The Philosophical and Scientific consequences of a world

created through Christ and in the sight of Christ

Prof. Gary Devery - Sydney

Via Negativa

Today man finds himself in a crisis of how he fundamentally understands the world and his place in it.

The relativization and minimalisation of man in his dignity (easily verifiable by the abortion statistics alone), and the reduction of the validity of the spiritual and moral dimensions of his nature, existence and experience to his private domain, have reduced the vision of the man of today to a solely ‘scientific’ level. This has given rise to the ‘scientific’ man.

The experience of the insignificance of man, and more particularly the individual, in front of the known and projected vastness of space and time has led to a loss of meaning for man in himself. Consequently this has led to a form of fatalism in front of the mystery of suffering. The vision of man is reduced to looking only at the flat, horizontal dimension and seeking to make some difference through political activity. This has given rise to the ‘political’ man.

These two types of men, ‘scientific’ and ‘political’, have led to various forms of determinism which reduce the recognition of existence, nature and the exercise of human freedom to be based solely on empirical predictability and usefulness. Consequently, grace has no place in the philosophical and scientific vision of the world.

Via Positiva

The brilliant third century philosophic and scientific mind of St Irenaeus, informed and formed by grace could see that the dignity of the human person resides in the nature of God and His design of love. Each person’s history and human history have transcendental, theological and sacramental dimensions. Freedom in grace, in relationship to the active and enabling love of God, expands human possibility to make possible a ‘civilisation of love’, rather than merely economic and political expediencies.

By corollary, human freedom in Christ is soteriologically expressed and ‘initiated’ in the recognition of the human participation in the mysterium iniquitatis (sin is at the root of man’s deepest alienation and his most existential suffering) at which point grace turns the person towards welcoming the victory of Christ over sin and death. Jesus Christ is experienced as necessary to live a fully human existence, and salvation is experienced as gift.

Human autonomy is possible when man transcends himself and finds himself within the Father’s design of love within creation. In dialogue with humanity in front of epochal changes in philosophical and scientific outlooks in recent human history the Church, through the Bishops exercising their prophetic function, in Gaudium et Spes n. 22 called humanity back to the truth expressed in the second and third centuries, first by Irenaeus and then by Tertullian, that it is “only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”