{"id":1138,"date":"2016-01-13T05:00:43","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T05:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjcmetheology.wpengine.com\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2016-01-13T05:00:43","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T05:00:43","slug":"the-courtyard-of-the-gentiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/the-courtyard-of-the-gentiles\/","title":{"rendered":"The Courtyard of the Gentiles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Courtyard<\/a>The purpose of Pope Benedict\u2019s initiative, which he calls \u201cThe Courtyard of the Gentiles,\u201d is to promote communication with human cultures, sciences and institutions. It is a practical implementation of what Pope Francis is calling \u201ca culture of encounter.\u201d Although its first meeting was in Paris in 2011, it is the kind of thing that Christians have been doing since the beginning when Paul praised the Athenians for their worship of the Unknown God (Acts 17: 22). \u201cThe Courtyard of the Gentiles\u201d came to mind as I read about Barbara Ehrenreich\u2019s latest book, Living with a Wild God<\/em> (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014).<\/p>\n

In his speech founding the Courtyard project Pope Benedict noted, \u201cI consider most important the fact that we, as believers, must have at heart even those people who consider themselves agnostics or atheists. When we speak of a new evangelization these people are perhaps taken aback. They do not want to see themselves as an object of mission or to give up their freedom of thought and will. Yet the question of God remains present even for them, even if they cannot believe in the concrete nature of his concern for us. \u2026 We must be concerned that human beings do not set aside the question of God, but rather see it as an essential question for their lives. We must make sure that they are open to this question and to the yearning concealed within it. Here I think naturally of the words which Jesus quoted from the Prophet Isaiah, namely that the Temple must be a house of prayer for all the nations (cf. Is 56: 7; Mk 11: 17).\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pope concluded: \u201cToday, in addition to interreligious dialogue, there should be a dialogue with those to whom religion is something foreign, to whom God is unknown and who nevertheless do not want to be left merely Godless, but rather to draw near to him, albeit as the Unknown.\u201d (Address to the Roman Curia, 21 December 2009)<\/p>\n

When she was 13 years old, Barbara Ehrenreich had the following experience:<\/p>\n

The world flamed into life. How else to describe it? There were no visions, no prophetic voices or visits by totemic animals, just this blazing everywhere. Something poured into me and I poured out into it. This was not the passive beatific merger with the \u2018All,\u2019 as promised by the Eastern mystics. It was a furious encounter with a living substance that was coming at me through all things at once, and one reason for the terrible wordlessness of the experience is that you cannot observe fire really closely without becoming part of it. Whether you start as a twig or a gorgeous tapestry, you will be recruited into the flame and made indistinguishable from the rest of the blaze.<\/em><\/p>\n

Was this a religious experience? I don\u2019t know. In an April 14, 2014 Time<\/em> magazine interview with this scientist, defender of the poor, and atheist, she spoke of this fascinating event. And judging from her interest in publishing a book about it, the experience is still important to her.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s one of two things I want to point out: the experience is important to her not in spite of her scientific training<\/em> (she has a PhD in biology) but because of it<\/em>. Her account of the experience and why she has refused to dismiss it should be of interest to those in the Courtyard project or anyone concerned with the relationship between religion and science.<\/p>\n

Question:<\/em> \u201cAre you worried that people are going to think you\u2019ve gone off the reservation?\u201d<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/em> \u201cI\u2019m more worried that people will say I\u2019m crazy. But I was educated as a scientist, and one of the things I learned was that you do not discard anomalous results. If you have a result that doesn\u2019t fit your theory, that falls way off the curve in your graph\u2014I\u2019m sorry, you don\u2019t get to erase that. You have to figure out what\u2019s going on. I\u2019m just opening up the conversation. If in the process I completely ruin my reputation as a rational person and end up in a locked ward, that\u2019s the chance I\u2019m taking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notice that the questioner makes the predictable secularist assumption: religion and science are incompatible because religion is irrational. If you think such an experience is important, you must be leaving the rational world of science. But also notice how Ehrenreich refuses that presumptive clich\u00e9: the authentic scientist does not discount what is exceptional. Unlikely things do happen, and they fall within post-Newtonian scientific theories, which search for probability and not necessity. The dismissal of such experiences as Ehrenreich\u2019s is not science but ideology. The task is, as she knows, to interpret it, not to prejudge it as impossible or meaningless.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the second thing I want to say: in the Christian theology of the Trinity there are two missions. The more familiar mission is the Outer Word, the Logos incarnate, sent by the Father into human history as Jesus of Nazareth. But there is also the pre-verbal, pre-conceptual Inner Word that we call the Holy Spirit, sent into the hearts of all human beings. Tad Dunne has sums up the role of the Spirit this way:<\/p>\n

The \u201cSpirit\u201d very seldom is reported in Scripture to deliver a message; rather, it disposes men and women to receive a message. At times this \u201cSpirit\u201d is portrayed as seeking, groaning or wondering. \u2026It seems, then that the mission of God\u2019s \u201cSpirit\u201d is experienced in our inner and immediately-felt wonder, be it the suffering kind that still searches or the enjoyable kind that appreciates the meanings embraced. God is present to us in the unmediated fashion that our own dynamic wonder is.[*]<\/a><\/p>\n

Thank you, Barbara Ehrenreich, not only for your relentless work in defense of the poor but now, for \u201copening up the conversation\u201d about your experience. Perhaps your book will give others who feared that they would be branded as unscientific or even crazy the confidence to heed Hamlet\u2019s words:<\/p>\n

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,\u00a0<\/em>
\n Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

David Hammond<\/strong> teaches theology and church history for Saint Joseph\u2019s College Online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[*]<\/a> Tad Dunne, \u201cTrinity and History\u201d Theological Studies <\/em>45 (1984), 147.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The purpose of Pope Benedict\u2019s initiative, which he calls \u201cThe Courtyard of the Gentiles,\u201d is to promote communication with human cultures, sciences and institutions. It is a practical implementation of what Pope Francis is calling \u201ca culture of encounter.\u201d Although … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,24,1],"tags":[37,83,246],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-evangelization","category-the-pope","category-uncategorized","tag-atheism","tag-court-of-the-gentiles","tag-science-and-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}