#or accept that human understanding cannot grasp the actual truth in its entirety

[kiralamouse]

Oh! Oh! I know the "dome of waters" bit for a round earth!

At least, I know what Ken Ham's explanation was in the 1990s. He said that Earth used to have a vapor canopy a la Venus, and that the extra air pressure (and oxygen?) prior to the Flood collapsing it helped contribute to the extreme antediluvian lifespans mentioned in Genesis.

I (bb tween in evangelical summer camp) bought into that, and a lot of Ken Ham's stuff that was better explained than what I learned in my middle school science class. My faith in Ken Ham cracked when my very patient biology teacher in high school explained that he, a Sunday-school teaching Christian, didn't see that as reasonable. My faith in Ken Ham switched to pure rage when I learned in astronomy that Venus's vapor canopy is (was? I don't keep up with developments like I'd like to) considered to be a major part of the runaway greenhouse effect that makes Venus's climate literally hellish. I hate deception with the fury of a Venusian sulfur storm. I hate deception that calls truth a lie even more.

And I rather hate the prosaic, literal-minded view that thinks "mythology" is the opposite of "truth" rather than the poetic expression of truth. Because it leaves you even more prone to accept a false mythology of the cosmos than if you recognize the poetic abstractions.

When I was getting my associates degree I took a Mythology class that I loved. But one of the girls in class was absolutely off the rails conservative Christian which made things… interesting.

The professor started off the class by being like, “Mythology is stories associated with religion.”

This girl. Haaaated that. She was like, “No, Christianity is true. It’s not mythology.” Mythology was delivered in the same tone as someone trying to spit excrement from their mouth.

The professor raised her eyebrows and said laconically, “Yes, most people believe their religion is the real one, that’s part of it, and the stories surrounding religion are referred to as mythology.”

The girl stewed in a hateful sullen rage. I truly don’t understand why she didn’t drop the class but perhaps it was court mandated education. We all expected her to drop the class but she dug in like a tick and derailed discussions as often as she could.

On a different occasion the professor was drawing a comparison between social constructs like gender. The girl raised her hand. The class hushed to hear her announce, “It’s just a fact that women like domestic work and even though men are awful and stinky we just have to love them anyway. It’s biology, we’re just hardwired like that.”

I was sitting next to my friend a baby gay Jewish girl and our eyes met in mutual hilarity while the professor tried to pretend she hadn’t just been stricken with a stress induced migraine while she steered the class away from that landmine.

The next sticking point was a week later when the professor informed us that many mythologies have overlapping events like floods but these didn’t necessarily happen in such literal terms. It was a metaphorical way to process and understand the world.

This girls hand shot up. I watched the professor exercise extreme self control to keep her expression bland before calling on her.

“The world did flood. And Noah saved all the animals. Before the flood all the water was in a dome outside the earth and then the dome broke and the world flooded. All of it.”

The whole class stared at her as if struggling to comprehend the overlap of her acceptance that the world was round while also firmly believing that there had previously been a barrier that held up all of the earths water before god smashed it in a fit of pique.

She raged under the attention, glaring balefully at our astonished faces.

The professor stared at her blankly, unable to form words to such a bizarre belief. I wanted to ask clarifying questions- what they’d drunk before the dome broke, if there were rivers or lakes prior, or did the dome allow some rain in somehow, but then I really looked at her.

She had the eyes of a feral, cornered animal who regarded any deviation in worldview from her own to be a physical assault on her person. Like the professor, I said nothing, and after a wretchedly long pause class moved on.

[septembersung]

I used to be so offended, so angry, when Protestants told me, “Catholics aren’t Christian!” (Especially since I’m related to a good many of the kinds of people who say that.) But I’m starting to have a great deal of sympathy for their motivation to say that.

No, not because I’ve suddenly lost the faith. Quite the contrary. Sure, some of that can come from a place of real bigotry - hatred of Catholics - but some of it comes from real love of the faith. Because here’s the thing: At least that accusation takes the Christian identity seriously.

Yes, the people who accuse Catholics of being idolators and not-actually-Christians-at-all, and who say you-can’t-possibly-be-saved-if-you’re-Catholic, are incredibly, fundamentally, hilariously (if by hilarity we include tear-jerking infuriation) 100% wrong. And yet! Consider:

Can one be a Christian without knowing Christ?

In my conversations with people of diverse backgrounds this month in the course of #500reasons, I’ve been surprised by just how many people are completely indifferent to the question Christian truth. It doesn’t bother them that everyone who reads the Bible walks away with a different interpretation of what “the Gospel” is, that there are irreconcilable differences between denominations. I admit to being fundamentally baffled by that response. I cannot see it as anything other than the coils of indifferentism and relativism clutching the heart of Christians and squeezing the life out of them.

Most Protestant positions admit no “degrees” of salvation because, whether they recognize it or not, they reject the reality of sanctification - that human beings are actually purified and made holy, not merely “declared” righteous by God. For most Protestants, the question is as simple as “Are you saved?” because, for most of them, “salvation” is a one time, black and white, yes or no issue hinging on assent, with wide and striking differences among Protestant theologies about what does or should happen after one assents. (Which is wild, really, given the total denial of free will that kicked off the Reformation, that Luther called the “central issue” and Calvin carried to its logical, extreme, conclusion - but I digress.) Now add that to the proliferation of denominations and individuals, all disagreeing with each other on what the Bible says, what is the right way to worship, what is “allowed” and what is not. Yet each of these denominations and individuals has (presumably) “accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior.”

Can this discord be the will of God? Can this contradiction among Christians be the Scriptural, apostolic view of the Church? Can the God of truth encompass falsehood? Can the God of reason command self-contradiction? Can the God of self-revelation, who became incarnate in Jesus Christ that we may see His face, be head of a ‘church’ where agnosticism - the inability to be certain of the truth - reigns? Should the one Body of Christ be divided against itself?

To borrow St. Paul’s exclamation: God forbid!

Consider John 17; Philippians 2:1-2; 1 Corinthians 1:10; 3:1-15; 12:12-13; Matthew 12:25-28.

And yet the vast majority of Protestants, even if they are of a persuasion or denomination which will say that there are right and wrong answers, will also defend this mass of contradictions and inconsistency as being “the church” or “the right/only way” (as opposed to the visible hierarchy and doctrinal unity of the Catholic Church,) and what’s more, even “good,” “acceptable to Christ.”

This is a contradiction in terms. This view of salvation and this accepting of the existence of orthodoxy and orthopraxy contradiction among Christians does not square with the Christ who tells us, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

There are degrees of participation in Christianity because one may grasp one truth but not the others that are connected to it, or believe a half-truth. Thus, one is not fully Christian unless one knows, accepts, believes, and practices the full Truth. This is why, for Catholics, “being Christian” involves strong catechesis as a life-long, ongoing process that accompanies the reception of the sacraments and the forming of the soul in virtue. It is precisely because the person of Christ is one and cannot be divided, because he himself is truth, that we cannot and must not accept contradiction and error as, or in the name of, the Gospel. He does not give us that option. 

Yes, of course, we always, always, throw ourselves on the mercy of God when we pray for the salvation of sinners - which, as Catholics, we know includes ourselves. Nothing is settled about salvation until death. But Christ Himself has excluded the possibility of merely ‘hoping for the best’ - we must seek the truth for ourselves and strive to bring it to others. We must work to “know” the truth - the person of Christ - as fully and deeply as possible.

Biblically, “knowing” something goes way beyond just having it in our heads: knowing is mind and body, thought and action, a union of intimacy. The Christian faith is a faith of Truth; hence the great commission to preach and to evangelize. 

In Vatican II’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, we read:

“The Church recognizes that in many ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter. (14*) For there are many who honor Sacred Scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life, and who show a sincere zeal. They lovingly believe in God the Father Almighty and in Christ, the Son of God and Saviour. (15*) They are consecrated by baptism, in which they are united with Christ.“ (No. 15.)

There are two aspects of being a Christian, of having and knowing the truth, recognized here: in a real and objective sense, anyone who has received valid baptism is a Christian, regardless of their beliefs, because baptism is an objective act of God which effects a real change in a person’s soul. The reality and efficacy of baptism, widely attested to in Scripture, is a primary truth because it is the grace of God himself: it is a truth Who possesses us.

The second order of truths begin in knowledge about Christ and the faith he preaches, truths which, in their aspect as statements of fact, we grasp with our intellect and reject or accept with our will. The truths themselves are objective, but here the subjective, the individual, understanding and reception of that truth is the primary working factor. This is where we need evangelization, catechesis, lectio divina, the study of theology, and mystical devotions.

If we, Catholics, really and truly believe that we know Christ, that he can only and definitively be found, complete and whole, in the Catholic faith because this is the church and the doctrine that he founded, then how can we sit by and watch others pursue half-truths, error, and falsehood? How can we not want to reach out and proclaim the Truth? 

If Protestants take seriously that we must “accept Christ” to be saved, then how can they not want to know the actual truth of him and his preaching, and to bring the fullness of that truth to others? Yes, there are many Protestants who do follow that belief through with evangelization - and even some of the evangelizers, among swaths of others, who defend the contradictory state of the competing denominations!

If we do not have the truth about Christ, then we really do not know Christ, because Christ is truth.

We can and should always hope and pray for God’s mercy on those who do not know, who refuse to accept, or who have rejected the Truth, including those who have partial truths - right about one thing, wrong about another. But that does not absolve us of the grave responsibility to preach that Truth and bring it to as many people as possible.

“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31-32).