Christ, the Key to History
By scientist and priest Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

To state that Christ is the key to History may be just a symbolic phrase, poetic and perhaps lacking in rigorous meaning.

To avoid ambiguities we must define concepts: What do we mean by "history"? By "key"? Only thus can we establish a logical connection between both words and see in what sense their meaning can be applied to the Person of the God-Man.

In our common language, we understand by "history" a temporal development, with an implied evolution, of some changeable reality that shows an interaction of parts among themselves and with some environment. We may speak of the history of the Universe, of the Solar System, of the Earth, of Life, of Man, of cultures, Art, Science, nations and each individual, as a person or as part of a group considered as such in some way (more or less justifiably).

An atomic particle, isolated and unchanging, would have no history except to indicate the beginning of its existence, but such state is physically impossible since all reality is interconnected by mutual influxes. Only an existence outside of time would be a-historical and it would imply a fixed permanency incompatible with an evolutionary development.

Even if a technical language we distinguish between pre-history and history, referring this second term only to periods when we find written records, that distinction in unimportant here. Everything that has happened in the past is part of history, and the present must be considered as influenced by all that was before, while we also consider it as capable of affecting the future.

Of that future we speak when in science we deal with predicting the material evolution of the Universe, or when talking about developments of human activities with their possible changes of a cultural, economic, political or religious order. We try to discover some evolutionary tendencies by studying varied facts, either known or suggested by logical considerations.

The word "key" is used in several analogical ways. In architecture, the "key-stone" describes the block upon which all the tensions and forces of an arch converge, and from its solidity depends the structural stability. The central stone acts as a part (the key) that closes the arch rising towards it, and when it is in place, the entire structure holds itself without extra external supports.

We can find here the idea of order and unity provided by the key: without it we would have a pile of loose parts instead of a harmonious, functional and stable construction. There are other ways of making a building, without arches, but no other architectural element has a role that is so clearly important and leading to a similar symbolic value.

But the word "key" suggests not only to close but also to open, especially in the area of what has some meaning: the key for an encrypted message makes intelligible an apparently absurd chain of letters or numbers. In a wider context, any fact, idea or person that allows us to make sense of what happens, at some moment or in a given historical process, giving a reason for what might seem chaotic or due to chance, can be considered as an explanatory key. Every deep thinker, in any field, seeks such bases of interpretation, that make into a "science" a mere listing of facts, names and dates. Historical science develops this way.

Both meanings converge by pointing to something real that, in some way, holds a primacy of honor, force, or meaning that gives coherence to some complex ensemble, raising it above the level of just a chance totality of facts or ideas. This is the understanding that will be inherent to the use of the word KEY when we apply it to Christ in his relationship to the history of the Universe, of Life and of Humanity.

Christ's Primacy

Being God, a divine Person, Christ holds the supreme category of being, the essential primacy of whatever exists or can exist: "In Him dwells all fullness". Even as Man, since his human nature is united to the divinity in a single Person, he is "the firstborn of Creation" and holds the absolute primacy in every respect.

We ascribe to Him the creating power that gives reality to everything, in Heaven and on Earth; everything subsists in Him. He is the keystone that holds together the metaphorical arch that symbolizes the full spiritual and material reality, since He is the reason why the Universe exists.

He is also the key to understand why everything exists; a kind of comprehension that is achieved by the study of the several forms of causality: efficient, exemplary and final. He is the efficient cause of everything created: "all things were created by Him and without Him nothing was made". Even if all activity outside God's intimate life must be common to the three Persons, since there is in God only one Omnipotence and one Will, still we find in the language of the Bible that creation is presented as due to the all-powerful Word pronounced by the Father, and his eternal Word is the Son.

The same creating action continues through all time, since conservation in being is nothing else but the subsistence of everything in Christ. Thus He is previous to everything else as the uncreated Cause, and also remains as the constant creator and source of activity at every level for creatures that exist only thanks to Him. The relationship of dependence does not apply only to the origin, but rather subsists forever.

As the Image of the Father, Christ is the exemplary cause of all perfection. Only to the extent that a creature reflects the uncreated Word can it possess beauty, order, any kind of perfection. There is no other independent source, and no creature can by its own power obtain or develop something not received from the Creator: what we call "create", in the finite realm of spirit or matter, is only a new expression -in some degree- of the infinite reality of the One from whom whatever does not exist by itself must flow.

When the most respected scientists search for a synthesis that implies that the Universe is intelligible, ordered, intrinsically beautiful in a conceptual simplicity, they are indicating that they need to think of matter as the reflection of the One in whose perfection all the properties that we describe with different words are truly identified with his essence.

Christ is also, in a unique way, the explanatory key as a final cause: everything was created for Him, not only because all things tend to God as the ultimate destiny but because He, the God-Man, is the final end sought by the Father who has in Him all his pleasure. Finite reality must be the ornament and joy of the only One who is infinitely loved in Himself, and nothing else can be desired by the Father unless it reflects the Son and contributes to his glory. Christ is the only sufficient reason why God creates, and only in Him do we reach an understanding of the Universe.

Christ, the key to cosmic history

Material evolution, from the initial Big Bang to the present, is a development pointing to the appearance of intelligent life. The Anthropic Principle, formulated by physicists and astronomers -not by theologians- underlines the most delicate balance of properties that give the Universe, in the first instants, the possibility of evolving to the point of producing a suitable environment for man. From the total mass and density to the relative strength of the four forces by which matter acts, data and scientific calculations show that one can barely change any parameter without reaching the conclusion, by physical laws, that intelligent life would be impossible.

In a process lasting billions of years, heavy elements were synthesized in nuclear reactions taking place in giant stars. A surprising play of energy levels allowed for the production of Carbon and Oxygen, as well as their explosive dispersal -together with other heavier elements- to enrich interstellar clouds with all the materials needed for solid planets and for the giant molecules required for life. That long time was not in vain: life would not have been possible much earlier.

About five billion years ago the Earth was formed from ashes of stars. We again find a chain of steps and a series of properties that mark our planet as a privileged environment, perhaps even unique. Its source of energy is a star with a mass sufficient to have a habitable zone at a distance that avoids synchronous rotation, but small enough to allow its nuclear fuel to last for billions of years (the stars with more mass are the ones that are consumed more rapidly).

The Earth's orbit is almost perfectly circular, avoiding pronounced climatic changes that would be due to a pronounced elliptical shape. The mass of the planet is enough to retain an atmosphere that warms it, distributes solar heat, allows liquid water on the surface and later furnishes the environment for varied forms of life. But he mass is not so great that the planet would be overloaded with the most abundant elements -Hydrogen and Helium- that form the bulk of Jupiter and Saturn.

We probably owe the Moon, our great satellite, to a most unlikely impact of a planet larger than Mars with the proto-Earth. It happened at a time and with such speed and trajectory that the metallic core of the intruder was incorporated to the Earth, while the mixed outer layers of both bodies were sent to space in a cloud that partially condensed to form the Moon. The presence of the Moon is credited with the stability of the rotational axis of the Earth that allows our climate to remain stable for eons.

Without that effect, calculations predict changes of orientation from 0 to 60 degrees that would impede the steady development of life. The daily rotation in 24 hours -so different from the 245 days of Venus, even if its mass is almost equal- is also a means to distribute heat evenly, with the help of the great mass of ocean water, without any violent extremes of temperature.

Even the impressive liquid and solid nucleus of Iron and Nickel in the Earth's inner half contributes in a most important way to determine the suitability of our home for life. Its currents produce a magnetic field absent as a significant factor in other similar planets of the solar system: a protective shield against sterilizing cosmic radiation. And the heat of that mass (one third of the total) at thousands of degrees, causes convection currents in the rocky mantle: that explains the formation of mountains and the tectonic activity that constantly renews the crust and redesigns continents and ocean basins, allowing for the great variety of vital environments.

We know no other planet with such properties, and it is impossible to even calculate the theoretical probability that all the factors might be present simultaneously in another very special place. But the Earth was designed and prepared to be the cradle of God, to be born among us. It is absurd to talk about "chance" as an explanation when we accept a Creator who, with infinite Wisdom and Power, chooses to create according to his plans: everything is foreseen and ordained without time limits: The history of the Universe and of planet Earth reflects the plan to design the dwelling for the perfect Man, "God-with-us".

Something similar can be said about the development of life and its evolution up to the human level. There is no way to explain the step from non-living matter to the first cell or to give a satisfactory reason for an evolution that appears as due to and conditioned by chance events that include great extinctions of cosmic origin. We find evidence of the fact of a marvelous process that increased complexity and diversified living forms, until matter was ready to receive the spirit that raises it to the level of a life similar to God's. From the moment a true man appears, we must stress the explanatory role of Christ, who will perfectly embody the ideal of our humanity and take a member of our species to God's own throne.

The future evolution of the Universe needs Christ as well to avoid the ultimate absurdity. If Science predicts the death of stars and the destruction of structures at every level, this really is of no importance when the very matter of those stars is now divine in the Person of Christ.

Christ in human history

Even if Christ is brother to every human person and his active presence reaches from stone-age man to the most distant future, He was born in a society and culture prepared in a very special way for his arrival. With a unique providence, the people of Israel developed as the only seat of a religion of One God, in contrast to the other known religious beliefs of any other time and place.

A long line of patriarchs, prophets and kings, increasingly stressed in the consciousness of the Jewish people the hope for a Messiah, dimly understood in his role and dignity, but somehow foreseen as the special envoy of God, eternal King, the glory of Israel, a source of peace and harmony for all peoples. In this unique environment -in spite of all its failings- the promise to David's royal family is actually fulfilled.

From a humble woman, full of grace, God is born as Son of David, Son of Mary, and the eternal God enters into our historical flow, fully as member of our humanity, in a place and time that provide the proper context for His saving mission.

We cannot understand the history of Israel apart from this destiny, and without Christ's presence we can't comprehend the subsequent development of humanity either. The small seed of the fearful group of the Apostles has grown until its branches cover the planet, taking to every corner a new vision of what Man is, of the dignity received from God -the only basis to speak of human rights- of the relationship of each individual to society and to God himself.

We are created to accept the transforming activity of God, grafted into Humanity, and nobody can fulfill that destiny outside the plan wanted by the Father: no other Name was given or will ever be given for our salvation. Christ is the Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End.

Christian culture changed the pagan world of Greece and Rome, was a source of civilization in the deepest sense for all those peoples that accepted it. It is still the ultimate basis for any claim of providing a sufficient reason for mutual respect, for true altruistic behavior (that requires love, even for those who do not deserve it), for giving all kinds of help to the weakest and least able to correspond to benefits.

Even scientific developments -that started in Greece- found a fertile ground in a Europe that during centuries had "Christianity" as its proper name: any effort to understand the world is worthwhile only if we are sure that everything was made "with order and measure", that is the reflection of the eternal Word, and if matter is respected as something good and precious, created by God, to the last atom.

Even without being aware of it, Humanity develops toward Christ. The efforts to erase economic and social contrasts, to lead all nations towards a dignified level of existence with adequate material means for everybody, with educational resources for individual and common development -in a society of freedom, order and mutual respect- are only logical consequences of seeing Man as the "Image and Likeness" of God: images of Christ, the perfect Man.

The attempts to reach those ends starting from a myopic materialism have led to tyrants presiding over utopian societies, where the individual is denied for the sake of a "social progress" that benefits just a few of the ruling class. In other cases, we get purely "consumer societies" that, even at their best, satisfy material needs but leave the human spirit in a vacuum.

Christianity has insisted upon the dignity of women, since Mary, the Mother of God, is the human person with the highest possible rank in creation, and we learned from the example of Christ who saw in each woman -even those despised as sinners- an image of his Mother, so that He always gave them a respectful and deferential treatment, appreciating especially their openness to love and their desire to help and to be near Him.

In the Christian viewpoint there can be no pride of race or cast or social standing: the one who leads must be a servant, and children, the simple and the outcasts are embraced with special care, so that the Kingdom of Heaven is said to require our becoming children, whose only strength is their awareness of being ignorant and helpless, but who expect and offer just love.

No other institution but the Church has spent the best efforts and abilities of its members, everywhere in the world, for the purpose of helping others, renouncing riches, fame and even the joys of family life, to seek that all possible members of Christ be considered the family of God and might live according to that dignity.

With all the limitations of human frailty in individual cases, nobody can honestly deny the overwhelming abundance of silent heroism that has enriched society during centuries as the fruit of Christ's presence in the world.

At the beginning of the third millennium of the Christian Era, in spite of all the shadows and sins of groups and individuals who proclaimed they were following Christ, it is clearly true that He is the Light who shines on every human being with his coming into the world, and that light has changed the world and human history.

Without Christ nothing makes sense, not the past or the future, because everything was made by Him, in Him and for Him. Christ is the key and Lord of History.