Agents and Processes

In two previous posts, I described the idea of primary and secondary causation, which has its roots in the classic philosophical tradition, but is especially found in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. God, as creator, is seen as the primary cause of all things, but he gives to most things he creates the ability to also act as causes.

I will use the term "agent" to refer to something that acts as a cause. In the example of bread that I used before, the farmer is an agent who plants, tends, and harvests the wheat used to make the bread, someone else is an agent who turns the wheat into flour, and the baker is an agent who combines the flour and other ingredients and bakes the bread. We can also say that sunshine, rain, and soil are agents that contribute to the growth of the wheat. The tools used for planting and harvesting, vehicles for transporting, and the oven for baking are also agents. Finally, we use money as an agent to buy the bread to get it to our table. So, we see that though we Christians say that God gives us our daily bread, there are many agents that he uses to give it to us.

In addition to the use of agents, I point out that this provision of our daily bread involves many processes. The bread does not appear instantly on our table, but there are processes of farming, processing, baking, distributing, as well as the job we do to earn the money to buy the bread.

I want to stress that when Christians ask God to provide their daily bread, he answers that prayer by using many agents and processes. In fact, the prayer itself is another agent used in the provision of the bread. Does God have to use all of these agents and processes, including our prayers, to accomplish what he wants to accomplish? No, but he chooses to do so. In fact, God appears to delight in working this way, and the more agents that are involved, the better. Even in the important work of the salvation of eternal souls, God involves flawed institutions and people as agents for this ministry, and leads us through a process that takes our whole lives. In fact, even the creation of an individual human life involve complicated biological processes to even get to the starting point of a newborn baby. Then that baby is entrusted to flawed human parents, and goes through a process of many years to reach adulthood. During that time, the child has many physical, emotional, and educational needs that must be met through many agents and processes. All of this is true, yet we say that we are created by God.

There are two implications to all of this on which I want to focus. The first is on the idea that has grown over the last several centuries that says that since through science we have  been able to identify and understand many of the agents and processes that are at work in the universe, we no longer need to believe in God. This is based on the "God of the Gaps" idea that uses God as an explanation for something that we don't understand. In other words, we use God to fill in the gaps in our understanding. Behind this idea is the idea that God is merely a human invention we devised to fill in those gaps. Unfortunately, both believers and unbelievers get caught up in this "God of the Gaps" thinking, and Aquinas would say both sides are off track because they don't understand the idea of primary and secondary causes. Indeed, although Aquinas lived in the 13th century, there is nothing that science has discovered in the last 650 years that invalidates his fundamental philosophical and theological ideas because he sees God's involvement in the universe as more fundamental than being the "God of the Gaps."

My other focus is on Christians who are afraid of evolution and other scientific theories. Although I don't know the exact process by which the first humans came to be, I see no conflict between the doctrine that God created the first humans, and the scientific claim that human life developed through the process of evolution. As we saw above, God delights in using processes to accomplish his plans, and the world today is full of complex natural processes. Why couldn't it be that God also used complex natural processes to move the universe from a simple starting point to the state we see it today in a way that is consistent with scientific theories of today? Indeed, I think it is less consistent to believe that the universe sprang into existence in its present form over the course of 144 hours, but then started moving and functioning in the complicated manner we see today.

I think it is more reasonable to believe that Genesis used language that the original audience would understand in order to make the theological point that God brought about the world from nothing in an orderly and progressive manner. There are too many theological implications to the way that the creation accounts are written for me to go into here, but many of them, including what I believe are the most important ones, are not affected by interpreting the creation accounts in a way consistent with evolution.

There is one exception or clarification I will make to what I have said. Genesis 2:7 says, "then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." Note that there are two stages in the creation of the first man. The first stage is a process of forming from the dust. We see God using preexistent material and a process in the forming of man. I believe this part of man's creation is consistent with evolutionary theory. However, the second part is different. God breathes into the nostrils of the man the breath of life. I believe this indicates the impartation of the spiritual nature of man by a direct act of God. Christians believe that humans simultaneously inhabit a spiritual dimension as well as the physical world, although most of us are vaguely aware of our spiritual nature at best. This act of impartation of the human's spiritual nature, also known as the rational soul, is a direct act of God, and is an exception to God's way of working though processes and agents that we usually see.

Greydanus on Redefining Marriage

I just read a series of 10 blog posts by Steven D. Greydanus on the question of the redefinition of marriage. It is the best comprehensive treatment of the subject I have seen, and although for the blog world it is a long series, it's actually very concise considering all it contains.

Everyone involved in the current debates on marriage should read this. For non-Christians, they would likely see that the various Christian teachings on marriage and sexual morals form a cohesive whole that is ordered for the common good. For many Christians, they would also benefit from seeing the connections between contraception, divorce, abortion, and gay marriage. Often these topics are argued in isolation, but Greydanus shows how a "contraceptive mentality" is the root of them all. Even those who are familiar with the arguments Greydanus employs would likely benefit from seeing them presented in such a comprehensive, balanced, compassionate, and concise manner.

An Answer to a Seeking Atheist

Today I read a post on Reddit from an atheist inquiring into faith in God. At one point in the discussion, he expresses puzzlement on how Jesus could pray to God if he is actually God. I wrote a really long post, and I thought that after going to so much trouble, I should also share it here in case it could be of help to others.

The nature of Theology
Since you are an intelligent and scientifically minded person, I think you would benefit from knowing a little about how theology is done. There are some similarities between science and theology in that in both disciplines, there is a set of data and an attempt to understand and explain it. The data for science comes from observation and experimentation. The data for theology is divine revelation as it has been perceived by some human and communicated in some form that we can study and try to interpret it.

A dominant theme in the Judeo-Christian tradition is that God is Holy, which means that God is entirely unique. God is unlike anything in the universe; he is an entirely different order of being. The difference between God and the entire universe is greater the difference between the entire universe and an electron. You can take a bunch of electrons and other elementary particles and build a universe, but you cannot even begin to build God out of a bunch of universes.

So, this fact that God is unlike anything else in our experience causes us to doubt if we can even talk about God intelligently. Thomas Aquinas (13th century) says that we can because God created the universe to be a kind of revelation of his nature, and he created us in his image. The grandure of the universe hints at the grandure of God, even though God's grandure is of an entirely different kind. The love of a father and mother for their child and the love of a husband for his wife both give us indications of God's love for us, even though the love of God is entirely different from human love.

So, when Christian theology says that God is Trinity, we mean that the concept of Trinity is the best that we we've been able to come up with given what we are able to understand of what God has revealed to us.

Why believe in the Trinity?
The experience of the Jewish people throughout their history and their interaction with God deeply impressed upon them that there is only one true God, the creator and ruler of the universe. As we enter the first century, this belief is firmly embedded in the Jewish people, not only in Palestine, but also in enclaves dispersed throughout the Roman empire. The theological and moral beliefs of the Jews were so distinctive that it was not uncommon for people of non-Jewish descent to be attracted to their religion at that time.

Then along comes a carpenter's son named Jesus. Jesus called God his "Father", which in his day was unheard of. It implied an intimacy with God that no human had a right to claim. He demonstrated command over the forces of nature, and performed healings that had never been seen before. He told people that his sins were forgiven, which was considered blasphemous because a sin is an offense against God, so sins could only be forgiven by God. He claimed to be building the kingdom of God and that he would judge the world, which was also seen as claiming God-like authority.

The character and teaching of Jesus attracted followers, but his outrageous claims turned others off and ignited such fierce opposition that he was executed for blasphemy against God and treason against the Roman empire. This shameful defeat was a crushing blow for his followers, but amazingly, within a couple of months they were in the streets of Jerusalem preaching that the crucified man is the Son of God. God has vindicated him by raising him from the dead. A following sprang up in Jerusalem and soon spread throughout the Roman empire, despite persecution from Jewish and later Roman authorities.

So, the problem early Christians had to wrestle with is who is Jesus, and how does his identity square with what they already knew from the Jewish tradition they had inherited. They could not reject that tradition because it had been endorsed by Jesus, but how to reconcile Jewish monotheism with the divine characteristics and claims of Jesus? Also, how can a divine being be so human?

The data pointed to the one Jesus called "Father" as being God, but also Jesus is the "Son" who came down from heaven. Jesus also taught about the "Holy Spirit", who also seemed to have divine attributes. Jesus also taught the apostles to baptize new believers in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, which implied an equality among the three. So we appear to have three divine beings in a religious tradition founded on the idea of one God. Various schemes were devised that tended to weaken one side or the other of the equation, and these were rejected. Even though they couldn't figure it out, the Christians knew that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and there is only one God.

What was eventually worked out is that the "substance" of God (Greek physis, Latin substantia) is one. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are "consubstantial" or of one substance. We don't know what the substance is, but substance is what we call the thing about God that is *one*. However, in the one substance there are three "persons" (Greek hypostasis, Latin persona). We use the word "person" a lot today, but it was not a common word in the first century. They would have refered to a human individual using the word for "man", "woman", or "human" in their language. "Person" was more of a theater term, coming from the word for the mask used in Greek theater. The mouth part of a Greek theater mask was constructed like a megaphone so that it amplified the voice of the speaker. The word "person" came to mean "one who speaks". So, we don't know much about what differentiates the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because they are of the same substance, but we do know they speak to each other, so we call them persons.

The Nature of Jesus The understanding of Jesus grew alongside the concept of the Trinity. What developed was the understanding that the three persons of the Trinity have eternally existed, but ~2000 years ago, one of the persons, the Son, took on human nature in the womb of the virgin Mary. In his person, he united God and humanity, thus building a bridge between God and the human race, making it possible for humans to know God and be made like him.

Therefore, it is believed that Jesus is God the Son who has taken on a complete human nature. The Son sacrificed nothing of his divine nature in order to become human, and there is no part of our human nature that he did not take on, except for sin, which is not a part of original human nature. So, when we see Jesus praying to the Father, we see God the Son, as a man, speaking to God the Father. As a man, Jesus is giving other men and women an example of prayer. As God the Son, his prayer is perfect communion with the Father. And, as we follow Jesus, by grace we become partakers of his divine nature, and our prayer can approach the perfect communion that Jesus has.

I will stop this long post at this point. I hope it helps.

More on Causes

In a previous post, I gave a brief description on the difference between primary and secondary causes, especially from a Christian point of view. I want to expand on it a little bit with some illustrations.


In this first picture, I represent some arbitrary things in our world as different sized and colored balls. These could be subatomic particles, planets, or even human beings. The arrows pointing between them show causal relationships between them. At the subatomic level it would include the electrical and nuclear forces which particles exert on each other. For stars, planets, and moons, it would primarily be the force of gravity. Between people, it would be words and deeds by which we influence each other. In all of these ways, one thing causes something to happen to another thing. These are all secondary causes. Notice that the arrows are double headed, which indicates that the influence is almost always to some extent mutual. For example, in the case of a pebble on the surface of the Earth, the Earth exerts a gravitational pull on the pebble, and the pebble also exerts a gravitation pull on the Earth.


The second picture is just the first one as seen from the side. It shows another dimension, which was not clear in the first picture, where we see that God is affecting all of the things. This is the primary cause, which gives the thing its existence as well as its ability to function as a secondary cause. Notice that the arrows only point in one direction. This shows that God causes the things of the universe, but they have no causal effect on God. God is completely uncaused.

It is this role of God as primary cause of everything that is behind the Christian practice of thanking God for every blessing, even when we know where it came from. For example, when I was a kid, I thought it was strange that we thanked God for our food, when I knew good and well that my mother had cooked the food, which she bought from the grocery store, with money earned by my father. I knew the food in the store came by various process ultimately from plants and animals raised on farms. I also knew about the natural process behind the growth of these plants and animals, and I saw no reason put God in the mix. Now I know that God is behind every little part of that process by which we receive our food.

There is a blessing said by the priest in every Catholic Mass (according to the post-Vatican II liturgy at least)  which I think illustrates this.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation,
for through your goodness we have received
the bread we offer you:
fruit of the earth and work of human hands,
it will become for us the bread of life.

In this little prayer, we first see God acknowledged as Lord of all creation, the implication being that it is because he is the creator. We have the bread due to God's goodness, including his continual work as primary cause. "Fruit of the earth" acknowledges the natural processes that act as secondary causes to bring forth the wheat used to make the bread, and "work of human hands" acknowledges the human agents also involved as secondary causes. Finally, the last line refers to the sacramental action of God, through the priest as secondary cause, that will make the bread the Body of Christ, food for eternal life.

Primary and Secondary Causes

The notion of primary and secondary causes is essential to understanding the role of God in creation in the context of our modern world. Although I had heard these terms before, it was from St. Thomas Aquinas that I got a clear picture of what they mean.

God is the primary cause of everything. This not only means that God caused things to exist at the beginning, but he continually causes their existence, and gives them the ability to do what they do. This idea appears in Scripture: "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28, where Paul is actually quoting a pagan poet), and "in him [Christ] all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17).

All of the matter and energy in the universe is caused to exist by God. If God were to cease causing them, they would cease to exist. Particles of matter and energy have the ability to interact with each other, and so they act as secondary causes. These secondary causes act not only at the level of physics, but also at the chemical, biological, and human level. I might say something that causes someone to do something that they would not have otherwise done, for example.

Everything that is studied by modern science is at the level of secondary causes, and science has done a good job of describing how these secondary causes appear to interact. However, nothing that science has uncovered has affected the philosophical need for a primary cause, nor has it found anything to disprove it. The concept of a primary cause is metaphysical, and outside the bounds of modern natural science.

Science and Creation

It's no secret that there are cultural conflicts in much of the world between religious and secular views. Although the conflict goes back at least a couple of centuries among intellectual minorities, in the last few decades it has become mainstream. Even most people of  general religious persuasion are affected by the secular world-view that is becoming dominant.

I think the doctrine of creation is central to this debate. If there is a God, and he made the universe and each of us, then the religious perspective is important. However, if there is no God, or God is defined as something less than the sovereign creator, then any religious perspectives are at best of secondary importance.

Belief in the doctrine of creation began to decline in the mid 19th century, with the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species being the watershed event. However, although Darwin's work is central to this decline, it is only one of many scientific theories and discoveries that changed our view of what the world is, and how it came to be the way it is.

Because this new way of looking at the universe came by means of scientific study rather than divine revelation, theology, or philosophy, it was easy for people to come to the conclusion that there must be some kind of conflict between science and religion or science and philosophy. The extreme view that is on the rise today is that science has either disproved the existence of God, or at least eliminated the need for God, the assumption being that God was something that humans made up in order to explain things they could not understand.

Although some religions have very specific teachings about the age of the Earth or the process of creation which are at odds with current scientific views, I don't see a conflict with the findings of science and the claims of Catholic Christianity. I have read and have spoken with priests and members of religious orders who are also scientists and science teachers who not only think that there is no conflict, but the believe that the findings of science harmonize so beautifully with the Catholic faith that the study of science is beneficial to the faith.

My plan is to write several posts as I think and read about this question. I certainly don't have all of the answers, so ideally there will be some discussion. I hope this exercise will be a learning experience for myself as well as an opportunity to share what I have learned with others.

The Church is born from the side of Jesus on the Cross

Today's reading from the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours is by St. John Chrysostom, who became Patriarch of Constantinople at the end of the fourth century, and is a Doctor of the Church. In this reading, he focuses on the blood and water that flowed from the side of Jesus when he was stabbed with a spear after he died on the cross.

Chrysostom says that the water and blood are the source of the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, which are central to the formation of the Church. Therefore, the Church, who is the Bride of Christ, was born from the side of Christ at this event.

St. Paul calls Jesus the "New Adam", the first of a new humanity. Chrysostom builds on this idea and compares the birth of the Church from Jesus' side to the creation of Eve from the side of the first Adam. What is important to Chrysostom is not that Eve was literally formed from one of Adam's ribs, but that the story is prophetic of the New Adam and his Bride.

Here is an excerpt from today's reading:

“There flowed from his side water and blood.” Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning, which I will explain to you. I said that water and blood symbolised baptism and the holy Eucharist. From these two sacraments the Church is born: from baptism, “the cleansing water that gives rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit,” and from the holy Eucharist. Since the symbols of baptism and the Eucharist flowed from his side, it was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church, as he had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam Moses gives a hint of this when he tells the story of the first man and makes him exclaim: “Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh!” As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to fashion the Church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and the water after his own death.

Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life.

The text for this quote is taken from Universalis.com, and the picture is from Wikipedia.

What is the Liturgy of the Hours?

I have done some posts in the past quoting from The Liturgy of the Hours, and I plan on writing more posts like them, so I thought it would be good to have a post explaining what it is.

The Liturgy of the Hours is also called the Divine Office, and is rooted in the Jewish practice of praying the Psalms at various times of the day. The Apostles continued this practice, as is seen in the Acts of the Apostles. For example, "Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour" (Acts 3:1). By the time of the 6th century, a particular weekly schedule of night prayer along with prayers seven times during the day was established that included Psalms, hymns, and passages from the New Testament. This scheme continued into the 20th century until the Second Vatican Council. After the Council, a new simplified scheme was introduced that combined some of the hours, and introduced a new "Office of Readings", which includes extended Biblical readings along with selections from writings from throughout the history of the Church.

The Office of Readings contains many gems from the tradition of the Church, and I am often struck by their beauty and how they so perfectly express important truths of the faith. That's why I am compelled to share some of them in this blog. I hope they will be of some value to some of my readers.

In preparing this post, I read this page on the Liturgy of the Hours from the EWTN web site, and this article from Wikipedia. You can also see the form of the Divine Office using the Universalis web site. It has just about all of the texts, but due to copyright issues, some of them are not in the official translation.