"The Apostle John writes of 'the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.' These things are not 'of the Father,' he says, but 'of the world' (1 Jn. 2:16). …
"The three forms of lust were not part of God's original creation. They are fruits of the Fall, …
"From the beginning, Adam and Eve lived in a state of innocence. But they lost their innocence by breaking a covenant with God, …
"Creation is God's gift, born from love. Sin arose when man rejected this love, and treated creation as something other than a gift. He cast God out of his heart. What is left is the hollow world John speaks of, with all its empty lusts."
An der Grabstätte von Kronprinzessin Cecilie
1 week ago
9 comments:
I'm not trying to be facetious but I don't quite see how something can be 'not of the Father' but 'of the world'. Surely the world was made by God and on that premise isn't everything de facto of the Father?
This is a serious point as it touches on the very reasons for my personal loss of faith at an age when I should have felt safe within the Church.
I think what makes it possible for things "of the world" to be "not of the Father" is the Fall. By "the world" John means those elements of our existence which are estranged from God by our sinfulness.
Because we have free will and are not mere automatons whose every thought and act is controlled by God, it is possible both for us to sin and to have sinful inclinations. Genesis attributes our sinful inclinations to Original Sin. Of course Genesis is not history, but sinfulness has been around throughout history, and there is no reason to believe that it was not there before people started recording things. If there is a God, it can't have been his decision, so that means it is our own doing, which is what Genesis says in its mythic form.
The Father has made it possible for us to vandalize his work and has given us a means of redemption.
when you say 'genesis in its mythic form' and 'genesis is not history' are you referring to the whole of genesis or just the 'creation story' and fall of man in the first few chapters?
I was thinking of the creation accounts in the first few chapters, although I think that up to Abraham we are looking at accounts with no more than kernels of fact behind them. After that we probably get increasing proportions of actual fact. But God's purpose in inspiring the authors of the sacred texts was not to give us precise facts, but to reveal himself through the medium of human memory working on traditions in the light of faith.
I think the Second Vatican Council expressed the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy very well when it said that the scriptures teach without error those truths which God wished to reveal through them for the sake of our salvation.
@ tom — I should also have mentioned that the reference to "myth" was not original with me. Certainly many people have used the word in reference to passages in scripture, especially Genesis. But what is important here is that the word comes from Pope John Paul II himself.
As I've noted, the Vatican hasn't provided an official English translation of the entire series of talks on the Theology of the Body. But it has provided them for the first series of talks, and in the third talk, on September 19, 1979, it translates him as follows:
"A reflection in depth on this text - through the whole archaic form of the narrative, which manifests its primitive mythical character - provides us in nucleo with nearly all the elements of the analysis of man, to which modern, and especially contemporary philosophical anthropology is sensitive. It could be said that Genesis 2 presents the creation of man especially in its subjective aspect."
So the Pope is explicitly applying the word "mythic" to the Genesis 2 account of the creation of man.
And it should be noted that "myth" is not understood to mean "falsehood" but a representation of truth in symbolic terms. It is a narrative which, regardless of its factuality, expresses important truth or truths.
i understand that the scholarly use of the word 'myth' does not denote falsehood. But in popular everyday use it does connote the sense of untrue or unfactual meaning, which is one reason I personally would not use that word without clarifying its 'actual' (scholary) meaning. I have no doubt that Pope John Paul II used it in it's scholary definition but to 'ordinary' people misunderstandings may certainly arise.
@ tom — Point taken.
I was trying to indicate that readers don't have to take the Genesis accounts of the Creation and Fall literally in order to accept the validity of the Pope's theology. In other words, if someone doesn't take the first chapters of Genesis literally, that doesn't mean he has to reject what JP II says out of hand.
But the clarification you asked for is important, so I'm grateful to you for raising the question.
i think people, both christian and non-christian alike, who read the creation account in genesis often miss the point the author of genesis is trying to convey. Rather focusing on the 'mechanics' of creation in trying to answer the modern questions of how specifically everything was formed and in doing so missing the author's point.
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