Time for a new theory of atonement?

[grannymh]

I’m confused. You’re saying that you learned that the necessity of forgiveness for sin is a sign that God doesn’t love us? :dts:

My reply in post 60. “Yes, that is what I learned from other Catholics.”

*Clarification for our gentle readers. *

We are in the century of “wolves in sheep’s clothing” which simply means that there other Catholics who want to change the Catholic Church from the inside. Historically, we are in the age of Emerging Christianity which seeks a Big Tent community that seeks social justice for all. There is nothing wrong with a goal of social justice. However, there are Progressive Catholics who seek the disappearance of annoying Catholic doctrines connected to the historic Adam brilliantly described in the first three chapters of Genesis. A good example is the basic principle that “We must now rebuild on a foundation of original goodness, and not on a foundation of original curse or sin.” Unfortunately, there are a few Catholics who have built on the idea of original goodness to the point that the necessity of forgiveness for sin can be a sign that God doesn’t completely love us. Or the impossibility for a human to reject God. I am not the only person who has seen these ideas presented in various compelling ways in past years.

Granted that there are a number of apologetic ways to counter the erroneous teachings of other Catholics. Personally, I prefer to kick where it hurts which is bringing back the simple first three chapters of Genesis. It is folly to start with great atonement or substitutionary theories by skipping the foundation of an original friendship relationship between the first human and his Divine Creator. Skipping this relationship opens the door to the bad creator.

 

[Mintaka]

First off, I haven’t done an in-depth study of Duns Scotus, but he comes up a lot in discussions of Irish and Scottish literature, even in secular sources. So I could be remembering stuff wrong, or my sources could be wrong. But here is my understanding.

Blessed Sean Duns Scotus didn’t teach that the Cross was unnecessary. Not the way Rohr was saying. Sheesh.

The Franciscan idea was that, even if Adam and Eve had never sinned, God would still have made humanity part of the Body of Christ, and co-heirs with Him. (And that Genesis hints at this.) There was a lot of musing on how maybe Jesus would have been born to Adam and Eve, and so on.

Since of course God always knew that Adam and Eve were going to sin, by virtue of being able to see all time and space at once from His vantage point in eternity, it’s not practical knowledge to have. But as a way of appreciating God’s fatherly love for us, it is important.

(Plus it’s good medieval theological science fiction. Ask me about some of the other theological what-if stories going around. Fun stuff from those Scholastics.)

So if the idea was true, that if we hadn’t ever sinned, we would still have been made sons by participating in Jesus’ life (but it wouldn’t have involved Jesus submitting to His own judicial murder because nobody ever would have been judicially murdered or even executed justly, because nobody would ever commit crimes) – then in that sense only, Duns Scotus would have said the Cross wasn’t absolutely needful.

Well, yeah. And if pigs would have been created with wings, farmers would have to raise pigs in much taller barns with much taller partitions between pens, and you’d also be able to order crispy pork wings at restaurants. Mmm, mmm, good!

But we don’t deal with our current pigs on the basis of our theoretical pigs, now, do we? And I’ll be waiting a long time for crispy pork wings if I order some!

Therefore, we shouldn’t deal with Jesus’ actual Passion on the basis of what could have happened if the entire history of the world had been totally different, and if sin never had anything to do with human nature. Duns Scotus would be the first guy to say so.

The other thing to know about Duns Scotus was that he was very big on pointing out that, although God’s actions arise from His nature (ie, he is love and Logos) and He won’t do anything other than what He does do, He isn’t forced to do what He does. God wants to do what He does, and what He does is loving and logical because His will is loving and logical. Basically, Scotus disliked saying that God must do this and has to do that, although he certainly didn’t go as far as Muslim thinkers.

(To simplify things, they came to opine that God doesn’t actually have any rationale for what He does, because reason is an insulting constraint on God’s raw power; and that’s why the Muslim philosophy, science, and theology movements got ended rather abruptly in the Middle Ages. The Church takes the Biblical view that God is reasonable, and even that He is Reason.)

So again, in that sense, God wasn’t forced to have the Cross in His plans, and Jesus wasn’t forced to die on the Cross. In that sense alone was the Cross not “necessary,” if you ask Duns Scotus. But God chose the Cross freely, because it was the best and most exact choice.

If anything, that would seem to make the Cross more important and more of a stark fact. So I’ve got no idea what Rohr is going on about.