Salvation in History

"I think, therefore I am."   -- Rene Descartes, French philosophe

Not the least of accomplishments, the late Pope John Paul II was an artist, an actor, an able statesman for his Polish homeland, exhibiting both bold love for the people, and courage against their Communist oppressors; as well, he was a highly articulate Pastor, tending his flock as priest, bishop and later as Pope, the spiritual leader of the world's Roman Catholic Christians.

Despite his high scholarship and extensive intellectual abilities, it is sometimes less known that John Paul possessed a formidable intellect for the humanities, the sciences, mathematics and philosophy of all kinds. He had a great interest in astronomy. In one of his many works of literature and philosophy, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul chooses as his subject, salvation in history. Why does the Christian story of Jesus seem so complicated? Is God really so loving? What about other faith groups who look to their traditions for wholeness, peace, for salvation, for unity? John Paul II (JP II) muses that the answers are long, yet he endeavors to make them simple in this essay for those who are not philosophers, to better carry the message of salvation, as he sees it.

"To be redeemed in salvation, is a profound question." Many faiths' practice for spiritual redemption; it is not limited to Christians. Jews and Buddhists are two other faiths that come to mind. In history, salvation in the west finds its modern roots in the teaching of the Enlightenment thinkers of Europe. John Paul writes, "I put Descartes at the forefront, because he marks the beginning of a new era of European thought, and because this philosopher, who certainly is the greatest France has given the world, inaugurated a great shift in philosophy: 'I think, therefore I am'...the motto of modern rationalism."

"The objective truth of this thought is not as important as the fact that something exists in human consciousness." Descartes inaugurates the modern development of the sciences, including those humanistic sciences, ushering in the new, modern age of western thought.

The French Enlightenment ushered in the "cult of the goddess of reason." To those minds shaped by a naturalistic consciousness of the world, God is decidedly outside of the world. "God working through man turned out to be useless...to modern science, to modern knowledge...which examines the workings of the conscious, the unconsciousness. The Enlightenment, thus, put God, the redeemer to one side."

Consequently, man, divorced from traditions of faith, of spirit, is now expected to live by reason alone. The collected wisdom of the ages, ever present in traditional society is cast aside in favor of reason alone. The presence of a divine Creator, a loving intellect that knows the heart of his creation, that so loved the world, does not need God's love.

The modern world is self sufficient; thus this world must be the world that makes man happy. Yet in the world today, man continues to suffer in body and mind, in poverty and neglect, in loneliness and greed, this world suffers alienation, aimlessness, anxiety, poverty, and suffers alone. Science has not been its help.

"This world,' says JP II, 'in which knowledge is developed by man, which appears as progress and civilization, as a modern system of communication, in a structure of democratic freedoms without limits, is today a world in which man suffers." The world is not capable, despite its reason, to make man happy, to free him from his sufferings, his pain, his death; it cannot save man from evil, illness or catastrophes. Still, now today, the world needs, wants to be saved, to be redeemed and renewed.

Immortality is not part of the world; that is why the Christ speaks in the Gospels of God's love which expresses itself in the offering of his son, so that man may not perish, but have life, eternal. He came that man might be free in love, to lift him and embrace in a redeeming love. For love is always greater than any force of evil."

"The Easter story is the culmination of the story of the "return," of redemption possible and available to all humankind. The history of salvation "not only addresses the question of human history, but also confronts the problem of the meaning of man's existence. It is both a confrontation of history and metaphysics; the encounters between man and God in the world, the divine mysteries of souls constitutes the modern Church." --paraphrased.

Between Something and Nothing

"Be transformed by the renewal of your mind." -- Romans 12:2

There surely is an intersection in the cosmic world entitled Something and Nothing streets. It would surely be the road to explaining the objective use of others in a "screwtape" sort of way. But in the "everydayness" of our lives we often find that a utilitarian attitude is most often what we are rewarded for: what we produce matters more than what we use. And in rewarding our production, the beneficiaries simultaneously acknowledge their use. They use our minds, our bodies and our labor to produce what is benefit to them. If if does not serve any other good, so be it.

As author C.S. Lewis wrote, some will subvert others to the thing of their choosing. The novel, The Screwtape Letters centers around a soul snatching demon and his apprentice. What the author intends is to unmask the soul snatching techniques of the Demon and the ways in which he retains those persons for his own use.
Many times we read Lewis' words and we laugh in recognition. It seems a lot of us love 'our favorite sins' and the devil we know just may seem better than the ones we've not met. As for Lewis, what becomes clear from a study of his writings is that he held a conception of the sanctity of personal liberty. Writing about the values of freedom, he stands then as something of a Libertarian.

In western philosophy there is a distinction between positive and negative freedoms. Notions of freedom held by most of the classical liberals (early modern thinkers) are typically thought of by modern political scientists as negative due to the view that freedom was defined as the absence of coercion by individuals against one another.
John Locke (1632-1704) as one example, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690) argued that liberty means to be "free from restraint and violence from others" and "not subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man."

 Adam Smith (1723-1790) writer of the The Wealth of Nations (1776) recorded, "All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus taken way, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord."
For those who viewed freedom as a sort of contract, such as Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and John Locke, freedom is a natural right--all men are created free--deistic beliefs, with intrinsic value.
Both strands of classical liberalism define liberty in absence of the power of persons to benefit from their freedom.

For example naturalists such as John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Adam Smith, the arguments for freedom were teleological and usually agnostic, so freedom is valued as merely instrumental.
And now we return to the modern view of the utilitarian attitude, one who sees others for what they derive from them in a consumeristic mind set. This is the more modern of views.

"Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure—
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek if private be thy end:
If it be public, wide let them extend
Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:
If pains must come, let them extend to few."
--Jeremy Bentham