Pope Francis as a universalist?

Pope Francis, the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, has already proven to be a controversial person from time to time in his career of only a few months. And luckily it has been in a surprisingly Christlike way, not in the way most modern liberal people expect popes to conservative and oldfashionedly irrelevant: The pope who denied the papal palace, shuns wealth, calls the church to focus on the poor,  washed the foot of women and Muslims instead of Catholic priests and criticised capitalism now stated that atheists are redeemed too and can do good works.

2 articles have been going round on facebook since yesterday, first one from the Vatican Radio and then one from the American Huffington post, which tried to interpret the words of the pope from an American perspective, but to me they seemed to miss the point and tried to make him answer questions he wasn’t addressing…

But let’s have a look at what our papal friend is saying:

“The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation”:

“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:

“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

(bold parts from the Vatican radio website)

Some people, like Paul from disoriented, reoriented, actually do think Francis’ words point to Christian universalism (the idea that through the saving work of Christ all will be saved in the end), and point to the old tradition of universalism within christianity that goed back to Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, but I’m not so sure of that actually. I don’t have much problems with hopeful universalism or even praying for the salvation of Satan in the end (as Gregory of Nyssa did), but I believe in free will, and I am afraid that some will never be able to enjoy an eternity with God, it would be hell to them.  But it’s not my task to even speculate about those things, let alone proclaim that I know all the answers here.

It is clear that the pope is an inclusivist here, not in the the sense of salvation (which is not addressed) but when it comes to doing good, which is what is expected from all human beings. (I suppose Rahners idea of anonymous Christians or the older idea of virtuous pagans does fit in here somewhere.)

What we can be sure of though is that the pope here rejects 2 doctrines that are important to certain protestant traditions, especially those based on Calvinism: limited atonement (Jesus did only die for the chosen)  and total depravity (man is fallen in a comprehensive way, and can’t do good himself)

(My problem with total depravity lies in the people whom the NT calls good and just, like Zachary and Elisabeth who were Thora-abiding Jews, and Cornelius who was a God-fearing pagan. Apart from that I do believe very strongly in human depravity, and I see it all the time in the news, around me, and in myself!)

The pope acknowledges here simply that all people can do good, whether they’re atheists or catholics:

“Doing good” the Pope explained, is not a matter of faith: “It is a duty, it is an identity card that our Father has given to all of us, because He has made us in His image and likeness. And He does good, always.”

What’s interesting is that he roots the possibility of doing good works both in Creation (man being the image of God) and in being redeemed by the blood of Christ.  Note also that Pope Francis is speaking about good works and bringing peace here. he isn’t speaking about salvation per se, especially not in ‘going to heaven after you die’ kind.Francis in his view on Christianity seems to be focussed more on the ‘here and now’ aspect of the Kingdom of God, specifically for the ‘least of those’ than about the ‘pie in the sky’ dimension of salvation that some people prefer.

To be sure about how to interpret what the pope said I asked  a catholic, Rob Allaert who writes in Dutch on http://www.thuiskerk.be , and he responded with the next paragraph:

Redemption needs to be uderstood as gift and assignment. Become who you are in Christ. Or as Saint Paul would have it: “Offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.” So, there is an assignment attached to salvation which has in itself a universal scope.

(He also said my interpretation in this post ‘nailed it’.)

So, redemption is only the beginning point here, not the end point at all as ‘salvation’ is often seen in  evangelicalism. Salvation may be universal, but it gives us ‘an assignment’. I don’t think I can disagree with that actually. I even think we should say the same about predestination: if some are predestined by God, it is not just to be saved themselves, but to bring Christ, and salvation and redemption, to this broken world.

So what can we take from this, except from a strong affirmation of the popes inclusivism and love for all people of all religions, and the call to everyone for peace and doing good? I hope there’s also the last thought included somewhere: Loving God and neighbor as the great commandment says (which will include living out that love, maybe even in radical ways) is not the way to salvation, it is part of salvation itself. The Christian idea of both heaven and the Kingdom of heaven on earth looks forward to a world in which all relationships have been restored, and everyone and everything lives in harmony with God, other humans, and all of Creation.

If that’s what the pope means, I agree with him…

what do you think

Bram

PS: The most creepy thing about a universalist pope, especially if he is the second pope after John Paul II, is that in the dispensationalist end-times plots I encountered as a kid (that the pentecostals for some had borrowed from dispensationalism) the endtimes-pope would be some kind of ‘all-religions-are equal’ universalist who would be very popular but open the door for the worship of the beast 666 by the people of all religions.
(Not that real Christian universalism in which it is Christ and Christ alone who saves all would apply here, let alone a pope who calls the Church back to following the gospel in simplicity as Francis does. But somewhere in me the idea still lingers sometimes, and it feels a bit creepy…)

C.S. Lewis, Ayn Rand, and science and magic as twins

Yesterday I came onto this blog post, in which Ayn Rands marginal notes are quoted like  she has scribbled them into C.S. Lewis book ‘the abolition of man’, a book that I’ve read several times in my life. As someone who knows the ideas of this book, I was quite surprised not only by the vitriol of her comments, but also by how irrelevant some of them are to the text they’re criticising. Update: the complete marginal notes from Rand can be found here (thank you Arend Smilde for the link)

For those who don’t know the book (which can be read online here): Lewis is mostly known for his Christian books, but this is a more a philosophical book that’s actually not particularly Christian. The main point of the book is 2-fold: First there is an Orwellian critique to the modernist project of man conquering nature, in which Lewis states that the final step of this conquering will be ultimately self-defeating on the part of man. The second point is that there is a more or less absolute set of values inherent to this world, which he calls the tao,  with a word borrowed from Eastern philosophy, of which all meaningful human values in all cultures are derived. I do not agree with every detail, and I don’t get more than half of his references, but  I’ve always found the basic ideas of the book, and it’s critique to modernism, quite compelling. (But you need to read the whole book to understand his conclusions, including some weird parts that are hard to read.)

(I also have the idea that some of her remarks about middle ages and the renaissance would not have been made if her issue of the book would have included, like the Dutch version does,  De despcriptione temporum, his inaugural lecture from the chair of mediaeval and renaissance literature at Cambridge University (1954).)

One of the things Rand reacts quite strongly to is the idea that magic and modern science are related:

The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.

Lewis as a scholar of medieval and renaissance literature (see also the ‘de descfriptione  temporum’ text I’ve linked to) knows what he is talking about, and anyone who knows something about the life of Isaac Newton for example, who was both a scientist and an alchemist who did weird studies in the occult (and a Christian who wrote bible commentaries)  should know what he’s talking about. Newton can indeed be considered as one of the last great Western magicians as well as one of the first great scientists…

Very important here is what Lewis means with the words science and magic. Both are not means of mere knowledge for him, but of power, power over reality, including power of the one who has it over other humans. Magic is a way to get power using the supernatural, science (and technology) is a way to get power using the natural world. Note also that ‘magic’ as used here is the opposite of astrology, which has the purpose of conforming to the influences of the stars and the supernatural!

Lewis himself does not deny the existence of science as a search for knowledge, and indeed explicitly notes that there are scientists who are seeking for pure knowledge, but that’s not the goal of most applied science both in the 16th century and the momdern time, which shares indeed the goal of magic: to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

I don’t think Lewis would say that this is always a problem, he’s not a luddite and used technology himself, and never rejects it. But what he wants to show us is a dark side that is inherent to modern (applied) science. A dark side that might remind us to the lie of the snake, that told the first couple that they would be like God.

And indeed, science has been used for ‘playing God, and abused in a lot of abominable ways to get power, not only over nature, but also over other humans. Most science nowadays is subdued not to those who want pure knowledge, but to those who want power and money.  This is how we came to have the atom bomb, genetically engineered crops that are very handy in making multinationals richer, etc, (While some other scientific fields not useful for securing power and money are underfunded!)

So what happened to magic? It lost because it didn’t seem to work the way science worked, and was pushed out of the modern worldview which became more and more hermetically naturalistic. But its goal is still the same goal of a lot of modern science.

The point of self-control to be able to conform ourself to reality is also something we should not forget. We are not the creators of the universe, and there are things higher than us we should conform to, like certain laws of nature. I do not mean this deterministically, we should not let every thing we meet rule over us, man is indeed able to fight back when reality is hostile and evil, but we moderns should not forget that we can never be free without self-control…

what do you people think?

peace

Bram

Freedom, human weakness, and why I suppose I better don’t leave the internet

Humans might have free will (yes, I believe that, I’m neither a calvinist nor a neuro-determinist), still they are quite weak too… We sometimes act on random impulses and are easily conditioned in doing stuff we shouldn’t do or not doing stuff we should do.

I’m not talking about big spectacular dangerous sins or serious addictions here. My biggest temptations lies more in things that come close to being nothing at all than in big evil sins… Sometimes I find myself irritatingly weak for example against all kind of ‘nothing-addictions’ when hanging around a computer that has an internet-connection (and facebook). Just wasting time is a big problem that I can’t afford, but it can be so compulsive, when I miss the energy to start what I should do, or miss the overview of the stuff I have to do, or just don’t have the attention to do anything not mindless… And then the meaningless click-an-surf-mode goes on, my time, energy and everything goes down the drain…

How can I solve this?

The problem here is discerning what the underlying problem is, and what just the symptom. I sometimes wish I could disconnect completely from the internet and facebook to free myself from these ‘nothing-addictions’, which is an impossibility for both my work and my social life. But still the idea lingers that everything would be different and that I would be doing more if I would be able to disconnect completely.

Which probably is mostly nonsense: at the moments that I’m productive I don’t fall into these kind of addictions at all, with internet on and facebook open… It’s only when I’m already distracted that they are out to get me… Moreover, I don’t think the internet is the main problem here, in an internetless life I would find other ‘nothing-addictions’… A very interesting article by Paul Miller, who did what I sometimes dream of and lived a year without the internet confirms what I already suspected… The problem lies not in the internet or facebook, and will never be solved by just disconnecting..

So I guess my real problem is battling my ADD and my overall lack of discipline, not the internet… I need to battle deeply ingrained patterns and to fight the false ideas of freedom that ‘not having to do anything’ is a form of freedom. There is no freedom in having to follow every stupid impulse, or in having to follow whatever comes your way. If that is freedom there can be no free will indeed. (And any form of humanism is impossible, since it’s nature that has by default won from the human being, just as Christianity is impossible, the flesh will always win.)

I do not believe in this determinism. Man may be a weak creature, but we do have free will! Even though it’s sometimes not strong enough against the other things that want to control us…

So here we come to the paradox: Only in self-control can freedom be found, otherwise you’re a slave to whatever impulse from inside or outside that comes your way.

Now that I realise this I know that I’ve been lazy all my life, and that I have to unlearn and relearn a lot of things. May God help me with this, I cannot do this alone… Wasn’t self-control one of the fruits of the Spirit? Where are those fruits [love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, see Galations 5:22] in contemporary Christianity anyway? Or are they not manly enough?

peace

Bram

scepticism about the age of scepticism

Some people call this ‘the age of scepticism’. Sometimes because as a Christian we feel that there is a lot of scepticism against our tradition, which used to be the main influence in our Western part of the world, but it is also because the humanist tradition in line of the Enlightenment finds itself to be very ‘sceptical’.

I myself am very sceptical here, and sort of have my doubts about this self-proclaimed age of ‘scepticism’ in which we are in tough. Most people I know that use that word to describe themselves are not exceptionally sceptical at all, they just fully subscribe to a tradition that likes to apply that word to itself (it’s even more weird when you have people call themselves ‘freethinker’ and they all parrot the same enlightenment-light clichés) and that is sceptical of other traditions, but they never seem to questions the dogmas that every Westerner seems to breathe in and out like a fish does not notice the water.

I wish there was more scepticism about the foundations of our way of life and our Western ways of thinking, but except in new age circles and among conspiracy theorists I do not find much of that kind of scepticism, and those people in most cases completely unsceptical about whatever kind of alternative truth comes their way…

It’s not really a surprise though. Real scepticism, and the willingness to question everything does in most cases lead one away from the tradition one is in. Most of those people are seen as heretics of some kind, except when they gain enough followers to throw over the old order for a new one, or at least establish a separate tradition… And in both ways the real scepticism will die…

Yes one could establish a tradition of scepticism, but that would kinda be self-defeating. Scepticism and the forming of a tradition are very strange bedfellows. Except for the first generation, you never get real sceptics in an existing movement: every sceptic reconstructs a new system by himself, that might be adopted as the new orthodoxy by their followers, and the it will just  fossilise into a new tradition.

I don’t find those who adhere to the scientist tradition to be sceptics at all, except for that they are (like everyone) sceptics about traditions not theirs. But that’s true for almost everybody…

And I wish we’d have more real sceptics…

peace

Bram