The Pope has recently issued an encylical, Magnifica Humanitas, which has been widely reported as dealing with issues of artificial intelligence - though I think it is actually has a somewhat broader theme, around technology and the technical society. I don't often read papal encyclicals, although I have dabbled in one or two, but this is a topic I'm interested in and the Pope's intervention seems to have got some traction, so I thought I'd dive in and offer some reactions. This post is mostly about method and stance; a second post will get into the details of the content a little more. References in brackets are to the paragraph numbers in the encyclical.
Naturally, I'm approaching this from a Protestant and evangelical perspective, and so it is likely that many of my reflections on theological method will boil down to 'well, this is Roman Catholicism'. This is most apparent to me in the theological method - in the first two sections of the encyclical, which look at the historical development of the Social Doctrine of the Church and the fundamental principles of that Doctrine, there is precious little Biblical content. Indeed, although we are told that it is "only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear" (1 - citing the 2nd Vatican Council; see also 49, where there is a little more flesh put on these bare bones) it seems to me that this statement does not have much operative force in the rest of the document. It becomes clear that the 'mystery of humanity' does not mean something about humanity which is only true in Christ - as, for example, that fallen humanity is redeemed - but something that is common to human nature which is only seen fully in Christ. It is about "the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ" (15) and not about the grandeur bestowed upon us by and in Christ. I think this is methodologically important, because it undergirds the regular appeal to the "common good" throughout the encyclical. There is nothing inherently wrong in an appeal to a shared human nature - a human nature which is revealed in Christ - but it does seem to me quite a lot of weight is put on the shared nature and very little on Christ. I wonder if there is actually anything in the positive teaching of the document for which the incarnation is a crucial foundation.
To my mind, this lack of Biblical and Christological reference paints a particular picture, of a church locked in conversation with itself. One misses altogether the sense of a people addressed from above. (In fact, the idea of the gospel coming "from above" - admittedly in this context mainly with a human imposition of the truth in view - is expressly repudiated in favour of the truth which "grows over time within the concrete interweaving of lives, communities and cultures." [25]) We are told that "this faith-based interpretation of history has never been interrupted" (45) - but I can't help wondering whether it wouldn't have been better if it had been interrupted, by the Word of God! The Church pictured in the encyclical is open to dialogue with the world around it, but gives no indication of being open to the Word. One consequence of this is that the overall impression given, when it comes to turning to the world, is that what is offered is simply the deliberations of a particular sub-section of humanity, which - drawing on ancient wells of wisdom and centuries of accumulated reflection - offers to its fellow human beings some proposals for ordering life and society. But where is the 'thus says the Lord' in all this? And without it, what authorises this sub-section to speak? And what can compel the rest of us to listen?
This seems to me to overflow into the approach to history. So we can read that under the guidance of the Spirit "the People of God come to recognize in cultural and social transformations both the signs of the presence of Christ, who comes and guides history toward its fulfilment, and those aberrations that obscure his face." (22) To be sure, this spiritual discernment is to involve interpreting the times "in the light of God's word" (22), but I can't help feeling that the specificity of the incarnation has gone missing here. The history of Christ in his birth, life, death and resurrection seems to have been dissolved into Christ in history.
Openness to the world defines the stance of this document, which is what you would expect given the method (or perhaps the influence flows in the other direction). A huge contrast with the evangelicalism with which I am familiar is that for the Pope the Church is a historical factor, one amongst many in driving the history of the world. (19) This has positive and negative aspects, I think. Negatively, there is a huge amount of talk in this document about the responsibility of the church to build the kingdom of God - the two building sites (Babel and Jerusalem) which run through the encyclical form the basis of a call to be careful how we build. (An appeal which could, of course, go back to the Apostle Paul - except that the Apostle is clear that what is being built is the church - the encyclical seems to be talking much more broadly than this). There is a lack of eschatology in this document, and what there is seems to me to rely on the progressive growth of the kingdom through the activity of the church and its allies. There is a lack of crisis, of the judgement on the world, which seems to me to characterise the NT message. On the other hand, positively, the idea that the church might have something to say to society is a welcome corrective to some evangelical thinking which essentially sees the world as something to be escaped from into the church. To put it another way, if the encyclical seems to present the church as standing in absolute continuity with humanity, with no sense of the rupture of the new creation, evangelicalism sometimes sees the church as standing in complete discontinuity with humanity, as a sect escaping the doomed world rather than as the provisional representation of the new humanity to be revealed at the eschaton.
More to follow...
