How the NSA Wiretapping Scandal Reveals God's Immanence and Transcendence

A while back, I was in an Eastern Orthodox church that had two large depictions of Jesus. The first was an enormous depiction on the ceiling, showing Christ in glory. The second was along the back wall, behind the altar: it was a depiction of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child in her womb. The priest explained that the ceiling was depicting Christ in His transcendence, while the back wall depicted Him in His imminence, and the Virgin Mary was a sort of Jacob’s Ladder by which the Almighty and Transcendent God came to Earth to dwell among us.

I bring this up, because it is a good reminders of the two major (and seemingly-contradictory) ways that we tend to misunderstand God. We either: (1) imagine a God that’s personal and small denying His transcendence; or (2) imagine a God that’s large and impersonal denying His immanence. In this post, I hope to show how those errors are really two sides of the same coin, and provide an illustration pointing towards the way out of misunderstanding God in this way.

I. Mistake # 1: A Small God

The first of these two is probably the most common misapprehension about God these days. We make Him too small, and imagine Him as a creature. While this happens in our understanding of the Father, I would suggest that we are most guilty of this in our understanding of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. For Christians, this means imagining God as basically, a bigger, nicer, holier version of ourselves. He’s friendly, but kind of harmless. We might depict Him sort of like this depiction of Christ as the Good Shepherd.

Bernhard Plockhorst, Good Shepherd (19th c.)

There’s nothing wrong, per se, with this depiction. But it is incomplete. If this is the limit of how we understand Christ, we’re missing out. What’s missing in this depiction is any sense of the transcendence of God, outside of a faint halo. Remember, we’re talking about the God who made the entire universe.

He isn’t good in the way that we are. He’s Good, in the sense that He is literally the fullest definition of what “Good” means. In fact, He’s the meaning of “Being.” It’s what God means when He reveals Himself as “I AM WHO AM.” He is the source of all Being, and isn’t a creature.

Christians are hardly alone in misunderstanding God in this way. As Fr. Robert Barron explained in the book Church and New Media, this misunderstanding of God is at the heart of many of the atheist arguments against Christianity:

In his Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton recalled the first time he read Etienne Gilson's The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy and encountered a philosophically sophisticated understanding of God as ipsum esse (the sheer act of being itself). He was flabbergasted because he had assumed that God was, in his words, a "noisy and dramatic" mythological being. 

Again and again, in my dialogues on YouTube, I encounter the characterization of God as a “sky fairy,” an “invisible friend,” or my favorite, “the flying spaghetti monster.” This last one comes from the militant atheist Richard Dawkins, who insinuates that there is as much evidence for God as for this fantastic imaginary creature. [Actually, while Dawkins popularized this mockery of God, it was a student by the name of Bobby Henderson who created this faux-Creator.]

Almost no one with whom I dialogue considers the possibility that God is not one being among many, not the “biggest thing around,” not something that can be categorized or defined in relation to other things. Throughout his career, Thomas Aquinas insisted that God is best described, not as ens summum (highest being), but rather as ipsum esse (the subsistent act of being itself). As such, God is not a thing or existent among many. In fact, Aquinas specifies, God cannot be placed in any genus, even the genus of being. This distinction - upon which so much of Christian theology hinges - is lost on almost everyone with whom I speak on YouTube. 

One of the best indicators of this confusion is the repeated demand for “evidence” of God’s existence, by which my interlocutors typically mean some kind of scientifically verifiable trace of this elusive and most likely mythological being. My attempts to tell them that the Creator of the entire universe cannot be, by definition, an object within the universe are met, usually, with complete incomprehension.

Once you understand what Christianity (and good philosophy) teaches about the transcendence of God, you will see that a whole slew of popular atheist arguments as simply nonsensical.

More than that, it also shows the folly of those people who want to acknowledge the existence of God, but castigate Him as evil, trying to subject God (the standard of goodness) to some “higher” standard of goodness that exists only in their own minds.

II. Mistake # 2: An Impersonal God

The second misconception seems to be the exact opposite. In some cases, we will affirm the philosophical concept of God as ipsum esse (the sheer act of being itself), but our resulting view of God will be wholly impersonal. In technical terms, we end up denying His immanence.

Generally, this seems to happen in our conception of the Father, or with the Trinity as a whole. We finally grasp that God is uncreated Being, Goodness, and Truth, the Source and Sustainer of all that exists, but we end up picturing God less as a Being, and more as an impersonal force, like gravity. We end up descending from the “God of the Philosophers” to the Deist notion of an impersonal and uninvolved “Nature’s God.”

Antonio Tempesta, God Creating Heaven and Earth (c. 1600)

Nor are Christians (or Deists) the only ones to misunderstand God in this way. Luke Muehlhauser, in his blog Common Sense Atheism, claims that “None of the usual arguments for the existence of God even try to prove the existence of a God whose existence would matter to me.” So, for example, he argues:

The design argument? It aims to prove the existence of an intelligent, powerful, supernatural Creator. The design argument doesn’t say anything about whether this God cares about morality or humanity or which scriptures you prefer. Do I care if such a God exists? No. It makes not a bit of difference to my life or yours. 

The cosmological argument? In its most robust form, it aims to prove the existence of a supernatural, personal Creator. Again, the argument doesn’t say anything about whether this God knows about humanity or has any moral commands to give us. Do I care if such a God exists? No.

Philosophically, this is topsy-turvy.You can’t affirm “the existence of a supernatural, personal Creator” and deny that He “knows about humanity.” What the philosophical arguments for God prove is the existence of a Personal God who created each one of us. The notion that this “makes not a bit of difference to my life or yours” couldn’t be more wrong. If our lives have any purpose, beyond us arbitrarily projecting a purpose onto them, it’s precisely because of this God. Just as we can say what a key (or a clock, or a grenade, etc.) is good for by determining what it was created for, we know what we’re made for by looking at why we were made.

So even as Muehlhauser pays lip service to the God of the Philosophers being a “personal” God, he’s treating Him as remote and impersonal. And this is a common mistake, and by no means a new one. The pagans commonly fell into these two traps as well, imagining their gods either as mere super-humans, or as impersonal and uncaring beings. Put differently, we tend to make God either microscopic (near us, but very tiny), or telescopic (enormous and far away).

III. The Common Error

While on the surface, these two errors – the superhuman God and the impersonal God – seem opposed, they’re really two sides to the same coin. In both cases, we’re applying human limitations to God.

The anthropologist Robin Dunbar has suggested that we humans can only maintain about 150 stable social relationships. In other words, no matter what Facebook has, you don’t have more than ~150 friends. We’re limited – intellectually, emotionally, in the amount of free time that we have, and so forth – in such a way that it’s hard to relate to many more people than that. So trade-offs happen. We meet lots of new people, and old relationships fade into the past. No matter how much we may want to “make new friends and keep the old,” we can only horde so much friendship “silver and gold” before it slips out of our hands.

So for us, power and “bigness” equate to “remoteness.”  The more people you know, the less you can afford to care about them all. If you end up on a remote desert island with a stranger, you’ll probably get to know him well. If you’re put in charge of a company of thousands of employees, and you’ll probably get used to viewing people as anonymous names and faces. 

IV. God and the NSA

God’s not limited in this way. On some level, we have to know this. But we forget this. And more importantly, we often overlook that “bigness” and “intimacy” work in more-or-less the opposite way for God that they do for us. In fact, and this is the key, it’s precisely because God is infinite that He’s able to be infinitely close to us.

That sounds counterintuitive at first, so let me take an analogy from the recent NSA wiretapping scandal. That controversy, in a nutshell, was that the government was using a large governmental agency to spy on its own citizens. Without commenting on the scandal itself, I want to use the NSA (or the government more broadly), because it gives us a good example of an actor not bound by individual human limitations. 

See, the bigger and more powerful the government gets, the more intimate they can get. It’s the opposite of our normal limitations. If the NSA gets 1000 new employees, it’s not as if they therefore know less about youThe opposite is true: they now have the resources to know you even better. While this is a limited and imperfect analogy, it still shows us something about God: namely, that it’s precisely because He’s infinite and omnipresent that He can be as personal and intimate as He is.

A tiny God wouldn’t be more personal that the real God. He’d be less so, always scurrying from place to place putting out fires and answering calls to Heaven, like an overworked firefighting switchboard operator. It’s because our God is omnipresent, transcending time and place, transcending all human limitations, that He knows you inside and out, that He hears you when you cry, and that He can care for the small details of your life.

Girolamo da Santacroce, The Adoration of the Three Kings (c. 1530)

St. Augustine (whose feast day is today), in Book X, Chapter 27 of his Confessions, connects the immanence and transcendence of God in a way too few others have: 

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

This says it all. Nothing could be more personal than a loving God who is always present within us.

The Chicken-and-Egg Problem for Abortion

A chick beginning to hatch

You’re likely familiar with the philosophical problem, “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” But I want to pose a different sort of chicken-or-egg question for those abortion supporters who claim things like “My Body, My Choice.”

In the case of non-mammals like chickens, fertilized eggs develop outside of the mother’s body, so we can actually watch embryonic development occur. It’s a fascinating process. The chick grows inside the egg until she’s old enough to hatch, and then she hatches herself, by pecking her way out of the egg.

It’s worth asking two questions.

First, was the chick inside the egg alive before she hatched? Of course. If her life began at birth, she couldn’t have pecked her way out of the shell. Dead chicks don’t peck. For that matter, if she wasn’t alive, she couldn’t grow inside her shell. Metabolism is one of the key markers for life, since dead things don’t metabolize. And of course, it’s absurd to suppose that a dead egg suddenly turned into a living chick.

Second, was the chick a distinct living being prior to hatching? This answer is equally obvious: the chick is a living being distinct from her mother. If the hen looked down at the egg, and said “My Body, My Choice!” she’d be objectively wrong. The chick is a different being, with her own tiny body, and with her own genetic code. She is, by every scientific standard, a distinct organism.

A chick emerging from her egg

Sure, she’s still reliant upon her mother to live. The hen could easily kill her chick, either actively (by crushing the egg), or passively (by simply refusing to care for the egg). But the fact that someone’s life is entrusted to you doesn’t make them part of your person.

Of course, there’s one important difference between chickens and humans in this regard: in the case of unborn babies, they grow in an egg inside the mother. That’s it: that’s the incidental characteristic of human development that the entire argument for abortion is based on. If human babies grew like chicks, or if they grew in test tubes, we wouldn’t hesitate for a second to recognize them for what they are: living human beings, distinct from their mothers.

Of course, the fact that they grow in eggs inside their moms, instead of growing in eggs outside of their moms is an accident of geography. “My Body, My Choice” is just bad science. You can’t seriously claim this without grossly misunderstanding human anatomy or reproduction. It’s someone else’s body, your child’s body, and if it’s “your choice” to destroy her body, it’s just because she’s too helpless to defend herself.

The Unborn Child is a Child. Literally.

When pro-lifers refer to the unborn child as a child, we get accused of playing games with language. The opposite is true, as Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out (fairly) recently. Originally the word “child” referred only to unborn children.

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

child (n.) 

Old English cild "fetus, infant, unborn or newly born person," from Proto-Germanic *kiltham (cf. Gothic kilþei "womb," inkilþo "pregnant;" Danish kuld "children of the same marriage;" Old Swedish kulder "litter;" Old English cildhama "womb," lit. "child-home"); no certain cognates outside Germanic. "App[arently] originally always used in relation to the mother as the 'fruit of the womb'" [Buck]. Also in late Old English, "a youth of gentle birth" (archaic, usually written childe). In 16c.-17c. especially "girl child."

The wider sense "young person before the onset of puberty" developed in late Old English. Phrase with child "pregnant" (late 12c.) retains the original sense. The sense extension from "infant" to "child" also is found in French enfant, Latin infans. Meaning "one's own child; offspring of parents" is from late 12c. (the Old English word was bearn; see bairn). Figurative use from late 14c. Most Indo-European languages use the same word for "a child" and "one's child," though there are exceptions (e.g. Latin liberi/pueri). 

The side playing games with language is the side trying to dehumanize unborn children, by replacing ordinary English with intentionally-obtuse technocratic jargon. As George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, “The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” Words like “fetus” have been coopted to avoid calling unborn children “children.” [Of course, even “fetus” refers to the living-but-unborn offspring of an animal (e.g., a chick, while still in her egg). But that's a topic for another day.]

Ten Facts About the Assumption of Mary That You May Not Know

Today is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of the most important feasts of the year. Here are some facts of about today’s feast that you may not know:

José Benlliure y Gil, Mass in the Chapel (1871)

1. Today is a Holy Day of Obligation: Outside of Sundays, American Catholics are obliged to go to Mass on five or six other days out of the year. Today is one of them. So if you haven’t been to Mass yet, go. You should have no trouble finding an evening Mass near you. (This is true for you Eastern Catholics also, pursuant to Canon 880 § 3 of the Code of Canons of Oriental Churches.)

2. You Should Avoid “Servile Work” Today: Most Catholics know that they’re not supposed to work unnecessarily on Sundays and major holidays. We don’t really need to be told that going to work on Christmas isn’t what we’re called to as Christians. Working on Christmas feels wrong.

But many Catholics are unaware that the Church calls on us to avoid “servile labor” on all Holy Days of Obligation (including today) in the same way that we would on Sundays. This comes from the first of the five precepts of the Church (which are listed in the Catechism in CCC 2042-43): “You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and rest from servile labor.” CCC 2042 explains that this precept:

... requires the faithful to sanctify the day commemorating the Resurrection of the Lord as well as the principal liturgical feasts honoring the Mysteries of the Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints; in the first place, by participating in the Eucharistic celebration, in which the Christian community is gathered, and by resting from those works and activities which could impede such a sanctification of these days.

The five precepts of the Church (which are binding on all Catholics) are “meant to guarantee to the faithful the very necessary minimum in the spirit of prayer and moral effort, in the growth in love of God and neighbor” (CCC 2041). Giving a few days out of the year – Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation – is part of the bare minimum that you should be doing as a Catholic.

Granted, by the time you read this, it’s late notice. But bear this in mind on the next Holy Day of Obligation: All Saints Day, Friday, November 1, 2013. It’s not too early to plan on a three day weekend.

15th c. icon of the Dormition of Mary

3. The Assumption and the Dormition are the Same Thing: In the West, we celebrate today as the Assumption of Mary, emphasizing that Mary was taken up, body and soul, into Heaven. In the East, they celebrate today as the Dormition of Mary, emphasizing that Mary “fell asleep” in the Lord. Same feast, different focus.

4. The Assumption of Mary Doesn’t Mean She Never Died: One result of the difference in emphasis between East and West is that we Western Catholics don’t tend to focus on the fact that Mary died before she was Assumed. Some Catholics even deny that she died, pointing in support to the allegedly-ambiguous nature of the infallible teaching of Munificentissimus Deus, which holds as a divinely revealed dogma “that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”

But throughout the encyclical, Pope Pius XII is clear that Mary did die, and he cites longstanding Tradition and ancient liturgical texts that support this. For example:

Thus, to cite an illustrious example, this is set forth in that sacramentary which Adrian I, our predecessor of immortal memory, sent to the Emperor Charlemagne. These words are found in this volume: "Venerable to us, O Lord, is the festivity of this day on which the holy Mother of God suffered temporal death, but still could not be kept down by the bonds of death, who has begotten your Son our Lord incarnate from herself."(11)

At least part of the confusion seems to be that art depicting the Assumption focuses on the reunion of her body and soul, as she was assumed (very much alive) into Heaven. Taylor Marshall has more to say on the subject, but the short answer is that Mary died, and then was assumed.

5. Jesus Wasn’t Assumed into Heaven: The Second Glorious Mystery of the Rosary is the Ascension of Jesus. The Fourth Glorious Mystery is the Assumption of Mary. The critical difference between the Ascension and Assumption is that Mary was taken up into Heaven, while Christ ascended by His own Divine power. Fr. James M. Keane, O.S.M., explains it this way:

Jesus arose from the tomb and ascended into heaven by his own power, whereas Mary's body was taken up to heaven by the power of her Son. For that reason we use two different words: the Ascension of Christ and the Assumption of Mary.

In the words of St. Anthony of Padua, today celebrates when “the Virgin Mother has been taken up to her heavenly dwelling.” Having said that, Scripture also speaks of Christ being “taken up” in the Ascension (Acts 1:9, 11), just as He is said both to have risen from the grave, and been raised from the grave. None of this denies Christ’s Divine power, or His ability to raise Himself. Here again, Taylor Marshall has more.

6. There are Two Assumptions in the Bible Besides Mary’s: While Jesus wasn’t assumed into Heaven, at least two other people in Scripture were (besides Mary). The Old Testament hints that Enoch was assumed (Genesis 5:24), and the New Testament says so explicitly (Hebrews 11:5). The Old Testament explicitly says that Elijah was assumed (2 Kings 2:11).

Additionally, Deuteronomy 34:6 says that Moses “was buried in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is.” Jude 1:9 has a cryptic allusion to a dispute between the devil and the archangel Michael about the body of Moses. What happened to his body – whether or not it was taken up – is left unsaid. More on that at Msgr. Charles Pope’s blog.

Peter Paul Rubens, Woman of Apocalypse (17th c.)

7. Mary’s Assumption is Implicit in Scripture: Just as the Old Testament hinted at Enoch’s assumption (a fact later confirmed by the New Testament), the New Testament hints at Mary’s Assumption (a fact later confirmed by the Church Fathers). The Assumption seems to be implicit in Revelation 11:19-12, in which we see that the Mother of God is already glorified in Heaven:

Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, loud noises, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

The reason that Protestants can read this and still deny the Assumption is that it’s not immediately clear who the Woman is.

I think that this can be answered by looking first to the Son. The Son is the one “who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (Rev. 12:5). The Book of Revelation actually reveals Who this is. It refers primarily to Jesus Christ (Revelation 19:15), and secondarily to the Saints (Revelation 2:27). This dual fulfillment is fitting, because Revelation 12:15 is the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophesy about the Son of God (Psalm 2:7-9). The Son of God, in the primary sense of the word, is Jesus Christ. But through baptism, we also become sons and daughters of God.

So the Son is Jesus first, the Saints second. So who is Jesus’ Mother and the Mother of the Church? Mary, obviously. Mary is described as Jesus’ Mother throughout Scripture, including in Matthew 1:16 and Galatians 4:4 (in which the Son is described as One “born of woman”). At the Cross, Jesus takes the extraordinary step of making Mary the Mother of the beloved Disciple (John 19:26-27), in prefigurement of her role as Mother of the Church (cf. Revelation 12:17).

I’ve written on this elsewhere on the blog, but if you’d rather listen to Fr. Dwight Longenecker say it instead, go right ahead. I won’t be offended.

8. Early Christian Tradition Supports the Assumption of Mary: While the New Testament hints as Mary’s Assumption, the early Christians embraced it explicitly. We find this from a wealth of sources: first and foremost, from liturgical celebrations. All throughout the global Church, we find ancient commemorations of Mary’s Dormition and Assumption into Heaven.

A wealth of literature (some reliable, some unreliable) sprang up quickly to relay stories about Mary’s last days. Some of this is merely pious legend, like the legend of George Washington and the cherry tree. But it reflects a global consensus within the Church that Mary was, in fact, assumed into Heaven. In other words, we don’t know all of the details about Mary’s last days, but we do know (because numerous sources attest to it, from all over the Church), that Mary was taken up. Pope Pius XII outlines some of this evidence, but I want to point out the (fascinating) fact that there’s no counter-tradition. That is, there’s apparently nobody in the early Church denying the Assumption, nor is there anyone claiming to have the relics of Mary’s bones, even though relics of the Blessed Mother would have been incredibly sought-after. Again, we simply see a consensus that Mary was assumed.

9. Modern Science Supports the Assumption of Mary: This is a clever point from Elizabeth Scalia. In short, every time a woman gets pregnant, her child leaves some of his cells in her body.  (even if the child later dies in the womb).  So even when a woman miscarries, or aborts her children, the cells of those children remain inside of her for decades, and can help her fight disease. It’s pretty incredible, and I imagine there’s a lot of potential to develop a pro-life apologetic around this science.

But Scalia points in a different direction: this means that Mary carried the Blood of Christ within her always. We receive the Eucharist, and carry Christ within us temporarily, but Mary was never wholly separated from Him, even physically.  Psalm 16:9-10 promises that the Body of Christ will not undergo decay. The Assumption is simply a further completion of that promise.

10. Mary’s Assumption Prefigures Our Own: The promise that the Body of Christ will not undergo decay is fulfilled first in Christ, then in His Mother, but its final fulfillment is in us, the Mystical Body. We shall not remain in the tomb, but shall rise again in Christ. What Mary underwent immediately, we shall undergo eventually, if we stay true to the faith.

This is why today's Second Reading included this passage from Romans 8:29-30:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

This is also why I don’t understand Protestant squeamishness about the doctrine of the Assumption.

God took Enoch (Genesis 5:24),
from the LaHaye Bible (1728)

Certainly, I understand why those who believe in sola Scriptura would struggle with a doctrine found only implicitly, like the Assumption (or the Trinity, or original sin). All of those are great arguments (against sola Scriptura). But there are some Protestants who actually think it’s heretical to believe that Mary was Assumed into Heaven. For example:

The Roman Catholic Church has embraced an idolatrous false gospel. To say that Mary rose from the dead and was taken into Heaven as Queen is to accord her similar status as Christ, and ultimately to denigrate Christ.

 

Therefore, there can be no agreement or compromise between Anglicans and Roman Catholics on these issues.   To agree is to deny the authority of Scripture, to embrace error and denigrate Christ.   Until Rome repents of its false teaching unity must be an offence to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Likewise, GotQuestions claims that “To teach the Assumption of Mary is a step toward making her equal to Christ, essentially proclaiming Mary’s deity.”

This is blind prejudice against Mary (and Catholicism), not rational Biblical analysis. I would respond by looking at three sets of Biblical teachings that contradict the above two claims:

• If it doesn’t denigrate Christ for Enoch or Elijah to be assumed into Heaven, why in the world would it denigrate Christ for Mary to be Assumed?  In declaring that Enoch or Elijah were assumed into Heaven, are we declaring them equal to Christ, or proclaiming their deity?
  
  
• If it doesn’t denigrate Christ for the Saints to “reign with Him” (2 Timothy 2:12), why does it denigrate Him for His Mother to reign with Him? If 2 Timothy 2:12 doesn’t deify the Saints, why would the Assumption be held to deify Mary?
  
  
• If the Twelve Apostles can be enthroned in Heaven (Matthew 19:28; Luke 22:30) without denigrating Christ or declaring them deities, why not Mary?

As you can see, to declare the Assumption heretical is ultimately to declare Scripture heretical. You can’t condemn the Assumption of Mary without condemning the assumptions of Enoch or Elijah. You can’t condemn the glorification of Mary without condemning the glorification of all of the Saints.

Hopefully, this has shown that the Assumption is both consist with, and implicit in, Sacred Scripture, and that what happened to Mary in the Assumption will eventually happen, in some sense, to all of the Saints.

How Train Cars and Set Theory Prove the Existence of God

Perhaps the strongest argument against atheism is the argument from contingency. In its barest form, it goes something like this:

A. All of reality, without exception, breaks down into one of two possible categories:
(1) that which is contingent, and (2) that which is non-contingent.

Let me explain what I mean by both the terms, “thing” and “contingent.” I mean “thing” in its broadest
possible sense: a physical object, a scientific law, whatever. If a thing requires something else to exist, it’s “contingent.”

Family Tree

You and I are radically contingent. Without our parents (and their parents, and their parents, all the way back), we wouldn’t exist. Even the slightest change: your great-great-great-great-great grandfather dies before meeting your great-great-great-great-great grandmother (or moves, or isn’t attracted to her, or marries someone else instead, etc., etc., etc.), and you don’t exist. But more than that, innumerous other factors had to line up just so: we had to live on a planet with all sorts of conditions making human life (and procreation possible), in just the right sort of universe, and so forth.

I’m not interested in debating here whether the coalescence of these factors was probable or improbable, mere chance or Grand Design.

My point is simpler: in order for you to exist, some other conditions much logically precede your existence. Your existence is logically dependent upon these other conditions. Therefore, if I know that a particular universe has you in it, I can deduce all sorts of other things about that universe: that it’s life-sustaining, contains (or contained) your parents, etc.

This is what we mean by a contingent reality. Under particular conditions, you come into existence. Had those conditions not been there, you wouldn’t.

All created things are in Category 1: they’re all contingent. They don’t arise necessarily. Sometimes this is stated as “everything that begins to exist has a cause.”

So all created things are contingent. But the opposite isn’t true: a thing could be infinitely old and still logically-contingent. So Category 1, as you might suspect, is enormous. It includes the entire universe.

B) You cannot simply have an infinite series of contingent causes;
an uncaused cause is logically necessary.

Contingent causes require something else to exist: that chain can’t simply go back forever. If A requires the existence of B, B requires the existence of C, and C requires the existence of A, you can’t posit A, B, or C as the cause of the existence of the set of A, B, and C.  A philosophy professor of mine gave me two helpful illustrations of this principle: one involving set theory, and one involving trains.

Let’s talk about set theory first. All causes can be divided into [Caused Causes] and [Uncaused Causes]. No matter how large the set of [Caused Causes] is, even infinitely large, it can’t cause itself. It needs an Uncaused Cause to begin. We tend to think of this temporally (that the uncaused cause exists prior to the caused cause), but this would be true even if the uncaused cause and caused cause(s) are both infinitely old.

That illustration is clean and simple, but it’s not for everyone. For that reason, he gave the illustration of trains. The picture below shows two cars - the car on the right is a locomotive, which has the engine; while the car on the left is an ordinary train car, which doesn’t:

If you’re at a railroad crossing and see an ordinary train car go by, you may be sure that it’s being pulled by a locomotive, even if you can’t see the front of the train. The car may be pulled by the locomotive directly, or by another train car or series of train cars which are themselves pulled along by a locomotive.

A train that was made up only of train cars, with no locomotive, could never move. It doesn’t matter if that locomotiveless-train was one car long, or a thousand, or a million, or infinite. Without something moving it, it won’t move an inch.

So it is with contingent realities: they are ultimately set in motion, so to speak, by what is necessary. It doesn’t matter if you have a single contingent reality, or a thousand, or an infinite number: they require the existence of a non-contingent reality.

By the way, this also explains why the atheist argument, “Who created God?” is philosophical nonsense. It’s like asking, “Well, if all train cars must be moved by a locomotive, who moves the locomotive?”

C) This necessary reality is what we call “God.”

At this point, we can say with certainty that Someone or Something necessary created the entire universe. We can say with absolute certainty that the entire universe – from every person to every particle to every scientific law – traces back to a common origin, some kind of Creator. This gives us a starting place to explore what sort of Creator we’re talking about. Here ends the proof.

It doesn’t immediately prove the truth of Catholicism (that’s known through a combination of reason and Divine self-revelation), but it does disprove the possibility of atheism. There’s simply no way to start with no uncaused causes, and end up with anything, be it physical laws or material realities or anything else.

P.S. What sort of Creator?

The proof might suggest that the universe has a Cause, but a wholly impersonal one. It turns out, using this proof, we can actually determine a whole lot about our Creator. You see, nothing can exist in an effect that doesn’t exist (at least in potency) in the sum total of the causes. You can’t put two and two together and get five. That whole notion violates basic causality.

And since all of the other causes derive from the same necessary cause, we can say that nothing can exist in the universe that doesn’t come from the Creator. So, for example, we exist in a universe that contains (and permits) personality and sentience. But the effects of personality and sentience can’t exist without the ultimate Cause possessing personality and sentience. So we know right away that we’re dealing with a personal God

Waiting on the Lord: A Lesson from the Book of Judith

The Book of Judith is read altogether too rarely. Protestants don’t have it in their Bibles, and many Catholics do, but wouldn’t know it. But it illustrates, quite vividly, the importance of holding fast to God.

This depiction comes from the seventh and eighth chapter of Judith, during the course of Holofernes' campaign against the Israelites. The Israelites are holed up in a series of mountainous cities that are hard to access, so Holofernes and his men besiege Bethulia by cutting off the water supply. After 34 days, the Israelites in the city are ready to surrender, and complain to their leaders that it was only stubbornness that has prevented the Israelites from making peace with the Assyrians. To the elders, they say (Judith 7:24-28):

“God be judge between you and us! For you have done us a great injury in not making peace with the Assyrians. For now we have no one to help us; God has sold us into their hands, to strew us on the ground before them with thirst and utter destruction. Now call them in and surrender the whole city to the army of Holofer′nes and to all his forces, to be plundered. For it would be better for us to be captured by them; for we will be slaves, but our lives will be spared, and we shall not witness the death of our babes before our eyes, or see our wives and children draw their last breath. We call to witness against you heaven and earth and our God, the Lord of our fathers, who punishes us according to our sins and the sins of our fathers. Let him not do this day the things which we have described!”

The assembly then erupted into a “great and general lamentation,” as they cried out to God (Judith 7:29).

What we’re hearing from the Israelites in Bethulia is nothing new: it’s a perennial human temptation. In fact, we heard these cries during the readings from last Sunday. During the Exodus through the desert, the Israelites grew weary of eating only the manna, and cried out (Numbers 11:5-6):

“O that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”

Peter Paul Rubens,
The Israelites Gathering Manna in the Desert (1627)

They were ready to trade their freedom (with all its accompanying suffering) for comfort and physical security, even if it means submitting to slavery to the Egyptians. There’s a lot we can learn from this, because we’re prone to do the same thing. I’m sure there are plenty of political analogies that can be drawn, about preferring a secure state (even a security state) to a free one.

But I’m not particularly interested in that, nor do I think that Scripture includes these repeated illustrations for that purpose. Rather, I think the message is about faith, and in the case of Numbers 11, about the Eucharist. In the Bread of Life discourse, Christ draws out the connection between the manna and the Eucharist (John 6:49-51, 53-58):

“Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. […] 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”

As Numbers 11 explains, the Israelites in the desert died, because they turned away from the manna and longed after the fleshpots of Egypt. It’s an important warning to those Catholics who leave the Church because they feel like they’re “not being fed.” I understand: the day-to-day life of many Catholic parishes is mediocre, at best. The Scriptural exegesis in the homilies may be weak, or non-existent, or even wrong / heretical. The people around you may seem (may, in fact, be) bored out of their minds. The other congregants (and, God forbid, the clergy) may be unwelcoming when you try to join.

I’m not blind to how bad some Catholic parishes are, nor do I intend to whitewash or defend their lukewarmness. But, barring the extraordinary, these Masses do have Jesus Christ in the form of the Eucharist: He is there, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. The Eucharist is the Bread of Life, our Daily Bread, and the Flesh Sacrificed for the life of the world. So even if you’re getting zero spiritual support besides the Eucharist, even if you’re suffering like the Israelites in the desert, hold on. Hold fast to Our Lord in the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, and you’ll live forever. Leave Him, even out of legitimate frustration, and you’re killing yourself, spiritually.

But Numbers 11 and Judith 7 are making a broader point. So often in the spiritual life, it’s much easier to simply give in and be a slave to sin, then to continually fight our sinful desires. It can seem joyless and arid to do the right then, and the sins we’re resisting can seem as tempting as a platter of meat before a hungry pilgrim.

This is why spiritual disciplines like fasting exist: with the help of God, we cultivate the disposition to repeatedly say “no” to our immediate impulses. This process of self-mastery, even over relatively insignificant things (like voluntarily depriving yourself of meat on Fridays), builds the spiritual muscles that come in handy when we’re tempted with something worse than a steak. This theme is developed further in Judith 7-8, in the elder Uzziah’s answer to the crying Israelites, and then Judith’s rebuke of the city elders.

Uzziah’s Compromise, and Judith’s Response

Simon Vouet,
Judith with Head of Holofernes (17th c.)

Uzziah, one of the elders of Bethulia, arises to respond to the people’s wailing and despairing. He calms them by making this speech (Judith 7:30-31):

“Have courage, my brothers! Let us hold out for five more days; by that time the Lord our God will restore to us his mercy, for he will not forsake us utterly. But if these days pass by, and no help comes for us, I will do what you say.”

At first brush, Uzziah seems to have done a good job: the people wanted to give up immediately, and he compromised, he talked them down. But two things are very wrong here: (1) the elders are trying to force God into their timetable; and (2) the elders are compromising where they’re not allowed to be compromising: they’re not taking surrendering to the Assyrians completely off of the table.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of forcing God into our timetable. Here, there’s something subtle going on with the timing. Throughout Scripture, 40 days is the period used for preparation: Noah on the Ark (Genesis 7:17; 8:6), Moses on the Mountain (Exodus 34:28), Jesus in the desert at the start of His Ministry (Mark 1:13), etc. When Goliath and the Philistines taunt the Israelites, God waits 40 days before sending David (1 Samuel 17:16). When the people in Bethulia want to surrender, the meeting takes place on Day 34 of the siege (Judith 7:20), and Uzziah “buys” God 5 more days. In other words, the Israelites agree to wait until Day 39 to give up. But that’s not God’s timetable. They’re trying to force God to act before His time.

So that’s clear enough. By what’s so bad about the Israelites considering surrendering to the Assyrians? Well, the people of Sidon and Tyre already tried that approach. At the outset of the campaign, they sent this message to the Assyrians (Judith 3:2-4):

“Behold, we the servants of Nebuchadnez′zar, the Great King, lie prostrate before you. Do with us whatever you will. Behold, our buildings, and all our land, and all our wheat fields, and our flocks and herds, and all our sheepfolds with their tents, lie before you; do with them whatever you please. Our cities also and their inhabitants are your slaves; come and deal with them in any way that seems good to you.”

When Holofernes arrived, “these people and all in the country round about welcomed him with garlands and dances and tambourines” (Judith 3:7). Sidon and Tyre embrace complete abasement before the invaders. And sure enough, they’re not killed. However, Holofernes “demolished all their shrines and cut down their sacred groves; for it had been given to him to destroy all the gods of the land, so that all nations should worship Nebuchadnez′zar only, and all their tongues and tribes should call upon him as god” (Judith 3:8). In response, the Israelites in Judea become “alarmed both for Jerusalem and for the temple of the Lord their God” (Judith 4:2). This is why they’re holding out. And this is why it’s totally unacceptable for them to even contemplate surrender, whether immediately (as the crowds clamor for) or after a few days (Uzziah’s compromise).

You can’t turn forsake God for the sake of ease and comfort, or even for your physical well-being. If you want to know why the USCCB hasn’t been bought off by any of the HHS Mandate “compromises,” your answer is here. It doesn’t matter that Uzziah’s approach is better than the people’s: both are wrong, and must be rejected.

August Riedel, Judith (1840)

And this is the point at which Judith finally enters the scene, eight Chapters in the Book bearing her name. She summons the elders, rebuking them for both of the errors just discussed. First, she criticizes their desire to put God on their own timetable (Judith 8:11-13):

“Listen to me, rulers of the people of Bethu′lia! What you have said to the people today is not right; you have even sworn and pronounced this oath between God and you, promising to surrender the city to our enemies unless the Lord turns and helps us within so many days. Who are you, that have put God to the test this day, and are setting yourselves up in the place of God among the sons of men? You are putting the Lord Almighty to the test—but you will never know anything! […] For if he does not choose to help us within these five days, he has power to protect us within any time he pleases, or even to destroy us in the presence of our enemies.”

Judith then criticizes the elders for threatening God with apostasy (Judith 8:16-17):

“Do not try to bind the purposes of the Lord our God; for God is not like man, to be threatened, nor like a human being, to be won over by pleading. Therefore, while we wait for his deliverance, let us call upon him to help us, and he will hear our voice, if it pleases him.”

The elders and the people of Bethulia speak of God, and even when they contemplate apostasy, they put it in pretty religious terms. So often, we do this: we’ll pray things like “God, if you don’t want me to do this, give me some kind of sign,” even when we know the course of action is wrong. But that’s threatening God: give me a sign, or I’ll embrace this sin. Judith shows us what true faith looks like, holding fast to God on His schedule, even if it entails suffering or death. And if we want Him to move faster then He seems to be, our recourse is to “call upon Him to help us,” rather than threatening Him or telling Him what to do.