Church teaching and its motivations
On the Pope Leo thread, @ChastMastr summed up his opinion on my economic explanation for the American RCC's pro-immigration stance with:
To which I replied...
So there it is.
I don't really see a need to drag in ulterior motives when basic Christian morality in a time of extreme cruelty toward the weak and downtrodden explains it well enough.
To which I replied...
Do you think that that could just as easily be reversed, and I could say to you "I don't see a need to bring in religious motivations when basic self-interest will do?
So there it is.
Comments
2. When it comes to making guesses about other people's unknown motivations, you can choose to err on the side of charity or not. The direction you choose has some effect on your mental health and how you relate to people in general. It's something I keep in mind, having seen the end-of-life personalities of a few people who chose poorly--or not.
Social justice, in many cases (again, not all), comes a long way behind.
This.
I think it is both affect and effect. The affect of your mental health regarding people will effect your mental health as well. It is a vicious circle.
Just to be clear, I don't really see it as a question of a charitable vs. an uncharitable guess about motivations. I think it's more a convergence of self-interest with ideology, and Pope Leo likely isn't sitting down and saying "I'm gonna tell everyone I'm doing this out of Christian compassion, even though it's just to bolster the socioeconomic standing of the church."
FWIW, it is pretty clear that the RCC(in common with most other religious institutions, to be sure) is somewhat selective about whose human rights it chooses to champion on behalf of "basic Christian morality". But, again, I would not put this down to conscious deception.
Could you give a concrete example of the problem you're trying to address?
And where Churches do have developed teachings on social justice you can bet the press will ignore them, especially if theres a randy vicar available instead to fill column inches. In fact I suspect that is the case for most churches.
I presume you are talking about sermons vs discussions?
I would hope that a sermon did try to relate the "timeless truths" to a congregation's "here and now". After all, it's not an academic paper. And, except in exceptional situations, one shouldn't use a prewritten homily out of a book or journal, which can't relate to the local situation. A sermon (or "message" in Baptist parlance) is "God's Word to God's people, here and now" - at least. one prays and hopes so!
Do you mean individual churches or denominations?
In practice I don't think the most widespread churches in the world as a whole are particularly concerned about that, because most of them are some form of Catholic or Orthodox in the Global South/Majority World and simply have more important things to be concerned with. Ime churches in the Global North/Minority World get so invested in sexual matters mostly because they ignore the issues that are more pressing in the Global South. That said, I would say that even in the Global North the RCC for eg is much more concerned about supporting immigrants than anything to do with sex.
Individual churches.
Jesus was not against accusing the faith leaders of his time of several things. We believe God is both justice and love. In many ways the two are combined. For instance you may seek justice because a loved one has been badly treated. Justice and love are different sides of a he same coin
It's a standard evangelical trope - and I'm not knocking it - that God's love and justice are 'balanced' and expressed through Christ - particularly through the atonement.
As the old hymn has it, 'heaven's peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love.'
Other Christian traditions may wish to qualify or amend this somewhat juridical approach - and with good reason, it can lead to grotesque courtroom caricature.
Nevertheless with so many scriptural references to concepts like 'debt', 'ransom' and the 'penalty' for sin, it's understandable that these ideas have been systemically. We may think that some Christian traditions may labour this point over much - to over-egg the pudding or to 'over sugar the Bara Brith' - but there's no denying that a scriptural case can be made to support these views to a certain extent.
I was actually talking about justice & mercy as abstract concepts, thanks. That has nothing to with tropes, evangelical or otherwise.
I hope he forgives me for chipping in so presumptively.
My point, as a former evangelical, is that justice and mercy are not 'abstract concepts' when approached from that - and indeed other directions. They are essential to an an understanding of the Gospel from an evangelical perspective.
So yes, it is bang on the money within some Christian paradigms to deploy these tropes - which in those contexts go beyond metaphor as it were and essentially become the the thing itself.
What may appear to be 'abstract concepts' are then grounded and 'fleshed out' - quite literally - in the incarnation, life, atoning death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 'He has become our salvation.'
There is nothing abstract about that and indeed I'd suggest it's a variation on an orthodox theme (small o).
Christ is himself the embodiment of justice and mercy. God is love.
We don’t have to be evangelical Protestants to see that. Evangelicalism, Protestantism in general - and 'Western' Christianity per se - is sometimes criticised by Orthodox Christians for being somewhat abstract and 'Scholastic'.
What I'm saying is that whether or not that criticism is justified, there is a sense in which apparently abstract concepts such as justice and mercy cannot be disaggregated from some understandings of the Incarnation and atonement.
None of us are dealing with purely abstract concepts and tropes.
As a recovering RC, this much I remember: “ do unto others”.
Bugger-all to do with incarnation and atonement.
For me, this is about two contrasting images of water: an irresistible river torrent or flood cleansing, washing away injustice, clearing the ground for everlasting streams of nourishing and sustaining righteousness.
The human experience of floods (or even just a river in spate) is that they are not constant, that they come at a time and a place not of our choosing. But a never-failing stream is a source of water on which we can rely, that leads to life flourishing.
You know, I can see a whole different way of looking at Hell, Judgement, Justice and Salvation that can be drawn from this.
If we think in terms of People Getting What's Coming To Them, then everyone has a claim against someone, and you'd probably have to walk a long way to find someone who someone somewhere doesn't have a claim on. It's like being in a pit with everyone crawling over everyone else to get out. You have a morass of claim and counter-claim, resentment, accusation and grudge. That can perhaps be seen as a kind of Hell.
If Jesus saves us from Hell, it's that pit he saves us from. The pit of insisting on our getting justice over every perceived wrongdoing, and in turn of everyone else insisting on their getting justice over our every perceived slight against them.
Justice might require someone dragging warring individuals apart and making an objective judgement, but peace only comes when the parties accept the judgement, even if it isn't exactly what they wanted. Ultimately, and I've been saying this for a long time, peace comes through reconciliation, which can require a frank and open admission of wrongs done - an uneasy peace where one party doesn't think they've done anything wrong and the aggrieved party seethes silently is no peace.
No Justice, No Peace, as the slogan goes.
Torturing naughty people eternally doesn't really enter into it. Leading them to how to not be naughty people does.
I was referring to evangelicalism rather than Roman Catholicism, although never having been RC I have no idea to what extent it's doctrines on the incarnation and atonement reach the people in the pews.
Not at all if your experience is anything to go by.
My point though was that evangelicalism in particular places enormous emphasis on 'justice and mercy' in a very juridical way.
You can't move in evangelical circles for very long without encountering penal substitutionary atonement and the idea that God can only forgive us if his honour and justice are satisfied - at Christ's expense.
Ok, that's been modified to some extent in recent times and other atonement models do come into the equation in those evangelical and post-evangelical circles I remain familiar with. In the former they tend to be relegated behind PSA but they are there.
As @mousethief's bon mot reminds us, it's certainly possible for an over-emphasis on a juridical and 'justice' approach to squeeze out a balancing emphasis on love.
'Do unto others...' wasn't absent in the evangelical circles I moved in although there could be a paralysing fear of 'justification by works' that could fly in the face of charity at times.
@Hugal is an evangelical who grew up RC so his take may differ from both yours or mine.
I'm reading an RC book at the moment and the author reminds the reader how many times God's 'mercy' is cited in the Old Testament.
Which is all very right and proper I think.
By the way, apart from the ninepenny catechism (pre V2) of my Tridentine youth I know nothing of “RC books” only of authors of RC background. These can range from “ serious theologians” to unashamed apologists such as Chesterbelloc to the like of Graham Greene and Morris West.
FWIW I've read a number of books by RC authors and apologists, taken part in Ignatian retreats and in lectio divina sessions run by RCs and attended a fair few Masses and Expositions and Benefictions of the Blessed Sacrament as well as the Stations of The Cross.
I count a number of RC clergy as personal friends.
None of which makes me an expert of course.
I'm also not sure that I'm a 'fervent' convert to Orthodoxy either. I know plenty of converts who are far more 'fervent' than I am.
But it's certainly true that I'd inevitably view Roman Catholicism both through the lens of my former evangelical affiliation and my later conversion to Orthodoxy.
If the Incarnation and Atonement are 'childish things' then I haven't put them aside at all. Rather, I embrace them. I don't embrace medieval or Dantesque understandings of Hell, of course and there remain areas of RC dogma and emphasis that don't sit well with me from either a Protestant evangelical or Orthodox perspective.
That doesn't mean I despise or repudiate my RC brothers and sisters in Christ any more than I do my Protestant brothers and sisters.
I can only speak for myself and see no reason to explain my decisions further.
I live my life and you go ahead and live yours.
Good night; over and out.
I wasn't asking you to explain any decision you've made.
That's not my remit.
You are free to accept or reject the teachings of the RCC or any other Church. It's not my call to comment on that one way or another and if that's implied in my posts that wasn't my intention either.
I spent 5 years in a seminary but was never ordained. This was shortly after Vatican 2 which dragged theology from the 16th century into the 20th.
During my 5 years of study I barely heard hell mentioned. The emphasis was on forgiveness and metanoia. Hell was described as the state of those who had finally turned their back on God and therefore spent eternity not in his presence - free-will to the end, their choice, not God's. Redemption was taught as being the result of the transforming power of the Incarnation made available through the sacraments. No mention of debt or blood. Forgiveness always available through confession.
Carrot rather than stick.
Sounds like the Orthodox. Come back, all is forgiven ... 😉
Our theology, like yours, is rooted in the first millennium. Unlike yours, the second millennium barely gets a look in ... 😉
There are, of course, references to debt and ransom etc in the Church Fathers but the atonement doesn't appear to presented as some kind of legal or juridical transaction in RC or Orthodox circles as it can be in some Christian traditions.
And yes, I know that there are a range of complementary models available within the various Protestant traditions and that the juridical model isn't the only one available. It is the dominant one in evangelical circles still, but not the exclusive one other than in very full-on conservative quarters.
@Hugal hasn't reappeared yet but I suspect that's the dominant model he's working with when he refers to justice and mercy.
He can speak for himself of course and I appear to have inadvertently rattled a few cages by interjecting before he's had time to reply.
I may start a separate thread on the 'blood' aspect. It's clearly there in much medieval Western iconography as well as much Protestant revivalist hymnody.
'Oh the blood of Jesus ...' etc.
It’s kind of related but I recall a West Wing conversation between President Bartlett and his Catholic priest about capital punishment in which the priest observed that “only God gets to kill people”.
It’s not wrong, nor a contradiction of the value of love, for human beings to get very angry about abuse and victimisation, feel that there should be just consequences for the perpetrators. Forgiveness does not rule out just consequences.
I’m not sure that continuing confusion over these various factors is limited to any particular denomination. Personally I no longer try to square circles, to rationalise the underlying apparent or real contradictions.
That's something that developed gradually in a line we can trace from Augustine to Anselm to Aquinus and the Reformers to later Protestant evangelicalism.
That's not to say that they 'invented' it out of thin air of course nor that Augustine, the medieval 'Scholastics' or the Reformers had a 'reductionist' approach nor that they weren't steeped in Patristics and so on.
The juridical element in understandings of God's wrath, the atonement and redemption isn't absent in any of the main strands of Christianity it seems to me, it's more a question of emphasis.
I saw an interesting article and podcast in which a convert to Orthodoxy from evangelical Protestantism with a Reformed flavour was saying that evangelicals don't have to abandon PSA should they become Orthodox so long as they held it alongside wider Patristic understandings.
He'd come in for some stick for saying this but as a former evangelical myself I got his drift.
Any atonement model can become reductionist if stretched too far.
Steve Chalke got into a lot of trouble by saying such a belief makes God out to be some kind of Cosmic Sadist. For unquestioning believers in PSA that is a very inconvenient observation. It's true of course but it got him expelled from the Evangelical Alliance.
The analytical problem is the nature of and the necessity for salvation.
But I'll let others thrash that one out.
I'm still thinking of starting a thread about how we understand 'the blood' aspects rather than PSA in particular. PSA has been debated here many, many times.
Thank you.
I think you are talking about the West Wing Episode of Take the Sabbath (Season 1 Episode 14). In the episode, Bartlet talks to his childhood priest and Tobi talks to his rabbi. It is actually the rabbi who tells Tobi only God gets to kill people.
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Do you know what that means? God is the only one who gets to kill people”.
(I just checked by watching the last 10 minutes of series 1 episode 14).
I don’t know if Tobi’s rabbi said something similar. It would have been in character if he did!
The episode contains three religious voices (Quaker, rabbi, priest), and all of them oppose the execution, but they do so in different registers:
• The rabbi speaks in moral aphorisms.
• The priest speaks in pastoral confrontation.
• The Quaker speaks in quiet conviction.
Because the themes overlap, viewers often remember the lines as a blended whole — but you’re right to point out that this one belongs to Father Cavanaugh.