Clarification needed. It looks like this sentence was truncated. “It’s simply human self-righteousness, a “righteousness” or moral position not necessarily based on truth but rather on my desires, not on God’s righteousness IOW, thinking of Phil 3.” What does Phil 3 refer to?
Yes, I was trying to keep the word count down a bit.
The first part of Phil 3 basically speaks of the difference between the old and new covenants. St Paul tells us that, as a Pharisee in good standing, he* excelled* in obedience to the Law. And yet he counts it all as garbage compared to knowing Christ. He goes on to say that, beforehand, his “righteousness” was his
own, even as it was based on the
Law. But that
now he’s found another righteousness-the true righteousness, the righteousness of God-which is based on faith. This faith is a coming-to-know-God: reference the most important New Covenant prophecy, Jer 31, verse 34 in this case:
"No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,
declares the Lord. ”
Jesus came to usher in this covenant, reconciling man with God so that they may authentically
commune again, as was always intended, as justice/order demands. Even while “under the Law”, as Scripture puts it, even while bound by the Old Covenant, man can’t be righteous, even if he could obey perfectly, because* God* must do the writing of the Law on our hearts (Jer 31:33); righteousness comes from God alone. Adam had departed from God, in favor of his own “righteousness”, determining right and wrong for himself. But Jesus informs us in John 15:5 that,** “Apart from Me you can do nothing”**. So just hearing and knowing the Law is insufficient, even after God gave it to Moses. “God wrote on tables of the Law what men did not read in their hearts”, St Augustine tells us. God
wants us to clearly read it in our hearts again, but this is a matter of
grace, of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, initiated by God and received by faith. Mere external obedience of the law does not effect this communion, it cannot
justify us because it’s only a show of holiness; it’s not based on faith-it’s still
me, trying to achieve or demonstrate righteousness on my own, as if I already possessed that righteousness for and within myself. But that, self-righteousness, is actually the
problem with man, not the solution. So, good as it is as a reflection of God’s eternal law, the revealed Law, as both Scripture and the Catechism tell us, was meant to be a
teacher, teaching us that *we cannot obey it, *sufficiently, properly, as intended. Man must be in communion with God first, then *He *does the justifying: we’re not
already just, apart from Him, much as we naturally like to suppose we are. Again, self-righteousness is man’s ugliness, it’s our
unrighteousness, it’s the cause of all the moral evil in the world: man wanting to be God and ending up a foolish little “god”, sometimes dangerously so.
At this point in time, the reference to *unreasonable behavior *appears to be a key element which has universal implications; therefore it can be used as a true axiom in the deductive method. Adam, being human, would understand unreasonable behavior.(Information source. CCC 1730-1732) In my humble opinion, understanding unreasonable behavior (Adam has a rational spiritual soul) is more comprehensive than having to experience evil before knowing what evil was. Comprehensive in the sense of Adam using the intellective reasoning skills of human nature per se. All of us should be able to recognize forms of unreasonable behavior. Obviously, there are times when individual humans cannot do this. This handicap is due to some kind of impediment and not because the person’s human nature is inherently different from others.
And yet otherwise “reasonable” humans do unreasonable things all the time. Theologians maintain that sin/moral evil is always an act opposed to the dictates of right reason, as well as opposed to God’s law. Adam’s sin, as well, was extremely unreasonable, considering that by it he defied and scorned God. He swallowed a lie, denying the Truth that was right in front of him. The first step into unrealityville. One seemingly small step for Adam, one giant leap for Adam-kind. Faith is the reversal of this, it’s the beginning of the knowledge of God, a gift, a dim foretaste, as the Church teaches, of that final vision where we’ll see Him “face to face”. 1 Cor 13:12
