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DESMOND TUTU – NOBEL PEACE PRIZE LAUREATE

Nobel Prize: The Professor of Theology, Desmond Tutu (born 1931) received the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the opposition to apartheid in South Africa.

Nationality: South African

Education: Master’s degree in Theology, King’s College, London, 1966

Occupation: Professor of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, USA (1999-present); General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (1978); Anglican archbishop of Cape Town (1986)

1. In his Nobel Lecture (11 December 1984, Les Prix Nobel 1984) Desmond Tutu said:

“When will we learn that human beings are of infinite value because they have been created in the image of God, and that it is a blasphemy to treat them as if they were less than this and to do so ultimately recoils on those who do this? In dehumanizing others, they are themselves dehumanized. Perhaps oppression dehumanizes the oppressor as much as, if not more than, the oppressed.

God calls us to be fellow workers with Him, so that we can extend His Kingdom of shalom, of justice, of goodness, of compassion, of caring, of sharing, of laughter, joy and reconciliation, so that the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Amen.” (Tutu 1985, 246).

2. To the question, “If there is a God, why do so many suffer all their lives and why do so many people hate each other based on their color?” Desmond Tutu replied:

“In the end, it is a tremendous tribute to us that our God is not one who keeps intervening, jumping in. Because God has given us an incredible gift – the gift of being able to make choices.

He’s like a parent. The parents often see their child, who they dearly love, is going to make a wrong decision. The good parent is one who is going to allow you to make that decision, because that is how you’re going to learn how to grow.

It isn’t that God does nothing. It is that God respects us and says, ‘If you’re going to be persons and not robots, then you’re going to have to be free, you’re going to have the space to choose. The reality of your freedom is judged by the fact that I let you be free even to choose to reject Me, to choose the wrong.’ We have to live with the consequences of those choices. God still does not abandon us! Jesus Christ died ultimately as the prize of God’s caring for us, when we got ourselves into the mess we’re in.” (Tutu 1995).

3. “The God that I worship is the one revealed by Jesus. Jesus is a kind of window into the character of God. That is a God who is life-affirming, who opposes anything that undermines the integrity of anybody.” (Tutu 1995).

4. “The God that I worship is a strange God. Because it is God who is omnipotent, all-powerful, but he is also God who is weak. An extraordinary paradox: that it is God, a God of justice, who wants to see justice in the world. But because God has such a deep reverence for our freedoms all over the place, God will not intervene, like sending lightning bolts to dispatch of all despots. God waits for God’s partners: us.

God has a dream. God has a dream of a world that is different, a world in which you and I care for one another because we belong in one family. And I want to make an appeal on behalf of God. God says, ‘Can you help me realize my dream? My dream of a world that is more caring, a world that is more compassionate, a world that says people matter more than things. People matter more than profits. That is my dream,’ says God. ‘Will you please help me realize my dream, and I have nobody, except you’.” (Tutu 1998).

5. In his sermon delivered on September 11, 2002, at the Washington National Cathedral, Desmond Tutu said:

“Dear friends, in many ways, it is to say we, all of us, are vulnerable, fragile. For vulnerability is of the essence of creaturehood. Only God is ultimately invincible.

The Bible has wonderful images of God holding back the waters of chaos that seek to overwhelm. God holding back the desert that seeks to take over the arable land. For it is only because God restrains the forces of evil that you and I are able to be at all.

And the Bible has this incredible image of you, of I, of all of us, each one, held as something precious, fragile in the palms of God’s hands. And that you and I exist only because God forever is blowing God’s breath into our being. And we exist only because God keeps us in being. Otherwise, we would disintegrate into the nothingness, the oblivion, from which God’s fiat has brought us.” (Tutu 2002).

6. “The powers of darkness, of evil and of destruction had done their worst, they had killed the Lord of life himself. But that death was not the end. That death was the beginning of a glorious life, the resurrection life. That death was the death of death itself – for Jesus Christ lives for ever and ever.” (Desmond Tutu, The Rainbow People of God, New York, Image Books, 1996, 18).

7. “God created us for fellowship. God created us so that we should form the human family, existing together because we were made for one another. We are not made for an exclusive self-sufficiency but for interdependence.” (Tutu 1985, 246).

8. In his open letter to the Prime Minister of the Apartheid Government of South Africa, B. J. Vorster (May 6, 1976), Desmond Tutu wrote:

“I am writing to you as one human person to another human person, gloriously created in the image of the selfsame God, redeemed by the selfsame Son of God who for all our sakes died on the Cross and rose triumphant from the dead and reigns in glory now at the right hand of the Father; sanctified by the selfsame Holy Spirit who works inwardly in all of us to change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. I am, therefore, writing to you, Sir, as one Christian to another, for through our common baptism we have been made members of and are united in the Body of our dear Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. This Jesus Christ, whatever we may have done, has broken down all that separates us irrelevantly – such as race, sex, culture, status, etc. In this Jesus Christ we are forever bound together as one redeemed humanity, black and white together.” (Desmond Tutu, The Rainbow People of God, NY, Image Books, 1996, 7).

9. Desmond Tutu’s favourite prayer is the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

“Lord, make me a channel of Thy peace

that where there is hatred, I may bring love,

that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness,

that where there is discord, I may bring harmony,

that where there is error, I may bring truth,

that where there is doubt, I may bring faith,

that where there is despair, I may bring hope,

that where there are shadows, I may bring light,

that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather

to comfort than to be comforted,

to understand than to be understood,

to love than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds,

it is by forgiving that one is forgiven,

it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen.”

(Desmond Tutu, The Rainbow People of God, New York, Image Books, 1996, 13; see also Les Prix Nobel 1979).

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE – NOBEL LAUREATE IN LITERATURE

Nobel Prize: Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age.” Sartre declined the prize.

Nationality: French

Education: Doctorate in Philosophy, Ecole Normale Superieure, France, 1929

Occupation: Professor at Lycee du Havre, Lycee de Laon, Lycee Pasteur de Neuilly-sur-Seine, and Lycee Condorcet; Editor, Les Temps Modernes, Paris, (1944-1980)

1. In his lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946) Sartre described his atheistic existentialism thus:

“Dostoevsky said, ‘If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible!’ That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can’t start making excuses for himself. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom.

On the other hand, if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses.” (Sartre 1957, 22-23; see also Sartre 1988, 78).

2. “First of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it.” (Sartre 1957, 15-16; see also Sartre 1988, 75).

3. Nevertheless, Sartre underwent a very surprising change of mind towards the end of his life; in fact, he came very close to theistic commitment. The magazine National Review (June 11, 1982) reported it thus:

“Throughout his mature career, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was a militant atheist. Politically, although he quarreled with Marxist materialism, his rhetoric was often indistinguishable from the most heavy-handed Stalinist boiler-plate.

However, during the philosopher’s last months there were some surprising developments. In 1980, nearing his death, by then blind, decrepit, but still in full possession of his faculties, Sartre came very close to belief in God, perhaps even more than very close.

The story can be told briefly, and perhaps reverently. An ex-Maoist, Pierre Victor, shared much of Sartre’s time toward the end. In the early spring of 1980 the two had a dialogue in the pages of the ultra-gauchiste Nouvel Observateur. It is sufficient to quote a single sentence from what Sartre said then to measure the degree of his acceptance of the grace of God and the creatureliness of man:

‘I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.’

Students of existentialism, the atheistic branch, will note that in this one sentence Sartre disavowed his entire system, his engagements, his whole life.

ISAAC SINGER – NOBEL LAUREATE IN LITERATURE

Nobel Prize: Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904–1991) won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life.”

Nationality: Polish; later American citizen

Education: Traditional Jewish education at the Warsaw Rabbinical Seminary

Occupation: Novelist, essayist, and journalist

1. In his Nobel Lecture (8 December 1978, Les Prix Nobel 1978) Singer said:

“I can never accept the idea that the Universe is a physical or chemical accident, a result of blind evolution. Even though I learned to recognize the lies, the cliches and the idolatries of the human mind, I still cling to some truths which I think all of us might accept some day. There must be a way for man to attain all possible pleasures, all the powers and knowledge that nature can grant him, and still serve God - a God who speaks in deeds, not in words, and whose vocabulary is the Cosmos.” (Singer 1979).

2. “I’m a sceptic. I’m a sceptic about making a better world. When it comes to this business where you tell me that this-or-that regime, one sociological order or another, will bring happiness to people, I know that it will never work, call it by any name you want. People will remain people, and they have remained people under communism and all other kinds of ‘isms.’

But I’m not a sceptic when it comes to belief in God. I do believe. I always did. That there is a plan, a consciousness behind creation, that it’s not an accident.” (Singer, as cited in The Brothers Singer by Clive Sinclair, London, Allison and Busby, 1983, p. 30).

3. In his last interview (1987) Singer stated:

“God is behind everything. Even when we do things against him, he’s also there. No matter what. Like a father who sees his children doing a lot of silly things, bad things. He’s angry with them, he’s punishing them. At the same time, they’re his children.” (Singer, as cited in Green 1998).

4. “Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It’s unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent.” (Singer, as cited in Rosen 1987).

5. “The serious writer of our time must be deeply concerned about the problems of his generation. He cannot but see that the power of religion, especially belief in revelation, is weaker today than it was in any other epoch in human history. More and more children grow up without faith in God, without belief in reward and punishment, in the immortality of the soul and even in the validity of ethics. The genuine writer cannot ignore the fact that the family is losing its spiritual foundation.

All the dismal prophecies of Oswald Spengler have become realities since the Second World War. No technological achievements can mitigate the disappointment of modern man, his loneliness, his feeling of inferiority, and his fear of war, revolution and terror. Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence but also in man himself, in his institutions and often in those who are nearest to him.” (Singer 1979).

6. “The material world is a combination of seeing and blindness. The blindness we call Satan. If we would become all seeing, we would not have free choice anymore. Because, if we would see God, if we would see His greatness, there would be no temptation or sin. And since God wanted us to have free will this means that Satan, in other words the principle of evil, must exist. Because what does free choice mean? It means the freedom to choose between good and evil. If there is no evil, there is no freedom.” (Singer, as cited in Farrell 1976, 157).

7. “Life is God’s novel. Let him write it.” (Singer, as cited in Moraes 1975).

RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650), founder of Analytical Geometry and Modern Philosophy

1. In the beginning of his Meditations (1641) Descartes wrote:

“I have always been of the opinion that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be determined by help of Philosophy rather than of Theology; for although to us, the faithful, it be sufficient to hold as matters of faith, that the human soul does not perish with the body, and that God exists, it yet assuredly seems impossible ever to persuade infidels of the reality of any religion, or almost even any moral virtue, unless, first of all, those two things be proved to them by natural reason. And since in this life there are frequently greater rewards held out to vice than to virtue, few would prefer the right to the useful, if they were restrained neither by the fear of God nor the expectation of another life.” (Descartes 1901).

2. “It is absolutely true that we must believe in God, because it is also taught by the Holy Scriptures. On the other hand, we must believe in the Sacred Scriptures because they come from God.” (Descartes 1950, Letter of Dedication).

3. “And thus I very clearly see that the certitude and truth of all science depends on the knowledge alone of the true God, insomuch that, before I knew him, I could have no perfect knowledge of any other thing. And now that I know him, I possess the means of acquiring a perfect knowledge respecting innumerable matters, as well relative to God himself and other intellectual objects as to corporeal nature.” (Descartes 1901, Meditation V).

JOHANNES KEPLER (1571-1630), founder of Physical Astronomy and Modern Optics

1. “O Thou, who through the light of nature increasest in us the longing for the light of Thy Grace that through it we may come to the light of Thy majesty, I give Thee thanks, Creator and God, that Thou hast given me this joy in Thy creation, and I rejoice in the works of Thy hands.” (Kepler, as cited in Beer and Beer 1975, 526).

2. “The World of Nature, the World of Man, the World of God - all three fit together. We see how God, like a human architect approached the founding of the world according to order and rule, and measured everything in such a manner.” (Kepler, as cited in Tiner 1977, 172).

3. “Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.” (Kepler, as cited in Morris 1982, 11; see also Graves 1996, 51).

SPINOZA (1632-1677), Dutch-Jewish philosopher, the chief exponent of modern rationalism

1. In his central philosophical work Ethics (1677), Benedict de Spinoza wrote:

“By God, I mean a Being absolutely infinite - that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.” (Spinoza 1883, Part I “Concerning God”, Def. VI).

2. Spinoza looked on Jesus Christ as a man of transcendent moral genius, standing out above Moses and the prophets. Spinoza looked on Jesus as a Son of God, but not as a God. In discussing the nature of prophetic vision he wrote:

“I believe not that any man ever came to that singular height of perfection but Christ, to whom the ordinances of God that lead men to salvation were revealed, not in words or visions, but immediately: so that God manifested himself to the apostles by the mind of Christ, as formerly to Moses by means of a voice in the air. And therefore the voice of Christ may be called, like that which Moses heard, the voice of God. In this sense we may likewise say that the wisdom of God, that is, a wisdom above man’s, took man’s nature in Christ, and that Christ is the way of salvation.” (Spinoza, as cited in Frederick Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy, Adamant Media Corporation, Boston, 2000, 352).

3. “I say that it is by no means necessary to salvation to know Christ after the flesh; but of the eternal Son of God, that is, the eternal wisdom of God, which has shown itself forth in all things, and chiefly in the mind of man, and most chiefly of all in Jesus Christ, we are to think far otherwise. For without this no one can attain the state of blessedness; since this alone teaches what is true and false, good and evil. And because, as I have said, this wisdom was chiefly shown forth through Jesus Christ, his disciples preached the same as by him it was revealed to them, and showed that in that spirit of Christ they could exalt themselves above others.” (Spinoza, as cited in Frederick Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy, Adamant Media Corporation, Boston, 2000, 353).

4. “God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists.” (Spinoza 1883, Part I, Prop. XI).

5. “We cannot be more certain of the existence of anything, than of the existence of a Being absolutely infinite or perfect - that is, of God.” (Spinoza 1883, Part I, Prop. XI, Note).

6. “Besides God no substance can be granted or conceived.” (Spinoza 1883, Part I, Prop. XIV).

7. “Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.” (Spinoza 1883, Part I, Prop. XV).

8. “All things, I repeat, are in God, and all things which come to pass, come to pass solely through the laws of the infinite nature of God, and follow from the necessity of His essence. Wherefore it can in nowise be said, that God is passive in respect to anything other than Himself.” (Spinoza 1883, Part I, Prop. XV, Note).

9. “Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the Divine nature.” (Spinoza 1883, Part I, Prop. XXIX).

LORD KELVIN (1824-1907), founder of Thermodynamics and Energetics

1. Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson) closed his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Edinburgh, August 1871) thus:

“Overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie all around us; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us through Nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living things depend on one ever-acting Creator and Ruler.” (Kelvin 1871; see also Seeger 1985a, 100-101).

2. In his first lecture in the “Introductory Course of Natural Philosophy,” Sir William Thomson stated:

“We feel that the power of investigating the laws established by the Creator for maintaining the harmony and permanence of His works is the noblest privilege which He has granted to our intellectual state. As the depth of our insight into the wonderful works of God increases, the stronger are our feelings of awe and veneration in contemplating them and in endeavoring to approach their Author.” (Kelvin, as cited Seeger 1985a, 99-100).

3. In a speech to University College (1903), Kelvin said: “Do not be afraid to be free thinkers. If you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to the belief in God.” (Kelvin, as cited in Yahya 2002).

4. “The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.” (Lord Kelvin, Vict. Inst., 124, p. 267, as cited in Bowden 1982, 218).

5. In his address at the annual meeting of the Christian Evidence Society (May 23, 1889), Kelvin said: “I have long felt that there was a general impression in the non-scientific world, that the scientific world believes Science has discovered ways of explaining all the facts of Nature without adopting any definite belief in a Creator. I have never doubted that that impression was utterly groundless.” (Kelvin 1889).

6. “Science can do little positively towards the objects of this society. But it can do something, and that something is vital and fundamental. It is to show that what we see in the world of dead matter and of life around us is not a result of the fortuitous concourse of atoms.” (Kelvin 1889).

SIR JAMES CLERK MAXWELL (1831-1879), founder of Statistical Thermodynamics

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1997): “James Clerk Maxwell is regarded by most modern physicists as the scientist of the 19th century who had the greatest influence on 20th-century physics; he is ranked with Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein for the fundamental nature of his contributions.”

1. “Almighty God, who hast created man in Thine own image, and made him a living soul that he might seek after Thee and have dominion over Thy creatures, teach us to study the works of Thy hands that we may subdue the earth to our use, and strengthen our reason for Thy service; and so to receive Thy blessed Word, that we may believe on Him whom Thou hast sent to give us the knowledge of salvation and the remission of our sins. All which we ask in the name of the same Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Maxwell, as cited in Bowden 1998, 288; and in Williams and Mulfinger 1974, 487).

2. “I think the more we enter together into Christ’s work He will have the more room to work His work in us. For He always desires us to be one that He may be one with us. Our worship is social, and Christ will be wherever two or three are gathered together in His name.” (Maxwell, as cited in Campbell and Garnett 1882, 312).

3. “I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of.” (Maxwell, as cited in Campbell and Garnett 1882, 404-405).

4. In a letter to his wife (December 1873), Maxwell wrote: “I am always with you in spirit, but there is One who is nearer to you and to me than we ever can be to each other, and it is only through Him and in Him that we can ever really get to know each other. Let us try to realise the great mystery in Ephesians V., and then we shall be in our right position with respect to the world outside, the men and women whom Christ came to save from their sins.” (Maxwell, as cited in Campbell and Garnett 1882, 387).

5. In a letter to his wife (June 23, 1864), Maxwell wrote: “Think what God has determined to do to all those who submit themselves to His righteousness and are willing to receive His gift. They are to be conformed to the image of His Son, and when that is fulfilled, and God sees that they are conformed to the image of Christ, there can be no more condemnation, for this is the praise which God Himself gives, whose judgment is just.” (Maxwell, as cited in Campbell and Garnett 1882, 338-339).

NICOLAUS COPERNICUS (1473-1543), founder of Heliocentric Cosmology

1. “To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power, to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful working of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance cannot be more gratifying than knowledge.” (Copernicus, as cited in Neff 1952, 191-192; and in Hubbard 1905, v).

2. “Not the Grace received by Paul do I desire,

Nor the good will with which Thou forgavest Peter,

Only that which Thou didst grant the thief on the cross,

That mercy I ask of Thee.”

(Copernicus, as cited in Trepatschko 1994, Vol. 44).

3. In his revolutionary work De revolutionibus orbium caelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, 1543), Copernicus wrote:

“For who, after applying himself to things which he sees established in the best order and directed by Divine ruling, would not through diligent contemplation of them and through a certain habituation be awakened to that which is best and would not admire the Artificer of all things, in Whom is all happiness and every good? For the divine Psalmist surely did not say gratuitously that he took pleasure in the workings of God and rejoiced in the works of His hands, unless by means of these things as by some sort of vehicle we are transported to the contemplation of the highest good.” (Copernicus, 1873, 10-11).

THOMAS H. HUXLEY (1825-1895), English biologist and evolutionist, famous as “Darwin’s bulldog”

1. In his article Science and Morals (1886), Huxley stated:

“The student of nature, who starts from the axiom of the universality of the law of causation, cannot refuse to admit an eternal existence; if he admits the conservation of energy, he cannot deny the possibility of an eternal energy; if he admits the existence of immaterial phenomena in the form of consciousness, he must admit the possibility, at any rate, of an eternal series of such phenomena; and, if his studies have not been barren of the best fruit of the investigation of nature, he will have enough sense to see that when Spinoza says, ‘Per Deum intelligo ens absolute infinitum, hoc est substantiam constantem infinitis attributis,’ the God so conceived is one that only a very great fool would deny, even in his heart. Physical science is as little Atheistic as it is Materialistic.” (Huxley 1893-94, Collected Essays, Vol. IX, p. 140).

2. “The more I know intimately of the lives of other men (to say nothing of my own), the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does not flourish nor is the righteous punished. But for this to be clear we must bear in mind what almost all forget, that the rewards of life are contingent upon obedience to the whole law – physical as well as moral – and that moral obedience will not atone for physical sin, or vice versa.

The ledger of the Almighty is strictly kept, and every one of us has the balance of his operations paid over to him at the end of every minute of his existence.” (Huxley 1903, Vol. I, Ch. 1.16).

"In a letter to Kingsley, Huxley said that he believed in 'the Divine Government' of the universe." (Goudge 1967, Vol. IV, p. 103).

3. In “On Providence” (An Apologetic Irenicon, 1892), Huxley wrote:

“If the doctrine of a Providence is to be taken as the expression, in a way ‘to be understanded of the people,’ of the total exclusion of chance from a place even in the most insignificant corner of Nature; if it means the strong conviction that the cosmic process is rational; and the faith that, throughout all duration, unbroken order has reigned in the universe – I not only accept it, but I am disposed to think it the most important of all truths. As it is of more consequence for a citizen to know the law than to be personally acquainted with the features of those who will surely carry it into effect, so this very positive doctrine of Providence, in the sense defined, seems to me far more important than all the theorems of speculative theology.” (Huxley 1903, Vol. III, Ch. 3.9; see also Coley & Hall 1980, 33).