Original Sin - Time to break to taboo and have a chat

[revdrew61]

Of course all that 'sin is missing the mark' stuff is right and we do all need the correction of a loving parent. But increasingly, I see sin, or rather, our sinful tendencies, as something we all need healing of and freeing from. Derek Flood's work over at the Rebel God blog, already cited on this thread, has been more helpful than I can say.
Dick, you asked me about how my theological metamorphosis has affected my practice of baptism. The simple answer is that I haven't really thought about it! Except that with all the sacraments I am more than ever aware of their value in encouraging and nurturing faith, and the fact that whatever we think we are doing is at best a pale shadow of God's transforming work in every human being.

[BirdOfTheEgg]

I often wonder if we are completely and utterly clueless in terms of what God appears to say and what he actually means.

"You heard: eye for an eye, but I tell you: turn the other cheek".

I actually consider baptism to be rather important. I don't think it's necessary or sufficient for anything when push comes to shove, but the way my faith came about, it's going to be a pretty important thing for me, and basically the point where I say "yes, I want this".

[revdrew61]

Well said Bird. I mostly find myself baptising infants of believing parents. In the anglican/ episcopalian churches that wonderful moment of "yes, I want this" is usually expressed in confirmation and of course ordination which - hoping no bishops are listening - is really the same thing! Praying for you, Drew

[BirdOfTheEgg]

Well, I've never been baptized, in big part because my parents thought it should be my choice. I'm still not quite sure what Confirmation is. I think most of the churches I go to do not do it. At most they have the Eucharist once in a while.

[Cindy Skillman]

Bird said:

Well, I've never been baptized, in big part because my parents thought it should be my choice. I'm still not quite sure what Confirmation is. I think most of the churches I go to do not do it. At most they have the Eucharist once in a while.

Wow! Really? Any believer can baptize you, Bird. All you need is a few witnesses and a body of water or a swimming (or a wading) pool. I've even heard of new believers in situations of persecution who, having no other options, baptized themselves.

[BirdOfTheEgg]

I was saying the churches do not do Confirmation, not Baptism. As for Baptism, they all do it, of course. I was offered to get baptized in the church of a friend of mine. It's all ETC, though, but they seem not care about that baptism-wise. I also recall spending a lot of time figuring out which baptism is correct. I recall some guy on reddit who kept saying anyone not baptised with full immersion is unsaved. Not to mention the Trinity issue.

Yeah, but to me it's kinda a big deal and I don't want to rush it. Maybe I'll decide Christianity is all false. Again. >>

I also look forward to the: "Mom. Dad. I want to get baptized." "Did you go insane? Are you in a cult? I knew you were in a cult, going to church on Sundays..."

*ahem*

So, to get this back on topic...

I was reading something, maybe even on this forum, about a person suggesting that Adam-Eve were already imperfect in the Garden itself, which is why they disobeyed. Not that they became imperfect after eating the apple. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I still wonder who were the people who actually decided this and how.

[corpselight]

being created imperfect...or unfinished, perhaps? maybe we are still in that process of creation now?

one wonders how all this fits into evolution. i know we have creationists and evolutionists present, but the idea of through one man sin came into the world, and through one Man we are all reconciled, which boils down to original sin in some fashion, appears to be important to universalism (though i still feel the meta-narrative carries the day).

i guess i figure if Original Sin is true, ie one specific sin led to all humanity's downfall (an idea i think i'm personally ok with), then the first proper humans, gifted with sentience, were the first to be disobedient.

or maybe it's less simple and Adam and Eve are symbols rather than people. in which case original sin in my life is the first time i sinned, personally. Paul could have believed in a literal Adam and Eve, and used them to build his idea that sin and death are in us all, and it still follows that the same "all" is redeemed later.

also, it's good we define sin as missing the mark. i think it's quite easy to come up with lists of acceptable and unacceptable things, and that list may work in ideal situations, but will fail to be relevant or even true under a variety of other circumstances. and life is rarely ideal. for me, any situation in which we find ourselves, if we try to do the best we can, we'll still probably miss the mark, but be closer than if we rejected the best choice.

the difficulty is that the best choice is not easy to find without foreknowledge! so all we can do is our best...and really i think that's all we can be expected to do, which again blurs the line of what sin is.

[BirdOfTheEgg]

but the idea of through one man sin came into the world, and through one Man we are all reconciled, which boils down to original sin in some fashion, appears to be important to universalism (though i still feel the meta-narrative carries the day).

There are many areas where Genesis is quoted as if literal, but I nevertheless do not think it's literal.

It is similar to the "man is to die once, then judgment". It's making a point. Heck, sometimes I think Paul tries way too hard to draw analogies like these and I do not believe all of them. I similarly do not take "Adam was created first, then Eve, Eve ate the apple, so now all women should be in permanent submission and have pregnancy issues" very seriously, either. God was, in my view, describing a reality that will occur, not a reality that should occur (where Paul seems bent on perpetuating it).

To me, the biggest Universalist message is "I came not to condemn the world but to save the world", "love your enemies", etc. And the general fact that I consider God to be far more moral, good, and loving than any of us. "My ways are not your ways".

or maybe it's less simple and Adam and Eve are symbols rather than people. in which case original sin in my life is the first time i sinned, personally. Paul could have believed in a literal Adam and Eve, and used them to build his idea that sin and death are in us all, and it still follows that the same "all" is redeemed later.

That's one way to look at it. Definitely valid considering the various analogies in the NT.

the difficulty is that the best choice is not easy to find without foreknowledge! so all we can do is our best...and really i think that's all we can be expected to do, which again blurs the line of what sin is.

Yes. I think the core message of "all have fallen short" is that we should not obsess with being perfect. We can't be perfect, and we aren't. Too many people forfeit many things and cut of relationships because someone had a problem. Life is extremely unideal.

Of course, one can wonder what is really the purpose of the Church, and which Church. Is it supposed to be a microcosm of God's kingdom? I seriously do not believe that anymore. I think early Christians had their special place where they were to spread Christianity and its morality for a few hundred years, but now it's on all people, and we're to bring it all on all earth, not keep the light locked up in a church somewhere.

[corpselight]

but the idea of through one man sin came into the world, and through one Man we are all reconciled, which boils down to original sin in some fashion, appears to be important to universalism (though i still feel the meta-narrative carries the day).

There are many areas where Genesis is quoted as if literal, but I nevertheless do not think it's literal.

It is similar to the "man is to die once, then judgment". It's making a point. Heck, sometimes I think Paul tries way too hard to draw analogies like these and I do not believe all of them. I similarly do not take "Adam was created first, then Eve, Eve ate the apple, so now all women should be in permanent submission and have pregnancy issues" very seriously, either. God was, in my view, describing a reality that will occur, not a reality that should occur (where Paul seems bent on perpetuating it).

To me, the biggest Universalist message is "I came not to condemn the world but to save the world", "love your enemies", etc. And the general fact that I consider God to be far more moral, good, and loving than any of us. "My ways are not your ways".

or maybe it's less simple and Adam and Eve are symbols rather than people. in which case original sin in my life is the first time i sinned, personally. Paul could have believed in a literal Adam and Eve, and used them to build his idea that sin and death are in us all, and it still follows that the same "all" is redeemed later.

That's one way to look at it. Definitely valid considering the various analogies in the NT.

the difficulty is that the best choice is not easy to find without foreknowledge! so all we can do is our best...and really i think that's all we can be expected to do, which again blurs the line of what sin is.

Yes. I think the core message of "all have fallen short" is that we should not obsess with being perfect. We can't be perfect, and we aren't. Too many people forfeit many things and cut of relationships because someone had a problem. Life is extremely unideal.

Of course, one can wonder what is really the purpose of the Church, and which Church. Is it supposed to be a microcosm of God's kingdom? I seriously do not believe that anymore. I think early Christians had their special place where they were to spread Christianity and its morality for a few hundred years, but now it's on all people, and we're to bring it all on all earth, not keep the light locked up in a church somewhere.

agreed, some excellent points!
i like what you say about us all falling short. it follows on from that statement that we may not be perfect but we are justified freely.
i think some confusion comes in at the sermon of the mount. Jesus says "be perfect as your Father is perfect". but this is clearly impossible, as i believe He knew. so...i think He was saying "look, don't be a hypocrite. God demands perfection, but none of you can do it. that's why I am here...to show the way and to conquer what holds you back"

[BirdOfTheEgg]

There's some confusion with the whole perfection issue. John (Peter) says "be without blemish when I come", and "it's difficult for even the righteous to be saved". In fact, those 3 epistles sort of undermine the whole saved-by-faith and saved-imperfect issue a bit, and summon a lot of "do I have the Spirit???" issues. I asked an ETC friend of mine and he believes that those things were said for effect, but in reality it is not as strict.

I also wonder if "be without blemish" is an indication of when Jesus will actually come back. It said in some other verse "I may take 10 years or 1000 years. It is not because I am slow, but because I am patient with you lot and want you all to become saved" (this seems to not make much sense considering that more people are unsaved than not, though. People do not live that long).

[corpselight]

There's some confusion with the whole perfection issue. John (Peter) says "be without blemish when I come", and "it's difficult for even the righteous to be saved". In fact, those 3 epistles sort of undermine the whole saved-by-faith and saved-imperfect issue a bit, and summon a lot of "do I have the Spirit???" issues. I asked an ETC friend of mine and he believes that those things were said for effect, but in reality it is not as strict.

I also wonder if "be without blemish" is an indication of when Jesus will actually come back. It said in some other verse "I may take 10 years or 1000 years. It is not because I am slow, but because I am patient with you lot and want you all to become saved" (this seems to not make much sense considering that more people are unsaved than not, though. People do not live that long).

interesting...i guess those verses can alternately threaten other schools of thought if taken "too literally". whatever that means!
it's strange when there is (i'm pretty sure) talk of us being washed clean by God, and then in other places talk of presenting ourselves without blemish...well that's impossible, Mr Apostle Man! i depend on God's righteousness, as the best i can offer is rubbish ("our righteousness is as filthy rags"; "who is righteous? no one! not one!" paraphrased slightly).

i think that 10-1000 year reference is great, as it's basically saying "i'll wait as long as it takes to save you" and i think works nicely with the father in the Prodigal Son parable.

[BirdOfTheEgg]

I do not believe everything people do is filthy rags. I think that keeps being taken grossly out of context. I think it's a discussion of works-based salvation specifically (similarly to the "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due"). I.e., doing things to gain salvation. Paul makes the point that those won't work (I would argue because they do not come from the heart. There's a big emphasis on "freely given" in the Bible).

On the other hand, whenever a person did something out of the goodness of their heart, Jesus commended them (the Samaritan, the confused sheep at judgment). There's nothing wrong with good works, "against such things there is no law", but if you do them out of a selfish interest only, it won't do anything because it doesn't change you and it's not God working. Yet "he who does the will of my father is my mother and my sister and my brother".

This is, of course, a very thin line to walk. For me, adopting Christianity was a very strong mental shift, and much of it was "I should do this because I should". And in big part, many things are "fake it until you make it". But I very early tried to throw salvation out the window. It makes one very selfish and clouds a lot of issue - you always think in terms of what will save YOU or what will damn YOU. It breeds a lot of that legalism. And all the Christians I speak to seem obsessed with the idea. When one mentions something negative they do, instead of worrying about its effect, they say "thank God for grace". One of the reasons I like Universalism because it kinda does throw that out the window. You are free to serve God because you want to, not because you feel cornered or blackmailed. And prior to Universalism, because I held Jesus's teachings to be true, right, worthy of following, I lived via something similar to Paidon's "better to be damned doing God's will than saved doing nothing". To me, that's really the Universalist manifesto. On this issue, I cardinally disagree with Origen/MacDonald. If one requires ETC to be compelled to follow God, show them the door.

[corpselight]

I do not believe everything people do is filthy rags. I think that keeps being taken grossly out of context. I think it's a discussion of works-based salvation specifically (similarly to the "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due"). I.e., doing things to gain salvation. Paul makes the point that those won't work (I would argue because they do not come from the heart. There's a big emphasis on "freely given" in the Bible).

On the other hand, whenever a person did something out of the goodness of their heart, Jesus commended them (the Samaritan, the confused sheep at judgment). There's nothing wrong with good works, "against such things there is no law", but if you do them out of a selfish interest only, it won't do anything because it doesn't change you and it's not God working. Yet "he who does the will of my father is my mother and my sister and my brother".

This is, of course, a very thin line to walk. For me, adopting Christianity was a very strong mental shift, and much of it was "I should do this because I should". And in big part, many things are "fake it until you make it". But I very early tried to throw salvation out the window. It makes one very selfish and clouds a lot of issue - you always think in terms of what will save YOU or what will damn YOU. It breeds a lot of that legalism. And all the Christians I speak to seem obsessed with the idea. When one mentions something negative they do, instead of worrying about its effect, they say "thank God for grace". One of the reasons I like Universalism because it kinda does throw that out the window. You are free to serve God because you want to, not because you feel cornered or blackmailed. And prior to Universalism, because I held Jesus's teachings to be true, right, worthy of following, I lived via something similar to Paidon's "better to be damned doing God's will than saved doing nothing". To me, that's really the Universalist manifesto. On this issue, I cardinally disagree with Origen/MacDonald. If one requires ETC to be compelled to follow God, show them the door.

true, but i'd argue alot (certainly not all!) of what we as humans do is self-motivated in some way. this may or may not be the sin of selfishness, but more of a behavioural pattern that we're born into. i think God urges us to break free of that pattern, and He promises to give us the strength to.

my point in bringing that up is that even when we do the right thing, quite often it backfires, and we miss the mark. missing the mark doesn't make you a horrible person (relative to other people), but God wants us to grow up into perfection. this perfection can only be realised when God is all in all, i would say. hence the urge to work at it, and to do our best to have the purest motives. but we also need to realise that we need God's help for this, we can't do it on our own.

i agree that UR frees us from the blackmail, and the ultimately selfish motives of trying to keep yourself on the road to salvation by doing good. it allows us to realise what Jesus meant about finding our lives once losing them.

as you say, it is a narrow road. it's very, very hard. but i think that the perseverence Paul talks about is the fruit of this. it's like physical strength. yeah, we could be born immensely strong, but if we have to work at it, it produces all other kinds of fruit. and we can take some ownership of it as well, not in a proud way as if we owe it all to ourselves, but also not in a spoiled way as if we'd just been given everything by our rich Daddie.

perhaps this helps answer a tiny portion of the problem of evil as well.

[Sobornost]

What a great conversation There is so much to think about and I don't want to say anything until I've pondered all that has been said today. I know I've taken it upon myself to keep this one going, even though Bird, Anthony and Jeff all played a huge role in getting the thread off the ground - but no one has complained. Therefore I would like to draw all of the threads together in the current conversation with a couple of posts now and allow space for further comment on anything else raised by my comments (but do keep posting in the meantime).

After this phase of the conversation is over I think there's plenty of other territory to cover before we are through -

Very importantly we need to look at the idea of structural sin. Whereas The Augustinian Original Sin tradition is all about a privatised religion of 'personal salvation' - and can make people feel so passive in their wretchedness that they fail to question unjust social structures - the ancient traditions of Christianity speak more often of sin as something we are oppressed by collectively in the shape of 'Powers and Principalities'. I've already had a chat with James ‘corpselight’ – who has contributed some really good thoughts above - about this elsewhere and we both feel that one problem with the Christus Victor over the Powers and Principalities theme is that it reminds us too much of 'Spiritual Warfare Theology' that stresses a personal devil as much as a personal saviour (and therefore can all too easily see evil personalised in individuals or groups). However, this need not be the case. Take a look at the Rebel God website if you wish -which Paidion first recommended and now Rev Drew has stamped with approval - and see how Christus Victor in, its right balance, takes on a very different and truly liberationist perspective which is all about human solidarity. The discussion of social/structural sin could be very interesting and raise plenty of issues (most of which I’m sure I haven't a clue about yet).

But I suggest that we don’t proceed directly to discuss Structural Sin. We could all get glum with all the emphasis on sin rather than blessing (and give Augustine too much cause for grim delight - whihc we must not do! ). So I suggest that after concluding on the current issues we proceed first to consider themes of Wisdom in the Bible and in theology that run directly counter to Augustine’s exaggerated concept of Original Sin. I commended the Wisdom tradition to you – not least because our friend Cindy’s faith, while recognisably evangelical, seems very much informed with the practical and trusting/joyful good sense of Wisdom thinking. (You can poke a virtual tongue out at me if I’ve embarrassed you there Cindy )

After we've covered first the Wisdom then the Powers territory - which could take a few weeks - I suggest we round up with some historical stuff about Augustine and the Manichean Heresy (which Anthony knows all about), the ECT tradition in Eastern Theology (in case we are tempted to get too rosy about the East) and - something I'm keen on - a look at what is important about Augustine (he said a few good things to keep, as well as many bad things to reject). And finally look at how it would be wrong to label any specific Christina tradition as totally formed by the bad bits in Augustine (history is messier than this - and the influence of Wisdom is often found in some seemingly Augustinian traditions and writings). This may just prove to be the dog end of an interesting discussion but I would like us to cover the whole territory. And who knows – the last part may throw up some hot issues.

All the best


Dick

[johnnyparker]

Wow, what a profound discussion! I don't think I can take all of it in in one session - so much to digest, as you say Sobornost.

But a couple of thoughts (probably not all that original, sorry) occur to me:

1. I don't understand original sin, but I know I am a sinner. It's one of the very few bits of theology I am sure about.

2. Far too much of religion - Christianity - is about 'personal salvation', escaping punishment in the afterlife for supposedly bad behaviour on earth. Bird nails that sentiment:

But I very early tried to throw salvation out the window. It makes one very selfish and clouds a lot of issue - you always think in terms of what will save YOU or what will damn YOU. It breeds a lot of that legalism. And all the Christians I speak to seem obsessed with the idea. When one mentions something negative they do, instead of worrying about its effect, they say "thank God for grace". One of the reasons I like Universalism because it kinda does throw that out the window. You are free to serve God because you want to, not because you feel cornered or blackmailed.

Interestingly, CS Lewis was a theist for a number of years before becoming a Christian, and did not believe in any sort of afterlife, thinking if far too mercenary for a religion which was all supposed to be about unselfishness, about dying to self and all that good stuff.

3. Evolution 'programmes' us to behave in a certain way. Some - including many Christians - would view that way as sin.

i'd argue alot (certainly not all!) of what we as humans do is self-motivated in some way. this may or may not be the sin of selfishness, but more of a behavioural pattern that we're born into. i think God urges us to break free of that pattern, and He promises to give us the strength to.

Guess that's basically what you're saying here, James? The question which perplexes me is why, if God urges us to break 'free of the pattern', we are programmed that way in the first place. I guess because the process of breaking free is beneficial to us, even necessary? (Which I think is Talbott's view.)

As always, I defer to my master, George MacDonald, for some wisdom on this subject:

"If sin must be kept alive, then hell must be kept alive; but while I regard the smallest sin as infinitely loathsome, I do not believe that any being, never good enough to see the essential ugliness of sin, could sin so as to deserve such punishment [ECT, basically]. I am not now, however, dealing with the question of the duration of punishment, but with the idea of punishment itself; and would only say in passing, that the notion that a creature born imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating, and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen, should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and too low to look up into the face of Jesus. It never in truth found place in any heart, though in many a pettifogging brain."

The good George condemns pointless retributive punishment - inflicting suffering on sinners for no reason other than the satisfaction of justice - in no uncertain terms.

4. Anybody read, or seen the movie of, 'A Clockwork Orange'? Anthony Burgess, a lapsed Catholic, was a believer in original sin, and he seems to be saying that the child-like central character, Alex, who drinks milk like a baby, is a sinner by nature, from birth, pretty much. Science - religion? - monkeys with his brain to try and make him be good, but it all ends in tears. Personally I've always found it a very interesting take on this whole subject.

Shalom

Johnny

[Sobornost]

That's a great post Johnny , and the quotation from George Macdonald is splendid (I've only ever read brief extracts from MacDonald they radiate goodness and good sense - they are modern(ish) Wisdom Literature). All of your points - 1-4 - are very relevant and well out and pick up on very interesting things that Bird and James have said recently (and originality is no big deal - nothing really is - and even sin that is original gets tedious through affecting us all in the same way). Sin being built into the evolutionary process, the fall into sin as being for our ultimate benefit (from the perspective of last things) – we can pick these up and discuss them to our profit.

Funny what you say about this thread being profound but difficult to absorb in one sitting. On reflection I think that the thread is indeed rather dense in the many difficult issues it raises all at once. The reason for this is the thread is completely relevant to the concerns of this site but, understandably in a UR site, to date the many other equally profound threads have focussed more on last things than first things: and so this discussion of first things, being the first real one on this site, has all of the feel of being over full and busting at the seams (for which I accept complete responsibility). Perhaps we need to take this conversation more slowly - and perhaps rather than doing all the discussing on one thread in sequence we need to start some other sub-threads under Soteriology on what we've already done

Original Sin versus Ancestral sin - the traditions compared and contrasted (and perhaps this is already covered quite thoroughly here)
In what sense are we, and especially children, 'sinners' (but this one certainly needs to stay an open ended conversation)

and on what we are going to cover

Wisdom and Sin - in scripture and tradition
Structural sin and personal sin
Historical perspectives on Augustine and Original Sin

If this was done all discussions could remain open ended rather than being closed down when taken in sequence.

Any ideas gratefully accepted from all regular, not so regular, and prospective contributors. Any feedback from people who simply like to read this thread would be most useful too. Please do let me know and I'll feedback to Drew (one of the site moderators who is also a valuable contributor to this thread).

All the best

Dick

Final thoughts Johnny – yes I do know about Anthony Burgess and ‘A Clockwork Orange’ – it is a profound and very disturbing novel (although I think Lord of the Flies has more insight into whatever we mean by sin in children). I remember Burgess’ voice well, listening to him on radio and the TV some years ago. Well he was very arrogant, and although lapsed himself from his faith took great delight in lecturing the rest of us on human depravity (and when he held forth with great confidence about Christian history – which he often confidently did - he often got his very confident facts wrong; apart from that, lovely bloke ).

That Alec drinks milk all of the time in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is a clear reference to Augustine. Augustine wrote a famous spiritual autobiography – ‘The Confessions’ – that contains an episode where he says he remembers gulping in milk from his mother’s breast as a baby and being filled with carnal greed (I used to think that he was either lying, weaned very late, or had an extraordinarily good memory ). It also contains one episode where he sins dreadfully as a child when scrumping/stealing apples from a neighbours’ orchard, and another episode where he is momentarily disturbed by sexual desire when disrobing with others in a public bath. People used to take this all literally – but current thinking very sensibly suggests (in my view) that his book is actually only part biography – to complement this it is also part invented allegory. The greed of the baby at its mother’s breast is an allegory of Original Sin, the scrumping/apple stealing episode is an allegory of the Fall from Eden, and the episode in the public bath is an allegory of baptism as the old Adam is cast off for the new. Well I found this interesting – but then I like history.

[Sobornost]

Dear All -

Perhaps this conversation is a little to full of ideas and busting at the seams. Perhaps we need to take it more slowly. And perhaps rather than doing all the discussing on one thread in sequence – moving from one theme to another - we need to start some other sub-threads under Soteriology so that all theme discussions can remain open ended.
We’ve already done -

Original Sin versus Ancestral sin - the traditions compared and contrasted (and perhaps this is already covered quite thoroughly here)
We’ve also already done
In what sense are we, and especially children, 'sinners'? (but this one certainly needs to stay an open ended conversation – and we neither need nor can expect complete resolution – so I reckon it needs a separate thread)

We are going to cover -

Wisdom and Sin - in scripture and tradition
Structural sin and personal sin
Historical perspectives on Augustine and Original Sin


Any ideas gratefully accepted from all regular, and not so regular, and prospective contributors. Any feedback from people who simply like to read this thread would be most useful too. Please do let me know and I'll feedback to Drew (one of the site moderators who is also a valuable contributor to this thread).

All the best

Dick

[Sobornost]

A footnote - I promise in future that if any of my posts contain a lot of historical detail, along with other essential stuff, I'll put the historical detail in italics so that anyone who finds it's 'not for them' can skip it.

[johnnyparker]

Hi Dick

Thanks very much to you - and to all the other participants in this thread - for raising some really interesting and challenging ideas. But I do agree with your suggestion that this thread be broken down into its 'component parts' as it were. It is already long, and covers a lot of ground, so I suspect anybody coming to it for the first time, like me yesterday, might find it a bit of a challenge to 'catch up'. (Or maybe I'm just slow! )

What's so interesting, though, is the way one area of theology links with another, and you can easily find yourself being launched down an unexpected tributary of the river you thought you were navigating. For example, cogitating on the notion of structural sin vs personal sin has set me thinking about the existence and function of Satan, which Is a subject I personally am very interested in and keen to explore (perhaps that's integral to the notion of structural sin anyway - please forgive my ignorance on that score; as I've said, this dense thread has left my brain spinning a little, even after a second read-through).

So yes, Dick, more of this, please, but in handier size chunks if possible. And in passing, I would suggest that if possible we should keep all the various strands of the discussion going. I for one don't feel that I understand the nuances of Original vs Ancestral Sin very well at all, and yet they are so germane to UR, and to other things I'm interested in (predestination, for example), I would love to get into them in more depth.

In closing for now, I would just touch on your thoughts on 'A Clockwork Orange' and 'Lord of the Flies'. I haven't read Burgess widely, although I have read some of his autobiography and I do know he was both a fearsome polymath and not backward about coming forward with an opinion! The original sin theme in 'Orange' is a fairly obvious one. I have read Burgess telling how Alex's attempted suicidal leap from a high window under torture is supposed to represent the Fall - which would seem, rather paradoxically, to suggest that even in his prelapsarian state he - and by extension mankind? - was already a violent thug?

But I wasn't aware of the allusion to Augustine, and to his autobiographical invented allegories. I must re-read the novel. (Gosh Augustine was an interesting, challenging, brilliant, frustrating character wasn't he?)

Golding I have read a little more widely, and clearly Christian themes are prominent in much of his work, not just 'Lord of the Flies' (eg 'The Inheritors', 'The Spire', 'Darkness Visible', the latter two of which I studied at school; but that was a long time ago!). Perhaps we could start a thread on original sin as explored in literature? Reckon those two books alone would fuel it for a while!

Anyway, thanks again to all for getting me thinking so hard.

Shalom

Johnny

[Sobornost]

Thanks Johnny - I think you are absolutely right; and I just await a little more feedback before setting the process in motion of beginning separate threads. The current thread is a sort of brainstorm - as you have so rightly and helpfully pointed out.

Yes Augustine was fascinating and passionate and complex, although his influence has been far too great. He wrote some beautiful mystical poetry – and I guess we must not misunderstand people who thrill to the odd phrase from Augustine and quote him with love (they almost certainly don’t approve of the ‘full works’). He wrote, ‘Too late have I loved thee....Our soul’s are restless until they find rest in thee’, for example.

Will ponder a little longer on the threads. Of course another important theme that has been broached here is the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. For me the holocaust has to be a sign for us to attend to. Before this Judaism was largely misunderstood and misrepresented by Christians becuase of their interpreting the Torah in the light of Original Sin. I think the right understanding is certainly not given by Christian Zionism (I don't know too much about Messianic Jews, so can't really comment on them). I think we can do better to look at the writings of, say, Etty Hillesum for pointers- she was the Jewish Christian woman who strove with all her might and all her young heart in response to God's grace to model God's love in the death camps, without rejecting her People. She should be a much loved saint of Christian Universalism.

I reckon that a look at Lord of the Flies could clarify discussion of childhood 'evil'. Perhaps it would be best placed in the context of looking at child development (johnny if its apporpriat ecould you write a breif plot synopsis - I knwo its all about the scapegoating mechanism). There is something that Bird has said that I didn't pick up on

quote="BirdOfTheEgg"]


Sobornost wrote:Children are indeed sinners – if you’ve been a parent or worked with young children you will know this all too well.
Tbh, I'm largely not going to accept this. I do not, will not, view children (in the basic sense) as active sinners. Developmental processes do not make them sinners, because they do not control their own development, so saying a child is a sinner because they are going through an ego-centric phase is really not smart. I guess I'll make a thread on my view on sin sometime to explain. Child corruption is a special topic of mine and if you are going to call children sinners I assure you we are all doomed because we can barely get even there. There's a reason Jesus said that to children belongs the Kingdom of Heaven, because they're not sinners, and put in a proper environment, they would be fine. I believe children will stumble a lot, and not resist corruption very well, and that is their ancestral sin. But not the fact that they think the world disappears when they close their eyes, that's a developmental phase.

No proper study has been conducted on the topic of very, very young children and nature vs nurture, because such a study would be unethical. Yet, a child can be very strongly affected by parental response in the first few weeks. The vast majority of the children you will see are raised on the cry-give formula, and are therefore reasonably spoiled, hence resulting in evil children.

This is a pattern you do not really see, and nobody will want to tell you it's there. And nobody wants to hear it, because nobody likes being told they made their children evil.

Children are born innocent and pure in the sense that they can discern a lot of things correctly if you let them. How many times I've seen a child make a completely logical request and a parent shut them up. This breeds sin, and destroys faith. Parents raise them in their crooked way, and parents actually make most of their children very, very evil, because they give them false information, and lying creates evil. Lying to children is not cute. Then you have this evil kid who becomes an evil teenager and you have to have society whine about them and fix them.

That's the majority of kids out there. Go to a Ukrainian school and you'd see it all for yourself. That is what Lord of the Flies works with. It's a generated evil, not innate. Every evil child I've seen there was a foolish parent behind it.

There's a reason the Orthodox venerate the Theotokos, I guess. Raising the Son of Man wasn't all him, I guess.
[quote="Sobornost"]

Bird - I agree with you absolutely, and think your thoughts on child development are spot on and brilliantly expressed (and love your throughts on the Theotokos ). I just can't 'do the math' on what I'm trying to say - I meant to place children in an ancestral sin context, not an original sin context, and I failed. We do need to talk further on this - and I need to listen properly. You obviously have the knoweldege and experience on this one (do you work with children adn/or have qualifications related to child development?). Can you think of a title for a thread that could look at this subject and have a title that somehow flags that it is intimately connected with the other Original Sin threads (because it is)?

All the best


Dick

[Melchizedek]

Richard Beck, who has recently joined our board, has an excellent series in his blog about how (specifically) the fear of death induces us to sin; and how that all ties in to Christus Victor theology.

I think the view in general is similar to Stephen Jones' view; that it is actually the state of being mortal that has passed on the propensity to sin, sort of like a generational curse or genetic disease that is passed down. We are enslaved by the fear of death, and it is only the resurrection provided to us that can free us from that.

[Sobornost]

That's very interesting and chimes with seomthing I half remembered early in the thread that an Orthodox theologian had written. (I only joined the site last November and have missed Richard Beck's thread on the site homepage - in case anybody else is as dumb as me. Yes he's got seriously interesting things to say that relate to first things as well as last things).

All the best

Dick (and I hear that you are a fan of Gerrard Hughes)

[Melchizedek]

That's very interesting and chimes with seomthing I half remembered early in the thread that an Orthodox theologian had written. (I only joined the site last November and have missed Richard Beck's thread on the site homepage - in case anybody else is as dumb as me. Yes he's got seriously interesting things to say that relate to first things as well as last things).

All the best

Dick (and I hear that you are a fan of Gerrard Hughes)

Yes, Gerry Hughes has some very keen insights, especially for a Catholic Jesuit priest; particularly for the time period of his writing. He was clearly hearing from God and was ahead of his time in many ways. I also appreciate the fact that he felt that he could effect change from within the institution, rather than feeling forced to separate himself from it.

[Sobornost]

Jeff (the agnostic) and I are having a discussion about Gerry Hughe's 'God of Surprises' over on a book thread that Jeff had already started as a result of touching base about it on this thread. I guess it's relevant to Orignial Sin because on of the things Hughes is doing in this book is trying to detoxify our imaginations of the Augustinian legacy by drawing upon a richer, more forgiving, more life affirming, and more humane Catholic tradition (although the exercises are based on Ignatius of Loyola, the sentiments are more those of Thomas Aquinas - who was a very different kettle of fish to Augustine. Thomas wrote that we cannot offend God unless we act against our own best interests).

All the best

Dick

[Sobornost]

A clarifier - Jeff started the book thread some time ago, but Jeff and I have begun to discuss 'God of Surprises' as a result of having touched base on it together in this thread. Do join in if you fancy it.

[Sobornost]

Hi Dick

Thanks very much to you - and to all the other participants in this thread - for raising some really interesting and challenging ideas. But I do agree with your suggestion that this thread be broken down into its 'component parts' as it were. It is already long, and covers a lot of ground, so I suspect anybody coming to it for the first time, like me yesterday, might find it a bit of a challenge to 'catch up'. (Or maybe I'm just slow! )

I’ve quoted Johnny here just to keep his feedback in our attention. This very recent thread really has been a joint effort. I've been 'guiding it' to raise the issues that I've thought about in the past as relevant to the theme, but that's all. The process of breaking down stuff into 'component parts' has already been suggested by Bird (she's spoken of starting new threads on two separate occasions in the past week), and after I’d first wanted to move things on in one big discussion from topic to topic I’ve come round to completely agreeing with her proposals and Johnny’s confirmation of these (hard to let go when you’ve been in control for a bit sometimes).
So do keep posting and think about the proposal of starting new component threads (which of course Johnny, could include threads on Literature and Original Sin, and ideas of Chaos, Temptation, Evil in the Bible focussed on the figure of Satan, and on predestination and freedom (seen from the point of view of first things). Well get order out of chaos here, even if it does take a few weeks to sort everything out.

All the best

Dick

[corpselight]

i think splitting topics could be useful, it does get a little complicated for my poor brain!
i've had to take it slowly.

Augustine, i am told, while being a pretty bad influence with his ECT, was apparently fairly liberal with his interpretation of Genesis? so definitely good and bad in all of us, and it's wrong to simply consign him to the "bad" pile of church fathers because he had a few bad doctrines. not his fault they captured the (awful and barbaric) imagination of the church til now.

i agree, foolish parenting ruins kids. toddlers can be hard to deal with, but yeah it's a stretch to say they're "guilty", though i'd say that the ignorance of how the world works and me-centricism of children, which is understandable, is an analogy of how humanity is. we are finally starting, as a species, to actually notice that other people and creatures share this planet with us, so i'd say we're growing out of the toddler phase of humanity...though of course there's an inconsistancy there if toddlers are pure...humanity before now was far from pure. but, it's a picture; an analogy.

about the fear of death:
at Easter last year, i attended a Methodist service, and the pastor spoke about what Jesus saved us from...and her answer was the fear of death. she showed how the fear of death is possible to be linked to so much actual badness in the world. at the time, i wasn't really ready for it, but i'm understanding more now as i come to realise that there are other models besides Penal Substitution. it sounds like she was arguing for Christus Victor. i will have to look into this more.

[Sobornost]

Good stuff James - so the idea of creating sub-threads is gathering momentum.
Yes I'd agree about Augustine - he didn't insist on a literal reading of the creation stories in Genesis. He saw them as symbolic/allegorical. But the idea that scripture contains different levels of meaning – the literal/historical level, the moral level (the level that gives us practical lesson on how to live), and the allegorical/symbolic level - was the mainstream tradition of ‘exegesis’ in the early Church. I understand that our friend Origen was the first of the Fathers to set this method of exegesis out systematically. I also understand the weight given to each level of interpretation could be different for different portions of scripture. For example for the stories of the massacre of the Canaanites in the Book of Joshua some Fathers prioritised the moral level – the stories teach us of struggle against sin and we should not get hung up on the seemingly repugnant literal level of meaning. Likewise with the interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis – that even in the light of Hellenistic science known to the Church Fathers seemed farfetched on a literal level– the allegorical/symbolic level was prioritised. Much later even Calvin – from whom many in Fundamentalism’s fold derive authority today – spoke of the first two chapters of Genesis as ‘bablative’ – or baby talk if taken literally. (Calvin also mused that the person who undertakes a deep study of the Apocalypse of John is either mad to begin with, or certainly mad when they’ve finished!). And this too is relevant to our discussion (how are we to understand the stories in Genesis?).
I like what you have to say about Easter. It reminds me of something the great Universalist theologian Jurgen Moltmann once said: ‘Easter is the festal protest against death and all that deadens.

All the best


Dick

[johnnyparker]

Dick, James

Some very interesting comments on Augustine. I knew he wasn't a Biblical literalist, particularly in relation to Genesis - I recently read an excellent book on Genesis - Genesis; The Movie by the American Episcopalian priest and about-as-close-as-you-can-get-to-being-a-Universalist-without-actually-being-one Robert Farrar Capon, which draws heavily on Augustine - but I had no idea this approach to scripture was common among the very early church fathers, Dick. How refreshing to learn that! In fact, I think we could all do with a healthy dose of 'primitive' Christianity. Those men and women were in so many ways so much closer to Christ and the Apostles - chronologically (obviously!), spiritually and theologically, if you ask me - than all who have come after them.

Personally I do believe in the idea of progressive revelation, but I also think some of us, sometimes, give way too much credence to the thought of the so-called 'great' theologians - Luther, Calvin etc - in favour of Christ, his contemporaries and appointed ambassadors, and the early fathers, simply because we perceive that they have somehow correctly 'worked out' theology - doctrines that the Bible doesn't make explicit (eg the atonement).

It's odd, isn't it, that in so many ways the broader 'orthodox' church is such a great respecter of tradition (eg in opposition to the doctrine of UR), but only a certain distance back in time. Were the church more willing to embrace the earlier traditions of those first Christians, we might not be in the pickle we are now over ECT.

Personally too, while I respect Augustine in many ways, I do think some of his ideas were truly terrible - bad hermeneutics, bad exegesis and eisegesis, bad philosophy, the works. His influence has been so malign - malignant even - and destructive on the gospel. And sadly, we're still seeing it everywhere today. (Look no farther than Mark Driscoll and his neo-Calvinist brethren.) But of course, Augustine converted from paganism, in pagan times. We mustn't forget that.

Calvin, of course, didn't have that excuse for his horrible theology.

Dick, I will have a think about a thread on literature and Original Sin. Not sure if I'm quite up to synopsising Lord of the Flies, though, without reading it again. Which might be edifying anyhow.

Shalom

Johnny

[Sobornost]

Thanks Johnny - didn't mean to put you on the spot there about Loed of the Flies

The allegorical method does have an interesting history - and I guess some of it is rooted in the Chistian traidition of typology - seeing symbolic prefiguration of the New Testament in the Old. I know one of the valid criticims of this method of the Fathers made by some of the Refomers is tha sometimes it was used so creatively as to completely lose sight of the literal sense (but I don't believe this criticism is valid ofr, say, an interpretation of Genesis that view s th edays of creation as symbolising epochs of indeterminate length using the symbolic numbder seven to mean completion - and thus the ressurection happens on a Monday, the eighth day syumbolising a new beginning).

The allegorical method of interpretation was revived by the Catholic Reformer Erasmus from Origen in the sixteenth century. I think it influenced the scriptual exegesis of the Anabaptist Spirituals (and I'm still pondering this).

It would be good to discuss how we understand the symbols in the Creation Stories of Genesis at some point.

All the best


Dick

[Sobornost]

Johnny - a thought on Calvin.
I am completely allergic to Calvinism from being hit over the head with big chunks of Cornelius Van Til and Francis Schaeffer when I was trying to find a way out of the Fundamentalist mindset. Sectarian Calvinism is a horrible thing.. Extreme Calvinists think that all who are not of their party are simply depraved beasts with whom there can be no common ground. There is no common ground between them and us - secular science, for example, may cast doubt on a literal reading of Genesis; but there is no reason to trust this. The people doing the research are depraved and actually not seeing the same data the elect do. This mindset informed Apartheid in South Africa, for example (with a bit of racism thrown in to the recipe). I've always found it amusing that some Calvinist's see Kuyper – the influential nineteenth century Dutch Calvinist - as a moderate and, therefore, a heretic. Kuyper suggested a policy of separate development for Calvinist, Catholic, and Secular communities in Holland. This idea became the root of Apartheid theology (although Kuyper would probably not have condoned apartheid himself). Kuyper was ‘generous’ enough to believe that people who are not of the elect are given a 'common grace' by God - which restrains their depravity and enables them to share a world with the elect - culturally, scientifically, and politically. So there can be good relations between the elect and the reprobate in this life -so long as a degree of separation is maintained. But this is all purely for the benefit of the elect - to make their lives comfortable here and now. In the world to come one of the punishments of the reprobate will be their despair at having common grace stripped from them. Nice eh!!!!!!

Is Calvin responsible for all of this? Well some good things have come out of the teachings of John Calvin, like Calvinist Universalism (Barth etc). And if you ever want to read a sympathetic account of old John boy, by an open minded and very intelligent and empathic writer, I'd recommend the essay on Calvin in Marilynne Robinson's ‘The Death of Adam’ (it certainly softened some of the anger in me).

All the best

Dick

[BirdOfTheEgg]

I think the view in general is similar to Stephen Jones' view; that it is actually the state of being mortal that has passed on the propensity to sin, sort of like a generational curse or genetic disease that is passed down. We are enslaved by the fear of death, and it is only the resurrection provided to us that can free us from that.

There was also a post regarding this idea on Experimental Theology. Little did I know, though, that this was also be supported in the Bible:

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. [Hebrews 2:14-18|ESV]

I'm reading Hebrews right now, and there's some really interesting stuff on it, particularly about Jesus's humanity, since we're on the topic of original sin and all. For one, there was a cross-reference in my ESV Bible from a verse in Hebrews 1 to 2 Samuel 7:14. And if you keep reading (according to Paul this is about Jesus):

12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, 15 but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. [2 Samuel 7:12-15]

Kind of interesting, eh?

[BirdOfTheEgg]

You obviously have the knoweldege and experience on this one (do you work with children adn/or have qualifications related to child development?). Can you think of a title for a thread that could look at this subject and have a title that somehow flags that it is intimately connected with the other Original Sin threads (because it is)?

I don't really work with children, I'd rather say that I observe parents a lot instead. Particularly, what they say, how they speak of their children, how they behave around them when they go visit someone, relative to what the children themselves are. Obviously this is rather anecdotal. As far as studying psychology and such is, I generally do case study, i.e., looking at one person at a time and seeing how things developed, instead of collecting data.

The things that I would point out the most are these: lying, mutual distrust, unearned approval, unjustified punishment, bad example, hypocrisy.

Most parents lie to their children. It's often small lies, but small lies can get big. The more you lie, the less the kid believes you. And this is ranging from some psychologically harmful stories and ideas such as "the demons will eat you if you do X", "if you eat a watermelon seed you'll have a watermelon grow in you", etc., to lies about simply how something works, why something happens, why should the child do something. If you use God somehow in the middle of this and make a lie using God's name (Christians do it, heck, even non-Christians do it), then I would say that is actually the direct breaking of one of the main commandments, i.e., blasphemy. Far worse than a swear word.

This goes into distrust. Distrust is actually the core issue because it's like man's gap with God: it's huge and very difficult to fix, and everything falls apart. If you treat your kid like an idiot, and he later discovers (thanks to the internet, no less) that watermelons do not grow in your stomach, or that birds do not bring kids, he may not respond very well to that implication. Especially if it's pervasive, as it is in some families I've seen. Distrust, of course, can come from other things. And it's usually two-way. The parent does not trust the kid with anything. The kid does not trust back. I have not seen a family where this did not occur, aside from movies and fiction. I'm sure they exist but I haven't seen one.

Unearned approval. This is the spoilage issue, when you approve (i.e., send false signals) of things you should not approve. For one, if your kid goes beat up another kid, and you approve it, you send him a message that that is good and OK. I've seen this, over and over. The most spoiled kids are these - anything they do, the parent approves. This approval also goes on the parents. If a parent does something, for the kid that implies they approve of it.

Unjustified punishment is the other side. We discussed this earlier. Your kid does something you do not like, you punish without explanation or warning. This usually breeds distrust as well, and often kids learn from this how to lie, how to avoid punishment, and they do not actually learn anything from your warnings.

Bad example/hypocrisy is the classic one. Can't do much if your parent is just not giving a good example at all, or, even worse, expects from you what they do not do or have not done. This can often generate some extensive problems, say, for instance, the parent dropped out of high school but beats you up for not having all A's in the most difficult classes and calls you lazy. They may even have a point, but for one, they lack experience with that situation themselves; for another, the child has little reason to believe they can accomplish it when their parent did not. Sometimes this is, in fact, an expression of the parent's neurosis and trying to relive their life through their kid.

This is why it's important to have an example that both experienced what we have experienced, but one who did not fail. I.e., Jesus. Hmm, did I just equate Jesus to a parent?

There's a lot of stuff here. All I will say is that the more I study humanity, the more I'm convinced we're all sick, in ways we do not even begin to realize. The issue of sin is fundamental and not some arbitrary term God made up. It's in front of us.

I dabble a lot in the fields of psychology and I've been looking into how various disorders typically show up and seem to associate. For one, I spent a while looking into the narcissistic, and it's one of those things that is very easily transmitted by parenting. I.e., narcissistic parents typically produce narcissistic children. I guess it's really the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" phenomenon. Same goes with parents who have a bullying attitude towards their children, etc. Things like NPD and such are also nearly undiagnosable, and most parents I've seen have some traits pertaining to it.

I wouldn't be particularly surprised if 90% of ancestral sin was, in fact, simply being exposed to life on Earth in one way or another.

[Sobornost]

Excellent post Bird -

Will have a ponder - and I need to think about a question you asked earlier that was connected to St Iraneus, and I'd like to say something for you about the idea of Original Innocence, different from Original Blessing and something I don't agree with. This entails a sentimentality about childhood that is a degraded form of Romanticism and was in evidence with the Hippies and today in some forms of New Age Thinking (it’s the cult of the wounded child that doesn't stack up, doesn’t protect and nurture real children, and is more about adults indulging themselves (if I put this into words it may become clear what I've got a hunch for here, and what I think we'll agree on once I've expressed it clearly enough - so hold your horses!).
Will post a reply soon (and inform you in your Introduction thread in case this thread keeps moving on).

And - hey, for the moment we can just talk all around the subject of Original Sin higgledy piggledy; we can do some sorting later (and it might take some time). Sorry to have done so much flip flopping!

All the best


Dick

[Sobornost]

And by the way Bird - the degraded romanticism about childhood of which I am thinking is just not where you are coming from in your posts which are informed by a genuine and clear insight into real children in the real world. Just need to 'do the math' before I rush into print about the degraded form. So will ponder.

All the best

Dick

[johnnyparker]

I wouldn't be particularly surprised if 90% of ancestral sin was, in fact, simply being exposed to life on Earth in one way or another.

Bird, in this one line, kind of sums up, for me at least, pretty much how I think about this whole issue of Ancestral Sin / Original Sin - as I've said on this thread, I'm not sure yet that I really 'get' the difference. But hopefully this conversation will help me learn.

My personal belief - which I guess is pretty orthodox, in many ways - is that we are inherently 'sinful'. That we cannot help doing things that are 'sinful'. As a believer in evolution, I think we are genetically programmed to behave in certain ways, many of which the church, the world, whoever, classifies as 'sinful'. Now this is not to deny that we have any ‘free will’ in determining how we actually behave – I am not a strict determinist like, say, the materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett, who (I think) asserts that we have no option to behave other than we do in anything we do (because we inhabit a completely closed system, where every action or event is purely the inevitable consequence of a preceding action or event).

But I do think that our genes (Ancestral sin?) – combined with our upbringing – create a very strong ‘inherited’ tendency to sin. And this, I believe, is what the Biblical notion of Original Sin is actually all about.

Don’t know if any of you guys have come across the work of the American anthropologist Robert Ardrey, who articulated in his books The Territorial Imperative and African Genesis the so called ‘killer ape’ theory – ie that humans have inherited a tendency to violence and aggression from the apes from which we are descended. Now I haven’t read Ardrey myself – I came across his ideas in connection with the movies of Stanley Kubrick and Sam Peckinpah, as part of a course I took at University – and I’m not sure I’d agree with him, even though I do believe in evolution.

But in the same way I look inside my own heart and see, as Mick Jagger says, it is black, I look around myself and see so much violence, aggression, cruelty and hatred in the human race, I wonder, where does it all come from? (Perhaps I shouldn’t say human race, rather the male members of it, for it is men who do practically all the violence - you just need to go to any English football ground on a Saturday afternoon to see thousands of young men behaving aggressively towards each other.)

Anyway, just some thoughts. So much to ponder here.

And Dick, thanks for your observations on Calvin. I just find it very hard to see the good in his thought, of which I’m sure there must have been plenty, because of the dreadful fruit it has produced ever since, including that you cite in South Africa, for example. Maybe I’ll try and give ‘The Death of Adam’ a go.

And no problem re ‘Lord of the Flies’, I just need to brush up on my reading is all.

Shalom

Johnny

[Sobornost]

Excellent post Johnny -

Regarding Bird’s contention that ‘90% of ancestral sin may in fact be the result of simply being exposed to life on earth’, what I really respect about Bird is her courage in holding on to important insights while negotiating the middle ground (the shabbier parts in me tend to want to negotiate a far too easy peace in the middle ground, by way of contrast with her). Because Bird is keeping us focussed on making clear and proper distinctions I think some genuine insights will emerge from this discussion eventually.

Interestingly Bird seems to be speaking of inherited sin mainly in terms of nature while you are speaking more in terms of genetic determinism from nature. Whatever the merits are in the ‘either/or?’, and the ‘both/and?’ cut and thrust of this debate, both can be seen from an Ancestral Sin perspective (which I think I may be beginning to understand through discussion with all on this thread).

With Augustine’s theory of Original Sin, the sin we inherit – whether through nature or nurture – is held against us as by God as a criminal offence in which we participate through our sharing/solidarity in the nature of ‘Adam’. In addition this Original Sin has so corrupted the Image of God in us that God’s grace actually, in a sense, destroys human nature if it is granted rather than renews it

With the Eastern theory of Ancestral Sin, the sin we inherit – whether through nature or nurture – is not held against us as by God as a criminal offence in which we participate through our sharing/solidarity in the nature of ‘Adam’ – it is something that God wants to rescue us, liberate us, heal us from so that our solidarity in the Old Adam is redeemed through our solidarity with in Christ out Victor, the New Adam. In addition the Ancestral Sin theory does not have as its corollary Augustinian ideas that Original Sin has destroyed the Image of God – rather God’s grace completes the image of God in us and enables us to grow from being bearers of God’s image into being sons and daughters of God according in his true likeness, truly reflecting his compassion and glory.

(That is how it’s beginning to seem to me (any comments??). Sure in a sense we can look into our hearts sometimes and see ‘black’ (and ‘Sir’ Mick Jagger should know all about this ) – but the Eastern view is that we should also see the image of God there, no matter who dimly (and, indeed, it is the light from this that points out the darkness in us without leading us to despair).


The link you make of Original Sin to evolutionary theory is very interesting. The Neo-Darwinian heavy trip as promoted evangelically by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett has been criticised for being a rehashed version of Augustine’s Original Sin theology complete with Augustinian hard determinism. For Dawkins – in ‘The Selfish Gene’ – we are at the mercy of our genes whose sole purpose is to survive. These selfish replicators have programmed us like robots in such a way that when we think we are behaving altruistically we are actually just promoting the selfish ends of our genes. Of course Dawkins’ in this book is discussing the legitimate scientific concept of the ‘analytic gene’. However. I think the moral philosopher Mary Midgeley who writes so clearly, so wisely and so humanely about these issues is right in saying that Dawkins gets completely carried away by his ‘giddying up-draughts of rhetoric on this matter. He has just reinvented the poetry of Augustinian pessimism and his closing sentence in the ‘Selfish Gene’ which argues that human beings alone are empowered to rebel against the selfish replicators that genes are’ – is lost in a fog of contradictions.

All the best


Dick

P.S. I raise a side issue as a footnote. Does belief in Ancestral Sin mean that the Eastern Church is Universalist? That’s a rhetorical question – we know it means nothing of the sort. Universalism as expounded by the Origen and by the much respected Doctor of Orthodoxy Gregory of Nyssa only has the status of theologoumena", or private - but allowed - theological opinion (as opposed to doctrines formally proclaimed by an ecumenical church council) There is a type of Eastern Christianity that stresses the real possibility that we might be lost eternally through our not responding to God’s love (but will also stress that the ‘fire’ that torments the ‘lost’ is not a special fire of torturing wrath – no, the fire that torments the lost and the fire that inspires the saved is one and the same, experienced differently according to the nature formed in us by the choices we make. However, there is another tradition of wide, and too wide, influence in the Eastern Church – this is the belief in ‘aerial toll houses’ (I quote from Wikipeida here - but have seen this information corroborated in the book I refer to below):

‘Aerial toll houses refers to a controversial teaching held by some Eastern Orthodox Christians, about the immediate state of the soul after death. According to this doctrine, "following a person's death the soul leaves the body, and is escorted to God by angels. During this journey the soul passes through an aerial realm, which is ruled by demons. The soul encounters these demons at various points referred to as 'toll-houses' where the demons then attempt to accuse it of sin and, if possible, drag the soul into hell."

This teaching is extensively alluded to in hagiographical and other spiritual texts of the church, though it has never been formally promulgated by any ecumenical council and so remains in the realm of "theologoumena’’. Many Orthodox saints and theologians have openly endorsed it, while other bishops and theologians have condemned it as heretical

So unfortunately belief in the toll houses as a "theologoumena" means that is has the same status in the Eastern Church as Universalism. However, I note from having read the standard and rather bullish work on Ancestral Sin written for Western readers by Orthodox scholars –‘The Ancestral Sin’ by John S. Romanides and George S. Gabriel – that this teaching arose in the fourth century and those Orthodox fathers who see it as anathema believe it has a Gnostic/Manichean origin, and may indeed be influenced by Augustinian ideas (Augustine was not without admirers in the East).

[BirdOfTheEgg]

You bring up an interesting issue with evolution. As someone with an interest in psychology, I have very big gripes with evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology when applied seems to instantly turn into some pseudo-horoscope style guessing on what man should do. The problem is, evolution "doesn't work like that", evolution is not directional, it does not have a purpose, it's full of emergent behavior, evolution is not smart, evolution does not prescribe what we should actually be doing, evolution seriously does not influence that much.

Yet, I've heard anything ranging from "it's OK for men to cheat because they're naturally built to have sex with as many females as possible" to "we are naturally programmed to enjoy killing each other, it's just social stigma preventing us from doing so" (I spent half-an hour debunking this one). Further various ideas on social structures how the strong should defeat the weak in capitalism and we shouldn't have social programs and rich people are the high rollers and so on. Darwin, who was a Christian early on, and drastically against using his ideas to generate this "darwinism" movement, is rolling in his grave. Little did these people knew that by generating and excusing so much injustice, they're driving people again to the realization that something within them can distinguish justice and injustice (C.S. Lewis argument), and it is stronger than the basic drives, and can push someone right back into Christianity (which is very big on filling valleys, first shall be last).

I, of course, hold a very different view, which is grounded closer to theories of real psychologists, as well as people who worked with special cases like Jung. And in psychology, if you tell someone that "everything man does is nature" (which is evolution), they'll laugh at you, because nature vs nurture is a huge debate and still largely a mystery. Developmental psychologists and others developed various theories, some of which are actually biased, some of which shed some light on why man can alternate between natural and nurture stuff (Maslov's pyramid shows some interesting interactions). And while nowadays atheism and evolution movement has almost buried true philosophy, which was a staple of ancient Greece, we still have our share in people like Ralph Waldo Emerson and so on.

The Eastern Church seems to believe in stagnant afterlife as the official Church, but it seems like their own saints hold very different opinions half the time.

‘Aerial toll houses refers to a controversial teaching held by some Eastern Orthodox Christians, about the immediate state of the soul after death. According to this doctrine, "following a person's death the soul leaves the body, and is escorted to God by angels. During this journey the soul passes through an aerial realm, which is ruled by demons. The soul encounters these demons at various points referred to as 'toll-houses' where the demons then attempt to accuse it of sin and, if possible, drag the soul into hell."

Tbh, I think this sounds... stupid. It's the same as Divine Comedy rubbish. I also heard a different version (from someone's book I think) where he said there was some wicked woman, who never did anything good ever (I am seriously doubtful such people even exist but w/e) except give someone an onion. So she is given the onion to hold on to while being thrown in the Lake of Fire, and whoever is already in the Lake of Fire is pulling her down, while an angel is pulling her up by the onion. And when she tried to kick off the arms that were pulling her down (because she was wicked, no less), the onion crumpled.

So I'm reading all these descriptions and I'm like "Seriously people?" I will not for a second believe this is anything rather than man's stupid fantasies, and, honestly, it takes a special kind of person to write this kind of stuff. It again comes back to these negative descriptions on God where God tries to keep man in terror and trip him up at every point. There are two reasons one can do such a thing: the evil way, where he trips people up to screw with them and send them to Hell; the good way, where a coach would trip you up to make sure you're in good shape and ready to go. I believe in the God of the latter. The God who made humans just to scare them for no reason to me seems unspeakably evil. Even a negative judgment would still be followed by the divine attributes of God.

[johnnyparker]

Great post, Bird. Have you actually studied psychology, because you have some very profound insights into what is for me a truly fascinating debate, ie nature vs nurture, but about which I am largely and sadly ignorant. As I've said, I believe in evolution, and I do think at least part of how we behave is down to our genetic programming. But I also believe that we are massively influenced by our upbringing and environment. But then I also believe, with Lewis, as you point out, we have a God-given conscience which can override either nature or nurture.

It again comes back to these negative descriptions on God where God tries to keep man in terror and trip him up at every point. There are two reasons one can do such a thing: the evil way, where he trips people up to screw with them and send them to Hell; the good way, where a coach would trip you up to make sure you're in good shape and ready to go. I believe in the God of the latter. The God who made humans just to scare them for no reason to me seems unspeakably evil.

All I can say to that is a resounding 'Amen'!

Shalom

Johnny

[Sobornost]

Ditto Bird - excellent post. Don't have a lot of time at the mo. but will respond properly sometime tomorrow. And ditto - you do have great insight into human psychology (and thanks so much for rasing this as a legitimate area for us to talk about). Brief word on Aerial Toll house- yes what a ridiculous idea!! What a very stupid idea It would be a purely laughing matter if it had not terrified people for generations in some sectors of the Eastern Church. I'm glad I heard about it or I would be getting a seriosly distorted and romantic picture of our sisters and brothers in the Christian East and theproblems they struggle with!

What an equally daft story that is about the woman and her onion! But it's still a good one for providing insight.

But will give proper feedback tomorrow - there's lots of stuff you bring up about Evolutionary Psychology, Darwin, and Jung that I can relate to.

Bird and Johnny would apprecitate feedback myself on one thing - the distinction I made between Original Sin and Ancestral Sin in my last post; is getting any easier to make a proper distinction? Did anything I wrote make sense? I don't think we'll be satisfied with a distinction until this thread has run for a bit longer - but I've chanced my arm at an interim definition.

As I said, I've read 'The Ancestral Sin' - and I found it a very difficult book that I soon sold. I got the conceptual jist but it didn't completely free my imagination by any means. Always forgive Dick his bookishness. One of the big reasons we are sharing here is to help and support each other in detoxifying our imaginations and opening our hearts to a broader vision. Information isn't everythign - but it can help. You are helping me enormously.

Cheers

Dick

[Sobornost]

Johnny sorry to be flippant about Mick Jagger but I was a bit of an art school type punk when young – but not one of those Mohican barbarians - and we were all rebelling against the likes of Sir Mick (I hated Punk’s speedy drift towards nihilism but I loved the X-Ray Spex and dear old Polly Styrene – who also got cheesed off with the nihilism and wrote very witty songs about consumerism and alienation and used her loud voice as a weapon to get the message across – and l Ioved/love Reggae ( but not keen on modern Reggae). It was a welcome holiday from being bashed over the head with large chunks of Francis Schaeffer at church!!!! .

The reason I’m sorry is that my flippant remark, unfortunately, was in the context of a very serious point you were making. That you know you are a ‘sinner’ and see yourself as ‘painted black’ inside. I’ll give you my thoughts on this now.
In her Introduction Bird asks a question about a verse 5 from Psalm 51, often quoted in defence of the Augustinian view of Original Sin:

‘Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in guilt(or ‘sin’ in some translations) did my mother conceive me.’

(Bird pointed out the variation in translations to me). I note that this comes from one of the seven Psalms that Catholics call the penitential psalms and Protestants call the psalms of repentance. These psalms are an outpouring of grief at personal sin and have traditionally been ascribed to King David, composed by him in recognition of his grievous having sent Uriah the Hittite into the think o battle to be killed to clear David’s path to Uriah’s wife Bathsheba (an awful and fearful example of the sin of covetousness played out).

This is the same David who played his harp and danced without inhibition, joyfully before the Ark of the Covenant (and God was well pleased with this). David was a Royal Person, beloved of God – but this didn’t mean that he was perfect. My view is that this psalm is speaking about a particular and desolate mood of alienation from God, and the intensity of its language is extreme to mirror an extreme mood of alienation. So its language should not be used as a cornerstone of sound biblical doctrine, but rather viewed as hyperbole.

Of course the psalm can also be seen as testifying to the doctrine of Original Sin but I note that many people who affirm this doctrine – Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, and some of them notable Christian writers - actually don’t mean it in the full blown Augustinian sense. They simply mean that we are born, or quickly become, creatures who – as well as being made in the Image of God – have an inbuilt tendency towards sin; therefore we are in need to God’s grace through Christ and always must be forgiving and longsuffering of each other’s failings.

There is a beautiful passage from the Greek version of the Old Testament which is much loved in the Church of the East (at least the 'non aerial toll house' parts of it) and it has to be a hit with Western Universalist –

For you love all things that exist,
And detest none of the things that you have made,
For you would not have made anything if you had hated it.
How would anything have endured if you had not willed it?
Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved?
You spare all things for they are yours,
O Lord, you who love all things.
For your immortal spirit is in all things.

(The Wisdom of Solomon 11, 12.1)

So in this reckoning we are, as Bird has stated elsewhere, ‘Royal People’; loved by God from the first, like King David. The problem with this passage for Evangelical Universalists is that it is placed in the Protestant Apocrypha because the Book it is taken from –The Wisdom of Solomon - is not found in Hebrew manuscripts of the Hebrew Testament. It seems to have been written in Alexandria sometime in the two hundred years before the birth of Jesus by a Greek speaking Jew. However, for the Protestant it can be seen as having a higher status than some of the other apocryphal literature. You see it seems very likely indeed that St Paul, a Greek Jew, draws upon ‘The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon’ in his letters (compare Romans 9: 21 – 23 with Wisdom 12: 12-18; an compare Ephesians 6: 11 – 17 with Wisdom 5 17- 20) and that it is echoed elsewhere in the New Testament. And anyway, the Wisdom theme – expressed with such clarity and beauty in the above passage, is very much present in canonical books of the Hebrew Testament, and in the New Testament Jesus often speaks using wisdom themes and is spoken of in terms of Wisdom symbolism. I think the Wisdom theme is worth exploring further and I think I can discern as central to George MacDonald’s theology.

I’m a real depressive by nature, so I naturally home in on the Penitential psalms and am tempted to make them the basis for my interpretation of scripture. However......

I’m sure when you look within' even in your most Augustinian moments' you don’t just see darkness. There is light illuminating this darkness for you – because you do believe in freewill, so there has to be a part of you that can respond to Grace. And, I’m sure you don’t just see a pit of depravity and violence when you look within; the light isn’t solely there to reveal your darkness. It’s well apparent – at least from our conversations - that there are plenty of resources of creativity, curiosity, compassion and justice making inside of you too; and this is the stuff the stuff of God image, which has yet to be perfected in us all (and it will take aeons). And I reckon this is what you actually think – I hope.

In my view, if faith is too concentrated on personalised notions of sin – the Augustinian introspective e conscience, the bloke in the Christian Union prayer meetings I used to go to who would ‘narcissus like’ pray, ‘O Lord, I’m vile!’ – is that if this is how we see ourselves, this is how we can view other people and act towards them in accordance with this view. Augustinian stuff has been used to justify all sorts of oppression – on the grounds that oppressive social structures are needed to constrain sin; and we both know about Apartheid theology. I’m aware that the Calvinist preacher in America, John Piper, has said that he used to be racist (and ‘saved’ at the same time). He now realise he was wrong and he and his wife have adopted a black baby girl as a result (poor kid). However, he still thinks that any fight against racism is low down on the list of Christian priorities and should not redirect energies form the more urgent task of evangelising God’s elect. He’s wrong. He wouldn’t have changed his mind about racism is Martin Luther King and not preached the message that black people are Royal People, beloved of God just as much as white people – and this was Wisdom theology. And the fight for social justice and inclusiveness is part and parcel of the gospel because we don’t derive our hope from our division in the old Adam, but from our unity in the New Adam.

(I do have some thoughts about killer Ape theory - read something really interesting relevant t to this -but will leave until another post. The next one I do will be a reply to Bird).

All the best Johnny
Dick

[johnnyparker]

Dick

Thank you so much for your thoughtful and compassionate post, which I found personally very encouraging and uplifting. You bless me with your fellowship (and indeed with all your interesting and challenging posts). Thank you.

The Greek OT passage you quote is indeed lovely, and I will file it away in my mental library of scriptures to treasure.

I do look inside myself and see my heart is black sometimes, it’s true. I know we’re all sinners, so I’m no different from anybody else in that respect. But I’m not so ‘inversely spiritually proud’ (if you see what I mean) that I think of myself as vile all the time, because I don’t. When, by God’s grace, I am doing my best at doing His will, and doing the things Jesus told us to do, I am not oppressed by my own sinfulness. But I’m always mindful of it.

But it’s the bad stuff that seems to be such a fundamental part of me, that actually is me, that gets me down sometimes. The besetting sins, the bad habits I have tried and failed my whole adult life to eradicate, the unattractive character traits. Although I do try my best to see the best in other people, I am prone to cynicism, and can have a sharp and sarcastic tongue sometimes, which too often I am too quick to use. I love satirical humour, black humour, but those are weapons which must be deployed with great care.

Perhaps the scripture which resonates the most with me on this subject is Paul in Romans 7 (my emphases):

"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."

Guess I'm in good company, eh? I guess the above throws a little light on why I’m so interested in the whole subject of Original Sin and Ancestral Sin, and the ‘nature v nurture’ debate. I do not in any wish to abrogate responsibility for my own failures as a person. But I would like to try and understand better why I behave the way I do sometimes.

But anyway, that’s enough about me! You say you are a depressive by nature. I’m sorry to hear that; you really don’t come across that way at all, if that’s of any consolation. There’s a lot of depression in my family, and I suffer from anxiety myself, and it is sometimes very debilitating, so I can sympathise with you there.

And no worries about being flippant about Sir Mick. I’m actually a bit of an old punk rocker myself (one-time favourite band the Ramones, three of whom, can you believe, are – like dear old Polly Styrene – no longer with us? ).

Would be interested to hear your thoughts on Killer Ape theory in due course. But for the meantime, God bless you, sir.

Shalom

Johnny

[Sobornost]

Johnny that's so sweet of you to thank me so warmly - you've made my day!

I really do think I understand you. I may seem as jolly as Old King Cole but - well I might as well tell you my dark secret... When I was young and a fundamentalist I started to suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy- not the falling type, nor the one where you go absent for a bit, but the one where your head scrambles suddenly, you can't get your words out, and you start seeing visions and getting flooded with emotions out of nowhere. Because of the 'spiritual warfare' milieu I was moving in, this was interpreted to me - and I in turn interpreted it to myself - as 'Satan' getting at me. And so I kept it to myself for a couple of years, got into plenty of trouble at school for not concentrating (and failed most of my O levels), and generally went round in a right old pickle of anxiety. I think my parents just thought I was a disturbed adolescent and worried a lot about me. In the end I did have the epilepsy diagnosed and started taking the medication and my life became bearable; and exit stage left from fundamentalism for me. I needed the peace and quiet of Quaker meetings to recover after too much high octane religion - and felt very angry and bitter, not just with fundamentalists but with evangelicals for a long time (I've changed now). The temporal lobe is the part of the brain that processes emotion and as the fits left me I developed cyclothymia - that's the mildest form of bi-polar disorder, but it still can be quite debilitating. Again this went undiagnosed for a long time and I think I wrongly interpreted the depressions as spirituals despair and the manic bits - when my brain became overly fertile and thoughts started rushing together - as me coming together again. Now I take medication and have learnt to live with these cycles as my 'thorn in the flesh' - as it were; (but do let me know if I ever start talking gibberish on this site - it could mean that I've gone too far up in the sky:lol: I think all of this has taught me much (I hope so).

You should take on board suffering from anxiety too, and learn to live with it rather than despair at it (well that's my advice)

Regarding the quotation from Romans - do look at my earlier post on St Paul the Greek Jew, Hamartia and Law (it gives a differnet perspective on this passage). You quote him thus

Perhaps the scripture which resonates the most with me on this subject is Paul in Romans 7 (my emphases):

"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."

Note that Paul's emphasis is in the climatic sentence - and not at the point that you emphasise. It's not him who is the problem, it's the 'sin living in me' , something he is confident that Christ our Victor will liberate him from - thus he asks to be rescued from this 'body of death' not this 'body of sin'. And we note that for Paul body - 'sarx' – does not mean our living flesh. It means dead flesh (rotting and covered with flies perhaps). It is his metaphor for our total being alienated from God (therefore it is possible opt sin with the intellect and the emotions as well as with our living flesh).

Dear old Polly - yes she died last year having said some lovely and positive things about life and about being grateful for her life and not despairing of humanity when she was in her last days. There was an outpouring of affection for her over the internet. And my other favourite New Wave girl - witty sassy Kirsty MacCool - also died young and died a hero pushing her child out of the way of a speed boat. The only one left is Lora Logic. The Ramones - sorry about the body count there. I liked ‘Sheena is a Punk Rocker’ and ‘Blitzkrieg Bob’ a lot.

Rich blessings on you old chum. There was an Eastern mystic who said 'Keep your mind in hell and despair not' And I'd go along with that. Let’s both go along with that.

All the best



Dick

[Sobornost]

P.S. The saying 'Keep your mind in hell, and despair not' comes from the Russian Orthodox Saint Staretz Silouan. Of him I know nothing, he could have been an absolute terror for all I know But I've seen his saying quoted twice - and it spoke to me.

Bird - you are top of my list to get back to. But my post to Johnny today reflects things we have already discussed, but in a more thought through form. There are lots of typos in the last paragraph about John Piper and Martin Luther King (hope these make sense - I was in a rush to finish)

All the best

Dick

[corpselight]

if you'll not mind me being briefly off topic, i wish my girlfriend was a Christian, or a bit more open to it, as she'd be in good company on here, i think. she spent her youth as a punks protesting various evils, and i think she'd enjoy chatting about some of these things here!
maybe one day

[Sobornost]

James - yes I think Punks got a really hard time of it by all being tarred with the same brush (and wiht delicious irony, the peopel really threatened by them were old hippies, who had not been cautious about giving offence in their own day - like, arise Sir Jumping Jack Flash ). Your girlfriend sounds like a top lass.

Another thought on Romans 7 - I'll need to think further about this too. There is a clear sense here of 'sin' not so much as wilful disobedience/crime but rather as sickness/bondage/frustration that we are being liberated from and one day will be free of in Christ our Victor (I'm still partially stuck in the Augustinian mindset you know). What we call our habitual sin, this sense of being the long term recidivist/re-offender up again before the same judge who with reluctance and irritation sentences us to a night in the cells, perhaps Paul would have referred to as 'weakness'.

I am mindful of another gem by one of the Eastern Fathers, Evagrius of Pontis (who contributed to the Philokalia - the compendium of Orthodox spiritual practice - and so is much respected as an authority). In his ‘Commentary on the book of Proverbs, speaking of Jesus’ parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus he writes:

'There was a time when evil did not exist, and there will be a time when it no longer exists; but there was never a time when virtue did not exist and there will never be a time when it no longer exists. For the seeds of virtue are indestructible. And I am convinced by the Rich Man almost but not completely given over to every evil who was condemned to hell because of his evil, and who felt compassion for his brothers, for to have pity is a very beautiful seed of virtue.'

[johnnyparker]

Dick

Thanks for your recent posts, and for being so open about your mental health history. As somebody who has suffered on and off from anxiety problems - sometimes very severe - for quite a few years now, it is very helpful to hear the testimony of another Christian who has been through this sort of thing. I think there's a tendency for some (many?) Christians to 'hide' these sorts of issues - anxiety, depression etc - in much the same way that they 'hide' their doubts or questions. This can then create a (false) climate where we can sometimes feel like there must be something wrong with us, or with our faith, if we're not always feeling on top of the world.

I am on medication myself now. When I went to my doctor, who is lovely, and told her all about my symptoms, I also told her that I felt somehow 'ashamed' of myself, seeing as how I was a Christian, and hence felt I ought not to be suffering from anxiety. She said that if I had, say, appendicitis, I would go to the doctor and get treatment, and my faith would have no bearing on the matter at all, so why should it be any different just because my problem was mental, not physical. I found that a very helpful perspective.

Anxiety is one thorn in my flesh (I reckon I have quite a few , but I am gradually learn to live with it. It is not constant, though; it waxes and wanes, as the Lord is gracious enough to bless me with His peace.

Really glad to hear you yourself have come to terms with your own thorn, and indeed that you were able to break free of the fundamentalist straitjacket. Not sure where you yourself stand on the whole 'Satan' issue. I would classify myself as strongly agnostic about the adversary being a personal being at all. But whatever he or it is, blaming him or it for one's mental health problems isn't very helpful, I don't think. (That's a whole other thread there, of course. )

Thanks for your observations on Romans 7. You are right, I think. The whole thrust of Paul's argument here seems to be that we are all, as you say, 'sick' with sin, in bondage to it. Whatever is really meant by Original Sin or Ancestral Sin or Adam's curse, call it what you will, it isn't something we choose to bring upon ourselves. Which if you ask me is a pretty strong argument in favour of UR! If we can't help being sinful (which we can't); if we can only ultimately escape the slavery of sin by God's grace through faith in Christ, and that faith itself is a gift from God, not something we can summon up by our own efforts, then we are, as the Calvinists would say, utterly helpless to rescue ourselves from our life of sin. Only God can do that. And because He is not partial, not a respecter of persons, and because, as the Bible tells us repeatedly, He sincerely wills that all his children be saved, then one day we all will be!

I will look at your earlier posts on Paul in more detail when I have time.

Your quote from Evagrius of Pontis is, as you say, another gem. Where do you get them all from?! These Eastern fathers had some jolly good insights if you ask me.

Shalom

Johnny

[johnnyparker]

James

Regarding your 'off-topic' remark about your girlfriend, two of the many things I love about this forum are that:

a) You can go off-topic whenever you like, it's all good!

b) People are as a rule so unjudgemental. Judgementalism is one of the most unattractive traits of Christians generally - certainly Christians of a certain type, and that type tends to be (but isn't always, of course) the ECT-believing type. I think this is one of the fruits, and one of the proofs, or UR.

Shalom

Johnny

PS Check out Ravi Holy's introductory post here, and his Facebook profile, if you want to see the epitome of the ex-punk Christian!!!

[corpselight]

James

Regarding your 'off-topic' remark about your girlfriend, two of the many things I love about this forum are that:

a) You can go off-topic whenever you like, it's all good!

b) People are as a rule so unjudgemental. Judgementalism is one of the most unattractive traits of Christians generally - certainly Christians of a certain type, and that type tends to be (but isn't always, of course) the ECT-believing type. I think this is one of the fruits, and one of the proofs, or UR.

Shalom

Johnny

PS Check out Ravi Holy's introductory post here, and his Facebook profile, if you want to see the epitome of the ex-punk Christian!!!

yeah, it's pretty awesome here!
i've got Ravi on my FB already, and read his testimony in an old news article. very cool! he wasn't exactly the socially responsible type of punk, but he's become one now, in a way!
part of my GF's problem with religion i think is down to what she was often protesting against...a poor track record of actually doing good in the world. but she seems ok with me, and even encourages me to go to church!

[revdrew61]

P.S. The saying 'Keep your mind in hell, and despair not' comes from the Russian Orthodox Saint Staretz Silouan. Of him I know nothing, he could have been an absolute terror for all I know But I've seen his saying quoted twice - and it spoke to me.

St Silouan (1866-1938) was actually known for his humility, constant prayer and emphasis on love for enemies. Thomas Merton apparently called him "the most authentic monk of the twentieth century". The retired bishop of Sheffield, Jack Nicholls, spoke about Silouan at our Synod meeting last week, describing him as his favourite saint. +Jack is an Anglo Catholic (a Mirfield man) rather than evangelical, but he did give a clear universalist message, with a strong Eastern Orthodox flavour. Can't remember it all but, starting from Jacob's ladder, he referred to Jesus's descent to hell as planting a ladder there and stated that God could not possibly be satisfied until every last person was rescued. Maybe I should have been an Anglo Catholic - universalism seems uncontroversial for them and it also seems OK for them to see original sin and salvation in EOx terms rather than the Augustinian view which is the norm amongst evangelicals and Roman Catholics. On the other hand, 4 days of A-C worship last week nearly drove me up the wall. Think I'll stay "EU"...