EXPLORING THE INTEGRATION OF FAITH, JUSTICE, AND THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN JESUIT, CATHOLIC explore HIGHER EDUCATION P UBLISHED BY THE I GNATIAN C ENTER AT S ANTA C LARA U NIVERSITY SPRING 2014 VOL. 17 6 My Bright Abyss: 18 Why Is God for 34 Why Science 46 The Fragility Thoughts on Christians Good Needs God of Faith Modern Belief for Nothing? Published by the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education at Santa Clara University SPRING 2014 EXPLORING THE INTEGRATION OF FAITH, JUSTICE, AND THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN JESUIT, CATHOLIC HIGHER EDUCATION Michael C. McCarthy, S.J. ’87 Executive Director Theresa Ladrigan-Whelpley Editor Elizabeth Kelley Gillogly ’93 Managing Editor Amy Kremer Gomersall ’88 Design Ignatian Center Advisory Board Margaret Taylor, Chair Katie McCormick Gerri Beasley Charles Barry Dennis McShane, M.D. Patti Boitano Russell Murphy Jim Burns Mary Nally Ternan Simon Chin Saasha Orsi 4 Dialogue and Depth: Nicole Clawson William Rewak, S.J. Michael Engh, S.J. Exploring What Good Is God? Jason Rodriguez Frederick Ferrer Richard Saso Introduction to Spring 2014 explore Javier Gonzalez Robert Scholla, S.J. Michael Hack BY THERESA LADRIGAN-WHELPLEY Gary Serda Catherine Horan-Walker Catherine Wolff Tom Kelly Michael Zampelli, S.J. Michael McCarthy, S.J. 6 My Bright Abyss: Thoughts on Modern Belief explore is published once per year by the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education at Santa Clara University, BY CHRISTIAN WIMAN 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053-0454. 408-554-6917 (tel) 408-551-7175 (fax) www.scu.edu/ignatiancenter 10 On Modern Faith: “Out of the The views expressed in explore do not necessarily represent the views of the Ignatian Center. We welcome your comments. Eater Came Forth Meat” BY TIM J. MYERS Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education Vision Statement The Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education will be recognized throughout Silicon Valley as providing leadership for the integration of 14 God’s Presence in Poetry faith, justice, and the intellectual life. BY SABRINA BARRETO ’15 Mission Statement The Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education promotes and enhances the distinctively Jesuit, Catholic tradition of education at Santa Clara University, with a view to serving students, faculty, staff, and through 18 Why Is God for Christians them the larger community, both local and global. Good for Nothing? Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university BY TERRY EAGLETON located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California’s Silicon Valley, offers its more than 8,000 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, theology, business, and engineering, plus master’s and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. 22 Thinking Otherwise about God, master’s universities, California’s oldest operating higher-education Marx, and Eagleton institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu. BY MARILYN EDELSTEIN Copyright 2014 by Santa Clara University. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission 26 The Varieties of Goodness is prohibited. 05/14 Q-12,550 BY JONATHAN HOMRIGHAUSEN ’15 2 IGNATIAN CENTER FOR JESUIT EDUCATION CONTENTS Fr. Arthur Poulin Fr. 30 What Good Is God? 2013-2014 46 The Fragility of Faith: Bannan Institute Photo Essay How Can a Thinking Person Still Believe in God? 34 Why Science Needs God BY MICHAEL C. MCCARTHY, S.J. ’87 BY BR. GUY CONSOLMAGNO, S.J. 52 Been There, Done That: 38 Science and Religion: What Atheists Can Contribute In Search of a Common Ground to This Discussion BY ALEKSANDAR I. ZECEVIC BY JEROME P. BAGGETT 42 Science, God, Life 56 The Fragility of Ministry BY BRIAN P. GREEN BY SARAH ATTWOOD ’07 58 Grace in Shakespeare BY MARILYNNE ROBINSON ON THE COVER: Graphic Icon by calligrapher and artist Barbara Callow, www. barbaracallow.com; Star by Georgia Deaver 62 Bannan Grant Report: What Good (1957-2013), created for Bannan Institute. Above: Arthur Poulin, O.S.B. Cam., “Radiant Is God for Grief and Loss? Light, High Noon, Big Sur,” painting, 24x36, BY DAVID B. FELDMAN and www.fatherarthurpoulin.org. Used with permission of artist. ROBERT A. GRESSIS 63 Looking Ahead IGNATIAN CENTER FOR JESUIT EDUCATION explore Spring 2014 From The Editor Dialogue and Depth: Exploring What Good Is God? Introduction to Spring 2014 explore By Theresa Ladrigan-Whelpley Director of Institutes and Spirituality, Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, Charles Barry Santa Clara University “WHAT GOOD IS GOD?” This provocative Belief,” considering the modern phenomenon question has long been a central concern of of unbelieving believers for whom the realities theology and philosophy. Medieval theologians of doubt, alienation, and suffering ground the such as Thomas Aquinas inquired: “Whether God experience of faith. Reflecting on his own journey is good?” and “Whether all things are good by the of faith and doubt, faculty member and celebrated divine goodness?”1 However, this age-old question author Tim Myers draws on Wiman’s contribution has taken on an added significance today. While to consider the interwoven realities of death and many contemporary believers continue to inquire life, and his experience of transformation within about what kind of “good” God is, many believers the simultaneity of divine paradox. Santa Clara and nonbelievers press in on the question through junior Sabrina Barreto, who currently serves as another frame: “What is the use of God?” In a poetry editor for Santa Clara’s student literary world in which humanity can create and destroy magazine, reflects on Wiman’s poetic vocation, with wide-reaching agency, what utility or “good” suggesting that poetry, with its inimitable does God, and belief in God, have for our lives capacity to hold space for the unsaid within the and our communities? said, provides an incarnational medium for the Through a dynamic series of lectures and transcendent. facilitated dialogues with scientists, philosophers, International literary scholar and prolific literary scholars, engineers, theologians, poets, author Terry Eagleton opens the second chapter artists, and educators, the 2013-2014 Bannan in this issue’s series of dialogues with an excerpt Institute of the Ignatian Center for Jesuit from his lecture, “Why Is God for Christians Education at Santa Clara University sought to Good for Nothing?” Here Eagleton challenges engage this challenging question. The current functionalist notions of God with the claim that issue of explore highlights four of these lectures God is good for no reason, benefit, or instrumental and invites further dialogue through the reflective end, but rather, for goodness’ sake itself. He urges responses of Santa Clara University faculty, staff, Christians to be “good for nothing” too, arguing students, and alumni. that humans most closely resemble God when we Poet and author Christian Wiman leads exercise our freedom seeking no self-advantage or off the issue with an excerpt from his lecture, return for our goodness. In her essay “Thinking “My Bright Abyss: Thoughts on Modern Otherwise about God, Marx, and Eagleton,” 4 IGNATIAN CENTER FOR JESUIT EDUCATION Marilyn Edelstein, English professor and Women may open up possibilities within ourselves and our and Gender Studies faculty affiliate at Santa Clara, universities where a more dynamic engagement expands on Eagleton’s thesis to suggest that the with faith may become possible. Professor of social and political practices that arise from “good Religion and Society at the Jesuit School of for nothing” goodness are central to the teaching Theology Jerome Baggett considers McCarthy’s of many religious traditions and are taken up by charge through the lens of his own research on nonreligious believers as well. Santa Clara junior everyday Americans who identify as atheists, religious studies and classics major Jonathan pressing McCarthy to consider the ways in which Homrighausen presses Eagleton’s thesis further, believers and non-believers alike seek to imagine arguing that while God may be “good for nothing,” bigger, befriend intelligent believers, and take a what humans believe about God is actually good risk. Finally, recent Santa Clara alumna, Sarah for everything. Attwood, now Campus Minister at Providence Planetary scientist and curator of meteorites College, posits that the three conditions McCarthy at the Vatican Observatory in Rome Br. Guy names for a thinking person to believe in God are Consolmagno, S.J., launches our third series of best understood as lifelong practices. dialogues on the question “What Good Is God?” with an excerpt from his lecture, “Why Science In a world in which Needs God.” In this lecture, Consolmagno argues humanity can create and that scientific questions are imbued with religious significance and scientists’ notions about ultimate destroy with wide-reaching meaning supply the motivation for doing science agency, what utility or itself. Professor Aleksandar Zecevic of Santa Clara’s “good” does God, and belief School of Engineering offers a dynamic response to Consolmagno’s thesis. While Zecevic agrees with in God, have for our lives Consolmagno that the core beliefs of scientists and and our communities? engineers do underlie their foundational reasons for conducting research, Zecevic also observes We conclude the issue with an excerpt that recent developments in mathematics, physics, from our 2014 Santa Clara Lecture, “Grace in and systems theory advance the claim that there Shakespeare,”