Salvation History, a Theological Analysis

[spauline]

OK, you can take all five of the following posts of mine and correlate them:

The Seven Heads and Seven Days

Final Jewish Conversion, a hypothesis and an Additional Reflection

False Prophet Prelude

The False Prophet as anti-Sacramentalism, part I

and combine them for interesting and profound meaning (IMHO !):

Here goes, from the first article about the beast and days of creation, there are presumably eight total stages of salvation history, 5 in the OT, and 3 in the NT.

From the article on the Jewish Conversion hypothesis, we see that the 3 stages of the NT are really just the intrinsically necessary fulfillment of the 3 stages of the Jews of the OT, both of these being the three-stage way of the saint in Catholic spirituality (purgative, illuminative, and unitive stages), which, according to the hypothesis, are themselves simply a microcosmic example of what the General People of God must pass through in the general journey of a major Salvific Covenant.

This leaves the very first 2 stages of salvation history unexplained. Are they then arbitrary? By no means! The solution to these stages, and of the whole collection of stages is filled in by the false prophet! Indeed, Augustine, in the quote of the second essay, hints at the two preliminary stages as having a special preeminence:

Of these ages the first is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the first man that was made, down to Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the flood. Then the second extends from that period on to Abraham, who was called the father indeed of all nations which should follow the example of his faith, but who at the same time in the way of natural descent from his own flesh was the father of the destined people of the Jews; which people, previous to the entrance of the Gentiles into the Christian faith, was the one people among all the nations of all lands that worshipped the one true God: from which people also Christ the Saviour was decreed to come according to the flesh***. For these turning-points of those two ages occupy an eminent place in the ancient books.***

The first two ages then, are precisely correllated to the two primary lies of the dragon that are typified in the false prophet’s two anti-sacramental horns.

Simply look at the history:

In the first great age of sin, we have the Fall and near total wickedness of the pre-Flood humanity. That is, in this first great age, humanity is mainly buying into the first lie of the dragon, which, as we have seen, is the anti-thesis of Baptism: You do not need to believe in God nor obey him (“wickedness”).

… (continued)

 

[spauline]

(continued from above)…

In the second great age, Babel, it is appropriately the second primary lie of the serpent that is believed, “You shall be like gods”, that is, the antithesis of Marriage. More specifically, whereas in marriage, we have the ultimate calling of our existence manifested-- to live in total, intimate union, penetration, gift and reception of love, of intellect and will, forever, that is, that God has made the Creation, in marriage and many other ways, to image to us the sacramental mysteries of faith and love and meaning–, in contrast, in the antithesis of marriage, the Creation is “taken” from the “tree of life”, thereby divorcing it from its life-giving, teaching, loving catechesis, and made to become a superificial end in and of itself. Hence, “let us build a Tower to heaven”, that is, the Creation alone can bring us ultimate fulfillment. It does not have sacramental meaning of love and spiritual mystery, it is not a means to a spiritual end, but an end in and of itself, physically. Hence, the lie of secular and materialistic messianism.

And so the first two ages of salvation history indeed have preeminence, seeing as they form the basic essence of ALL iniquity in human history, these same two lies being the essence of all subsequent stages of sin in the Two great Covenants that follow for the People of Old and New, respectively.

 

[spauline]

question:

Scottt,

The salvation history concept seems similar to the dispensational idea that God deals differently with man in different dispensations. Is that correct?

No, that’s not true for Catholicism. In Catholicism, God has always used the same approach to man in terms of principles, which can be summed up in this: in any age, God expects each individual man to seek out religious and moral truth as their ultimate goal and to seek out help from God and try with that help to do their best to obey what they believe to the best of their knowledge.

What I saying is simply that there is a spiritual psychology to Salvation History. More specifically, it seems that the seven cardinal sins would always have to exist as they are regardless of what the physical appearance of the world would be. IOW, God would ALWAYS create man so that He is sexual and make sex pleasurable (to reveal the Trinity and encourage man to be fruitful), He would ALWAYS create man so that he required physical sustenance (in order to manifest greater reality: man does not live by bread alone, but by spiritual nourishment), He would ALWAYS create it so that time passes in weeks and days, each day first darkness then light, so as to manifest the lesson of “rest”, successsion of spiritual stages, etc.

Hence, given the cardinal sins that flow from these (lust, gluttony, sloth), human behavior is largely predictable given his fallen nature, hence, the eight stages of history are a necessary spiritual blueprint for the way that Salvation history HAS to go: that is, there will inevitably be the patriarch stages (the first modeling anti-Baptism, the second, anti-Marriage), followed by the intrinsically necessary “three stage way of the saint” for the Prefiguring People, followed by the necessary fulfillment of these three stages for the New People.

OH, and all this depending on the fact that God, through His Infinite foreknowledge, knows precisely HOW to respond to the successive stages of sin so that, in the end, the greatest spritual good is wrought in human history. From this perspecitive, this could be at least a possible chunk of the “mystery of inquity”, that is, the apocalyptic questions involve understanding the psychology and mystery of God’s Plan, why God does what He does in the greater spiritual picture, and why humanity becomes incurable spirutally in the final stage of darkness, that is, the eighth.

 

[spauline]

Here’s a more concise way for me to post this, seeing as the first post got messed up:

…My argumentation will build on the conjecture that the Catholic spiritual way of the individual saint is not only an intrinsically necessary path that the individual creature must traverse who is being redeemed and walks in the path of the light and grace of the Church, but that this path is the intrinsically necessary way that any primary People of God must pass through historically if they traverse a major Revelatory Covenant, the Two of these being precisely the Old and the New.

But, behold, even before the Prefigured People are formed and begin their journey, there are two necessary stages that precede it, namely, first the pre-Flood wickedness, and secondly, the attempt at materialistic utopia of Babel.

For, as I’ve posted before, I see the dragon’s primary deception in the garden as being ultimately summed in two lies, these forming the essential essence of all iniquity that is subsequent, or even possible, in a material creation.

I. The first being that man can deny what God has Revealed and then subsequently disobey the Revelation, and escape the consequences.

II. The second being that, moving on, God having been dethroned as the ultimate end of human longing, the Creation replaces God, becoming the ultimate end itself, instead of a sacramental means to an end: the love of God and neighbor, and the expression of spiritual mysteries.

And, as I’ve pointed out, these two primary lies are precisely the total antithesis of the two sacraments remaining to heretics, Baptism and Marriage, respectively. Hence, not only are the Sacraments predetermined and not arbitrary, but neither is the remnant left to heretics. That is, Baptism and Marriage are not arbtirarily left to heretics, for they form the bare minimal and primary signs of life to heal the two, ultimate root depravities that underlie all sin.

therefore, the path of salvation history is predetermined according to the nature of the fall. The first two ages follow the two primary lies of all iniquity in succession, the remaining stages of darkness then follow the three primary darknesses of the “Way”, three for the Prefigured People, and three for the Gentiles, making a total of eight, just as there are eight days of creation and eight kings of the beast.