Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christentum: Befreiung von dem Bösen; Gefallenheit - Gnade

Kurzinhalt: Christianity is, first of all, a liberation from the evil that destroys us; We choose evil for no other reason than that it is evil; Grace is the inner movement of what we outwardly recognize in Jesus.

Textausschnitt: 134a This is the core of what Christianity is all about. It is not primarily a movement of salvation from this world or of reconciliation with the divine judge above it. Christianity is, first of all, a liberation from the evil that destroys us. Everything else follows from this. We recognize the depth of the evil that held us in light of the divine gift of self required to overcome it. The predicament in which we had been fastened becomes blindingly clear. Our condition had been one of fallenness, the immovability of souls barely able to sense the direction they should go, but utterly powerless to move a muscle toward it. It was not only that our gaze was limited to the range of finite reality and therefore was incapable of drawing us toward our transcendent fulfillment; the darkness within ourselves went deeper than the absence of light. It was infected with the spirit of revolt. Not only did we recurrently fall into evil and consistently fall short of our aspirations. There was a distinct component of wilfulness to it. Evil was not merely an affliction; it is also an inescapable fatality of our souls. We choose evil for no other reason than that it is evil. Irrational and surdic as it may be, we are prone to overstepping the limits for no other reason than that they are there. We want to be the center of our own existence even when we know we are not. Fallenness is not a mythic extrapolation to the beginning; it is primarily the mystery of iniquity that we recognize as holding us in its grip. The good that I seek is not the good that I will; rather, it is the evil I do not wish (Romans 7:13-25). It is the realization finally that nothing separates us from the evil we wish to avoid-the abyss we are powerless to close within us-that opens us up to recognition of the transcendent fullness that can alone close the emptiness. (Fs) (notabene)

135a What Plato intimated in the proximity of the philosopher/tyrant, we recognize as the universal condition of human hearts. Our capacity for evil is the mirror image of our unlimited openness to good. Evil is not merely a fall away from goodness. It is its inversion, and nothing can ensure against its irruption. The very unattainability of transcendent fulfillment can be redirected toward its opposite and prove equally insatiable. Our life is balanced in every moment on that knife edge of possibility where, for no reason, we might yet choose the evil we seek to avoid. Habit can consolidate the practice of virtue at every step of the way, but it can do nothing to secure the innermost orientation of the soul toward it. The final temptation is to do the right thing for the wrong reason. Augustine's critique of philosophic virtue lays bare the reserve of pride that can still remain untouched by all its impressive resolution.1 The twentieth century has presented the shock of limitless gratuitous cruelty to the de-Christianized modern consciousness, but it would have surprised neither Augustine nor Dostoevsky, who both recognized such a possibility within themselves. Once again the rational apprehension of reality seems supportable only by the light of transcendent grace dispensed by Christ. It is because we see in him the transcendent fulfillment of our longing that we are able to acknowledge its abyssal character within us. (Fs) (notabene)

135b Grace is the inner movement of what we outwardly recognize in Jesus. It is the touch of transcendent reality we recognize as our final fulfillment and whose mere brush is enough to bring about the decisive reorientation of our lives. This is the repentance at the heart of the Gospel message. Without it, not only are we unable to move toward our transcendent fulfillment, but even the limited goodness of which we are capable by nature will fail. As Augustine explains, the incompleteness and conditionality of our orientation toward the good, eventually infects even ordinary virtues with its corrosive influence.1 Thinking we can get by with a merely human effort, we eventually lose the defenses needed to prevent the coop-tation of our efforts in the service of evil. This is why a purely natural order cannot stand long. Virtues of tolerance and kindness ultimately lack the fortitude to resist the more imperious demands for self-interest and survival at any cost. Only Christianity can provide the adequate underpinnings for the realization of natural virtue because Christianity alone has differentiated the constitution of nature from its transcendent source. The capacity to rationally analyze the sources of the abyssal disorder that afflicts the natural order is intimately connected with the revelation of the transformative grace of restoration. Repentance generates an order within this life because it is rooted in the order beyond it. (Fs) (notabene)