The necessity of the deception is given in the primary characteristics of the Christian world. What Christianity means by the idea of the Fall can only be known in introspection.
Beyond Tragedy by Reinhold Niebuhr
The Tower of Babel
These universal undertones in great literature are a reminder of the legitimate pride of the human spirit. The myth of the Tower of Babel is one of the earliest, as well as one of the most vivid, expressions of the quality of biblical religion.
The Ark and the Temple
But the very ambiguity of the god of the ark that causes this anger also points beyond itself. He places the ark in the temple and deceives the people to regard the god of the ark as the eternal God.
Four Hundred to One
The king of Israel wanted to go to war and asked the king of Judah for help. The purity of the word of God depends more on Micah than on the king of Judah.
The Test of True Prophecy
To understand the importance of this distinction, the entire endangered nature of the human enterprise must be analyzed. To the dangers of the natural order must be added the dangers of the social order. At any moment, a person can become a victim of the greed, cruelty and reckless passions of his loved ones.
The sin of man arises from his attempt to establish his own security; and the sin of the false prophet lies in the attempt to include this false security within the ultimate security of faith. This is the meaning of the philosophies of pessimism that are periodically replaced by optimism and self-. Here is mortal man, dimly aware of the capricious and arbitrary character of human destiny.
The Ultimate Trust
However, so great is the power of human pride at times, even within the conditions of. In the Christian faith, man places his essential faith not in the ultimate character of God, but in some achievement of the human spirit. The ubiquity of the written word, which, in Condorcet's opinion, would bring salvation to the world, can.
Cursed be the mast that trusts the youth as the hope of the future. He does not trust the piety of the pious nor the wisdom of the sage. The prophets who lead him in the wilderness will become the priest-kings of the new order.
Childhood and Maturity
Thus every adult life experiences the reality of what is expressed in the myth of the Fall. But where the greater value is not immediately and obviously in favor of the more immediate, devotion to it is qualified. We understood the calmness, unity and sincerity of the child as the norm of life.
The most charming quality of childhood is the fondness of the child for simple but profound questions. It is without bitterness, because judgments of fellow man are tempered by the forgiveness prompted by repentance. Yet something of the beginning must be in the end, if the end is not to be pure dissolution.
Christianity and Tragedy
The fault is all in the spectator and not in the actor of the drama, because the spectator discerns meanings that he does not see. Of course, it is not possible to comprehend all ordinary life in the category of the merciful and reserve pure tragedy only for an occasional hero of great nobility and strength. A weakness of the tragic hero is that he always cries "Cry for me". He needs a chorus to extol his virtues and justify his actions.
It really accompanies every creative act; but evil is not part of creativity. She forgets, like Agamemnon, that the pride of the husband and not the self-sacrifice of the father is the dominant motive in the sacrifice. This Savior is a revelation of the goodness of God and the essential goodness of man, i.e., the second Adam.
The Suffering Servant and the Son of Man
It was the idea of the “suffering servant” in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. They dream of the Kingdom of God on earth through the conversion of Henry Ford or Adolf Hitler. We still live in a world that does not conform to the Kingdom of God, even though the law of the Kingdom has been revealed to it.
Anyone who truly understands the magnitude of God's kingdom stops having illusions about worldly kingdoms. If he tries to moderate anarchy with relative justice, he will not regard that justice as the justice of the kingdom of God. Both the city of God and the city of the world are growing, as Augustine observed.
Transvaluation of Values
Paul dares to declare that in the Kingdom of God not many great ones from the world will be chosen. One is reminded of Jesus' parable of the rich man and the eye of the needle. The mighty man is incapable of the humility that all sinful men should have before God.
All these double connotations hide the moral confusion of the powerful in the second and third generations. But they, as well as the mighty, are not only subject to this final judgment of the Kingdom. They are not always wise enough to overlook the pretensions of the mighty and noble.
The Things That Are And The Things That Are Not
Whatever the faults of Nietzsche's perverse ethics, he is right when he discerns the element of revenge expressed in the rebellion of the weak and despised. At best, the rebels claim, it is a fatal instrument of God's judgment. However, no class that resists the sins of the mighty and noble ever does so with pure messianism.
This conclusion is the more remarkable in both Hegel and Marx because both of them recognized a dialectical principle (an antithetical threat to existing things) in the history of the past. The fact that it regards its own particular category of existence as the last in the whole series of development is partly a natural illusion of the finite mind. Thus the "things that are" are persuaded in their vain defiance of the "things that are not." The defiance is vain because God is the author of the things that are not.
Zeal Without Knowledge
One of the leading philosophers and theologians of the twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr was for many years a professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York City. Modern Christians play the ungrateful fools if they do not do justice to what really was. freed in the hope of modern times. The logic of modern culture's decline from universalist humanism to nationalist anarchy can be expressed as follows: Men seek a universal standard of human good.
His entire interpretation of human nature is based on the recognition of the finitude of all human culture. Jews and Greeks are the same in that they both need the mercy of God. Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the most important philosophers and theologians of the twentieth century, was for many years a professor at the Union Theological Seminary, New York City.
Two Parables About Judgment
The parable of the Last Judgment portrays God as a judge who rewards good and punishes evil. 34;Pelagian" and the second "Augustinian". Their contrasting emphases are the basis of the moralistic and supramoralistic tones in the Christian religion. The evil and the good, and even the more and the less good, are equally in need of grace from God.
The Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector is perhaps the most classic expression of Jesus'. Yet there is this other side of the gospel teaching and of all biblical thinking: It makes no difference whether people are good or bad in the eyes of God, because they all need God's grace. In this sense, the tension between law and grace is resolved in the life of the individual.
The Kingdom Not of This World
Even when the prophet or priest is not consciously drawn into partnership with the ruler, the kingdom of which he is the messenger can support the kingdoms of the world. However, there is this difference between Plato and the gospel's conception of the relationship of the kingdom that is not of this world to the world: Plato's is a very individualistic conception. In the biblical conception, the sin of the world is not due to its temporary character, but to man's rebellion against God.
Actions inspired by the truth of God's kingdom are merely symbols of judgment and hope rolled into one. Thus, the kingdom that is not of this world is a more dangerous danger to the kingdoms of the world than any competing worldly kingdom. Martyrs, prophets and statesmen can each be servants of the kingdom in their own way.
The Fulfillment of Life
Hellenic and Hebrew notions of the afterlife battled with each other in the mind and soul of the saint. The hope of the resurrection of the body is preferable to the idea of the immortality of the soul, because it expresses at once a more individual and a more social idea of human existence. It is just a part of the whole world of mortality that the immortal soul crumbles away.
Contrary to such an interpretation, it is significant that the biblical idea of the resurrection grew out of a social hope. It is of course true that modern men express their social hope in terms other than those of the idea of the resurrection. The individuality of human life is the product of freedom; and freedom is the fruit of the spirit.