God that is simply beyond human comprehension. Some of the most brilliant minds in history have struggled with coming up with ways of expressing it. St. Patrick likened the Trinity to a shamrock (which is why the shamrock is a symbol of Ireland), as a shamrock has three leaves, but is only one plant. St. Augustine of Hippo, operating on a more cerebral level, likened the Trinity to the mind, self-knowledge, and self-love.

                  Leaving aside trying to understand the idea of the Trinity, let us consider what it means and why it is so important. First of all, there’s the fact that if there is love in God – which there must be, as we have already said that all good things have their ultimate origin in God – then there must be a plurality of persons in God, since otherwise God would simply be loving Himself, which would leave Him in a state of imperfect love (since love is necessarily ‘other centric’). This would also impose a necessity on Him; if He were to love, He would need something else to love, meaning that His creation would be based on need rather than a gratuitous gift. In short, without the Trinity we would be faced with the absurd idea of a lonely God.

"All by myself! Don't wanna be / all by myself anymore..."

                  There’s another reason why the Trinity is so important. Most theists agree that God is something beyond mere ‘personality:’ that God is more than a person. But the trouble is that most theists, when they try to describe what this means, instead come up with something impersonal: something less than a person. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, if you’re going to posit that God is beyond personality, the Trinity is simply the only idea on the market.

                  So we see why the Trinity, but we haven’t said much on what is the Trinity. Well, the Trinity consists of the ‘Father,’ the ‘Son,’ and the ‘Holy Spirit’ (I put them in quotes to head off temptations to read those names too literally). The short version; the Father is God the Creator, the Son is the ‘Word of the Father:’ the Father’s perfect conception of Himself. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of love that passes between the Father and the Son.

                  Does that make any sense?

                  I’ll slow down: you have the Father; perfect existence. The Father has an idea of Himself. That Idea is from perfection of perfection, and hence must itself be perfect. But a real person is more perfect than a simple idea of a person, and so for the Father’s self-conception to be perfect, it must be a real person. Thus, the Son proceeds from the Father.

Now, between the Father and the Son, perfection to perfection, a relationship exists; a ‘spirit of love.’ We see this phenomenon in human relationships: success guru Napoleon Hill, taking an idea from Andrew Carnegie, described how when two minds come together for a specific purpose a ‘third mind’ is formed: the mind that comprises the combined knowledge, experience, and personalities of the two individuals. When a devoted husband and wife are together, their friends will notice a kind of ‘combined personality’ formed by their bond (for more information, see these articles on The Art of Manliness).

Well, what in humans is a faint, shadowy spark is in God blown into a roaring fire. The elusive ‘third man’ of any relationship must, in a perfect relationship between perfect existence, become a real third person.

So you have the Father, who begets the Son, who is His perfect self-conception, and the loving, perfectly unified relationship between the Father and the Son forms the Holy Spirit between them.

In any case, that’s about the closest I can get to explaining the mystery of the Trinity. It is one of those things that are simply beyond human comprehension, and our greatest minds have only succeeded in catching glimpses of it. But, of course, we’re dealing with God here; we shouldn’t expect to understand. I know that sounds a bit like a cop-out, but logically it’s obviously true. If God is God, and if He is as far above us as all that, then He should always remain, in large part, a mystery. Catholics believe that even in the highest heaven God will remain a mystery to us; a mystery that we will spend eternity trying to comprehend. It’s not so surprising, really; many people spend their whole lives just trying to comprehend the mystery of one other person. It’s called ‘marriage.’

The last aspect of God we have to consider is His status as creator of all things. Since God is the first principle of existence, logically He must be the origin and maker of all things that do exist.

But let’s dig a little deeper: what does this mean?

Catholics believe that God created the world ‘ex nihilo:’ from nothing. All that means is that there is no ‘eternal matter’ which God then worked on until it formed the universe. Instead, everything that exists is from God. How does that work? Basically, God conceived of the world, and it came to be. The Book of Genesis describes this as God speaking His commands into the void and each command bringing forth aspects of creation. J.R.R. Tolkien in The Silmarillian describes God conducting the angels in singing the world into being. The point of all these images is that God made the universe by an act of His will; He conceived of creation and willed that his conception be made real, and it was done (and is still being done).

Does that sound far-fetched, or overly mystical? Well, it really shouldn’t; we see something dimly similar in our own lives. When an artist – a musician, a poet, a painter, etc. – sets down to make a work of art, he starts with a conception; the idea of the thing he wants to create. From there he engages his will to bring the conception to life so that it becomes something apart from him, and yet a part of him at the same time. A painter’s personality is suffused in his painting, an author’s mind is revealed in his novels, and so on, yet once they are made the whole world can experience them without ever meeting the author.

This is an image of what happens with God. Of course, God being much greater than any human artist, His conceptions are expressed perfectly and by an act of Will, and are both much more separate and more united to their creator. Separate because they have a life and will of their own, united because they are absolutely dependent upon God’s love for their existence.

The great mystery and glory of Catholicism (or one of them) is this idea of “united individuality.” That is to say, we believe that individuals do exist; that each person and, indeed, each particle of being is unique and specifically made by God. They are not just “bits” of a single whole, but wholes unto themselves. At the same time, however, they are made for union with God and cannot exist apart from Him. But the union is not the union of a part rejoining a whole (as in, a drop returning to the bucket), but the union of lovers reuniting. The former involves the part ceasing to be a part and instead simply joining in becoming ‘the whole’ (the drop ceases to be when it enters the bucket). The latter requires the parts to remain parts in order to maintain the union (if one becomes completely subsumed into the other, it ceases to be a union because there’s only one individual).

Now, the question might arise “if God is absolutely simple, as you said earlier, then how could everything that exists be an expression of Him? Wouldn’t that require Him to be absolutely complex?” Well, consider it this way; there is only one source of natural light on Earth, correct? The Sun. But that light enters our eyes and our brains in the form of a myriad of different colors and hues. How can that be if there is only one light source? It’s because that one light is reflected in different ways; if it’s reflected off a leaf, it’s green. If it comes off of the moon, it’s white. And if you put a filter in front of your eyes (say, if you’re visiting the Emerald City), then everything appears in one color.

So, if you wanted you could say that everything that exists is a filter through which we see God in a different way; through a thunderstorm, for instance, we might see His power and majesty. Through a baby, we might see His innocence and joy. And through a certain young lady we might see His beauty and goodness.

Now, all these qualities: power, joy, beauty, etc. are the names we give to the effects of the filters; not to different aspects of God. God, again, is absolutely simple. In Him is a ‘total’ quality which includes everything we mean when we say “power, joy, beauty,” and so on. We don’t have a word for this, obviously, but the closest would probably be “goodness.” It is this that is expressed in different ways by everything that exists.

Such is a summary of the Catholic idea of God the creator. Now, before we end, I would like to clarify two images of creation that are not Catholic, but which are often brought up.

One idea (much beloved of 18^th and 19^th century scientists) was the “watchmaker” image of God: a God who set the world into motion, but then more or less abandoned it to its own devices. The trouble with this is that, if God is, as we said, the principle of existence then a thing could only exist through Him. So, if God did ‘abandon’ the world to its own devices, it would cease to be. Moreover, to be active is more ‘real’ than to be idle, and since God is pure Reality, pure Existence, He can only be an active God. Finally, we’ve established that God is Love, and love does not involve abandoning the beloved to their fate. Sea-Turtles are not generally considered images of maternal love.

(Though these days...)

So the watch-maker God won’t fly. God must be actively involved in His own creation.

The second idea (sort of) is ‘Creationism;’ basically the attempt to make the Book of Genesis fit the fossil record. It doesn’t, and it was never intended to. Awesome as the image of Adam and Eve riding around on dinosaurs is, it’s also bad philosophy, bad science, bad theology, and bad literary criticism. Just bad all-around. Trying to make Genesis into a scientific treatise does nothing but give atheists more reason to despise us and make it easier to miss the actual meaning in the creation account. Needless to say, Creationism is not a Catholic idea.

To summarize what have so far: Catholics believe that there is a single absolute and unconditional source of all existence which we call ‘God.’ God is an incomprehensible mystery, but what we can say about Him is that He is absolutely simple, yet expressed in three distinct ‘Persons.’ This reality of tri-part unity is called the Trinity. God willed all things into being, and as all things are created by God, all things direct us back to God. We call things ‘good’ to the extent that they remind us of God.

Now, if God created all things, and God is good, then the question must arise “Then why is there evil?” and that’s what we will deal with next week. 

For today, however, if there is one thing I’d want you to take away from this post, it’s this; Catholics believe that at the center of the Universe, at the uttermost foundation of reality, you will find truth, beauty, and love.

Vive Christus Rex!

The Existence of God Song

This morning I was thinking about doing a post about the existence of God, but couldn't find a good hook. Naturally, I did what any sensible person would do, called up Thomas Aquinas and Julie Andrews, and said "I'm trying to come up with a good blog post; can you help?" So, they put their heads together, and this is what they came up with:*

                Let’s start at the very beginning

                A very good place to start

                When you read, you begin with ABC

                But where to begin in Theology?

               

            Don’t ask me!

               

                We start with the fact that we happen to be

         
          That’s Philosophy!

               
               I know it is; just work with me!

               

                I, I am, I know I am

                But there wasn’t always me

                The same is true of everything;

                It is, but doesn’t have to be

                But something had to have to be

                Or else existence would be odd 

                Something exists necessarily

                It is that that we call God!

                I, I am, I know I am

                But, I didn’t make myself

                Everything that is was made

                And every cause has an effect

               

                But this can’t go on eternally

                And effects cannot exceed their cause

                A perfect prime mover must be

                And it is that that we call God!

                I, I am, I know I am

                And I know it’s good to be!

                I call things good and evil

                And can recognize beauty

                But, if there’s beauty and justice              

                And I can call things bad or good

                A perfect standard must exist

                It is that - that - we - call - God!

*Note: Ms. Andrews and St. Thomas may not have actually been officially involved here.

Vive Christus Rex!