I hope to not offend too many people with the nature of this post. I've been thinking back on a lot of Christian apologists/theologians and their reasoning why Christianity makes sense.
In all reality, there does need to be some kind of explanation, because Christians have to answer to the question why we worship some guy who the Romans crucified two thousand years ago.
So the explanation usually goes that Jesus had to die in order to sanctify humanity once again. St Augustine said that humanity was stained with the sin of Adam, or original sin, and thus every one needed saving, no matter how good they are. This leads to the Christian emphasis on baptism and more especially the Catholic defense for infant baptism. Karl Barth re-emphasized Augustine's words and said that Christ was almost like a second Adam, but that His sacrifice by far overshadows Adam's sin. Athanasius said that Jesus had to die in order to reconcile us with God, and St Anselm said that a God-man needed to pay the price for our sins. Hans Urs von Balthasar said that Christ had to endure all things that humans endured in order to have lived a truly human life, including death.
All these men, I think, were right. It is true that humanity needs saving. However, I will respectuflly disagree with Barth and Augustine and state that there is a lot more than the fall of Adam that needs reconciling.
I think of where man is now, and where man has been before. We consider animals to be sinless, but this is because animals are innocent and stupid. We humans have gained great stores of knowledge, but what have we done with it? We possess the ability to destroy all life on the planet several times over. We have long histories of bloody wars, some lasting many, many years (the forty years' war and the hundred years' war, for example). We take away people's freedom and put them to work as slaves, or in internment camps, or traffick them, or put them to work in sweatshops. We take revenge for our perceived wrongs. We take more than we need, limiting how much others can have. We elevate ourselves above other people or debase ourselves below them. We steal, cheat, lie and take no heed for the damage we do.
And that's only what we do to each other. We also have many sins against nature. As the most intelligent of all species on the planet, we alone have the ability to help maintain the natural balance of the earth. But instead we build polluting factories. We kill off native species and introduce foreign ones. We spray pesticides and herbicides into fields, killing off naturally occuring life and poisoning the ground water. We deplete forests, ore reserves, oil fields. We drain wet lands to build mini malls. We clear out rain forests for cattle grazing. We take and take from the earth and never think to give back. Man is the only animal that can prevent ecological disaster, yet it seems that all we do right now is cause it.
So, while the weight of Adam's sin might be a heavy burden for Christ to bear, I think it is nothing compared to the many thousand times since then that we have damned ourselves as a species.
This, then, is why I am a Christian. I think with the damage we have done and the sins we have committed, it would take nothing short of a miracle, and no one else but God alone to pardon them all. If there's any hope for the human race, I think it came about two thousand years ago in the backwater regions of the Roman Empire.
And as a Christian, I think the command to help build the Kingdom is a very real command. And this command does not simply mean proselyting to the non-Christians, but living in a way that shows that we are willing to live without the sins that we have for so long embraced.
Showing posts with label Anselm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anselm. Show all posts
Monday, July 13, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Scandalus
What is it about Christians that makes a lot of the rest of the world despise us? Surely there is the conservative Christians that make a lot of people cringe. And our reservation and prudence also make us a bit peculiar. But what of our message itself?
"We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles" wrote Paul (1 Corinth 1:23). And really, how silly is it, from the outside, to say that God became man?
From one perspective, we look Greek. Our God is now encased in human flesh, much the way Hercules was. All the Olympic gods existed in a physical sense in this world. They all had bodies. They took on many forms.
"But," we might argue, "our god paid the price for sin and was exalted." This sounds like Odin, the "Allfather" of the Norsemen who hung on a tree for three days in order to give to mankind the sacred runes. After the three days, he regained his spot as head of the gods.
This is where we take on a monotheistic view of God. Not only did our god take on all of our sins, but he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, a notion that escapes the Romans, Greeks and Vikings. Truly, St. Augustine says that all things are held by our god, and our god is in all things.
So here our God seems more like the God of the Jews, who created the heaven and the earth and has the ability to manipulate time and space itself according to His wishes.
This is why it is a stumbling block. At first glance it looks nonsensical. The outsider gets lost in the trinitarian language of the Council of Nicaea and the message of Word become Flesh.
Here is where Athanasius seems to help out. To Athanasius, and in fact to St. Anselm as well, Christ is God's way of restoring humanity. We have fallen; fallen of our choosing. Because of this transgression against God, we, who are unholy and imperfect, cannot hope to dwell with God, who is holy and perfect. This is not in God's plan, so God comes to restore humanity.
Now, here is where it gets tricky. Man cannot redeem himself, for how can one restore what he never had attained. However, it was necessary for man to make restoration, since it was man who sinned. So God comes down in the person of Jesus, takes on our sins and dies. This process restores us to God.
Even with the explanation of our faith, it still seems incredible. It is a fantastic-sounding story that necessitates our faith. Even with the philosophical arguments for God, Christ's existence is not obvious.
So I say, since our message is one that is offensive enough, our call is to not be offensive. We are to go out with humility, meekness, mercy, temperance and all the commands that Christ laid upon us. St Francis of Assisi once wisely said, "Preach Christ crucified always, if necessary, use words." It is more important that our actions preach our message than our shouts. For, all of our words can be proven wrong by our actions, but our actions are never proven wrong by our words.
"We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles" wrote Paul (1 Corinth 1:23). And really, how silly is it, from the outside, to say that God became man?
From one perspective, we look Greek. Our God is now encased in human flesh, much the way Hercules was. All the Olympic gods existed in a physical sense in this world. They all had bodies. They took on many forms.
"But," we might argue, "our god paid the price for sin and was exalted." This sounds like Odin, the "Allfather" of the Norsemen who hung on a tree for three days in order to give to mankind the sacred runes. After the three days, he regained his spot as head of the gods.
This is where we take on a monotheistic view of God. Not only did our god take on all of our sins, but he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, a notion that escapes the Romans, Greeks and Vikings. Truly, St. Augustine says that all things are held by our god, and our god is in all things.
So here our God seems more like the God of the Jews, who created the heaven and the earth and has the ability to manipulate time and space itself according to His wishes.
This is why it is a stumbling block. At first glance it looks nonsensical. The outsider gets lost in the trinitarian language of the Council of Nicaea and the message of Word become Flesh.
Here is where Athanasius seems to help out. To Athanasius, and in fact to St. Anselm as well, Christ is God's way of restoring humanity. We have fallen; fallen of our choosing. Because of this transgression against God, we, who are unholy and imperfect, cannot hope to dwell with God, who is holy and perfect. This is not in God's plan, so God comes to restore humanity.
Now, here is where it gets tricky. Man cannot redeem himself, for how can one restore what he never had attained. However, it was necessary for man to make restoration, since it was man who sinned. So God comes down in the person of Jesus, takes on our sins and dies. This process restores us to God.
Even with the explanation of our faith, it still seems incredible. It is a fantastic-sounding story that necessitates our faith. Even with the philosophical arguments for God, Christ's existence is not obvious.
So I say, since our message is one that is offensive enough, our call is to not be offensive. We are to go out with humility, meekness, mercy, temperance and all the commands that Christ laid upon us. St Francis of Assisi once wisely said, "Preach Christ crucified always, if necessary, use words." It is more important that our actions preach our message than our shouts. For, all of our words can be proven wrong by our actions, but our actions are never proven wrong by our words.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Being a Christian in today's world
So I've realized that I write a lot about what it means to be Christian and how different it is from what we normally view as Christianity.
To be fair, it seems to me that most of the people who act Christian tend to be more of the atheistic brand or adhere to some other religion. Those who go by the tag of Christian seem far more Nietzschean to my view.
The question, then, is how are we to reconcile the two camps? With the name of Christians being tarnished right and left, it becomes difficult to maintain a place in this world that is not completely looked down on. We hear people in the scientific and intellectual world tarnishing the name of Christians and the God of our faith. In the world of entertainment, we are represented by self-serving, war-mongering celebreties that portray us to the world in a negative light.
The problem is that there are not enough intellectual Christians to provide sustained dialogue between the atheist scholars and the Christian scholars.
So it is our duty to make a point of engaging the scientific world. One does not have to be an atheist to be a biologist or theoretical physicist. Christianity can engage in intelligent debate about the origins of man or the universe. Evolution is not against God's nature.
In reality, the sad truth is that Christianity has, for a long time, been behind the scientific world. Galileo discovers helio-centrism and is anathema. Charles Darwin discovers biogenetic diversity and is shunned. We cannot be afraid of the scienitfic world. All that that does for us is turns the learned man away from our faith.
Christianity has the honor of having some of the most famous philosophers learned men in its midst. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Anselm, Kierkegaard, Pascal, and others have all graced Christianity with their intelligence and skill. It is not incompatible to be Christian and a scholar.
So we need to take up the call to be scholars. We need to engage the scholastic world with substantial discussion instead of hurling insults and refusing rationality. We need to learn to be Christians in our contemporary world, not in years long past.
To be fair, it seems to me that most of the people who act Christian tend to be more of the atheistic brand or adhere to some other religion. Those who go by the tag of Christian seem far more Nietzschean to my view.
The question, then, is how are we to reconcile the two camps? With the name of Christians being tarnished right and left, it becomes difficult to maintain a place in this world that is not completely looked down on. We hear people in the scientific and intellectual world tarnishing the name of Christians and the God of our faith. In the world of entertainment, we are represented by self-serving, war-mongering celebreties that portray us to the world in a negative light.
The problem is that there are not enough intellectual Christians to provide sustained dialogue between the atheist scholars and the Christian scholars.
So it is our duty to make a point of engaging the scientific world. One does not have to be an atheist to be a biologist or theoretical physicist. Christianity can engage in intelligent debate about the origins of man or the universe. Evolution is not against God's nature.
In reality, the sad truth is that Christianity has, for a long time, been behind the scientific world. Galileo discovers helio-centrism and is anathema. Charles Darwin discovers biogenetic diversity and is shunned. We cannot be afraid of the scienitfic world. All that that does for us is turns the learned man away from our faith.
Christianity has the honor of having some of the most famous philosophers learned men in its midst. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Anselm, Kierkegaard, Pascal, and others have all graced Christianity with their intelligence and skill. It is not incompatible to be Christian and a scholar.
So we need to take up the call to be scholars. We need to engage the scholastic world with substantial discussion instead of hurling insults and refusing rationality. We need to learn to be Christians in our contemporary world, not in years long past.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Augustine contra Darwin
In a 1996 talk entitled "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth," Pope John Paul II announced to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that evolution does not contradict Christianity. In this talk, the point of human kind's separateness and likeness to God is emphasized.
Of course, innate in this line of thinking is an idea that humankind, though not necessarily coming from two beings in the Garden of Eden whose names were "Adam" and "Eve," is the idea that we descended from some origin divinely set apart by God.
This contradicts a lot of evolutionary theory that depicts the mutations that caused evolution to be random and the selection of traits to be natural. In this case, God has fore-ordained which traits would be passed down to the human species that would make us in His likeness and image.
Now, this kind of thinking does not sit very well with traditional Biblical thinking. Pope John Paul II emphasized that the evolution theories don't depict well the innate spiritual qualities of man nor do they talk about our being the end of God's creation.
So we begin to see where the two don't function very well together. With an Augustinian view of natural sin, how can this correspond in a human history that has no root in the Garden? If we descended from Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals, how is it that we are the only creations created in God's image and likeness?
Furthermore, we begin to see problems like what John Paull II mentions. How do Athanasius' and Anselm's views on the Word made Flesh correspond to a human kind that does not derive its humanity from God? How can Christ take on our sins and become one of us if all we are is a process of random mutations?
I offer no solutions to this problem. I do offer this, however: in the Muslim Empire from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries, science was never seen to contradict faith. If one thought they were in opposition, then it was clear to that person that either his scientific discovery was off, or his faith was not correct. In this case, it is clear that this applies to us. If God is the God of nature and the cosmos, than no scientific law or truth can contradict what God has made so. Thus, if evolution is the way that scientists say it is, then this does not disprove God, only what we think of God.
Of course, innate in this line of thinking is an idea that humankind, though not necessarily coming from two beings in the Garden of Eden whose names were "Adam" and "Eve," is the idea that we descended from some origin divinely set apart by God.
This contradicts a lot of evolutionary theory that depicts the mutations that caused evolution to be random and the selection of traits to be natural. In this case, God has fore-ordained which traits would be passed down to the human species that would make us in His likeness and image.
Now, this kind of thinking does not sit very well with traditional Biblical thinking. Pope John Paul II emphasized that the evolution theories don't depict well the innate spiritual qualities of man nor do they talk about our being the end of God's creation.
So we begin to see where the two don't function very well together. With an Augustinian view of natural sin, how can this correspond in a human history that has no root in the Garden? If we descended from Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals, how is it that we are the only creations created in God's image and likeness?
Furthermore, we begin to see problems like what John Paull II mentions. How do Athanasius' and Anselm's views on the Word made Flesh correspond to a human kind that does not derive its humanity from God? How can Christ take on our sins and become one of us if all we are is a process of random mutations?
I offer no solutions to this problem. I do offer this, however: in the Muslim Empire from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries, science was never seen to contradict faith. If one thought they were in opposition, then it was clear to that person that either his scientific discovery was off, or his faith was not correct. In this case, it is clear that this applies to us. If God is the God of nature and the cosmos, than no scientific law or truth can contradict what God has made so. Thus, if evolution is the way that scientists say it is, then this does not disprove God, only what we think of God.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
fides contra rationem
I really need a better title than that. But I couldn't think of anything. This semester I am in a philosophy class centered on theological claims. A lot of what we have been learning and studying focuses on proofs for the existence of God.
I have a really hard time accepting the proofs given. It's not that I doubt the intellectual capacity of people like Anselm, Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Averroes, Avicenna, and others. It's more that I don't think that philosophy has any say in religious conviction. Yes, we can use the philosophy of Aristotle, Mills, Kant, or Nietzsche to tell us by what standards to live. Yes, we can use Plato, Nietzsche, Saint-Exupery or MacIntyre to tell us what we should esteem. But I don't think that the existence of God has any place in philosophy.
Yes, we can speak of religious things. We refer to "Christian virtues." We speak of "the way," being "disciples of Christ," and of our teleological value. But we can only discuss this in light of our belief, a belief which does not come from philosophy.
If God were provable, then faith, one of the three Christian virtues, would be null and void. If we could take Kant's model, or Aquinas' proofs, or Anselm's definition of God as a concrete way to show God's existence, then there would be no requirement for faith. How can we esteem faith, if faith isn't even necessary. How can we be Kierkegaard's knight of faith when there is no place for faith?
Long have theologians argued about the place of faith. St Paul tells us that we are saved through our faith in Christ. James responds that faith without works is dead. The argument gets taken up again in the Reformation period with figures such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and the entire Roman Church.
So how can we say that we can prove God exists? Pascal only tells us that it's better statistically to believe in God. Most theologians tell us to have faith in God. Even those arguing about the proofs of God are only arguing that they can prove why it makes sense to believe in God. God is not provable. If God were, then there would be no struggle, no faith requirement or trials to overcome. If God is a logical deduction, there are no atheists.
Even so, God provides us with enough to make it reasonable to believe in God, and also reasonable not to. The beauties that surround us and are right in front of our eyes are seen by some to be infallible proof for God's love, and by others as the beauty of chaos. Our minds and bodies prove to some that God exists and to others that natural selection favors certain traits. Even our history and progress shows to some that God has been there, and to others that nature's laws are above all others.
I have a really hard time accepting the proofs given. It's not that I doubt the intellectual capacity of people like Anselm, Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Averroes, Avicenna, and others. It's more that I don't think that philosophy has any say in religious conviction. Yes, we can use the philosophy of Aristotle, Mills, Kant, or Nietzsche to tell us by what standards to live. Yes, we can use Plato, Nietzsche, Saint-Exupery or MacIntyre to tell us what we should esteem. But I don't think that the existence of God has any place in philosophy.
Yes, we can speak of religious things. We refer to "Christian virtues." We speak of "the way," being "disciples of Christ," and of our teleological value. But we can only discuss this in light of our belief, a belief which does not come from philosophy.
If God were provable, then faith, one of the three Christian virtues, would be null and void. If we could take Kant's model, or Aquinas' proofs, or Anselm's definition of God as a concrete way to show God's existence, then there would be no requirement for faith. How can we esteem faith, if faith isn't even necessary. How can we be Kierkegaard's knight of faith when there is no place for faith?
Long have theologians argued about the place of faith. St Paul tells us that we are saved through our faith in Christ. James responds that faith without works is dead. The argument gets taken up again in the Reformation period with figures such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and the entire Roman Church.
So how can we say that we can prove God exists? Pascal only tells us that it's better statistically to believe in God. Most theologians tell us to have faith in God. Even those arguing about the proofs of God are only arguing that they can prove why it makes sense to believe in God. God is not provable. If God were, then there would be no struggle, no faith requirement or trials to overcome. If God is a logical deduction, there are no atheists.
Even so, God provides us with enough to make it reasonable to believe in God, and also reasonable not to. The beauties that surround us and are right in front of our eyes are seen by some to be infallible proof for God's love, and by others as the beauty of chaos. Our minds and bodies prove to some that God exists and to others that natural selection favors certain traits. Even our history and progress shows to some that God has been there, and to others that nature's laws are above all others.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Ex nihilo ad Omnium
Please excuse my Latin.
I was reminded earlier today of a key difference in Mormon theology and Catholic theology. That difference is the doctrine of "creation ex nihilo" or "creation out of nothing." What it basically means is that God created the entire universe from nothing.
Mormons believe that God "fashioned" the universe. He was more of a cosmic carpenter or watchmaker. Along with this doctrine comes the notion of divination and a procession of Gods (not to be confused with gods). For Mormons, there's a pseudo-doctrinal idea that God became God in such a way that mankind may also become God. This leads to a question of whether or not God had a God, and that God had a God.
However, St. Thomas Aquinas assures us that it is impossible for there to be an unending procession of necessary things (viz the Third Way). A necessary thing for Aquinas is something which is not "contingent," that is, generated and corrupted. God is neither generated nor corrupted. God is. "I am that I AM" He proclaims in Exodus to Moses. He is Aquinas' "first mover," that which cannot be moved by His own creations.
But what of creation then? Well, Genesis tells us that God "created" all things. Christians believe that God created all that is. The Big Bang theory suggests that everything that is exploded from nothingness. Is this the same? Perhaps it is. Nothing in the Big Bang theory suggests that there was no cause of the explosion. Perhaps God said, "let there be everything."
Then we come to the tricky business of creation of mankind. Evolutionary theory suggests that man evolved from an ape-like ancestor. Pope John Paul II allows for this, provided that humankind shares one original set of parents, an Adam and Eve, if you will.
But what about all the diversity in the world? We cannot hold to the assumption that in 6 thousand years (according to the Bible), the human race went from being 2 people of similar traits to all the different ethnicities to be found throughout the world. Furthermore, the Bible was not written in real time. The Torah was written about 1000 BC. At this point, everything written therein is orally handed down. So the question of the authenticity of the accounts comes into question (a topic which I hope to further discuss in later posts).
So, with this new information brought to light, what are we to think of humanity? Anselm, Athanasius, and almost every other theologian asserts that humankind was made in God's image and likeness. This is where I think our true question must be answered: If man is in God's image, how can we know this, and what does this say about evolution?
I was reminded earlier today of a key difference in Mormon theology and Catholic theology. That difference is the doctrine of "creation ex nihilo" or "creation out of nothing." What it basically means is that God created the entire universe from nothing.
Mormons believe that God "fashioned" the universe. He was more of a cosmic carpenter or watchmaker. Along with this doctrine comes the notion of divination and a procession of Gods (not to be confused with gods). For Mormons, there's a pseudo-doctrinal idea that God became God in such a way that mankind may also become God. This leads to a question of whether or not God had a God, and that God had a God.
However, St. Thomas Aquinas assures us that it is impossible for there to be an unending procession of necessary things (viz the Third Way). A necessary thing for Aquinas is something which is not "contingent," that is, generated and corrupted. God is neither generated nor corrupted. God is. "I am that I AM" He proclaims in Exodus to Moses. He is Aquinas' "first mover," that which cannot be moved by His own creations.
But what of creation then? Well, Genesis tells us that God "created" all things. Christians believe that God created all that is. The Big Bang theory suggests that everything that is exploded from nothingness. Is this the same? Perhaps it is. Nothing in the Big Bang theory suggests that there was no cause of the explosion. Perhaps God said, "let there be everything."
Then we come to the tricky business of creation of mankind. Evolutionary theory suggests that man evolved from an ape-like ancestor. Pope John Paul II allows for this, provided that humankind shares one original set of parents, an Adam and Eve, if you will.
But what about all the diversity in the world? We cannot hold to the assumption that in 6 thousand years (according to the Bible), the human race went from being 2 people of similar traits to all the different ethnicities to be found throughout the world. Furthermore, the Bible was not written in real time. The Torah was written about 1000 BC. At this point, everything written therein is orally handed down. So the question of the authenticity of the accounts comes into question (a topic which I hope to further discuss in later posts).
So, with this new information brought to light, what are we to think of humanity? Anselm, Athanasius, and almost every other theologian asserts that humankind was made in God's image and likeness. This is where I think our true question must be answered: If man is in God's image, how can we know this, and what does this say about evolution?
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