Kakistocrat

Where does the bizarre notion come from that because a person in this life hasn’t affirmed particular propositional statements about Jesus (that he was the Son of God, that he rose from the dead…) or about the Church, that somehow Hell awaits?

While finding such a notion bizarre, and foreign to the words of Jesus on the subject of eternity, I want to remind readers that I am not belittling the existence of doctrinal orthodoxy, or the importance of it, or even the need for evangelism.

Instead of repeating arguments made here many times, let me appeal to the discussion in Hell, and to the posts Who is a Christian, and Still Before Christ, to name just a couple. If you don’t care to look there, simply answer the question asked in the opening sentence, which lasts the entire paragraph.

K.

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.

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.

Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate originally began as an attempt on the part of John XIII to mend the desperately strained relations between the Jewish people and the Catholics, most significantly by putting an end to the Church’s officially anti-Semitic line, which condemned all Jews at the time of Christ, and all Jews since, for the responsibility of his death. Nostra Aetate’s intention came to be extended as the Declaration on the Jews soon became, by the third session of Vatican II, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. Those who penned the document justified its existence by highlighting mankinds’ being drawn closer together, and reflecting this reality, the Church in turn saw its own need to "examine more closely her relationship to the non-Christian religions." The declaration is an attempt to highlight what humans have in common and what can draw them together.

Vatican II identifies "unsolved riddles of the human condition [which] deeply stir the hearts of men," as something that very different religious adherents still contemplate.

What is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what is sin? Whence suffering came and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgement, and retribution after death? What finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going?

These questions bring people together, even if they come to very different answers. In Eastern thought, for example, in Hinduism, ‘men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek freedom from the anguish of our human condition either through ascetical practises or profound meditation or a flight to God with love and trust." In Buddhism we see a realization "of the radical insufficiency of this changeable world," and we see a Buddhism which "teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able to either acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination."

While not endorsing such faiths (in light of the Catholic belief that it is Jesus, in whom the fullness of religious life may be found, as it is in Jesus that God has reconciled all things to himself), it must be remembered (though it is often forgotten that)

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect ray of the Truth which enlightens all men.

Turning to Muslims, Nostra Aetate writes:

The Church regards with esteem also the Muslims. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in himself, merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even his inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His Virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition they await the day of judgement when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value a moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Closing with the Jewish people, the document states that what happened to Christ cannot be pinned on all Jews of his time without distinction, nor against the Jews of today. Among other statements made, the Church, while seeing itself as the ‘new People’ of God, cannot allow for the Jewish people to be  presented as "rejected or accursed by God."

The document concludes with the conviction that it is wrong for anyone to call on God, while still refusing to treat in a brotherly way any man, as all men (and women) are created in the image of God. "Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: He who does not love does not know God" (I John 4:8).

K.

After a few very quiet posts, I expect things to pick back up again.

The centrality of the role of Jesus in human salvation is often subverted by those who wish instead to place primary importance on the human’s acceptance (often nothing more than intellectual assent) that Jesus is Saviour.

While those responsible for this shift are gracious enough to engineer heaven’s acceptance of those who die young, or those developmentally challenged, grace really should extend beyond these exceptions.

A. Those Before Christ

Jesus came 2000 years ago, and if it is conceded that the Old Testament works out an approximate 4000 years before Jesus, then Christian history, and by extension the awareness of Jesus as Saviour, is only a fraction of human history. When modern scientific attempts to calculate human history are taken into account, Christian history becomes even more fractionally insignificant.

Does anyone really suppose that all such people (unaware of Jesus) are damned?

How are such people to be saved?

B. After Christ (I)

We may say that knowledge of the inhabited lands was rather limited in ancient days the same way future generations will characterize our assessment of the solar system (or other things, I am sure) as limited. In the Midieval Era ‘the world’ essentially meant that which surrounded the Mediterranean as well as the neighbouring territories. Thousands of years passed after Jesus, and countless millions will have lived without having heard his message.

Does anyone suppose all such people (unaware of Jesus) are damned?

How are such people to be saved?

C. After Christ (II)

Finally it may be conceded that a lack of awareness of Jesus persists today. The Christian West is no more, and the great cities of Christendom have lost their Christian base. Where there is still statistical strength, substance is nominal. Many others have simply turned away, while still others have never been compelled to join particular Christian faith communities.

Though there have been great advancements in the technology of communication, in many ways the majority are still placed along a before Christ (B.C.) time-line. They may have heard of who he is, but not in the right way, for the transformative nature that Jesus will have in a persons life will not have been seen by them in others who profess faith.

Can such people really help having no faith or awareness of Jesus?

Are such people damned by consequence?

How are such people saved?

Conclusion

I wonder if readers can agree with the following

-that it is a mistake to reformulate Biblical passages like No one comes to the Father but through me to No one comes to the Father but by professing faith in me, or If you say with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord then you will be saved to If you say with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, then only then will you be saved, for these verses transfer the focus of salvation from God’s grace to human assent to particular statements of faith

-Pius IX:

We must hold fast to the truth that no one is guilty in the Lord’s eyes of this sin of not belonging to the Church if he lives in invincible ignorance of the true religion. But who would presume to think that he could determine the cases in which it is no longer possible for such ignorance to exist, when all these cases are different according to the differences of nations and of countries and of the circumstances of individuals.

Perhaps the degree of awareness of Jesus can only be seen by God, as the Pope suggests, and perhaps there are often circumstances that solidify certain stages of recognition, and perhaps all such people should instead be entrusted to the grace of God rather than to the judgements of those who often feel they are in a privileged position, but who themselves will also one day be judged.

K.

"John said to him, ‘Master, we say a man who is not one of us casting out devils in your name; and because he was not one of us we tried to stop him.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘You must not stop him: No one who works a miracle in my name is likely to speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us (Mark:9:38-40).’ "

Though this man is not part of the recognizable band of disciples, he is also not working for the enemy of God and he is certainly not against Jesus. Being hardly neutral, he cannot be spoken of as one of those who are lukewarm, as one who is unable to distinguish or choose between God and his enemy. Though he he may have the same goals as them, he is not one of the disciples, and is not a part of the recognizable Church that is in its fetal stages. But he is for Christ. He works for him, though he does not take part in the activity of this ‘Church,’ and while he has nothing against Christ, he likely does have something against Christ’s apostles and this is why he won’t join them.

John wonders what is to be done about him and Jesus’ answer comes like cold water on John’s red-hot zeal: "Do not forbid him!" SO John is to stop the very thing that he thought he was doing for Christ. He is not to be bigoted and fanatical and arrogant. He is not to make out that good is bad, and forbid it and try to prevent it, merely because it is being done outside the band of disciples.

Doesn’t John realize that he is being a Pharisee? That he is making himself out to be better than that other man? Whereas he has no reason at all to imagine himself as anything on account of being chosen by Christ; whereas he and all the other disciples are poor, sinful human being; whereas he and the other disciples are possibly the very reason why the stranger doesn’t want at any price to join the band of disciples: they, with their arrogance and their false sense of mission and their fanatical zeal. So the stranger says to himself: "No I shouldn’t feel at home in a group like that, I can’t join with them. I’ll work for Christ, but not with the disciples. I’ll work for Christ outside the group of disciples."

Jesus says ‘You must not stop him.’ He does not criticize, condemn or attack the man but rather acknowledges the good that is being done, and calls for it not to be obstructed. Jesus does not suggest that John separate himself from his brother disciples and go on his own way too, but he still recognizes that good is being done outside the community he has constructed. He says, ’Anyone who is not against us is for us,’ and in saying this he extends the boundaries of his own community so as to include this independent stranger. It is a hidden and mysterious relationship, but it is still a relationship. It may not be ideal, but it still exists in this less than ideal world. Even though the disciples, in their false zeal and narrowness, won’t see it, even though the stranger himself in his obstinacy won’t realize it, it’s still true: he already belongs to the community of disciples, he is already (though it does not show externally) a member, he already belongs to the Lord’s Church, is already within the Lord’s grace.

The Catholic Church sees in itself the most ancient Christian community, possessing a special, official apostolic succession. Protestants are unable to join in agreement and cannot acknowledge these claimed features as true to the Catholic Church. But Protestants are not on the side of evil because of this. They are not against Jesus and they are not neutral. They are not those spoken of as lukewarm, unable to distinguish and choose between God and his enemy. In a collective sense, they are the lone man of today.

There seems little point today in employing the attitude of John and demonstrating a mixture of conceit, arrogance, lovelessness, and pride. Good can be accomplished even outside the chosen vessel of God’s grace. And if grace is not flowing from that vessel, it is perfectly understandable why some may look elsewhere today, as the man independently working for Jesus did.

What is meant by "outside the Church there is no salvation?" Not some hard, pharisaical truth, but a truth that is deeply merciful, reaching out to all men of good will.

K.

(Though reflecting my own thoughts, the italicized material is not my own but rather is the work of Hans Kung as found in That the World May Believe [New York, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1963]. Though having gained a reputation for his dissent, this book was given the Imprimatur, which is granted to a document by the Church, and is meant to inform readers that the content contained within is not contrary to the Roman Catholic faith or its morals. The Imprimatur is not given lightly, and occurs only after a thorough review process).