How Christianity solved the problem of monotheism

Shrewsbury writes:

Perhaps the central problem of any monotheism is that it puts the believer, who is of course a creature, in the role of hostage, of desperate placater of the all-powerful creator—resulting in a sort of cosmic Stockholm syndrome. Christianity’s genius is that God Himself, as Christ, has become the hostage, freeing all His creation. This is so perfect and beautiful as to be worthy indeed of the word divine. Shrewsbury is not a believing Christian, but he believes that Christianity is thus demonstrably the highest of religions, and that any intellectually honest monotheist (or atheist, for that matter) is obliged to agree with him. Only Christianity frees the creature from his terror and permits him the free will to accept God’s gift.

(Thus Mahomet assumes the guise, not biblically perhaps, but literally, of an anti-Christ, returning monotheism to its former state, with power rather than goodness as defining theme—and adding for bad measure more than a dollop of Arabian cruelty. Islam is thus not only demonstrably inferior to Christianity, but, since it came later, a ghastly perversion of it, even as orcs bred from elves by Sauron.)

LA replies:

1. That’s a great and valid insight into Christianity: the uniqueness of Christianity is in the Creator’s entry into his creation in order to bring it back to himself, or, as you put it, to free it. Here’s the problem solved by Christianity. God created the world and man. But as soon as the world was created, it became something apart from God. As soon as man was created, he developed his own separate selfhood and turned away from God. What we call the fall, or sin, or separation from God is thus an inevitable consequence of God’s creation of the world as something apart from himself. God’s creation of the world, as great as it is, is insufficient. Therefore, to heal the breach created by the Creation, God had to enter, as man, the world he had created, to show man the way to God, to show how man can follow God even in this world which is not God. So there are these two stages of God’s being and manifestation as represented by the first two Persons of the Trinity: God as Creator/Father (which is emphasized in the Jewish Bible), and God as Savior/Son (which is emphasized in the Christian Bible).

The Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit (who I’m taught is also a Person but I’ve never experienced that), is that aspect of God that directly enters into and operates through our lives, helping us in all kinds of ways, giving us energy and inspiration. As a cleric once said to me, the Holy Ghost is like the wind blowing a sailboat. You still have to choose your course and control the boat, but the power to move forward comes from the Spirit.

2. That you see this without being a Christian believer reminds me that for decades before I became a believing Christian I believed that Jesus was who he said he was, and that the Gospels were the highest thing on earth, the expression of something that came from above, not from ordinary humanity. Similarly, you are a not a Christian believer yet you recognize that Christianity is divine truth.

3. As you suggest, Islam doesn’t simply return the world to an older monotheistic state, i.e., to the equivalence of Judaism. Much of the Koran consists of debased parodies of various elements in the Jewish or Christian Bible.

- end of initial entry -

Keith H. writes:

I am nearly always delighted with your comments on the “passing scene” and happily read your expression of the traditionalist and orthodox view. I therefore regretfully point out that your comment on the origin of man’s sinfulness (How Christianity solved the problem of monotheism) does not square with the Biblical account and orthodoxy. You say: “As soon as man was created, he developed his own separate selfhood and turned away from God. What we call the fall, or sin, or separation from God is thus an inevitable consequence of God’s creation of the world as something apart from himself. God’s creation of the world, as great as it is, is insufficient. Therefore, to heal the breach created by the Creation, God had to enter, as man, the world he had created, to show man the way to God, to show how man can follow God even in this world which is not God.”

This reflects on God’s perfection as it attributes sin’s origin to the “insufficiency” of God’s work of creation. In fact the Bible informs us that the creation of man by God was perfect. Man was innocent. Sin entered the world via the Serpent’s temptation of Eve with the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and man fell when Eve and Adam chose, in disobedience to God’s command, to follow the Devil’s lie. There was no inevitability about this fall, innocent uncorrupted man had the power to choose God’s way and reject Satan’s way. That man didn’t is no reflection upon God.

Right from the beginning in his communication with man, God has revealed himself as the “perfect one”—absolutely sufficient and complete. All his works are perfect and in order that man should not misunderstand his perfection, he has given his perfect word, both written – the Bible, and incarnate – Jesus Christ, to man and guaranteed perfect interpretation and understanding by his Holy Spirit. Men are still free to wilfully misunderstand, and many, even in the church make mistakes due to human weakness, but God’s perfect witness to his perfection is there throughout history for all to see. For Christians this is the starting point in all discussions of what is right and what is wrong.

The deeper mystery is why and how Satan or Lucifer fell. That he fell “like lightening from heaven” we have on the authority of Jesus Christ himself (Luke 10:18). The Bible gives us very little on Satan’s origin, but based on Isaiah 14:12-17 Satan is held to have been the chief angel who fell through pride. Most of orthodox tradition has held to this view including (among others) Thomas Aquinas and John Milton—“Paradise Lost.” Satan was in direct fellowship with the perfect one—God—and yet he (although created in perfection, and perfectly by God) turned inwards and away from God. In John 8:44 Christ again tells us that the Devil, “was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him … he is the father of lies.” We don’t know enough this side of eternity to fully comprehend this, but God has provided enough evidence of his perfection in his works and his relationship with us to demand our trust. That is the essence of Christian faith.

LA replies:

The view expressed in my first numbered paragraph is my own attempt to make sense of God’s relationship with the Creation. Perhaps it is not orthodox, though I always thought of it as at least conformable with orthodoxy. But let’s look at it this way. Man did fall. And God, knowing everything, had to know that man would fall. Further, the very fact that God has to tell man not to eat of the fruit indicates that God knows that man has impulses within him that will lead him to eat the fruit, and therefore these impulses have to be resisted. So man is not a simple, unitary being, he is a complex being, with different “wills” pulling him different ways. That suggests he is not perfect. And God knew that man, being what he is, would follow the will that led to disobedience, which in fact man did almost instantly—the very first time he was tempted! So, on one level of the story, yes, man is created perfect and has the ability to follow God perfectly. But on another level of the story, man is virtually certain not to follow God perfectly. And my explanation tries to make sense of that experienced reality about man, in terms of God’s two modes of relating to man, as the Father, who creates man as a separate being with his own will and thus at least very likely to fall, and as the Son, who saves man by bringing his will back into harmony with the Father’s.

I am not saying that God is not perfect. I am saying that the world, as something created by God and apart from God, is not God, and is therefore not perfect. The moment God creates the world imperfection enters the picture, and then the problem becomes how to harmonize the world with God. My “scenario” attempts to make sense of that problem in Christian terms of God’s two-fold mode of interacting with the world, first creating the world, then entering into the world.

Or let’s look at it this way. According to Genesis, man is created perfect and then disobeys God and falls. But the story of the Fall is itself a symbolical expression of the truth, it is not the pragmatic or literal truth (unless you believe that there was literally one man and one woman in a garden and God spoke to them and told them not to eat the fruit and so on). In actual human history, as far as we know, there never was, before Jesus, a perfect man.

Actual man living on the earth is two things: he is created in the image of God, and he is not perfect. Both statements are true. The story of the Fall is a mythical way of explaining this contradictory truth about man, by saying that man was created perfect and then fell through disobedience. Another way of explaining it is to say that man as a separate, created being has his own will and is free to use it, and is likely to use it for his own purposes, not God’s purposes. Not that he has to do that, but he is inclined to do that. As someone once said, man is a being capable of good, but inclined toward evil.

The entire Old Testament is a saga of man’s disobedience to God. God keeps giving man everything, if only man will follow God, but man keeps refusing it. In Deuteronomy, God says over and over: “Here is the way that leads to happiness, through following me, and here is the way that leads to ruin. Follow the first way. But, even as I’m telling you to follow me, I know you’re going to turn away from me and bring ruin on yourself. But even after you bring ruin on yourself, I will still forgive you and bring you back.”

God knows that man is going to disobey him. It’s built into the structure of reality. That’s why we need Christ.

This is just my attempt to make sense of things. Perhaps it’s out of line with orthodoxy, but I hope not. I’m open to correction.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 24, 2006 03:48 PM | Send