Studying ‘women and religion’

The purpose of this reading is to highlight principles that have guided the Instructional Team of Catherine of Siena Virtual College in selecting the gender courses on religion that we offer.

We combine critical study with respect for religion

Professor Romila Thapar

When following an academic methodology it is easy to clash with the traditional views of an established religion. This happened to Romila Thapar, Professor of History in New Delhi. She is specialized regarding ancient India. Her research showed her that the orthodox Hindu interpretation of the origin and development of some Indian institutions was ‘unscientific and based on religious material that distort's the truth’. She questioned the historicity of the Ramâyâna (see reading on organised religion) and opposed the insertion of tendentious material into the history textbooks of school children.

“The controversy on my work involved some textbooks I had written for middle schools, where I had talked about the lives of Aryans as we knew it from the Vedic texts. I had mentioned, for instance, that the early Indians ate beef – the references in the Vedas are clear, and there is archaeological evidence for this. The Hindu right wing extolled the Aryans as the great model society for ancient India, and were opposed to any criticism of them. When they objected to this and other statements of mine, I provided evidence from the texts as proof. But they insisted that children should not be told that beef was eaten in early times. My reaction was that it was historically more correct to explain to school children why in early times beef was eaten, and why later a prohibition was introduced.”

“Once we accept one religious group’s agenda and beliefs to be taught in the public schools, it opens the door for every other group to do the same thing. As educators, we have to make a distinction between history on the one hand, which involves questioning existing knowledge about the past where necessary, and faith on the other hand, where even myths are acceptable. The two have to be kept separate. The first is the domain of the historian and the second that of the priest.”

Professor Thapar published many classic books on Early India. Her scholarship was recognized by honorary doctorates conferred on her by universities in Chicago, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. But her frank criticism provoked vehement opposition from orthodox Hindu movements. On 27 January 2005 the Indian Government offered her the prestigious Padma Bushan Award, but she declined probably because she believes that State Awards can be tainted by political bias.

Can we combine a rigorous academic method with respect for religious beliefs?

The answer is not simple.

The movement from : simply, the belief that Bible is man's only source of truth and governs defines all areas knowledge. Biblicism often used, derogatorily falsely, to those who believe work from this premise, they are narrow-minded do not value other sources knowledge (especially, natural revelation) use theology. True uses knowledge, but always allows Scripture be controlling authority. >biblicism:> to biblical studies

Think of Sacred Scripture. Through many centuries Christian faith has firmly adhered to the doctrine of inspiration. God wrote the Scriptures. He preserved them from error and falsehood. The medieval theologian Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) gave expression to traditional Christian belief when he said:

Bible by Vincent van Gogh

“God himself is the author of Scripture. It is true: the prophets and the apostles wrote. Yet, they were not, properly speaking, its authors, but as it were the pens which God used in writing. Saint Peter the apostle himself states: ‘It is under inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the holy men of God spoke’ (2 Peter 1,21). And his colleague in the apostolate, Saint Paul, testifies: ‘All Scripture is divinely inspired’ (2 Timothy 3/16). The holy King David adds: ‘My tongue is the pen of a deftly writing scribe’ (Psalm 45/1).”

If God takes full responsibility for these writings, then no error may be admitted in them. God is Truth itself. God could not be the author of falsehood. Robert Bellarmine does not hesitate to draw this conclusion with unmistakable clarity:

“Scripture contains indubitable truth. In it we find no falsehood, no doubt, no uncertainty; everything in it is true, everything certain, everything without a doubt.”

The case of Galileo

 

Galileo Galilei, who was born in Pisa, Italy, in the year 1564, became one of Europe’s leading scientists after studying and teaching in Pisa, Padua and Florence. He was the first scholar to use the recently discovered telescope for the study of the planets. His observations supported the theory of Copernicus (d. 1453) to the effect that the earth revolves round the Sun, and not the Sun round the earth. Up to this point, the theory of Copernicus had been accepted as a "calculating device" that determined the length of the solar year to within seconds. This supreme advantage was brought to good use by Pope Gregory in 1582 when he reformed the calendar relying upon court astronomers who accepted the work of Copernicus. Galileo, however, refused to allow that Copernicus was only a "calculating device"--he insisted that the earth moved. Thus, for Galileo the seeming "appearances of the rising and the setting of the sun" were to be explained by the earth's daily rotation on its axis, and the annual change of seasons were to be explained by the yearly rotation around the sun. As yet, however, there was no compelling scientific evidence that the earth actually did move. Furthermore, the philosophers of the day insisted that the ancient Greek authorities, Aristotle and Ptolemy, demonstrated that the earth was immovable and fixed at the center of the universe and that the sun, stars, and planets rotated around the earth. Galileo, on the other hand, refused to accept the authority of the ancient Greek philosophers on the grounds that they had made errors in other matters and were surely wrong when it came to describing the movements of the heavenly bodies.

Galileo could refuse to accept the authority of the Greeks; when it came to the authority of God, however, the case seemed to be firmly shut against him. Here are a few of the texts bearing on this controversy:

• "The LORD set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved" (Ps 104:5; cf. Isaiah 45:18).
• "The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved" (1 Chronicles 16:30; cf. Ps 93:1; 96:10).
• "And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place" (Ecclesiastes 1:5).
  

The enemies of Galileo accordingly contrived to convince Cardinal Bellarmine that the popular writings of Galileo were deceiving the masses (since he, unlike his contemporaries, published in Italian) and leading them to call into question God's truth as found in his revealed Word (the bible). Galileo defended himself against the papal theologians by affirmed that it would be unfitting for God to propose something for our religious assent that his gift of reason demonstrated to be false. Sacred writings, accordingly, should not be expected to contain modern scientific views since they were written with an eye toward harmonizing with the pre-scientific worldview held by the ancient people of Israel who first received them:

With regard to the standing still or the movement of the sun and earth, the inspired Scriptures must obviously adapt themselves to the understanding of the [ancient] people . . . otherwise the people, with their limited imagination, would easily be brought into [scientific] confusion, and would not be ready to accept those [religious] truths which are far more important as the direct object of faith.

Galileo's point is well made. In effect, Galileo is arguing that if God had spoken of the movement of the earth, this would have been a stumbling block for the ancient people of Israel. If God spoke of scientific absurdities regarding the earth, how could he be trusted as reliable when it came to the religious content of his message?

While Cardinal Bellarmine was sensitive to Galileo's point, he found no reason to suspect that the science of the bible was just as reliable as its religious content. Thus, in 1616, Cardinal Bellarmine, in the leading role assigned to him by the Office of the Inquisition accused Galileo as promoting a theory that was "false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture." Galileo was accordingly required to desist from any public defense of his position. Meanwhile, his books and the book of Copernicus were put on the Index of Forbidden Books. In 1633 Galileo Galilei was tried before the Inquisition and convicted of grave suspicion of heresy for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture." Being in poor health, he recanted his belief that the earth moved in order to forestall being burned at the stake as a heretic. He was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. Click here for further details.

Don O'Leary in his recent historical study, Roman Catholicism and Modern Science, summarizes the impact of Galileo's condemnation in these terms:

The physical sciences went into sharp decline after the death of Galileo. The institutional church had the resources to police the faith and repress unacceptable ideas. These included magic and astrology, and their condemnation led to action being taken against those who practiced chemistry and chemical medicine. Nor surprisingly, very few Catholics undertook research in these branches of science (4).

With time, scientific evidence for the movement of the earth began to accumulate, and even Catholic scientists began to accept the Copernican theory as a confirmed and reliable theory. Even the Holy Office of the Inquisition began to soften its harsh condemnations of 1616 and 1633 for, in 1741, permission was given to publish the collected works of Galileo. Even though the Vatican slowly back-peddled in an attempt to minimize its tragic error in regard to Galileo, this did not offer any overarching wisdom for encountering a long line of difficulties that were to follow.

Consider, for example, the story of Noah's worldwide flood. As European ships of exploration revealed the immense scope and variety of animal life on the planet earth, it seemed more and more implausible that kangaroos and ostriches from Australia were somehow available and loaded onto Noah's ark. Furthermore, the volume of water needed to flood the whole earth up to the height of the highest mountains exceeded the available water on the face of the earth by a factor of nearly 10. Where did all this extra water come from, and where did it all disappear to as the flood receded? More and more, reputable scholars were prompted to conclude that the flood narrative may be more of a parable bent upon explaining the origin of rainbows as a sign of God covenant with Noah (Gen 9:13f) or that it might universalize what was, in fact, a terrible flooding that menaced the entire Middle East.

In the early 1800s, evidence for ordered geological layers of rock began to accumulate. George Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830) provided massive evidence that the formation of rock layers and the subsequent buckling of these layers due to what we now know as "plate tectonics" reguired millions of years. Using the genealogical data of Genesis, Archbishop James Ussher already figured that Adam was created in 4004 BCE. The new geology, accordingly, required that the first five days of creation covered an expanse of time 1000 times greater. Between 1844 and 1863, over sixty books were published in English with the prospect of reexamining Genesis on the basis of the new geology. A few of these books endeavored to repeat the events of 1616 and to use the biblical authority to disprove and condemn the new geology. The findings of modern science could not be so easily dismissed in the 1800s as they had been in the 1600s. Hence, responsible theologians began to explore whether the Hebrew term "day" could be taken to mean a "geological period" of thousands of years. Others, however, reaffirmed the suspicion of Galileo (as quoted above) that the events of Genesis 1 intend to convey good theology rather than good science. Clearly, the six-day creation enforces the note that the Creator rests on the Sabbath--a point that would be obscured if six epochs rather than six days were intended. As in the case of Noah's flood, it remained possible that Genesis 1 was never intended to be a chronological history of the geological epochs of the planet earth.

Many Christians, however, continued to be uneasy with any concessions regarding the complete historicity of the whole of Genesis. This was all the more the case, when in 1848, Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species. Up to this time, both the philosophers and theologians had generally assumed that every living creature and plant on the face of the earth was directly and immediately created by God.

A quick look at Genesis might appear to confirm this. When examined closely, however, Genesis says more than is normally expected. According to the narrative of Genesis 2, Adam is presented as intensely lonely following his creation "from the dust of the ground" (2:7). Thus the Lord God seeks to find Adam "a helper as his partner" (2:18). Before there is any thought of Eve, however, "out of the ground, the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them" (2:19). Here one has the Lord God motivated to find a solution to Adam's loneliness and thus he explores the option of forming sea gulls, monkeys, wolves--hoping thereby to discover what Adam will see in them. But, in the end, this exploration fails for "there was not found a helper as partner" for the man. Clearly none of these birds or animals were regarded as "food," because, according to Genesis, the trees alone were intended to produce Adam's food (2:16) and, only after the flood, does God give permission to kill and eat bird, animals, and fish (Gen 9:1-5). According to the rabbis, God then created "out of the ground" the first woman, Lilith. As things turned out, however, the two got into a dispute and Lilith disappeared. Adam was thus again frustrated. Then the Lord God put Adam into a deep sleep and brought form his side (rib?) the raw material to form Eve. When Adam awakes, he finally recognizes this latest creation as "flesh of my flesh" (2:23). Genesis then says: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife" (2:24)--a midrashic reflection that abstracts from Adam's situation and applies it to us. Genesis 2, consequently, might well have more to say about how it is that a man's bond with his wife originates and how it is stronger than a man's bond with his father and his mother (or with his dog, for that matter). Again, therefore, the possibility exists that we might well be encountering a religious parable rather than a historical event. In fact, since the narrative from this point introduces snakes that talk and trees that have magical fruit--one promising that "your eyes will be opened and you will be like God" (3:5) and another that you might "live forever" (3:22f)--one must suspect that one has here a mythological wisdom narrative and not just history as such. Click here for further details.

The few examples indicated above can only touch the surface of how our ability to read and interpret the bible has gradually become more nuanced and informed. In any case, it is worthy to note that not everyone was able to travel this path. Right after World War I, a coalition of Protestants declared themselves as committed to defend the inerrancy of the Scriptures in all areas--faith, science, and history. This movement has been called Fundamentalism and, esp. in the United States, it has taken the stance of publically challenging science whenever it goes against the clear teaching of the bible.

Roman Catholics, on the other hand, after a brief period of dogmatic fundamentalism that took place during the same period when Protestant Fundamentalism originated, gave way to a much more nuanced notion of biblical inspiration. Just as formerly Catholics overplayed Jesus' divinity and obscured his humanity, scholars like Cardinal Bellarmine overplayed the divine origins of the bible and obscured its human origins. The bishops of Vatican II declared that the books of Scripture "Teach firmly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted to put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation" (Dei Verbum 3:11). The emphasis must be placed upon the words "for the sake of our salvation." Inerrancy of the Bible is relevant only insofar as it teaches us the truth about God and God's plan for our lives. The bible is not to be read as divinely revealing truths of natural science or of ancient history. This helps explain why, in a U.S. survey of seminary professors, 31% of Protestant professors either questioned or dismissed evolution while only 2% of Catholic professors did so (M. Conrad Hyers, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science, p. 5).

Accordingly, under the direction of John Paul II, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences undertook to reexamine all the proceedings regarding Galileo. Guided by this reexamination, John Paul II spoke positively of Galileo and negatively of those who mistakenly condemned him:

Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture (Pope John Paul II, L'Osservatore Romano N. 44 (1264) - 4th November,1992).

In 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for all the errors of the Church and for the violence, persecution and blunders committed, not only against scientists, but against Jews, heretics, women, Gypsies and native peoples as well.

In sum, Roman Catholics want to affirm creation without falling into creationism. Likewise Catholics want to affirm evolution without allowing biological evolution to solely define the human condition. In a series of homilies on the first chapters of Genesis, the then archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, wrote in 1981 as follows:

The exact formula is creation and evolution, because both respond to two different questions. The account of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, does not in fact tell us how man originated. It tells us that it is man. It speaks to us of his most profound origin, illustrates the plan that is behind him. Vice versa, the theory of evolution tries to define and describe biological processes. However, it does not succeed in explaining the origin of the 'project' man, to explain his interior provenance and his essence. We are faced therefore with two questions that complement, not exclude each other.

The academic courses offered by Catherine of Siena Virtual College

The academic courses offered by Catherine of Siena Virtual College are truly professional. They research, describe, and critically analyze the biblical records as they are known. At the same time, however, they respect the religious context in which this discussion takes place and endeavor to steer a course between scientism and fundamentalism.

Our course Women in Islam critically examines the contribution of women to Islam and reassesses the position attributed to women in Islamic tradition. It does so, however, without distracting from Islam as a religion which continues to inspire millions of men and women to live as responsible citizens of God’s world.

Women’s ministries according to the Sacred Scriptures challenges the interpretation of key texts used by Christians to ‘keep women in their place’. This critical approach does not diminish the status of the Scriptures. Rather it enhances the true meaning which has been obscured by the prejudice of preachers and theologians.

Women's leadership according to Christian tradition analyses the reasons for which women were excluded from leading functions throughout the centuries. It faces not just historical questions. For ‘Tradition’ itself, however misguidedly, was invoked to justify women’s exclusion. Our course tries to establish the difference between the genuine understanding of Christian Tradition and time-bound human traditions.

Other courses are in preparation.