Epilogue: Consequences of Faith in Creation, Part II
The next figure
Cardinal Ratzinger considers after Bruno, Galileo, & Luther is Wilhelm Hegel,
who saw God as the “process of reason (p.89),” where sin, grace, & personal
salvation all evaporate before the emergence of a new humanity that pulls
itself up by its own bootstraps, so to speak.
If Hegel proposed this as a theory, Marx made it a reality: “Redemption
is now construed strictly as the ‘praxis’ of man… the total antithesis of faith
in creation (p.90).” Ratzinger notes two
aspects of Marx’s scheme. Firstly, the
individual no longer matters; only the whole.
“Individual consciousness [& suffering] is taken up into class
consciousness… All that matters is the logic of the system… a future in which
humans are redeemed by their own creation work (p.91).” A cheery prospect, no? G.K. Chesterton in his book What’s Wrong with
the World calls this not the bravest, but the most cowardly ideology of all:
ever gazing toward a perfect future that never seems to arrive. Secondly, Marx says a creation ordered toward
another is dependency & weakness. It
is man that must create his own universe & destiny through work. The Marxist is utterly forbidden to ask where
the universe came from, to what it is ordered, & how man finds his place it
in. Collectivism promises freedom, but
the first thing it eliminates is the freedom to ask a question. In denying the question, it also denies the
truth that answers it. Disguised as
work, Marxism admits only contempt for both man & creation.
Based on these
historical observations, Ratzinger says belief in creation these days is
obscured & denied three main ways: scientific rationalism, radical
environmentalism, & a view of creation as hostile to grace. The first false view would reduce creation to
simply a thing to be examined through microscope & telescope, mere matter
to be manipulated. What is beyond
empirical observation is “dismissed as meaningless (p.92).” Matter has no questions to ask, no morality
to struggle with, nor hopes or desires to pursue; all that remains is what
science can do. In such a view, all that
is definitively human is swept aside.
Yet, isn’t every aspect of human life inseparably linked to questioning
& decision making as to what it right, what it true? Science by itself separates man from his
anchor in the truth; substituting a false god of progress.
The second trend
against creation we are seeing more & more today is the idolatry of radical
environmentalism: the view of man “as the disease of nature (p.93).” Even the old pagans that worshipped the earth
believed that man had a place on it. This environmentalism views the human
intellect as the source of the damage, so it is a highly anti-intellectual
movement. Further, it is self-hatred of
the gift that is human life. It is ultimately
a nihilism in which man finds no grace, no future, & no redemption.
The third false
understanding of creation would not permit it to be redeemed by God; it remains
an irredeemably corrupted obstacle for man.
Ratzinger recalls Paul’s words, “It is not the spiritual that is first
but the physical, and then the spiritual (1 Cor 15:46) (p.94),” indicating that
grace & creation are two poles of the Christian Faith that must never be
set against one another. Indeed, the
Christian view sees creation as the gateway to the world as grace. Understanding God as lover presupposes faith
in God as creator. Ratzinger calls this
“the freedom to accept myself as well as the any other member of the Body of
Christ… it is a way of saying ‘Yes’
(p.95)” to the gift of God.
In his conclusion, Ratzinger
proposes that ultimately there are really only two philosophies of creation:
the Gnostic model & the Christian model.
“Gnosticism, in all its different forms and versions, [is] the
repudiation of creation (p.p.96).” Here,
God’s redeeming love seems too shaky a ground on which to found our lives; it
is not something we can force & control.
On the contrary, in humility & dependence the Christian receives a
redeemed creation as a gift & a promise from the God who entered his own
creation to save us. The Gnostic option
is, in fact, hostile to God as it aims “at power through knowledge… [it] will
not entrust itself to a world already created, but only to a world still to be
created. There is no room for trust,
only skill (p.97).”
The Christian truth
is exactly opposite: man is dependent.
In acknowledging this, he rejects every attempt to create himself &
his world from within. However, “there
is nothing degrading about dependence when it takes the form of love… for only
love transforms dependence into freedom (p.98-99).” The center of man’s redemption is Jesus
Christ, the God-man, hanging on the cross.
Thus, “the doctrine of creation is, therefore, inseparably included
within the doctrine of redemption (p.99),” which must be proclaimed to prevent
the reduction of man to just another animal in nature & the redemption of
man as the future we can build by our own powers. With a proper understanding of the
Incarnation & the Resurrection, man finds the truth of God & himself
within a genuinely Christian understanding of creation.
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