Have you seen anything written on the connection between forgiveness and perceived dualism? (The dualism of âpower of goodâ v. âpower of evilâ, of Star Wars)
Not directly, but if the starting point is âdid really God need Jesusâ violent death to forgive the fallen humanity?â, this logically opens the way towards the connection and it will then appear in some form.
An example - Joseph Ratzingerâs Introduction to Christianity criticizes the old theory about a vengeful God needing reparation: âAlmost all religions centre round the problem of expiation; they arise out of manâs knowledge of his guilt before God and signify the attempt to remove this feeling of guilt, to surmount the guilt through conciliatory actions offered up to Godâ. He states that âGod does not wait until the guilty come to be reconciled; he goes to meet them and reconciles themâ, because âHis righteousness is graceâ, so the crucifixion âdoes not stand there as the work of expiation which mankind offers to the wrathful God, but as the expression of that foolish love of Godâs which gives itself away to the point of humiliation in order thus to save manâ.
This, in turn, means that âa Christian is someone who knows that he lives first and foremost as the beneficiary of a bounty; and consequently all righteousness can only consist in being himself a donor, like the beggar who is grateful for what he receives and generously passes part of it on to others. The calculatingly righteous man, who thinks he can keep his own shirtfront white and build himself up inside it, is the unrighteous man. Human righteousness can only be obtained by abandoning oneâs own claims and by being generous to man and to God. It is the righteousness of âForgive, as we have been forgivenâ - this request turns out to be the proper formula of human righteousness as understood in the Christian sense: it consists in continuing to forgive, since man himself lives essentially on the forgiveness he has received himself.â
Leaving separations behind: âIn realityâs susceptibility to manipulation the boundaries between nature and technology are already beginning to disappear; the two cannot be clearly separated from each other. To be sure, this analogy must be regarded as questionable in more than one respect. Yet such processes hint at a kind of world in which spirit and nature do not simply stand alongside each other, but spirit, in a new âcomplexificationâ, draws the apparently merely natural into itself, thereby creating a new world which at the same time necessarily means the end of the old one. Now the âend of the worldâ in which the Christian believes is certainly something quite different from the total victory of technology. But the welding together of nature and spirit which occurs in it enables us to grasp in a new way how the reality of belief in the return of Christ is to be conceived: as faith in the final unification of reality by spirit or mind. // The world is in motion towards unity in the person. The whole draws its meaning from the individual, not the other way about. Perception of this also justifies once again Christologyâs apparent positivism, the conviction - a scandal to men of all periods - that makes one individual the centre of history and of the whole. // The omega of the world is a âyouâ, a person, an individual. The unification infinitely embracing all is at the same time the final denial of all collectivism, the denial of the fanaticism of the mere idea, even the so-called âidea of Christianityâ. Man, person always takes precedence over the mere idea.â
Many years later, Benedict XVI:
âGod invites us to join with him, to leave behind the ocean of evil, of hatred, violence, and selfishness and to make ourselves known, to enter into the river of his love. This is precisely the content of the first part of the prayer that follows: âLet Your Church offer herself to You as a living and holy sacrificeâ. This request, addressed to God, is made also to ourselves. It is a reference to two passages from the Letter to the Romans. We ourselves, with our whole being, must be adoration and sacrifice, and by transforming our world, give it back to God. The role of the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that it may become a living host, a liturgy: so that the liturgy may not be something alongside the reality of the world, but that the world itself shall become a living host, a liturgy. This is also the great vision of Teilhard de Chardin: in the end we shall achieve a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host. And let us pray the Lord to help us become priests in this sense, to aid in the transformation of the world, in adoration of God, beginning with ourselves. That our lives may speak of God, that our lives may be a true liturgy, an announcement of God, a door through which the distant God may become the present God, and a true giving of ourselves to God.â
All of the above is consistent with the Orthodox emphasis on theosis and Incarnation âso that we might become Godâ. Itâs interesting that the Pope Emeritus
was criticized exactly by people who use to demand the ârestoration of strict Thomismâ (in reaction to to Benedict XVIâs emphasis on Christianism as a process of encounter with a living Person), because of his talk about âcosmic liturgyâ and leaving separations behind seemed heretic to them.
