Regarding Ryan’s ruminations on S.M. Hutchens’ review of E.O. Wilson’s The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (warning: I’ve read neither the book nor the review, just Ryan’s post about them), I think Ryan has it right in concluding that in Wilson’s account of Christianity “nature has become only a vehicle for supernature.”

It’s easy enough to see how this might happen. Suppose that, as Aristotle and Aquinas and eudaimonistic ethicists generally have thought, there is a natural end for man knowable by human reason and that this end is normative for human beings in the sense that human beings should order their actions to it. Suppose further that some religion teaches that there is some other end disclosed by God in revelation and that religious believers ought to treat this other end as normative, ordering their actions to it rather than to any other. If all this is the case, then it’s easy to see that those pursuing the natural end for human beings and those pursuing the supernaturally revealed one have adopted quite different agendas and that these agendas may come into conflict.

The solution to this problem in the Catholic moral tradition has been to point out that a difference of ends need not make for a conflict of ends if the one end is appropriately subsumed within the other. For example, the end of running an excellent emergency room need not conflict with that of running an excellent hospital, and the end of being a good father need not conflict with that of being a good man, for in each case the former end is subsumed in the latter. Hence, the Catholic tradition has taught that the natural end for human beings is subsumed within the supernatural end, with the result that there is no conflict between them. Although the supernatural end, as something grander and more expansive than the natural end, requires us to do more than the natural end does, nevertheless no action enjoined by the supernatural end is contrary to the natural end (theology never commands what natural ethics knows to be wrong), and every action contrary to the natural end is also contrary to the supernatural one (what natural ethics forbids, theology forbids too). This is one of the things Catholic theologians have traditionally meant when they said that grace does not destroy nature but perfects its.

It’s worth pointing out in this context that Wilson seems to be writing against some of the Protestant traditions, not the Catholic one. If a person thinks that nature is wholly corrupt, that there is no natural morality knowable by human reason, that grace completely supplants nature, that the basis of morality is the divine command and not the essences of things as created by God—and some Protestant theologians can plausibly be read as having said such things—then all bets are off. Then there really can develop a conflict between a natural human morality and a supernatural, divinely revealed one.

In the Catholic Church, today is the memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In the Office of Readings for the day, we find this passage by Thomas:

The Cross exemplifies every virtue

Why did the Son of God have to suffer for us? There was a great need, and it can be considered in a twofold way: in the first place, as a remedy for sin, and secondly, as an example of how to act.

It is a remedy, for, in the face of all the evils which we incur on account of our sins, we have found relief through the passion of Christ. Yet, it is no less an example, for the passion of Christ completely suffices to fashion our lives.

Whoever wishes to live perfectly should do nothing but disdain what Christ disdained on the cross and desire what he desired, for the cross exemplifies every virtue.

If you seek the example of love: Greater love than this no man has, than to lay down his life for his friends. Such a man was Christ on the cross. And if he gave his life for us, then it should not be difficult to bear whatever hardships arise for his sake.

If you seek patience, you will find no better example than the cross. Great patience occurs in two ways: either when one patiently suffers much, or when one suffers things which one is able to avoid and yet does not avoid. Christ endured much on the cross, and did so patiently, because when he suffered he did not threaten; he was led like a sheep to the slaughter and he did not open his mouth. Therefore Christ’s patience on the cross was great. In patience let us run for the prize set before us, looking upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who, for the joy set before him, bore his cross and despised the shame.

If you seek an example of humility, look upon the crucified one, for God wished to be judged by Pontius Pilate and to die.

If you seek an example of obedience, follow him who became obedient to the Father even unto death. For just as by the disobedience of one man, namely, Adam, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one man, many were made righteous.

If you seek an example of despising earthly things, follow him who is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Upon the cross he was stripped, mocked, spat upon, struck, crowned with thorns, and given only vinegar and gall to drink.

Do not be attached, therefore, to clothing and riches, because they divided my garments among themselves. Nor to honours, for he experienced harsh words and scourgings. Nor to greatness of rank, for weaving a crown of thorns they placed it on my head. Nor to anything delightful, for in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

For a nice introduction to his philosophical thought, check out the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (written by Ralph McInerny and John O’Callaghan).

The Eve of St. Agnes—Green Bay, 2008
John Keats for Today’s Reader

Saint Agnes Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was,
The coach for all his sweaters was acold;
The team limped weakly through the frozen grass,
And bundled were the fans, a woolly fold.
Numb were the passer’s fingers as his hold
Embraced the ball and flung a mighty pass.
It flew like cannon from a warship old,
Seemed taking flight for heaven, without a death,
To the alert receiver, while his prayer he saith.

—A. Dulles, S.J.

Time to apply for the Junior Fellowship at First Things. As I wrote last year, here are

Some of the Things You Might Do As a First Things Junior Fellow (Not All in One Week):

Monday, 3 pm: First Things editorial meeting; 8 pm: $15 tickets for Wagner’s Die Walküre at the Metropolitan Opera

Tuesday: Read the New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Claremont Review of Books, and Books and Culture. (And take out the recycling at home.)

Wednesday: Read manuscript submissions and write a daily article or a post for the blog.

Thursday, 2:30 pm: Edit article or blog post with Jody Bottum; 8:00 pm: Performance of David Ives’ adaptation of Mark Twain’s Is He Dead? at the Lyceum Theater near Times Square

Friday, 11 am: Email about new and upcoming books with the editor of Books and Culture.

Saturday, 7 pm: Night prayer, drinks, and dinner with Richard John Neuhaus, Fr. Joseph Koterski, and Avery Cardinal Dulles

I’ve finally gotten around to reading the new issue of The New Atlantis. For those not familiar with it, The New Atlantis is published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and has legitimate claim to being America’s premiere “Journal of Technology and Society.” In this new issue, S. M Hutchens, senior editor of Touchstone, reviews E. O. Wilson’s The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. Wilson’s book is written as an extended letter to an Evangelical Baptist pastor, so having Hutchens (a theologian in the Evangelical Lutheran tradition) respond makes considerable sense. (Readers of First Things may remember the review of The Creation that Stephen Barr wrote for us here.)

The main thrust of Hutchens’ review is the contrast between humanist views (like Wilson’s) of creation and Biblical accounts. As Hutchens sees it:

One of the more exasperating characteristics of the biblical God is that He, inferior to greater souls in this regard, seems to evince very little reverence for life. By this I mean His attitude toward the biological life we prize so highly in ourselves and by natural extension in other living things seems to be entirely, and jealously, proprietary, and that what we would bestow more generously, had we the power, He, in accordance with His own lights, keeps short and difficult. We humans in particular, who would be gods, He quickly recycles: “Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”

The scriptures show him removing life from the whole earth when men displease Him, contemplating this event not only once, but twice, “the fire next time.” The attitude that seems to please Him most toward this gift which seems so precious to us that we are constantly tempted to define our being by it is “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away—Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”

He goes on to explain the difference this makes:

The principal difference in the horizons against which orthodox Christianity and earth-piety work is that the earth as it presently exists is the eschatological telos of the latter’s vision, while for the former it is subsumed under the more general category of Creation. The concept of Creation carries with it belief in the biblical God as its Creator, and thus acquires subordination to a purpose in which it exists not as the end of a vision, as it must be to non-theists who believe in no other home, but a means to the accomplishment of a divine purpose that transcends and shall eventually subsume it.

Here, then, is the first inescapable offense Christianity gives to earth-piety: the earth as we know it empirically is not a final thing but a first creation. The second offense is that Christianity’s principal reason for the earth’s existence is to serve the cause of human redemption, to be defined and carried out not by what seems reasonable to man, but the purpose and method of God. The earth is presented to the faith as sacramental, and as sacrament its end is to be consumed so that a second and higher Creation may come. Its end is as the end of man who has been made from and returns to its dust, who must pass away so the Second and Eternal Man can arise to take his place in a new heaven and earth, the old having passed away. It is difficult to exaggerate the breadth and depth of the chasm that exists between biblical religion and earth-piety.

I don’t know what I think about this. For whatever reason my initial reaction was that Hutchens has overstated his case. But I’m no expert on the theological status of creation. Still, this seems just a little too other-worldly, and a little too “Man is the ‘only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake.’” (That, of course, is a quote from the Second Vatican Council; in the broad contours, Hutchens has obviously gotten it exactly right.) So maybe it’s just the emphasis. The impression one gets is that nature has become only a vehicle for supernature. The nature-supernature debates are well-known in Christian anthropology and moral theology circles; do they undergird the debates over environmental stewardship as well?

Anyway, give Hutchens’ entire review a read. And you might want to check out the symposium on Hannah Arendt’s “The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man,” also in the new issue of The New Atlantis. And if you like what you read, you might want to subscribe to The New Atlantis.

The US has “In God We Trust,” the French have “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” but the British don’t have anything. And they seem to like it that way. Recently the Times of London sponsored a motto-writing contest, the winner of which being, “No motto please, we’re British.” The story of the British and their potential motto provides another example of European nations trying to find their national identity in the midst of immigration and other societal changes. The New York Times article covering this story, however, did not involve many grave matters. It ends with the following exchange from the House of Lords that sums up the British better than any motto could:

After Lord Hunt’s assurances that the government had no plans for a motto and his colleagues’ insistence on discussing one anyway, Lord Conwy had a thought. Why, he asked, could they not just use the French “Dieu et mon droit,” which means “God and my right?”

Lord Hunt replied: “As the noble lord will know, that represents the divine right of kings. While it is of course a well-known phrase, one would need to reflect on whether that would be entirely relevant to a motto that we are not going to have.”

I’ve been following the somewhat acrimonious debate over the extent of the biblical canon and the place of the Apocrypha in it that has been taking place between some Reformed (James White, William Webster, and James Swan) and Catholic folk (Gary Michuta and Steven K. Ray) on their respective blogs. (See here, here, and by way of Reformed Catholicism here for the Protestant side, and here, here, and here for the Catholic.)

The Prots have the better historical argument on this one (but, being a Prot, I would say that), following St. Jerome, who is cited, for example, in the Thirty-nine Articles in an aside precisely about the apocryphal books:

And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following:

The Third Book of Esdras
The Fourth Book of Esdras
The Book of Tobias
The Book of Judith
The rest of the Book of Esther
The Book of Wisdom
Jesus the Son of Sirach
Baruch the Prophet
The Song of the Three Children
The Story of Susanna
Of Bel and the Dragon
The Prayer of Manasses
The First Book of Maccabees
The Second Book of Maccabees

Nevertheless, in reading through a chapter of N.T. Wright’s New Testament People of God, I was taken by a passage from the Wisdom of Solomon that Wright quotes for the purpose of situating his readers in the prophetical/eschatological mindset of first-century Jews. Wisdom 2:12-20 is worth reproducing at length:

Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for sins against the law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord.
He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
the very sight of him is a burden to us,
because his manner of life is unlike that of others,
and his ways are strange.
We are considered by him as something base,
and he avoids our ways as unclean;
he calls the last end of the righteous happy,
and boasts that God is his father.
Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him,
and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
Let us test him with insult and torture,
so that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected.

I am ashamed to say that this past Saturday is the first time I can remember ever encountering these stunning verses. It seems to me that “Protestant Bibles” that do not have the apocryphal books are missing rich material that most certainly would have informed to some degree the Apostles’ own thinking about the relation of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection to the suffering of Israel and the promises of God to redeem that suffering and liberate them from oppression. Certainly there are echoes of the Wisdom of Solomon in Paul. This does not, ipso facto, make the apocryphal books canonical; there is also a cryptic allusion to the Assumption of Moses in Jude, and no Christian church includes the pseudepigrapha in its lectionary. (Though see this interesting interpretation of the passage in question by Jonathan Edwards that, if tenable, makes the issue moot.) Paul also cites approvingly the works of a Greek playwright, which doesn’t mean that, if the complete works of Menander were to be unearthed in a clay pot somewhere, our New Testament would expand to accommodate them, with Sunday school classes adding papier-mâché skene buildings to their Christmas pageants.

But is it time to revive the Reformation practice of including the Apocrypha in Bibles published for Protestant churches as a deuterocanon (which is most probably how these books functioned throughout much of church history, however you parse the vote or scholarship at Trent).

Lutheran Pastor Paul McCain asked this question a couple of months back on his Cyberbrethren blog:

How is it that the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod did in fact have the Apocryphal books in its Bibles right up to the very time when they moved to English? One can see that every German Bible printed by Concordia Publishing House [and very beautifully printed I might add!] had the Apocryphal books, but one is hard pressed to find any English Bible sold by CPH starting in the early 20th century that contains the Apocrypha.

And so is it time we Reformation Christians repair to our roots and thicken our Bibles for the sake of enriching our understanding of first-century Jewish theo-thought, and, by extension, that of the biblical authors themselves?

I’d say yes.