What Alex says here- at the beginning of the thread - speaks to me. We have to do the math and get the balance right on this one. One of the reasons that I am so interested in keeping this thread going is that when I first heard the full ‘shock horror’ about Augustine and his influence it was in the context of a rather heterodox Christian pluralist movement known as ‘Creation Centred Spirituality’ (CCS) and inspired by the writings of Matthew Fox (who was a Catholic Dominican, but is now an Episcopalian Priest). Don’t worry; I’m not going to start a long tale of betrayal and bewilderment about CCS here - that didn’t happen. I just note that although I certainly derived benefit from Fox’s book ‘Original Blessing’, and it opened my eyes to many things, the balance of the book ‘wobbled’ and, in my view, the balance of the CCS movement ‘wobbles’.
In ‘Original Blessing’ Fox tells us all the stuff that Augustine got wrong and saddled us with – original sin, total depravity, , religious persecution, hatred of the body and suspicion of the physical world etc. (although he doesn’t major on Augustine’s views of ETC – with infant damnation – or his views on predestination). There is a lot of truth here in my view; and Fox also makes good sense about Grace being implicit in God’s act of Creation through the Holy Spirit (rather than Grace being an act of rescue from Creation); in addition his emphasis on UR as a cosmic event – not just a reconciliation between human beings with God and with each other - all seems very profitable as the basis for an ecologically concerned spirituality.
And yet…leaving the side the issue of an uncritical religious pluralism in CCS, Matthew Fox advocates an alternative tradition culled from the Eastern Fathers, the Medieval Catholic mystics, the Protestant humanists etc whose religion he labels ‘Creation Centred Spirituality’ – that celebrates life in wonder -in contrast to the Fall/Redemption Augustinian tradition that is basically anti –life and anti-cosmic. There are a lot of issues here, so I’ll just sketch three –
• With the Eastern, view the cosmos is the wonderful, Gracious creation of our good God and reflects His glory, and the same is true of human beings; but both are fallen and, in a sense, unfinished. The second act of Grace is required for their renewal and completion – and this is the Redemption achieved and in process by Christ. Fox, in my view, misreads the Eastern Fathers (and the medieval Catholic mystics, and the Protestant Christian humanists)
• Because Fox is anti-Augustine he has to be pro-Pelagius. Pelagius was a Celtic Christian monk who Augustine bitterly opposed because Pelagius taught that we can actually do what is pleasing in the sight of God through our efforts and self-control because we bear God’s image(Fox , if I understand him rightly, sees Pelagianism as the antidote for Augustinian teachings on the paralysis of the will and total depravity). However, it appears that in Pelagian Churches you were far more likely to be excommunicated for minor sins than in Augustinian Catholicism where the same sins would be dealt with by the sacrament of penance. So Pelagius teaching was unbalanced too –but in the opposite direction - and Pelagianism seems to have resulted in some very ungracious, unforgiving attitudes.
• Fox’s critique of Augustine is so over the top that he lays all of the evils of the world at the Bishop Of Hippos’ door (and one day I will do a post saying a few good things about Augustine). Augustine becomes the scapegoat – he’s almost construed as the devil that we need to liberate ourselves from. However, I do detect something curious – concerned as it is with environmentalism there can be a tendency to almost reinvent Original Sin in some CCS authors inspired by Fox; human beings once again are seen as polluting blots bent on destroying the environment rather than Original Blessings. A dark hopelessness and apocalypticism seems to reassert itself.
So we gotta do the math –
All good wishes
Dick
.
. The punchy little quotation ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ which is used as a mindless retributive slogan, like ‘an eye for an eye’, is actually from a rather saucy eighteenth century poem; but it is derived from the saying you quote from Proverbs. Since I want to always apply the ‘measure of mercy’, of minimum force through horror of violence, I’m always disturbed about the use of smacking - and I was never smacked by my Dad as a child, although the teachers at one of my schools used plenty of disproportionate violence - but the article this weekend by the Labour MP from an Afro-Caribbean background did make me think.