Based on Rob’s recent comments on matters eschatological, I think he and I agree that even the secularist can come to realize that some things about the physical world are destined to come to an end, such as the life of the planet and the life of each human being. I would characterize the important questions he properly raises from a different perspective about the role of Christian in teaching about the future of the human race that should have a role in the development of law and public policy.
Today many believers and unbelievers conclude that the human race is unnecessarily degrading the planet and hastening if not an end then certainly avoidable yet harmful consequences for Earth and all its inhabitants. In an earlier period, from the 1950s to the very early 1980s, the human-generated threat of global disaster was primarily viewed as general thermonuclear war rather than environmental degradation. It seems that we have avoided the former but now face the latter. In either case, we see the capacity of man to harm substantially if not destroy the human race and the world that surrounds and sustains it. While averting man-made disaster is crucial, it is not the only matter which the Christian, or for that matter the secularist, should be concerned.
There is, when all is said, the matter of salvation, the matter of redemption, the matter of eternity. The secularist may not be too interested in these. He or she may say: I don’t believe; therefore, I am not concerned. But, can the believer, the Christian, the Catholic take the same approach? My answer is: no! And why do I suggest this is so?
To borrow from Jacob Marley (a realization made a bit too late by him), “Humanity was my business!” But just what about humanity is my/our business? It may be that the conflagration of the Earth by the Sun is more than just a few years ago, as Rob properly states. However, the end of each of our earthly lives is far closer at hand. This factor, too, is scientifically verifiable like the Earth’s conflagration by the Sun. While that collective end-time may be quite remote, the personal one is close at hand. It is quite a challenge to translate this issue into matters with which public policy, Barry Lynn, and the ACLU can agree. So, I come to Rob’s “bigger question”: how does the theist base his or her political position that will be accessible to the secularist? On what grounds does the disciple rely?
Let me offer a humble and modest suggestion by posing a question for the secularist who has at least an equal share in the direction of public policy as does the theist: have you thought about the future? The secularist may dismiss the direction in which my inquiry is going, i.e., in an eschatological path. All I can do then is to propose that the secularist reflect on something that he or she may have never considered. And how might I do this? Let me offer the following illustration:
I could say, “You may be right, Secularist, that it is all over when we die. But I ask you to consider the following: we both will die (however that happens), and this event is inevitable. You may look at me and say, ‘see I (the Secularist) was right. You have wasted a lifetime.’ But, my suggestion to you is this: But if I (the theist) am right, I will not have wasted a lifetime, but you will have wasted an eternity.”
I wonder what the Secularist’s response will be to this exchange? It could well be an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. But in the meantime, it is my responsibility to demonstrate to this person, through proposition rather than imposition, why the secularist approach is lacking and mine is not. This is evangelization simple and proper and of which I spoke earlier today in my posting on the recent Doctrinal Note issued by the CDF [HERE]. I don’t think I have satisfactorily addressed all the nuances raised by Rob—but this is a life-long enterprise for me and those other believers who acknowledge that the human salvation that is at stake goes beyond the present moment and the planet on which we live it. RJA sj
This from Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture:
“[P]lease keep in mind that our 2008 annual Fall conference: The Family: Searching for Fair Love, will take place November 6-8, 2008. We believe this theme will prove very timely. In 2008 the Church will celebrate important anniversaries of Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968), and Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), and we have also noticed that Pope Benedict’s message for the celebration of the World Day of Peace on January 1, 2008, already available on the Vatican website, takes the family as its central theme. In that message the Holy Father says that “The natural family, as an intimate communion of life and love, based on marriage between a man and a woman, constitutes “the primary place of ‘humanization’ for the person and society,” and a “cradle of life and love.”” Our 2008 annual Fall conference will aim both to explore and to promote the Holy Father’s exaltation of the family as the primary place of humanization for the person and society.”
Chris Eberle writes:
Just a quick note about Rob Vischer’s recent post. I take it that Rob’s view is that “the creation of the perception of imminent death” by way of “extreme physical suffering” is a sufficient condition of torture – waterboarding is torture because it does just that. That doesn’t seem to be to be right. After all, creating the perception (and reality) of imminent death by way of extreme physical suffering is what soldiers do to enemy combatants all the time, but killing, wounding and maiming enemy combatants isn’t torture. Moreover, many American soldiers undergo waterboarding, during which the aim is to create the perception (without the reality) of imminent death by way of extreme physical suffering. But waterboarding is not torture in those cases, or, if it is, then it’s permissible torture. Perhaps that’s why, as I was wandering through the hall here in Annapolis, it was hard to find someone who thinks waterboarding is torture.
Of course, that hardly settles the issue – we can’t rely on the expertise of military folks to determine whether we should engage in waterboarding if for no other reason than that they are divided on that matter. For what it’s worth, I think that we ought not engage in that practice – that’s where my gut is – but it’s very difficult to specify what it is about that practice that’s so heinous. Neither Rob’s post nor the editorial from the Armed Forces Journal helps remove that perplexity.
Readers might be interested, by the way, in this post of mine ("What Is 'Torture'?"), over at the Vox Nova blog, and also in the many interesting comments.
The Tablet
Dec. 22, 2007
Lowest-paid give most to charity, Tablet survey finds
Isabel de Bertodano
PEOPLE ON the lowest incomes will be among those donating most generously to the Church and to charities this Christmas.
The results of a Tablet survey
show that more than a quarter of people on salaries of less than
£20,000 a year will give in excess of £100 to charity at Christmas,
while 5 per cent will also give the same amount to the Church. The
survey, completed by visitors to The Tablet's website and subscribers to our enewsletter, shows
that the vast majority of people give a special donation to charity at
Christmas. Most tend to donate a larger sum to charities than they do
to collections at Christmas Masses.
Nonetheless,
more than half of respondents said they would be giving at least £20 to
the Church, with 20 per cent of those on large salaries giving in
excess of £100. Priests rely on Christmas to boost their income, with
all donations put into collections at Midnight Mass and on Christmas
Day going straight to the clergy rather than into the parish coffers.
Fr Tom Jordan, chairman of the National Conference of Priests, said
Christmas was essential to priests but that many felt awkward about
asking people to give generously. "It is the mainstay of clergy income
and for our financial existence," he said. "A tradition has built up
and the collections are bigger at Christmas but I'm not sure if
parishioners always realise how important it is to us." However, it is
to charities that people give really generously. Among respondents to
our survey 40 per cent of people said they would be giving more than
£100, while just over 3 per cent planned to give in excess of £1,000.
Around 700 people responded to our survey, which also found that people
prefer to give directly to charity at Christmas rather than buying
"alternative gifts" for friends and family such as goats or latrines
for the developing world.
While
57 per cent of all respondents said they were not planning to buy any
alternative gifts this year, 70 per cent of these people said they
would make a special donation to charity instead.
Seton Hall law prof David Opderbeck, an evangelical, offers this response to my "Just Passing Through" post:
This reflects an interesting tension in the evangelical community right now. I think the "just passing through" sentiment is indeed a hindrance to environmental stewardship in the large segments of the American evangelical community that are tied into premillennial dispensational theology. Premillennial Dispensational theology, as popularized in the "Left Behind" novels, posits distinct historical breaks in the manner in which God deals with people. Currently, in this system, we live in a time when the Church's primary mission is evangelization. This time will end immanently when Jesus returns to remove the Church from the earth (the "rapture"). A seven year period of judgment will follow the rapture (the "tribulation"). After the tribulation, Jesus will return again with the Church to physically reign from David's throne for 1000 years (the "millennium"). At the end of the millennium, people will again rebel and the earth will be destroyed, along with all the rest of the existing creation, to be replaced by an entirely new heavens and earth. For many premillennial dispensationalists, environmental stewardship merely distracts the Church from its primary mission of evangelization and is in any event fruitless in light of the coming tribulation.
In contrast, a growing number of American evangelials have embraced a more classically Reformed understanding of creation and eschatology. In this view, part of the Church's present task is to participate in the redemption of all creation. Under at least some versions of this Reformed understanding, this task will be completed at Christ's return, at which time the present earth will be transformed into its final eschatological state as the home of God's resurrected people; the "replacement" view of creation in eschatology is rejected. Thus, "creation care" today is in some sense a way of participating in the process by which all of creation is being redeemed in Christ. See, for example, the eschatological thrust of the "Evangelical Declaration on Creation Care" published by the Evangelical Environmental Network.
Yet another version of Christian environmentalism is rooted in process or quasi-process theological views about creation such as those promoted by Ted Peters and John Polkinghorne. In Ted Peters' view, for example, the "omega point" of creation is the end of an evolutionary process by which God is bringing all of creation towards a harmonious telos. You can hear echoes of Teilhard de Chardin here. This sort of view is outside the mainstream of American evangelicalism, but some U.K. and American evangelicals involved in faith-and-science discussions are attracted to it.
