Kakistocrat

These are just some reflections on Grace. It struck me as difficult to relay in words, but as the last post’s lengthy comments described how we can respond to that Grace, here’s an attempt at Grace itself:

Theology takes the action of Adam, who Genesis presents as both the origin of humankind and of human sinfulness, and seems to blame us also. To Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) if we are led to see “Original Sin” as such, then we have been misled by imprecise terminology. "Nothing," Ratzinger claims "seems to us today to be stranger or, indeed, more absurd than to insist upon original sin, since, according to our way of thinking, guilt can only be something very personal, and since God does not run a concentration camp, in which one’s relatives are imprisoned, because he is a liberating God of love, who calls each one of us by name."

To make sense of ‘original sin’ Ratzinger suggests that a renewed understanding of the human person is necessary, especially in light of Western culture’s obsession with individuality.

In In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Creation and the Fall (English translation, 1990), Ratzinger suggests that it is imperative that humans not close in on themselves, and that they not live only for themselves. Ratzinger writes that "we receive our life not only at the moment of birth but every day from without—from others who are not ourselves…" and that to "to be truly a human being means to be related in love," to those around us.

Just as the sin of autonomy led to the Fall of the first couple, the same sin damages or destroys relationality presently, and this cannot but affect us. This sin chooses power over love, and rejects the dynamics of a relationship (for in wanting human autonomy, we desire that which does not belong to us, that which is beyond us, and in our relationships this heightened sense of self has the potential to damage those around us who are satisfied with themselves as created beings in equal relationships with other created beings). Sin is never restricted to the individual, because every mistaken action affects at least some of those whom we surround ourselves with. Sin is to Ratzinger "an offense that touches others, that alters the world and damages it."

So much so that, with Adam and Eve in mind, "when the network of human relationships is damaged from the very beginning, then every human being enters into a world that is marked by relational damage." There is no avoiding the "damaged world" that all who are born enter into. Relationality has been hurt, and each person from the very start is damaged, not because of their own actions but because the relationships that they are engaged with are damaged, and over time this damage pursues each one of us and we capitulate to it. We err. It seems all very natural.

In seeking out autonomy, in choosing power over love, we all have cut ourselves off from not simply those around us, but also the one who created us to function relationally in love, and salvation comes "only when he [God] from whom we have cut ourselves off takes initiative with us and stretches out his hand to us. Only being loved is being saved, and only God’s love can purify damaged human love and radically reestablish the network of relationships that have suffered from alienation."

Ratzinger reflects on how Jesus is God’s initiation, his stretching out to us, his demonstration of purifying love. Jesus takes Adam’s route, but in reverse. Jesus is one who really is like God, in a way that Adam wasn’t. Adam merely wanted to be. This likeness to God, comes in the fact that Jesus is Son, and the relationship between he and God is wholly relational. Jesus does not maintain autonomy, but rather he becomes dependant on God. He does not choose Power, as Adam sought, but love. Humanity begins anew in Jesus. The Cross, according to the Pope, becomes the true tree of life, a symbol of redeeming love. The earth is once more set right.

K.

By the way, Avril Lavigne turned 23 today, and if I can connect her birthday to this post, to pray for her husband’s death does show a less than desired form of relationality, but to quote the last sentence of paragraph 5, “it all seems very natural.”

We’ll close the week on a bright subject.

Hans Kung comes to the following conclusions regarding Hell, in Eternal Life? Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem (1982). His position is naturally more nuanced than what may be seen from his conclusions, but we can draw out anything ambiguous here:

-’hell in any case is not to be understood mythologically as a place in the upper–or underworld, but theologically as an exclusion from the fellowship of the living God, describable in a variety of images, but nevertheless unimaginable, as the absolutely final possibility of distance from God, which man cannot of himself a priori exclude. Man can miss the meaning of life, he can shut himself out of God’s fellowship.’

-’the New Testament statements about hell are not meant to supply information about a hereafter to satisfy curiosity and fantasy. They are meant to bring vividly before us here and now the absolute seriousness of God’s claim and the urgency of conversion in the present life. This life is the emergency we have to face.’

-’anyone who fails to perceive the seriousness of the Biblical warning of the possibility of eternal future judges himself. Anyone who is inclined to despair in the face of the possibility of such a failure can gain hope from the New Testament’s statements about God’s universal mercy.’

-’the eternity of the ‘punishment of hell’ (of the ‘fire’), asserted in some New Testament metaphorical expressions, remains subject to God and to his will. Individual New Testament texts, which are not balanced by others, suggest the consummation of a salvation of all, an all-embracing mercy.’

Kung notes the wide range of the use of ‘hell,’ in our present vocabulary. (We talk about circumstances being ‘hellish,’ and we use this word because often it expresses the worst possible description that our language can depict). While Kung doesn’t care for this terminology (for even when great evil is on display, God is after all present, and hell describes separation), he does suggest that the Christian message teaches that ‘hell is not the last word,’ and that ‘in light of the crucified and risen Christ [there exists] decisive consequences [for our lives] here and now.’

To illustrate this he quotes Jurgen Moltmann:

The torments of hell are no longer eternal. Nor are they the last thing. ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. Hell, where is your sting,’ so Paul in the First Letter of the Corinthians kicks against the pricks. Hell is open. We can go freely through it. And this is true, not only of his hell, but of all the hells on this earth. It was on the Crucified that God let his future dawn. Thus something of the glow of dawn can be seen over history’s fields of dead and in the places of murder and also over the petty hells of ordinary life…If Christ is really risen, this leads to a revolt of conscience against the hells on earth and against all those who heat them up. For the resurrection of this one who was damned is attested and even now relived in the revolt against the damnation of man by man. The more truly hope belives in the shattered hell, the more political and militant it will become in shattering the present hells, white, black, and green hells, loud and soft. 

This discussion can go in many ways. I have begun it.

Recognizing the words of Catholic theologians Thomas and Gertrude Sartory (’no religion in the world, not a single one in the history of humanity, has on its conscience so many millions of people who thought differently, believed differently’) I remind readers that this Blog has never embraced the idea of damnation for those who reject certain propositional statements about Jesus or God, and has always promoted Jesus’ own words that place primary importance on how one lives in relation to those around him.

K.

A detail or two in the Gospels allow for a small amount to be known about Jesus’ chosen twelve. Certain ones may enjoy more attention than others, but it is St. Thomas who may figure more prominently than one might originally suppose.

When Jesus has received word that his friend Lazarus is sick, and his disciples hear of his intention to return to Judea to visit him, they remind him, ‘Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews wanted to stone you; and you are going back again?’ Jesus produces an ambiguous mini-parable which does not at all satisfy his disciples tension. It is the words of Thomas which break through the reluctance of his fellow disciples: ‘Let us go too, and die with him.’

They do not die (yet, I suppose), and John’s reader next meets Thomas at the Last Supper. Jesus here predicts his own betrayal and subsequent death, but tells his disciples that he is preparing for their own entry into the world beyond. Thomas tells Jesus that as they do not know where he is going, how are they supposed to follow him there. Here Jesus gives the ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,’ line.

According to John 20, after rising from the dead, Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene, but then to the disciples. Thomas is noticeably absent. When the disciples tell them that they have seen the risen Jesus, Thomas famously demands certain criteria be met, before he believes them. While history has been quick to judge our ‘Doubting Thomas,’ his doubt in this regard are not at all absurd.

A week later, when he sees Jesus for himself, he accepts the evidence that has been placed before him.

Graham Greene’s The Comedians, recounts fictionally the life inside the oppressive regime of Haitian Papa Doc Duvalier. Towards the end of the book, a small band of men begin to resist Duvalier, and they choose violent means. As is often the case, death is the result. A young priest officiates at the funeral for a few of the fallen rebels. Reflecting on Thomas’ "Let us go too, and die with him," the priest preaches

The Church is in the world, it is part of the suffering of the world, and though Christ condemned the disciple who struck off the ear of the high priest’s servant, our hearts go out in sympathy to all who are moved to violence by the suffering of others. The Church condemns violence, but it condemns indifference more harshly. Violence can be the expression of love, indifference never. One is an imperfection of charity, the other is the perfection of egoism. In the days of fear, doubt and confusion, the simplicity and loyalty of one apostle advocated a political solution. He was wrong, but I would rather be wrong with St. Thomas than right with the cold and craven. Let us go to Jerusalem, and die with him.

Violence is wrong (Jesus never embraced it), but "our hearts [do] go out in sympathy to all who are moved to violence by the suffering of others." Or, to quote Neil Young: "No one has the answer/ But one thing is true/ You’ve got to turn on evil/ When it’s coming after you/ You’ve got to face it down/ And when it tries to hide/ You’ve gota go in after it/ And never be denied…"

Mr. Smith, a pacifist and former Presidential candidate, is unimpressed with the priest’s message, and while I haven’t quite figured out the link between Thomas and violence (perhaps Greene believes Thomas would have employed violence to protect Jesus in Judea, or that Thomas was the one who sliced off the ear of the high priest’s slave?), I do think that Thomas can be seen as a warning against indifference to suffering. He is certainly a model of courage (as he was more willing to die with Jesus, than let him journey into danger alone), religious inquiry (’Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’), rational thought (making decisions based on evidence is fully in line with loving God with one’s mind), and both humility and honesty to see something in a different way, and change perspective. Thomas leaves a lot to strive for should we wish to model ourselves after him.

K. 

We’ve spoken of Graham Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case before. (Rather, as no one chose to comment on my recommended reading for the summer, I have spoken of A Burnt-Out Case before).

To summarize as I did before:

The central character of ‘A Burnt-Out Case’ is Querry, rather, the Querry, a world famous architech, who has lost the ability to see meaning in his work, or experience pleasure in his life. Querry, a burnt-out case, arrives anonymously at a Leper colony in the Congo where Doctor Colin, an atheist physician administers medical care, and a cast of priests and religious brothers oversee all else.

Few few people read Querry rightly. Many believe he is a man of deep faith, even though he goes to great lengths to demonstrate his indifference. In a discussion with the Superior of the Leper Colony, Querry mentions that he does not like to look into his past life, to which the Superior notes that "remorse is a kind of belief."

Querry responds:

Oh no, it isn’t. You try to draw everything into the net of your faith, father, but you can’t steal all the virtues. Gentleness isn’t Christian, self-sacrifice isn’t Christian, charity isn’t, remorse isn’t. I expect the caveman wept to see another’s tears. Haven’t you even seen a dog weep? In the last cooling of the world, when the emptiness of your belief is finally exposed, there’ll always be some bemused fool who’ll cover another’s body with his own to give it warmth for an hour more of life.

The Superior’s response comes in the form of a homily at the next Sunday Mass, and Querry is fortunate enough to hear it, as he and Dr. Colin sit on the steps of the hospital right across from the unenclosed Church. Nuns and lepers make up the majority of the audience.

Querry and Dr. Colin have the Superior’s voice reach them as they hear

And I tell you the truth I was ashamed when this man he said to me, "You Klistians are all big thieves—you steal this, you steal that, you steal all the time. Oh, I know you don’t steal money. You don’t creep into Thomas Olo’s hut and take his new radio-set, but you are thieves all the same. Worse thieves than that. You see a man who lives with one wife and doesn’t beat her and looks after her when she gets a pain from medicines at the hospital, and you say that’s Klistian love. You go to the courthouse and you hear a good judge, who can say to the piccin that stole sugar from the white man’s cupboard, ‘You’re a very sorry piccin. I not punish you, and you will not come her again. No more sugar palaver,’ and you say that’s Klistian mercy. But you are a mighty big thief when you say that—for you steal this man’s love and that man’s mercy. Why do you not say when you see a man with a knife in his back bleeding and dying, ‘There’s Klistian anger?’ Why not say when Henry Okapa got a new bicycle and someone came and tore his break, ‘There’s Klistian envy.’ You are like a man who steals only the good fruit and leaves the bad fruit rotting on the tree."

All right. You tell me I’m number one thief, but I say you make a big mistake. Any man may defend himself before his judge. All of you in this church, you are my judge now and this is my defence.

You pray to Yezu. But Yezu is not just a holy man. Yezu is God and Yezu made the world. When you make a song you are in the song, when you bake bread you are in the bread, when you make a baby you are in the baby, and because Yezu made you, he is in you. When you love it is Yezu who loves, when you are merciful it is Yezu who is merciful. But when you hate or envy it is not Yezu, for everything Yezu made is good. Bad things are not there—they are nothing. Hate means no love. Envy means no justice.They are just empty spaces, where Yezu ought to be.

Now I tell you that when a man loves, he must be a Klistian. When a man is merciful he must be a Klistian. In this village do you think you are the only Klistians—you who come to church? There is a doctor who lives near the well beyond Marie Akimbu’s house and he prays to Nzambe and he makes bad medicine. He worships a false God, but once when a piccin was ill and his father and mother were in the hospital he took no money; he gave a bad medicine but he took no money: he made a big God palaver with Nzambe but took no money. I tell you then he was a Klistian, a better Klistian than the man that broke Henry Okapa’s bicycle. He not believe in Yezu, but he a Klistian. I am not a thief, who steal away charity and give it to Yezu. I give back to Yezu only what Yezu has made. Yezu made love, he made mercy. Everybody in the world has something that Yezu made. Everybody in the world is that much a Klistian. So how can I be a thief? There is no man so wicked never once in his life show in his heart something that God made.

I do not tell you to do good things for the love of God. That is very hard. Too hard for most of us. It is much easier to show mercy because a child weeps or to love because a girl or a young man pleases your eye. That’s not wrong, that’s good. Only remember that the love you feel and the mercy you show were made in you by God.You must go on using them and perhaps if you pray Klistian prayers it makes it easier for you to show mercy a second time, and a third time…

Greene’s novels produce some excellent sermons, but I wonder how this particular message sits with this audience. Are you comfortable saying that when a person loves that is Jesus loving, because Jesus created love? Similarly by loving, or by showing mercy, or by demonstrating any other virtuous trait, does someone become a Christian? Even if they worship another God? To the Superior, the medicine man who shows mercy (and who worships a ‘false God,’ according to the Superior) is a far better Christian, than the Christian who breaks Henry Okapa’s bicycle. Your thoughts?

K.