Christianity

An Outline of Catholic Apologetics

Drafted by Stratford Caldecott

1 God

The Mystery at the source of our being

'Somewhere there is something worthy of belief' (Alfred Bester).

To start with, drop all your preconceptions about what 'God' means. Let us start by using the word to refer to that which causes the universe – whether that cause is a thing or a person, intelligent or stupid, alive or dead, a kind of energy or just a mathematical equation.

Now, does the universe need a cause? What if it existed forever and never had a beginning? But even something that exists forever needs a reason for existing forever. That is to say, if we are to understand the world, we have to work out what causes it to be the way it is, the reason it exists. Of course, we could decide not to try to understand the world. (If you don't want to understand you can stop reading now.)

So the question is not really, Does God exist? but What sort of a thing must God be, in order to be able to provide an adequate explanation for the world? It is often argued that because the world contains conscious, intelligent life, the cause of the world must also be conscious and intelligent. Because we are conscious, thinking, willing, loving persons, God must be all those things, only more so. Let us consider that possibility, and the objections to it.

It would be ridiculous to think that God is like an old man in the sky. How like us can he be? If you or I were promoted to being God for a day, would we permit innocent children to be tortured and abused, or sickness and death to ravage the planet? God obviously does allow (very) bad things to happen to good people. So either he doesn't care or he can't care – perhaps because he is not a person at all, but only an impersonal force or inhuman disembodied intelligence or mathematical equation).

That is why many people decide to call themselves atheists. It is not that they don't believe that the universe has a cause, but they can't see how that cause could be anything worthy of worship. Therefore they prefer to avoid using a loaded word like 'God' to describe it.

But there are other possibilities. Perhaps God is conscious and intelligent after all, and does care about the evil in the world, and in fact cares about it more than we do, but either has a good reason for letting all those things happen, or cannot prevent them happening.

Some people would say no reason could be good enough to justify the agony of one innocent child. Even the happiness of millions of other people would not justify it. Maybe that is true. Certainly the Catholic Church teaches that we must never commit an evil act (like torturing a child) in order that good may come of it, or to save the life of another person. Should we not apply the same principle to God?

Similarly, if we decide that God must be powerless to prevent evils from happening, is that not inconsistent with Catholic belief in God's omnipotence, and also the belief in miracles? (If he can sometimes do miracles, why not always?)

Hinduism does not have the same problem with these questions as Christianity. According to the Hindu tradition, there are many gods, some of them cruel (such as Kali), and over all of them one supreme but impersonal deity whose ultimate identity is the same as our own.

Nor does Buddhism face this problem. The Buddha seems to have confined himself to showing people how to escape suffering through inner detachment, refusing to speculate about the existence of a God or gods.

The scriptures of Judaism and Islam present a God who is responsible for the world but often appears cruel, angry, vengeful, and passionate.

It is Christianity that experiences the challenge of evil at its most acute. Rejecting all forms of polytheism, it accepts the Hebrew Scriptures as its own Old Testament, whilst interpreting these in the light of the teaching of Christ and a philosophical conception of God based partly on Greek thought.

The Christian can regard the gods of Hinduism as representing aspects of divinity presented in mythological imagery. The impersonal Absolute, Brahman, is the divine nature without relationships of any kind. But Judaism and Islam show a God who is entering into a specific relationship with men (a covenant), and who in this context is passionate on behalf of his chosen people. Christianity goes further.

The Christian God is Father, Son, and Spirit, and his relationship with a chosen people has been transformed (through the assumption of human nature) into a personal relationship with all men. This relationship is no longer that of a Creator to his creation, leaving the Absolute unaffected and untouched. It is a relationship established through personal friendship and self-sacrifice on both sides.

The God who enters his creation in this way, through Incarnation, does not do so in order to force it into obedience. Instead he becomes subject to it, and suffers in himself the pain that is the result of evil deeds throughout history. He renounces the exercise of omnipotence in order to heal and transform the world from within. He does so by giving his creatures reason for faith, hope, love, and joy in the midst of suffering.

Remaining objections.

It is not permitted to do evil in order to achieve good – for example to torture a child in order to save others. However, the crucial question is where responsibility lies. To allow an evil act to be committed is not always the same as committing it oneself. Even if I could prevent you, I would not necessarily be to blame if I refrained on the grounds that many others would certainly suffer as a result of my action. In that case the responsibility would still be yours. Having created men, God permits them to commit sins, and judges them accordingly. Nor does he escape the consequences himself, for the agony of the innocent who suffer at the hands of sinners is experienced by God in the person of the Son.

As for miracles (such as extraordinary healings), these do occur but not at random, and not simply in response to human need. There must be a particular combination of holiness and receptivity to create the conditions for a miracle. Even Jesus could not perform miracles where there was no faith. But with or without miracles, everything that happens does so for a reason, even the worst of natural evils.

Evils can exist in the world because the world is not God. A world without evil would be perfect. A perfect world is in the process of being created: it is called heaven. But heaven depends on our being perfectly united with God, which can only come about through the use of our free will. Free will is what created the imperfect world in the first place, by committing the original sin. That sin separated the world from God. God is therefore in the process of saving his creation by means of the Incarnation. But it is a process, not instantaneous, and until it is completed the imperfections remain.

[The rest of this Outline is incomplete, but notes follow.]

Anselm's Ontological Argument (a Christian 'koan' from the 11th century)

The Absolute does not 'exist' like a thing; it 'subsists'. It does not stand out among other things in the world; it stands under them.

Anselm's argument runs: I am thinking of something than which nothing greater can be thought (God). I know that it is greater to be than not to be. Therefore what I am thinking of must exist.

Note. In The Shadow of Scotus: Philosophy and Faith in Pre-Reformation Scotland (T&T Clark, 1995, pp. 10-11, 71-2), Alexander Broadie claims that Anselm is not trying to prove that God exists – in the sense that something known by faith would then be known by reason. He draws attention to the fact that Anselm distinguishes God, who truly exists (in the Preface and Ch. 2 of the Proslogion), from all else, which scarcely exists (in the Monologion). The argument is intended to establish the nature of divine existence. 'Starting with the concept of a being greater than which cannot be thought, Anselm demonstrates that such a being cannot not exist, as contrasted with every created thing, which has only contingent existence. The conclusion of the argument therefore, is that God has necessary existence' (my emphasis).

I am not entirely convinced by this. It seems to me more attention should be given to Anselm's use of terms such as 'think' and 'understand'. In his Reply to Gaunilo this becomes very clear. When we think of that than which a greater cannot be thought (which is God) we are 'thinking of something which cannot even be thought [i.e. posited, imagined] not to exist'. His emphasis is always on the thinker, who is positing God and cannot posit something contradictory – therefore cannot posit a God that does not exist (and who in that case would not be God, because a 'greater', i.e. more godlike God, could be posited, namely one that did exist).

To posit or to think of God at all we must be thinking of something that necessarily exists: to that extent Broadie is quite right. But Anselm's argument is not primarily a philosophical exercise, but a trick (a 'Christian koan' like the koans of the Zen masters) to make us think of God. He is not – or at least not consistently – concerned with the process of thinking about thinking about God, but rather about the process of thinking about God.

The Five Ways (by St Thomas Aquinas): God as the bedrock of reality

Each of the 'ways' is like a signpost:

1. From observed motion/change: God as the Prime Mover

2. From the need of causation: God as the First Cause

3. From the contingency of things: God as the one Necessary Reality

4. From observed degrees of perfection: God as the Most Perfect

5. From apparent purposefulness and design: God as the Final Cause and End

According to Aquinas, the First Being or Principle differs from all else by the fact that its nature is simply 'to be' (esse). The nature of anything else is to be something in particular. In other words, the existence of each created thing is limited to this or that particular set of (positive) attributes or qualities that reflect some aspect of the divine infinity. From the infinite 'fulness' of Being (esse) derive the Divine Attributes or 'Names' such as Unity, Simplicity, Perfection, Goodness, Beauty, Wisdom, Eternity...

Maritain's 'Sixth Way'

From the intuition of my own 'pre-existence': God as the Original Self

The Thomist writer Jacques Maritain points out that it is impossible to think of ourselves as not existing before our birth. In his view this indicates that the self is conscious of having always been known and thought by God.

Newman's argument from Conscience

That is, the universal sense that there is an objective Right and Wrong, and therefore there must be a Lawgiver, whose voice can be heard within.

Pascal's Wager (an argument of last resort)

If human reason or intuition cannot resolve the question, it is safer to assume God exists, and to act accordingly. You lose nothing, and there is eternity to gain!

2. JESUS CHRIST

The Historical Evidence

Josephus, etc.

Birth of the historical-critical method

The modern (often misguided) search for 'the historical Jesus' separate from 'the Christ of faith' (Schweitzer, the 'Jesus Seminar', etc.)

The Authority of Scripture (Catechism 101-141)

Gospels as historical/ literary documents

Scripture in Tradition (see also Catechism 80-82)

Ways of reading the Bible (see The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, 1993)

The 'Four Senses' of Scripture (2-4 are 'spiritual', or interior, reading with the 'eyes of faith'):

1. Literal (understood according to literary genre)

2. Allegorical (seeing the New Testament in the Old)

3. moral (instructions for action here and now)

4. anagogical (glimpses of eternity, leading us to our destiny)

Salvation History

A series of Covenants

The history of a people is like the history of a soul; the Bible is the life-story of the People of God

Encounter with a Personality

The man at the centre of Time

Readings from G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, and Luigi Giussani

The Uniqueness of the Claim

The claim to be divine (comparison with other religions)

The Resurrection (comparison with other religions)

Impact of Christ on subsequent history

Evidence of Prayer

No good talking about God if we are not prepared to talk to God

Witness of the Saints

Saints (those who have lived their faith well) as the best exegetes/ interpreters of Scripture

3. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Nature/ Purpose of the Church (Catechism 748-975, on Art. 9 of the Creed)

Church a 'sacramental' reality, not primarily sociological

Church as extension of the Incarnation

Covenant – People of God – Body of Christ

Soul of the Church (Holy Spirit)

The Church and the Bible: Did Jesus found the Church?

Revelation of Christ entrusted to the Church

Sacraments, Creeds, Teachings, Tradition, Scripture, Prayer

The Bible is the product of the Church; the Church is not the product of the Bible

Apostolic succession and the 'Petrine principle'

Texts concerning St Peter and the Apostles

The historical reality of the Papacy

'In communion with Peter'

Authority in the Church

Guardianship of Revelation entrusted to Church as a whole (communio)

Levels of authority/certainty

Limitations of infallibility

Infallibility not 'impeccability'

Sin and corruption in the Church

The wheat and the tares (weeds)

Repentance, conversion, purification, healing

In herself the Church is holy; in us she is sinful

In Mary the Church already exists and is spotless

Divisions in the Church

The command to be 'one'

Tree: roots, trunk and branches

True Church 'subsists in' the Catholic Church (Lumen Gentium 8)

Membership of the Church

'No salvation outside the Church'

Visible and invisible membership

Implicit Baptism; Baptism of Desire

Holiness and truth in the Church and outside

Good pagans

Seeds of truth

The 'wider ecumenism'

Integration

SOME QUOTATIONS ABOUT GOD

'We hope to explain the entire universe in a single, simple formula you can wear on your T-shirt.... I think we're on the threshold of finding God.' – a scientist at Fermi Lab in 1983 [presumably he's still looking]

Aliquid est, ergo Deus est: 'Something exists, therefore God exists' – Medieval Schoolmen

'Words and thoughts cannot reach him, and he cannot be seen by the eye. How then can he be perceived except by one who says, He is?' – The Katha Upanishad

'God is at home. It is we who have gone out for a walk.' – Meister Eckhart