Sin and Redemption

The Christian Religion claims to be very necessary on the basis of its having access to a mechanism for purifying Souls so that they may enter into Heaven. What is supposed to be cleaned away is the sacramental guilt that attaches from Sins that the Soul has committed – sacramental guilt that would cause God to toss such contaminated Souls into Hell, or at least that could bar them from coming into His Very Presence.

The Blood of the Sacrifice of the murdered Christ was purported to be specifically empowered for pardoning such sacramental guilt. Now, we could suppose that if the All Powerful Blood of The Divine Man Son of God really had been involved, that it would have served us all much better if it had been used to dissolve Sin itself, that is, that Believers should actually become purified – that their Conversion would turn them into actual Righteous Human Beings. Instead they just get a Free Pass, but continue to Sin. Does that really help anything?

Well, practically speaking, it is a whole lot easier to claim that the Legal Repercussions of Sin can be erased then to say that Sin itself could be erased, especially when people could see clear as day when Sins continue to persist. About the Legal Status of Guilt, it is easier to maintain one’s case without actually having to demonstrate anything. The Preachers only have to insist that their prospective Members need to have Faith. Faith would make any implausibly sounding thing True.

Proponents of such easy Doctrines depend a great deal on people quickly accepting such teaching, no questions asked concerning why God would express his Grace in some silly and unimportant way, while allowing far worse conditions to continue. So it has been that more complete philosophers have never been very Religious in the traditional sense. They ask more questions than the Membership Drive Slogans have answers for.

But still, Christianity has been around a long time and so we need to wonder why nobody has asked, for the record, why God would be so concerned over the Guilt of Sin while totally ignoring Sin itself? If People would only become Good, then the Guilt from some Previous Condition could hardly be of much lasting importance. If a Person finally becomes good, then who cares about the bookkeeping? Indeed, should we wonder whether Guilt has any importance at all.
Well, yes, there is such a thing as guilt. If we can feel it, it exists, and so we do have to deal with it. Guilt manifests through Conscience. Yes, most of us (but certainly not all of us) have a Conscience, and so most of us cannot do intentional harm to others without feeling guilty about it. But such Conscientious pangs of Guilt are for our own Moral Benefit, and it is intended for our improvement, not for our Damnation. Religiously speaking, it would probably be better to have more Guilt, not less. Whatever keeps us on the Straight and Narrow is a good thing.

Here it is important to make the distinction between the artificial and opportunistic Religions with there manipulative doctrines, and the True Religions of Spiritual Intuitions and Psychological Truths. In view of the Real Religions of Spirituality, God does not bar Heaven on the basis of Guilt, but only because of the continued persistence in Sin.

This problem of persistence of Sin even in Salvation has not been addressed by the Protestant Churches. Sinners in a Perfect Heaven ring no Paradox Alarm for them. The Catholic Church had discerned the problem of Sin in Heaven long ago, and resolved the problem by positing the absolute necessity of a Purgatory, a region stretching out in front of and below Heaven, leading up gradually to Heaven, where the Sinful Tendencies of the Saved can be purged away, preparing them for Heaven.

Anyway, if the central problem of Salvation rests with actual Sinfulness, and not just with the Guilt of Sin, then our focus should be on Moral Reformation and the perfection of Righteousness. Yes, Paulist Christianity had foreseen this Argument and answered it with the insistence that Humanity is inherently Sinful (see Doctrine of Original Sin), Sinful by Nature, and absolutely unreformable by any Human Effort or Act of Will. Yes, Christianity holds out the possibility that by an Act of Divine Grace a Soul may be purified of even Sinful Inclination, but it is underscored repeatedly that such Grace comes only at the behest of God, and that no human willpower should be spent in attempting to overcome Sin – it would seems like an attempt to earn one’s own Salvation (which we are supposed to consider a bad thing). A Beleiver is supposed to entirely throw himself on the Mercy of Christ, and any self-effort could only be deemed as sourcing from Pride and the arrogant reliance upon Self. Really, it was an important issue. There was a Bishop named Pelagius who was tossed out of the Church for teaching that believers should make a good faith effort at moral reformation. The Official Church Teaching insists that Sinners should be happy that they are no longer held responsible for their Sins, and that the quest for Goodness should be abandoned as both futile and egotistical.

Yes, they can elaborate their Argument until it begins to seem quite persuasive when they point out that no person can ever ABSOLUTELY refrain from all sin – that Absolute Moral Perfection is beyond any Human possibility. Remember, that in such an argument the Christian is leaning heavily upon counting the Past – that the History and Record of Past Sins counts against a Soul. However, Metaphysically speaking, we need to wonder whether the Past should even be considered as something that Exists. The Past is past. It once happened but has no continued existence except as it is reflected or remembered. But can a Bar to Heaven be made of such flimsy stuff? So our Counter-Argument should be that the Past does not matter, that the qualities of the Soul are changeable and amorphous, and that at the moment the Soul becomes Good it has effectively transcended Evil, like black carbon being turned brilliantly red by a flame. Blackness is no longer a problem when the Soul become illuminated by Righteousness.

Also, remembering our good Heretical Bishop, our own Good Saint Pelagius, that it was his Argument against the impossibility of Perfect Righteousness that it was really not such a big deal. One only had to pay attention to one’s actions throughout the day. One only had to refrain from Sin. That is not really so demanding. Pelagius quite insisted without even the least tone of a boast that with a certain amount of practice one could expect to lead one’s life without crossing the moral lines. He simply did not see Sin as all that insurmountable. But, yes, he was an old man. It is easier for old men as I am willing to testify.

But part of it all is in how we define Sin. In order to strengthen their Argument about the irremediable Nature of Sin, they included every natural appetite under the heading of Sin. Doing intentional harm to others lost all priority and Sin became synonymous with sexuality and even eating and sleeping and talking a bit too much. In order to make a case for irremediable Sin, they made everything a Sin.

What straightened me out on the subject was I once had a Visitation of Angels, a few old scholarly Angels who came bringing their own chalk board and they rather diagramed out a more plausible theory of Sin then I had yet heard or imagined. By their telling, there are two main varieties of Sin – Black Sin and Red Sin. The Red Sins are Sins of the body and appetite. These Red Sins fall away at the Death of the Body and no longer have any influence on the Soul as long as the Soul is not overly attached to the habits and tastes for such Red Sins. Given the proper frame of mind and spiritual conditioning, the Soul rises above the Red Sins, as Death comes as a relief from the burdens of the Body. Black Sin, on the otherhand, is intentional Evil – crimes for profit or cruelty for the sake of status and power. These Black Sins contaminate and bore deeper into the Soul than simple body appetites – they are habits of Will and Intention, the kind of Evil that defines the demons.

Given this framework for pondering the difficulties of Sin, we can infer that the occasional challenge of regulating a stubborn appetite is not really much of a problem, as such appetites end with the body anyway. A certain amount of regret and repentance would be cure enough against any continued influence of fallen bodily appetites on the Transcendent Spiritual Being. The truly problematic Sins would be the Black Sins, the penchant one has for doing actual deliberate harm to others.

Oh, this suggests a worst problem for Christian Theology. While Sinners may at first be relieved only that their Guilt not be held against them, over time they begin to stop worrying about their Guilt at all – that inveterate Christians will eventually lose any sense of Guilt. If Jesus will forgive them, then why shouldn’t they likewise forgive themselves? I really believe that such casuistic and convenient thinking has brought us all the complexities of Institutionalized Sin brought to us by Protestant Christianity – Slavery, Rum Running, the Opium Trade, Exploitative Capitalism, Predatory Usury, and the dehumanizing Factory System. Ostensibly Religious People certainly could not do such things unless they firmly believe their guilt no longer matters, not even to themselves. The Catholics were largely saved from such abuses, because they believed that Salvation only earned them a pass to Purgatory, and that they would have to become Pure before they could enter Heaven, and so the earlier they started being Good the better it would be for them. So while Catholic Civilization was not perfect, we had to await the ‘Reformation’ before we saw such a blossoming of Intentional and Deliberate Sin as we saw with the rise of Protestantism – the Resurrection of Absolute Paulist Influence in Christianity… the Anti-Christ coming into his stride.