At all events when, after many hours, the door was opened and people thronged in, they found the murderer unconscious and in a raging fever. The prince was sitting by him, motionless, and each time that the sick man gave a laugh, or a shout, he hastened to pass his own trembling hand over his companion’s hair and cheeks, as though trying to soothe and quiet him. But alas he understood nothing of what was said to him, and recognized none of those who surrounded him.
If Schneider himself had arrived then and seen his former pupil and patient, remembering the prince’s condition during the first year in Switzerland, he would have flung up his hands, despairingly, and cried, as he did then: “An idiot!”
– From Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot
Jacob Smith’s wonderful entry about a theology of the cross vs. a theology about the cross last week inspired some fresh thinking about what is (to me) a familiar subject. Familiarity does not exactly mean exhaustive knowledge, however. Indeed, it is sufficiently counter-intuitive so as to demand a lifetime of contemplation and living to connect with its meaning. So if only for my own benefit, I would like to explore this idea of the “theology of the cross” once more.
You have heard it said here that “judgment kills love and love births goodness”. I would like to add this sub-header to that maxim: Goodness Kills Love. You may ask, “How can what is good in this world kill love?” I would, in turn, point you to Thesis 4 of Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation: “Although the works of man always appear attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.”
The understanding of this actually lies in the 3rd chapter of Genesis: But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5) The reality of mankind’s condition of self-justification and self-deification does not need biblical support to be proven empirically and finally. The Bible simply and truthfully says what exists. It is this condition of self-deification that takes whatever is available and distorts it as a means to justify oneself before some perceived jury of peers or some other concoction of the subconscious. Most commonly, it is a sense of victimhood that suggests an inherent goodness.
What triggered my renewed thinking about this is a woman I know in the Midwest whose husband had been unfaithful. Old story, I know, but it is not some common societal abstraction to the one who suffers through it. In any case, there was a divorce and now the woman hates her ex-husband. And it is a palpable hate that radiates and can physically be felt. It has infected the children of the marriage and the father has been utterly destroyed and exists today in an equally palpable despondency. The transgression has opened the floodgates of consequence and life has stripped bare the preposterous veneer of self-justification.
Ironically, the offender or violator is in the position of being the one for whom Christ came to save. A miserable offender. On the other hand, the victim (or the one who sees herself as justified) is the very one about whom Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken.” (Luke 13:34-35a)
In his earlier entry, Smith noted: “Therefore, a theology of the cross, as opposed to simply inoculating our conscience to sin and our own culpability in it, finds us guilty of the sin that we have committed, and states that we should be justly condemned for it, while at the same time stating our penalty has been paid for and we are 100% forgiven.”
For the one who is good or the one who is justified, the idea that WE should be forgiven is an affront! The victim who comforts and gently caresses a murderer is an idiot! With goodness aided by its worldly ally justice, love is killed and the world wastes away with a clenched fist and a finger on the button of the electric chair.
It can simply be said that one loves and shows compassion to the exact degree that he has been loved and has been shown compassion. Everyone on this planet is a candidate for unmerited favor or “grace”. Goodness is an obstacle to grace and the theology of the cross creates love.
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18 responses to “Goodness Kills Love”
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it is sufficiently counter-intuitive so as to demand a lifetime of contemplation and living to connect with its meaning.. . and how:) I’m glad that we have this opportunity to contemplate/reflect together. . . viva la internet!
Thanks Browder! Very helpful post.
Browder, thoughtful and rooted in real life, as always.
I loved this thought: “With goodness aided by its worldly ally justice, love is killed and the world wastes away with a clenched fist and a finger on the button of the electric chair.” Exhibit A: The Middle East. Exhibit B: The Cold War. Exhibit C: Humanity.
Thanks guys. My experience with that friend just jarred that entry out of me.
Hey David,
Your descriptions of the palpable negative energies of the estranged couple are pure Dostoevsky. After reading the whole post, I’m not sure what to think about enjoying sentences based on somebody’s real pain. Bob Dylan was shocked (in interviews, at least) that anyone could have enjoyed BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, and album inspired by this pain of divorce. However, people love it and it’s considered one of his best albums.
I’m having a little trouble tracking with the idea of “goodness” in your post. I don’t really understand the Luther thesis, because viewed through the lens of such human activity as brought up by Aaron, the “works of man” hardly ever appear good!
If goodness kills love, I know of at least one crime to which I can plead “not guilty.”
Trevor, I think this is where “the community” becomes an abstraction and God addressing the particular (individual) first becomes profound.
Everyone knows the “works of the human race” appear bad. The only problem is “the works of the human race” are done by people other than myself. I (with my condition of self-enthronement) can sit in judgment on the “works of the human race” because they are detached from what I am doing. Polluting companies, for instance, are not me.
Now, in Christian circles, you hear a lot of talk about how much of a sinner “I” am but none of them really believe it. It’s just a cultural spiritualization. If, however, it is David and Trevor, then we are getting somewhere. Because God can then address David and Trevor as a candidate for unmerited favor. The rest, the groupings, “society”, the “culture”, the polluting companies, and the “liberal media” are just self-defense mechanisms for the old Adam.
If I am addressed as an individual… that is, if my defense mechanisms are overwhelmed and I stand naked before God… and He addresses me as not guilty and fully justified…well, then, love starts. And little, individual loci of love start popping up and loving other individuals.
The trick, though, is to see yourself… individually… apart from any group dynamic… as wholly deserving of wrath but receiving the complete opposite.
Trevor, by the way, you are right about the marital example being pure Dostoevsky. Good man!
Me or him?? Just kidding.
I really like how you put that. Thank you for expounding.
When your “defense mechanisms are overwhelmed and [you] stand naked before God,” well that would be the Glory, wouldn’t it? The Love just melting away all those thought patterns and memory filters and guilt and guilt and doubt and confusion, and fear. In K+’s post about the Death Cab song…there is no room for fear in Love, Love has no fear.
But I am never without questions, and certainly the counter-intuitive love of God is worthy of infinite questioning, and infinite silence/awe, leading each other in an eternal circle.
I understand you to be saying that our attempt to be good inhibits true goodness itself from forming out of the freedom from demand.
That’s where I want to go, Trevor.
“I understand you to be saying that our attempt to be good inhibits true goodness itself from forming out of the freedom from demand.”
While this statement is partially true, from a Christian perspective, as I understand it anyway, it leaves out what are the unique claims of Christianity:
(1)God is personal, holy and good; He is not an abstract principle of the cosmos we can call “Love”, “Zen” or “Chicken Salad”;
(2) Our “attempt to be good inhibits true goodness” not because we are not laid back enough, passive enough, or not “letting it be”, but because our attempt to be good is an active rejection of God’s gift of forgiveness and imputed goodness in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (simply being “passive” in an abstract sense is meaningless);
(3) “true goodness” does not automatically form out of the “freedom from demand”, rather, “We love, because He first loved us.” That is, our love forms as a result of receiving the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ, who bore within Himself the just punishment and alienation from God that we should have justly received for our hateful and arrogant hearts.
Because the God of the Bible made each of us, we do behave in certain ways that reflect His character, and therefore the pattern of “love, rather than demand, causing obedience” is something we would expect to see in all human relationships, Christian or not. But very often this pattern creates perverse results. For example, in the happy photos of Nazi holiday camps we see that “love” within the SS in particular, and National Socialism in general, motivated people to WANT to do what their superiors required. So, in that example, “love”, as an abstract principle, motivated people to mass murder. This is not at all unusual, and is seen every day in gang activity, which is almost entirely motivated by “love” within the gang, rather than the fear of retribution. Sorry for the long post, but this tendency to see Christianity as a set of abstract psychological constructs can be a problem. Christianity is rooted, first and foremost, in specific claims about a specific person, Jesus Christ, not in gaining an understanding of the principles of the universe.
What I was going for was the self-justification-makes-it-unneccesary-for-alien-justification bit.
Since we are always defending ourselves, we cannot see or countenance a wrathful God. Therefore, we cannot love as we have been loved because we don’t understand what an act it took for us to be justified.
I would say, yes, there is always a danger in psychologizing when making theology “existential”. I would also caution against straight, rational theology that does not interact with the “existential” because it becomes an abstraction and a series of points that are to be assented to. Theology can be so divorced from the everyday that it can become practically useless. Karl Rahner is a good example of this, if I might say so.
Theological suppositions can also be tools for self-defense for the old Adam in the sense that the theology doesn’t hit too close to home. The existential can’t be divorced from true doctrine but true doctrine in itself needs some meat on the bones to be conveyed in a meaningful way.
Agreed that “theology” as an abstract system that fits rationally together, while not connecting to the life we all live, is not true Christian theology. However, “theology” that becomes, in practice, a set of psychological “truths” that are free-floating principles with “real life” illustrations ceases to be Christian when it is not rooted in the person of Jesus Christ. The profession of His living, active existence is the basis of all “existential” theology. That is why “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ is coming again” is our profession of faith, not the expression of some psychological insight, although that profession of Christ can indeed lead us to psychological understanding that we would not otherwise have.
I really tried (and hope I succeeded… but maybe not) to make Christ’s Atonement the answer to the question. My main topic was anthropology and, specifically, the condition of total depravity, or, self-deification/justification.
In this sort of state, idolatry manifests itself in the ultimate anthropomophisis (sp?). When I talk about the law (small “l”) as psychological maxim, I am, in effect, talking about idolatry. That is a word you will find all in the Bible and all over Calvin’s Institutes (if that is your poison ;-)). I just don’t use the word because I think it is a) archaic and b) misleading in the sense that most people stop at the idol itself and don’t normally move to “in curvatas” which is the real issue.
Each idol has a law that ultimately comes directly from self-justification. The law of thin, success, non-smoking, conservative, liberal, environmentalist, cultural Christian, etc. Success in any of these laws can be quite vile from a Christian perspective in that a passive reception of righteousness becomes unnecessary from the succeeder’s point of view.
Obviously, this success is fleeting and you have to re-create it every day to appease the idol. Better that God strip the success bare (as in the example of the unfaithful man) and render him exposed and despondent over the idol.
That is, the Law kills the law and therefore the idol. Christ on the cross is then offered and love emerges from having been loved, as you correctly state.
If I’m out to lunch on how I look at that, I hope someone will let me know.
But that is how I “existentialize” the law and the gospel and the Person of Christ.
David, I actually agree with what you have said. My concern is that even the “theology of the cross” can itself easily morph into abstraction, wherein “the cross” becomes an abstract “principle” rather than the execution of an innocent man around 33 A.D.
so in other words, the hero in the good vs. bad movie feels justified because he’s fighting on the “good side”, and therefore, shows no mercy towards the bad guy because he feels justified in his actions. what he fails to see, though, if he’s human, is that he is just as “bad” as the bad guy.
Michael,
Yeah. If it’s like Greg Allman’s “It’s not My Cross to Bear”, etc., I can see where you’re going. Certainly. If an innocent man didn’t die on a cross 2,000 years ago, the theology of the cross has nothing. It ceases to become “theology” as such and becomes Sartrian despair. No love. Just suicide and despair.
Anonymous, I think you have your finger on the thrust of it! As long as it is before God!
I love that David Browder is an existential philosopher, and, at the same time, David Browder.
…as I sit here recalling his (and Kari’s) ovation at the conference…I smile.