The Cosmology of Jesus: Does It Matter?

John W. Proctor
God, Man and the Universe
201-0101
28 February, 2006

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There is no small amount of confusion today over what a Christian should

believe. The encroachment of modernism into the disciplines of theology has

introduced an enormous body of doubt about the supernatural character of our

religion, the reliability of our Tradition and the authenticity of the scriptures. I

recall many years ago when engaging in a discussion about this with fellow

believers that an uneducated yet devout woman interjected, “if Jesus believed it,

I believe it.”

Her unwittingly profound confession changed my life. Indeed, as the Psalmist

says,

“From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength;
Because of Your adversaries,
To make the enemy and the revengeful cease.”1

The truth is not reserved for scholars; indeed St. Paul reminds us that academics

offer no sure understanding of revelation:

“Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this
age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to
know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message
preached to save those who believe. “2

And this is confirmed by Jesus Himself:

“At that time Jesus said, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that
You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed
them to infants.”3

Clearly, the New Testament delineates between that understanding which may

be apprehended by reason and that reason which is informed by revelation.

1
New American Bible, © 1991 by Greenlawn Press; Ps. 8:2
2
Ibid, 1 Cor. 1:20
3
Ibid, Matthew 11:25

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Kingdoms in Conflict

That we are engaged in spiritual combat with the evil one is a plain and

foundational reality in Christian belief, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to

demonstrate this. The Catechism teaches

“In this petition [lead us not into temptation], evil is not an abstraction, but
refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil
(dia-bolos) is the one who “throws himself across” God‟s plan and his work of
salvation accomplished in Christ.”4

The Apostles taught this as well:

“We know that we belong to God, and the whole world is under the power of
the evil one.”5

The Apostles developed the application of this conflict by citing that concord with

the world was tantamount to hostility towards God, whose kingdom is

diametrically opposed to Satan‟s animation of the world:

“Adulterers! Do you not know that to be a lover of the world means enmity
with God? Therefore, whoever wants to be a lover of the world makes himself
an enemy of God.”6

St. Augustine‟s monumental classic “City of God” was dedicated to this very

subject; St. Thomas Aquinas cites St. Gregory as a source for explaining that “in

this visible world, nothing occurs without the agency of invisible creatures”.7

The kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan (the world) are in conflict; the

Kingdom of God is also referred to as the kingdom of light and the devil as the

prince of darkness, a dichotomy between truth and error, or orthodoxy and

heresy.

4
Catechism of the Catholic Church, © 1994, Ligouri Publications, art. 2851
5
NAB, 1 John 5:19
6
Ibid, Jas. 4:4
7
Thomas Aquinas, Tour of Summa Theologica, Glenn, © 1978 Tan Publishing Co.

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The Encroachment of Rationalism in the Church

The Popes of the 20th Century expended herculean effort to address the

encroachment of modernism, the child of rationalism which is identified by Leo

XIII as the chief enemy of the Church:

“Now, we have to meet the Rationalists, true children and inheritors of

the older heretics, who, trusting in their turn to their own way of thinking, have
rejected even the scraps and remnants of Christian belief which had been
handed down to them. They deny that there is any such thing as revelation or
inspiration, or Holy Scripture at all; they see, instead, only the forgeries and the
falsehoods of men; they set down the Scripture narratives as stupid fables and
Iying stories: the prophecies and the oracles of God are to them either
predictions made up after the event or forecasts formed by the light of nature;
the miracles and the wonders of God's power are not what they are said to be,
but the startling effects of natural law, or else mere tricks and myths; and the
Apostolic Gospels and writings are not the work of the Apostles at all.”8

Pius XII cites the serpentine encroachment of these „isms‟:

“These and other errors, it is clear, have crept in among certain of our
sons who are deceived by imprudent zeal for souls or by false science.”9

Pius XII goes even further in identifying the tie between rationalism, modernism

and communism, the form of human government founded on atheistic evolution:

“Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not
been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of
all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the
world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so
that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal
God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical
materialism.”10

The obvious link between Satan and the forces of rationalism/modernism and its

effect on orthodoxy are clear. Any theologian that begins the task of exegesis

with the a priori world view of evolution will do violence to the truth.

8
Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, © 1952 Wipf and Stock Publishers
9
Ibid.
10
Pius XII, Humani Generis

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 Eschatological Apostasy: Will the Son of Man find faith on the earth?

It is well-established that prior to the eschatological climax, there will be a

great falling away from the church. This subject is treated at length by St.

Paul in II Thessalonians; it also the subject of II Peter and is treated at length

in the Johannine epistles, II Timothy, Jude and of course the Apocalypse.

Paul is explicit in his teaching on the causes of the apostasy:

“And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord (Jesus) will
kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the
manifestation of his coming, the one whose coming springs from the
power of Satan in every mighty deed and in signs and wonders that lie,
and in every wicked deceit for those who are perishing because they
have not accepted the love of truth so that they may be saved.
Therefore, God is sending them a deceiving power so that they may
believe the lie, that all who have not believed the truth but have
approved wrongdoing may be condemned.”11

This deceiving power (Greek: plane, „fraudulence; subj. a straying from

orthodoxy or piety: - deceit, to deceive, delusion, error) is rendered in other

translations as “strong delusion”. The prepositional phrase is answering the

thesis of “the lie” – which is startlingly translated frequently with the article

“the” which is to say, the principle lie or the basic lie. Paul uses the same

language when describing the degeneration of the human race in Romans:

“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the
creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”12

The New Testament writers universally conclude that there will be an apostasy in

the last days and a wholesale abandoning of the truth.

11
NAB, II Thessalonians 2:11
12
Ibid, Romans 1:25

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It is safe and orthodox to conclude therefore that rationalism and its attendant

branches and sprouts of heresy are animated by the devil and pose enormous

threat to the children of the Church. Evolution, being the base tenet of

rationalism, creeps into the Church by means of those thereby deceived and

upsets the entire construct of orthodoxy. There will be a great falling away from

the Church in the last days due to a lack of commitment to the truth, and many

will be deceived by lies and error. The responsibility of the Church is to proclaim

the everlasting Gospel clearly and without compromise. When the Church

countenances these rationalistic errors with a simplistic “it could be so”, she

unwittingly lets down her guard and is infiltrated by diabolical means. The safe

ground for both theology and proclamation is to embrace Jesus Christ, the God-

man, and his understanding of cosmology.

The Cosmology of Jesus

It is quite in vogue today to dismiss Jesus‟ credulity of the Old Testament and its

miracles as expressions of archaic oriental literature. The view that Jesus was

“just a man of his times” and was limited anthropologically by scientific

understanding simply will not stand up to the scrutiny of examination. If Jesus is,

as St. Paul speaks of him allegorically as “the second Adam”13, he is perfect man

with perfect knowledge. Indeed, Adam‟s untainted intellect created human

science and his understanding of nature is perhaps unparalleled. To Adam was

13
Ibid, 1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 5:14

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given dominion over all the earth, its creatures, their governance and the duty of

naming it all.14

Another area of contention is Jesus‟ self understanding: did he know he was the

Messiah? How this question ever came to be taken seriously is a testimony to

the inroads the modernists have made into theology. As Leo XIII said,

“They deny that there is any such thing as revelation or inspiration, or Holy
Scripture at all; they see, instead, only the forgeries and the falsehoods of men;
they set down the Scripture narratives as stupid fables and Iying stories: the
prophecies and the oracles of God are to them either predictions made up after
the event or forecasts formed by the light of nature…”15

It is a popular heresy, even in the pulpits of Roman Catholic Churches, to explain

that the Gospels were written to explain Christian theology and they do not

pretend to contain history. It is also commonly alleged that the miracles of Christ

were editorial augmentations and that most of his first-person quotes were

inserted into his mouth by pious editors. These grievous errors can only be

taken seriously by those who wholesale dismiss the Magisterium and the

testimony of Holy Tradition.

Jesus most certainly understood himself to be the Christ as we have dozens of

key passages to resource, most pointedly the one our Church is founded on:

Peter‟s profession of Jesus as the Christ of God in Matthew 16:16-18.16

Therefore, if Jesus is perfect man with perfect intellect and power over nature,

and understands himself to be God Incarnate, what defect could his cosmological

14
Ibid, Gen. 2:19; Ps. 8
15
Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, © 1952 Wipf and Stock Publishers
16
Ibid, Matthew 16:16-18

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understanding possibly possess? The Angelic Doctor sheds invaluable light on

this subject in Summa Theologica:

“Christ‟s human intellect is enriched with the fullness of infused knowledge.

For, by reason of the hypostatic union, the human faculties of our Lord are as
perfect as such faculties can possibly be; and to have infused knowledge is a
perfection of the human mind. By divinely infused knowledge, Christ as a man
knows all that any or all human minds can learn by the rational power (for
instance, Christ perfectly knows all human sciences); he also knows all
revealed truths, and all truths made known to the human mind by the gifts of the
Holy Spirit and the gratuitous graces.”17

The idea that Jesus was a first century simpleton woodenly clinging to Jewish

myths about nature is patently absurd. The notion that Jesus knew better but

manipulated Jewish symbols to communicate meaningfully with his audience

leaves us with a shrewd, conniving Messiah, indulging his people in their

ignorance. Both models are unsatisfying but necessary to sustain a syncretism

between evolutionary theory and Christian theology. Either Jesus is the God

man or he is not; if he is, then his cosmology is utterly trustworthy, and the only

safe cosmology for orthodox belief and practice.

It is beyond dispute that Jesus gave full credulity to the Bible, the Septuagint

being the Bible of his day. Jesus believed in special creation; a literal Adam and

Eve; the account of the flood and the destruction of Sodom; the historical person

of Abraham; the swallowing of Jonah by a great sea creature; and all the

preaching of the prophets, to include their supernatural predictions. Jesus

believed in heaven and hell; devils and angels, miracles and gifts of the Spirit;

and the eschatological apocalypse. He clearly believed himself to be born of

Mary and that God was His Father. His credulity of the prophets show us that
17
Aquinas, Tour; Qq 1-26

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Jesus believed in the eschatological repatriation of the Jewish people for

Armageddon and deliverance.

Jesus believed that he cast out demons “by the finger of God”.18 How is this

compatible with evolution/rationalism/anti-supernaturalism? What must be

compromised in order to sustain the marriage between Christianity and

evolution? And is there such a thing as Christian evolution?

The Crisis of Syncretism

The destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and the Kingdom of

Judah in 587 BC was the result of syncretizing the Covenant faith with paganism.

Indeed, Elijah, prior to calling God to witness to his offering in the standoff with

the priests of Baal, confronts Israel with their double mindedness:

“Elijah appealed to all the people and said, "How long will you straddle the
issue? If the LORD is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him." The people,
however, did not answer him.”19

Judah was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar for its syncretism with idols, which

were posted for worship within the temple of the LORD.20 And what was the

temptation for the covenant people? They wanted to retain the privileges of the

Covenant while espousing the beliefs and practices of the gentiles. Baal is

described in the Catholic Encyclopedia as “the god of mountaintops,” the “god of

18
Ibid, Luke 11:20
19
Ibid, 1 Kings 18:21
20
Ibid, Ezechiel 8:5-18

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the clouds” – a figure of dominance over nature.21 F.F. Bruce in his work, Israel

and the Nations explains

“Mannasseh‟s reign allowed the retrograde tendencies of religious syncretism

to become so ingrained in the life of the people, and their moral effect was such
that no subsequent reformation, like that sponsored by his grandson Josiah,
could undo the evil; nothing would serve but the purgatory of national collapse
and exile. The worship of the sun and other planetary divinities (“the whole
host of heaven”) became an integral element in the national cult in the
Jerusalem temple itself. The attendant practices of necromancy, ritual
prostitution and even on occasion, human sacrifice – for Manasseh himself, like
Ahaz before him is said to have offered up his son as a sacrifice, presumably
on some occasion of grave national peril.”22

The practical effect of syncretism was to render the Covenant faith impotent and

national disaster was the result.

The movement within the Church to embrace evolution is most certainly buoyed

up by a self conscious need for relevance. It is worth noting that the Church was

admonished by a strident evolutionist in 1934:

“The church must get used to the doctrine of blood and race. Just as the
Catholic Church could not change the fact that the earth goes round the sun, so
the church could not do away with the irrefutable facts which are given in blood
and race. Unless they realize that, developments will simply pass them by.”23

The above quote is from Adolf Hitler.

Hitler built his entire movement on evolution; his eugenics were the attempt to

„select the fittest‟ and develop the master race by eliminating the untermensch –

the weaker or „sub humans‟. Will the Church now accept Hitler as its prophet?

Will the church be so bent on relevance that it baptizes the most destructive,

godless and dangerous philosophy in human history as a way of being „relevant‟?

Roy H. Schoeman writes:

21
Catholic Encylcopedia, © 1973 Nelson
22
F.F. Bruce, Israel and the Nations, © 1987 Eerdman‟s, p 73
23
Klaus Scholder, A Requiem for Hitler, © 1989 Trinity Press International

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 “There is facile temptation to think of Nazi anti-Semitism as an expression of
Christianity and Christian theology – “applied Christianity”, if you will. Yet even
a cursory examination of Nazi writings and policies shows that this is far from
the truth – on the contrary, the campaign to exterminate the Jews grew out of
the worldview of secular materialism, of evolution, and the exaltation of the
natural over the supernatural, and was in fact, an extreme expression of
“applied Darwinism”.24

Evolution was also the philosophical foundation for communism – and it was

used by Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot as a rationalization to exterminate

millions of people in the 20th century. When the social sciences are derived from

the natural science of evolution, the dehumanization of its societies is the natural

result. How can Christians merely baptize this pernicious and deadly belief and

pretend there is no disagreement between Christ and Darwin?

The inexcusable gullibility of Church leaders, especially the Bishops in this

regard is scandalous. The system of ethics that flow from evolution and

Christianity could not be more disparate. Evolution says „kill the weak‟ while

Christ commands „serve the poor‟. And yet it is a fact that most Catholic schools

teach this bizarre syncretism of Christianity and evolution, and the Church is

facing the same skid into impotence that Judah suffered in the 7th century BC for

the same reason. The European Churches are a witness to this decadence.

Syncretism and the Gospel

It is embarrassingly apparent that Christian proponents of evolution have not

seriously considered its ethical compromise; neither have they admitted to the

violence it does to revelation.

24
Roy H. Shoeman, Salvation is from the Jews, © 2003, Ignatius Press

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The Church staunchly defends special creation in the case of Adam; yet this is

impossible at worst and dishonest at best if we are to baptize evolution. If God

created Adam who had eternal life, how did Adam evolve from previous species

that experienced millions of years of death? Here we must compromise not only

the narrative in Genesis, but several articles of its religious meaning. And if the

world evolved gradually over millions of years, what possible meaning does the

Sabbath Day have? Is it alright to flush the Sabbath Day from the record of

revelation by interpreting it as a fictional Jewish myth? Did not Jesus identify

himself as Lord of the Sabbath?25 If evolution is accepted by the Church, the

violence done to revelation is not inconsequential. Now we have the dilemma of

either an ignorant or a dishonest Messiah, both ideas contrary to Tradition,

because Jesus believed in the 6-day Creation week, the account of the creation

of Adam and Eve as historical persons, and the significance of the Sabbath day

and Sabbath years as a sign of the supernatural Covenant between God and

Israel. These problems cannot be solved meaningfully by glibly answering with

“we don‟t know how God made the universe.” Addressing this collision of

contradictions, Pius XII wrote:

“However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions,
that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and
judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided
that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ
has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of
defending the dogmas of faith.”26

25
Ibid, Matthew 12:8
26
Pius XII, Humani Generis

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Whatever evolution is and does, the Church is charged with defending and

disseminating her dogmas. We cannot allow key elements of revelation to be

sacrificed on the altar of compromise with the world. And the altering of

revelation to fit evolution can only diminish Christ and the Gospel. The

dimunition of Jesus and the baptizing of Darwinism as science (and as a source

of social science) are cleanly contrary to the Magisterium and the Gospel

mission.

Conclusion:

It is absolutely essential that we embrace the cosmology of Jesus and believe

not only the religious meanings of what he taught, but his beliefs as well. Anti-

supernaturalism is not compatible with the Gospel. Evolution is not compatible

with the Gospel. Social Darwinism is the exact opposite of the Gospel. We have

no right to alter the Faith of the Apostles by denying the authenticity of the

cosmological world-view of Jesus: spirit, angels, devils, miracles, heaven, hell,

prophecy and creation. To build benevolent scientific institutions and erect social

sciences that are humane and truly progressive, we must build on the foundation

of Jesus‟ worldview. Those Christian nations that compromised by syncretizing

Christianity and evolution are a poignant example of what happened to Israel so

long ago. Russia and all of Europe with few exceptions are in free fall decline –

not even replacing their own populations.

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Bibliography

Salvation is of the Jews; R.H. Schoeman, © 2003 Ignatius Press

Catechism of the Catholic Church; Vatican Library Edition, © 1994 Ligouri
Publications
The Catholic Encyclopedia; © 1973 Thomas Nelson Publishers
Jerome Biblical Commentary; © 1968 Prentice Hall
Providentissimus Deus, Leo XII, © 1952 Wipf and Stock Publishers
Humani Generis, Pius XII, © 1952 Wipf and Stock Publishers
Israel and the Nations; F. F. Bruce, © 1969 Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Tour of Summa, Thomas Aquinas, edited by Pau; J. Glenn, © 1978 Tan
Publishing Co
New American Bible, © 1991 by Greenlawn Press

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