Ichthus Article: Façades

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What Is Original Sin?

Given my recent post on the matter, I've been thinking a lot about original sin and talking about it with different people. I've been a bit a frustrated by the vagueness of the doctrine. One friend told me that he never thought original sin implied (for example) the guiltiness of infants, but that it had something to do with the sinful nature or fallenness of mankind. I've heard different people suggest similar understandings of original sin.

Call such an understanding a "weak" view of original sin. A couple thoughts about the weak view:

1. No one I know of claims that Jesus was born with the stain of original sin. (I may not think that Mary was immaculately conceived, but I certainly think that Jesus was!) But Jesus was tempted, so he must have had a sinful nature in some sense...right? (Remember that what the NIV translates "sinful nature" literally means "flesh" - and Jesus clearly had flesh.) So it seems that, under the weak view of original sin, Jesus was born with the stain of original sin. But that is problematic.

2. Does anyone really dispute that we are born predisposed to sin or with sinful natures? And, if not, is the difference between proponents of a weak view of original sin and opponents of original sin just a semantic one?

Fish Tank Post: Infant Baptism and Original Sin

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A Resurrection That Matters

Reply to Evan Fales: On the Empty Tomb of Jesus

Fish Tank Post: The Man on the Cross

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Evil as Privation?

There is a long tradition in Christian thought of describing evil as nothing more than a privation of good.

The thought that always comes to mind: What about pain? Pain is not a lack of a good experience, but a (sometimes quite powerful) experience all its own. There is a difference between experiencing a lack of pleasure and experiencing pain. But pain, ceteris paribus, is evil.

Two Sides of the Coin

I have noticed what I believe is a sort of confusion in Christian theology, especially on the popular level. It is not (I think) a particularly troublesome confusion - most of the time - but it is worth mentioning nonetheless.

Consider the two following claims: "We are saved by faith alone" and "We are saved by grace alone." Without delving into the precise meaning of the five solas, I can say at least this: It does not make obvious sense that we can be saved both by faith alone and by grace alone. It seems, rather, that we are saved by both, and that neither is alone; the one is accompanied by the other.

In making this observation, I have not uncovered any glaring inconsistency in classical Protestant theology; I have only demonstrated a need for clarification. Here, I would like to propose a rough draft of a clarification, using the analogy of a coin.

Salvation, like a coin, has two sides. It is a gift (or set of gifts) we receive both through God's efforts to impart it to us - through His grace and Jesus' sacrifice on the cross - and through our efforts to receive it - through our faith or baptism, or perhaps (controversially) through our works. My preliminary suggestion is to call the former the means of salvation and the latter the conditions of salvation. Faith, then, would be a condition of salvation - "[W]ithout faith it is impossible to please [God]" (Hebrews 11.6) - while grace would be a means of salvation. Christians often discuss the question "What saves us?" Such discussions should, in my mind, be divided into discussions of what God has done to bring salvation and what we must do to accept it.

Perhaps this distinction is simplistic at best - perhaps the line between conditions and means is not so clear-cut. Perhaps it is biased toward certain perspectives on salvation. I do not know. I find this distinction helpful because it emphasizes and brings to light the covenantal nature of salvation; salvation has two sides because it is a covenant which must be (like any covenant) both offered and accepted.

It could also illuminate certain theological debates. For example, I think that saying we are not saved by works is saying (primarily) that our works cannot and can never be a means of our salvation; in other words, we cannot earn our salvation. However, the question of whether or not works can be a condition of our salvation - whether "faith without works" can be enough - is, in my opinion, a thornier one.

Fish Tank Post: Resurrection

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Fish Tank Post: Where Were We in Haiti?

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James on Skepticism

From William James' The Will to Believe:

"We cannot escape the issue by remaining skeptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else? Skepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error. [...] To preach skepticism to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us that yielding to our fear of error is wiser and better than yielding to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law."

"To take a trivial illustration: just as a man who in a company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant for every concession, and believed no one’s word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn, — so here, one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or not get it at all, might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making the gods' acquaintance. This feeling, forced on us we know not whence, that by obstinately believing that there are gods (although not to do so would be so easy both for our logic and our life) we are doing the universe the deepest service we can, seems part of the living essence of the religious hypothesis. If the hypothesis were true in all its parts, including this one, then pure intellectualism, with its veto on our making willing advances, would be an absurdity; and some participation of our sympathetic nature would be logically required. I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or willfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule. That for me is the long and short of the formal logic of the situation, no matter what the kinds of truth might materially be."

(Hat tip to JAM.)

Searle on the Overriding Question

From Searle's Freedom & Neurobiology:

"There is exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy. [...] How do we fit in? [...] How can we square this self-conception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational, etc., agents with a universe that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles?

For the scientific naturalist, the answer is, 'Not very well.'"

(Hat tip to CoW.)

The Sorrow of God

Courtesy of BW3, a beautiful and simple Cockney poem called The Sorrow of God: A Sermon in a Billet. My favorite parts:

But what if 'E came to the earth to show,
By the paths o' pain that 'E trod,
The blistering flame of eternal shame
That burns in the heart o' God?

For the voice of the Lord, as I 'ears it now,
Is the voice of my pals what bled,
And the call of my country's God to me
Is the call of my country's dead.

Chesterton on the Way Things Are

Gotta love it.

Fish Tank Post: Atheistic Moral Realism?

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