This series began with Pope Benedict XVI praying at Auschwitz. It won't end there, not because I am interested in following the Holy Father to another scene, but because the issue of good and evil has no earthly terminus. We will be asking questions until answers are finally given.
In the February 6, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, in an article called "Forgiveness", author Timothy W. Ryback discusses the Pope's difficult past –– of growing up in Nazi Germany and serving in the Hitler Youth and the Nazi military. But in Ryback's piece one reads the following about then-professor Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) teaching at the University of Tübingen as a young man:
In 1966, when Ratzinger arrived in Tübingen, the university was a center of theological dispute. Students disrupted lectures with cries of "Verflucht sei Jesus!" ("To hell with Jesus!"). Protestant faculty members endorsed flyers denouncing the crucifix as "an expression of sadomasochistic glorification of suffering."We have already spoken of both human indifference and human culpability regarding suffering and evil. I have argued that humanity is remarkably silent about horrors, except when it comes to horrors and God, and then humanity is quite boisterous about God's alleged weakness, moral turpitude, indifference, or even His non-existence. If there is a God, God is to blame; He's the one who must give account, He is the one who must be judged. God is the source of horrors.
***
I cannot think of a more complex religious image: the Vicar of Christ, the Pope of the Holy Catholic Church, a former Hitler youth and soldier in the Nazi cult, standing at Auschwitz. It is a stillpoint; it is the crux of the matter. Can a sinner be a saint? Are redemption and sanctification possible? Does God love the indifferent and brutal as much as He loves the compassionate and merciful? Does God love the abuser as much as he loves the abused? Are Hitler and Elie Wiesel (a famous Holocaust survivor) loved equally by God?
There is something essentially Christian about Benedict XVI standing within the gates of death. There is something essentially Christian about the very idea of redemption: St. Paul, the outstanding Jew who was a murderer, is the quintessence of the Christian message: all are saved who would be saved. God, as St. Paul says, takes the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; He is a God of gracious irony, proving that grace, love and mercy always trump the rules. My own earthly father taught me this: he taught me that he loved me more than he loved his rules, his reputation, his honor. I was more important than a statute, a commandment. The sheep is more important than the sheepfold; a hole in the fence did not mean that the fence was broken but that a sheep was lost, and in jeopardy. God cares for the lost, He pursues them; and He finds them in order to make them whole. This is what my father taught me, and it is essentially Christ's message to the world.
And yet there is a whole world of people who believe that rules are God; that a lost sheep deserves his or her plight; that the fence should just be fixed to keep only the good sheep in, and the bad sheep out.
Perhaps I am rambling, but I ramble over brambles and thorns to get to one important point, a point that might indeed save one sheep from a disasterous decision, and that point is this: To hell with Jesus indeed!
There is something essentially Christian about Benedict XVI standing within the gates of death. There is something essentially Christian about the very idea of redemption: St. Paul, the outstanding Jew who was a murderer, is the quintessence of the Christian message: all are saved who would be saved. God, as St. Paul says, takes the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; He is a God of gracious irony, proving that grace, love and mercy always trump the rules. My own earthly father taught me this: he taught me that he loved me more than he loved his rules, his reputation, his honor. I was more important than a statute, a commandment. The sheep is more important than the sheepfold; a hole in the fence did not mean that the fence was broken but that a sheep was lost, and in jeopardy. God cares for the lost, He pursues them; and He finds them in order to make them whole. This is what my father taught me, and it is essentially Christ's message to the world.
And yet there is a whole world of people who believe that rules are God; that a lost sheep deserves his or her plight; that the fence should just be fixed to keep only the good sheep in, and the bad sheep out.
Perhaps I am rambling, but I ramble over brambles and thorns to get to one important point, a point that might indeed save one sheep from a disasterous decision, and that point is this: To hell with Jesus indeed!
***
I have said it before and I will say it again: The Christian gospel has it all exactly right. Christianity is separated from all other religions by having, not the valley climb to the summit, but the summit tumble down to the valley. There is no Moses climbing to receive a Word from God in the Gospel story; there is no Muhammad receiving the very words of a radically transcendent God whose message is all about making men better men. The message of Christianity is about a God tumbling to Hell in order to make God a better God. I border on blasphemy, I know, but hear me out.
***
Years ago I was painting a school gymnasium with a college friend when a horse fly, a large nasty bloodthirsty fly with stinging jaws, landed on my friend's leg. My friend was quick to snatch it, and, in the course of looking at it, my friend asked me if the pest was "one of the nasty biting flies". I told him that it was indeed, and that it was cousin to the smaller though no less nasty deer fly. To my horror, my friend pulled the wings off the fly and tossed it to the ground. "Suffer!" he shouted. I quickly walked over and crushed the wingless fly beneath my foot.
Odd that such a moment should have become a defining moment in my life. Earlier that year I had a young man in my dorm (I was an RA for three years) whose father, an atheist, threw out a stiff challenge to the idea of original sin or original culpability. "Why should God be upset with me if I cannot help but be a sinner? I did not ask to be born. How then am I accountable?" It is a great challenge, and I was stumped for months. But when I crushed the fly beneath my foot, I knew I had an answer. And that answer begins with the character of God. Was my friend, the wing-ripping, sardonic and merciless man before me, anything like the God of the universe? Did God delight in abusing that which itself was abusive; did God aim to punish a fly that was just being itself? Would a just God punish a being that had no choice but to be unpleasant?
The clarity with which I divined my way through the problem took the following course. I imagined that I, an outsider to the fly's world yet a being full of love for all flies, descended to the mere existence of a fly. I was, to a perfect match, a horsefly. And to the other flies I spoke:
I know that you do not know exactly what it is you do. But if I were to tell you that you were an awful, nasty creature, what would you say? If I told you that the things you bite, the things from which you draw your life, are injured viciously by you, and that they loathe you, would you care? Trust me when I say this: I am not blaming you. In fact, let me state that you were even made this way. I made you this way. But now I ask you this. What if I were to tell you that you could become something new, wonderful, lovely? What if I told you I could transform you, I could liberate you from this plight? Would you follow? Would you choose to be new, different, lovely, though still in essence who you were created to be? Would you choose to be more lovely than the butterflies if I promised you such wonder? Or would you reject me?
My question to you, dear reader, is this: If I really could transform the flies, if I really could deliver them from their plight and I showed them incontrovertibly that I could, who would be responsible if they refused? If the flies could be completely transformed and yet essentially remained their fully undifferentiated selves, and they refused so great a blessing, who is to blame if they chose to remain nasty biting bugs? Surely not their creator, even if He, indeed, had created them to bite. For now He was offering them a singular gift, a chance to participate in their creation; they were to be co-creators in their new lives. But, and here is a critical point, if they refused their new lives, they would be endorsing their viciousness as wonderful and desirable. In short, if they chose to be nasty and untransformed, they would become the sole creators of who and what they were.
For those who have an understanding of the problem of predestination and free will, we come to another crux, another crossroad. For here we see something amazing. Even if the creator of the flies made them to be vicious, should they refuse his offer, they have become their own creators, setting the creator free. The flies can no longer complain that they were made to be mean by someone else: they have freely made their decision, and they have continued in their evil ways. The flies have chosen, and their NO to the creator is the one thing that is truly their own: It is a wondrous act of free will.
However, should any fly choose to be transformed, should any fly choose to be a co-creator in his (or her) re-creation, that fly would make a startling pronouncement: I had nothing to do with it at all! For the fly, now more glorious than a butterfly, would announce that his choice was not of his making, as the wondrous world in which he lived was not his doing: "You see, I am indeed new, but I had nothing to do with either the option or the choosing. I did not present the choice to myself, it came to me; I did not create the idea of a butterfly, it came from above. My assent is hardly a choice. It is more that I have been chosen, for my creator came to me at a point in time with a wonderful bit of news; I did not come to HIM with the news, but He came to me." In other words, the transformed fly would say that his YES to the creator was not really his; he was predestined to be transformed. For he did not come up with the whole idea in the first place. And, as a result, both the creator and created were set free.
So in short, free will means saying NO; but it has nothing to do with saying YES.
Where does this fit in with the problem of evil? It fits right here: that Christ became a fly, was confronted by the vicious who could not be, on their own, otherwise; they submitted Him to capital punishment for making the cosmos in the first place; He died and descended to Hell, and returned as a transcendent butterfly with POWER. And then He said, "You've killed me. I've suffered. I've taken the blame for starting it all; I have taken your sins upon me and called them my own. And now the whole of sin is buried, hidden away, tossed into the abyss. I am the murderer, and the murdered; I am the rapist and the raped; I am the Nazi and the Jew. I have been all things in all ways in all times; you have punished me and I have succumbed. And now that you are no longer to blame, now what? Will you come to me now? For there is no one left to blame."
Odd that such a moment should have become a defining moment in my life. Earlier that year I had a young man in my dorm (I was an RA for three years) whose father, an atheist, threw out a stiff challenge to the idea of original sin or original culpability. "Why should God be upset with me if I cannot help but be a sinner? I did not ask to be born. How then am I accountable?" It is a great challenge, and I was stumped for months. But when I crushed the fly beneath my foot, I knew I had an answer. And that answer begins with the character of God. Was my friend, the wing-ripping, sardonic and merciless man before me, anything like the God of the universe? Did God delight in abusing that which itself was abusive; did God aim to punish a fly that was just being itself? Would a just God punish a being that had no choice but to be unpleasant?
The clarity with which I divined my way through the problem took the following course. I imagined that I, an outsider to the fly's world yet a being full of love for all flies, descended to the mere existence of a fly. I was, to a perfect match, a horsefly. And to the other flies I spoke:
I know that you do not know exactly what it is you do. But if I were to tell you that you were an awful, nasty creature, what would you say? If I told you that the things you bite, the things from which you draw your life, are injured viciously by you, and that they loathe you, would you care? Trust me when I say this: I am not blaming you. In fact, let me state that you were even made this way. I made you this way. But now I ask you this. What if I were to tell you that you could become something new, wonderful, lovely? What if I told you I could transform you, I could liberate you from this plight? Would you follow? Would you choose to be new, different, lovely, though still in essence who you were created to be? Would you choose to be more lovely than the butterflies if I promised you such wonder? Or would you reject me?
My question to you, dear reader, is this: If I really could transform the flies, if I really could deliver them from their plight and I showed them incontrovertibly that I could, who would be responsible if they refused? If the flies could be completely transformed and yet essentially remained their fully undifferentiated selves, and they refused so great a blessing, who is to blame if they chose to remain nasty biting bugs? Surely not their creator, even if He, indeed, had created them to bite. For now He was offering them a singular gift, a chance to participate in their creation; they were to be co-creators in their new lives. But, and here is a critical point, if they refused their new lives, they would be endorsing their viciousness as wonderful and desirable. In short, if they chose to be nasty and untransformed, they would become the sole creators of who and what they were.
For those who have an understanding of the problem of predestination and free will, we come to another crux, another crossroad. For here we see something amazing. Even if the creator of the flies made them to be vicious, should they refuse his offer, they have become their own creators, setting the creator free. The flies can no longer complain that they were made to be mean by someone else: they have freely made their decision, and they have continued in their evil ways. The flies have chosen, and their NO to the creator is the one thing that is truly their own: It is a wondrous act of free will.
However, should any fly choose to be transformed, should any fly choose to be a co-creator in his (or her) re-creation, that fly would make a startling pronouncement: I had nothing to do with it at all! For the fly, now more glorious than a butterfly, would announce that his choice was not of his making, as the wondrous world in which he lived was not his doing: "You see, I am indeed new, but I had nothing to do with either the option or the choosing. I did not present the choice to myself, it came to me; I did not create the idea of a butterfly, it came from above. My assent is hardly a choice. It is more that I have been chosen, for my creator came to me at a point in time with a wonderful bit of news; I did not come to HIM with the news, but He came to me." In other words, the transformed fly would say that his YES to the creator was not really his; he was predestined to be transformed. For he did not come up with the whole idea in the first place. And, as a result, both the creator and created were set free.
So in short, free will means saying NO; but it has nothing to do with saying YES.
Where does this fit in with the problem of evil? It fits right here: that Christ became a fly, was confronted by the vicious who could not be, on their own, otherwise; they submitted Him to capital punishment for making the cosmos in the first place; He died and descended to Hell, and returned as a transcendent butterfly with POWER. And then He said, "You've killed me. I've suffered. I've taken the blame for starting it all; I have taken your sins upon me and called them my own. And now the whole of sin is buried, hidden away, tossed into the abyss. I am the murderer, and the murdered; I am the rapist and the raped; I am the Nazi and the Jew. I have been all things in all ways in all times; you have punished me and I have succumbed. And now that you are no longer to blame, now what? Will you come to me now? For there is no one left to blame."
***
"Verflucht sei Jesus! To Hell with Jesus!" To Hell indeed. For it is the God that was believed to be vindictive and petty, mean and cold, that we discover in Christ is a different God: He is the God who SUFFERS, who succumbs to the death inherent in even the smallest sin. He would rather be in hell with us than in heaven without us. He has come, He has shown us that He is a different God. "Come unto me, and I will give you rest," He offers to Jew, Gentile, and Nazi alike. And yet, and yet …
There are those who refuse, who resist transformation, healing. And in so doing their NO to God becomes a YES to sorrow, sin, death, and suffering. They freely choose to be sole creators in their sorrow; and they resist the gentle Hand that reaches forward. God does not pull off wings; He does not say "Suffer!" We say it in every moment of resistance to transformation; and in keeping our pitiable sorrows we refuse to have our sins transformed to gems. We, those who protest against such grace, true protestants as we are, are the sadomasochists: it's not the God on the Cross who is sadist, masochist. It's the obdurate who view Him that way who are mired in sadomasochism.
Pope Benedict XVI, formerly a little boy in Nazi Germany who helped the Hitler cult perform even one heinous deed, is that perfect emblem of Christianity: The wise are confounded by the grace of a God who saves -- and transforms -- not only that which is lost, but that which is revolting. Grace abounds in Christianity, from sea to sea, star to sun, earth to hearth, Heart to heart. There is no peace without forgiveness, the forgiveness of God toward man, and man toward God; and, most importantly, man to man, woman to woman, brother to sister and Palestinian to Jew. There will be no end to woe without forgiveness. Mark my words.
Forgiveness always requires that something dies, is buried. And then comes the freedom. It is the gospel, the glad tidings. Glad indeed!
Peace to you.
(Concluding thoughts tomorrow, which begin here.)
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved. (Dedicated to James Saunders.)
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil,
The New Yorker
There are those who refuse, who resist transformation, healing. And in so doing their NO to God becomes a YES to sorrow, sin, death, and suffering. They freely choose to be sole creators in their sorrow; and they resist the gentle Hand that reaches forward. God does not pull off wings; He does not say "Suffer!" We say it in every moment of resistance to transformation; and in keeping our pitiable sorrows we refuse to have our sins transformed to gems. We, those who protest against such grace, true protestants as we are, are the sadomasochists: it's not the God on the Cross who is sadist, masochist. It's the obdurate who view Him that way who are mired in sadomasochism.
Pope Benedict XVI, formerly a little boy in Nazi Germany who helped the Hitler cult perform even one heinous deed, is that perfect emblem of Christianity: The wise are confounded by the grace of a God who saves -- and transforms -- not only that which is lost, but that which is revolting. Grace abounds in Christianity, from sea to sea, star to sun, earth to hearth, Heart to heart. There is no peace without forgiveness, the forgiveness of God toward man, and man toward God; and, most importantly, man to man, woman to woman, brother to sister and Palestinian to Jew. There will be no end to woe without forgiveness. Mark my words.
Forgiveness always requires that something dies, is buried. And then comes the freedom. It is the gospel, the glad tidings. Glad indeed!
Peace to you.
(Concluding thoughts tomorrow, which begin here.)
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved. (Dedicated to James Saunders.)
Technorati tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler, Theodicy, Problem of Evil,
The New Yorker
20 comments:
Mr. Gnade--
Excellent essay! Thank you!
I think you nailed it right on the head: "The message of Christianity is about a God tumbling to Hell in order to make God a better God." "The wise are confounded by the grace of a God who saves -- and transforms -- not only that which is lost, but that which is revolting."
That is the difference between Christianity and everything else--all other beliefs and religions. It is our distinctive. And, if it is not true, "we are of all people most to be pitied."
Christianity is all there is when we have to actually confront our own problem of evil. Nothing else makes such a radical diagnosis--but no other religion has such a radical cure.
Thank you for your words--may God's grace be evident to you today!
Thank you so much, David. You are too kind to bless me. Peace and grace to you as well.
Christ has given His Church a great, confounding message. We must speak.
Blessings,
BG
WOW, BG....
I applaud your words. They are very deep, and many good and interesting points. To be devil's advocate for a second. (this isn't just to you but things I have thought over many years and would like to get feedback from another thinker)
We read in the bible that God knows EVERY hair on our heads. He knew me, and everyone alike, before we were a glimmer in our parents eyes. We are told and believe as catholics that God sent His only son to die for our salvation. Therefore we must take into account that Jesus died for man's sins. Past and present. By acknowledging that one must also agree that God knows all sins before they ever were committed. Be it sins we commit towards Him, or fellow humans, which is still a sin against God to a certain point.
You spoke about people that understand predestination and free will. No catholic can say to me that what I wrote above isn't true. That's catholic teaching. I've heard it in church, at home, in school. But I ask you, how is predestination not real? For if God knew me before I was born, ultimately He knew I would be born. If Jesus died for my sins, then God sent him knowing that my sins, that I haven't committed yet, would be forgiven. I have to ask for that forgiveness but nonetheless. He knew I would sin, that I would need forgiveness. Therefore He knew what my sins were before I did them. So take all that into account. God knows when I will die, He has to if he knew me before I was born. And like you said, death is inevitable. So God knows the date and time my soul will leave it's shell. He has to if He knows every hair on my head.
So if God knows all this, he knows what I will "turn out like." He knows Hitler was going to murder millions of innocent people. God created the world, the entire universe. Then came man and woman. Assuming that the creation story is real for one minute, God knew that He had to plant the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that Eve would be "to blame." Take it one step further, God created angels before he created our universe. Lucifer was an angel. God created the devil. God knew that Lucifer would one day grow jealous of Him and that He would banish Lucifer from heaven indefinately. God created hell. Not with his two hands, but ultimately He created the being that would one day rule his own dominion. Angels don't have free will. We are the privledged ones that God gave that to. However, I have been asked this numerous times. "How do you believe in predestination and free will?" It's easy. Predestination is knowing what will happen before it happens. But life isn't one straight road. There are many stops along the way and even more forks. We choose what road is the right one. It's still my choice. The gates of heaven are open to anyone who chooses to go in. But we must choose the right road to get there. If I'm meant to go to heaven, then I will make the right choices and God knows I'll turn to Him.
Predestination isn't as simple as "Well I'm going to hell, I might as well go kill someone." It's even more simple than that. The option is on the table forever. You can go to heaven or hell by the choices you make. It's set in stone that we will all die and we will stand before God and be judged by our choices. But God only knows our fate by the choices He gave us the option to make. I was meant to be with my new wife. God knew her before she was born and God knew that we would find each other and live as husband and wife. God knows by our decisions that will haven't made yet if we will stay together. (not saying we won't or won't try to stay together just an example)
I think that it scares people to even think that they don't have control over their lives. We HAVE to have control. We have to be the captain of our lives. I also think that people don't understand the beauty of not having control. To an extent. I control my decisions, but I don't control what forks come down my road. Anything can come my way. But by my choices I'll decide if I take the road that leads to lotto winnings or to a life called to marriage or priesthood etc. As another example. God knew my dad would walk out on our family, that road was already paved before I was born. But off that road was a fork. I could be angry and upset about it and never speak to my dad again or be a man about it and say "I will never do what he did to my family."
So with all of that, is God to blame for our messed up world? To an extent yes. He created it knowing full well what we would do. But we as humans and the choices we make when we come to the forks decided that the world would be messed up. It's 50/50. You can't have joy without troubles. You can't have good without evil. Without expiriencing evil we would never know what good is. It's balance. We curse God for taking our loved ones from us cause subconsciously we have the mentality of "We didn't ask to be born." We didn't create life or death. God did. Should we be surprised when people die or are murdered. No. Like you said it happens and it's the one gaurantee to life. We will all die. But it didn't have to be that way. At least that's the way it is in our minds.
I've struggled to come to terms with life. Why are we here, what's our purpose, why do we have to live, to die, to go to heaven or hell? As for my feelings about it, I feel this world is a joke. The lack of common sense in people leads to bad decisions. We end up with wars over land and the rights to it. We fight amongst ourselves over religions and who's right and who's wrong. We did that. Not God. But God created this with full knowledge of this world's road and where it would lead. God screwed up. Look at all the good things and all the bad things in this world. Balance. But would you, should God grant you with His "powers", ever create a world, knowing, that little children would starve to death in Africa? Or knowing that one country would drop two bombs that would destroy thousands upon thousands of people in seconds? Or would you create a world knowing that every person you created would have to endure sickness, disease, and die? And for what? To live? To expirience life? Show me the beauty in any of that. Show me why we have to be here and do our daily routines and then tell me "It's good." I know I sound like a downer and that I must be living a life that seems to have no meaning after saying what I said. But it's not the case. Because I can ask all the questions I want, and I can make my own conclusions, but without a doubt those conclusions aren't accurate. While I do feel that this world is a joke, I can still say that I do see what God's intentions were at the time. Sunsets, being loved by another person, sharing a life together, creating life and taking care of that life. It's a balance.
Sorry for the long post, wicatholic, my mom, pointed to your site to read your essays. I did enjoy them, very insightful. maybe you got something from it, like something new to think about or another p.o.v to think about. in any case i look forward to the next one to further see your point of view and see something that I never thought of before.
God bless
kevin lynch
wicatholic's son
My dear Kevin,
You have offered a lot to think about. It comes at an interesting time: in less than two hours I will be meeting with an older friend of mine, a retired mathematics professor, and we will, as we always do, discuss the paradox of determinism and free will.
Now, if you will permit me, I will try to respond to your comment. Trust me when I say that I do not see in this post one bit of devilishness; you've raised honest and timeless issues regarding the nature of God, choice, freedom, love and justice. Thank you for taking the time not only to be so thoughtfully thorough, but also so frank and vulnerable.
I want to depart from the topic at hand solely to say that I read your post at your blog regarding your father. I am sorry that you had to endure that sort of thing. Honestly, it breaks my heart. But what is interesting is that I read your story (some time ago) only moments after hearing NBC's Tim Russert on the radio talking about his newest book, "Wisdom Of Our Fathers." It is a collection of letters Russert received in response to his earlier book about his own dad. On the day I read your post, Russert had earlier shared a story by a young man whose father left his family when the boy was young. The young man reported that his father would not even acknowledge him in public: If he saw him in a store, if the boy even spoke to his dad, his father ignored him. Now, writing to Mr. Russert, the man said this about his father (and I paraphrase): "I suddenly saw that I was not the problem. It was my dad's loss, for he missed knowing a wonderful son." The tragic wisdom of this realization is nonetheless heartwarming: the boy may have lost a father, but the boy's loss was nothing to what the father lost. It appears to me the same could be said about your situation: Your dad has missed a wonderful son.
My first point of clarification might be around your definition of predestination. Foreknowledge of an event does not mean that it is predestined. What I mean by that is that "predestined" implies "predetermined": That God wills everything as it happens. In a predestined world I cannot help but type this; in a predetermined world you cannot help but read this. There is no freedom. But knowing beforehand that I will write to you is not the same as saying that this is the only possible thing that could have happened. I could have written to you at your blog; I could have ignored you completely. But God's omnscience does not require that each thing MUST go a certain way at the moment it occurs. God may know the hairs on your head; he may have known Jeremiah (I don't think the Bible says this about all people) before he formed him (as prophet) in his mother's womb; but I don't see that it entails that God determines everything. I may have a dream that my son will come home tonight on time from school, as he will. But it does not follow that I MAKE him come home, nor do I determine every step of the day in order to make that happen.
Let me put it this way: God is so all-knowing that He knows how to enfuse reality with His will without predetermining everything. Only a weaker God determines everything. But the God of Christianity is so wise and powerful He is able to accomplish His will through free choice. But even if we dismiss this, if we say that God does indeed predestine everything, I believe that I've offered an intriguing interpretation here: Those who accept Christ believe they in fact have not made a choice at all, that God discovered them, choosing them "before the creation of the world." But those who reject God's offer, are indeed truly free: God gives them over. What I am suggesting is that since I have not created my option for salvation; that I did not create either Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3; the door of salvation was not my doing but was presented to me by God at a specific point in time: I am not the architect of my choice. But if I said no to that salvation, I would be entirely the architect of my estrangement, of my fate. Predestination is for the saved; freedom is for the lost. The irony is that my salvation will eventually give me autonomy in God's kingdom ("God is at work in YOU so that YOU will ACT and CHOOSE according to His good purpose", to quote St. Paul), while those who freely reject God will be enslaved to the inevitable consequences of that free rejection.
I would also like to point out that though blaming Eve for the fall is popular, the Bible clearly points out that Adam blamed God: "The woman YOU gave me deceived me ..." And while God holds them both accountable, we do see that He later regrets creating humanity in the first place: even He starts to blame Himself. And I believe that the crucifixion, in part, is our witnessing God lay down His life to receive the blame we impart to Him: He in fact, takes the blame for the whole thing. It IS His fault, He proclaims, and then He drinks His poison. But after He returns from the grave, with arms wide open, He asks each of us whether we are ready to be forgiven for our own parts in the corrupting of creation and whether we are ready to forgive Him. His message, simply, is that He takes the blame for it all; all we have to do is receive His healing grace. What stands in our way?
I am not suggesting that I've stated anything clear or even helpful here. I am groping at something really hard to even touch, let alone grasp.
I thank you for your insightful and gracious participation in the search for truth, purpose and clarity.
Peace to you, and may God bless you and your wife beyond measure. I am proud of your intense commitment to love. Such commitment is far too rare in far too many men.
Bill Gnade
Bill,
Thank you for your kind words. Again, your response was insightful. I never really thought of the crucifixion in that manner. Waiting for part 4 with great anticipation.
Kevin
I was going to write something a lot less theological shall we say? But after reading all this I think I'll pull back. I will, however, say that my Catholic upbringing and education left out a lot of philosophical details. Good stuff.
The Commentator,
It always amazes me to hear Catholics share that their Church has not taught them something. My experience is that the Catholic Church is just overflowing with philosophical and theological gems. And I am an outsider looking in! Seriously, from floor joist to rafter the Catholic Church has something to teach us, at least in a philosophical sense. I mean, taking St. Thomas alone is enough for a lifetime, or two.
This is in no way a suggestion that there is no problem with the Church. You just pointed to one: It leaves its lay people in the dark on lots of things. And this is in no way any criticism of you. It is a problem for all of us, Catholic or not. My wife and her family are Catholics; there is a richness so wonderful to my wife's faith that I can't help but respond with joy. But there are deficiencies too, and she'll be the first to point them out. But what I have found is that there is always someone in the Church who is not only aware of the problems, but the problems are being addressed (or have been). It's just that the Catholic Faith is so big, one might not know where to look.
I am everything but a received Catholic. I know that in my heart. I am a confirmed Episcopalian, though I know I stand outside its fold. Part of me wishes I could be an Orthodox Christian, but I once saw news footage of Ukranian Orthodox women walking up to a poster of Pope John Paul and spitting on it, and I was lost in that moment (the poster was announcing his first visit to Ukraine). I understand the history, and the pain. I just don't understand the gesture. For the Orthodox, spitting on a picture of the Pope is a virulent form of iconoclasm, or so I know it in my bones. Seriously, that one little act, done by just a few elderly women passing a poster on the street, has stopped me in my tracks as I journeyed toward Byzantium.
Peace to you, always.
BG
As we prepared for our Confirmation, I remember asking my teacher in Grade 5 where and how did Catholicism begin? Obviously she did not (or could not, who knows) answer. I think she tld me "Finish coloring the fish." "Um, yeah, about multiplication and fish...." I guess this is why I struggled in school. I could not grasp what was being taught without a training in classics or history o the subject first.
BG, Thank you for mentioning the Russert book and story to Irish Eyes. I had wanted to, but it has not got the same impact coming from Mom as it does from another man.
And you can see that there were many philosophical discussions in our time together, which sometimes left us both frustrated. I often thought then, and still think now, that this was the difference not in our ages, but in our thought processes as female/male even more than in mother/son.
God bless!
Commentator, We probably experienced similar teaching, in a time when the Baltimore Catechism was being used, along with Bible History. In grade school, we really did not get a lot of philosophy as much as we got a lot of things to memorize and accept, rather than to consume and digest. I have no problem with using the memorize method when it is coupled with the other, because we were given all the 'basics'... just told it was all mystery (and much is..).
Then there was a whole generation that somehow got lost as far as learning the basics (Baltimore Catechism and Bible History got tossed in favor of 'feeling' type of learning. (There is an essay online entitled "I Was Robbed!" that is EXCELLENT about that generation)
But too much of one way, or the other really is not good either. My children had 12 years of Catholic school, and seemed to really have a fairly good basis in grade school. Then came High School, and suddenly it all seemed to 'fall apart'. Recently a Fr Mark from here told me that where my kids were after leaving their schools was much the same place HE was when he'd graduated from a Green Bay WI Catholic HS. He felt that the Catholic High Schools of this past generation were excellent at taking apart, questioning and 'chewing on' the Faith, but not really good at putting it back together again.
That totally made sense to me. It was exactly what I was seeing happen. I am hoping that the next generation is able to do some of each... and know their Faith much better as a result. It is my prayer.
God bless!
You are a good writer, that's for sure.
I'm curious, as to your thinking processes, how you might propose that God could 'become a better God'. What was He missing before that, so that He was able to improve Himself? Can He improve Himself again?
Thanks!
-ALAN
Alan,
Thanks for the question.
I thought I answered that question in my essay, but I know I don't always reach my goals. Forgive me for leaving you wondering.
As we know from the history of revelation, God did not fully reveal either His intent or His total identity until we meet Christ as the risen Lord. In short, God permitted His intent, plan, and nature to be concealed, even misunderstood. The very foundational idea of God being a tri-unity is revealed in Christ; and while there is ample indication in the Old Testament texts that God is trinity, we do not conclude that Judaism is trinitarian. Christianity reveals this to us; as such, Christianity reveals to us a "better God," which is God's doing. Hence, God revealed a better God in Christ; and He revealed a better God in a Risen Christ than He did in Christ in a manger. Similarly, since we see "through a glass darkly", we shall see an even better God when Christ returns.
Of course, this all has to do with the quality of our perception of God. It has nothing to do with a qualitative change in God, though one could argue that moving from a concealed to a completely revealed God requires some sort of qualititative change in God. I would not argue that way. But what I am saying is that God permitted that we see Him in stages. There is no argument about this. Even the angels, if not just the prophets of old, wish they could know and see what we have known and seen. God's revelation on Mt. Sinai is qualitatively and even quantitatively (so to speak) different from what is revealed on the trash heap outside of Jerusalem over which the "fullness of the Godhead" hung on a cross.
I hope this answers your question. Thanks for keeping me honest, and a little more accurate.
Peace.
Bill Gnade
PS. Christ, as we know, spent most of His earthly ministry correcting mistaken ideas about who God is or what He is like. He came to make God a "better God." Again, this is about perceptions; it is not about God's essence. And we know that both Jews and Muslims do not believe that in Christ we see a "better God."
Good stuff, Bill. I wrote about your series on my blog today. Peace.
Oh, OK - you're talking perceptions, not essence.
Seems that you could stand to be a little more cautious w/ your terms, but so be it. Clarification appreciated.
Another thought - might you consider expressing the same idea thru more scriptural terminology, such as that found in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where we see a "better covenant" and such but the same Jesus Christ (and thus, God) who is the same yesterday, today, and forever?
--ALAN
Dear Alan (Rhology),
Yes, I am talking perceptions, and I am not talking about essence. But I am talking a bit about God's wisdom and volition. If we take the Scriptures as our starting point, God has clearly chosen to reveal Himself in what might be called stages. This is not to be confused with dispensationalism; rather, it is simply a straightforward commentary about how God has revealed Himself to Israel and the rest of the world. In a sense, then, God chose in the fullness of time to reveal a "better God" than what He had up until then revealed. I can only guess that there are plenty of people who would dispute this claim, but so be it. While it is possible for people to have errant and deceptive perceptions of God, God is nonetheless responsible for presenting Himself, and therefore presenting a new set of perceptions that can be experienced. God surely is One Who can live in obscurity, but the God we worship can best be called the God Who Wants to be Known. God revealed Himself in Christ Jesus; surely that revelation transcends (and fulfills and even subsumes) all that preceded it. But, in the end, God is responsible for how He will be (correctly) perceived.
Yes, I could use more scriptural terminology, if I thought that could help. I am really approaching the whole issue as a philosopher informed by Christianity. And what I am ultimately trying to do is to find what is "good" in the "good news" of Christ.
Hebrews is a wondrous, and trying, epistle. I believe that in Christ we do find a "better covenant", but I don't think that means the old covenant was necessarily bad, nor do I think it means the old has been necessarily supplanted in total. Israel remains the apple of God's eye, no? At least it remains as one of His beloved apples.
I would urge you to take whatever I have written here that you find useful and augment it in a more scriptural apology. I, personally, try to use scripture as little as possible to bolster my arguments. I am reluctant to appear as if I am using the sacred texts to justify some hidden agenda, you know, sort of the way Satan uses scripture to make his case against Jesus' Lordship and humanity. I believe all truth is God's truth (as I am sure you believe as well); hence, if I can relate something about Our Lord without falling directly back onto scripture; I mean, if I can find something else that testifies to the reality of Christ other than what we already know so testifies, then I shall use that truth to proclaim the gospel. And lastly, if a problem is presented regarding the Faith, and it is presented in non-biblical language, my first step is to use the same sort of language to solve that problem. More often than not, attacks on the faith are due to the abuse of language ("Surely you will not die?!") or logic ("If you are the son of God, say to these stones ...").
I hope this helps. And I apologize that I was not more clear with my terms. But sometimes I don't want to come across as too didactic; I like to permit people to figure some things out for themselves. This is a risk, I know, and is often unwise.
Peace to you,
Bill Gnade
Bill,
Could pick some nits, but it's late, I'm tired, my eyes are dry, I'm depressed about the roach that escaped my killing spoon, and Japan couldn't come up w/ a goal against Croatia. In short, not now. ;-)
OK, just one nit. Israel and the apple - I suggest a perusal of Jesus' comments about wineskins and Paul's about grafting of olive branches and the children of the free woman vs. those of the slave woman.
And thanks for your fluid elucidations - you more than made up for any lack of clarity in these posts.
--ALAN
Alan,
Thank you for the Galatians and wine skin references. I initially had a reference to the Romans/grafting analogy of Paul's in my last comment to you, but I removed it.
But I am not sure how this would be a nit that you'd like to pick. Israel, of course, remains the apple of God's eye, as we are grafted into that wonderful trunk, no? And the wineskins surely refer to being new creatures with new contents, not old creatures with new contents, so to speak (I write in haste, so I am an idiot). Or are you picking because I did not include these biblical references? Please don't think that I mind the picking; in fact, I encourage it. But I am not sure how these passages do anything other than augment my point. Again, I am being too hasty, perhaps, and thus have not properly digested Paul and Jesus' words here.
Peace, always. And don't fret about Japan and the World Cup. The US has YET to score a goal without help from the Italians. That's embarrassing. But not as embarrassing as having a man advantage over the lowly US and not being able to capitalize. Italy's fans must be wretching.
I hope you slept well.
BG
BG,
Thanks, did sleep well after another protracted battle w/ some more roaches. Joy.
No, not picking b/c you didn't include the biblical references. No prob - usually I can pick out a biblical theme though sometimes I have to ask for it explicitly. ;-)
The nit is that, yes, the wild branch (Gentiles) is grafted into the tree, but the point of the two mountains, two women discussion in Galatians is to point out that *Christians* are the true branch now, the "apple of God's eye," if you will. Israel, though still a special people in God's eyes, now has a different place in God's plan b/c of their (foreseen) virtually wholesale rejection of their Messiah. Christians are "Israel" now.
As for the wineskins, think of it more along the lines of the Old Covenant vs. the New Covenant. But what you said about the person and the new man also makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that!
Finally, hooray for own goals!
--ALAN
Yes, yes! Hooray for one's own goals!
I would not squabble with you on this. I had OT/NT professors who interpreted Paul differently: the more rabbinic professors still see God in a covenantal relationship with Israel, while others simply see Israel as, you say, grafted into Christ. Either way Israel is special to God, or so I believe; and I am not one to have a problem with the idea that God loves more than one apple.
Peace to you, dear sir,
BG
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