Two Theologies

( From last week ‘I looked up a bit of history about Church development and so on and I came across quotations saying: “There are many theologies within the Catholic Church” – I should have known that of course and I did in a sense – but I didn’t know, say, that St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas who lived around the same time had quite different theologies and yet they are both famous for their love story of God’  ).

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 and 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 and 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 then 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 – and 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 throng to Confession long before we can commit any sin. We are all the time saying “Mea culpa”, “Mea culpa”, “O 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 and 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.” And that’s 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.

All of these episodes will be based on that second and beautiful and forgotten and neglected love story – the one out of which Pope Francis says everything, and says everything so lyrically and so beautifully.

So, instead of Original Sin, we talk about Original Blessing – original joy, original creativity and imagination, original light – divine light – rather than the darkness of sin.

That is what I would set before you – those two theologies – one is on the way out and one is being recovered and re-discovered. Again, our friend Richard Rohr – a wonderful theologian – has done his homework. He says:

“Christianity’s continued ‘Fall-Redemption’ spirituality just kept digging a deeper impossible basis for our faith. We must return to our original creation theology and spirituality for the foundational reform of Christianity.”

(Richard Rohr)

 What a reform it is going to need! But he could see clearly part of the foundational trouble caused by that flawed understanding, flawed teaching. So, for the rest of our time together and I hope we will all stick together until Episode 10 which will open again into the future – that is the story and the theology perfectly traditional.

Don’t be anxious about it – it is perfectly orthodox – it is just that we are a bit unaccustomed to it. It will warm our hearts. I feel certain that it will renew our minds. I am equally certain that it will heal our bodies so deep and beautiful because we were created to hear that lovely story.

(  Transcript from video 2 Astonishing Secret video course visit  https://astonishingsecret.org )