St. Hippolytus on the Logos and Creation
There is only one God, brethren, and we learn about him only from sacred Scripture. It is therefore our duty to become acquainted with what Scripture proclaims and to investigate its teachings thoroughly. We should believe them in the sense that the Father wills, thinking of the Son in the way the Father wills, and accepting the teaching he wills ( Read more... )
As for the suffering of the infant, and whether or not she is responsible for her affliction due to original sin. I think it is important to understand the difference between original sin and its effect on persons, and actual incurred sin. The best way I think we can regard original sin is not so much a guilt which we incur, but rather a state into which we are born. Whether one regards the two creation accounts as literal or allegorical, the truth it proclaims is the same, and it is that truth which we must appreciate as the true divine inspiration of that text, which is that God did indeed create a perfectly ordered universe, and in that creation He had a very special love for the human person, creating them not apart from creation but rather as its apex. And at some point, that human being, the only creature to have a will that is free, and thus the only creature able to choose to oppose the natural order as designed by God, did just that, and sinned. This sin of the human person created disharmony in creation, a disruption in the divine rhythm. And so that first sin represents a boundary of sorts. On the one side of that boundary is the state into which the human person was created, the state of original innocence. On the other side of that boundary is the state of original sin. It is a boundary that ultimately can never be crossed again, so that once sin has entered into the world, all human beings, and indeed now all of creation, are born into this state of disharmony.
Now, the immediate problem with this concept of original sin is that we are first positing a God who is so powerful, so loving, so beautifully creative as to create a universe of perfect order and harmony and magnificent in beauty, and then we say that this God would allow one of his creatures to somehow disrupt the entire created order just by his action, by his sin. If this is true, it might appear that this God is either a bastard or is ultimately impotent.
Now Susannah, I have a great love for religions of the world, and I don't think I would ever put any of them down, and have learned a great deal from many of them. I think in all of them I recognize the natural longing of the human heart for God. However, it is just because of the scenario above, and because of the existence of suffering, that I am able to recognize that any of this can only make sense if Christ is true, if he is who we proclaim him to be. It is only in Christ that we can recognize that a God who allows the above to happen, who creates a world knowing that the world will include suffering, even if suffering is not a part of his plan, and will even allow for suffering of those who are otherwise innocent, is in fact still a loving and all powerful God. For it is in Christ that we have hope that the disruption of order that God allowed was a necessary component of giving us free will, and that giving us free will was necessary to allow us to love and be loved, but also that this disruption of order does not have the final word, and that order will be restored once again, even more gloriously than before. For the birth that we celebrate today is the beginning of the wheels of salvation. Salvation has come to us in Christ, but salvation is not yet complete. Though fulfilled on the Cross, we know what St. Paul says to be true, that all of creation awaits in eager anticipation for redemption. And that is just it, Christ will in fact come again, and will judge the living and the dead, and in him there will come a new heaven and a new earth, and though our bodies are corruptible now and subject to suffering, we will be raised and glorified, given perfect and incorruptible bodies.
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35 But some one will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" 36 You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. 42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. 50 I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
51 Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.
54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory."
55 "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?"
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Cor 15:35-58)
That little child did indeed suffer, for she was born into a world where corruption has been introduced, but that suffering and that corruption do not have the last word, and death has no victory, death has no sting, but the perishable body will be clothed in immortality, just because of what we celebrate today, that the immortal allowed himself to be clothed in the perishable body.
What's more, and this is where I make my reading recommendation, but not only does our suffering not have the last word, but our suffering also allows us the opportunity to participate in redemption. By putting on the Cross of Christ, we can participate in the redemption of Christ, and not only be passive agents in our salvation and our redemption, but because of Him we can even participate in it. And so to that end, I think the following will be a very good read for you, while not giving all the answers, certainly perhaps assisting you in coming to terms with what is the most paradoxical of mysteries, the awesome and terrible mystery of suffering. It is a mystery we can penetrate only a little, but which ultimately remains incomprehensible to the human soul. But read this, the Apostolic Letter from John Paul II called Salvifici Dolores: On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering.
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Yes I believe that.
But I still find the suffering and sadness so extreme that I find it hard to attribute that to some historic sin. Things were dying in our world, long before humans even evolved. The world still seems to have been 'fallen' or 'mortal' then.
In the face of the death of a baby, I don't find it easy to attribute the blame to 'sin'. It just seems like we're born mortal and frail.
But yes, at least I do agree, that in eternity, the perishable body is clothed in immortality. And we are made new and whole.
And yes, I love that passage in Romans 8, about how the whole of creation is aching and straining on tiptoe, waiting to see the children of the Holy One entering upon that wholeness. All creation awaits interpretation and completion and wholeness in eternity.
Meanwhile, sooner than just take on board the doctrine of Original Sin, I hear instead those words of the prophet:
"Comfort you, comfort you, my people" - the voice of the Eternal One speaking tenderly... repudiating this passing world of sin and selfishness and frail mortality and suffering...
One who will not stay high and set apart, but comes down to dwell alongside us, and know that suffering, and that mortality.
Is this fallen world all the result of Adamic sin? Then why did the dinosaurs die out before us, if death had not yet entered the world?
I'm not trying to deny the terrible consequences of our sin and selfishness, and how it hurts people. That much I acknowledge as demonstrable truth.
Whether all mortality and suffering (the death of a baby for example) is the consequence of sin - I find that much harder to intellectually or emotionally grapple with.
The mainstream christian teaching is certainly that the two are linked. I don't deny that. I'm just being honest and saying that I find the link difficult, sometimes to accept on either an intellectual or a moral level.
When a baby dies at birth, is it really because ancestors have sinned, or is it because that's just the world we're placed in, and - in a way - the creator is more responsible than us for deaths like that?
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