A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion 13 & 14

    Augustine concludes his Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love with a discussion of Christ’s saving work, the forgiveness and new life we receive in baptism, and a brief meditation on the final judgment.

    Recall that for Augustine we are condemned on account of original sin – the guilt imputed to us because of our first parents’ sin – and actual sins we have committed (though infants are guilty only of the former). Christ, then, is the sacrifice that washes away all sins, original and actual. “Although he himself committed no sin, yet because of ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’ in which he came, he was himself called sin and was made a sacrifice for the washing away of sins.”

    Augustine goes on to describe how Christ takes away our sins in a way that to my ears sounds very Lutheran:

    The God to whom we are to be reconciled hath thus made him the sacrifice for sin by which we may be reconciled. He himself is therefore sin as we ourselves are righteousness–not our own but God’s, no in ourselves but in him. Just as he was sin–not his own but ours, rooted not in himself but in us–so he showed forth through the likeness of sinful flesh, in which he was crucified, that since sin was not in him he could then, so to say, die to sin by dying in the flesh, which was “the likeness of sin.” And since he had never lived in the old manner of sinning, he might, in his resurrection, signify the new life which is ours, which is springing to life anew from the old death in which we had been dead to sin.

    This passage hits a couple of favorite Lutheran themes such as the “happy exchange” and the notion of “alien righteousness.” Christ takes our sin and we receive his righterousness. We have no righteousness or standing before God of our own, but we have Christ. It’s very easy to see how passages like this influenced Luther.

    And we receive Christ and his righteousness by being united to his saving death in baptism:

    This is the meaning of the great sacrament of baptism, which is celebrated among us. All who attain to this grace die thereby to sin–as he himself is said to have died to sin because he died in the flesh, that is, “in the likeness of sin”–and they are thereby alive by being reborn in the baptismal font, just as he rose again from the sepulcher. This is the case no matter what the age of the body.

    In baptism we die to all our sins – original and actual – to all the sins which we have already committed by thought, word, and deed. This is true as much for the lifelong sinner as for the newborn infant. Since Christ died to sin once and for all, defeating the power of sin, we, in being joined to his death by the waters of baptism die to sin as well.

    The death of Christ crucified is nothing other than the likeness of the forgiveness of sins–so that in the very same sense in which the death is real, so also is the forgiveness of our sins real, and in the same sense in which his resurrection is real, so also in us is there authentic justification.

    Such a high view of justification by grace, though, always seems to raise the dread specter of antinomianism. If we’re forgiven and justified because of Christ’s righteousness and saving death, then why not go on sinning? Laissez les bons temps rouler!

    Of course we all know that Augustine, following Paul, when asked if we should sin more that grace may abound is going to respond: by no means! Christ, in his death, “died to sin” in the sense that he defeated its power. How much more, then, should we who are baptized into his death also “die to sin”? As the Apostle says “If we have died to sin, how, then, shall we go on living in it?”

    Part of the idea here seems to be that because we are so closely united to Jesus in his life-giving passion and resurrection, it would be a kind of performative contradiction to go on sinning. It makes no sense for me to say that with Christ I have died to sin but can nevertheless go on sinning. If I say that it shows that I either don’t really believe it or don’t understand it.

    Augustine points out that the entire sweep of Christ’s life serves as a model for the Christian life:

    Whatever was done, therefore, in the crucifixion of Christ, his burial, his resurrection on the third day, his ascension into heaven, his being seated at the Father’s right hand–all these things were done thus, that they might not only signify their mystical meanings but also serve as a model for the Christian life which we lead here on the earth.

    It’s interesting here that Augustine doesn’t advert to the teachings of Jesus as providing the template for the Christian life, but the whole shape of his life, especially his passion and resurrection. We are crucified with Christ, buried with Christ, and raised to new life with Christ. Quoting Paul again: “But if you have risen again with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For your are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”

    There is, then, a kind of “because…therefore” structure to Christian ethical imperatives. Because we have died and been buried with Christ, we therefore are dead to sin. Because we have been raised with him, we therefore have new life. This is in contrast to a “if…then” form such as “If you want to be accepted by God, then you must do x, y, or z.” The Christian life grows out of the experience of being grasped by God’s grace (preeminently in the sacrament of baptism).

    Augustine concludes with a brief discussion of the Last Judgment. He acknowledges that Christians believe that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, but he points out that “the living and the dead” can be understood in two different senses. It could mean, literally, that Christ will judge those who are alive here on earth and those who have already died at the end of the age. But it could also refer to the “living” as those who are righteous, or destined for God’s kingdom, and the “dead” as the unrighteous. The judgment of God would then reveal one’s status as belonging to one of these two groups (elsewhere Augustine talks in more depth how here below we can’t determine empirically who belongs to the elect and who to the reprobate). Of course, these two notions aren’t mutually exclusive; God may judge the living and the dead precisely by means of establishing who the righteous and the unrighteous are.

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion 12: The Incarnation and the Holy Spirit

    In chapter 12 Augustine considers the role of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation. Though we say that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, we don’t call him the son of the Spirit. Should we say that his divine nature is the Son of the Father but that his human nature was the Son of the Spirit? No, because that would divide his person.

    He goes on to discuss the various senses in which we might say something is born of something else and the different respects in which someone might be called a son (by birth, by adoption). His point is that not everything which is born of something else is called that thing’s son, nor are all sons sons by birth. One wonders whether part of Augustine’s intent here is to counteract attempts to portray Christianity as another pagan myth where the god impregnates a human woman with his offspring.

    So, we don’t want to call Jesus the Son of the Spirit, and yet the Spirit plays a special role in his conception and birth. Augustine’s explanation is to connect this to grace:

    Wherefore, since a thing may be “born” of something else, yet not in the fashion of a “son,” and conversely, since not everyone who is called son is born of him whose son he is called–this is the very mode in which Christ was “born” of the Holy Spirit (yet not as a son), and of the Virgin Mary as a son–this suggests to us the grace of God by which a certain human person, no merit whatever preceding, at the very outset of his existence, was joined to the Word of God in such a unity of person that the selfsame one who is Son of Man should be Son of God, and the one who is Son of God should be Son of Man. Thus, in his assumption of human nature, grace came to be natural to that nature, allowing no power to sin. This is why grace is signified by the Holy Spirit, because he himself is so perfectly God that he is also called God’s Gift. Still, to speak adequately of this–even if one could–would call for a very long discussion.

    Being born of the Holy Spirit indicates, then, that the unity effected between the human and divine natures is from first to last an act of God’s grace. This forecloses both adoptionism and safeguards the full humanity and full divinity of Jesus. Speaking of him as the Son of the Holy Spirit and Mary might indicate some kind of human-divine hybrid. Instead, the orthodox teaching is the human nature was fully united to the divine life, by grace alone, without ceasing to be human.

  • Faith seeking understanding

    Deconstructionist theologian Don Cupitt urges the church to trade in its traditional reliance on western metaphysics, the view that “behind the flux of experience there had to be something Real, one, intelligible to us, and perfect” with a radical rethinking of Christian faith based on a kind of post-Derridean anti-realism:

    We used to assume that we were presented with a ready-made world, with a built-in order that we were predesigned to be able to grasp. But since Kant, and especially through the philosophies of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, the old western metaphysics has now been radically destabilised, deconstructed. The old west has gone.

    It’s not at all clear what this post-metaphysical Christianity would look like but Cupitt alludes to a faith that “cannot now be more than a practical orientation of our attention, our affections, our life towards One who is hoped for and believed in, but is not actually known.”

    I have three questions for Cupitt here. First, is he essentially attacking a straw man? The classical western theological tradition has never simply held to “a belief in one ready-made truth of things out there, waiting to be copied into our language.” There has always been a kind of dialectic between “negative” and “positive” theology and an awareness of the limits of our thinking to grasp the divine, balanced with the firm conviction that knowledge of God is possible.

    Second, he assumes the cogency of Derridean deconstruction with a kind of “everybody knows this” tone without anything by way of argument or evidence. What reason do we have to accept this? Not only is such a move far from universally accepted among theologians and philosophers (to put it mildly), it’s not clear what a cogent argument for anti-realism would even look like since, according to anti-realism, there’s no one way the world is, including, presumably, the way of being such that there’s no one way it is! (Or, more modestly, we know that the world is such that it’s impossible to know what the world is like.)

    Finally, what would be the point of a Christianity stripped of any reference to an extra-mental reality? And how would we go about practically orienting our lives toward a god about whom we know nothing? For all we know, selfishness and cruelty might be just as fitting a response as benevolence to a reality that is utterly denuded of knowable qualities.

    This isn’t to say that Cupitt hasn’t pointed out a real problem, namely the question of religious authority in a pluralistic “post-modern” world. But the proposed cure here seems worse than the disease.

    Of course, if Cupitt is simply exhorting us to a kind of epistemic humility (“One who is hoped for and believed in, but is not actually known”) then I don’t find that particularly objectionable. But, again, I think those resources are already there in the tradition. Anselm’s “faith seeking understanding” implies that we don’t know but believe, and that belief can lead to greater understanding (though only in the next life will faith become sight). But neither does this preclude having true beliefs about God or making a fitting response to the divine reality. There is a wide middle ground between Cartesian certainty and postmodern nihilism.

    (Link via Thinking Anglicans.)

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion: 10 & 11

    We’ve seen that for Augustine the human condition is pretty dire. Humans, due to the sin of our first parents, find ourselves spiritually crippled and condemned to death, our wills utterly impotent on their own to change our situation. A rather grim situation.

    But of course, the Christian story is the story of God’s mighty acts to save his people. In chapter 10 Augustine considers the work of Christ. He notes that “the human race was bound in a just doom and all men were children of wrath.” Interestingly, “wrath” here seems to mean more than just the prospect of punishment at some future time. He quotes John’s Jesus to the effect that “he that believes not does not have life. Instead, the wrath of God abides in him.” Wrath is a state men are in, indeed born into. We might say that our sinful nature is what makes us liable to God’s verdict, or “wrath.”

    To turn away wrath, then, there was need for a Mediator. Augustine doesn’t go into detail about how Christ saves us, he simply says that “a Reconciler who by offering a unique sacrifice, of which all the sacrifices of the Law and Prophets were shadows, should allay that wrath.”

    There’s a longstanding debate between Catholics and Protestants over whether justification is a verdict whereby God declares us innocent on account of Christ’s sacrifice, or on account of an actual change in us worked by grace. At least here Augustine can seem to take both views. He says that Christ’s sacrifice allays wrath, but also says that “we are reconciled to God through the Mediator and receive the Holy Spirit so that we may be changed from enemeis into sons….” This would seem to suggest that we become sons by the Holy Spirit working some actual change in us. We’ll come back to justification in a later chapter, so things may be cleared up a bit there.

    Augustine spends the rest of chapter 10 discussing the two natures of Christ. He is careful to assert that it is a complete human nature which is united to the divine Word, not simply a body which has the Word as its soul. He also denies what would come to be called “subordinationism,” the view that there is inequality between the persons of the Trinity:

    Accordingly, in so far as he is God, he and the Father are one. Yet in so far as he is man, the Father is greater than he. Since he was God’s only Son — not by grace but by nature — to the end that he might indeed be the fullness of all grace, he was also made Son of Man — and yet he was in the one nature as well as in the other, one Christ.

    In Chapter 11 Augustine goes on to discuss the Incarnation as “the Prime Example of the Action of God’s Grace.” Human nature didn’t merit to be united to Godhead, it was an act of sheer grace on God’s part. And Jeus was God’s Son from the very beginning of his existence – there is no hint of Adoptionism here. “Indeed it was Truth himself, God’s only begotten Son — and, again, this not by grace but by nature — who, by grace, assumed human nature into such a personal unity that he himself became the Son of Man as well.” Note here the reversal of the Son of Man/Son of God distinction characteristic of the Fathers; in the Bible the “Son of Man” can be a semi-divine eschatological figure, whereas many humans (such as David) can be referred to as a “son of God.” The Fathers, however, tend to reverse this usage and use “Son of Man” to Jesus considered in his human nature, and “Son of God” according to his divine nature. The point, though, is that the Son of God is the Son by nature, but he takes human nature to himself by grace.

    And this graceful uniting of the human and divine natures is the work of the Spirit: “This same Jesus Christ, God’s only Son our Lord, was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Now obviously the Holy Spirit is God’s gift, a gift that is itself equal to the Giver; wherefore the Holy Spirit is God also, not inferior to the Father and the Son.” The same Spirit which overshadowed Mary also calls us out of our sin and changes us from enemies to sons of God.

  • Pluralism and the work of Christ: 2

    In this post I suggested that there is a connection between one’s view of the work of Christ and one’s view of religious pluralism. My hypothesis was that holding a strongly “objectivist” view of Christ’s work tends to go with either an exclusivist or inclusivist position on other religions, while a more “subjectivist” account fit better with pluralist views.

    Thinking about it a little more, though, I think that might’ve been a bit simplistic. This is partly because it’s hard to cleanly categorize Atonement theories as either “objective” or “subjective.” Every account of the work of Christ has a “dipolar” character so to speak. There is the act on God’s part to effect Atonement and there is the response or appropriation of that work by human beings. It’s hard to see how an Atonement to which no one responded would in fact be atonement, or reconciliation at all. But no one denies that the initiative in reconciliation comes from God’s side. As Baptist theologian Paul Fiddes put it in the title of his book on the Atonement, it involves both a past event and a present salvation.

    Moreover, so-called subjectivist theories do create a “new situation” at least insofar as they understand the cross as the definitive revelation of God’s love and also of the horrors of human sin. This revelation makes possible reconciliation between God and humanity because the revelation of God’s love and its outpouring are taken to be two aspects of the same event. Part of the difference between objectivist and subjectivist theories is that they differ over who needs to be reconciled to whom. Is the problem that God needs to be reconciled to us, or needs to reconcile his justice with his mercy? Or is the problem that we have made ourselves God’s enemies and need to be reconciled to him? If the former, then Atonement will focus on payment, reparation, substitution and other related concepts. If the latter, then the focus will be on how God wins us back through the pouring out of his love and the revelation of our own self-centeredness. But “subjectivist” theories don’t deny the need for a new situation to be established in order to make reconciliation possible.

    However one comes down on this issue, I think both share equally in the view that reconciliation comes from God’s side. It’s not about the human ascent to divine truth by means of our own religious and/or ethical striving. Rather, God descends to us in order to restore the relationship broken by sin.

    Certain “hard pluralist” views, by contrast, which see all religions as the fruit of human spiritual experience, have a hard time coming to terms with a special action coming from the divine side in order to set the world to rights. Often the divine is viewed as almost inert, as a kind of ineffable sea of transcendence, which is more or less adequately limmed by the various beliefs and rituals of the world’s religions. Whatever can be said for this view, it seems to be at considerable variance from the living, dynamic God of the Bible, the “hound of heaven” who relentlessly seeks to win his faithless people back. The more important distinction, then, may be between a view which holds that the divine reveals itself to us, versus the view that we acquire saving knowledge of the divine by our own efforts.

    Even this distinction probably isn’t as hard and fast as it seems, though. For even our own best efforts to seek enlightenment can be seen as the fruits of prevenient grace. And a pluralist could accomodate the notion that the divine is active in seeking fellowship with us and still hold to a plurality of revelations. God may have many avenues by which he is seeking to reconcile the world to himself.

    So, I’m not sure how much ground we’ve really gained here. I’ve reconsidered the idea that a particular account of the Atonement will necessarily push one in a particular direction on the question of other religions. I then proposed a distinction between the idea that salvation is something initiated by God and one that holds salvation to be the fruit of human striving, but it seems that both views can be accomodated by exclusivists, inclusivists, and pluralists alike.

    Another thought, maybe to be taken up in another post: maybe it’s not so much differences over accounts of Christ’s work that are important, but over his person.

  • The perils of the “virtuous minority”

    Marvin continues his series on vegetarianism wth a post on the eschatological expectation that predation and violence are aspects of creation which will ultimately be done away with. Vegetarianism, then, can be seen as a “living into the kingdom,” a kind of anticipation of what is to come:

    In the present age one cannot dismiss eating meat out of hand, but one good rationale for vegetarianism is as a sign of the kingdom to come. Vegetarianism, like a commitment to non-violence, or a vow of celibacy, may be an appropriate witness to the new heavens and new earth that God will one day create.

    However, in comments to Marvin’s post, Jonathan of the Ivy Bush observes that some theologians, such as Karl Barth, have called vegetarianism a “wanton anticipation” of the eschaton, trying to live, as it were, beyond this present fallen age. But Jonathan, himself a committed pacifist, worries that this could cut against pacifism as well.

    I think that’s a good point. In fact, John Howard Yoder, in his book Nevertheless: Varieties of religious pacifism, discusses how “the pacifism of the virtuous minority” can end up marginalizing the pacifist witness. To relegate pacifism to the status of a special calling for a distinct minority, Yoder worries, can enable the majority to ignore the pacifist’s arguments:

    One normal implication of this minority stance is to approve by implication, for most people, the very position one rejects for oneself. The Catholic understanding of the monastic morality has no trouble with this. Those in this tradition do not identify the freely chosen Rule with everyone’s moral obligation. They tell Christians in the Historic Peace Churches to accept such minority status and be accepted in it. Thus the minority stance can be a special gadfly performance to keep the rest of society from being at peace with its compromises.

    This understanding of a vocational role for the peace churches has been fostered by the relativistic or pluralistic mood of modern denominationalism. The question of objective right and wrong is relativized by the acceptance of a great variety of traditions, each having its own claims to truth arising out of its own history. Each may be recognized as having a portion of the truth, on condition that none impose their view on another. (p. 81)

    Yoder continues:

    Various stances may be recognized as “valid” or “authentic” or “adequate,” but none specifically as true. In this spirit many nonpacifists since the 1930s have been willing to concede to the pacifists a prophetic or vocational role. Nonpacifists grant this recognition on condition that in turn the pacifists accept always being voted down by those who have to do the real (violent) work in the world. (pp. 81-82)

    Likewise, the view of vegetarianism as a special witness or calling to a creation without violence may also fall prey (pardon the expression) to this kind of relativism. And ultimately vegetarians could be similarly marginalized as harmless eccentrics who aren’t trying to make claims on the consciences of others.

    The two issues are somewhat disanalogous though. In one sense vegetarianism is more demanding than pacifism because, while war is a relatively exceptional event in the life of most societies, the use of animals is something that is woven into the very fabric of most societies, especially industrialized ones. On the other hand, the sacrifice of vegetarianism is ultimately less serious. People can live perfectly happy and healthy lives on a plant-based diet, so no one is being asked to sacrifice their life for the sake of animals. Pacifism, by contrast, requires that we be prepared to give up our lives rather than commit violence (though the blow may be softened by noting that war isn’t a very efficient means of getting what you want anyway).

    I would add that most vegetarians ure unlikely to say that meat-eating is always and everywhere wrong. It’s quite likely that there are times and places where killing animals for food is the only way for human beings to survive. In that sense one could devise an ethic of “just meat-eating” that allowed for exceptions for legitimate human need and health. It’s hard to see how that would justify the large-scale industrial production of meat that actually exists, though.

    The point is that vegetarians (and pacifists, and others with unusual moral views) shouldn’t refrain from making arguments to persuade others of the truth of their position. If one takes a moral view seriously, then I think one is committed to its universalizability: that is, that anyone in the relevantly similar circumstances ought to make the same choice.

    That said, I still personally wouldn’t want to try and make vegetarianism a litmus test for Christian discipleship. This is mainly because it’s not obvious that personal vegetarianism is the only, or even the best, way to address issues of animal mistreatment. And secondly because there is no “pure ground” to stand on where one has extricated themselves from involvement with industries and practices that abuse animals. If “ought implies can” it would be foolish to demand an unattainable level of moral purity.

    This is where I think the “Barthian caveat” is helpful. In our fallen world moral choice will always retain an element of ambiguity. And being aware of that will help one avoid pride and self-righteousness. Moreover, trying to live as an example, as proof that it’s possible to live a less violent life, may well end up being the most effective form of argument.

  • Pluralism and the work of Christ

    Any discussion of religious diversity and salvation (see last post) ultimately has to come to terms with what salvation means. It’s pointless to debate how people “get saved” if we don’t know what people are supposed to be saved from (or for).

    Following custom, I’ll distinguish between exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist views on religious diversity:

    Exclusivist: There is one correct religion, and in order to be saved, one must adhere to it.

    Inclusivist: There is one correct religion, but adherents to all religions can potentially be saved.

    Pluralist: There is no one correct religion; all religions (or sometimes all “higher” religions) are paths which can lead to salvation.

    (There is also a variation of pluralism which holds that “salvation” actually means different things in different religions, so they aren’t actually competing in providing the true path to salvation, but I’m going to ignore this option for the purposes of this post. In part that’s because I think it ultimately reduces to one of the other three options.)

    In Christian terms then, both the exclusivist and inclusivist hold that God in Jesus has accomplished something definitive for our salvation, where “salvation” means something like deliverance from sin and its consequences and communion with God which comes to ultimate fruition in the Beatific Vision along with the saints in heaven. How Jesus accomplishes this is, of course, a matter of great debate in the history of Christendom. But I think all traditional theories of the Atonement agree that there is an objective change in the situation of humans vis-a-vis God due to the life, passion, and resurrection of Jesus. The difference between the exclusivist and the inclusivist, then, is that the former holds that one must come into some conscious relationship with this event (in this present life) in order to be saved, whereas the inclusivist (or one kind of inclusivist) believes that it’s not necessary to be consciously aware of the work of Christ to benefit from it. As C.S. Lewis put it, to say that only Jesus saves doesn’t necessarily entail that only those who know him are saved by him.

    Contrast this with the view that says that Jesus simply reveals the nature of God, but doesn’t necessarily bring about some new state of affairs in the divine-human relationship. The God revealed by Jesus is what God has always been like: merciful, just, compassionate, etc., and the problem is that humans don’t sufficiently realize this. But, at least in theory, they could come to the same knowledge by routes other than the life and teachings of Jesus. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, etc. can come to a correct view on the benevolent nature of Ultimate Reality without believing in, or even being aware of Jesus. Salvation is the realization of the truth about the Divine along with the corresponding changes in one’s life from being self-centered to being “reality-centered” as the pluralist theologian John Hick likes to put it.

    This view can be given either an inclusivist or pluralist spin. An inclusivist can hold that the divine nature is best, or most clearly revealed, in Jesus while still holding that other religions can contain saving knowledge of the divine. The pluralist, meanwhile, can say that this knowledge is (at least potentially) equally present in all faiths, and whether any particular person finds that knowledge in a given religious tradition will depend on circumstances (such as their own upbringing, temparment, etc.).

    It’s worth pointing out, I think, that theologians who have a more subjective account of the Atonement also tend to lean more toward inclusivist or pluralist positions, whereas objectivist theories of the Atonement correlate with exclusivism and certain forms of inclusivism. And getting clear on religious diversity requires, I think, getting clear on what we think the work of Christ is and what it accomplishes.

  • Bishop Hanson on the salvation of non-Christians

    This is interesting: an ELCA blogger wrote to Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson about his take on Episcopal Presiding Bishop Schori’s controversial (at least in the hothouse of the blogosphere) remarks on the salvation of non-Christians (via I Am a Christian Too). And Bp. Hanson actually wrote back.

    Bishop Hanson’s reply is very sensible – you can read it here – and he expresses himself with a certain forthrightness and clarity that seem to have been lacking in some of Bp. Shori’s comments.

    But then again, Lutherans have always been better at theology than Episcopalians. 😉

  • Augustine’s Enchiridion 9: Redemption, grace and free will

    Having discussed the fall, Augustine begins to turn his attention to redemption. He makes an interesting suggestion at the beginning of Chapter 9 (later echoed by Anselm in Cur Deus Homo) that there is something fitting or even necessary that the angels who fell and are permanently banished from heaven should be replaced by a corresponding number of redeemed human beings. “From the other part of rational creation–that is, mankind–although it had perished as a whole through sins and punishments, both original and personal, God had determined that a portion of it would be restored and would fill up the loss which that diabolical disaster had caused in the angelic society.”

    The problem, naturally, is how a ceratin portion of fallen humanity is to be restored and redeemed. The first point to be established is that human beings are not able to redeem or restore themselves by the exercise of their own free will. This is because, while sin was freely chosen by our first parents, the consequences of that sin have rendered all subsequent generations incapable of exercising their free will to choose the Supreme Good. “For it was in the evil use of his free will that man destroyed himself and his will at the same time.” Humans are in bondage to sin and must be freed by some outside power if they are to avoid sin:

    He serves freely who freely does the will of his master. Accordingly he who is slave to sin is free to sin. But thereafter he will not be free to do right unless he is delivered from the bondage of sin and begins to be the servant of righteousness. This, then, is true liberty: the joy that comes in doing what is right. At the same time, it is also devoted service in obedience to righteous precept.

    Let’s stop here to note that Augustine has distinguished two different senses of freedom at this point. The first is what we might call metaphysical freedom or the “freedom of indifference;” this is the freedom to choose A or B, right or wrong. This is the freedom Adam and Eve had which they misused and consequently lost (along with the rest of humankind). Fallen human beings are no longer free, on Augustine’s view, to choose the good, but can only choose to sin.

    The second kind of freedom — “true liberty” — is the freedom of a self that is oriented toward the Supreme Good and thus takes joy in doing the right thing. It’s one thing to choose the right thing against countervailing inclinations, but another to wholeheartedly will the good, without even, we might say, the possibility of choosing evil. This is presumably the kind of freedom that the angels and saints in heaven enjoy.

    Our predicament, to which grace is the solution, then, is that we are incapable of moving from the state where our wills are broken and in bondage to sin to the state where we take joy in the good. On the one hand, Augustine writes, we have the witness of Scripture that “…it is God who is at work in you both to will and to do according to his good will” (Phil. 2.13) and “It is not therefore a matter of man’s willing, or of his running, but of God’s showing mercy” (Rom. 9.16) – all comes from God’s grace. And yet, “it is obvious that a man who is old enough to exercise his reason cannot believe, hope, or love unless he wills it, nor could he run for the prize of his high calling in God without a decision of his will.” It seems that everything depends on God and everything depends on our will.

    The resolution of this seeming impasse for Augustine is that it is ultimately God who disposes the human will. God’s mercy “predisposes a man before he wills, to prompt his willing.” In other words, whether we can believe, hope, and love depends upon a prior act of God, who mercifully turns the will of the elect away from sin. God doesn’t save sinners against their will, but through their will.

    The worry, of course, is that this risks making human beings mere puppets. If it depends on God to dispose my will in order for me to receive grace, then how can I possibly be blamed for not receiving it? But as we’ve already seen, Augustine holds that the entire human race is already justly held blameworthy for Adam’s sin and condemned to eternal death. So, God has no obligation, in strict justice, to save any human being. Therefore any mercy he shows is sheer gravy, so to speak.

    I imagine many readers would be very unhappy with this scenario. I certainly find it troubling. But I think we should try and understand why Augustine takes this position. Clearly one major factor is Scripture. Like it or not, the God of the Bible does not seem to adhere to liberal egalitarian notions of justice. He chooses to save some and not others, he hardens hearts, he heals people not because they deserve it, but in order to manifest his glory. He is no respecter of persons.

    Another factor, I think, is Augustine’s strong notion of God’s sovereignty. This is related to his anti-dualism and anti-Manichieism. There is no factor in creation which constrains God to act in one way or the other. God disposes events the way he sees fit. Modern theology, acting out of a liberal-humanistic impulse, has often sought to qualify God’s sovereignty in some way to avoid some of the harsher implications of Augustinian predestinarianism (as well as to provide a more adequate theodicy). Process theology is the clearest example of this: in order to make room for human freedom God’s power is limited. Whether this can be squared with the Christian witness is another matter.

    Other contemporary theologians like William Placher and Kathryn Tanner have tried to articulate an understanding of God’s sovereignty that is “noncompetitive” with the agency of finite beings. If God is thought of as creatures’ power of being rather than an agent acting within the same causal nexus as those beings, it becomes possible to affirm both divine sovereignty and creaturely freedom. Thus the relation between creature and creator needn’t be seen as some kind of zero-sum game.

    I can’t do justice to this position here, but one worry I have is that this view has difficulty articulating what it might mean for God to act in creation in a special or extraordinary way, i.e. if every event is a manifestation of the divine power, what distinguishes events of particular religious significance? Tanner, for instance, in her brief systematic theology, has very little to say about the Resurrection, and I wonder if part of the reason is that she has trouble fitting “mighty acts of God” into her conceptual scheme.

    Getting back to Augustine, though, one of his lasting contributions is to locate the source of sin in the human will. For much ancient thought the source of evil was ignorance and/or the weight of the material world dragging down the spritual soul. Augustine’s view, by contrast, firmly defines sin as a spiritual malady. It is precisely our “higher” spiritual nature that is capable of the greatest evil. The “sins of the flesh” look pretty mundane in comparison. Our predicament goes much deeper than any shallow self-help gospel can reach.

  • ISG museum

    This Saturday we went with some friends to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum here in Boston. I was very taken with this piece by Fra Angelico of the Death and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Unfortunately the image doesn’t do justice to it – the gold and blue are so bright and vibrant – really lovely. Here’s a fairly decent detail.

    Interestingly, it also turns out that Mrs. Gardner donated the stone reredos behind the High Altar of our parish.