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Authority, Community & Identity article

Pope Benedict XVI: Modern, Not a Modernist


While Benedict XVI’s sympathetic observers define his act of resignation as “an eruption of modernity inside the Church,” critics point to his “crackdowns on nuns and liberal theologians,” “his outreach to the Lefebvrists” and “his resurrection of the old Latin Mass” as a sign of his conservative legacy.

Neither side is completely wrong, nor completely right. For Benedict XVI’s papacy seems to have struck a balance between “the modern” and “the traditional,” in an attempt to avoid the excesses of both modernism and traditionalism. Consider his views on reason, modern science and the Church magisterium.

Prior to becoming Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger warned against the pathologies that both reason and faith give rise to, when they are separated. As pope, in the Regensburg Speech, he argued that no authentic religion can justify violence, nor expect God to justify acts against reason. This emphasis on the rational content of authentic religion demonstrated Pope Benedict’s deep and perhaps surprising affinity with several Enlightenment philosophers’ critique of revelation. In the same speech, however, he criticized another aspect of the Enlightenment legacy, namely the “modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant’s ‘Critiques,’” which equates the reasonable with the empirically verifiable, or falsifiable.  Such constraints on reason, which the Pope sees as arbitrary and artificial, would make faith in God untenable and the search for meaning of the universe impossible.

Pope Benedict XVI’s attitude towards science is yet another example of his being modern, without being a modernist. In Dogma and Preaching, for example, he writes that Darwin’s theory has proven untenable the idea that “every individual species is a datum of creation that existed since the beginning of the word through God’s creative work.” This traditional view of Creation, based on naïve interpretation of Genesis, has been dethroned by the discoveries of science. At the same time, Benedict XVI has pointed out that the idea of evolution does not respond to the question why there is something instead of nothing. It only says why precisely these things exist, instead of others.  In this way, the new idea of Creation that Benedict XVI advances has to do with the “intellectual starting point” of all “being.” This philosophical outlook does not rule out the theory of evolution, rather it provides a modern framework in which both theology and science can coexist.

Finally, Pope Benedict XVI has adopted a middle way in his interpretation of the Church’s Magisterium. According to the experts, his view of the Primacy of Peter as a “horizontal, rather than vertical papacy” has been developed and elaborated during his pontificate.  Considerable are the implications for a new, perhaps more democratic conception of the authority in the Church that nonetheless upholds the primacy of the Pope. Even Benedict’s act of resignation demonstrates a fresh and innovative interpretation of the Papacy, which has for many centuries been viewed as a life-long, active ministry of the Pope. In his typically balanced avoidance of extremes, Benedict XVI has avoided undermining the traditional understanding of the papacy as a God given vocation, while underscoring the human dimension on which divine Grace builds.

In short, Benedict XVI has tried to be open to the challenges of our age, without being so accommodating as to risk jeopardizing the identity of the Catholic faith.

Recognizing with his predecessor that the world is “subject to many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith,” the next Pope will need to continue engaging new pressing issues, including developments in neuroscience, the dialogue with other religions and the increasing secularization of society, while at the same time remaining faithful to the Catholic tradition.

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Paula Bernardini
Paola Bernardini is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Global Perspectives at the Holy Cross College in South Bend, Indiana. She was previously the Associate Director for Research for Contending Modernities. Paola received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome, Italy, where she was a Russell Berrie Fellow in Interreligious Studies. Her past publications include Natural or Political Man? The Foundation of Human Rights in Martha C. Nussbaum (2009), and Multiculturalism and Adult Dialogue Education (2003). Paola received an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, with a concentration in human rights and conflict resolution education.
Authority, Community & Identity article

The Two Others


Since at least the time of Pope Urban II and the launching of the first Crusade (1096-99), European Catholicism was partly defined in relation to two “others”: the Jews, who were left dispersed as a negative testament for their failure to accept the teachings of Jesus and for their supposed complicity with deicide, constituted the other within; and the Muslims, against whom Christendom came to be articulated cohesively as such, constituted the other without. Recognizing the intricate connections between the Vatican’s relations to both Jews/Israel and Muslims may be pivotal for the ever complex interfaith challenges facing the Church globally.

Commitment to a Cooperative Future

While Pope Benedict XVI’s negatively received 2006 Regensburg address may be his lasting legacy within Muslim contexts, his Jesus of Nazareth-Part II (2011), where he offers – echoing Vatican II – an exoneration of the Jews from the millennia-long accusation for being the killers of Christ, suggests consistency with his most immediate predecessor’s effort to reconcile with the Jews and confront the legacy of Pope Pius XII during WWII (while nonetheless suggesting the canonization of Pius XII and attempting to revoke the excommunication of bishops associated with the Society of St Pius X).  Notably, Pope Benedict XVI stressed that the conversion of the Jews should not be a preoccupation of the Church. His historic visit to Israel in 2009 reinforced this general tenor. On the front of Catholic-Jewish relations, the resigning Pope, therefore, may be viewed as operating within the parameters of Vatican II.  This apparently generated the recent “Letter of Gratitude” from Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.  “I remember fondly our meeting [in 2009],” Netanyahu writes, “in which you referred to Judaism as Christianity’s elder brother and in which you reaffirmed your commitment to a cooperative future between Christians and Jews”.

And yet, despite Netanyahu’s warmth toward the Vatican, Benedict XVI’s reign reflected the ambivalences of the Vatican with respect to the Israeli Jewish state. This ambivalence goes back to Viennese-Jewish self-appointed spokesperson and visionary of political Jewish Zionism, Theodore Herzl’s unsuccessful audience with Pope Pius X in 1904. The latter, in significant contrast to the Reconstructionist Movement that captivated the imagination of many Protestants in Europe and the United States, responded negatively to the Zionist project and the request of support. According to Herzl’s diary entry, the Pope said: “We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem—but we could never sanction it”. This theologically based rejection is still reflective in the post-Vatican II approach to Zionism and Israel (and even after the establishment of diplomatic relations in1993): on the one hand, we see a great emphasis on interfaith acceptance, toleration, and remorse concerning the Church’s legacy of anti-Semitism and accusation of deicide. On the other, one can identify a clear support of the Palestinian cause for nation-statehood that has recently translated into the Vatican’s support of the 2012 UN General Assembly vote recognizing Palestine as a member state, as well as renewed calls for the internationalization of Jerusalem.

Navigating Charged Terrain

Of course, the two tasks of reconfiguring Catholic-Jewish relations and supporting the rights of the Palestinians for self-determination are not necessarily mutually exclusive or contradictory. However, exonerating the Jews from the accusation of deicide is not the same as accepting the theological, historical, and now political centrality of the land within the Jewish imagination and embodied experience. Indeed, all too often the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perceived as a zero-sum game and the future leadership in the Vatican may want to reflect on how to navigate this charged terrain. This objective carries broad consequences precisely because of how Palestine/Israel resonates symbolically and eschatologically in various contexts and cultural and religious imaginations.

Hence, reconfiguring relations with the Muslim and Jewish others is an intimately interconnected task and one that may require challenging the Zionization of Vatican-Jewish relations. Even while Netanyahu thanked Benedict XVI “on behalf of the people of Israel,” the presumption that Israeli political leadership is the mouthpiece of all Jews the world over is problematic. It elevates the state of Israel and its infrastructure to a church-like position. On the other, de-Zionizing by downplaying (and even denying) Jewish claims and attachments to the physical Zion can easily find affinities with the new wave of anti-Judaism currently found in various Muslim contexts. Considering the recent history of interfaith reconciliation with the Jews this consequence is clearly undesirable.

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Atalia Omer
 Atalia Omer is Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Politics (2008) from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Her research focuses on Israel/Palestine; religion, violence, and peacebuilding; as well as theories and methods in the study of religion. Omer was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, resulting in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2023). Among other publications, Omer is the author of When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (University of Chicago Press, 2019). She is also a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2015). 
Field Notes article

Global Migration and the New Cosmopolitanism: New Reports, Workshop, and Film


The ambition of Contending Modernities is to bring academic research into dialogue with policy-making and grassroots practice. Its east London research project – with the Contextual Theology Centre (CTC) – is focused on the ways that community organising enables diverse communities to work together to discern and promote a common good. As well as producing research papers, it is generating a number of resources for the wider community.

Online Resources

In 2012 the east London project produced a number of research reports and resources. In the coming weeks we will be posting blogs highlighting the research of members of the Contending Modernities research team in east London. The following resources are now available online:

A New Covenant of Virtue (pdf) –  a collection of essays on Islamic engagement in broad-based community organising,

Organised Christians (pdf) –  a report on the motivations of Christians engaged in community organising

From Goodness to God (pdf) – a report for the public theology think-tank Theos on whether morality needs religious foundations – and what implications this might have for the role of faith in public life

With good reason?  – a podcast of the debate on morality and religion at the London School of Economics which launched   From Goodness to God

Making Sense of the Census

The UK Government has just begun to publish the findings of the 2011 Census – with the first batch of statistics relating to religious affiliation in England and Wales. Unsurprisingly, the three statistics which attracted most media interest were the proportion of citizens declaring themselves to be Christian, Muslim or of no religion. The research being conducted by Contending Modernities speaks into this debate, and recently the Contextual Theology Centre held a workshop for clergy in multi-religious contexts on ‘Making Sense of the Census’.

The Holy Family – and the Story of Today’s Refugees

Contending Modernities’ east London research has a particular focus on the experience of migrants and refugees – which is informing the Contextual Theology Centre’s wider work with British churches. In partnership with The Children’s Society, the Centre recently produced a short film relating the Biblical account of flight of the Holy Family to Egypt to the experience of refugee families in the UK today.  It has also produced a leaflet to help congregations listen, pray and act on asylum issues.

 

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Angus Ritchie
Canon Dr. Angus Ritchie is an Anglican priest. For over twenty years, he has served in parishes in East London involved in community organizing, playing a leading role in campaigns for the Living Wage, affordable housing, and a cap on interest rates. He is the founding director of the Centre for Theology and Community. His latest book, Inclusive Populism: Creating Citizens in the Global Age was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2019, and was recently discussed by Pope Francis at a conference of Catholics involved in community organizing.
Field Notes article

Definitions of Personhood in Islamic Normative Texts


How was personhood defined in Islamic normative texts since the 7th century? One approach to this question is an analysis of texts relating to the unborn. One sort of text tries to solve legal problems. One example would be the issue of abortion; another, the so-called waiting period before re-marriage (idda) after being divorced or widowed. Ideas about the unborn were expressed in such commentaries.

Such issues were addressed in historical texts with respect to the issue of proof. How and after which state of embryological development can an abortion be proven? If an idda ends through premature delivery of an unborn, how can that premature delivery, again, be proven?

In addition, the argumentation turns on discernment of what had actually happened and whether this could be proven beyond doubt. The legal consequences flowed from this prior determination.  Accordingly, the fundamental question in these sorts of texts was, whether or not it was indeed an embryo which had left the uterus prematurely. If it was established that the incident under discussion had actually been a premature delivery, for example, a catalogue of legal consequences applied.

Ensoulment

At which point of embryological development must the unborn be considered a human person according to the Shari‘a?  Certainly this question governs the contemporary tendency to scrutinize the catalogue of legal consequences. But this approach can also be found in texts dating from the first six centuries of Islamic history. Today, however, one issue has gained pivotal importance in bioethical discussions about issues relating to the status of the embryo such as cloning, genetic engineering, abortion, pre-natal testing, and frozen embryos: the role of ensoulment. According to the majority of opinions, ensoulment takes place at the 120th day of pregnancy. After this date the embryo is considered to have the same status as a born human being.

However, these legal statements should not be read as an equation of ensoulment with the attainment of personhood. The historical texts indicate that the aspect of form was not only raised in discussions relating to the embryo because of pragmatic issues of proof. Rather, form was also discussed on a more theoretical level, and in this discussion it was clearly linked to the embryo acquiring a different, elevated legal status. In addition there was also a certain tradition that defined a person (in contrast to a soul) via his or her outer appearance. Josef van Ess illustrates this point in his groundbreaking work on the Islamic theology of the 8th and 9th Centuries C.E., highlighting the pre-Islamic and early Islamic usage of the term shakhs, which for most of Islamic history meant “person,” and signified a silhouette (i.e. the body of a person).

Shape & Outer Appearance

Two additional examples point to the importance of shape/outer appearance in the definition of an individual human being.  Q. 17:70 reads, “We have honored the sons of Adam (…) and conferred on them special favors, above a great part of our creation” (Yusuf Ali translation). Over the centuries the exegetes asked what exactly God had given to humankind in order to elevate it over most of the rest of his creation. In commentaries written before the 4th/10th century, they answered: humans eat with both hands and this sets them apart from the rest of creation. Subsequently, commentators started to mention the soul (rūḥ).

A second example shows how the discussion about what defines a human person is linked to issues relating to embryological development. In his exegesis to Q.22:5, one of several Qur’anic passages describing embryological development, Abu Bakr Ahmad al-Jassas, a scholar from the 10th century, delves into a discussion about the legal consequences of a premature delivery. These consequences do not apply, he argues, if the miscarriage occurred in early stages of the pregnancy. The reason: “it does not have a human shape” (sura insaniya). To bolster the point he adds: “This is also attested [by the fact] that the aspect through which the human (al-insan) differs from the donkey or other animals is his existence in this particular form and shape.” The broader framework of the anthropology underlying Jassas’ statement can be gleaned from a recent contribution by Ayman Shihadeh, in which he assembles materials from Islamic normative texts roughly until the 13th century CE.

In keeping with this tradition, I would argue for a stronger consideration of the issue of form in the definition of personhood in Islamic normative texts. Such consideration would add significantly to a differentiated understanding of the anthropology expressed in these texts and the ways that such views on this question have developed throughout the course of history.

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Thomas Eich
Thomas Eichis Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Professor Eich is trained as a social historian of the 19th century Middle East and classical Arabic and Islamic studies, with a longstanding interest in bioethics. He is author of Islam und Bioethik (Reichart-Verlag, 2005)
Theorizing Modernities article

The Human Person and the Human Brain: Some Implications of New Science


The secular Enlightenment could be described as a “move to the head.”  Late-Medieval Christendom, drawing on the views of Aristotle-inspired scholasticism, understood the human person to be an ensouled animal. The Enlightenment initiated a (gradual) shift toward identifying the human person with capacities of the individual head or brain: self-consciousness, rationality, will, autonomy, etc. The legacy of this tradition in the developed West is so powerful that most aren’t even aware that it could be otherwise. Of course human beings are our brains. What else could be the case?

Identifying persons with brains, however, raises a number of difficult problems. Perhaps the most famous is the mind/body problem—the persistent difficulty in explaining how capacities like consciousness and free will can be reduced to a physical brain without undermining our experience of consciousness and free will.  Not surprisingly, while this was a problem for the Greeks pre-Aristotle, and then again with Descartes and the dawn of the Enlightenment, it was not a major concern for the West in the intervening time.

Then there are the “brain transplant” or “brain splitting” problems—made famous by the philosopher Derek Parfit, who suggested several thought experiments which involve downloading brains into computers and swapping the brains of two people into each other’s bodies. Parfit has also helpfully engaged medical reality—like when surgeons sever the corpus callosum (the main bundle of nerve fibers connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain) as a treatment for epilepsy. This procedure creates two separate spheres of consciousness housed in each half of the brain—which presents a serious problem for those who want to identify human persons with our brains. If there was one person before the surgery, are there now two persons inhabiting one body? Did the original person die, only to be replaced by two new persons? Were there always two persons in one brain somehow working together?

New Scientific Discoveries

There are also problems raised by new scientific discoveries. Though it was once uncontroversial to think of consciousness as resulting from “higher” brain functions of the cerebral cortex, we now know this is not the case. Despite having their cortex destroyed, patients like Roger still know who they are, crack jokes, recognize themselves in photographs, and more. Furthermore, we now know that some children born with hydranencephaly (a disorder in which fluid replaces the brain’s cerebral hemispheres) can laugh and cry, understand the difference between familiar people and strangers, and even prefer certain kinds of music. If these children are self-conscious—as they appear to be—then self-consciousness does not require higher brain function.

Some say that we can locate consciousness in the more primitive brain structures, but (in addition to being forced to ask the uncomfortable question about the possible self-consciousness of thousands of non-human species with this primitive brain function) perhaps we should stop and ask why our first instinct is to locate consciousness in the brain in the first place?  Norman Doidge has written extensively about recent revolutions in brain science—and particularly about how brains can change dramatically in attempts to deal with injury and disease—but even he describes this as the brain changing itself.

One of the few to challenge this dogma of the contemporary secular age is the philosopher Alva Noe, who recently wrote a book provocatively titled Out of our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. Noe directly challenges the scientific establishment, not only on their view that consciousness must be reduced to processes of the brain, but also the idea that science itself will be able to tell us the whole story of consciousness. After providing examples of conscious experiences that cannot be reduced to processes of the brain, Noe concludes that consciousness is not something the brain achieves on its own, but rather the achievement of the whole human animal in her particular environment.

This is precisely the theological understanding of the human person that existed in the West before the secular “move to head.”  Persons are not brains that inhabit a body (or computer!); we are living human animals.

Implications for Bioethics

This view has important implications for bioethics. The secular establishment has basically accepted the view that those in a persistent ‘vegetative’ state (PVS) are no longer persons; but this view must now be rethought, not least because we now know that some humans in PVS are self-conscious. The idea that a person dies when her brain dies must also be rethought—along with the idea that humans cannot be persons until a brain is formed. The human animal achieves homeostasis before she has a brain, and can even achieve it when her brain is damaged or dead. The human organism, holistically considered, is responsible for this homeostasis. If we can avoid dogmatic reductions of the human person to the human brain, we are likely to discover that many other features of human existence are the achievement of the whole human animal.

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Charles Camosy
Charles C. Camosyis Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Fordham University. Camosy’s research engages with bioethics, Catholic social teaching, moral anthropology, and the intersection of Christian and secular ethics. Camosy is author of Peter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond Polarization(Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Too Expensive to Treat?: Finitude, Tragedy, and the Neonatal ICU(Eerdmans, 2010).
Field Notes article

What (or When) Is the Human Person?


“What is the human person?” This question serves as the very root for later elaborations of biomedical ethical questions involving beginning and end of life decisions, distributive justice, transhumanism, and many others. A fruitful way to shed light on what we think is the human person might be to ask, “When is the human person?”

When Is the Human Person?

The question of “when” arises throughout the individual’s life cycle. The question of whether a person has died at the point of brain death or cardio-pulmonary cessation is just one example of the question of “when”. In the Islamic tradition, death is tied to the departure of the soul (Ar. nafs) or spirit (Ar. ruh) from the body. Prior to the advent of biomedicine, which enabled the monitoring of brain activity and the deployment of ventilators and other biotechnology to assist or even take over for the cardio-pulmonary system, the point of “when” was fairly clear. But such innovations have sparked a debate among Muslims—can brain death become an acceptable criterion for death? Furthermore, how do these two ways of defining death relate to the underlying religious notion of death as the departure of the soul or spirit?

“When is the human person” is not limited to the definition of death, but also to the beginning of human life. The Catholic notion of the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception is well known. In the Islamic tradition, though an implanted embryo is given special protection and abortion is frowned upon, most scholars do not extend considerations of full humanity to an embryo until the time of its ensoulment. This period is detailed in several different hadith (accounts of what the Prophet Muhammad did, said, or silently affirmed), with the most commonly agreed upon time being 120 days after conception.

This relatively late point of ensoulment has enabled researchers and clinicians in Muslim-majority countries to engage in the use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies, in which surplus embryos are generated, and to undertake related research into stem cells and cloning. A number of Arab countries such as Jordan, and research institutes such as the Avicenna Research Institute and Royan Institute in Iran, are quite advanced in these fields. And while pre-ensoulment implanted embryos have been largely protected under Islamic law, ex utero embryos, such as surplus embryos in a lab, have not. This view of when the human person’s full status is achieved not only enables the treatment of an infertile couple, but also fosters scientific development for the state.

The Development of Islamic Biomedical Ethics

We might ask if this religious-legal notion about when, based on determining punishments for those who harm a fetus, is sufficient to tell us much about the human person in Islamic thought. The question gets skipped over by Islamic jurists who provide the ruling (fatwa) that pre-ensoulment embryos can be used for research, and by the biomedical researchers and clinicians who strive to solve the infertility of their patient’s. In a recent book on the emerging field of Islamic Biomedical Ethics, Professor Abdulaziz Sachedina takes the issue further and identifies several hadiths from the Shi‘i tradition which may tie ensoulment and the beginning of life in Islam to the time of conception, similar to the Catholic position. If pursued, this line of thought could limit the patient’s treatment options and restrict some biomedical research.

Several important implications result from this examination of the when of the human person. First, it illustrates the need for a more thorough Islamic biomedical ethics which incorporates deep theological reflection, an understanding of biomedicine, socio-cultural factors, and a more comprehensive investigation of the long and short term potential ethical pitfalls with the use of certain biotechnologies. The current system of Islamic medical fatwas is important, but does not seem sufficient in itself. Second, the hadiths highlighted by Sachedina open up common ground with the Catholic position on when to extend full recognition of human personhood. This hints at the potential for joint reflection or even arriving at a consensus on the matter by ethicists in both traditions.

Modern Challenges to Religious Conceptions of Personhood

Yet there is another potential common language that must be considered: modern science. Just as biotechnology has allowed us to peer into previously hidden processes at the time of death, contemporary understandings of embryology may pose a challenge to religious conceptions of the when of human personhood. How should the scientific facts about an embryo’s development be incorporated into Islamic biomedical ethics? Will a close examination of the religious texts in light of the knowledge of the day-by-day development of the embryo provided by modern science and biotechnology challenge or reinforce the view of human personhood originating at conception? What are the implications for the infertile, their physicians, the state, and the wider human society?

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Robert Tappan
Robert M. Tappan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Towson University. His areas of interest include Islamic ethics, theology, and law, with a particular emphasis on exploring Shi`i scholarship on Islamic biomedical ethics. He has published several book chapters and encyclopedia articles on Islamic views of ethics, assisted reproductive technology, biomedical ethics, and health care. 
Field Notes article

How Essential Is the Human Person?


The western notion of the human person can be traced back to the Stoics who defined the human person as equipped with a rational nature. Cicero used the term “person” as a generic characterization and as a mark of individuality which cannot easily be communicated to other persons.  “Person” identifies what a human being is, namely, a rational being and thus a moral subject accountable for his or her deeds.  The Stoic tradition was encapsulated in the later definition by the Christian philosopher Boethius (48–524) who, in his treatise On the Two Natures: Against Eutyches, defined a person as “the individual substance of a rational nature.”   Human personhood is the capacity for rational discernment present in an individual human being.   The word “person” contains the Latin “sonare” which can be translated as “to sound” and the prefix “per” which can be translated as “through.”  The word “person” therefore means “to sound through.”  Boethius was aware of the concept of person as a theater mask through which sound comes forth amplifying the actor’s voice (per–sonare). It is unclear, however, if the word “person” actually had this Latin root as suggested by Boethius or was imported from the Persian word persu (also meaning a mask).  What is conveyed in the word “person” is relationality; a person is defined not by what someone does (that is, function) rather by who one is related to (for example, the character in a play). Hence, personhood is manifest in relationality.

From Fixed Autonomy to Deep Interconnectedness 

Despite the root meaning of person as relational, the emphasis on individuality and rationality defined the human person up until the 20th century.  The human person was marked by a fixed essence, a higher order of being than other creatures with a dignity of perfection, as Thomas Aquinas noted (Summa theologiae 1.29.3). The term “individual” gained prominence with the rise of modern science and technology. The invention of the printing press, Cartesian philosophy’s “turn to the subject,” and the Reformation all emphasized the ability of the mental over the material, spirit over matter. The person was an individual center of thought, one who could read, interpret and freely respond.  The Newtonian mechanistic world furthered a sense of autonomy of the individual, one related to other individuals according to established laws.

The two pillars of twentieth century science that have influenced the meaning of the human person are evolution and quantum physics.  Evolution means that nature does not operate according to fixed laws but to the dynamic interplay of law, chance and deep time.   Quantum physics indicates that reality is a vast unified sea of matter and energy, two facets of the same universal process.  Matter is not composed of basic building blocks but complicated webs of relations.  Modern science transforms our understanding of personhood from fixed autonomy to deep interconnectedness.

Evolution, Posthumanity, and Transhumanism

Today, the human person, considered in light of modern science, can no longer be identified with perfect fixed being, since there are no fixed essences in evolution. Rather, nature is incomplete and subject to ongoing creativity.  The human person is not a ready-made fact but the outflow of billions of years of evolution, beginning with cosmogenesis (13.7 billion years ago), and the billions of years that led to biogenesis.  Evolution is a process which means that, given a sufficient amount of time and the right conditions, new species, such as homo sapiens, can emerge in nature.  Humans are integrally part of evolution and emerge with a level of intelligence and consciousness that allows us to stand apart and reflect on the process itself.  From the point of science, the human person is more like an eddy in a stream than a perfect creature of nature.  Neuroscience, for example, reveals the plasticity of the human brain in relation to the environment and the interplay between mind, brain and culture.

What is less certain is whether the human person is the apex of biological evolution or a transitional species in evolution.  Advocates of posthumanity maintain that the human person will become extinct in the not too distant future.  Transhumanists believe that technology will enhance and perfect the human person, enabling us to transcend the biological limits of suffering, aging and death.  A new posthuman species is on the horizon, aptly called techno sapiens, with a new digitized body, free and unconstrained by the physical and temporal limitations of the flesh.  Is the human person sacred?  Or is transhumanism part of God’s ongoing creative action?  These are questions that must be engaged for the future of humankind.

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Ilia Delio
Ilia Delio, OSFis Director of Catholic Studies and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. Delio’s research concentrates in science and religion, with a focus on transhumanism, nature and ecology, and evolutionary theology. Her book, The Emergent Christ (Orbis, 2011) explores the meaning of Christian faith in light of evolution. Her new book The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love (Orbis, 2013) was released this spring.
Field Notes article

Changing Conceptions of the Human Person


As Tom Banchoff and Abdulaziz Sachedina noted in their previous post, the Science and the Human Person working group aims to advance a global interreligious and intercultural conversation about science, technology, and the human future.

At the core of this conversation lies the issue of how the human person has been conceptualized and understood across different religious and cultural traditions throughout history, and the role that the scientific and philosophical developments associated with modernity have played in challenging established conceptions of the human person.

In the coming weeks, the members of the Science and the Human Person working group will begin to address these issues through a series of short essays that respond to a number of foundational questions. What is the human person? How are advances in science, technology, and neuroscience challenging established conceptions of the human person? Are religious traditions in a position to engage modern science to achieve common terms of conversation in these debates about the new personhood? Is consensus about these issues, among different religions and across religious and secular lines, possible or desirable?

Such questions have implications not only for the field of bioethics, but also in defining and shaping the way that scientific developments are understood and responded to by religious and secular communities and individuals around the world.

 

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James Adams
James Adams was program manager of the Contending Modernities research initiative until 2016. He is a graduate of the MA in International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Science & the Human Person article

Science and the Human Person

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Rapid advances in science and technology are raising fundamental questions about human life, flourishing, suffering, and death. When does life begin and deserve protection? How is neuroscience reshaping our conceptions of what it means to be human? How should we live and die with dignity amid 21st century technologies? These and other questions at the intersection of science and the human person have a global character. They cut across national, cultural, and religious boundaries. But most efforts to address them have centered on particular communities, such as scientists and physicians, secular bioethicists, and religious experts drawn from the same tradition.

The Contending Modernities Science and the Human Person working group is advancing a global, interreligious and intercultural conversation about science, technology, and the human future. Through a three-year series of workshops, global conferences, research activities, publications, reports and online educational resources, the working group is convening experts in Catholicism and Islam along with representatives of other religious traditions and the secular scientific and bioethics communities.

The activities of the Science and the Human Person working group are organized through two connected projects: Engaging Tradition in the Context of Modernity and Informing Public Discourse.

Engaging Tradition in the Context of Modernity

Catholicism and Islam are home to long traditions of philosophical, theological, and legal reflection on the nature and dignity of the human person and the value of scientific knowledge. The idea that men and women are of divine origin and therefore possess an inviolable dignity is a starting point for both traditions. The human person and the human body are divine gifts deserving of unconditional respect. In both the Catholic and Muslim world view, God endowed human beings with reason as a means to communicate with one another, to strive after truth, and to care for His creation. Science and technology are recognized as positive in principle but can also, like all human enterprises, serve evil ends.

On this common foundation, the trajectories of Catholicism and Islam have diverged over the past 1000 years. Through most of the Middle Ages, Islamic civilization was home to the most advanced scientific learning in the Hellenistic tradition. The level of Muslim theological, philosophical and legal reflection on science and its applications was approached by Catholic thinkers only by the late Middle Ages. The scientific revolution in Early Modern Europe, enabled by the break with Hellenism and the turn to experimental methods, coincided with a relative decline of Islamic sciences. The European Enlightenment and subsequent industrial revolutions and colonial expansion heightened the scientific divide between the West and the Muslim world.

While the Reformation and the onset of modernity undermined the cultural influence of Catholicism, the Church retained a tradition of moral philosophy that has served as a resource in responding to contemporary scientific and technological issues. Islamic religious-legal responses to those issues have remained confined within juridical thought and heritage carried on by important institutions in the Sunni and Shi’ite world.  The conversation between secular and religious bioethics remains underdeveloped because of the emphasis on derivation of binding judicial decisions (fatawa) to guide the field of biotechnology.  Epistemological deliberations to develop practical ethics founded upon rationally derived principles remains enigmatic in the culture dominated by the sanctity of Shari’a.

Over the past several decades, Islamic thinkers have begun to address bioethics in systematic fashion, both within the West and in Muslim-majority countries including Iran and Saudi Arabia. But that reflection remains insufficiently developed and has not kept up with scientific and technological advances. As Ebrahim Moosa has noted, “Debates about the next generation of biotechnological issues including molecular genetics, stem cells and regenerative medical technologies arrive at a time when Muslim ethicists are barely coming to grips with an earlier generation of issues such as organ transplants and brain death.” As Moosa puts it, “What remains elusive is a critical and informed discourse about the philosophical grounds that underpin a contemporary Muslim moral and ethical vision.”

Under the leadership of Professor Abdulaziz Sachedina (George Mason University), the Engaging Tradition project centers on the further development of moral reasoning in Islamic bioethics, extending and deepening efforts to develop an ethical discourse that moves beyond legal reasoning and seeks a common moral terrain with Catholicism and other religious and philosophical traditions. The goal, in Sachedina’s words, is to develop “a unique and yet universal spiritual and moral language that is needed to make a common cause of human concern the resolution of the universal problems ushered in by contemporary advancements in medicine and science as a whole.”

At issue is not only whether Islamic jurisprudence can be integrated more fully into modernity, but also whether other traditions, religious and secular, are sufficiently flexible, adaptive and plural, so as to make a place for Islamic ethicists, philosophers and scientists who seek to enter the conversation on their own terms but also in a spirit of collaboration and dialogue.

Informing Public Discourse

Contemporary scientific and technological challenges raise ethical questions about the human person that cut across national and cultural boundaries. Issues including the moral status of early human life, the significance and use of genetic information, and the use of cognitive enhancement and neuroimaging techniques have generated complex ethical and policy challenges. Some countries tend to adopt technological advances without much public debate. In others, controversy rages between scientists and their secular allies, on the one hand, and religious conservatives on the other. Indifference predominates in one case and polemics in the other.

The Informing Public Discourse project will foster public deliberation on science, ethics, and the human person through dialogue between Muslim and Catholic scholars, and with representatives of other religious traditions and secular perspectives. The goal of such dialogue is a more informed public debate but also the development of shared perspectives on the human person that can deepen public discourse and policy deliberation into the future, both nationally and internationally.

The Catholic Church is no stranger to such engagement. Since the late 19th century, popes and bishops have made public pronouncements on issues of biomedical ethics, including abortion, euthanasia, eugenics and, in the contemporary era, issues of artificial birth control and embryo and stem cell research. As in the case of Islam, however, the Catholic Church has been pressed to keep pace with scientific and technological advances. Even while Church leaders have sought to clarify Catholic teaching on emerging issues – including cloning research, the deciphering of the human genome, and life-extension technologies – Catholic thinkers are already engaged in lively debates about those issues and their implications for human dignity and the human person. Dialogue with Islamic scholars and with secular thinkers will help to orient the Church to new challenges posed by science and to both broaden and structure those debates.

Dialogue within and across religious traditions and with secular, research, and medical communities on science and the human person will not achieve consensus. But it will help to define disagreements, improve the level of public discourse, and advance educational goals. The starting point for Islam, Christianity, and Judaism – human life as created by God and human dignity as therefore universal – differs from non-Abrahamic perspectives, including the Buddhist, Hindu, and Confucian, which approach the human person, human body, and human dignity in other ways. The search for greater common ground between Islam, Catholicism and other traditions can help to join a more global ethical debate – an imperative in light of scientific and technological breakthroughs that touch humanity as a whole. Dialogue can also help define or even bridge differences with mainly secular scientific and bioethics communities, for whom human dignity and personhood are most often related to rationality and sentience rather than to any transcendent foundation.

Under the leadership of Professor Thomas Banchoff (Georgetown University), the Informing Public Discourse project promotes a deeper intercultural and interreligious conversation on science and the human person designed to improve the quality of public discourse and policy controversy too often marked by either indifference or polarization. The project builds on and advances the efforts of the Engaging Tradition project by bringing Islamic scholars into conversation with Catholic thinkers and representatives of other traditions, religious and secular, around critical public issues including the beginning of life and the implications of neuroscience. “Breakthroughs in science and technology pose difficult ethical questions for national and international society,” Banchoff notes. “Governance decisions will inevitably favor some conceptions of the human person over others. It is in everyone’s interest that those decisions be informed by the very best thinking our traditions have to offer.”

2 Comments on Science and the Human Person Array
Thomas Banchoff
Thomas Banchoffis Vice President for Global Engagement at Georgetown University. He also serves as founding director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and as Professor in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His research centers on religious and ethical issues in world politics. Dr. Banchoff is the author of Embryo Politics: Ethics and Policy in Atlantic Democracies(Cornell University Press, 2011).
Abdulaziz Sachedina
Abdulaziz Sachedina, Ph.D., is Professor and IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. His research and writing focuses on the field of Islamic Law, Ethics, and Theology (Sunni and Shiite). More recently, he has concentrated on social and political ethics, including Interfaith and Intrafaith Relations, Islamic Biomedical Ethics and Islam and Human Rights.
Global Currents article

Nahdlatul Ulama: Good Governance and Religious Tolerance in Indonesia


Notwithstanding its considerable contribution to Indonesian politics and cultures, Nahdlatul Ulama (which literally means the “awakening of religious scholars”), Indonesia’s largest Islamic organization, has been poorly understood in the West.  While most Western political commentators and policy makers absorb an almost daily dose of news or intelligence regarding Islamist extremist organizations or terrorist groups in the predominantly Muslim countries of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, there is far less information and understanding of Muslim peacemakers, moderate-progressive groups, and organizations that advocate for tolerance and pluralism. Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) is one of the world’s foremost Muslim associations devoted to the spread of the Islamic message of justice, peace, and tolerance.

Established in 1926, NU today has a membership of more than 50 million.  Founded as a critical reaction to the growth of Indonesia’s Wahhabi reformist and modernist groups, which were attempting to shrink Indonesian Muslim, practices of locally inspired religious traditions, cultures, and knowledge, NU developed a reputation as the guardian of traditions – both classical Islamic traditions of knowledge, and local traditions and cultures.  Accordingly, NU has been dubbed a “traditionalist Islamic organization”—a label that can be easily misconstrued.  Indeed, NU serves as one of Indonesia’s leading Muslim institutions dedicated to the protection and attainment not only of traditional values and practices of Islam, but also citizenship, democratic civility, inter-group conciliation, religious tolerance, and the public good. In this regard, NU is traditional and modern, conservative and progressive alike.

Defending Pluralism

Since its founding, NU has conducted numerous large-scale national meetings aimed at evaluating contemporary political, social, and religious trends, and recommending paths forward to policy makers on ways of addressing problems facing both state and society. Attended by thousands of NU members, sympathizers, and Ulama or Kiai (a Javanese term for Muslim clerics and scholars, notably linked to NU), such meetings have provided the organization a platform from which to persuade state and society actors, religious and secular alike, to defend the country’s national pluralist ideology (Pancasila).  NU also embraces the national constitution (UUD 1945) as the foundation of nationhood and ethno-religious brotherhood.

In a recent national gathering, Konferensi Besar Nahdlatul Ulama (the Great Conference of NU) recently held in the city of Cirebon in West Java, for example, NU issued a number of fatwas and recommendations concerning religious issues, inter-group relations, and public affairs facing today’s Indonesian societies.

Such advocacy on the part of a respected Islamic organization like NU is necessary for the common good. Since the collapse of Suharto’s New Order dictatorial regime, the archipelago has weathered a wave of small but militant trans-national Islamist groups which have attempted to impose the implementation of Islamic ideology and Shari’a (Islamic Law) as a replacement for Pancasila and UUD 1945, which they considered as secular, Western style, and “un-Islamic.” For NU, however, both Pancasila and UUD 1945, which guarantee freedom of religion and association for all Indonesian citizens regardless of their ethno-religious affiliations, are regarded as Islamic and suitable for Indonesian cultures and societies due to their roots in Islamic teachings, discourses, and practices of pacification. NU also points to the cultural grounding of these founding documents within Indonesia’s rich traditions of tolerance and cooperation.

Indonesian Archipelago: “Pluralist Endowments”

The Indonesian archipelago, once described by historian Denys Lombard as having been blessed with an abundance of “pluralist endowments,” is home to the ancient philosophy of bhinneka tunggal ika (“oneness amid diversity”), which later became an official national motto of Indonesia. This philosophy inspired the founding fathers of Indonesia to create the inclusive state ideology of Pancasila and the state constitution, UUD 1945. NU leaders such as Syaikh Hasyim Ash’ari, K.H. Wahab Chasbullah, K.H.A. Wahid Hasyim worked hand-in-hand with secular nationalists, both Muslims and non-Muslims, to create a public culture of citizenship and establish a political basis for a deeply plural society in the newly established nation-state of Indonesia. Embracing the ideology of Pancasila, they challenged reformist and Islamist aspirations of establishing an Islamic state in the country – a legacy that continues today through NU’s defense of pluralism and the constitution.

Struggling for Good Governance

NU has historically pressed Indonesian political elites and government officials to move beyond procedural democracy, and to embrace a “substantial democracy” that is typified by freedom from “money politics” or risywah siyasiyah (vote buying), voluntarily participation in elections, and the pursuit of the common public goods rather than sectarian interests. Moreover, NU pushes for the government to use tax money in an appropriate manner, supporting causes such as improving education, developing the economy, and assisting the poor. NU leaders threaten that failure by the government to work towards such goals would result in the issuance of fatwa’s that outlaw Muslims to pay taxes. Chairman of the NU Supreme Council, K.H.M.A. Sahal Mahfudh, has argued that the primary job of the government is to “create social justice, prosperity, and global peace” as well as to “protect ethno-religious minorities.” Therefore, he has affirmed that as long as a ruler contributes to the public good society is obliged to obey the ruler, but if not “they are free from such obligation.”

The NU has historically advocated for good governance in Indonesia, a fact which is highlighted through NU’s opposition to Suharto’s authoritarian New Order. Under the leadership of K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid, who became leader in 1984, NU evolved into a religiously-inspired civil society force aimed at providing a counterbalance to the power of Suharto’s regime, and struggling for the achievement of global justice, democracy, citizenship, and freedom of religion. Despite Suharto’s tireless efforts to weaken the political influences of NU’s Ulama, K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid, along with other anti-New Order NU leaders, continued to resist Suharto’s regime by developing unique nonviolent models of opposition and “cultural protests.”

Protecting Religious Minorities 

NU works together with secular and religious forces to secure religious freedom, guarantee interreligious tolerance, and to defend Indonesia’s plural ethno-religious societies from violent threats attempts posed by minority extremist groupings. This commitment to religious freedom and human rights was demonstrated through K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid’s instruction that NU’s youth wing, Banser, send its members to churches across the country in order to protect Christian places of worship and to guarantee the safety of Christians, especially during Christmas. One of the Banser’s members, Riyanto, tragically died while protecting the Eben Heizer Church in Mojokerto, East Java, from a terrorist bomb attack in 2000. Under the leadership of K.H. Sa’id Aqiel Siradj, NU continues to send thousands of Banser members to guard churches from “extremist onslaught.”

In a world torn by conflict between competing ideologies, Indonesia “continues to produce men and women whose nonsectarian vision remains every bit as pluralistic, tolerant and spiritual as that of our founding fathers” (Bisri & Taylor, Strategic Review 2:3, 2012). NU is just one of Indonesia’s many Muslim groupings and religious associations that are ardently devoted to extend the very fundamental teaching of Islam and the Quran as rahmatan lil ‘alamin—“a source of love and compassion for all humanity,” and to ensure that this message is embodied on earth.

1 Comment on Nahdlatul Ulama: Good Governance and Religious Tolerance in Indonesia Array
Sumanto Al Qurtuby
Sumanto Al Qurtuby is cultural anthropologist, author, interfaith activist, and columnist. An Indonesian-born scholar of Islam, he is now a Professor of Cultural Anthropology at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. He was previously a visiting research fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. A graduate of Boston University, Sumanto is co-founder and vice chairman of the American branch of Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest moderate Islamic organization whose membership is more than 50 million in the country. Sumanto has authored, co-authored, and edited 18 books, and written dozens of journal articles and hundreds of popular essays.