Last night–somewhat against my better judgment–I went to hear a talk given by “Celtic Christianity” guru J. Philip Newell at a “faith forum” sponsored by a group of Capitol Hill churches, including ours. Though I didn’t know too much about Newell going in, my fears that it would be fuzzy feel-good New Ageism were, alas, mostly confirmed.

In Newell’s telling, we’re living at the birth of a “new consciousness.” This involves something like overcoming the dualities of earth/heaven, matter/spirit, male/female, nature/grace, the One/the many, etc. and realizing the essential oneness of all things.

Christianity’s contribution to this new consciousness will best be served, according to Newell, by rehabilitating the Celtic tradition and rejecting much of the standard-issue Western tradition. The most interesting part of Newell’s talk was an attempted rehabilitation of the much-maligned Pelagius. According to Newell, Pelagius was a gender egalitarian, appreciated the wisdom of the pre-Christian Druid tradition, and rejected the Augustinian view of original sin. (Confusingly, Newell seems to think that the Augustinian view holds that we are evil by nature, and that the Pelagian view rejects this; but Augustine certainly didn’t think that, which is not to say that his view of original sin doesn’t have problems.) Newell said that we have had the doctrine of original sin beaten into us and need to recover a doctrine of our essential goodness, as well as a sense that grace perfects nature rather than being in opposition to it (he didn’t use the exact phrase “grace perfects nature,” which might’ve given away the error that the evil Western tradition is uniformly anti-nature).

Although the talk (and Newell’s most recent book) was called “Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation,” there was actually very little talk about Jesus. Christ, he said, reveals the “heartbeat of God” which is also found in every person, and in all nature. But we didn’t hear much about the specific shape of Jesus’ life, much less his death and resurrection. In his scheme, Jesus seems to serve as an exemplar of a kind of nature mysticism, and this can lead Christians to embrace the “new consciousness.”

To some extent, I’m sympathetic to an attempt to rehabilitate Pelagius. I have no doubt the historical Pelagius probably got something of a raw deal at the hands of his theological opponents. And I don’t accept a full-throated Augustinian doctrine of original sin/guilt. But Newell’s view just doesn’t seem to have the resources to grapple with the reality of evil. I guess if you spend most of your time leading workshops at idyllic retreat locations like the Isle of Iona, off Scotland, and Casa del Sol in New Mexico, you might have a benign view of the world as good through-and-through. But, beyond those surroundings, we have a world that is full of a lot of brutality, violence, cruelty, suffering, and frustration. It calls for a more radical solution than attaining a new consciousness.

This is the truth contained in the traditional doctrine of original sin, however much we might need to re-think some of its cruder explications. Sin isn’t just a matter of limited knowledge or faulty perception, but a profound distortion of the will. The good that we want to do, we don’t do, and the evil we don’t want to do–that we do (to paraphrase St. Paul). This is why a New Age nature-mystic Jesus isn’t the solution to our problems, emphatically including the problem of our despoiling of the earth. Our ignorance isn’t the only–or even the major–reason that we take more than our share of the earth’s goods, crush the poor under our heels, and drop bombs on villages in faraway places. Rather, “we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves,” in the words of the Lutheran Church’s confession of sin. A Christ who can’t liberate us from the principalities and powers that hold us in thrall isn’t going to be much help.

The problem with appeals to “Celtic Christianity” is that the history of the Celtic church is shrouded enough that it enables modern liberals to project onto it pretty much everything good in opposition to everything they find bad about the “Western Church” (this is the term Newell used – why the Celts are not part of “the West” wasn’t clear to me). Such a construct is rarely going to be more than a reflection of whatever values we happen to hold, like the image of the “historical Jesus” at the bottom of the well of history, who simply reflects the image of the scholar peering down into it. Only the living Christ can actually stand outside of us to both judge us for and liberate us from our sin.

ADDENDUM: My wife tells me that saying “if you spend most of your time leading workshops at idyllic retreat locations like the Isle of Iona, off Scotland, and Casa del Sol in New Mexico, you might have a benign view of the world as good through-and-through” was a low blow. And she’s right. I have no idea how Newell spends the rest of his time and it was unfair of me to suggest otherwise. I think the point stands, though: I really don’t see how Newell’s brand of benign nature mysticism can account for radical evil in the world and in the human heart.