In my last post , I argued the Christian doctrine of Original Sin and the theory of evolution are entirely compatible. This is something of an embarrassment because Augustine of Hippo's doctrine of original sin has encouraged so much Christian censoriousness. He argued that the sin (of Adam and Eve) is communicated through the sex act and this has been enough to justify a fear of sex, damaging to the life of the church, including the position of women, who have been accused of the fall in much the same way as the Jews are accused of murdering Jesus.
Original sin is the first of Wesley's three great doctrines and so we need to look at the other two before we arrive at a final conclusion. The next is Justification by faith.
So, let's go back to evolution. Dawkins will tell us that everything about us is determined through natural selection. The need to kill, eat and reproduce is explainable through natural selection. Indeed, most of our urges for pleasure, for power and wealth can be explained by millions of years of competition to survive. We are programmed to prioritise whatever actions we need in order to pass on our genes to the next generation.
Let us accept this view at face value. As human beings we are not free but at the mercy of our selfish genes and so will behave selfishly.
To behave as programmed by our selfish genes, without any external constraints, is traditionally called license. We are enslaved not only to our genes but also to those who control the resources we need to take our pleasures. This is where imperialism comes in, imperialism is social control. Imperialists provide bread and circuses, to keep the rest of us happy. We begin to see why license is a problem for us. It is a means by which all of us are enslaved. Because we are enslaved to our natural desires we become slaves of our rulers too.
Is there an alternative? The obvious one is law. So, imperial powers will try to impose law and morality. Crossan in the second chapter of In Search of Paul , describes how Emperor Augustus attempted to impose morality upon Roman society. He wasn't very successful but his aims seem somehow familiar. Of course, Judaism is based upon law but there, it seems, much emphasis is placed upon interpretation of the law. In Jewish hands, the law seems flexible and interpreted with a degree of irony.
So, we have a choice between license and morality. The former is easy to surrender to and the latter far more difficult. Both are used by imperialists for social control. Is there really no alternative?
Justification is a decision to accept neither license nor morality. We understand both of these approaches enslave us and that we must surrender to another way which is beholden to no-one. This is the way of the disciple.
At this point many Christians believe they have accomplished the job. All they have done is set one foot upon the way and so believe they are saved. So much follows from this lack of ambition. It becomes easy to fall for some Christianised version of morality.
Imperialism, through license, which today we call consumerism, or morality, enslaves us to external forces. Our salvation is in being free from both. It comes from an understanding of the meaning of of Jesus' death. His victory over death means we need no longer fear death. Without fear of death, society has no hold over us, neither in terms of license nor morality. Imperialism depends upon our fear of death. If we do not eat and reproduce, we die and our descendants die too. This fear is their hold over us. We learn to embrace death because we understand it is necessary. Without death society will stagnate. Reproduction is important for the survival of genes but so is death. We need to embrace death in a positive way, a way of trust in God.
License is too chaotic and needs to be balanced by morality. A society entirely moral would stagnate. Our task is to walk the knife edge between the two. The new science of complexity shows us this path is hard to find but generates all that is new. Evolution itself happens along this edge and it is the path we are all called by God to travel. It is a path of freedom and creativity.
Justification is the name we give to the call and decision to do this. Sanctification, the third of Wesley's great doctrines, tells us how to do it. As such it is the greatest of his three doctrines.
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