In the last two posts, we encountered three key elements necessary for sound theology that I learned in my youth: intellectual honesty (and rigor), prayer, and humility. To this I would like to add a fourth: integrality. By that term, I mean trying to hold all things together as best one can, seeing the big picture, having a perspective that sees all the various aspects of life as part of a larger whole, not missing the forest for the trees. In other words: everything is related. That is not to say that there aren't separate spheres of study or that specialization is inherently bad. It simply means that one ought to always consider the part in light of the whole and vice-versa.
This is the original notion behind a "university," by the way. Sadly, as one professor put it to our class: "We no longer have Universities; we have Multi-versities." There is ever increasing specialization without integration. As we will see, that is a problem.
Expertise in one area does not mean expertise in another. To paraphrase a line from a medical drama: ask a surgeon and his solution is always surgery. We tend to view things from within our specialization. That is understandable, but it is important to realize that we may need to bring in knowledge and wisdom from other disciplines to get the full picture and the best solution to the problem or the most fitting answer to the question.
How does this relate to my theological journey? Well, in addition to my spiritual, moral, and religious development, I also always had a love for nature and the sciences. My favorite subjects in school were always science and math. I was particularly drawn towards biology, especially zoology and the sub-speciality of anatomy and physiology. I thoroughly enjoyed dissecting animals (even though I would not have been able to be the one to kill them for dissection, because I loved animals so much). I enjoyed it because I was fascinated how every part of the body worked together to make the whole organism function. The design of the body from the various tissues, working in concert to form organs, which then formed organ systems, all coming together into one living organism showed complexity and inter-connectedness on every level and between every level of organization. Pure genius!
I was also really good at chemistry, and I loved how predictable it could actually be. In college, I once showed up unprepared for a quiz that I had forgotten about. That quiz required that we know a certain formula to solve the problems. The difficulty was: I had not memorized the formula. So what did I do? I thought about it. I considered the relation of the various aspects of the equations and I regenerated it based on that analysis, and I aced the test. Similarly, in the same class on another occasion, my professor was reviewing our homework problems for us, and he noticed that he got a problem wrong when he checked the answer key. He said: "I see what they did differently, but I'm not sure why." I raised my hand, he called on me, and I explained why this particular problem was different than the others, showing the rationale behind the different operation. He looked at me and said: "Yes, and you have a future in [chemical] engineering." Well, I didn't, but I did become a tutor as well as the top student in my Organic Chemistry class the next semester. (I had a dual Major in Pre-Veterinary Medicine and Biology with a Chemistry Minor.)
After running out of funds to pay for my 4th semester, I had to transfer out of the University I was attending. I decided to go to a Catholic College closer to my parents and younger brothers. By that time, I decided to drop the Pre-Veterinary Medicine major, and instead I looked towards going into biomedical research and development. The Spring Semester of my Sophomore Year, I took a Cell Biology course, which I was really excited about. By that time, my love for the study of life (Biology) and my love for Chemistry made me extremely interested in biochemistry and the inner life of the cell.
As it turns out, as fascinatingly integrated and complex the macro-level of biology is, the micro-level of every single cell in the human body is exponentially more complex, integrated, and fascinating. What is more, it is astronomically more complicated to understand. The more I studied biology and chemistry, the more I was convinced how it all pointed to God. I can go into more detail on that in another post.
For now, let me focus on a pivotal point in my education. In that Cell Biology class, we were studying genetic diseases. The professor brought up Huntington's Disease, which doesn't manifest until someone is middle-aged, usually in their forties. It is a terrible disease that leads to a lot of suffering. Fortunately, it is fairly rare, since the gene for it is recessive, meaning you have to get it from both parents for it to be contracted. Using a hypothetical man (let's call him Dale), my professor then mentioned that it is possible to test the genes of Dale's children and their spouses to calculate the probability that any of their children would contract the disease. It could prove to be 0%, 25%, 50%, or 100% chance (remember Punnett Squares?). The next statement was the kicker, she said: "That way, they can decide whether they want to risk it and have children." My mind was blown; I was deeply disturbed. I understood wanting to know whether there was a risk and how much of a risk to prepare oneself emotionally and mentally for the challenges that could like ahead, but this seemed more than that to me. Let me recount the exchange that ensued as best I can.
I raised my hand. She called on me. I said: "Should Dale never have been born?" "What?! I don't understand the question." "Was Dale's life pointless and worthless because he contracted Huntington's Disease? Would it have been better if he were never born, and thus his children never born, so as to avoid the suffering he endured in middle age?" "NO! No one is saying that." "Well," I said, "if Dale's life was still valuable, then why should we want to prevent other people from being conceived because of a chance that they might contract the same disease?" My professor wasn't happy. She coldly explained to me that we did not have time for such questions and that we would need to speak privately in her office at another time.
So, we did. And before that meeting, I thought about the scenario even more, and I came up with a way to explain it, that I thought might help. So, when we got together, I put it this way: "There are two sentences, each containing the exact same words, but changing the word order completely changes their meaning and value: 1) 'We do not want children to be born with Huntington's disease'; versus 2) 'We do not want children with Huntington's Disease to be born.' The first is noble and expresses a desire to protect children from a disease, to seek for a cure for even to eradicate the disease. The second is deplorable, for it seeks to destroy, prevent, or eradicate persons in order to prevent a disease." I thought that was pretty clear. She was not amused, said she didn't understand and that we'd just have to agree to disagree.
It was a powerful experience in which I concretely came to realize that people who are very smart, intelligent, and learned in one area can be quite blind in others, and that our 'worship' of scientists and doctors is dangerous. For, knowledge and power without commensurate moral and ethical reasoning simply means an increase in the power to misuse power. Today, we are growing in our ability to control the natural world and are also decreasing in our ability to even talk about moral issues.
This is a danger to our humanity. The reduction of universities to multiversities means that we have scientists, physicians, engineers, and business professionals who don't know anything about philosophy, theology, or ethics. We now worship medicine and technology, despise philosophy and often religion, eschew any notion of objective morality and yet expect our 'rights' to be protected. Based on what rationale? The vast majority of students are never taught the basics of logical argumentation, not even logical fallacies, let alone principles of moral thinking. Technology (what we can do) is expanding rapidly. Moral reason has all but disappeared. This is a recipe for disaster.
So what did I do about it? I changed my major to theology and wrote my bachelor's thesis on "The Theological/Moral Implications of Genetic Research." I drew upon Just War theory's two-fold structure of "Right to War" and "Right in War" and applied it to genetic study: "The Right to Study Genetics" and the "Right in Studying Genetics." To this I added a third: "Right Application of Knowledge Gained through Study." Not that many people read it, but my oral defense was fairly well attended and was generally enjoyed by those in attendance.
In the end, I don't even know where a copy of that thesis is. But, I can say this: it formed me as a person and as a thinker. I began to appreciate the fact that the sciences and the humanities are all aspects of human existence. They are all valuable. They ought to all be held together. An integrated world-view is important. And thus, a search after the closest approximation to a 'true' world-view is a supreme value. The cooperation between the fields of study towards a common goal, is invaluable. Education should be of the whole person, not just of the part. And no science/field should be completely cut-off from the rest. Each should learn from each other. And that is what I mean by integral.
By the way, there is another word whose original Greek form means "whole, integral, containing all the component parts in their proper relation": Catholic. More on that later.
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