- Feb 5, 2002
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About ten years ago I found myself in China teaching a weeklong philosophy seminar on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Present were forty or so young philosophers from premier Chinese universities. Also present, acting as observers in the back of the room, were members of the Chinese Communist Party. I taught in jacket and tie, but everyone knew that I and one other Dominican professor were priests. The students talked to us more openly at the meals, at crowded tables, where it was not easy to be overheard. Most were non-Christian, but almost all were studying Western philosophy. I will never forget asking one of them why he was present at the seminar, given that the philosopher we were studying was a medieval Western Christian thinker. He said, “Father, the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s severed contemporary Chinese culture from its historical past, its traditional ethical resources. Today we know that communism is a failed system, but what we don’t know is the meaning of life. We wonder whether it might have something to do with Christianity.” I found these words prophetic.
We, too, have been severed from our historical past. It’s all too common to think that nothing can exist beyond the secular order, which represents a kind of stasis, the endpoint of Western history. And this mentality is increasingly attended by discontent, a sense that things aren’t working. This Chinese student, however, emerging from the most intensive attempt in history to stamp out religious belief, was aware of a profound and genuine possibility, a condition of naivete, that of a person seeking meaning, open to a religious proposal. He was envisaging the possibility of a post-secular order and a new religiosity.
He was correct, not only about the spiritual conditions in China, but also about those in our own societies. We live amid global religious conflict, the threat of nuclear extermination, amazing scientific progress, and Western existential malaise. The meaning of life is indeed a twenty-first-century question.
Philosophy and the natural sciences can give us answers, but only to a point. A very good philosopher might provide sound arguments for the existence of God, but he cannot introduce us to God personally. Moreover, there is a nucleus of personality in us, characterized by intelligence and freedom, which demarcates the existence of a soul. But no one knows what happens to the soul after death. And neither philosophy, nor politics, nor technology can deliver us ultimately from the problem of evil, whether moral or physical. Religion and claims about revelation remain always relevant and unavoidable. Thus our challenge—and our opportunity. In our historical moment, Catholic theology should seek to explain the meaning of life in its ultimate registers: with reference to God and the Incarnation.
Continued below.
We, too, have been severed from our historical past. It’s all too common to think that nothing can exist beyond the secular order, which represents a kind of stasis, the endpoint of Western history. And this mentality is increasingly attended by discontent, a sense that things aren’t working. This Chinese student, however, emerging from the most intensive attempt in history to stamp out religious belief, was aware of a profound and genuine possibility, a condition of naivete, that of a person seeking meaning, open to a religious proposal. He was envisaging the possibility of a post-secular order and a new religiosity.
He was correct, not only about the spiritual conditions in China, but also about those in our own societies. We live amid global religious conflict, the threat of nuclear extermination, amazing scientific progress, and Western existential malaise. The meaning of life is indeed a twenty-first-century question.
Philosophy and the natural sciences can give us answers, but only to a point. A very good philosopher might provide sound arguments for the existence of God, but he cannot introduce us to God personally. Moreover, there is a nucleus of personality in us, characterized by intelligence and freedom, which demarcates the existence of a soul. But no one knows what happens to the soul after death. And neither philosophy, nor politics, nor technology can deliver us ultimately from the problem of evil, whether moral or physical. Religion and claims about revelation remain always relevant and unavoidable. Thus our challenge—and our opportunity. In our historical moment, Catholic theology should seek to explain the meaning of life in its ultimate registers: with reference to God and the Incarnation.
Continued below.
