Memorial of Saint Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs
The idea of the resurrection of the dead had no exact comparison in the Old Testament and therefore the Sadducees at the time of Jesus argued against such an occurrence. This debate about the resurrection of Jesus and our own resurrection calls to mind another debate, though this one is a bit more contemporary. Although in the 1500s there developed a debate about how to move successfully to God, no one argued against the existence of a God who worked both in and through nature and was supreme over all creation. This idea began to crumble in the so-called Age of Reason, the eighteenth century, and then was hit with full force in the nineteenth century. Atheism became a viable option, if not the position an educated man or woman was to embrace. By the opening of the twentieth century, the battle lines were drawn between those who held that God is not only an active force in nature but is over nature and is directing its progress in ways that we do not fully understand versus those who argued for only material principles directing the universe. The consequences of either position effect how we understand the world and particularly affect how we understand human nature. Either human nature is the effect of material principles with and therefore simply an extension of the rest of creation or each human person has a dignity given to him or her by God. Both ideas have consequences and elicit subsequent choices. Keeping these consequences of holding an understanding of the world as governed by material principles, it is no surprise that Pope Paul VI called upon the Society of Jesus to fight atheism both by arguments and to heal the consequences of this way of thinking.