Let’s do the right thing!

Now, in the process of the divinisation of the self, that began with the eating of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, we imagine that grace is something that comes from us, something that we may practice. We are blessed through our own actions. It is enough, we think, to decide to live the best life that we can live. Hello Pelagianism!

Modern anthropology is ignorant of the divided self. As Paul would have it; "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (Rom 7:15) Or as Luther would have it, we are simultaneously saints and sinners. This ignorance of human nature opens into a triumphalism in which the right and the wrong, the righteous and the unrighteous are easily and plainly obvious. Hence our modern Puritanism and our narrowing moral code.

If desire lies at the centre of the human soul for good or ill, it also lies at the centre of faith.

God reveals himself not as a supernatural being who shares our ontology, but in the Trinitarian relations. Belief in God is not an intellectual exercise that we can perform. The Billy Graham crusades bordered on Pelagianism when he encouraged us to accept Jesus as our personal saviour. Rather, faith is quickened by our desire for the One who is most beloved, Jesus. But having loved the Son, we automatically love the Father because they love one another. Faith is not a work we can perform but a desire for the beloved. It is no wonder that the kingdom of heaven/God is described in terms of a wedding banquet.

In all this God does not "act" in the world as though He is a distant inhabitant of the universe but who can reach into the world in response to prayer. Rather God exists as does a work of art, or in the parable of the pearl of great price. Such things evoke desire just by being. The influence of art is a passive causality. Similarly, the man Jesus, because he is no longer in the world in the flesh, acts to draw us to Himself through his image in Scripture and by the love in the Church. There lies an ontological difference between the creature and the creator, His being is not like our being, He exists in eternity while we live in secular time. He does not create as we create. While our creation is causal, His is a creation out of nothing and is inconceivable to us. It is not as though God fashioned a thing called the cosmos, in which case we could talk in terms of cause and effect, but rather, in a neo-Platonic way, the creation is the mirror of His being and reflects His beauty. This is how it may be said that we are created in the image of God.

Thus, coming to faith cannot be described in terms of a rational progression, but only in terms of desire. Faith is a participation in "an anterior gift, and it is at once self-moved and moved by the beauty of the gift. Here will, whether human or divine, is constituted in a relation of love for the beloved, and its freedom is established in dispossession." There is no such thing as abstract freedom there is only freedom for and the paradoxical loss of the self in that freedom. On the other hand, according to secularism, "will names an inviolable power, and freedom consists in demonstrating this inviolability". But this is an empty freedom because desire lacks an object.

We now exist in a time of hangover in which we are conscious of the old mores only as fragments of a forgotten tradition. When we attempt to talk about "the human condition" we mix and match various sources. It is no wonder that our attempts are inchoate as are the speeches of school headmasters. We have lost the language of the soul established by the early theologians and we proceed as though the old forms still hold, but barbarism lies close to hand. It will take more time for us to realise that the ground has fallen from under our feet and the final catastrophe is upon us. Already we observe the disintegration of once common ground in our institutions and personally. Already the light of Christ is fading from consciousness. It is apparent that the Church, in all its forms, has lost the battle for the modern mind. God help us!