Faith in Flux: Navigating Catholic Meta-History and Contemporary Challenges

Human history, unlike a protein, an amoeba, or a virus, cannot be put under a microscope; it is not the kind of thing that can be circumscribed by any scientific technique or device. On the one hand, there is the distant and dark past out of which humanity has emerged, which has left behind but only a few scattered bones and artifacts, and, on the other hand, there is the veiled future that meets us in the present but only one fragile moment at a time, with the vast expanse of the future always lying beyond our reach as the great unknown. And between these two times—the clouded past and the unattainable future—there lies the span of human history proper, which can only ever be known as to its facticity by way of what humanity happened to leave behind and what happened to be preserved. Even then, historians must oftentimes rely on the sometimes less-than-reliable testimony of the then-contemporaries in order to make heads or tails of what actually transpired.

Such is the human predicament when our attention is turned to the question of the unfolding of mankind’s existence and affairs in this world. We emerged from an enigmatic past-as-beginning; we have lived in a more or less documented present-as-middle; and we are venturing towards an always distant and unknown future-as-end. Framed in this way, mankind is on a ship adrift at sea, neither knowing from where we have launched nor to where we are tending but only relatively certain as to the course we have charted in the meantime.

Beyond the enigmatic content of human history, there is also the far more mysterious reality that serves as the proximate cause of all historical happenings: human freedom. Conventional wisdom states that a thing is truly understood when it is known in relation to a more fundamental principle, but intrinsic to human freedom is that it is not simply reducible to the body, the environment, or nature, understood as the sum total of all empirical reality. Human freedom is certainly affected by one’s physiology and physical, moral, and aesthetic environment, but it is not explained simply by reference to it, or else there is no genuine self-possession and moral culpability. Deterministic and fatalistic philosophies aside, the exercise of human freedom, while reliably ordered towards certain transcendent realities—truth, goodness, beauty, etc.—it often chooses otherwise or, at the very least, chooses a given thing or course of action under the appearance of the good, true, or beautiful, without it in fact being so. As St. Paul writes in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” And as St. Thomas Aquinas writes in Summa Theologiae I, q. 106, a. 4, ad 3, the exercise of human freedom is inscrutable even to the angels: “Till the Judgment Day some new things are always being revealed by God to the highest angels, concerning the course of the world, and especially the salvation of the elect.” Thus, both from the perspective of the content of history and the proximate causes of history, a cloud of darkness prevails.

The endeavor of history, though, is one which seeks to understand and articulate as best as possible the facts concerning human agents, agency, and events, on the one hand, and the contingent, interrelated causes that have given rise to these facts, on the other. For example, did Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus exist, and, if so, how and why did he die? No one doubts that Julius Caesar existed, but the latter is subject to various kinds of answers, none of which are necessarily in competition with one another. Julius Caesar died, the philosopher might say, because his soul separated from his body, whereas the scientist might say that he lost an inordinate amount of blood or his heart stopped beating. But these are not answers with which the historian is concerned. What the historian wants to know is how he died—by natural or unnatural causes?—and, if the latter, then by whose hand and why? The example of the death of Julius Caesar is only one among an incalculable many, all of which concern historical inquiry.

The Philosophy of History

But is this the only angle by which human history can be approached: knowledge of peoples and events and their relations and causes? On this point, history, ironically, says otherwise, for baked into the fabric of history is the attempt to know and understand the “big picture,” the shape, direction, and meaning of not simply the particular (whether it be a single life or a global affair) but of the whole, which, of course, also comprehensively includes all particulars. “He who philosophizes,” writes the German philosopher Josef Pieper, “asks whether this historical happening means anything over and above the merely factual, and what this meaning may be.”[1] What, in other words, is really happening in human history from beginning to middle to end? What is the deeper mystery that enfolds and sustains the inaccessible past, the fleeting present, and the veiled future? What is really occurring in the exercise of human freedom?

While historical inquiry is certainly a key feature of this quest for understanding, these are questions that transcend the concerns, subject matter, and techniques of historians as historians. In other words, these are meta-historical questions and concerns, transcending history while always at the same time arising from mankind and, thus, from within history.

The proper domain of such questions, then, is not historical inquiry as such but, rather, the philosophy (and theology) of history, which is intrinsically concerned with the most fundamental realities, though in different ways: the nature of the universe, existence, human nature, freedom, providence, and God.

Now, in one way, this simplifies the matter, for it brings into view a distinct set of questions and the overarching method by which history is to be approached; however, this clarity also comes at a great price, for the area into which one ventures by way of the philosophy and theology of history is by no means tame. It is a wilderness. Why? Because the meaning and nature of history, again, cannot be placed under the proverbial microscope; it cannot be adequately grasped and made an object of inquiry by the human person, for we always exist within history, and our epistemological horizon is necessarily circumscribed by our limited experience and understanding. “The special nature of his [man’s] situation [who philosophizes about history],” writes Pieper, “does not consist in its being different in principle from that of anyone else who philosophizes; it consists in the fact that an element inherent in all philosophizing in general appears here with greater intensity.”[2]

So strenuous is this task, so slippery is the object of this quest, that it exceeds even metaphysics in difficulty, for “success,” here, entails not simply understanding—as best as one is able—the nature of created and uncreated being but discerning the mind and freedom of the ultimate cause of history, namely, God, who could have willed any number of different universes, histories, and plans. Such an endeavor, of course, assumes that God exists and that God is the transcendent protagonist of human history as he who is simultaneously greater than that which can be conceived and closer to us than we are to ourselves, but it is at this point that the atheist parts ways and, if he is logically consistent, either abandons the very idea of the meaning of history or conceives of it simply in materialistic and emergentist terms. Meaning may exist, but it arises from below and is, thereby, altogether relative and, ultimately, irrelevant in the final analysis.

Consequently, there arises the temptation to discard the question of the meaning and philosophy of history altogether. But, here, Pieper intervenes: “There is, however, a great deal to suggest that the question of the end of history cannot be suspended at all, that it will ‘in any case’ be asked and, indeed, answered.”[3] Whether one is willing or unwilling to take a stand as to an over-arching and objectively true meaning and direction to history, one cannot help but live under the domain of some meta-historical paradigm.

Survey of Some Meta-Historical Paradigms

Aristotle, for example, believed that the celestial bodies are the “higher” causes of terrestrial affairs, which themselves desire the perfect eternity of the Prime Mover. By virtue of the eternal stability of the Prime Mover, the celestial bodies manifest an eternal regularity, which themselves determine the order and movement of terrestrial affairs. Earthly environments and the lives of men, then, are unchanging: birth, hunger, suffering, death, and so on; there is nothing altogether new under the sun.

Plotinus believed that created realities issue forth from the divine, not as a created procession of goodness and love but as a “fall.” The cosmos and human history, then, are already a kind of disaster, a catastrophic occurrence. “This means,” writes Joseph Ratzinger, “that non-divine being is in itself and as such fallen being; finitude is itself already a kind of sin, something negative that has to be healed by being drawn back into the infinite.”[4] Consequently, history is directional, but it is a movement from tragedy to tragedy, at least insofar as created being is itself concerned.

Evolution posits that the universe as such “advances” in size, scope, and complexity, at least on the whole, though any particular instance of organization will inevitably experience decay and destruction. The star comes to exist from the physical and chemical laws and elements of the universe, but it will eventually exhaust itself and collapse; a species emerges over a long course of time by way of the interaction between the creative capacity of physics, chemistry, and biology, on the one hand, and the eco-system which its ancestors inhabited, on the other, but it, too, is subject to destruction and loss when the conditions necessary for its existence no longer hold. If our Sun eventually self-destructs, all “advances” made by life on Earth will be for naught. Within the evolutionary paradigm, then, there is both an inbuilt directionality and cyclicality (broadly considered).

Finally, both the Enlightenment and Marxist-Hegelian paradigms entail a progressive reading of history wherein man is invariably advancing toward better days, a veritable heaven on earth thanks to the conquest of reason, technology, and social relations. Man, here, lives under an abiding hope and expectation that the best is yet to come.

Thus, the question arises as to how one ought to conceive of the direction and meaning of history. This inquiry is especially relevant for the Catholic and Christian, for, again, there is no neutral space here: either one believes that there is no direction and meaning (which is itself a certain kind of philosophy of history, tragic as it may be) or that there is some direction and meaning (which can take many different forms, as seen above). The question, then, for the Catholic and Christian is: “How ought I to conceive of the shape and nature of the whole of human history in a manner that is consistent with the revelation of Christ?” “What is the meaning of the whole in light of Christ, which in turn redounds unto the particular, thereby giving its objective meaning and signifying power?”

A Catholic-Theological Meta-History

One approach to the Christian conception of time is to conceive of it simply under the purview of chronos, the Christian vision of history as it exists along a timeline, transitioning from moment to moment, event to event, until there are no more moments or events proper to this age and dispensation.

In this regard, consider the 3rd/4th-century theologian Lactantius, who writes in his Divine Institutes that the universe will exist for 6,000 years, at the conclusion of which Christ will come again to bring this history to its conclusion:

Therefore let the philosophers, who enumerate thousands of ages from the beginning of the world, know that the six-thousandth year is not yet complete. . . . Therefore, since all the works of God were completed in six days, the world must continue in its present state through six ages, that is, six thousand years. For the great day of God is limited by a circle of a thousand years, as the prophet shows, who says, “In thy sight, O Lord, a thousand years are as one day” (Ps 90:4).[5]

And as Jean Danielou writes in The Lord of History, “Hippolytus supposed that Christ was born in the middle of the sixth millennium, so that the Second Coming would be in A.D. 500. St. Augustine, in his earlier writings, put the Incarnation at the beginning of the same millennium, giving A.D. 1000 as the date of the Second Coming.”[6] Examples like this can be multiplied many times over. But is this way of approaching the Christian conception of history all there is? More pointedly: is it even the most significant and penetrating question to ponder?

Consider, here, the insight of Augustine, who not only proposed a chronological account of the events of history from creation to the Second Coming but also articulated a meta-historical vision wherein God is not only the providential governor of human history[7] but also the transcendent reference point of the deeper reality behind human history as it is typically understood. For example, Augustine offers his famous “Two Cities” interpretation of human history, wherein—behind the facticity of human affairs—there is a more fundamental human drama at play:

Two cities, one of sinners and one of saints, are to be found throughout history from the creation of mankind until the end of the world: at the present day they are mingled together in body, but separate and distinct in will; in the day of judgment, they will be separated bodily. All men who take pleasure in the lust of power and the spirit of domination, in the pomps and vanities of the world, and all spiritual substances who approve these things and take pride in subjecting men to themselves, all these are united in one city; even when they fight among themselves over such advantages, they are nonetheless brought down together in the same direction by one and the same burden of cupidity, and bound together by common behavior and deserts. On the other hand, all such as humbly seek the glory of God . . . belong together in one city.[8]

Thus, according to Augustine, the over-arching meta-historical paradigm is one of two competing “cities” or communities, each co-mingled in this world but fashioned and sustained by their loves, as Augustine writes in Book XIV of the City of God: “We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self. In fact, the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.”[9]

Like Augustine, Bonaventure sees a deeper, more commodious reality behind mere history considered as a record and narrative of historical events, and this reality behind reality is Christ and his Paschal Mystery. As the Seraphic Doctor writes in his Collationes in Hexaemeron:

[A] beginning should be made from the center (medium), that is, from Christ. For he himself is the Mediator between God and men, holding the central position in all things. . . . Hence it is necessary to start from him if a man wants to reach Christian wisdom. . . . Our intent, then, is to show that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and that he himself is the central point of all understanding.[10]

Consequently, not only is the fullness of revelation to be found in Christ but also ultimate meaning, for Christ, in the unity of the Trinity, creates an orderly history that finds its source and end in him. Consequently, one must begin in the “middle,” that is, Christ, from whom creation and human history finds its multi-layered pattern and order. Human history is a divinely ordered unfolding of divine Wisdom, of Christ, and all things find their life and purpose in him.

Finally, in the modern period, Jean Danielou, SJ, echoing the Bonaventuran vision, writes: “It is a further peculiarity of the Christian outlook on history that the center of interest is neither at the beginning, as it was for the Greeks, nor at the end, as it is in evolutionary theories, but in the middle;”[11] “[T]he history of civilizations falls within the history of salvation.”[12] Or, as Josef Pieper writes, echoing Augustine: “What really and in the deepest analysis happens in history is salvation and disaster.”[13]

Gaudium et Spes and the “Signs of the Times”?

With this foundation in place, one can begin to see the significance of a philosophical-theological approach to history (or meta-history, as I have deemed it) by way of the Church’s vocation to understand and engage with the historical circumstances in which she and the wider world find themselves. The parameters of this calling are outlined by the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes on the Church in the Modern World, wherein the Council Fathers speak of the importance of discerning “the signs of the times,” which the German Cardinal Karl Lehmann called a “central legacy of the Council”[14] and Massimo Faggioli “one of the hermeneutical principles of Vatican II.”[15] In order to “carry forward the work of Christ under the lead of the befriending Spirit,” the Council Fathers state that “the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel” (Gaudium et Spes §§3-4).

But, one might ask, what are the “signs of the times”? To state the matter as unobjectionably as possible, the signs of the times are noteworthy historical events, values, aspirations, and societal constructs and relations that give specific shape and form to a given culture and people. In other words, the signs of the times are what define a given age, culture, or people as this particular age, culture, or people.

In the context of the 1960s, during which Gaudium et Spes was written and promulgated, the Council Fathers spoke of rapid historical changes, cultural and social transformation, technological advances, the probing of the human psyche, unequal distribution of economic and political wealth and power, social and psychological slavery, and so on. And if one were to attempt a similar analysis today, one could do worse than the 2017 account provided by Cardinal Blaise Cupich of Chicago in Commonweal:

Our time is plagued by global terrorism and threatened by global warming and the exploitation of limited resources. Many people are excluded by unchecked forces of economic exploitation and globalization, and others are left homeless or forced to migrate by wars and privation. As a result, we have become fearful of one another in a world marked by great divisions over race, ethnicity, religion, and place of origin.[16]

These are a few of the most significant aspects of our current historical moment, but a simple listing of constitutive features does not suffice, for the question remains as to what these contemporary realities signify? What, in other words, does it mean to discern the signs of the times once we have identified what these signs are?

As Faggioli writes, “Discerning ‘the signs of the times’ is not just about being aware of world events; the signs are a new ‘semiotics of time.’ In other words, ‘the signs of the times’ reflect the recognition that there are facts of history that a credible presentation of the faith cannot dismiss without losing its credibility”;[17] and, as the German Cardinal Walter Kasper states (and is approvingly quoted by Faggioli in this same essay), “We meet the Gospel not only listening to Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium, but also, of necessity, by listening to the world. . . . Concrete human history is a constitutive part of revelation.”[18] What this practically means, according to Faggioli, is that “The church looks into history and the present to understand the gospel more deeply—that is, where the gospel already exists even without the church, and where the church can recognize it and be inspired by it.”[19]

In other words, the “signs of the times” are not simply those significant features of “the world” that the Church is called to recognize and scrutinize in light of Christ and the Gospel so as to better communicate the mystery of Christ to present-day men and women; instead, they are actually the hidden presence and activity of Christ—the Gospel—bubbling up in human history and affairs apart from the Church, Sacred Scripture, and Sacred Tradition. Divine revelation, as it were, continues to unfold all around us, if only we have the eyes to see and ears to hear it. Consequently, the Church is not called to simply look “inward” to Sacred Scripture and the Sacred Tradition, both of which are the uniquely privileged means by which the Church encounters Christ and which she embodies and carries across time and space, but also “outward” to the world that the Church is called to evangelize in order to more fully know and understand Christ and the Gospel. This is what it means to call the world a locus theologicus, a source of insight and principle for theological argumentation.

Critical Discernment “in the Light of the Gospel”

This, I think, ventures beyond the classic “seeds of the Word” paradigm put forward by Sts. Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria in the Post-Apostolic Age, wherein certain elements of truth and goodness are providentially scattered across human history and culture whereby men and women are better prepared for a fruitful reception of the Gospel, for Faggioli posits that “The church looks into history and the present to understand the gospel more deeply.” Thus, whereas Justin and Clement would say that the Holy Spirit prepares the world to receive Christ and the Church, Faggioli argues that the Holy Spirit prepares the Church to receive Christ in the world. Contrast this with the program that Gaudium et Spes actually advances: “[T]he Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel,” which means identifying the “seeds of the Word” in light of the full revelation of the Word himself.

In the final analysis, the basic question at hand is: “Ought the Church to understand human affairs in the light of Christ and the Gospel, or ought the Church to understand Christ and the Gospel in light of human affairs?” It is here that the significance of an adequately articulated Catholic meta-history rises to the surface, for a theological meta-history seeks to answer the question: “What is it—really—that happens (and, thus, is happening) in human history in light of the divine revelation of Christ?”

Since the Council Fathers of Vatican II urged the Catholic faithful to discern the signs of the times in light of the Gospel, one cannot begin to understand what the significant elements of a given culture are except against the backdrop of some meta-history, nor can one reliably identify what these realities signify as signs except by virtue of some theology of history. As was mentioned previously, there is no neutral position when it comes to meta-history; one always takes a stand on this question in some form or fashion. The question, then, is: “According to what paradigm ought one to interpret the whole of human history and, consequently, all of its component parts?” According to Augustine and Pieper, human affairs are either a manifestation of the love of God (salvation) or the love of self (disaster), and, according to Bonaventure and Danielou, what appears to be merely mundane history is actually an unfolding of a sacred history rooted in the mystery of Christ and the Paschal Mystery, which includes both the mystery of sin and redemption.

Consequently, a Catholic approach to history recognizes that each and every exercise of human freedom has its ultimate reference point in Christ. As St. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 3:11-13, “For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. . . . [E]ach man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.” What this very practically entails, then, is that one cannot approach human affairs—either within or outside of the Church—as simply altogether positive or altogether negative. Put another way, the “signs of the times” are moments of either acceptance or rejection of Christ, salvation or disaster.

This paradigm, in fact, is well-represented within Gaudium et Spes itself, for the Council Fathers speak of both the failures of contemporary society and culture that stand in need of correction and purification (§4) and the “authentic signs of God’s presence and purpose,” which cry out for recognition and acceptance (§11). Consequently, Gaudium et Spes §11 states, “This council . . . wishes to assess in this light those values which are most highly prized today and to relate them to their divine source. Insofar as they stem from endowments conferred by God on man, these values are exceedingly good. Yet they are often wrenched from their rightful function by the taint in man’s heart, and hence stand in need of purification” (emphasis mine).

As a result, the vocation of the Church relative to the world of extra-ecclesial affairs cannot be one of either simply “updating,” aggiornamento, and accommodation, or simple rejection. This is why the Church has “the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel,” which is not possible except by way of a rightly understood Catholic-theological meta-history revealed fully in Christ Jesus. Under such a paradigm, one is led to see that all of human history and every human life find its ultimate meaning, value, and purpose in Christ and his Gospel, “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Eph 3:9-10). It is only in light of the manifold mystery of Christ that human history and affairs, the “signs of the times,” can be adequately understood and evaluated.