Welcome to another installment of Theology with Ghym. Today I want to take a look at the theology of salvation found in the Catholic Church.
The Bible gives three phases to Salvation: At times the authors discuss salvation as something already possessed, something received in the past. At other time they discuss it as something which is ongoing, in the present. Still at other times they speak of salvation as something still far off in the future. This is what I was taught when I was a protestant and this is what I was taught after I became Catholic, as far as I am aware these three phases are universally recognized. I've been saved, I'm being saved and I shall be saved.
That being said, Catholics and Protestants have some very different understandings of these three phases. Protestants put a huge amount of emphasis on the initial point of salvation, seeing it as the moment of justification. For Catholics this is simply the starting point, when we enter into the process; justification comes later.
The departure runs even deeper when one considers how it is we come to be "saved", initially. For Protestants God bestows an initial grace on us which can bring about a saving faith, which, when acted upon by us, brings about our salvation. For Catholics this initial point of salvation actually precedes faith, faith and works come later. God bestows initial grace upon us enabling us to respond with either a yes or a no. If no then we stay outside. If yes, we enter into the process and God bestows even greater graces upon us, slowly bringing about faith and works, justification and sanctification.
For Catholics this initial point of salvation is entirely based upon our own receptivity, our willingness to receive the grace of God. However, this is true, not only of this first point, but of every point that follows. God continually offers us ever more grace and we continually say yes or no. As we say yes, through works or prayers or sacraments, God acts upon our hearts to bring about even more faith.
Catholics do not discuss the initial point of salvation overly much because it is simply the first link in a very long chain. It is the first yes we offer up to God, but it is far from the only one. In the second phase of salvation there is an ongoing cycle. God's grace brings about faith, our faith is made manifest in works, our works dispose us towards a greater receptivity to grace, we get more grace which brings about more faith and the cycle continues.
The final point of salvation is achieved when we are made fully open to God. This is that moment of complete surrender when we are brought into the inter life of the Trinity. It is here that we are able to fully embrace the salvation won for us on Calvary. It is only here that we are fully sanctified and thus fully repentant and can fully receive our justification.
It is not necessary that one be a Catholic, or even a Christian, in order to be saved. All that is necessary is that one be willing to receive the grace of God. You must be open to Him, He will do the rest.
The great thing about being Catholic is that we have the fullness of the truth and the sacraments. As we participate in the life of the Church our spiritual life is expedited. The sacraments and sacramentals are tools which help us along the journey. We have saints who serve as examples by which we might live our lives more fully inline with God's will. And most of all, we get to know God, not just personally, but intimately. Every time we participate in the Mass we receive a glimpse of heaven. Every time we receive the Eucharist we receive love incarnate in the most intimate act we could possibly share with God himself.
Truly, it is not necessary to be Catholic, but it really helps.
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Understanding Sin as Tangent
Generally, I avoid the term sin. This is not because i find the topic distasteful, but because most people don't know what sin is. They see it as arbitrary divine judgement. For them, sin is the violation of some supernatural legal code. Just as crime results in prison, sin results in damnation. It's cold and impersonal and alienating. When they hear us say they are sinning they simply hear us passing judgment on them. Although i will not shy away from talking about sins, generally, i will avoid the term. It just confuses the issue and pushes people farther away.
However, this is based on a misconception of God, of His relation to us. God is not a power hungry tyrant, He is not an impersonal and wrathful judge. He is a loving Father, and He created us with a purpose. To understand sin, we must first understand this purpose and our relation to God.
There is a meaning to life. We were created for the greatest good of all, complete union with God, in which we find true happiness and ultimate joy. We enter into this union through love, through the true self-gift. This is not something we do, but rather something we allow God to do. All you really contribute is your yes, when you say yes to God and offer Him the entirety of yourself. So long as i pursue my own good, i will never find the ultimate good. So long as i am looking out for myself and pursuing my own happiness, true joy and fulfillment will forever evade me. So i let go, and offer myself to God. I allow him to love me and to love the world through me. In giving myself to Him, i receive Him in turn, and find the purpose for which i was made.
There is this path, its narrow and steep, but when we travel it we travel with God, towards our true purpose. This is the path of salvation. God neither forces us to walk it nor to remain on it. There are many other paths to choose from, often times they seem more appealing, but they do not takes us anywhere we really want to go. They are tangents, leading us away from our true ends. We walk the path of salvation so long as we pursue God, the ultimate good. We leave this path and pursue the tangents when we choose lesser goods over God, temporal good over eternal good, personal good over the good of others.
God does not send anyone to Hell. If He did, he would be a monster, creating man simply to subject him to eternal torment. God sends no one to Hell. Each and every soul who arrives in this destination of the damned is there of their own free will, their own volition. They refused God when He offered them salvation, when He offered them Himself. The souls in Hell said no when God offered them Heaven.
When we place our hope in anything apart from God it will eventually fail us. We pursue lesser goods but they don't satisfy us. They may grant us a momentary escape from the miseries of life, but soon they fade. We seek them out again, but this time we need more to get the same feelings, and again they fade. Soon it does not matter how much we get, our desire cannot be satisfied. We desire a fulfillment which can only be achieved in finding our meaning, our purpose in being. We all hope in someday finding that purpose, but the longer we seek it in vain the more our hope fades, until it finally dies, and all we are left with is despair. Hell is not a place like Pittsburgh or Milwaukee, it is a state of being, it is the complete absence of a meaning only God can provide. Hell is the complete and utter despair resulting from a life of self-gratification.
Sin aught not to be seen as a legal term, divine or otherwise. Our true fulfillment is found in union with God, and God desires that for us. However, He gave us free will so that we could choose for ourselves. We have the power to choose against God, to reject Him. We can take actions that impede our union with God, that separate us from the ultimate good, that lead us on the path towards the misery of despair. This is the essence of sin. This is what we aught to mean when we refer to it. Sin is that which separates us from God, from the ultimate good, from the purpose of our being. It consists of those things which are spiritually harmful to the individual who does them.
God desires that which is best for us, which is union with Him. Sin harms us by separating us from Him and binding us to the world. Nothing in creation is evil in of itself. Food is good, sex is good, music is good, everything is created good. The problem comes when we prefer these things to God. Again, God sends no one to Hell, it is not something God subjects us to, it is something we subject ourselves to. But why? Why would anyone choose Hell over Heaven? It is because of the high cost of Heaven. In order to gain paradise, we must be willing to give up everything. All the goods of creation are distractions we must be willing to sacrifice. No human being can do this alone. It is only with God's aid that this is possible. Even then we all will fall short on occasion. Sins are those things which tie us to these lesser goods and distract us from God.
When we do something that leads us away from God, we are choosing against Heaven. When we stop pursuing God and go off on these tangents, that is sin. When God tells us to give to those in need and avoid murdering our neighbors, it is because He desires what is best for us. I could rightly say that contraception is a sin, but most people would hear something like; contraception makes God angry and now your going to hell. This understanding would not only be unhelpful, but it could even lead people away from Christ and His Church. So rather than give scandal, i say contraception harms you as a person, it impedes your true happiness and hinders your relationship with God. Far less offensive, much more informative, and yet I have said the exact same thing in both cases. For that is what sin does and why it is so bad; it harms us as people, impedes our true happiness and hinders our relationship with God.
Sin is a tangent, because it distracts us from the real purpose of it all.
However, this is based on a misconception of God, of His relation to us. God is not a power hungry tyrant, He is not an impersonal and wrathful judge. He is a loving Father, and He created us with a purpose. To understand sin, we must first understand this purpose and our relation to God.
There is a meaning to life. We were created for the greatest good of all, complete union with God, in which we find true happiness and ultimate joy. We enter into this union through love, through the true self-gift. This is not something we do, but rather something we allow God to do. All you really contribute is your yes, when you say yes to God and offer Him the entirety of yourself. So long as i pursue my own good, i will never find the ultimate good. So long as i am looking out for myself and pursuing my own happiness, true joy and fulfillment will forever evade me. So i let go, and offer myself to God. I allow him to love me and to love the world through me. In giving myself to Him, i receive Him in turn, and find the purpose for which i was made.
There is this path, its narrow and steep, but when we travel it we travel with God, towards our true purpose. This is the path of salvation. God neither forces us to walk it nor to remain on it. There are many other paths to choose from, often times they seem more appealing, but they do not takes us anywhere we really want to go. They are tangents, leading us away from our true ends. We walk the path of salvation so long as we pursue God, the ultimate good. We leave this path and pursue the tangents when we choose lesser goods over God, temporal good over eternal good, personal good over the good of others.
God does not send anyone to Hell. If He did, he would be a monster, creating man simply to subject him to eternal torment. God sends no one to Hell. Each and every soul who arrives in this destination of the damned is there of their own free will, their own volition. They refused God when He offered them salvation, when He offered them Himself. The souls in Hell said no when God offered them Heaven.
When we place our hope in anything apart from God it will eventually fail us. We pursue lesser goods but they don't satisfy us. They may grant us a momentary escape from the miseries of life, but soon they fade. We seek them out again, but this time we need more to get the same feelings, and again they fade. Soon it does not matter how much we get, our desire cannot be satisfied. We desire a fulfillment which can only be achieved in finding our meaning, our purpose in being. We all hope in someday finding that purpose, but the longer we seek it in vain the more our hope fades, until it finally dies, and all we are left with is despair. Hell is not a place like Pittsburgh or Milwaukee, it is a state of being, it is the complete absence of a meaning only God can provide. Hell is the complete and utter despair resulting from a life of self-gratification.
Sin aught not to be seen as a legal term, divine or otherwise. Our true fulfillment is found in union with God, and God desires that for us. However, He gave us free will so that we could choose for ourselves. We have the power to choose against God, to reject Him. We can take actions that impede our union with God, that separate us from the ultimate good, that lead us on the path towards the misery of despair. This is the essence of sin. This is what we aught to mean when we refer to it. Sin is that which separates us from God, from the ultimate good, from the purpose of our being. It consists of those things which are spiritually harmful to the individual who does them.
God desires that which is best for us, which is union with Him. Sin harms us by separating us from Him and binding us to the world. Nothing in creation is evil in of itself. Food is good, sex is good, music is good, everything is created good. The problem comes when we prefer these things to God. Again, God sends no one to Hell, it is not something God subjects us to, it is something we subject ourselves to. But why? Why would anyone choose Hell over Heaven? It is because of the high cost of Heaven. In order to gain paradise, we must be willing to give up everything. All the goods of creation are distractions we must be willing to sacrifice. No human being can do this alone. It is only with God's aid that this is possible. Even then we all will fall short on occasion. Sins are those things which tie us to these lesser goods and distract us from God.
When we do something that leads us away from God, we are choosing against Heaven. When we stop pursuing God and go off on these tangents, that is sin. When God tells us to give to those in need and avoid murdering our neighbors, it is because He desires what is best for us. I could rightly say that contraception is a sin, but most people would hear something like; contraception makes God angry and now your going to hell. This understanding would not only be unhelpful, but it could even lead people away from Christ and His Church. So rather than give scandal, i say contraception harms you as a person, it impedes your true happiness and hinders your relationship with God. Far less offensive, much more informative, and yet I have said the exact same thing in both cases. For that is what sin does and why it is so bad; it harms us as people, impedes our true happiness and hinders our relationship with God.
Sin is a tangent, because it distracts us from the real purpose of it all.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
The Enlightenment is a Lie
Basically, the enlightenment is a lie. This is not to say it didn't happen, it did, but it was not very enlightening. It's the idea of the enlightenment, casting off the shackles of faith and embracing reason; that's what never happened. The enlightenment, like all heresy, is based off a false dichotomy. In this case, faith verses reason. It claims you can only have one, and then rejects faith as mere superstition. It claims to champion truth but in actuality it brings only doubt.
A dichotomy is a choice involving only two options. It is an either/or statement with no alternatives. There are real dichotomies; life and death, truth and falsehood, women... But most of the time they are false.
A false dichotomy tries to present an either/or when in actuality there may be a third option or some middle ground. I would say Protestantism presents a false dichotomy in contrasting faith and works, Catholicism responds with the correction; faith and works are really the same thing and they are both gifts of grace. Marketing campaigns love to present a false dichotomy of spend less here or more somewhere else; how about I keep the car I have and not spend anything? The enlightenment presents the false dichotomy of faith and reason. It fails to recognize that these are not in opposition to each other. How can truth conflict with truth?
The entire idea of the enlightenment presupposes a conflict between faith and reason. It claims that now man can be free of religion by embracing science, that before the enlightenment man hid from reason, behind a curtain of faith, but in the enlightenment that curtain is torn away and the light of truth is shown upon the earth.
In reality the enlightenment obscures. It shifts the focus from the why onto the how. As i discussed last week, there is nothing wrong with asking how, but it shouldn't distract from asking why. The question of how can't give meaning or purpose. In denying faith the enlightenment mindset goes to an unbelievable extreme, it denies the ultimate question of why altogether. It says this is all there is and there ain't no more.
In the name of this falsehood man's eyes are blinded from all but the material, only the purely natural can be acknowledged. Faith is not hostile to reason but the proponents of reason seem to be very hostile to faith. Perhaps it is because faith claims to answer questions pure reason cannot and the principles of the enlightenment cannot acknowledge that possibility.
If you challenge a proponent of the enlightenment and ask for examples of faith conflicting with reason, they have nothing. They may bring up the myth of Galileo, that he was excommunicated for believing the earth revolves around the sun. (Although he was excommunicated, and he did support heliocentrism, it was not the direct cause of his excommunication.)
Perhaps they will bring up evolution, a theory the Church has never condemned, which I happen to support, but which has many holes in it nevertheless.
Perhaps we could respond with Nicolaus Copernicus, a devoted Catholic and Canon Lawyer who developed the heliocentric theory. (He was not the first to propose it, but he expand it into a true scientific theory.)
We could point to the modern university system, developed within the Catholic Church.
To Brother Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar, who first developed the entire field of genetics! His work was ignored for 72 years by the enlightened Darwinists because it ran contrary to their materialistic philosophy.
To Father Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest, who developed the hypothesis of the primeval atom, which would later became known as the Big Bang theory. Somewhat humorously, his theory was largely dismissed by the scientific elite as well, partially because of his religious background and partially because the enlightened materialist worldview runs at odds with the universe having a beginning. (Perhaps because it implies a beginner.)
Sometimes defenders of the enlightenment will try and paint Christianity or religion in general as violent and barbaric. Some modern historians claim that Christianity has been responsible for 3 million deaths in the last two millennia. I personally would contest this number as far too high, and every few years a new study comes out to prove me right and it drops. However, lets go with this number, take them at their word.
Now consider the French Revolution, which flowed directly from enlightenment principles and constitutes the first modern genocide. Over a quarter-million faithful Catholics were massacred for being just that, faithful Catholics. They refused to disavow their religion; namely, their allegiance to the Pope.
These deaths, however, constitute less than one fifth of one percent of the total victims of the enlightenment. When we reject a reason for our being, deny any value to life, and focus solely on how to reach our goals, morality drops away. Any faith would find these number abhorrent, but in the name of reason...
- From Nazi's enlightened eugenics program - 26 million
- Under Mao's new enlightened China - 38 million
- Under Russia's enlightened communism - 62 million
- From other communist nations (Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, etc.) - 11 million
Not counting war, preventable famine or abortion, that's 137 million people.
(The worst killer of all, abortion - 1.5 billion deaths since World War II (But we can leave the Enlightenment out of that and just attribute it to man's inhumanity.))
Even when we compare the high estimate for Christianity to the middle estimates for enlightenment philosophy, we get a number 45 times higher, in only one tenth the time.
It is truly ironic that this idea should be named Enlightenment. Rather than ushering in an age of light it brought darkness, such that the true dark ages are not the time that came before, but rather every day since.
Perhaps one day the world will realize that reason alone is insufficient. Reason, unfettered by faith, won't take us anywhere we want to go.
A dichotomy is a choice involving only two options. It is an either/or statement with no alternatives. There are real dichotomies; life and death, truth and falsehood, women... But most of the time they are false.
A false dichotomy tries to present an either/or when in actuality there may be a third option or some middle ground. I would say Protestantism presents a false dichotomy in contrasting faith and works, Catholicism responds with the correction; faith and works are really the same thing and they are both gifts of grace. Marketing campaigns love to present a false dichotomy of spend less here or more somewhere else; how about I keep the car I have and not spend anything? The enlightenment presents the false dichotomy of faith and reason. It fails to recognize that these are not in opposition to each other. How can truth conflict with truth?
The entire idea of the enlightenment presupposes a conflict between faith and reason. It claims that now man can be free of religion by embracing science, that before the enlightenment man hid from reason, behind a curtain of faith, but in the enlightenment that curtain is torn away and the light of truth is shown upon the earth.
In reality the enlightenment obscures. It shifts the focus from the why onto the how. As i discussed last week, there is nothing wrong with asking how, but it shouldn't distract from asking why. The question of how can't give meaning or purpose. In denying faith the enlightenment mindset goes to an unbelievable extreme, it denies the ultimate question of why altogether. It says this is all there is and there ain't no more.
In the name of this falsehood man's eyes are blinded from all but the material, only the purely natural can be acknowledged. Faith is not hostile to reason but the proponents of reason seem to be very hostile to faith. Perhaps it is because faith claims to answer questions pure reason cannot and the principles of the enlightenment cannot acknowledge that possibility.
If you challenge a proponent of the enlightenment and ask for examples of faith conflicting with reason, they have nothing. They may bring up the myth of Galileo, that he was excommunicated for believing the earth revolves around the sun. (Although he was excommunicated, and he did support heliocentrism, it was not the direct cause of his excommunication.)
Perhaps they will bring up evolution, a theory the Church has never condemned, which I happen to support, but which has many holes in it nevertheless.
Perhaps we could respond with Nicolaus Copernicus, a devoted Catholic and Canon Lawyer who developed the heliocentric theory. (He was not the first to propose it, but he expand it into a true scientific theory.)
We could point to the modern university system, developed within the Catholic Church.
To Brother Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar, who first developed the entire field of genetics! His work was ignored for 72 years by the enlightened Darwinists because it ran contrary to their materialistic philosophy.
To Father Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest, who developed the hypothesis of the primeval atom, which would later became known as the Big Bang theory. Somewhat humorously, his theory was largely dismissed by the scientific elite as well, partially because of his religious background and partially because the enlightened materialist worldview runs at odds with the universe having a beginning. (Perhaps because it implies a beginner.)
Sometimes defenders of the enlightenment will try and paint Christianity or religion in general as violent and barbaric. Some modern historians claim that Christianity has been responsible for 3 million deaths in the last two millennia. I personally would contest this number as far too high, and every few years a new study comes out to prove me right and it drops. However, lets go with this number, take them at their word.
Now consider the French Revolution, which flowed directly from enlightenment principles and constitutes the first modern genocide. Over a quarter-million faithful Catholics were massacred for being just that, faithful Catholics. They refused to disavow their religion; namely, their allegiance to the Pope.
These deaths, however, constitute less than one fifth of one percent of the total victims of the enlightenment. When we reject a reason for our being, deny any value to life, and focus solely on how to reach our goals, morality drops away. Any faith would find these number abhorrent, but in the name of reason...
- From Nazi's enlightened eugenics program - 26 million
- Under Mao's new enlightened China - 38 million
- Under Russia's enlightened communism - 62 million
- From other communist nations (Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, etc.) - 11 million
Not counting war, preventable famine or abortion, that's 137 million people.
(The worst killer of all, abortion - 1.5 billion deaths since World War II (But we can leave the Enlightenment out of that and just attribute it to man's inhumanity.))
Even when we compare the high estimate for Christianity to the middle estimates for enlightenment philosophy, we get a number 45 times higher, in only one tenth the time.
It is truly ironic that this idea should be named Enlightenment. Rather than ushering in an age of light it brought darkness, such that the true dark ages are not the time that came before, but rather every day since.
Perhaps one day the world will realize that reason alone is insufficient. Reason, unfettered by faith, won't take us anywhere we want to go.
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