The Cosmology Of Jesus: Does It Matter?

The Cosmology of Jesus: Does It Matter?

John W. Proctor God, Man and the Universe 201-0101 28 February, 2006

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There is no small amount of confusion today over what a Christian should believe. The encroachment of modernism into the disciplines of theology has introduced an enormous body of doubt about the supernatural character of our religion, the reliability of our Tradition and the authenticity of the scriptures. I recall many years ago when engaging in a discussion about this with fellow believers that an uneducated yet devout woman interjected, “if Jesus believed it, I believe it.” Her unwittingly profound confession changed my life. Indeed, as the Psalmist says, “From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength; Because of Your adversaries, To make the enemy and the revengeful cease.”1

The truth is not reserved for scholars; indeed St. Paul reminds us that academics offer no sure understanding of revelation: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. “2

And this is confirmed by Jesus Himself: “At that time Jesus said, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”3

Clearly, the New Testament delineates between that understanding which may be apprehended by reason and that reason which is informed by revelation. 1

New American Bible, © 1991 by Greenlawn Press; Ps. 8:2 Ibid, 1 Cor. 1:20 3 Ibid, Matthew 11:25 2

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Kingdoms in Conflict That we are engaged in spiritual combat with the evil one is a plain and foundational reality in Christian belief, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to demonstrate this. The Catechism teaches “In this petition [lead us not into temptation], evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos) is the one who “throws himself across” God‟s plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.”4

The Apostles taught this as well: “We know that we belong to God, and the whole world is under the power of the evil one.”5

The Apostles developed the application of this conflict by citing that concord with the world was tantamount to hostility towards God, whose kingdom is diametrically opposed to Satan‟s animation of the world: “Adulterers! Do you not know that to be a lover of the world means enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wants to be a lover of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”6

St. Augustine‟s monumental classic “City of God” was dedicated to this very subject; St. Thomas Aquinas cites St. Gregory as a source for explaining that “in this visible world, nothing occurs without the agency of invisible creatures”.7 The kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan (the world) are in conflict; the Kingdom of God is also referred to as the kingdom of light and the devil as the prince of darkness, a dichotomy between truth and error, or orthodoxy and heresy.

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Catechism of the Catholic Church, © 1994, Ligouri Publications, art. 2851 NAB, 1 John 5:19 6 Ibid, Jas. 4:4 7 Thomas Aquinas, Tour of Summa Theologica, Glenn, © 1978 Tan Publishing Co. 5

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The Encroachment of Rationalism in the Church The Popes of the 20th Century expended herculean effort to address the encroachment of modernism, the child of rationalism which is identified by Leo XIII as the chief enemy of the Church: “Now, we have to meet the Rationalists, true children and inheritors of the older heretics, who, trusting in their turn to their own way of thinking, have rejected even the scraps and remnants of Christian belief which had been handed down to them. They deny that there is any such thing as revelation or inspiration, or Holy Scripture at all; they see, instead, only the forgeries and the falsehoods of men; they set down the Scripture narratives as stupid fables and Iying stories: the prophecies and the oracles of God are to them either predictions made up after the event or forecasts formed by the light of nature; the miracles and the wonders of God's power are not what they are said to be, but the startling effects of natural law, or else mere tricks and myths; and the Apostolic Gospels and writings are not the work of the Apostles at all.”8

Pius XII cites the serpentine encroachment of these „isms‟: “These and other errors, it is clear, have crept in among certain of our sons who are deceived by imprudent zeal for souls or by false science.”9

Pius XII goes even further in identifying the tie between rationalism, modernism and communism, the form of human government founded on atheistic evolution: “Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.”10

The obvious link between Satan and the forces of rationalism/modernism and its effect on orthodoxy are clear. Any theologian that begins the task of exegesis with the a priori world view of evolution will do violence to the truth.

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Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, © 1952 Wipf and Stock Publishers Ibid. 10 Pius XII, Humani Generis 9

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Eschatological Apostasy: Will the Son of Man find faith on the earth? It is well-established that prior to the eschatological climax, there will be a great falling away from the church. This subject is treated at length by St. Paul in II Thessalonians; it also the subject of II Peter and is treated at length in the Johannine epistles, II Timothy, Jude and of course the Apocalypse. Paul is explicit in his teaching on the causes of the apostasy: “And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord (Jesus) will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming, the one whose coming springs from the power of Satan in every mighty deed and in signs and wonders that lie, and in every wicked deceit for those who are perishing because they have not accepted the love of truth so that they may be saved. Therefore, God is sending them a deceiving power so that they may believe the lie, that all who have not believed the truth but have approved wrongdoing may be condemned.”11

This deceiving power (Greek: plane, „fraudulence; subj. a straying from orthodoxy or piety: - deceit, to deceive, delusion, error) is rendered in other translations as “strong delusion”. The prepositional phrase is answering the thesis of “the lie” – which is startlingly translated frequently with the article “the” which is to say, the principle lie or the basic lie. Paul uses the same language when describing the degeneration of the human race in Romans: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”12

The New Testament writers universally conclude that there will be an apostasy in the last days and a wholesale abandoning of the truth.

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NAB, II Thessalonians 2:11 Ibid, Romans 1:25

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It is safe and orthodox to conclude therefore that rationalism and its attendant branches and sprouts of heresy are animated by the devil and pose enormous threat to the children of the Church. Evolution, being the base tenet of rationalism, creeps into the Church by means of those thereby deceived and upsets the entire construct of orthodoxy. There will be a great falling away from the Church in the last days due to a lack of commitment to the truth, and many will be deceived by lies and error. The responsibility of the Church is to proclaim the everlasting Gospel clearly and without compromise. When the Church countenances these rationalistic errors with a simplistic “it could be so”, she unwittingly lets down her guard and is infiltrated by diabolical means. The safe ground for both theology and proclamation is to embrace Jesus Christ, the Godman, and his understanding of cosmology.

The Cosmology of Jesus It is quite in vogue today to dismiss Jesus‟ credulity of the Old Testament and its miracles as expressions of archaic oriental literature. The view that Jesus was “just a man of his times” and was limited anthropologically by scientific understanding simply will not stand up to the scrutiny of examination. If Jesus is, as St. Paul speaks of him allegorically as “the second Adam”13, he is perfect man with perfect knowledge. Indeed, Adam‟s untainted intellect created human science and his understanding of nature is perhaps unparalleled. To Adam was

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Ibid, 1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 5:14

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given dominion over all the earth, its creatures, their governance and the duty of naming it all.14 Another area of contention is Jesus‟ self understanding: did he know he was the Messiah? How this question ever came to be taken seriously is a testimony to the inroads the modernists have made into theology. As Leo XIII said, “They deny that there is any such thing as revelation or inspiration, or Holy Scripture at all; they see, instead, only the forgeries and the falsehoods of men; they set down the Scripture narratives as stupid fables and Iying stories: the prophecies and the oracles of God are to them either predictions made up after the event or forecasts formed by the light of nature…”15

It is a popular heresy, even in the pulpits of Roman Catholic Churches, to explain that the Gospels were written to explain Christian theology and they do not pretend to contain history. It is also commonly alleged that the miracles of Christ were editorial augmentations and that most of his first-person quotes were inserted into his mouth by pious editors. These grievous errors can only be taken seriously by those who wholesale dismiss the Magisterium and the testimony of Holy Tradition. Jesus most certainly understood himself to be the Christ as we have dozens of key passages to resource, most pointedly the one our Church is founded on: Peter‟s profession of Jesus as the Christ of God in Matthew 16:16-18.16 Therefore, if Jesus is perfect man with perfect intellect and power over nature, and understands himself to be God Incarnate, what defect could his cosmological

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Ibid, Gen. 2:19; Ps. 8 Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, © 1952 Wipf and Stock Publishers 16 Ibid, Matthew 16:16-18 15

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understanding possibly possess? The Angelic Doctor sheds invaluable light on this subject in Summa Theologica: “Christ‟s human intellect is enriched with the fullness of infused knowledge. For, by reason of the hypostatic union, the human faculties of our Lord are as perfect as such faculties can possibly be; and to have infused knowledge is a perfection of the human mind. By divinely infused knowledge, Christ as a man knows all that any or all human minds can learn by the rational power (for instance, Christ perfectly knows all human sciences); he also knows all revealed truths, and all truths made known to the human mind by the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the gratuitous graces.”17

The idea that Jesus was a first century simpleton woodenly clinging to Jewish myths about nature is patently absurd. The notion that Jesus knew better but manipulated Jewish symbols to communicate meaningfully with his audience leaves us with a shrewd, conniving Messiah, indulging his people in their ignorance. Both models are unsatisfying but necessary to sustain a syncretism between evolutionary theory and Christian theology. Either Jesus is the God man or he is not; if he is, then his cosmology is utterly trustworthy, and the only safe cosmology for orthodox belief and practice. It is beyond dispute that Jesus gave full credulity to the Bible, the Septuagint being the Bible of his day. Jesus believed in special creation; a literal Adam and Eve; the account of the flood and the destruction of Sodom; the historical person of Abraham; the swallowing of Jonah by a great sea creature; and all the preaching of the prophets, to include their supernatural predictions. Jesus believed in heaven and hell; devils and angels, miracles and gifts of the Spirit; and the eschatological apocalypse. He clearly believed himself to be born of Mary and that God was His Father. His credulity of the prophets show us that 17

Aquinas, Tour; Qq 1-26

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Jesus believed in the eschatological repatriation of the Jewish people for Armageddon and deliverance. Jesus believed that he cast out demons “by the finger of God”.18 How is this compatible with evolution/rationalism/anti-supernaturalism? What must be compromised in order to sustain the marriage between Christianity and evolution? And is there such a thing as Christian evolution?

The Crisis of Syncretism The destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and the Kingdom of Judah in 587 BC was the result of syncretizing the Covenant faith with paganism. Indeed, Elijah, prior to calling God to witness to his offering in the standoff with the priests of Baal, confronts Israel with their double mindedness: “Elijah appealed to all the people and said, "How long will you straddle the issue? If the LORD is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him." The people, however, did not answer him.”19

Judah was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar for its syncretism with idols, which were posted for worship within the temple of the LORD.20 And what was the temptation for the covenant people? They wanted to retain the privileges of the Covenant while espousing the beliefs and practices of the gentiles. Baal is described in the Catholic Encyclopedia as “the god of mountaintops,” the “god of

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Ibid, Luke 11:20 Ibid, 1 Kings 18:21 20 Ibid, Ezechiel 8:5-18 19

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the clouds” – a figure of dominance over nature.21 F.F. Bruce in his work, Israel and the Nations explains “Mannasseh‟s reign allowed the retrograde tendencies of religious syncretism to become so ingrained in the life of the people, and their moral effect was such that no subsequent reformation, like that sponsored by his grandson Josiah, could undo the evil; nothing would serve but the purgatory of national collapse and exile. The worship of the sun and other planetary divinities (“the whole host of heaven”) became an integral element in the national cult in the Jerusalem temple itself. The attendant practices of necromancy, ritual prostitution and even on occasion, human sacrifice – for Manasseh himself, like Ahaz before him is said to have offered up his son as a sacrifice, presumably on some occasion of grave national peril.”22

The practical effect of syncretism was to render the Covenant faith impotent and national disaster was the result. The movement within the Church to embrace evolution is most certainly buoyed up by a self conscious need for relevance. It is worth noting that the Church was admonished by a strident evolutionist in 1934: “The church must get used to the doctrine of blood and race. Just as the Catholic Church could not change the fact that the earth goes round the sun, so the church could not do away with the irrefutable facts which are given in blood and race. Unless they realize that, developments will simply pass them by.”23

The above quote is from Adolf Hitler. Hitler built his entire movement on evolution; his eugenics were the attempt to „select the fittest‟ and develop the master race by eliminating the untermensch – the weaker or „sub humans‟. Will the Church now accept Hitler as its prophet? Will the church be so bent on relevance that it baptizes the most destructive, godless and dangerous philosophy in human history as a way of being „relevant‟? Roy H. Schoeman writes: 21

Catholic Encylcopedia, © 1973 Nelson F.F. Bruce, Israel and the Nations, © 1987 Eerdman‟s, p 73 23 Klaus Scholder, A Requiem for Hitler, © 1989 Trinity Press International 22

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“There is facile temptation to think of Nazi anti-Semitism as an expression of Christianity and Christian theology – “applied Christianity”, if you will. Yet even a cursory examination of Nazi writings and policies shows that this is far from the truth – on the contrary, the campaign to exterminate the Jews grew out of the worldview of secular materialism, of evolution, and the exaltation of the natural over the supernatural, and was in fact, an extreme expression of “applied Darwinism”.24

Evolution was also the philosophical foundation for communism – and it was used by Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot as a rationalization to exterminate millions of people in the 20th century. When the social sciences are derived from the natural science of evolution, the dehumanization of its societies is the natural result. How can Christians merely baptize this pernicious and deadly belief and pretend there is no disagreement between Christ and Darwin? The inexcusable gullibility of Church leaders, especially the Bishops in this regard is scandalous. The system of ethics that flow from evolution and Christianity could not be more disparate. Evolution says „kill the weak‟ while Christ commands „serve the poor‟. And yet it is a fact that most Catholic schools teach this bizarre syncretism of Christianity and evolution, and the Church is facing the same skid into impotence that Judah suffered in the 7th century BC for the same reason. The European Churches are a witness to this decadence.

Syncretism and the Gospel It is embarrassingly apparent that Christian proponents of evolution have not seriously considered its ethical compromise; neither have they admitted to the violence it does to revelation. 24

Roy H. Shoeman, Salvation is from the Jews, © 2003, Ignatius Press

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The Church staunchly defends special creation in the case of Adam; yet this is impossible at worst and dishonest at best if we are to baptize evolution. If God created Adam who had eternal life, how did Adam evolve from previous species that experienced millions of years of death? Here we must compromise not only the narrative in Genesis, but several articles of its religious meaning. And if the world evolved gradually over millions of years, what possible meaning does the Sabbath Day have? Is it alright to flush the Sabbath Day from the record of revelation by interpreting it as a fictional Jewish myth? Did not Jesus identify himself as Lord of the Sabbath?25 If evolution is accepted by the Church, the violence done to revelation is not inconsequential. Now we have the dilemma of either an ignorant or a dishonest Messiah, both ideas contrary to Tradition, because Jesus believed in the 6-day Creation week, the account of the creation of Adam and Eve as historical persons, and the significance of the Sabbath day and Sabbath years as a sign of the supernatural Covenant between God and Israel. These problems cannot be solved meaningfully by glibly answering with “we don‟t know how God made the universe.” Addressing this collision of contradictions, Pius XII wrote: “However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.”26

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Ibid, Matthew 12:8

Pius XII, Humani Generis

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Whatever evolution is and does, the Church is charged with defending and disseminating her dogmas. We cannot allow key elements of revelation to be sacrificed on the altar of compromise with the world. And the altering of revelation to fit evolution can only diminish Christ and the Gospel. The dimunition of Jesus and the baptizing of Darwinism as science (and as a source of social science) are cleanly contrary to the Magisterium and the Gospel mission.

Conclusion: It is absolutely essential that we embrace the cosmology of Jesus and believe not only the religious meanings of what he taught, but his beliefs as well. Antisupernaturalism is not compatible with the Gospel. Evolution is not compatible with the Gospel. Social Darwinism is the exact opposite of the Gospel. We have no right to alter the Faith of the Apostles by denying the authenticity of the cosmological world-view of Jesus: spirit, angels, devils, miracles, heaven, hell, prophecy and creation. To build benevolent scientific institutions and erect social sciences that are humane and truly progressive, we must build on the foundation of Jesus‟ worldview. Those Christian nations that compromised by syncretizing Christianity and evolution are a poignant example of what happened to Israel so long ago. Russia and all of Europe with few exceptions are in free fall decline – not even replacing their own populations.

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Bibliography Salvation is of the Jews; R.H. Schoeman, © 2003 Ignatius Press Catechism of the Catholic Church; Vatican Library Edition, © 1994 Ligouri Publications The Catholic Encyclopedia; © 1973 Thomas Nelson Publishers Jerome Biblical Commentary; © 1968 Prentice Hall Providentissimus Deus, Leo XII, © 1952 Wipf and Stock Publishers Humani Generis, Pius XII, © 1952 Wipf and Stock Publishers Israel and the Nations; F. F. Bruce, © 1969 Eerdmans Publishing Co. Tour of Summa, Thomas Aquinas, edited by Pau; J. Glenn, © 1978 Tan Publishing Co New American Bible, © 1991 by Greenlawn Press

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