It is challenging for a natural scientist to leave his world of numbers, matter, and energy and step into the unknown, into the vacuum of philosophy and theology. But we still have to ask the question: What if the world is still something other than a game of matter and energy? What if, to understand the nature of things, it will be necessary to leave the stream of naturalistic reasoning, to step aside from the river of thought and look at the world from elsewhere, from the position of a painter or a theologian? Biologists are very good at mapping the genes that make up material DNA and the visible environment. Still, they have trouble accepting the existence of an immaterial soul and an immeasurable God. Just what if this is true? God or soul lie beyond the reach of the natural sciences, but does that mean they don’t exist?
It’s hard for us because it’s hard to imagine; it’s another world. For scientists, it is qualitatively different and often challenging to think about God because God is from a different world – different from the world of the natural sciences. God is somehow on a separate page, on a separate page of the book. Questions about cause materials, the material cause of things, lead to firmly enclosed answers in the world of matter. Thus, man/e is a clump of cells, and the chalice is silver. This is the correct answer, but such an answer is only meant to be a stepping stone for further questions.
In this way, Christians emphasize one more thing: the love of God
to man, understood personally, the love of God for me. This move, love, has been in me since childhood. St. Paul writes: I am what I am by God’s grace! This being surrounded by God’s love, independently of my merits and reflections, perhaps even more clearly in the well-known opening of the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. He is called upon to be a prophet independently of his merits, even before he is born, even before he can do anything good or bad in his life: Before I formed thee in thy mother’s womb, I knew you, before you came out of my womb, I consecrated you, I made you a prophet to the Gentiles.™ 1 Cor. 10.
Catholic Christians have a strange custom: they baptize little children. We often talk about how freedom and love are a matter of choice: For the Good for non-Christians or the Good for Christians. That is why we baptize little children. The child does not know what is happening to him and cannot give the information of consent to his baptism. Biblical reasons for baptism. Baptizing children is, moreover, fragile and very indirect. Well, Paul baptized the Psalmist and his whole house, with his wife, any servants, and his children, if he had any. Also, Peter baptized Cornelius the centurion and his relatives. Perhaps there were young children, perhaps not. But the biblical reasons could be more compelling. The reason we baptize little children is theological. The baptism of a child is a beautiful symbol that God speaks the first sentence of the conversation between God and man. All questions about the meaning of being in this world, where I came from, and who, in the Catholic understanding, I think about God, and prayer is only man’s response to the call, the restlessness God puts in him. No, it is not, therefore, that after studying the catechism textbooks and observing the world, I said, yes, I believe that God exists, and I want to be baptized. The decision is correct, but it is only the answer to a question that the Lord God once long ago and quietly voiced in us.
So genes, environment, freedom of the soul, and God’s grace are not the four players playing against each other: all come from God, and so can, therefore, to make this fundamental truth evident, the whole of the Holy Scripture with the phrase, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So genes, environment, freedom, and God’s grace. Of man’s freedom, of how it is intertwined with God’s grace, and of man’s can be called to a role, often even before he is born, is explicitly stated in Holy Scripture and by many saints and theologians after him. Modern biology supplies the background of genes and the environment that make us shapes us. We are made of inanimate matter, which, like any other piece of matter, is subject to the laws of physics, and yet we tout the matter we can move; we are this matter, and through it, our spirit manifests itself. In this perspective, the ancient biblical image, in which God formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life, becomes surprisingly modern.
The beauty of man is in his uniqueness. As the only creature we know, man is a fusion of sensuality and spirituality. Yes, we are composed of the same elements of Mendeleev’s system as the whole universe; all the atoms of the carbon of our bodies were once stars and then plants. Many genes and proteins of our body are the same as butterflies, trees, and birds; in all the cells of our body, we are populated with friendly bacteria. We are one blood with all life on Earth. Similarly, like nature, we reflect God’s beauty – but at the same time, our minds are drawn to God, we think about freedom, we create art and paint icons, the contemplative hearts of monks pray for the world in contemplative monasteries, we are the origin of the Fugue in D minor, the Vatican temple, Gregorian chant, the Song of Songs or the Ode to Joy, we discover and rejoice in knowledge; we can give and not expect back; we struggle with temptations, and for love, we can deny ourselves or even to die; we can forgive and love; we are humble in our greatness – and great if we live in humility; we can celebrate, we rejoice when in good happens in the world, and we are sad when evil is done. We are like angels. We are the most beautiful meeting of sensuality and spirituality. Through the material, we see the spiritual, and the spiritual is reflected in our bodies. As people who believe in God, we can think of Mary and Jesus.’ birth, the spiritual and physical union, and Christ Himself, whom we confess to as true God and true man. St. Athanasius says that God became man so that man might become God.
