Reviewer no. 2: Christian Commitment
Christian Doctrine of Original SinTraditional Understanding:
1. Consequence of our first parents’ sin: lost of sanctifying grace (separation from God) not only for themselves but for all their descendants. 2. Jesus – saved man not only from his personal sins but also from the state of separation from God or original sin at baptism. 3. Baptism – person receives sanctifying grace and shares in God’s life but remain liable to death, pain, toil, error and to the experience of the inclination towards sin which is concupiscence. 4. St. Augustine – influenced the traditional understanding of original sin. He insisted the need of grace because of the following attacks: Manicheism – human nature is utterly corrupt despite grace; and Pelagianism – man can be good if he really tries even without grace. 5. Church Teaching based on the Council of Trent – Every man by the mere fact of being born into the human community is alienated from God and deprived of grace and is justified only by the grace of Jesus Christ. Bible 1. No formal theological concept of OS in the Old Testament. Genesis 3 provided the main message that sin entered the world through man (Adam and Eve). The story narrates the sin of man, of everyman. The external sin depicted in the story – man’s disobedience; internal sin – man’s pride (wanting to be like God). The story of the fall explains the cause of the sinful history of mankind. 2. Wisdom books (Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, Psalms) – present a story of inherited evil consequences of sin which the individual aggravates by his own sins. 3. St. Paul reveals the universal need of the redemption and grace of Jesus Christ and emphasizes mankind’s solidarity in grace. Experience of OS 1. OS is a universal human experience 2. Threefold Emphases in the experience of Filipino Christians today – presence of OS in the sinful situation around us (OS as sin of the world) – example: immorality, graft and corruption, violence, unjust structures; interior personal dimensions of OS – example the roots of our personal sins like pride, greed or covetousness, envy, anger, sloth, lust, gluttony; and the relation between the presence of OS today and our own personal sins – example, by our moral faults we lead others into sin. 3. 4 components of sinful situations: bad example, bad example with pressure, obscuration of values and norms, and total obscuration of values and norms. OS and Theology of Liberation 1. What are the implications of the contemporary understanding of OS for a theology of liberation within the Philippine context? 2. The presence of OS today can be seen in structures of social sins as embodied in unjust structures, institutions, systems. 3. If OS is both internal inclination to sin and external sinful situation, then there is need of a double liberations – personal conversion from sin or change of heart is not enough and liberation from unjust and sinful structures. 4. Structures of injustice and gross inequality can be changed through cooperation in community. 5. The doctrine of OS is a realistic reminder that there is no perfect society and we should distrust absolutes and ideologies that promise a perfectly just society. 6. The doctrine of OS brings us to the realization that we would be totally subject to sin and death and that we need the liberating and healing grace of Jesus Christ. Social Sin 1. Situation of injustice – arises not only from malice but also from ignorance, inattentiveness and other objectifications of the “sin of the world.” 2. A person is guilty of participating in sinful social structures or social sin only to the extent that he/she consciously and willfully does that. 3. Moral judgment on any participation in social sin should not be made merely on the basis of an “ideal” but on the “concretely possible” in the particular situation. 4. Sinful social structures come about and are perpetuated because people willingly opt for them, because of the privileges offered by them. 5. Distinction between accountability and responsibility with respect to moral responsibility for dealing with sinful social structures: - Accountability calls for the positive responsibility to co-operate actively to change the sinful social structures or to set up more must social structures. - A person is morally responsible both for the intended and unintended or unforeseen consequences of his/her actions and omissions, not necessarily in the sense of being guilty but of being responsible to undo the damages caused. 6. How to address structural injustice (which is often the unintended consequence of human action or omission) in the society properly? – avoid the individualistic notion of guilt and broaden our notion of responsibility. 7. We have to recognize moral responsibility for social evil even where there is no moral guilt. 8. Social dimension of Accountability: - It points to a process by which one answers to others who question him/her about what they are doing; - A person or a community is accountable to others as individuals or groups, for good or evil. 9. Guilty for perpetuating sinful social structures (SSS) – those who do nothing to rectify or transform SSS and merely pass them on to the future generation unchanged 10. Substantive responsibility – positive obligation to do something to better the situation; determination on what is to be done to transform SSS and to liberate the victims of SSS – if this is motivated by love and compassion, then it transcends the sphere of mere duty. 11. The term 'social' applies to every sin against justice in interpersonal relationships, committed either by the individual against the community or by the community against the individual . . . Also social is every sin against the common good and its exigencies in relation to the whole broad spectrum of the rights and duties of citizens. (Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, n. 16) 12. How SSS developed? - Sin externalizes itself in human interaction. When patterns of human interaction become habitual, a social structure develops. When the habitual patterns of human interaction are infected by sin— selfishness, injustice, pride, greed, hatred—then we have sinful social structures. These SSS can harden into institutions, and result in a network or environment that effectively hinders growth in the Christian life. - SSS perpetuate disvalues or the wrong hierarchy of values. They are inducements to sin and are a formidable obstacle to Christian living. 13. What are the effects of SSS? - We can see the terrible effects of sin and sinful structures in the many uncared for and malnourished children of our unjust society, the wretchedness of the jobless and the homeless, the proliferation of crimes, the pervasiveness of graft and corruption, the lack of peace and order, or the horrors of war. Sin shows itself in suffering, in the myriad suffering faces that demonstrate the degradation of the human person and human society, and in the destruction of our environment that lays bare the evil shortsightedness of human greed. (PCP II # 82) Ecological Sin (ES) 1. Sinful spiritual assumptions - mentality immune to questioning and to challenge. 2. This mentality informs and permeates all our thoughts and deeds, even those that appear contrary to it. We may recycle newspapers and glass, and we may take proper satisfaction in doing so, but we remain caught in a web of spiritual assumptions about success and consumption, progress and waste that effectively undermine and trivialize our efforts to escape. 3. Christian theological response to ES: a) - Ecological religion = humans are co-creators with God. The effects of our destruction are becoming visible, we are able to see and measure the real meaning of our co-creator status, only if we can accept our responsibility as co-creators b) - Ecological Repentance = ritual expression of ecological repentance: ceremonies that "weave together three important themes: mourning, remembering, and speaking from the perspective of other life forms. c) - Ecological reparations = Realizing how far we humans are from doing deeds of love to the rest of creation, we must begin with deeds of justice, reparations for the harm we have caused. These would take both positive forms (for example, spending public and corporate funds to restore natural habitat) and negative ones (restricting the growth of human populations and forgoing economic "growth" as it is usually defined). = can contribute in six ways toward meeting the complex challenge we face: (i) express our ecological repentance in concrete deeds of human self-limitation and self-sacrifice; (ii) introduce the concept of justice or reciprocity into our relations with nature; (iii) provide financial resources for restoring the balance of nature and limiting the human tendency to ignore that balance; (iv) contribute toward communication and reconciliation between the industrialized world and surviving indigenous peoples whose lands and ecologically-based cultures can still be protected; (v) help undo the effects of "environmental racism," (toxic production and wastes located in the living space of those who are politically and economically powerless to resist); (vi) help address the powerful but misleading argument from developing nations that ecology is primarily a concern of privileged first-world people, a luxury that the poor cannot afford. d) - Ecological realism = takes full account of the destructive and self-destructive aspects of human nature; recognizes our common human tendency to socialize ourselves in self-deception and denial, particularly in the face of traumatic truth or difficult choices. THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL: SPOKESPERSONS FOR JUSTICE 1. Emergence of the Prophets - due to the injustice and oppression under Israel's kings (36-37) manifested by the following changing contexts: from an economics of equality to an economics of privilege (1 Kgs 4:22-23, 26-27); from a politics of justice to a politics of ppression (1 Kgs 5:13-14; 1 Kgs 9:15); and from a religion based on God's freedom, compassion and fidelity to a domestication of God and the use of religion to legitimize injustice (1 Kgs 11:1-8; 1 Kgs 8:12-13) 2. What Manner of Person Is the Prophet? - speaks, not only on behalf of Yahweh, but on behalf of those who have no voice as well. 3. The Task of Prophetic Ministry - to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. 4. Justice in the OLD TESTAMENT - Two principles of social justice practiced by the Israelites as nomadic people (wandering in the desert who had no permanent homes or landed property): interdependence and communitarian sharing. When they settled in Canaan, Joshua divided the land among the 12 tribes. There was no private property. Land was held in stewardship from Yahweh by the community. (Lev. 25:23) - After they settled in Canaan, their ideal of social justice deteriorated due to the corrupting influence of the Canaanites who owned private property. Soon they became a society of the rich and the poor. - Response of the Bible to the situation (poverty and injustice) at that time was 3-fold: legislative (the Torah or Law), prophetic, an the wisdom books - corresponding to the 3 divisions of the OT books. - Justice in Hebrew word is "mishpath"/"sedakah" which consists in a relationship between two parties and the just man is one who measures up to the particular claims which this relationship demands. - Prophet Amos compares justice to water because without water the soil is barren. Without water life is not possible. He also compares justice to an "unfailing" stream because justice should be habitual all throughout life. - During the Intertestamental period (between the old and new testaments), the social justice of the prophets became radically changed and became individualized (Tobit 4: 3-20), eschatological (Sirach or Ecclesiasticus 16: 11-14) and stressed almsgiving (Tobit 12: 8-9) Jesus Christ and Justice 1. Descending Christology - It begins its thinking in heaven with the doctrine of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word of God preexisting from all eternity in unity with the Father and the Spirit. - this Christology traces the descent of the eternal Word into this world, fascinated with the mystery of the incarnation, the Word become flesh. 2. Ascending Christology - It begins its thinking on earth, with the memory of Jesus of Nazareth who lived a genuinely free, historical life. - It tells the story of his compassionate ministry and of his impact on the women and men who followed him. 3. New Testament: The 4 gospels give us the life of Christ: Matthew's Gospel:
Luke's Gospel:
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