Is Christianity a Dualistic Religion?

[MNathaniel]

Our Christian life can be about doing good simply because it is the right thing to do, in accord with God’s will. The threat of Hell kind of underminds our freedom. Not that I am arguing one way or another about its existence.

Of course we should do good primarily because it is right and accords with God’s will, and not primarily because we fear hell. (While CS Lewis makes great points about fear of hell and desire of heaven being helpful starting places on the road toward appreciating goodness for its own sake.)

That said, hell exists. Jesus warns us about it. And the knowledge of hell does not undermine our freedom. Rather, it adds helpful context, in the form of increased knowledge about the objective nature of reality, within which we meaningfully exercise our freedom.

Knowing that the stove is hot doesn’t undermine my freedom. It adds helpful knowledge-based context to the set of free will choices I may make in the kitchen.

 

[MNathaniel]

MNathaniel:

So everything God created (and God created everything) is indeed good – and evil isn’t some equivalent but opposite set of ‘things’, but rather a privation of the existing good things.

In that context, if hell were a place of evil, it could not have been created by a good God. It all depends on what we are referring to by the word hell.

I will defer for my definition of hell to the teaching of the Catholic Church. Whatever that may be.

 

[MNathaniel]

Our Christian life can be about doing good simply because it is the right thing to do, in accord with God’s will. The threat of Hell kind of underminds our freedom. Not that I am arguing one way or another about its existence.

I’d also like to add this:

The knowledge of the realities of heaven and hell are helpful. Knowing about hell is helpful. It helpfully keeps us alert to the urgency of choosing between good and evil, in stark contrast to the lulled-to-sleep apathetic conscience of someone who believes there’s always ‘more time’ to make a better choice later, because they think they have endless reincarnation cycles ahead (what I used to believe). Or because no matter how much they prioritize their own material prosperity in this life, and sleep with all the attractive partners who invite them, or do other things that many consider spiritually ‘harmless’… Hey, even if it turns out those things weren’t ideal, they’ll immediately go to heaven after they die anyway (maybe after a single finger shaking and ‘tut-tut’), so why not also do everything that’s immediately gratifying now? Why even bother learning why some people think you shouldn’t take advantage of all these immediately gratifying opportunities available to you? If even they agree it makes no difference in the end and you all get the same ‘big’ reward after death, why shouldn’t you also take advantage of all the little ‘mini’ rewards that tempt you in this life? It’s not your fault others don’t have the same mini-rewards available. And hey, even if it is your fault – so what? God’ll probably gift you with a total personality shift at death, you’ll say sorry, then all will be well.

At that point telling people to take up any kind of cross in this life, starts to seem evil. Like reducing the sum total of happiness humans will experience across time and space. If everyone goes to heaven no matter what, then afterlife happiness is totally taken care of. So all we need to concern ourselves with is being as happy as we can before death, too. That’s what ‘love’ becomes: not helping each other towards an objective reality of heaven and union with God, but rather ‘helping’ each other feel as subjectively happy (according to what each person says makes them happy) as possible in the immediate present. Because all that ‘God’ stuff and ‘eternity’ stuff is taken care of for us behind the scenes; we don’t have to be involved.

And then you get into the tangent of all the different things people say makes them happy.

Spoiler alert, it doesn’t include a lot of disciplined virtue or self-sacrifice or respect for objective truth.

It doesn’t look a lot like Christianity.

I can only reiterate: knowledge of hell increases our ability to act freely. It doesn’t undermine it. Rather, it actually undermines our freedom if we believe there is no hell, because this belief tends to lead to spiritual apathy and laziness, and an “I’ll consider thinking about or acting on questions of god and evil tomorrow… maybe… or in the next life” disposition. We end up drifting (typically from sin to sin). That’s not freedom.

 

[Shakuhachi]

I do see your point. Many years ago I thought of the analogy of using an umbrella on a rainy day. I am free not to use it but it is in my bets interest.

 

[meltzerboy2]

Also as an outsider, perhaps whether or not Christianity can be considered dualistic depends on which other religion(s) one is comparing it to. Compared to Zoroastrianism and Judaism, Christianity may seem to be a dualistic religion, in which the forces of good and evil are waging war against one another. But compared to Pagan religions, Christianity does not appear to be dualistic.

 

[MNathaniel]

I do see your point. Many years ago I thought of the analogy of using an umbrella on a rainy day. I am free not to use it but it is in my bets interest.

Cheers mate.

Apologies for my intensity on the topic.

The topic (importance of belief in hell) just touches a nerve for me because for years it was my biggest barrier to Christianity (from childhood I thought an eternal hell seemed evil). It took a lot of study and soul searching (and trust in God) to get to the point where I could accept the possibility of hell coinciding with a good God.

So it feels like a personal blow when people (not you but e.g. a certain public figure mentioned earlier in the thread) suggest that it’s people who move the opposite direction from me that have moved to a ‘higher moral consciousnes’ (or whatever new age jargon he uses). It implicitly suggests that when I accepted the doctrine of hell as part of becoming Christian, I became morally worse. (So not just sacrificed everything else I had to sacrifice – which was a lot. Became morally worse.)

And it’s one thing to hear that from a non-Christian. But to hear that from a Christian (in a priest’s collar, no less) rankles.

It’s like being told I was ‘more right’ before, and have joined an evil religion, and should get back out.

Which I don’t believe. But it’s what it sounds like people like that earlier-named public figure are saying. Which is why I end up seriously disturbed by what they say, and warning others.

 

[Dovekin]

(e.g. claiming a theological impossibility of hell coexisting with a good God)

I do not have Fr Rohr’s words, only your recall of them here. It is not hard to establish some ideas of hell that are theological impossibilities. As @(name removed by moderator) said, hell is a place of Justice, which is good. But if it is portrayed as a place only of evil, it is a theological impossibility, because God is good, as is everything God creates. But again, I do not have his words, but I believe he was trying to convey a message of a loving God.

On another topic, fear of hell is a good motivator, but an imperfect one. “ I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of hell, But most of all because they have offended You” as the act of contrition traditionally puts it. There is a selfishness in doing things to avoid the pains of hell, or to assure yourself of Heaven. The better way is to do things out of love, the love God has for us and the love we have for God.

 

[MNathaniel]

There is a selfishness in doing things to avoid the pains of hell, or to assure yourself of Heaven.

Agree with most of what you said (e.g. interpretation of hell matters, and it’s ideal to do things out of pure love), except this one sentence. I think most of us think something like this sentence at some point (it sounds true, and seems to have surface credibility), but personally I found my mind changed by an essay CS Lewis once wrote, let’s see if I can scrounge up which one it was (keyword sticking out to me is “mercenary desires”…)

Ah, ‘The Weight of Glory’. Preached originally as a sermon, apparently.

Fantastic essay if you ever find your way to reading it. It seems to actually be available online, from a quick google.

 

[Dovekin]

The Weight of Glory is available online, though I suspect it shouldn’t be. Lewis’ official site has reflections on it, but sells the book…

Lewis is delightful as always, but I am not sure he means what you think.

Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it. A general who fights well in order to get a peerage is mercenary; a general who fights for victory is not, victory being the proper reward of battle as marriage is the proper reward of love. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.

The fear of the loss of heaven and of the pains of hell are like money or a peerage. They entice, but the rewards are marriage or victory, not those other things. We are motivated for a while by these things, but they are ultimately a selfish path to selfless glory.

So I will stand by what I said, and perhaps think of the promises in Curdie’s handshakes and how they take us to our victory in heaven.

 

[MNathaniel]

Lewis is delightful as always, but I am not sure he means what you think.

The fear of the loss of heaven and of the pains of hell are like money or a peerage. They entice, but the rewards are marriage or victory, not those other things.

With respect, objectively speaking (whether or not you agree with him) Lewis’s essay says the exact opposite of what you seem to think he says.

The whole point of a huge thread through Lewis’s essay is that the desire of heaven is not a mercenary desire, because heaven is a proper consummation reward more like marriage than money. He starts off his essay explaining how he used to think the desire of heaven was mercenary and something to be embarrassed about, but came to understand how it isn’t. It’s not wrong or ‘selfish’ to desire heaven any more than to desire marriage. It’s only if we desire them for the wrong reasons (potentially; e.g. desiring to marry someone for access to money) that we err.

Again, you needn’t agree with him. He wasn’t even Catholic. But that’s a key point of his essay.

 

[MNathaniel]

The Weight of Glory is available online, though I suspect it shouldn’t be. Lewis’ official site has reflections on it, but sells the book

PS yes I agree with you that although it’s online, it probably shouldn’t be. I personally own the book, and would encourage others to purchase it also. It just seemed unlikely that anyone would, for the purpose of a single comment on a CAF thread. But if anyone’s so inclined, I give the book two thumbs up, as an owner of the physical copy. certainly recommend the purchase.

 

[EssentialBeing]

Just a thought that may seem a little ambiguous & uneducated, but

If creation is good then destruction can be also seen as good. As humans observe the natural world we can almost always conclude that to create we must destroy. Whether through science or natural processes the end result for the creation of anything comes through the re-purposing or destruction of something else.

God created Adam from the soil, in the soil there was living life like micro organisms, even insects & the soil itself, that were all destroyed once Adam came into existence. Adams rib was destroyed to create Eve. The same seems to be true of our universe such as the destruction of matter to create our sun & keep it alive. What about planets & asteroids? If god where to destroy our planet completely could it be because he is creating something?

Creation as well as destruction seems to be a symbiotic relationship. Dualistic may be in regard to creation & destruction, could it not?

 

[CelticWarlord]

Catholics to avoid anything produced by Fr. Richard Rohr.

This controversy is what led me to look at Rohr to begin with. I find him a fine and upstanding teacher.

 

[MNathaniel]

MNathaniel:

Catholics to avoid anything produced by Fr. Richard Rohr.

This controversy is what led me to look at Rohr to begin with. I find him a fine and upstanding teacher.

With respect, for those readers who don’t check profiles and assume all comments here are made by practicing Catholics, allow me to reiterate that this (your endorsement of Fr. Rohr as a “fine and upstanding teacher”) comes from someone who self-describes as:

Religion: Non denominational, ex-fundamentalist, outside the box, heretical Catholic enthusiast

I’ll let that stand for itself.

 

[CelticWarlord]

I endorse any priest who teaches practical day to day application on living a spiritual life. The Church has not told him to keep quiet, and since my Christian reading is confined entirely to Catholic authors and writers, he remains among the best sources of how to do this. I have many Catholic friends who enjoy what he has to say and none seem to be on the edge of leaving the faith. Your views reflect an attitude of legalism which I left behind many years ago; ie- one which says one can love God but only in the accepted manner.

I’m sorry if my post disturbed you, but please be assured I post only with the best interests of this forum at heart. I have encountered nothing among Father Rohr’s work which would seem to be aimed at undermining Catholicism or which would cause anyone to suddenly switch allegiances to any other form of practice. In this particular instance, my sole goal was to help someone understand what is meant by dualism.