For My Catholic Theology Final, I had to answer two questions: According to a book by Michael Himes', explain original sin. 2) Explain how my views on Catholic Theology have evolved in this course I was sort of pleased with the responses I came up with and since i've heard from a bunch of people lately that I should blog, I will start using this one I created several years ago. Enjoy!
Catholic Theology Final
Question 1 – What is original sin?
Almost all Christians are familiar with the story of Creation and of Original Sin recorded in Genesis as the tales of Adam and Eve. It is easy enough to say that original sin is the sin passed down from our first ancestors which needs to be washed away before we are born. Michael Himes in “The Mystery of Faith” provides a comprehensive definition of the concept however. According to Himes, the basis of original sin is the oh-so common tendency to think of ourselves as not fundamentally good. In the first creation account of Genesis, after God creates Man, he earth, stars, waters, etcetera, God believed that his creation was good. Humans especially were created in the image and likeness of God. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tells Adam and Eve that they must eat of the forbidden fruit so they can be like God. Adam and Eve choose to eat the fruit anyway choosing instead to believe, as Himes writes, that they were not like God to begin with. The primary sin that Adam and Eve committed was to deny their goodness, to deny their humanity and the divinity within them. Himes therefore identifies this “originating sin” as the denial of human goodness.
When we deny our basic human goodness- when we “choose not to believe what we have heard about ourselves in the first chapter of Genesis,” (30) and it is often a great human temptation to do so, we act out of evil. When humans fail to acknowledge their innate goodness, they reject the love and hope which God endlessly offers. When humans say “no” to the goodness of their humanity, it becomes much easier to say “no” to other things: the other people try to give us, the choice to do what is good for us, or even that we have any worth at all. When we say no to our goodness, it becomes easier to disrespect ourselves and if we do not believe that there is anything good to honor in ourselves, we will not make choices that are good for us. When we start to devalue ourselves, we will devalue others and their contributions to us. This can cause separation amongst humans.
Fortunately, God offers human beings a way out of this state of self-pity. God offers salvation. As Himes suggests “Salvation is the story of God’s entry into the world in order to reaffirm the first judgment, which is that God has looked at us and seen that we are good.” (35). Salvation, in its simplest form, is the process of recognizing the goodness of ourselves and of the world around us. It is coming to believe in our goodness, the goodness of others, and the goodness of our God. Salvation is the counteraction to our self-wallowing pity. When Christians say therefore that Christ offers salvation, they mean that Jesus came to show us our fundamental Goodness as human beings and to challenge us to embrace this. God didn’t become man because man was “bad.” God became man because man is good, and our biggest failing is that we don’t recognize it. What a concept.
Question 2 – Changes in my Perceptions of Catholicism:
All my life, I have been a Catholic. This course in Catholicism is one of those occasions when I was forced to weigh and balance opinions of mine as regards Christianity. At this point in the semester, I have found myself truly enriched. Within this class, I found that some of my opinions and biases were strengthened while others were altered or discarded completely. Most of all though, I have found more appreciation about the basis of human nature, according to Christian ideals.
The most valuable thing I have learned in this course is in all sincerity what I have just written above in the last paragraphs about “good” and “salvation.” All my life, I have been obsessed with identifying how things aren’t perfect, how “logically” things must be considered sins, how I don’t measure up. I have been felt loved by God at times, but although I know intellectually that God’s love is not conditional, I somehow find a way to make it so. I constantly deny goodness. Although I am fairly knowledgeable about Catholicism, I admittedly have always viewed it through a self-pitying lens. I expect it to always be logical, correct, unchanging. Since I have always been critical of myself, I have always sought to lean on “official” Church teaching to at least give me a reason to think that I was doing something right. Yes, I have known intellectually that “God loves me,” and that “it’s about relationship” and not “rules” I have never really integrated this concept into my own spiritual life. I viewed grace and sin to be dispensable items Morality was something defined by Church teaching.
It is only in the last few weeks though that I have started thinking seriously about what Himes describes as “original sin” namely the denial of our fundamental goodness. I had a Priest tell me recently that this is one of my key spiritual shortcomings. Because I have viewed myself critically, I have tended to be critical of others and full of ideas about how things “should” be. As regards sin, grace, and morality however, I am coming to appreciate more fully how these things are all dependent upon a relationship with God. I have a greater belief in the importance of “context” when making moral judgments because I am realizing that I cannot know fully another’s relationship with God. Likewise, I am sometimes blind to grace I realize. If anything, this course on Catholicism – although it didn’t add too much to my “factual” knowledge of Catholicism really challenged me to broaden my perspective and admit two things: that I don’t know everything or all about everyone, and that I too have fundamental goodness I am ignoring. I guess I realize that all these doctrines I like to defend and debate aren’t all that important if the relationship with God isn’t right for a person. My greatest takeaway is that I am now more open to thinking about how God may work in human relationships and in the Catholic tradition. I guess I can call this grace.
