Tag Archives: Thomas Jefferson

On the Possibility of Miracles

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The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, better known as the Jeffersonian Bible, was compiled in 1820 by the founding father of the same name.  Using a literal cut and paste method, Jefferson extracted sections of the New Testament that he thought presented Jesus as a great moral exemplar.  Left behind are only mentions of the miracles He performed, including the Resurrection, and any passages that even have a whiff of his divinity.  The famous tinkerer could find no reasons to believe in the divinity of Christ and the operation of the supernatural so he imposed his naturalism upon the texts of the Bible.  Although he hid it away for fear of reprisal, there are many, even inside confines of the Church, who openly adopt and preach naturalism. 

Naturalism

Simply put, naturalism is the position that all that exists is nature.  It usually goes hand in hand with scientism, that is, the belief that the only field of knowledge is empirical science.  Within this philosophical framework the supernatural is a priori excluded such that there must be a natural explanation for everything.  This would include the divinity of Christ and miracles.  Rather than scientifically investigating the possibility of miracles, they simply conclude that miracles are impossible because they are impossible.  As we shall see, however, the miracles of Jesus are in fact quite possible.

CS Lewis makes a helpful distinction in categorizing the miracles of Jesus into two very broad categories: miracles of the Old Creation and miracles of the New Creation.  The former are those miracles in which, seemingly, the laws of nature are altered.  The latter are those that pertain to the laws of supernature.  As an example of the former we could have the changing of the water into wine and of the latter, the walking on water.  Both however respect nature and are no mere suspension of natural laws.  The super-natural always builds upon and assumes the natural. 

Using the Miracle of Cana as an example, let us examine whether or not such a miracle of the Old Creation is possible.  But before doing so, a disclaimer of sorts must be made.  The goal of this discussion is to show that miracles are possible and if possible then probable.  This is not a definitive proof that any particular miracle, including the changing of water into wine, actually happened.  That must be taken upon faith.  Instead the goal is more modest and that is to show that there is nothing irrational about believing in miracles, and, in fact, it is irrational not to believe in their possibility.

Returning to our example, let us examine what is happening.  A substance, namely water, is being changed into another substance, wine.  Change is a reality within the natural world and occurs everywhere we look so there is nothing per se out of the ordinary here.  All substantial change is governed by the enduring principle of matter.  In each substantial change, the matter takes on a new form; water gets into a grape seed and the matter becomes the grape vine which then bears grapes which undergo another substantial change through the process of fermentation and become wine.  So, we see, using the laws of substantial change, it is quite possible that water becomes wine. 

The Lord of Nature

This is not to explain away the miraculous, but to set it in its proper context.  Properly speaking the miracle is not in the change itself, but in the rapidity of the change.  Christ is revealing that He is the Lord of Nature and so it is fitting that He would respect the laws of nature and yet show His mastery over them.  He is the Sovereign King of Creation and thus He can do all things.  He came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it means not just the religious laws like the ritual washing that made the stone jars necessary, but also the laws of nature as well.  In fact, He uses the miracle as a sign that it is His power over nature that also gives Him the authority over the religious law. This mastery over nature is precisely what lends credibility to His claims of divinity and is the reason why He always uses some form of matter in His miracles rather than just creating it out of nothing.  The fact that He also produced a superabundance of 520 liters of wine shows how His absolute mastery.  A similar thing can be shown with the other miracles such as the multiplication of the loaves. 

What about the miracles of the New Creation, those like the walking on the water and the Resurrection?  How can we reconcile these?  Here again we must admit that we cannot prove them, but we can show how the follow from the possibility of the Miracles of the Old Creation and how they are not a repudiation of the laws of Nature.  If we view the miracles of the Old Creation as signs, motives of credibility if you will, then we can say that these miracles of the New Creation are the fulfillment of those signs.  They are meant to show that the laws of nature are not what is altered but man and his relationship to nature that is altered.  Water is still wet and still permeable, but man is given power over it.  Peter, a mere man in the process of becoming a new man, is able to walk on the water as long as he kept his eyes fixed on Christ.  Death, a natural consequence of man’s material being, no longer can hold him.  In both cases the laws are still in place, but man himself has changed.  Previously governed by the material laws because of his material body, he is governed by the laws of a spiritual body.  Spirit asserts its dominance against matter. 

We see now that we must admit at least of the possibility of miracles of Jesus and any philosophy that eliminates them by definition is necessarily false.  There is nothing contrary to the character of nature that would preclude them.  To eliminate them a priori means that you must in some way deny some of the attributes of nature itself.  To eliminate the possibility of the supernatural in this case means a denial of the natural as well.  The only way they could be excluded is if God did not allow them, a question that the Naturalist is not even willing to consider.

Not surprisingly most naturalists are also atheists (or at least deists).  In other words, they form their philosophy based on their belief, rather than as true scientists who would allow the data to take them wherever it goes.  In other words, they invent a philosophy to fit their belief rather than fitting their belief to a correct philosophy.  One may not know whether Christ was God or not, but to eliminate the possibility of the miraculous ultimately is unreasonable. 

Separation of Church and State?

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In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association written on New Year’s Day in 1802, President Jefferson wrote what, especially in recent times, has become his most often quoted words.  In offering an interpretation of the First Amendment he said,

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State” (emphasis added).

The Catholic Church invents the Separation of Church and State

Jefferson was offering nothing novel.  Christians have been preaching the separation of Church and State for millennia.  If we look at the great cultures throughout history, the idea of a separation between the State and Religious powers was anathema.  Whether it was Egypt or Rome, the Emperors were believed to be gods themselves and religious veneration was due to them.  When Christ uttered His famous “render unto Caesar,” He did so in a culture in which Caesar thought himself divine and the High Priest or Pontifex Maximus of the official Roman pagan religion.  This was the norm throughout the ancient world, except for a single country—Israel.  In Israel, the role of king was distinct from either the priests or the prophets.  The first king, Saul, was anointed by the Prophet Samuel (1Samuel 10) and even King David himself was beholden to the Prophet Nathan who accused him of murder.

Christians have always interpreted Christ’s admonition to “render unto Caesar” as a call to keep this Jewish tradition of separating the governance of the State from the governance of the Church.  On the one hand, we can see why Our Lord thought this necessary simply by looking at man’s nature as both spirit and body.  We live two distinct, although related lives—temporal and eternal.  His utterance baptizes these two distinct powers to govern each of the lives.  Like the body and soul, there is a certain precedence of the spiritual governance over the temporal governance, but still the two should work in a complementary fashion.

Why We Need the Separation

Why the Church and State should remain distinct is not entirely clear until we add into the mix man’s fallen nature.  As an effect of man’s prodigious fall, the body tends to drag the soul down and corrupt it.  When the Church and the State are essentially one, it is the Church bears the brunt of it.  History reveals this repeatedly, especially if we look to the Middle Ages, culminating in Henry VIII’s foundation of the Church of England.  The circumstances may change but the Church always becomes corrupt when it gets too closely tied to the temporal power.

To use an American parlance, the Church/State distinction is a form of checks and balances.  The temporal authority, because he is first and foremost is trying to save his own soul in addition to his subjects, is always subservient to the Church.  The Church would, in turn, make itself the servant of the Imperium in her conduct of temporal affairs.  Each serves to keep the other in line—when the Church oversteps her bounds and gets too caught up in temporal affairs, the State is there to remind her of her mission to souls.  When the State oversteps its bounds and puts the souls of its residents at stake, the Church is there to remind it of its proper place.  While this practice may have been abused, the power of the Pope to excommunicate a rogue Christian King was very effective in bringing about conditions that were good for the soul.

When the two function in this way the citizens of the State thrive and are holy.  The culture becomes Christian, rather than a mere State that happens to have a majority of Christians in it.  The Church recognized the importance of building a Christian society—one in which being a Christian is made easier by the culture—and therefore worked out her understanding of Church/State relations shortly after the time of Constantine.  Pope St. Gelasius I (492-496) who is often credited with “inventing” the separation of Church and State said:

“Christ, mindful of human fragility had discerned between the functions of each power… His reason for so doing was twofold. On the one hand, it is written that no one warring for God should be entangled with secular things. The raison d’être of the royal power was to relieve the clerics of the burden of having to care for their carnal and material wants. For the temporal necessities the pontiffs indeed need the emperors, so that they can devote themselves to their functions properly and are not distracted by the pursuit of these carnal matters, but the emperors, Christian as they are, need the pontiffs for the achievement of eternal salvation.”

The Jefersonian Distinction

Even if Jefferson did not invent the notion of the Separation of Church and State, he did endorse an important twist to it.  What was new about Jefferson’s position—which was subsequently read into the Constitution by Justice Hugo Black—was his belief that a wall of separation had to be erected.  In other words, he thought Church and State should remain completely separate.

Returning to the analogy of the human person, you can no more put a wall of separation between the Church and State than you can between the soul and the body.  To sever the one from the other leads to death—be it the death of the person or of society as a whole.

When the complementary role of Church and State is denied, the State will go unchecked in its power.  When the State finds no authority above it then it simply does as it sees fit without any regard to the moral law or the eternal salvation of its citizens.  In order to pull this off though the State needs to promote “bread and circuses” to keep the populace from focusing on their souls.  The “bread and circuses” can take various forms, but the form of choice today is sexual license.  It is not as if the Church merely disappears in this setting.  The State sets up a new Church, one that is merged with the State.  In other words, when you set up a “wall of separation” it will always end up merging the two.

 

Return of the Church-State of Paganism

Much of the West is returning to paganism in the form of liberalism, worshipping the god of freedom.  Like all pagan gods, it demands child sacrifice, even if is cleaner this time because it is done in utero.  Its churches are universities (really all public schools) and its high priests are the judges.  The State will “tolerate” other religions and grant “freedom of worship” but any public expression, especially when it comes in conflict with the State Religion, will not be tolerated.   The Little Sisters of the Poor may have ultimately won their lawsuit, but that is only a harbinger of things to come.  The next battle will likely come for not complying with the demands of the law for gay marriage.  You must be willing to profess the new pagan creed which many Catholics, even bishops and priests, have shown themselves willing to do.

This is really a project of the Enlightenment, it simply took a few centuries for the Christian roots of Western society to actually die out.  Those roots are now, for all intents and purposes, dead.  We are living in Rome in reverse and the only way we can act redemptively is the way of the Church—martyrdom or an appearance by Our Lady.  Throughout history those are the only two ways that a society has been saved from the clutches of paganism.  Let us pray that as we ready ourselves for the 100th Anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima that it is the latter.