Foundations in Christian Theology

Elliott Wright

AUGUSTINE

Human Nature• Men and Women• The soul• Sin

Genesis and The Fall

• Augustine believed Genesis 1-3 to be literally true• Before the fall, the universe created by God was in

perfect harmony. Adam and Eve were made in the image and God, and like God were rational beings with a moral nature. Their will, body and reason were in complete co-operation.

• In this state of original blessedness, Adam and Eve had free will and the ability not to sin. They were blessed with gifts of immortality and immediate knowledge of God.

• Augustine defines human nature through the consequences of the fall– Death; the loss of immortality– Ignorance; the loss of knowledge, intimacy with God– Corruption of the inner harmony between the reasons and

the passions. Passions now dominate rational thought (concupiscence), inclining one to sin

– Ability not to sin replaced by an inability not to sin, as manifested by Akrasia, the confounding state of mind in which one wittingly goes against reason to sin

– The image of God in humans was damaged but not completely destroyed

– The corruption of Adam’s moral nature and the guilt of his sin was passed onto his children through the seed (Original Sin)

– Pains in childbirth, manual work and erections; direct punishment from God

Men and Women• In Genesis, both men and women were created in God’s

image, so they share God’s rational nature.• Despite this equality a woman’s body is symbolically

different to a man’s, suggesting she is to be ruled over as a ‘help-mate’. God tells Eve her ‘desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’

• The taking of the rib from Adam illustrates that though man and woman share the same spiritual nature, women are subordinate in ‘practical reason’, according to her lower bodily self.

• Before the fall, while naked in each other’s company, they ‘felt no shame’. After the fall, upon acquiring sexual desire, ‘they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves’.

Sex

• Augustine condemned lust, which was manifested in males by an, often uncontrollable, erection of the penis. These are a physical expression of the sin of lust (libido). Erections and spontaneous sexual desire are proof and a penalty of original sin.

• Ideally, Augustine imagined sex would only occur for procreation. By exerting will over his body a man can, and should, summon an erection without lust in order to have sex.

The soul• The soul is a separate substance from the body,

representing the spark of divinity, the image of God. The soul’s harmony with the body was corrupted after the fall; the soul is unable to control concupiscence

• Two functions; the ‘deliberative’ and the ‘obedient’• For man, his deliberative self is outlined in Genesis, where

he is given dominion over irrational animals. His obedient self is to worship God.

• For woman, the obedient self is directed to her husband, and her deliberative self is to maintain the household.

• Salvation is achievable only through God’s grace; that is, God’s active changing of our heart’s desires, or wills, so we may freely choose him, finding him in our true soul’s joy.

The will

• The ‘will’ is the human aspect derived from the image of God, but irreparably damaged after the fall, that distinguishes us from animals

• The will is God-given, but can choose between good and evil; that is, to believe in God or not. Akrasia is the manifestation of weak will.

• Synonymous with love. Selfish love, cupiditus, diminishes us, but generous love, caritas, completes us by expressing the divine love of God for his creation (amor dei).

Criticisms of Augustine• Dawkins

– Concept of original sin is incoherent as it is derived from non-existent events• Kant

– Reason is our salvation, not God’s grace. The natural human state is conflict, and through reason we can find peace

– ‘Good will’ defines a moral act as it is one motivated purely by duty, and makes us human. Comparable to Augustine’s views on will.

• Freud– Criticises Augustine’s connection between sex and sin; he argues sex is natural, and

religion began as a result of sexual guilt– Agreed misuse of sex could lead to disorder, but disagreed on what this was. Freud

believed the misuse of sex was only using it for procreation.• Sartre

– Condemned religion as an example of ‘bad faith’; conforming to stereotype and not living your own life. Thus, there is no discernable ‘human nature’.

• Niebuhr– Claims are society has failed because these theories have warped our idea of sin and

morality; we put too much trust in rationality, when it can produce bad actions. – Agrees with Augustine, but not with his sexual arguments

AQUINAS

God and creation• God’s relationship to matter• God’s relationship to humans and angels

Quinquae Viae• Five arguments for the existence of God

– First Mover; Objects set in motion are done so by other objects. It follows that something, an unmoved mover, must have initiated this chain reaction.

– First Cause; All matter is caused into being by something else. There must be a first cause of everything that exists, which is not itself existent because of anything else.

– Contingency; It is unfeasible for everything in the world to be contingent (possible to be and not to be) as there would have been a time where nothing existed, so nothing could have created what exists now. There must be a necessary being whose existence is non-contingent and absolute.

– Graduation; All things exist in degrees of goodness, so there must exist something that is supremely good.

– Design/teleological; All natural bodies act towards ends, so there must exist an intelligent being who guides them. The intricate design of beings suggest a great designer must exist.

God’s nature

• Omniscience; All knowing• Omnipresence; Everywhere• Benevolence; Loving (all good)• Omnipotence; All powerful• Eternal; Always• Transcendent; Outside of our realms of time and space.

Particularly debateable, especially when miracles are considered; transcendence suggests God cannot have direct influence on the world.

• God created the world ‘ex nihilo’: out of nothing

Angels• Angels act as mediators between God and our universe, inhabiting

the middle of the irreparable divide between humans and God• Three roles

– To worship God – Implement his will– Serve as messengers

• Spirits of great power and intelligence; the pinnacle of God’s creation (closest to God’s image)

• Are non-corporeal but can assume human, corporeal forms• Ordered into nine ‘choirs’

– The most powerful of which, the Seraphim, exist entirely to worship God in perpetual adoration

– The least powerful are most familiar to us; the principalities, archangels and angels. They direct the actual implementation of God’s will, and communicate with humans.

Four causes

• Aquinas employed Aristotelian influence not only in Natural Law, but by adopting the four causes; a wider idea of how something exists – Material Cause: the material substance from which a

thing is made. All matter has potential for change– Formal Cause: the ‘organising principle’, or ‘substantial

form’; what distinguishes one thing from another. Its structure, or concept

– Efficient Cause: the designer which brings about a change in matter; an energising cause

– Final Cause: the thing’s purpose, or end

Four causes of Humans– Material Cause: All living things have soul, ‘psyche’, which enables

matter to live. Lower life forms only possess the first and/or second of the characteristics of the soul (the vegetative and appetitive level) while humans possess the third ‘rational’ level. God breathes this into humans, enabling us to know of God and act freely

– Formal Cause: The organising principle is this rational soul. As God’s stewards humans exist to maintain creation through their ability to rearrange matter

– Efficient Cause: God is the first and final cause, but the free will of humans enables them to be their own efficient causes through making their own life decisions

– Final Cause: Occurs after death, when the soul is reunited with its body and is now able to truly know God. It is God’s will that all humans will achieve salvation in eternal life, but some will fall short

Four causes of Angels

– Material Cause: Angels have no corporeal bodily existence, thus have no material cause

– Formal Cause: The formal cause of angels depends on the choir they belong to. The lowest groups interact with the world through influencing humans to rearrange matter, but they cannot do this themselves

– Efficient Cause: God creates and maintains angels– Final Cause: The purpose of Angels is to follow

God’s example; how this is achieved also depends on their order

CALVIN

Knowledge of God• Natural and revealed knowledge• God as creator, God as redeemer

Sensus divinitatis• A ‘sense of God’ or the divine• Knowledge of God and self is synonymous; ‘no one can look upon

himself without immediately turning his thoughts to God’• As we are made in the image of God, whatever we see in ourselves

implies something about the nature of God; Calvin calls this correlation

• Developed from St Paul’s ideas that we all have an innate disposition to believe in God; we know God unconsciously as he sustains us

• Verified by Cicero’s Universal Consent argument. As so many people historically believe(d) in a form of God, then all people have an inbuilt sense of the divine

• A form of natural knowledge of God as creator

Conscience• God-given faculty as creatures made in God’s image • Conscience is correlation; the joint knowledge

between ourselves and God • Conscience is accommodated by direct moral

guidance, and accommodated further by scripture • Cannot be overridden by human power. The state

can represent God’s authority but conscience supersedes this.

• Another form of natural knowledge of God as a creator

Revealed knowledge of God as creator

• Creation as a mirror of God– Calvin’s version of the traditional design argument– The awesome nature of creation leads us to consider it

as the work of an intelligent designer– Calvin argues this is a form of accommodation; God

reveals himself to our finite minds through our environment

• Scripture– Provides a deeper and ‘clearer’ knowledge of God– Scripture cannot provide comprehensive knowledge;

we have finite minds and obscurities lie in our own subjective interpretation

Knowledge of God as redeemer

• Calvin argues that to be regenerated, to be spiritually renewed, is to know God; true knowledge is salvation in Christ.

• Christ is a mediator, the human likeness of the invisible God. Christ is another mirror of the divine, reflecting God’s qualities, but not totally.

• To know Christ enables us to understand God’s judgement of sinners as his promise of blessing

• The nature of this grace in Christ is two-fold (double grace)– The grace of repentance; produced through Jesus’ death and

resurrection– The grace of justification; in which humans are reconnected

with God

HERMENEUTICS

Interpretation of the Bible•Hermeneutics as the art of understanding: exegesis and eisegesis•Inspiration and Authority of the bible

Fundamentalist interpretation

• Literalist approach• The bible is the actual word of God, literally dictated by

God to human scribes, whom made no changes or mistakes

• No word may be challenged• If society moves to a point where the bible seems

inappropriate, it is society that must change, not scripture; it is infallible

• The bible is self-authenticating; because the bible is the source of truth from God it is self-evidently authoritative

• E.g. Southern Baptist Church (2nd largest religious body in the US); promotes life built around religion

Liberal interpretation

• The bible is not the word of God, but people, whom were influenced by their own religious experience and wished to communicate their beliefs

• Certain elements were appropriate at time of writing but are inappropriate now. Thus, it is not society which must change, but the Bible must be reinterpreted

• E.g. Jesus Seminar/ Woodland Hills Church, which claims the bible is metaphorical of God’s view for humanity

Conservative interpretation

• Written by human scribes directly influenced by God, but there may be mistakes; reflecting the human fallibility of the author and the influence of their historical context

• The Bible is generally truthful and literal, but some parts require reinterpretation; inconsistencies must be considered

• Some principles are too important that they cannot be considered outdated

• E.g. The Roman Catholic Church; traditional and creationist

Exegesis• ‘Reading out of the text’; meaning is located in the text

independent of interpretation• Synchronic interpretation means that a text should be studied in

in its final Biblical form– Discourse critics study the language and structure of the text; narrative

perspective, causation– Feminist, political or psychoanalytic approaches are possible. Some

take a deconstructionist view, analysing also what is absent in the text• Diachronic interpretation concerns the text’s historical

development– Critics analyse the manuscriptual transmission from its original Hebrew

source to note what has changed– Grammatical critics assess the meaning of words in their original

language or historical setting– Form critics look at the developing genre and purpose of passages

Eisegesis• ‘Reading into the text’; there is no fixed meaning in the text.

Meaning is derived from the relationship between the reader’s own agenda and experience and the text itself

• Considers gender, racial and political status of the reader as well as the text

• Reader response criticism; as without an audience the text means nothing, the reader supplies the vital elements which occupy the meaning not stated in the text

• Gender criticism; argues that gender-free reading is impossible, highlighting certain questionable passages

• Race criticism; assesses how the bible can be read in relation to aspects of slavery, survival, discrimination

• Social context criticism; aspects of poverty, social deprivation and corruption