Theology is a Love Story

However, not all theologies are love stories – as we will now see.

May I mention, in particular, two of these theologies. They are the two we will be most familiar with and we will explore briefly the story behind both to give us a deeper grasp of this course.

One is called a theology of Sin and Redemption and the other is called a theology of Creation – a theology of Nature and Grace – that nature and grace are not separate; they always come together.

That first theology is a grim one – it is doctrinal; it has little love in it; it has a lot of fear in it. You will know the story of Adam & Eve and Original Sin – and this perfect Garden and these two perfect people, and the snake who could talk and the unfortunate apple caught in the middle. It is a beautiful myth. It has a truth in it. It is asking the question we are all asking all the time – from where has this strange, evil, human stain in us come from? But it is not history. To take it as history has caused immense destruction of the true love story of God. It never happened.

The teaching Church still would say it did happen, But in any form of evolution or any form of the work of the scientists, it cannot be true, but it is a beautiful truth in myth. Anyway, we have taken it as history and so we believe that this was God’s first plan – it went all wrong – God was angry – shifted Adam & Eve out of the Garden where they would now have to work and sweat, and earn their bread by the sweat of their brow and somehow  then we are all complicit in it and we are all being punished for it and we are called sinners in exile, in a fallen world, and God wanted some kind of atonement and Jesus came to die so that God would be satisfied in some way – forgive me if I exaggerate a little bit – and finally we are saved but we are still ‘mired’ in sin. We still have to die, we are still suffering – all the fallout from that Original Sin – that is why we are weak and that is why we suffer and so on and so forth.

So our whole faith and our whole lives have been decided by and defined by a fall that never happened. So we are all living – when the baby is baptised and the devil is exorcised out of that baby. We all thronged to Confession long before we can commit any sin. We are all the time saying “Mea culpa”, “Mea culpa”, God forgive me – I must make reparation to you for the things I did and so on and so forth. And we think that this is why we have

to die and to suffer – the world, the flesh and the devil – all of these things because of Adam and Eve who never existed committing a sin of disobedience that never happened.

So you see the tragedy of that. It is little – it is nothing but a tragedy that this beautiful faith, this beautiful love story, this beautiful meaning of Incarnation from a God who is unconditional love, as we saw in the last episode, has been twisted and turned into a real winter time of the heart that brings a lot of guilt and shame – sin and darkness.

And we look at the other theology – just for a moment. It tells us – I don’t think you can reconcile the two – many say you can  – but it is a different story – of a God who is spilling over with love. Love tends to spread itself and God wished with all the desire in God to create and to be part of that Creation. So incarnation didn’t happen because Jesus had to come to suffer and to die to appease the Father.

Incarnation happened because that was the whole point of Creation that God could take on flesh – take on the emotions of the heart – take on the seasons of the year – and experience out of pure love with us all that being human means.

Thomas Aquinas said: “God is sheer joy and sheer joy demands company.” That is why we are created – not with any darkness hanging over us – or cloud of guilt, St. John Chrysostom says: “God created us to be manifestations of God’s own beauty.” So you see the difference between: we are wanton sinners – cursed from the start – the devil having to be exorcised out of us, with this beautiful picture of being God’s delight and God’s perfect creation – and God never losing patience with us or anything but unconditional love – no matter how we act and we do act in a pretty evil way so much of the time – but that Mother, lover God always holding us in that beautiful embrace.

So it looks like a lot of our faith will have to be redefined and that whole theology let free and the meaning of the Church as community and the meaning of the sacraments – all would be based on that beautiful theological story rather than the story of fear.

(Transcript excerpt from Episode 2 of An Astonishing Secret video course)