By Randall Smith
At Mass the other day, the priest said: “Today we face a decisive choice.” He was referring to the challenges of artificial intelligence. AI poses a challenge, but it is important to understand that the challenges we face and the decisive choices we must make are the same ones humanity has faced again and again, from the beginning.
It is often said that we are in a “new era” in which “everything has changed.” This is a trend that has been aggravated by the way some have interpreted certain statements of the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world from the Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et spes). In Gaudium et spes 4 we read: “The human race is today at a new stage of its history, characterized by profound and accelerated changes that are progressively extending to the entire universe.”
Against the oft-repeated claim that Gaudium et spes was excessively optimistic, the Council Fathers warn: “As happens in every crisis of growth, this transformation brings with it no small difficulties. Thus, while man is extending his power extraordinarily, he does not always succeed in subjecting it to his service.” They then mention some of the serious problems: persistent hunger, lack of educational resources, the destructive power of atomic weapons, the rise of atheism and its consequences in the lack of respect for the dignity of the human person.
In retrospect, I think the Council Fathers can be forgiven for being astonished by the changes that had taken place during their lifetime. If one was a Council Father born in 1900, in his youth he would have seen people moving at the same speed they had moved since the time of Christ: on foot or on horseback. But when he traveled to the Second Vatican Council in 1965, he probably did so by jet plane, and his radio and television interviews could be broadcast around the world.
Humanity was only four years away from putting a man on the Moon. That Council Father would have seen two devastating world wars, the Holocaust, the murder of millions of people in Russia and China, and the creation of atomic weapons. We think that we face changes, but they are nothing compared to those faced by that generation.
Although we should not downplay the astonishing advances that took place in the twentieth century, one may wonder whether there was ever an age that did not consider itself “decisive.”
The ancient Greek world considered itself “decisive” culturally, for having left behind the “barbarian” cultures that did not know Greek philosophy and culture.
The Romans considered themselves “decisive,” because they civilized the world with law and public works.
Charlemagne saw himself as a “decisive” figure who pushed back the Muslim invasions of Europe.
Theologians of the thirteenth century described their style as “modern” to distinguish it from that of their predecessors.
The thinkers of the Renaissance saw themselves as “decisive,” and so did the thinkers of the Enlightenment and the Marxists of the twentieth century.
But now we are all very “modern,” whatever that means. According to some, modernity began with Galileo and Descartes in the sixteenth century; others maintain that it was with Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century; and still others say that “modernity” began with Darwin, Marx, and Freud at the end of the nineteenth century.
Read Paul Johnson’s classic work, Modern Times, and you will see that the “modern world” began with the experiments of Sir Arthur Eddington that confirmed Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. So what does it mean to be “modern”? Before, we used to say we were “postmodern.” But that was some time ago. I don’t know what we are now.
In every age it has been claimed that “it is a new era” and that, therefore, “now everything will be different.” When America was discovered, they called it “the New World,” and many imagined that in that “new world” everything would be different. It was and it wasn’t. The old diseases, both physical and spiritual, traveled with them.
But this question of “decisive moments,” when we find ourselves at “a crossroads,” can be traced even further back. The choice between living in fidelity to God and acting as stewards of His Creation, or trying to live as “autonomous” beings who become “lords” of Creation, is the one our first parents faced. Their choice is one we face again and again throughout history. That is why the story is so fundamental, and why we return to it again and again.
So let us return to Gaudium et spes. In the face of all the changes they had experienced, the Council Fathers were convinced that the help the Church had to offer humanity was the perennial “good news” of God’s self-revelation in Christ. The two key passages of the document that Pope Saint John Paul II cited again and again are found in Gaudium et spes 22 and 24: “In reality, the mystery of man is only clarified in the mystery of the Incarnate Word”; and “the Lord, when He prays to the Father ‘that all may be one… as we also are one,’ opens perspectives closed to human reason, suggests a certain likeness between the union of the divine persons and the union of the children of God in truth and charity. This likeness shows that man, the only earthly creature whom God has loved for his own sake, cannot find his own fulfillment except in the sincere gift of himself.”
We face a “decisive choice.” But let us not deceive ourselves: it is a choice we face every day. We can choose to try to be God, or we can choose to be “in the image of God” as Christ revealed Him to us. To the extent that we choose to be instruments of God’s love, things will go well for us. To the extent that we choose the path of trying to be God, pain and death will probably await us. Every age faces its own challenges. Our challenges are new; the nature of the choice is not.
About the author
Randall Smith holds the J. Michael Miller Chair in Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. His most recent book, Mapping the Itinerarium: A Companion to Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind into God, has just been published by Emmaus Press. His articles can be found here: Randall Smith Portfolio.