Dec
20
When Metaphysics Trumps Epistemology
December 20, 2006 |
Two Gospel readings in a row (yesterday’s and today’s) from Luke contrast for us the difference between Zachariah’s response to God’s message and Mary’s. When I first converted I often wondered what the difference was supposed to be–why was God so much harder on poor old Zachariah than on Mary? Something about humble acceptance of God’s will as opposed to skeptical stubbornness. Over time it gradually dawned on me, but today, sitting in the Church and listening to the lector–the same guy who was lector yesterday, so there was a certain continuity–I suddenly saw it in rather different terms.
And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.
…
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
I don’t know why I didn’t see this before: Whereby shall I know this, as opposed to How shall this be? One is an epistemological question, the other a metaphysical, one a question about personal psychology, the other about divine reality.
I suppose this is something that sharper tools in the shed have seen all along, but I’m still marveling over the richness of biblical texts that can say so many different things to so many different people with such an economy of words. Being versus knowing, humility versus skepticism; Mary humbly accepts that God’s will is just a manifestation of how things are, while Zachariah wants, principally, to be given a satisfactory account of how things will be.
A particularly humbling text for the philosopher, most of whom deserve a more permanent version of Zachariah’s punishment.
