The Crisis of Conservative Catholicism

Ross Douthat recently delivered the 2015 Erasmus Lecture entitled “The Crisis of Conservative Catholicism" which is well worth a read.

Click here for the transcript as published in First Things.

Irenaeus on Conditional Immortality

Irenaeus was one of the earliest church fathers and theologians, living in the second century (A.D. 130-202) well before the Council of Nicea. In his main surviving work, Against Heresies, he presents a “conditionalist" view: the soul is not immortal, rather eternal life is a gift from God that is extended to mortal souls and those who reject it will perish rather than endure.

The two key passages are reproduced below:

It is the Father of all who imparts continuance for ever and ever on those who are saved. For life does not arise from us, nor from our own nature; but it is bestowed according to the grace of God. And therefore he who shall preserve the life bestowed upon him, and give thanks to Him who imparted it, shall receive also length of days for ever and ever. But he who shall reject it, and prove himself ungrateful to his Maker, inasmuch as he has been created, and has not recognised Him who bestowed [the gift upon him], deprives himself of [the privilege of] continuance for ever and ever. 

Against Heresies 2.43.3

Those who assert that He [Jesus Christ] was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son...But, being ignorant of Him who from the Virgin is Emmanuel, they are deprived of His gift, which is eternal life; and not receiving the incorruptible Word, they remain in mortal flesh, and are debtors to death, not obtaining the antidote of life...For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of Man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God.  For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that might receive the adoption of sons?

Against Heresies 3.19.1

Conditional immortality has been a minority view within orthodox Christian theology since that time and I believe it is the view most consistent with biblical evidence such as John 3:16 (“whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life") and 1 Corinthians 15:42 (“what is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable").

It contrasts with a view of the immortality of the soul which is arguably drawn from Greek philosophy and a doctrine of eternal torment that is potentially inconsistent with the nature and love of God. It also stands as a defensible alternative to notions of universal salvation and straight universalism that have gained ground in recent decades (for further background also see my posts on “The Reconciliation of All Things" and “Time's Arrow").

Towards True Reconciliation

God of holy dreaming, Great Creator Spirit,
from the dawn of creation you have given your children
the good things of Mother Earth.
You spoke and the gum tree grew.
In the vast desert and dense forest,
and in cities at the water's edge, creation sings your praise.

Your presence endures
as the rock at the heart of our Land.
When Jesus hung on the tree
you heard the cries of all your people
and became one with your wounded ones:
the convicts, the hunted, and the dispossessed.

The sunrise of your Son coloured the earth anew,
and bathed it in glorious hope.
In Jesus we have been reconciled to you,
to each other and to your whole creation.

Lead us on, Great Spirit,
as we gather from the four corners of the earth;
enable us to walk together in trust
from the hurt and shame of the past
into the full day which has dawned in Jesus Christ.

“A Thanksgiving for Australia", A Prayer Book for Australia, pp. 218-219

Urakami

Three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a lone B-29 bomber took off from Tinian Island bound for the Japanese city of Kokura. After several unsuccessful approaches due to heavy cloud cover and running low on fuel it diverted to the secondary target of Nagasaki.

Nagasaki was the centre of Japan's small Christian community, a port city where the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier had first landed nearly 400 years earlier and the site of the crucifixion of 29 martyrs in 1597. After centuries of severe persecution the Kakure Krishitan (“hidden Christians") re-emerged and built St Mary's Cathedral in the district of Urakami, completing it in 1925.

The bomb detonated directly over Urakami, only 500 meters away from the cathedral just as morning mass was commencing. At least thirty five thousand people were killed in the blast, including more than 8,000 Japanese Catholics.

Several months later Dr Takashi Nagai, who lost his wife in the bombing, addressed a memorial service in front of the destroyed cathedral and invoked the providence of God:

On August 9, 1945, at 10:30 A.M. a meeting of the Supreme Council of War was held at the Imperial Headquarters to decide whether Japan should capitulate or continue to wage war. At that moment the world was at a crossroads. A decision was being made that would either bring about a new and lasting peace or throw the human family into further cruel bloodshed and carnage.  

And just at that same time, at two minutes past eleven in the morning, an atomic bomb exploded over our district of Urakami in Nagasaki. In an instant, eight thousand Christians were called into the hands of God, while in a few hours the fierce flames reduced to ashes this sacred territory of the East. At midnight of that same night the cathedral suddenly burst into flames and was burned to the ground. And exactly at that time in the Imperial Palace, His Majesty the Emperor made known his sacred decision to bring the war to an end.  

On August 15, the Imperial Edict which put an end to the fighting was formally promulgated, and the whole world welcomed a day of peace. This day was also the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant to reflect that Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her. And we must ask if this convergence of events—the ending of the war and the celebration of her feast—was merely coincidental or if there was here some mysterious providence of God... 

Is there not a profound relationship between the destruction of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Nagasaki, the only holy place in all Japan—was it not chosen as a victim, a pure lamb, to be slaughtered and burned on the altar of sacrifice to expiate the sins committed by humanity in the Second World War? 

The human family has inherited the sin of Adam who ate the fruit of the forbidden tree; we have inherited the sin of Cain who killed his younger brother; we have forgotten that we are children of God; we have believed in idols; we have disobeyed the law of love. Joyfully we have hated one another; joyfully we have killed one another. And now at last we have brought this great and evil war to an end. But in order to restore peace to the world it was not sufficient to repent. We had to obtain God’s pardon through the offering of a great sacrifice...  

Our church of Nagasaki kept the faith during four hundred years of persecution when religion was proscribed and the blood of martyrs flowed freely. During the war this same church never ceased to pray day and night for a lasting peace. Was it not, then, the one unblemished lamb that had to be offered on the altar of God? Thanks to the sacrifice of this lamb many millions who would otherwise have fallen victim to the ravages of war have been saved. How noble, how splendid was that holocaust of August 9, when flames soared up from the cathedral, dispelling the darkness of war and bringing the light of peace! In the very depth of our grief we reverently saw here something beautiful, something pure, something sublime... 

“The Lord has given: the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!” 

Let us give thanks that Nagasaki was chosen for the sacrifice. Let us give thanks that through this sacrifice peace was given to the world and freedom of religion to Japan. 

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

For further background see:

• The story of Takeshi Nagai's life and conversion
• The Catholic holocaust of Nagasaki
• Religious responses to the bombing of Nagasaki 

Time's Arrow

In previous posts I have written that the current scientific consensus regarding the beginning of the universe is consistent with the doctrine of creation. But how consistent are scientific and theological perspectives on the end of the universe?

We are currently living in the Stelliferous Era, the age of starlight. This will eventually come to an end as larger stars explode or collapse over billions of years while small red dwarf stars burn slowly through their remaining fuel over trillions of years. Ultimately though even the red dwarfs will fade and become white dwarfs.

British physicist Dr. Brian Cox describes what will happen next:

A black dwarf will be the final fate of those last stars, white dwarfs that have become so cold that they barely emit any more heat or light. Black dwarfs are dark, dense decaying balls of degenerate matter. Little more than the ashes of stars, their constituent atoms are so severely crushed that black dwarfs are a million times denser than our sun...

We think that the matter inside black dwarfs, the last matter in the universe, will eventually evaporate away and be carried off into the void as radiation, leaving absolutely nothing behind. With the black dwarfs gone, there won't be a single atom of matter left. All that will remain of our once rich cosmos will be particles of light and black holes. After an unimaginable length of time, even the black holes will have evaporated and the universe will be nothing but a sea of photons, gradually tending towards the same temperature, as the expansion of the universe cools them towards absolute zero...

It's what's known as the heat death of the universe, an era when the cosmos will remain vast and cold and desolate for the rest of time. There is no difference between the past, the present and the future. There's no way of measuring the passage of time because nothing in the cosmos changes, the arrow of time has simply ceased to exist.

Although we do not know the final outcome of all things with certainty it seems to me this scientific view is consistent with a “conditionalist” or “annihilationist” theological perspective. Arguably Luther held some form of this view as evidenced by his rejection of the innate immortality of the soul - anything that is not in the end restored with God in eternity will pass away.

Whether one believes in our Christian God or not the ultimate fate of all things in this world is the same.

The shaking of Advent

Once again we struggle in the wake of events this week in Sydney: a city in lockdown, hostages held in terrifying conditions, two innocent people killed in the early hours of the morning.

How are we to make sense of the senseless? Alfred Delp, a young Jesuit priest in Munich who was ultimately executed by the Nazi regime, posed the following answer in his sermon on the first Sunday of Advent in 1941:

Perhaps what we modern people need most is to be genuinely shaken, so that where life is grounded, we would feel its stability; and where life is unstable and uncertain, immoral and unprincipled, we would know that, also, and endure it. Perhaps that is the ultimate answer to the question of why God has sent us into this time, why He permits this whirlwind to go over the earth, and why He holds us in such a state of chaos and in hopelessness and in darkness—and why there is no end in sight. It is because we have stood here on the earth with a totally false and inauthentic sense of security. So now, God lets the earth resound, and now He shudders it, and then He shakes it, not to call forth a false anxiety... He does it to teach us one thing again: how to be moved in spirit. 

Much of what is happening today would not be happening if people were in that state of inner movement and restlessness of heart in which man comes into the presence of God the Lord and gains a clear view of things as they really are. Then man would have let go of much that has thrown all our lives into disorder one way or another and has thrashed and smashed our lives... Instead, man stood on this earth in a false pathos and a false security, under a deep delusion in which he really believed he could single-handedly fetch stars from heaven; could enkindle eternal lights in the world and avert all danger from himself... 

That is the first Advent message: before the end, the world will be set quaking. And only where man does not cling inwardly to false security will his eyes be capable of seeing the Ultimate.

Alfred Delp, Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings, 1941-1944 

All things shining

My favourite film is Terrence Malick's WWII masterpiece The Thin Red Line. Set during the Pacific War as the Americans attempt to take Guadalcanal, the film gives voice to the inner thoughts of many characters.

When watching it again recently I noticed fragments of Malick's ecletic Christian worldview. For instance after raiding a Japanese camp and killing or capturing all the enemy soldiers the most spiritual character, Private Witt, contemplates the fractured nature of the world:

We were a family. How did it break up and come apart so that now we're turned against each other, each standing in the other's light? 

How did we lose the good that was given us, let it slip away, scattered, careless? What's keeping us from reaching out, touching the glory?

Towards the end Witt leads a company of Japanese soldiers away from his unit before sacrificing himself in the face of overwhelming odds. In the final scene the film closes with a shot of new life against a voiceover from Witt's character reflecting on the glory of creation:

Who were you that I lived with, walked with? The brother, the friend? Strife and love, darkness and light--are they the workings of one mind, features of the same face? 

Oh my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. 

All things shining.

The Second Fall of Man

A century ago the world changed forever when Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia on 28 July 1914. The ensuing conflict tore apart the fabric of European society and resulted in the death of more than fifteen million soldiers and civilians. The war also led directly to the rise of totalitarian regimes in Germany and Russia, setting the stage for a second war which would claim an additional 60 million lives.

Pope Benedict XV, elected in September 1914, called unsuccessfully for peace amongst Christian nations and later referred to the war as “the vast conflict, the suicide of civilised Europe”.

Paul Kengor writes:

The moral calamity was obvious to all. Quite apart from the bishop of Rome, the acclaimed atheist-leftist intellectual Sidney Hook might have best summed up the catastrophe when he referred to World War I not as the “Great War,” or “War to End All Wars,” or the “Kaiser’s War,” or, in President Woodrow Wilson’s famous line, the war to “make the world safe for democracy,” but as something considerably less inspiring: World War I was, said Hook mordantly, “the second fall of man.”

And so it was.

Religious metaphor best captures the gravity of this giant fall from grace. Historian Michael Hull evokes the image of O Cristo das Trincheiras, “The Christ of the Trenches.” This life-size statue of Jesus Christ hung with arms outstretched on a tall wooden cross was erected on the Western Front. Soiled, bullet-scarred, and, most of all, crucified, the French presented it to the government of Portugal after the war to memorialize the thousands of Portuguese who sacrificed themselves at the Battle of Flanders. It’s an appropriate symbol for the millions who gave their lives for this colossal sin.

The war also resulted in the death of Christendom in Europe. At the time almost all European citizens and national leaders notionally adhered to the Christian faith, however this counted for little or nothing in avoiding war.

Henceforth conflicts would grow even bloodier and would lose any remaining restraint. Today we are left with this legacy, a world fractured and remade in our own image.

The fight against modern slavery

Andrew Forrest, an Australian mining magnate and evangelical Christian, has recently launched the Global Freedom Network to fight modern slavery with the support of Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior Sunni Muslim cleric the Grand Imam of al-Azhar.

The formation of this inter-faith initiative follows the release late last year of the first Global Slavery Index which found that almost 30 million people worldwide are living in conditions of modern slavery.

Click here to view the key findings of the Global Slavery Index

Click here to find out more about the Global Freedom Network

Justifying Faith

“Faith which justifies is not merely a knowledge of history, but it is to assent to the promise of God, in which, for Christ's sake, the remission of sins and justification are freely offered. It is the certainty or the certain trust in the heart, when, with my whole heart, I regard the promises of God as certain and true, through which there are offered me, without my merit, the forgiveness of sins, grace, and all salvation, through Christ the Mediator... It is not my doing, not my presenting or giving, not my work or preparation, but that a heart comforts itself, and is perfectly confident with respect to this, namely, that God makes a present and gift to us, and not we to Him, that He bestows upon us every treasure of grace in Christ"

- The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article IV(II): Of Justification

Christianity in New Zealand

The 2013 census results were recently released in New Zealand and they show an alarming acceleration of trends that are present in all Anglosphere countries. The tables below show key trends in religious affiliation since 2001.

The share of the population responding “No Religion" has increased to 39%, far higher than Canada (24%) and Australia (22%).

Those identifying as Christian now represent less than half the population and are declining in absolute numbers.  At this rate the non-religious in New Zealand will likely outnumber Christians within the next five years.

Table 1: Religious affiliation - total population

Affiliation	2001 (000)	2006 (000)	2013 (000)	2001 (%)	2006 (%)	2013 (%)
Christian	2,076	2,063	1,880	56%	51%	44%
Hindu	40	65	90	1%	2%	2%
Buddhist	42	52	58	1%	1%	1%
Muslim	24	36	46	<1%	<1%	1%
Jewish	7	7	7	<1%	<1%	<1%
Other	100	112	107	3%	3%	3%
No religion	1,028	1,297	1,635	28%	32%	39%
No response	527	536	520	14%	13%	12%
Total	3,737	4,028	4,242	100%	100%	100%

The second table shows the breakdown of Christian respondents by major denomination:

Table 2: Religious affiliation - Christian denominations

Affiliation	2001 (000)	2006 (000)	2013 (000)	2001 (%)	2006 (%)	2013 (%)
Catholic	486	509	492	23%	25%	26%
Anglican	585	555	460	28%	27%	24%
Presbyterian	432	401	331	21%	19%	18%
Methodist	121	122	103	6%	6%	5%
Pentecostal	67	80	74	3%	4%	4%
Baptist	51	57	54	2%	3%	3%
Orthodox	10	13	14	1%	1%	1%
Lutheran	4	4	4	<1%	<1%	<1%
Other	320	321	347	15%	16%	18%
Total	2,076	2,063	1,880	100%	100%	100%

Anglican and Presbyterian numbers have been particularly hard hit, declining more than 20% in absolute terms over the last twelve years. Lutheran numbers are very small - fewer than 4,000 and representing only 0.2% of all Christians in New Zealand (versus 2% in Australia and Canada).

A Wartime Prayer for Advent

Alfred Delp, the son of a Lutheran father and Catholic mother, was a young Jesuit priest in Munich during the war and a member of the Kreisau Circle, a Christian resistance movement against the Nazi regime. His sermons and prison writings stand today as powerful and unsentimental reflections on the meaning of Advent in the face of the hubris and despair of the modern age. Here is an excerpt from a devotion he wrote in Berlin's Tegel Prison in December 1944 while awaiting execution:

Let us pray for the openness and willingness to hear the warning prophets of the Lord and to overcome the devastation of life through conversion of heart. Let us not shun and suppress the earnest words of the calling voices, or those who are our executioners today may be our accusers once again tomorrow, because we silenced the truth.

Once again, let us kneel down and pray for keen eyes capable of seeing God's messengers of annunciation, for vigilant hearts wise enough to perceive the words of the promise. The world is more than its burden, and life is more than the sum of its grey days. The golden threads of the genuine reality are already shining through everywhere. Let us know this, and let us, ourselves, be comforting messengers. Hope grows through the one who is himself a person of the hope and promise.

One more time, we want to kneel and pray for faith in life's motherly consecration, in the figure of the blessed woman from Nazareth. Already, today and for always, life is torn away from the cruel and merciless powers. Let us be patient and wait, with an Advent waiting for the hour in which it pleases the Lord to appear anew, even in the night, as fruit and mystery of this time.

Advent is the time of promise, not yet the fulfilment. We are still standing in the middle of it all, in the logical relentlessness and inevitability of destiny. To captive eyes, it still appears that the ultimate throw of the dice indeed will be cast here below in these valleys, on these battlefields, in these camps, and prisons, and cellars. One keeping vigil, though, senses the other powers at work and can await their hour.

The sounds of devastation and destruction, the cries of self-importance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and powerlessness still fill the world. Yet, standing silently, all along the horizon are the eternal realities with their age-old longing. The first gentle light of the glorious abundance to come is already shining above them. From out there, the first sounds are ringing out ... They do not yet form a song or melody - it is all still too far off and only the first announcement and intimation. Still, it is happening. This is today. And tomorrow the angels will relate loudly and jubilantly what has happened, and we will know it and will be blessed if we have believed and trusted in Advent.

Alfred Delp, Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings, 1941-1944