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Meaning
and History
1. Two different senses of (or referents for the word) "history": A) History (sequence of events) of NATURE (COSMOS) - Determined according to the ineluctable (predictable) laws of physics B) History (sequence of events) of MAN - The same as above? Or free? If free, then to a certain extent, not entirely predictable or law-like. * NB: "We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possession and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life strories and the history of the world were written by the same hand." (The Alchemist, by Paulo Coehlo, p. 79) 2. Is there some meaning to one or the other? Or are the events intrinsically meaningless? There is no "point" or "why" for history (either of human history or the history of the cosmos). It just is. It exists for absolutely no reason or purpose at all. 3. On this view, perhaps the best that can be said is that we make meaning; that is, we give ourselves a sense of meaning or purpose in what is, by its own right, an essentially meaningless world. 4. Is meaning something "out there," in the world, or is it something merely in my mind? That goes for both the history of the cosmos as well as human history. Indeed, it would be true of your own life as well. Does your life have an "intrinsic" meaning and value? Do you, as a person, have an "intrinsic" meaning and value? Or is that meaning merely "in your mind"? (If so, how can you demand that others recognize your intrinsic meaning and value? To do so would be to challenge their "value judgments," and we're not supposed to do that. You would be saying, in essence: "Here is how I value things; now you must put the same value on things that I put on them -- or else!") 5. If there is some intrinsic meaning (to my life, to the broader context of human history, and to the broader context yet of the history of the cosmos), what is it? How can we discover it? Is there some key to the enigma of history? If we could discover it, it seems (or it has historically seemed to many people) that we would have a valuable sort of "wisdom." 6. How do we conceptualize our situation? And what is "wisdom"? (Also, what about suffering? What about death?) (a) If we can predict what's coming in the future, then perhaps we can control events for our own benefit. - Wisdom would be the ability to predict the future. - Salvation involves controlling the future for one's own benefit. - Suffering: If we can predict the future, perhaps we can avoid it as much as possible. - Death: If you knew when it was going to happen, would you want to know? But in both cases, suffering and death, there is a problem. If the prediction is true -- this will happen -- then, by definition, it can't be avoided. If it can't be avoided, would you want to know, either (a) that you will (without fail) get cancer when you reach a certain age, or (b) that you will (there's no avoiding it) die on a certain day, at a certain time, in a certain way? (b) Perhaps events run in cycles, like the seasons, or like the turning of the "wheel of fate." Sometimes you're up; sometimes you're not. - Wisdom would be either being able to recognize the patterns (in order to know what to do). Or wisdom would be recognizing that all "ups" and "downs" are essentially temporary and transient. Soon, the wheel of fate will move on. Best to be prepared. Or best not to get too excited about the "ups" or the "downs." - Salvation involves remaining calm and detached amidst all the turmoil and changes. - Suffering: Suffering and pleasure, defeat and victory, are both transitory and ephemeral. The wise man treats both with equal dispassion. Both will pass. - Death: It comes when it comes. There is no point worrying about it. Alhtough you might also believe in the "wheel of reincarnation." If you believed the goal of reincarnation was to get free from the wheel of fate, then wisdom would be living the sort of life that would get you free from reincarnation. (c) Perhaps events are, at least to some degree, "fated." (NB: This view may be similar to the previous view – one simply finds oneself at a certain place on the "wheel of fate" – but it wouldn't necessarily have to be that way.) My "fate" was to be born in such-and-such a place; to have certain benefits (or not); to be caught up in certain natural or historical disasters (wars, famines, plagues, earthquakes, volcanoes); and thus to die at in a certain place, time, and way. (Modern science might, in its own way, tell such a story of pure "determinism." On this account, we are "fated" by our genes or by a combination of nature and nurture.) - - Wisdom, on this view, would be recognizing my fate and not attempting foolishly to resist it. - Salvation would involve meeting my fate freely and with honor – not being dragged like a dog behind a cart. - Suffering: It is either fated or not. There is no freedom about whether it will happen. The only freedom is how one faces it. - Death: Same as for suffering. (d) Perhaps events are essentially chaotic. History is essentially suffering. Time and change are the sources of disruption. - Wisdom, on this view, would be recognizing the changing world of history as illusory and seeking escape from history in an eternal or timeless or mythic realm. - Salvation would involve an escape from time and history into an eternal, timeless realm. - Suffering: The whole point is to escape from suffering. - Death: This would be the final escape from suffering and the final escape from history into the eternal or timeless realm. (e) Perhaps history and human life are essentially meaningless. - Wisdom, on this view would be withdrawing from all activities or emotions related to some assertion of meaning. Wisdom would be recognizing how other people's lives are directed toward an illusion and then avoiding it oneself. - As for salvation, there is none. You live; you die; that's it. Your "salvation" (such as it is) is in accepting the truth of your situation, and not giving in to the illusions of meaning. - Suffering: It happens. Avoid it if you can, but since events are chaotic, it is impossible to do so completely. As they say, "shit happens." - Death: It happens. There's nothing you can do. You live; you die; that's it. There's no point to it, it just is. (f) Perhaps the history of nature and the cosmos are essentially meaningless, but human beings are able to make meaning for themselves. Life is your own self-creation. - Wisdom on this view would involve refusing any "natural" constraints or rules and making life whatever you want it to be. - Salvation would involve setting aside all constraints and exercising your will to control your life and your surroundings. - Suffering: Things are what you make of them. - Death: It depends on how you think about it -- the only problem being, death brings the end of you as a thinking and thus "meaning-making" being. It's hard to put a positive spin on that. (g) Perhaps history is the story of continual progress. Things in every way are getting better and better. We evolve. The universe evolves. We are reaching ever greater stages of development. - Wisdom on this view would involve becoming more reasonable, gaining more knowledge, and developing greater technological control over one's environment. - Salvation comes with greater understanding of nature, greater ability to predict it, and ultimately control it by means of technological progress. - Suffering can be avoided by scientific and technological control over nature and chance. - Death: Perhaps eventually we can conquer even this. We will make ourselves immortal (either by genetic manipulation or some other technological invention). 7. What do the Old and New Testaments have to say about history and the meaning of life? (a) Our lives are not ruled by fate. We are not caught in an endlessly repeating cycle. Our lives are a journey into the wide open and unforeseeable. But we live in hope because of God's promise. (b) Salvation involves not an "escape" from history; rather, history is the proper context within which we work out our salvation in cooperation with God. (c) History is important. It has a lasting value – indeed, an eternal significance. And yet the culmination of history does not lie within history itself. History (of the cosmos and human life) has a goal beyond itself. That does not make this life unimportant; rather, it gives the events of this life a lasting significance. (d) Created in the image of God (by the Creator of the entire cosmos), we are fallen. We are free, but with a corrupted nature. (e) Meant for happiness, yet we are in slavery to our own misguided intellect and corrupted will and in need of liberation. Thus we are in need of God's free gifts (grace) to attain happiness in a lasting and authentic way. (f) History and the human condition are not (not yet) what they were meant to be. History and the human condition can only reach their ultimate culmination in and through God's help. Right now, the cosmos is not perfect. But we live by faith in God's promise. We are not entirely empowered to bring about this fulfillment of history and of human life by ourselves. There is no utopia on earth. And yet, we can cooperate with God's grace. (g) God has made a promise to care for us. But He will not do it without our cooperation. He will not force His will upon us. (h) Even our sufferings have meaning (and value) from the perspective of God's providence (that is, when history is seen as a whole, from the perspective one could only have after its end.) (i) History is a "gift" rather than, say, a trap or a condemnation or a punishment. 8. Wisdom on this view has something to do with having faith in God's promise, living one's life not desiring to escape the vicissitudes of life, but in hope. Hope is needed because the culmination of history is "not yet": it remains in the unknown future because history is not entirely determined; rather it is in many ways the theater of human freedom and free human decisions. And yet, God has promised that all of our struggles and suffering now will have a lasting significance. History has not yet reached its fulfillment, but it will: not because it is ruled by ineluctable laws or by fate, but because it is under the providential care of a Creator who loves us and wills our ultimate fulfillment. It's simply that our ultimate fulfillment is not something that He does without our cooperation. We are not puppets in a show. We have to play our part. And yet, we are not totally in control of history either. It is not subject to our free will choices alone. We play our part, but others will play their parts as well. And in the end, only God is the Lord of history. 9. The goal (salvation) is to make history (the story of humanity-in-the-world) the story of a communion of free and freely loving persons, not merely the story of "things," "objects," or meaningless "events." The promise is that, if we do our part, God will take care of us and of the whole. We cannot completely and entirely comprehend the full significance or ultimate product of our actions or of history as a whole. But we can play our part in faith, hope, and love. 10. Suffering: It is not entirely unavoidable, but it is not "fated." It comes often as a result of our bad choices, but it is also the result of a fallen world. It should be embraced as a part of life, but it too falls under the promise of hope. 11. Death: It too is part of our lot in life in a sinful, fallen world. But it too falls under the promise of hope. Christ's death and resurrection promises us an afterlife (one which does not make this life meaningless). 12. We are rational and loving beings made in the image of God. We can come to understand the Good, and choose to act in accord with it. We can choose to love God and our neighbor, or we can choose not to. But we love because God has loved us first. God's love makes our response possible. 13. Thus the key to the mystery of history (wisdom) comes with understanding the ways in which the Creator has revealed Himself as a God of love who wills our salvation. Our salvation comes in responding to this revelation in faith, hope, and especially love. 14. What are the reasons for our hope? God's self-revelation in words and deeds. 15. And yet, we have the potential problem of "particularism." How can a revelation given to us by way of history – in very particular words and deeds – be valid for all men and women in all ages? Another way of putting the same: There were some "things" that happened in the past, long ago, to some people who are long gone. Fine, but what does that have to do with me? (Answer: those words and deeds are part of God's self-revelation – a self-revelation that gives us a clue to the mystery of history, that gives us wisdom about how we should live our lives. (How should we live our lives? Answer: Not by going to the oracle or the fortune-teller. Not by trying escape from suffering or the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Not by cursing the darkness. Not by trying to establish an earthly utopia by means of scientific-technological progress or by speeding up the revolt of the proletariat and the establishment of a socialist worker's utopia. Rather, by trusting in God's promises, and by going forward in faith, hope, and love.) Supposing we have "reasons for our hope," why is a community of faith important for understanding these "reasons" (Qq. 43-46 on Haught's "Meaning and History"). 43. As Prof. Haught points out: "it is not evident to everyone that there is a creative, gracious, and promising God at work in human history. It is not clear to most intellectuals today, for example, that history has any meaning at all. As they survey the past, they see no pattern of promise, no special events that would provide a clear basis for contemporary confidence and hope." How, in light of all the suffering and confusion of history, can history be read as "pregnant with promise? How are we to speak coherently of history's promise in the face of these facts? * Discernment of the promissory character of historical events, especially those connected with the theme of covenant, requires that we belong, in some sense at least, to the inner life of a faith community that grounds itself in those events. * Experiencing a certain belongingness to this inner history allows us to abstract a certain sector of coherent events from the welter of confusion that makes up history, and to employ this abstracted series of events as a kind of key to interpret the whole. * Question: What brings about the sense of "belonging"? What would convince you that the universe – and your life – is a gift (not a punishment or a trap)? What would convince you that the universe is, ultimately, a communion of love, rather than a dog-eat-dog world? (There's certainly enough evidence to suggest that it's a dog-eat-dog world. What would convince you that it's not?) 44. We have been looking for a "key" to the enigma of history, one that can show us that, amidst the "welter of confusion" that makes up history, there is some way in which history remains "pregnant with promise" – that ultimately, history, even with all its sufferings and confusions, will be found to be, in the end, meaningful. For Christians and Jews, that "key" to understanding history as a promise, can be found in God's revelation in and through certain events in history. But notice that now we have a potential problem: what we might call the problem of "particularism." Look again, if you would, to the question I posed at the end of question 9 above. There, I mentioned the following: Obviously for Prof. Haught, that "key to unlock the enigma [mystery?] of our social and historical experience" can be found in divine revelation. One of the questions that will arise in the course of the reading, however, is how a very particular series of historical events (such as is provided in the Bible) can provide a "key" to unlock the mystery of the whole of history? Do you see the problem? It may well seem strange to some people to think that a very particular story or set of stories that happened to a very particular people (the Jews) or a very particular person (Jesus) somehow holds the key to all of the history. Perhaps what happened to the Jews in the Old Testament is relevant to the Jews, but how is it relevant to me? How can it be relevant to the destiny of the entire cosmos? What does John Haught say? * According to John Haught: "Dwelling within a community of faith shaped by the significant events in the life of Israel and the Church orients our perception and consciousness so as to be able to read in the larger context of history a pattern of promise and fulfillment. * Those ‘outside' the reach of this story will obviously not have the same orientation, and so they may fail to discern the significance that believers perceive in the Exodus or in Jesus' death. * But those who participate in the internal history of the covenant will see the call of Abraham, the Exodus from Egypt, the lives of the prophets, Israel and Judah's release from captivity, the disciples' missionary fervor after the death of Jesus, and the establishment of the Church as all having a promissory significance that a ‘scientific' historian might not appreciate at all. It is through our specially charged participation in the internal memory of a tradition that we are placed in touch with the promissory interpretation of what might otherwise appear only as a series of inconsequential occurrences. * A purely external, detached, or "objective" account of historical events cannot by itself conjure up the significance we ourselves may attach to these events." * By indwelling a faith community that sees things in terms of certain paradigmatic events (such as the call of Abraham, the promise to Moses, the Exodus), we acquire the skill of discerning meanings that would otherwise completely elude us. 45. According to Prof. Haught, "Our conviction that we belong to a meaningful and redemptive history could hardly take shape outside the life of a community whose very identity is based on hope in that promise." Why should that be the case? Why is the "life of a community" shaped by this hope so essential? Why couldn't we simply "go it alone"? For a reasonable answer to this question, you should look at what Fr. Latourelle says at the end of "History and Revelation" about (A) the "particularism" of revelation" and (B) how a revelation which is given to us by way of history can be valid for all men and for all times? In other words, how can a revelation in history escape the relativism inherent in history? * ii) A second implication concerns the particularism of revelation. - How can the God of all time, all history, all peoples, all the universe have revealed himself to one particular people? - One absolutely unique fact in the history of nations. (God's sovereign freedom.) - Without this view, we don't have history. Just a cycle of types. - Note: the election of the chosen people takes place primarily with a view towards service. - Revelation takes place in Israel, but with a view towards its extension to all nations. * iii) A third implication concerns the validity of a revelation given in time. How can a revelation which is given to us through the way of history be valid for all men and for all times? How can it escape the relativism inherent in history? - Even if we claim that it comes from God, it is necessarily received in the categories of a given era, a given mentality; consequently, how can it enter into history without being mutilated, deformed, exposed to all the vicissitudes that history cannot escape? - He prepared man. He chooses the analogies which can serve as likenesses to the divine mystery. - Also, He does not leave His doctrine to the chance of history and individual interpretation. He protects it first of all by handing it down through a charism of inspiration (prophets and apostles) then He entrusts it to a Church which he fortifies with a charism of infallibility to preserve, defend, propose, and authentically interpret revelation. - Without this divinely established magisterium, and without the special assistance of the Spirit, we gladly concede that it is impossible to conceive of a doctrine, even though divine in its origin, which could escape the fluctuations of history. - [God promised to be with His Church until the end of time and to send His Holy Spirit.] - We need a community of memory-keeping and interpreting to keep the story in its full integrity. 46. At the end of the current selection, Prof. Haught says this: "It is only from within a relative and limited framework that we can provide a justification of our hope. We do not stand on any Archimedean point from which we can, in a detached way, survey the totality of history." Explain. [In order to answer this question, you will first have to know what an "Archimedian point" is. Look it up. Then you will have to ask yourself whether there could possibly be a neutral point outside of history from which a person could view history? Isn't every person who views history actually in the flow of history? And quite frankly, even if we could find some way of viewing history "in a detached way," would a "detached" view necessarily be better than an "engaged" view? Think of it this way: I have more of a "detached" view of you than, let us say, your mother does. Does that make my view of you more "accurate" or more "true" than your mother's view of you? Are there things, for example, that only love can see clearly (and thus that cold, hard, analytical professors may miss)? * We can only testify to the trustworthiness of the promise on the basis of what we know from the stories of God's mighty deeds told to us in the context of our faith. But any complete verification of the validity of our trust awaits the fulfillment of God's promise. * There is no entirely "detached" point-of-view for looking at history. We are all in history. We are involved in it, not outside of it looking in. But is "involvement with" something or someone always a bad thing? Does it always cause you to see the reality wrongly? Does a doctor always see a young patient more accurately than the girl's mother? Does loving someone sometimes allow you to see more deeply? |