In the thread on sin, I refer to a book called Original Goodness, written by a Hindu scholar who taught meditation to his American students at Cal. Since his primary audience was Christian, he used the wisdom teachings and understandings of mystics from several religions, but mostly Christians, in his books. After recalling the provocative title that originally drew me to his book, Original Goodness, I took it off my shelf to read again after 20 or so years. I knew it was about the beatitudes, but his title implies that he was would offer broad insight into human nature, including sin. I couldn’t remember how he worked that into his notion of original goodness. Here are a few excerpts from the introductory chapter.
Original Goodness by Eknath Easwaran.
“I have spoken at times of a light in the soul, a light that is uncreated and uncreatable . . . to the extent that we can deny ourselves and turn away from created things, we shall find our unity and blessing in that little spark in the soul, which neither space nor time touches.” – Meister Eckhart
First, there is a “light in the soul that is uncreated and uncreatable”: unconditioned, universal, deathless; in religious language, a divine core of personality which cannot be separated from God. Eckhart is precise: this is not what the English language calls the “soul,” but some essence in the soul that lies at the very center of consciousness. As Saint Catherine of Genoa put it, “My me is God: nor do I know my selfhood except in God.” In Indian mysticism this divine core is called simply atman, “the Self.”…..
On this legacy the mystics are unanimous. We are made, the scriptures of all religions assure us, in the image of God. Nothing can change that original goodness. Whatever mistakes we have made in the past, whatever problems we may have in the present, in every one of us this “uncreated spark in the soul” remains untouched, ever pure, ever perfect. Even if we try with all our might to douse or hide it, it is always ready to set our personality ablaze with light……
Early in the third century, a Greek Father of the Church, Origen, referred to this core of goodness as both a spark and a divine seed – a seed that is sown deep in consciousness by the very fact of our being human, made in the image of our Creator. “Even though it is covered up,” Origen explains, because it is God that has sowed this seed in us, pressed it in, begotten it, it cannot be extirpated or die out; it glows and sparkles, burning and giving light, and always it moves upward toward God. Eckhart seized the metaphor and dared take it to the full limits it implies: The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is, and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature……
Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God. “Its fruit will be God-nature”! What promise could be more revolutionary? Yet Eckhart, like other great mystics of the Church before and after him, does no more than assure us of his personal experience. The seed is there, and the ground is fertile. Nothing is required but diligent gardening to bring into existence the God-tree: a life that proclaims the original goodness in all creation. The implications of this statement are far-reaching. Rightly understood, they can lift the most oppressive burden of guilt, restore any loss of self-esteem. For if goodness is our real core, goodness that can be hidden but never taken away, then goodness is not something we have to get. We do not have to figure out how to make ourselves good; all we need do is remove what covers the goodness that is already there. To be sure, removing these coverings is far from easy. Having a core of goodness does not prevent the rest of personality from occasionally being a monumental nuisance. But the very concept of original goodness can transform our lives. It does not deny what traditional religion calls sin; it simply reminds us that before original sin was original innocence. That is our real nature. Everything else – all our habits, our conditioning, our past mistakes – is a mask. A mask can hide a face completely; like that frightful iron contraption in Dumas’s novel, it can be excruciating to wear and nearly impossible to remove. But the very nature of a mask is that it can be removed. This is the promise and the purpose of all spiritual disciplines: to take off the mask that hides our real face…..
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"We are in God and God is in us, as the fish is in the sea and the sea is in the fish." --St Catherine of Siena
ReplyDeleteI don't believe in the innate goodness or evil of people. I think what we call "good and evil" reflects the capacity of people to cooperate with or to destroy each other. And those capacities are probably rooted in the origins of modern humans who had to do both to survive. That's my Inner Unitarian talking, I guess.
I sought Baptism as an adult. For me it was a sign of my intention to wash the destructive urges, especially those that had become habitual and cruel, from my soul. When The Boy was baptized, it was a sign that we as parents intended to raise him in a way that pushed him toward the good.
I think, too often, Baptism is seen as some kind of lifetime membership ritual that bestows the key to membership in the Cosmic Country Club of Eternal Life, Great Parties, and Manicured Lawns.
We forget it's a promise we made before our Creator that requires renewal and effort every damn day.
According to the RCC, and mentioned by Jim in his homilies, nobody can be “ saved” if they aren’t baptized ( water) . Jim and I had a long discussion about this once. Finally Jim said that baptism is the only “for sure” way that the church knows of to eternal salvation. Eventually the church added baptism of desire to the possibles to try to redeem a teaching that could theoretically mean that someone like Ghandi wouldn’t go to hell. And baptism by martyrdom for the faith. It seems unlikely that people chose martyrdom without having been baptized by water, but I am not a theologian or church historian so maybe.
ReplyDeleteI started having problems with the doctrine of original sin years ago. It never made sense to me, and after studying a bit, I learned why. However the church tends to paint itself into corners by proclaiming infallibility - Papal. Or the ordinary magisterium etc. Unfortunately the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception had to be “developed” because otherwise the mother of Jesus would not have been a perfect, perfectly sinless person, a condition that they believed absolutely necessary for the human mother of a human baby. They also had to develop the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity. Not being a virgin would be “impure”, no matter how holy the woman is.
So the misguided teachings grow out of previous misguided teachings. Augustine was hung up on sex, and saw Eve (woman) as temptress causing man (Adam) to sin. So he developed the doctrine of original sin. Interesting to me that the eternal punishment of humanity for the “fall” wasn’t incurred until Adam, the man, ate the fruit (disobeyed). The woman’s disobedience wasn’t important enough to condemn all humans for however long there is human life on earth - to having all humans for beings ( except Jesus and Mary) born with sin on their souls. For a while they taught that newborn babies who died before being baptized couldn’t go to heaven because they had original sin on their souls. So they came up with limbo, now apparently no longer taught as it was in my Catholic school days.
Your Unitarian upbringing had a few positives it seems.
I wasn't raised having to reconcile Catholic theology with various "what about" situations.
DeleteIt seems to me that Christians should only feel confident that, for them, Baptism is a necessary sacrament, but that it confers nothing special unless they try to live up to their baptismal promises. They should infer nothing about the salvation of others who have not been baptized.
Where clergy and theologians try to make inferences, they are guilty of trying to speak for God and should be ignored. The job of clergy and theologians is to help and encourage others to love God and their neighbors, not explain how God works.
Literary side track: I've always been puzzled by the fact that John the Baptist, baptized by Christ himself, was traditionally one of the souls in Hell in the Harrowing plays the Church put on every Easter. Waiting for a theologian to explain that one.
“…it ( baptism) confers nothing special unless they try to live up to their baptismal promises. They should infer nothing about the salvation of others who have not been baptized.
DeleteWhere clergy and theologians try to make inferences, they are guilty of trying to speak for God and should be ignored.”
Agreed.
If only I had been raised Unitarian or United Church of Christ- then I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time researching and studying all the Catholic doctrines that have never made sense to me but that I was taught are “ must believes”.
My sense of "being Catholic" has pretty much unraveled. As I've said many times, I admire lots about Church teaching, the saints, its art and imagination. But I wasted a lot of my time as a Catholic worrying about little rules and regs that, in the end, distracted me from bigger things like developing patience, tolerance, loyalty, open-heartedness, and a sense of joy in being with others.
DeleteI may have referenced this snippet from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: " The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude". (CCC 1257). The entire paragraph might be worth considering in light of this post. Btw, this paragraph is the first one listed under the heading, "The Necessity of Baptism":
ReplyDelete"1257 The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation.[Cf. Jn 3:5]. He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them. [Cf. Mt 28:19-20; cf. Council of Trent (1547) DS 1618; LG 14; AG 5.] Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament. [Cf. Mk 16:16.] The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are "reborn of water and the Spirit." God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments."
I offer this as a baseline for what the church magisterium teaches. I don't know how well this correlates with the divine spark of Meister Eckhart and the other Christian mystics, but I think it's also traditional church teaching that even the Fall didn't destroy all that is good about humanity - although it left us in such a state of fallenness that we're not able to get back up on our own.
The Church teaches that "baptism is necessary for salvation," but it also teaches that all the people who lived prior to the ministry of Jesus (and the institution of baptism) had the possibility of salvation, and also all in the subsequent generations who did not know about Christianity through no fault of their own were not excluded from the possibility of salvation. (It's a fascinating question as to when the "Adam and Eve" moment came in human history. One source I checked has homo sapiens going back 300,000 years, with "modern" homo sapiens going back 160,000.)
DeleteI think Catholic apologists make the point included in your quote from the Catechism: "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments."
It would seem to me then, that baptism is, and is not, necessary for salvation.
I no longer put a lot of faith in theologians, nor in the Magisterium to get it right all the time. Their pronouncements and catechisms don’t bring me closer to a relationship with God. I suspect this is true of many. I find the insights of Catholic and other Christian spiritual writers and “mystics”, and also some of the insights from Buddhism and other eastern religions and philosophies bring me closer to learning to live with divine mysteries. The sacraments are man- made, some inspired by Jesus and the gospels, but I doubt that God is overly concerned about the 95% or more of human beings who lived after the founding of Christianity - and knew about it but did not become Christians - not having received them.
Delete"God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments....It would seem to me then, that baptism is, and is not, necessary for salvation."
DeleteInteresting thoughts, David. I believe along those lines also.
I also remember the "baptism of desire", which would be the desire to do good, whether or not one knew about God as we think of him. Not all Christian denominations believe in Baptism, including the Salvation Army. They certainly have the desire to do good, and believe in God.
I believe that Baptism is good and necessary for Catholic Christians, and am grateful for my Baptism.
In these days of genocide and general nastiness, I’m not a big believer in human goodness, original or otherwise. The so-called “christian” nations are supporting a “Jewish” nation that’s performing open brazen extermination. Search around and you’ll find similar things with non-Christian nations. Then there’s climate change which mostly gets ignored because we like our little habitual conveniences. Give the human race an IQ test or morality test, I think we’re coming up way short. If people lived up to their baptism, it would be a start. For us, anyway.
ReplyDeleteIn thinking about this for a couple of days, I have decided that for me, the notion of original goodness makes sense - more sense than original sin at birth. As noted in the excerpts, all major world religions teach that human beings are made in the image of God. So we are all born "good" as God is good. So babies are not born with sin on their souls - they are innocent . As some point free will kicks in when making decisions on how to act - this stage of development can be seen with fairly young children. They may decide to hit little brother. But they don't necessarily know at age 2 or 3 that hurting other people is wrong - much less that it's a "sin". Adults gradually teach them. I think even the RCC doesn't claim that children younger than 7 truly understand sin well enough to define it, or to confess it. I don't think the human prediliction to do harm is evidence that babies are born with a sin on their souls that has to be washed away in baptism, or risk them dying and not going to heaven, but.....? Limbo is out these days.
ReplyDeleteBaptism is a ritual that symbolizes making one's child a member of the community, and is a commitment on the part of the parents to teach the children what members of a particular religious community believes. So it's not a necessary thing to do because the child is sinless. Adult converts know what they are committing to, but infants do not. It's a valid choice to make on behalf of one's child, but it isn't necessary. IMHO
I only believe in the Genesis creation story as an allegory, and not historical truth. But I believe it correctly names the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as the source of original sin. Because what that is, is free will. We can choose good or evil and we frequently choose evil. We can choose good because God made us good. But we can choose evil because we have millions of years of evolution, survival instincts, behind us. The urge for survival can be selfish and deceitful and conniving. But without survival instinct we wouldn't be here as a species. So we did and do need redeeming, if that makes any sense (which it probably doesn't!)
DeleteSomewhat unrelated, the name "Genesis" for a child is having a moment. Several little girls are named Genesis in our parish. Not a saint's name, but it is scriptural.
Seriously? Genesis is now a name? I suppose Genny or Gen for short might be a choice if these girl children grow up and think they have been burdened by their name instead of gifted by it. It could go either way.
DeleteI don’t think anyone except for evangelicals and apparently some Catholics these days take the Bible literally. But the church insists that baptism by water is necessary to wash away “:the stain of original sin”. I don’t think this is true. Babies are born innocent - no stain on their souls - yet. So no need for baptism at that point. In the early years of Christianity only adults were baptized, and many Protestants adhere to that because it’s scripturally based.
Free will - yes.we can choose good or evil but free will and original sin are not the same thing. Even the issues surrounding choosing evil freely - full knowledge- are murky.