Some thoughts on Original Sin from our friends at Kissing Fish and Retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong. What are your thoughts? [cc] The notion of original sin isnt Biblical, isnt part of Judaism, wasnt known by Jesus, and wasnt known by any of the Christians for the first three hundred years of the early Church. It was invented by Augustine - and it hasnt been a helpful gift to Western Christianity. - Roger Wolsey Original sin is irrelevant to the life of our world -- and anybody that keeps talking about sin and rescue and redemption doesn’t understand what’s going on. The primary Christian myth – the way we have told the Jesus story for most of the years of our life – is based on the perfection of Creation, including human beings, and their fall from perfection. They can’t rescue themselves and need a divine rescuer; the rescuer comes, pays the price, and restores them to their status before they were fallen. That’s the way our hymns talk and that’s where we developed what I call our fetish with the blood of Jesus and his cleansing power. Protestants like to bathe in it. Catholics like to drink it. It’s interesting the way we’ve made that fetish work. But when you look at Darwinian principles, there never was a perfect creation, so [there] could not have been a fall. You don’t need to be rescued from a fall that never happened (not even metaphorically) and you can’t be restored to a status you never possessed. We’ve got to get out of what I call the rescue/savior/redeemer mentality and begin to see life not as fallen, but incomplete. And then you develop a Christology that helps people to become more whole, more complete, more human, more authentic -- and that’s where I think we can make a difference in the world today. -- Bishop John Shelby Spong in Living the Questions Painting the Stars
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 14:41:55 +0000
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