WE ARE ALL DESIGNISTS:

What "God Said" Matters (William E. Carroll, 5/11/11, The Catholic Thing)

In his homily, the pope reflected on the opening of Gospel of John as a commentary on the opening of Genesis:

“In the beginning was the Word.” In effect, the creation account . . . is characterized by the regularly recurring phrase: “And God said…” The world is a product of the Word, of the Logos, as Saint John expresses it, using a key term from the Greek language. “Logos” means “reason,” “sense,” “word.” It is not reason pure and simple, but creative Reason, that speaks and communicates itself. It is Reason that both is and creates sense. The creation account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason.

In revealing that the source of everything is creative Reason, which embraces love and freedom in Benedict’s reading, we have a far richer sense of reason from what has been celebrated in the modern world from the time of Descartes. This wider sense of reason incorporates but is not limited to the rationality central to the natural sciences and philosophy. Furthermore, to identify Reason, Logos, as the creative source of all that is, is to recognize that appeals to randomness and chance as ultimate explanatory principles of nature must be rejected.

Again, the Pope’s words:

Here we are faced with the ultimate alternative that is at stake in the dispute between faith and unbelief: are irrationality, lack of freedom, and pure chance the origin of everything, or are reason, freedom and love at the origin of being? Does the primacy belong to unreason or to reason? This is what everything hinges upon in the final analysis. As believers we answer, with the creation account and with Saint John, that in the beginning is reason. In the beginning is freedom . . .

Do we recognize that the universe is the result of God’s free creative Word, that all that is depends, at every moment of its existence, upon God’s causal agency, or do we think that there is no ultimate source of things, that all that is just happens to be, and, ultimately, without reason?

Benedict says, “everything hinges upon” our response to this question.

First Meme.

Posted by oj at May 11, 2011 6:32 AM
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