amigo@iwlc6.UUCP (John Hobson) (04/16/84)
Here is the first of a series of articles on a Christian view of salvation. I am sending it out in two parts as it is fairly long. The Mystery that is God is stubbornly, maddenly mysterious. Not that we don't have an existential grip on it: we touch it all the time--and not just in religious ways. It isn't only by anointing the feet of Jesus while he was on earth , or by remembering his Sacrifice of his Body and Blood that we grasp it. It is in us, with us and under us every moment of our being--and in, with, and under everything else too. We all have an intuitive feeling for it, call it God, or humanity, or nature or whatever. It's when we try to talk about it that we find we can be clearer about what is is not rather than what it is. The best we can do is refine and reinterpret the images by which we figure it--go over our figures, if you like, and check them for false results. Let us take an example. Take a phrase from the Anthanasian Creed: "When, in the fullness of time, God became man..." There is a suble implication here, that God says "Well, the time is ripe, I now decide to incarnate myself." On one level, saying "when God decided" is perfectly all right. It is anthropomorphism, jsut as every other usage about God is. To use it wisely, you simply have to bear in mind that deciding at a certain time is a lusy image of what God does. He doesn't sit around wondering, and then one day makes up his mind. He just wills. And whatever he wills, he wills from all eternity. His mind is never anything but fully made up. On anther level, however, this is bound to make trouble, because the "time" imagery is so strong that it keeps knocking at every door in the house until somebody ets it in. Perhaps you think that that's all right--as long as it doesn't track its time-mired feet in the front room, where God is, it can be let into the kitchen, where creation is. After all, the world is temporal, and God acts in history, and revelation comes by degrees. Why don't you just put an unexpressed parenthesis in the phrase to clean it up? Why can't you say: "When (from our point of view) God decided"? Doesn't that succeed in keeping the mud out of the parlour? No, because even with its feet thus parked on a mat, it's just biding its time. The moment you turn your back it will roam all over the place. Watch. Jesus of Nazereth was born in the back of a stable near Bethelehem in about the year 4 B.C. (It may have been as early as 12 BC, but 4 is the generally accepted year. Mercifully, this is not a paradox; but rather the result of a mistake somebody made when the calendar was changed.) In any case, Christians believe that this same Jesus is the Word made flesh; he is God become man. Accordingly, it seems perfectly safe to hold that his birth is a new departure in which God himself comes on stage in the incarnation--that "when (from our point of view) God decided to become man," a new Mystery went into effect. For most Christians, no doubt, this sounds cautious enough. It predicates time of God only in connection with something he did in time. He always willed to do it; but in this world, he did it on a certain day. But hold on. There is am implication there just itching to put its muddy feet all over your theology. If you don't watch it, yopu will find yourself saying that, accordingly, this Mystery became operative only in 4 BC and only in Jesus. Does that still sound all right? Watch some more. It this mystery only went to work in 4 BC, then it was unavailable to all the people who lived before that date. And if it is operative only in Jesus then that means that Jews, Greeks, or Infidels who died in 200 BC, or Eskimos who died in 50 AD, were never in touch with it. And that in turn means that the whole untimely lot of them are out of luck as far as getting hotel accomodations in the New Jerusalem is concerned. And that means they can all go to hell. Notice how nicely we're progressing. We have now arrived at one of the the more detestable enormities in the history of theology. And we have run into direct opposition to Jesus' own words: "I ... will draw all men unto me." Since most of the theologians who embraced this monster were basicaly nice people (really!), they had the grace to feel bad about not having room in the celestial Holiday Inn for so many people. So they proceeded to build, not with the hard cash of Scripture, but almost entirely on speculation, a couple of cheap hotels along the New Jerusalem road. These were run by Conrad Limbo, Inc. There was the Limbus Patrum, or Limbo of the Fathers, for all the ancient Greek worthies like Socrates; and there was the Limbus Puerorm (interesting how in Latin, a generic child is a boy), or Limbo of the Children, for all those little tykes who cashed in their chips before they had a chance to commit any sins. Things are going swimmingly. We have reached the point of saying that God will give you a cut-rate bliss on the outer marches of his favour, just for being a good egg. Which, of course, is exactly what Jesus did not say: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Morality, not forgiveness--Law, not Grace--has become the promise of your gospel. You are about to skid yourself into the world's all time pileup on the Jersey Turnpike of theology: A dump truck (Galatians) and a tractor trailor (Romans) owned by Paul & Co. are going to jump the divider and smash into you. All because you thought it was safe to take your eye off "when God decided..." John Hobson AT&T Bell Labs--Naperville, IL ihnp4!iwlc6!amigo
amigo@iwlc6.UUCP (John Hobson) (04/16/84)
Let's go back, then, and try again. Only, this trip, no quite so recklessly: "When (from our point of view) God decided to become man," he chose to become incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. This time, we will avoid the pothole of assuming that the birth of Jesus is the beginning of a new departure in the way God works in the world. Let us say instead that it was the culmination of a whole series of transactions between God and Man--transactions by which the one, unchanging Mystery works toward building the New Jerusalem, the City of God. That sounds better already. It fits nicely with the history of the covenant, and it obviates the necessity of seeing Jesus as the sole transaction in which the Mystery is at work. All the earlier transactions, the covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses (if you want me to write a short theological essay on the history of the covenant, I will)--are true steps in the building of the City. The Incarnation is simply the supreme transaction. The death and resurrection of Jesus are the effective fulfillment of all that went before. Accordingly, we may now view the proclamation of the Gospel in a different light. In Jesus, God has made the ultimate transaction, after which no other transaction will ever be needed. God has, as it were, perfected a saving product, and he now proceeds to distribute it. This is good, too. It makes sense of the scandal of particularity we see in the covenant with Abraham: God particularizes salvation, first in Israel and finally in Jesus, precisely in order that he may universalize it. He cuts out everyone, just so he can eventually draw them in. We're holding the road fairly well. But how does the result of the final transaction fecome universal? How is the perfected product distributed to all? Well, in the first instance, this is accomplished by a fellowship of baptised people which is universal, for all men--by the one, holy, catholic (note the small "c") and apostolic Church, sent to proclaim everywhere the good news of Jesus' full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for all offered on the cross. How, though, shall we deal with the problem which, last time around, eventually caused the crash? How do we get the perfected product to those born too soon, or too far away from the Holy Christian Chain Store? Let us try it this way: Let us say that, while the church is the normal outlet for the fruits of the transaction, it is obvious that the distributing operation of Jesus is not limited to the church. This has the virtue of having some scriptural and creedal foundation: After his death on the cross, and before his resurrection, he descends into hell, into the place of departed spirits. He goes and he preaches to the spirits in prison. He offers them an opportunity to accpt the free gift he has just perfected in the ultimate transaction. Good enough. That takes care of everyone who died before 29 AD--and without a single jerry-built limbo, at that. But what about the Eskimo in 50 AD who didn't even have an Eskimo's chance of getting preached to at all--who died in the frozen north while the church was still basking in the Mediterranean sunshine? What about all those poor souls who were too late for the early show and too early for the late one? Well, perhaps we can hold that the descent into hell was not meant to be taken as a single excursion, but as a perpetual visit. Maybe it should be taken to mean that Jesus is always there, continually offering his salvation to all who die without having heard it. This can be extended to include those who weere aware of the Church, but who were so repelled by the actions of the individual Christians they came across that they refused to consider it. If you aren't able to pick up your free gift at one of his franchised outlets during your lifetime, he will personally distribute his product door to dor after death. It's holding nicely. No limbos. Nobody left out. But what of the final question? What does it mean when we say that the souls of the departed will have a chance to accept or reject the free gift? The souls of the departed, if they exist in reality at all, are not human beings. A human being is body and soul; if you separate the two, you get a corpse and a ghost. Furthermore, in the tradition in which this usage of soul was most common, the sould after death was viewed as a poor, passive thing, incapable of doing or deciding anything. And worse yet, there is 2 Corinthians 5:10: "We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in the body, according to that which he has done, whether it be good or bad." Oh, oh. Things are beginning to sound as if we've got a front wheel out of balance. The argument is up to speed, but it's developing a shimmy. Perhaps if we push it a little harder, we can cure it. Suppose we try saying that the descent into hell means, not a standing order by which Jesus offers the benefits of his saving transaction to the souls of the dead, but rather a willingness on his part to take some of the "deeds done in the body"--things done while the people were still alive and, therefore, still people--as the equivalent of acceptance or rejection of the gift. That only makes it worse. Apparently both front wheels are in bad shape. On the one hand, we are slipping from theology into bookkeeping: We are now obliged to work out a system for converting purely natural earthly deeds into acceptance of Christ. On the other hand, that turns out to be a tricky proposition. If we're not careful, we will steer ourselves right back into the same situation that caused the awful pileup on the last trip. We are on the verge of saying once again that it is morality, not mercy, is the key to the City. Of course, we might try to work up some way of saying that the "good deeds done in the body" are to be taken, not as good deeds which have power to earn salvation, but as evidence of a willingness to accept mercy. How about a system for converting the coin of morality into the scrip of forgiveness? Of course, that will involve a lot more bookkeeping. As a matter of fact, it will probably involve keeping two sets of books. I think that we had better park this vehicle, since the shimmy is getting worse rather than better. Why don't we pull it into a dealership and trade it in for a new model? I will give the next part of this in a day or so. John Hobson AT&T Bell Labs--Naperville, IL ihnp4!iwlc6!amigo