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Faith in
progress
The
community-oriented vision of the “blessed life” is
certainly directed beyond the present world, but it also
has to do with the building up of this world.
Let us
consider a randomly chosen episode from the Middle Ages.
It was commonly thought that monasteries were places of
flight from the world and of withdrawal from
responsibility for the world, in search of private
salvation. Bernard of Clairvaux, who inspired a
multitude of young people to enter monasteries of his
Order, had quite a different perspective on this. In his
view, monks perform a task for the whole Church and
hence, also for the world. He uses many images to
illustrate the responsibility that monks have toward the
entire body of the Church and, indeed, toward humanity;
he applies to them the words: “The human race lives
thanks to a few; were it not for them, the world would
perish . . . .” Contemplatives—must become agricultural
laborers—he says. The nobility of work, which
Christianity inherited from Judaism, had already been
expressed in the monastic rules of Augustine and
Benedict. Bernard takes up this idea, again. The young
noblemen who flocked to his monasteries had to engage in
manual labor. In fact, Bernard explicitly states that
not even the monastery can restore Paradise, but he
maintains that, as a place of practical and spiritual
“tilling the soil,” it must prepare the new Paradise.
A wild
plot of forest land is rendered fertile—and, in the
process, the trees of pride are felled, whatever weeds
may be growing inside souls are pulled up, and the
ground is thereby prepared so that bread for body and
soul can flourish. Are we not perhaps seeing once again,
in the light of current history, that no positive world
order can prosper where souls are overgrown?
The
transformation of Christian faith—hope in the modern age
How
could the idea have developed that Jesus’ message is
narrowly individualistic and aimed only at each person
singly? How did we arrive at this interpretation of the
“salvation of the soul” as a flight from responsibility
for the whole, and how did we come to conceive the
Christian project as a selfish search for salvation
which rejects the idea of serving others? To find an
answer to this we must take a look at the foundations of
the modern age. These appear with particular clarity in
the thought of Francis Bacon. That a new era
emerged—through the discovery of America and the new
technical achievements that had made this development
possible—is undeniable. But what is the basis of this
new era?
It is
the new correlation of experiment and method that
enables man to arrive at an interpretation of nature in
conformity with its laws and thus, finally to achieve
“the triumph of art over nature.” The novelty—according
to Bacon’s vision—lies in a new correlation between
science and praxis. This is also given a theological
application: the new correlation between science and
praxis would mean that the dominion over creation—given
to man by God and lost through original sin—would be
reestablished.
Anyone
who reads and reflects on these statements attentively
would recognize that a disturbing step has been taken:
up to that time, the recovery of what man had lost
through the expulsion from
Paradise was expected from faith in Jesus Christ: herein lay
“redemption.” Now, this “redemption,” the restoration of
the lost “Paradise”
is no longer expected from faith, but from the newly
discovered link between science and praxis. It is not
that faith is simply denied; rather, it is displaced
onto another level—that of purely private and
other-worldly affairs—and at the same time it becomes
somehow irrelevant for the world. This programmatic
vision has determined the trajectory of modern times and
it also shapes the present-day crisis of faith, which is
essentially a crisis of Christian hope. Thus, hope, too,
in Bacon, acquires a new form. Now it is called: faith
in progress. For Bacon, it is clear that the recent
spate of discoveries and inventions is just the
beginning; through the interplay of science and praxis,
totally new discoveries will follow, a totally new world
will emerge, the kingdom of man. He even put forward a
vision of foreseeable inventions—including the aeroplane
and the submarine. As the ideology of progress developed
further, joy at visible advances in human potential
remained a continuing confirmation of faith in progress
as such.
To be
continued next week
Spe Salvi Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI to all “On
Christian Hope”
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