New Cosmology: Eulogy for Thomas Berry

The following is an excerpt of the eulogy that was given for Thomas Berry’s funeral in Jamaica Queens by Fr. Stephen Dunn, CP.

In the beginning, the story of Genesis says. In my own life as a Passionist, I especially remember two things that date all the way back to 1951. (I won’t tell you how old I was.) Fr. Coleman Haggerty was teaching us about evolution. This was so far back I don’t know whether he was for it or against it, but for some reason he made a point of the Greek translation of that phrase: “in the beginning” . . . en arche (ἐν ἀρχῇ). He noted that these were the same words with which St. John’s Gospel begins . . . because linking the two texts suggests a cosmic dimension of Christ. The words, then, gained what Thomas would call a “numinous” quality for me. The other thing I remember was that 1951 was also the year that Thomas’s teaching career at the Prep Seminary ended—in no small part because in that McCarthy era, he felt he could not teach college level European history without having the students read Karl Marx! This began my interest in his confident intellectual leadership. Today, it allows me to interpret, in terms of the new cosmology, our reading from Genesis when it says humans “have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and the cattle and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground”. It would be better to think about Thomas’s quip: “Maybe opera is the degradation of the bullfrogs.”

Genesis speaks of God. Thomas spoke with a sense of mysticism about the Divine. His thoughts are particularly apt on this, the day before the Feast of the Trinity. “There exists in the Christian world” he said, “this sense that the inner life of the divine is community. To say that community is at the heart of the ultimate simplicity (we attribute to the Divine) is a challenging statement.” Barbara Reid, OP, a scripture scholar teaching at Catholic Theological Union, says: “Augustine liked to speak of the three persons as ‘Lover, Beloved, and Love.’ Hildegard of Bingen favored ‘Fire, Burning, and Flashing Forth.’ One might name them ‘Eternal Giver, Receiver and Outburst of Joy’. There is no limit to the ways we can speak of the profound mystery of the Three in One.” She further notes: “the saving activity of God is concrete and visible both in great moments and in the routines of everyday life.” (America Magazine. May 25, 2009)

Thomas would so agree with her that there is no limit to the ways we can speak of the profound mystery of the Three in One. He considered the model of differentiation, inner articulation, and communion— insights emerging from our scientific understanding of the universe—as another way. He thus offered a vast theological program to further articulate the numinous meaning of ἐν ἀρχῇ.

Our second reading is insisting we realize that Divine love is gifted to us; the gift is primary . . . our love of the Divine is secondary. The genius of the author of this epistle is that he gives us a practical guideline: “No one has ever seen God, yet if we love one another God dwells in us and God’s love is brought to perfection in us.” In the several beautiful and moving eulogies of Wednesday’s service in Greensboro, various members of Thomas’s family introduced us to the many ways this man of towering intellect also proved to be a man of outstanding heart. By St. John’s standard: “The person without love has known nothing of God, for God is love.” Thomas certainly proved himself to be in possession of profound knowledge of the Divine. That is what he meant in yet another quip: Resist Ecstasy!

But Thomas gave us a challenge in what he called the Third Mediation of the Divine. Succeeding the Christian mediation found in sisterly and brotherly love, but not dispensing with it, the Third Mediation of the Divine is discovered in the numinous universe. He said: “The basic mood of the future might well be one of confidence in the continuing revelation that takes place in and through Earth. . . . Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture. (Dream of the Earth, 137)

Finally the Gospel for this Mass of the Resurrection deals with the counter intuitive Evangelical norm of “turning the other cheek” and learning to love those who would present themselves to us as enemies. Each person here, I am sure, could cite numerous examples of this altruistic behavior in Thomas’s life story that would surely make us expect that St. Luke’s sense of the exuberance of the Resurrected life applies to him: “Give and it shall be given to you . . . good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over.” However, I feel that St. Luke is also giving us the opportunity to contemplate a further aspect of the numinous cosmos. St. Luke’s sense of exuberance suggests what Thomas called the asymmetry—the wild disproportion—between the gift and response.” He cites the sacrifice parents make for their children. If the child responds with gratitude, the asymmetry is accomplished. Yet that too can demand sacrifice. Thomas said, further: “The thing that exists in our times and the root of the tragedy might be considered to be our unwillingness to make the return for what has been given us. . . . We did not choose to be here, the story (of the universe) selected us to be here. Once we are here, we must be willing to fulfill the destiny assigned to us; that is our grandeur, that is our blessedness, that is our joy, that is our peace. . . . We are not making the journey simply by ourselves. We are making it with the entire universe community, the human community, the life community, the earth community. . . . All the great enormous sacrifice.” He later names that sacrifice as “the entire industrial system” and describes that system as “taking beneficial resources and giving back poisonous products, rather than the return of gratitude.” (Befriending the Earth, 132- 133)

But the last note is not tragedy, but dance. Along with Thomas, we are aware that the story of the universe has “brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, (so) there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process.”