Scripture, science, and non-believers: Further insights from Benedict XVI

In the last installment of this “God’s Two Books” column, I reflected on some highlights from the unprecedented dialogue that unfolded over eight years between the retired Pope Benedict XVI and atheist mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi.

I spent much of that piece focusing on Benedict’s methodology, the manner he went about conducting this dialogue. Here as elsewhere in his ministry, the emeritus pontiff achieved a rare feat. In the face of an antagonistic interlocutor, he exhibited a singular ability to combine fidelity to Catholic doctrine with patience, poise, and a willingness to offer charitable yet frank criticism.

Perhaps above all, Benedict’s model is worthy of emulation because he sincerely viewed conversations with those holding different perspectives as a joint quest for the truth and an opportunity for mutual enrichment. With that by way of a reminder, I now wish to pick up where I left off, delving deeper into a few prominent themes in this noteworthy engagement between an atheist mathematician and theologian pope. As we are about to see, both of God’s books feature prominently in the conversation between these prominent figures.

Biblical symbolism and anthropomorphism

The first point to highlight pertains both to Scripture and creation, and it has to do with Odifreddi’s claim, “Mathematics and science are the only true religion; the rest is superstition.” In particular, the atheist points to anthropomorphic imagery in the Bible as evidence that what Jews and Christians claim to be the revelation of reality, in fact, obscures it. Think of Scripture’s depiction of creation taking place roughly six thousand years ago over a span of seven days, or how man came into existence when God scooped up dust from the earth and breathed life into it.

Instead of outright rejecting Odifreddi’s accusation, Benedict acknowledges that, even as the Catholic Church possesses the proper understanding of these matters, his interlocutor has not completely missed the mark. To this point, the pontiff refers his counterpart to Dionysius the Areopagite, a pivotal Patristic writer whose thought concurs with the atheist to the extent that he considered it necessary to transcend the figurative imagery deployed in Scripture to arrive at the metaphysical truth concealed by it. At the same time, however, Benedict cautions with Dionysius that, while a more refined philosophical approach to God may be more appropriate than material symbols, they are still far fall short of constituting a perfect representation of divine reality. In the words of Benedict, “The risk for these enlightened people is to then regard their philosophical conception of God as adequate, forgetting that their philosophical ideas also remain infinitely distant from the reality of the ‘wholly Other’” (August 30, 2013, I). Citing the Fourth Lateran Council, he then adds, “every concept of God can only be analogical, and the dissimilarity from the true God is always infinitely greater than the similarity.”

Taking it a step further still, Benedict declares that Scripture’s figurative imagery continues to occupy a central place in our theology. Even as most of us today would consider it rather crude to imagine that God (who didn’t have a body until the Incarnation) shaped the first human being with his hands like a potter molding clay, the pontiff considers the disguise of anthropomorphic language “necessary to overcome the arrogance of thought.” As a committed student of St. Augustine, Benedict does not lament the presence of ambiguities in our biblical interpretation, but sees these as opportunities for tempering our complacence and pride. We might describe that as the “negative” function of the symbolism that Scripture extensively uses to communicate its theology.

Benedict does not stop there. In fact, he doubles down on this point by insisting that this imagery also has an eminently positive role to play: “It must be said that, from a certain perspective, anthropomorphisms come closer to the reality of God than mere concepts.” In this, the pontiff’s thought again resembles that of Dionysius, who said of Scripture’s anthropomorphic images: “Describing celestial beauties with evidently inaccurate features does not lower but rather elevates them” and that “these defective approximations help our thought to rise.”

Benedict also had a deep appreciation for the work of C.S. Lewis, and in reading this line I cannot help but think the latter’s comment in Miracles when he says: “The crudest Old Testament picture of Yahweh thundering and lightning out of dense smoke, making mountains skip like rams, threatening, promising, pleading, even changing His mind, transmits that sense of living Deity which evaporates in abstract thought.”

The historical Jesus

Odifreddi extends his same derogatory assessment of the Old Testament to the New, pronouncing that we possess little credible information about Jesus as a historical figure. In response to this well-worn assertion (which spurred him to publish three books in rebuttal), Benedict confronts Odifreddi with brutal honesty:

What you say about the figure of Jesus is not worthy of your scientific rank. Seeing as you pose the question as if nothing is really known about Jesus as a historical figure, then I can only firmly invite you to become a bit more competent from a historical point of view (August 30, 2013, V).

From here, the pontiff’s remarks echo principles he emphasized across his lifetime of teaching. While he strongly advocates for taking full advantage of the tools offered by modern biblical scholarship, Benedict laments, “It is unfortunately an indisputable fact that much of what has been written in exegesis lacks seriousness,” adding of those in pursuit of this quest that “the so-called ‘historical Jesus’ is mostly a mirror of the authors’ ideas.”

Countering his counterpart’s accusation that Catholicism is too closed-minded when it comes to modern scholarship, the pope stresses that historical-critical exegesis certainly can indeed be abused as a tool of the anti-Christ (a theme he had famously mentioned before on multiple occasions). As before, however, he makes it abundantly clear here once again that this is not a problem with scientific exegesis per se. In fact, he contends, “Historical-critical exegesis is necessary…to show that the Jesus described in the Gospels is also the real historical Jesus—that we are indeed dealing with history that actually happened.”

Monotheism, evil, and Islam

In another letter, Benedict takes up Odifreddi’s allegation that there is no significant difference between Christianity and the religion of Islam (June 24, 2016). Despite the “mass of facts and words” that his interlocutor had assembled in support of this thesis, the pope responds that the issue is not so simple if we take a moment to examine it in greater depth.

For starters, Benedict informs Odifreddi, “You treat the Bible–Old and New Testaments–and the Quran as if they play the same role in their respective religions and hold the same authority.” However, this is simply not the case. Whereas Muslims believe that the Quran was written by Allah and transmitted miraculously through his illiterate prophet Muhammad, Benedict reminds Odifreddi that “the Old and New Testaments constitute a literature that developed over more than a millennium, with different genres and claims.”

This is crucial because doctrine cannot develop within a book that is directly authored by God himself. Although this has been attempted, you really can’t appeal to a later, more straightforward text in the Quran to clarify an earlier problematic one when both are supposed to represent the definitive word on a given matter. In contrast with Muslims, Christians see the Old Testament as a testament to the Lord’s divine pedagogy through which he revealed the full truth about himself only gradually over many centuries (CCC, §53). Because the Old Testament is the record of Israel’s step-by-step advance toward Christ, Benedict can say that its full meaning becomes clear only in the light of Jesus Christ. As I have discussed in my Dark Passages of the Bible among other places, classic figures including Thomas Aquinas and Gregory the Great say the long duration of this process was due not to God being a bad teacher, but because we humans are slow learners.

In any event, Benedict views the difference between the Quran and the Bible on this point as quite clear-cut: Christians can understand disturbing Old Testament passages by considering their contemporary cultural context and recognizing them as part of a progression that ultimately leads us to Jesus. In the words of Benedict, “For Christians, the entire canon of the Old Testament must be read through the lens of the crucified and risen Christ.”

Muslims, on the other hand, have no such recourse. Thus, Sacred Scripture and the Quran and may not appear so different if we focus exclusively on biblical passages that enjoin the faithful to “show no mercy” (Deut 2:34; 7:2; Josh 6:21) and texts that describe Israel as having “utterly destroyed” entire cities—exterminating men, women, children, and animals alike (1 Sam 15:3–9). And, yet, when we examine the Quran against the full revelation of the God who is love and who exhorts us to love our enemies, the difference could not be more obvious.

For this reason, Benedict says, “It is not really necessary to explicitly demonstrate that the figures of Jesus Christ and Muhammad are fundamentally different, especially regarding the issue of violence. The Cross and the sword each speak a different language.”

Evolutionary fact vs. science fiction

As I have previously mentioned, the dialogue between Benedict and Odifreddi addressed not only issues related to Scripture but also those dealing with what the Church has traditionally referred to as God’s “other book”—the created world. Like many atheists, Odifreddi views the relationship between faith and science through the lens of conflict. He maintains that the world is entirely explicable, thereby rendering divine intervention superfluous.

Benedict’s response to this claim mirrors his approach when addressing Odifreddi’s concerns related to Scripture—affirming the great value of modern discoveries while distinguishing these and the ideology frequently associated with them. Thus, far from disputing life’s evolutionary past, the pontiff informs his atheist counterpart that the Church has long affirmed the harmony between evolutionary theory and belief in creation. Benedict spoke on this subject numerous times, maintaining that there are “many scientific proofs in favor of evolution” and that we should therefore not see this as a question of “creation or evolution” but instead “creation and evolution.” In this instance, the emeritus pontiff takes an even firmer than typical stance on the complementarity of these domains:

First of all, I would like to point out that no serious theologian will contest that the entire “tree of life” stands in a living internal relationship, for which the term evolution is appropriate. Likewise, no serious theologian will be of the view that God the Creator, had to intervene repeatedly at intermediate levels almost manually in the process of development. In this way, many attacks on theology regarding evolution are unfounded (August 30, 2013, II).

It is clear that Benedict saw Christianity and evolutionary science as complementary realities. Nevertheless, as he also noted on multiple occasions, there does indeed exist a point of incongruity related to this matter: the atheistic philosophy that is popularly associated with evolution. In keeping with his saintly predecessor, who criticized the ideology of “scientism,” Benedict characterizes this worldview as “scientific” faith. He identifies this as the primary problem related to the dialogue between faith and science, asserting that “everything else, in comparison, is secondary.”

On this score, immediately after agreeing with Odifreddi that divine intervention is not required to account for evolutionary changes through the ages, the pope moves to a critique that he finds applicable to many proponents of the thesis that evolution disproves God.: “On the other hand, it would be useful for the progress of knowledge if representatives of the natural sciences would show themselves to be more openly aware of problems and if it were stated more clearly how many questions in this regard remain open.”

So emphatic was Benedict regarding this point that he characterizes much of the rhetoric aimed at invalidating God through science as “science fiction.” Identifying Richard Dawkins’ work The Selfish Gene as a classic example of this “genre,” he explains that fantascienza can indeed be valuable so long as those who write it acknowledge it for what it is:

Science fiction exists, moreover, within many sciences. What you present on theories regarding the beginning and end of the world I would label as science fiction in a good sense. They are visions and anticipations by which to arrive at true knowledge, but they are indeed just that: only imaginings by means of which we try to approach reality (August 30, 2013, III).

At this point, Benedict identifies three “mysteries” that go unacknowledged in scientistic “religion”: how the universe arose, how life first emerged, and how consciousness arose among living beings. The pontiff addresses Odifreddi directly: “But your mathematical religion knows no answer to the question of freedom, is ignorant when it comes to love, and offers no insight when it comes to evil.” Indeed, he goes so far as to declare that atheistic naturalism is fundamentally bankrupt: “A religion that overlooks these fundamental questions remains empty.”

Benedict finds this deficiency to be blatant in Odifreddi’s position regarding the status of human beings within creation. Following the consensus findings of paleoanthropology, Odifreddi holds that human beings to have evolved within a population of pre-human (hominin) ancestors. Benedict and John Paul II likewise consistently affirmed the discovery of mankind’s physical continuity with his immediate ancestors, so this is not the problem. Rather, the issue Benedict takes with Odifreddi on this front is his claim that this continuity between man and his biological ancestors should lead us to “fundamentally question human dignity” (August 30, 2013, II). As he often emphasized, the fact that humans emerged through evolutionary processes does not mean that we are mere matter, reducible to our DNA.

According to Benedict, the marvel is that a creature with dignity of the highest order first came into being—just as it happens every time a new person is conceived—“not next to, but rather precisely through” natural processes. As I’ve explained in great detail elsewhere, Benedict’s approach to the natural world closely resembles that of Aquinas. Both hold that God is more glorified not when he bypasses creatures but rather when he works by means of creatures, endowing them with natures by which they, as true causes, are empowered to drive their own development.

This is why Benedict is unperturbed by evolutionary theory’s capacity to propose a compelling narrative by which all life on our planet arose gradually from a single common ancestor. It turns out, then, that evolution is a testament to the great wisdom with which God governs our universe.

Conclusion

I hope that this brief reflection has illustrated that Benedict XVI’s approach to conversing with a notable atheist offers valuable insights into how to effectively evangelize non-believers in a culture where genuine and ongoing dialogue is scarce. By way of conclusion, I would like to let Benedict once again speak for himself as he urges us to make dialogue with those with different views a vital part of our faith life.

As this pontiff saw it, fraternal dialogue with non-believers is essential not only for the sake of propagating the gospel but also because it contributes to “the perpetual self-purification of Christianity.” We need this dialogue, he says, “to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion.” In this, Benedict’s approach mirrors that of another beloved pope of blessed memory, his dear friend and predecessor Pope John Paul II:

Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.

Having been there myself and guided numerous students in similar situations, I understand that engaging in this dialogue can be intimidating. It is common for Catholics to worry that dialogue will simply foster more doubt, creating a scenario where, in the words of Benedict, “the faith of the Church is like some kind of jellyfish, where there is nothing solid to grab onto, nothing firm at the center of it all that can be built upon.”

Yet, as Ratzinger so often exhorted us, the fear of falling prey to error must not prevent us from getting to the truth of things. In fact, he believed that avoiding life’s most challenging questions “is actually, in essence, a kind of refusal of faith, or, at least, a very profound form of skepticism that fears faith will not be big enough to cope with reality.” When confronted with challenges to our faith, the only path forward is not around, but through.