Sir, - Patricia Murray (December 24th) refers to herself as a lay person. I am in the same happy state myself, when, years ago, I asked Dr Enda MacDonagh why moral theologians didn't seem to pay attention to ethology, he replied that they hadn't time most of them were so busy tilling their own field that they couldn't survey the landscape.
So I welcome Ms Murray's enquiry, because I watched a fair proportion of the TV series Lives of Jesus, in which Mark Tully interrogated a number of people who were studying the records of that life from various points of view. in the final episode the camera follows Mr Tully to a peak in Egypt, from which he surveys the world's oldest inhabited monastery and asks himself why, if Jesus was only one of many wandering preachers in a time of disturbance, are we still talking about him today?
it seems to Mr Tully, as it did to St Paul, to relate to the fact of the Resurrection the man who, according to the Gospels, was encountered after his death could not have been a dead body able to move, or a gravely injured victim who has survived. He was recognised as the Master the disciples knew - but yet he was astonishingly different.
if this was not so, if all that remained was memory of the noble things he had asked, why were the disciples willing to be persecuted, beaten, killed on account of him? But neither Mark Tully, nor the professionals he had consulted, seemed to have any suggestions about how the Resurrection was possible.
This is why I was pleased to see Patricia Murray's letter. I haven't read Professor Michio Kakuu I think most of what I have absorbed has come by chance, but long before I read Fritjof Capra I was aware that, as she said: "Objects shift from particles to waves, space buckles into impossible dimensions". Earlier still, from childhood, I knew that until God created the universe there wasn't any "time", that we live in time, but that Father, Son and Holy Spirit live in eternity. So, to put it in a nutshell, the Creator could hardly have known less about nuclear physics that do present day scientists, and since presumably (I say this respectfully) the incarnation and virtually certain need for Resurrection were part of the plan, the matter of which the human body would consist (and probably all matter) would have been designed appropriately.
Of course, for those who prefer the hypothesis that creation does not occur my explanation is meaningless, but to Christians who have any acquaintance with the new physics it should not appear farfetched. if Patricia Murray were to read the Tablet for even a few weeks, she would know that there are many such Christians; I just don't quite understand what apologies she is waiting to hear. - Yours, etc.,
Whitechurch Road,
Dublin 14.