what is human "nature"?

Ignore what seems to our ear the anti-Semitic tone.  Celsus used a (fictitious?) Jew to mount various criticisms against the Christians, so Origen was responding to "Celsus' Jew."

Origen, Contra Celsum II.29
[Celsus' criticism is that] "the prophets say that the one who will come will be a great prince, lord of the whole earth and of all nations and armies."  But it is just like a Jew, I think and consistent with their bitterness, when he reviles Jesus without giving even any plausible argument, saying: "But they did not proclaim a pestilent fellow like him."  Indeed, neither the Jews nor Celsus nor anyone else could establish by argument that he was a pestilent fellow who converted so many men from the flood of evil to live according to nature (κατὰ φύσιν) practising self-control and the other virtues.

It is interesting that Origen says that Jesus converted people "from evil to live according to nature."  Jesus recovers for us and converts us to the "natural" way to live, the truly human way to live.  So is human nature evil?  I find the word "nature" in this last sense troubling, not because I don't believe that humans are wicked and have a bent toward wickedness, but because it is not a dominant term used in the NT to refer to the wicked condition of a humanity and it is not entirely theologically coherent, as I will try to briefly demonstrate below.  The only use of φύσις in the NT that comes close to affirming wickedness as human nature is Eph 2.3: "We also once conducted our lives among these [trespasses and sins] in the desires of our flesh, willing the things of the flesh and of our minds, and we were children of wrath by nature (φύσει) like the rest."  And yet, verse 2 also affirms the presence of the "ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit who presently is working in/among the sons of disobedience."  Paul, assuming he wrote the letter, still doesn't evade the presence of deception among the disobedient.  Adam and Eve rebelled AND were deceived.  This is true of our world too.  Paul uses other language to describe the wicked state of the disobedient, but his lack of "nature" talk when it comes to humanity's wicked bent might be telling.

As David Bentley Hart has said somewhere (I think in his little book, The Doors of the Sea), the East has always rejected original guilt from original sin.  But he is quick to say that this doesn't change the fact that all humans will sin.  The world was altered by the rebellion in the garden, and the result is now that all humans inevitably sin due to a messy complex of problems.  Sin makes us less human, not more so.  Even Henri Blocher, who is quite reformed in his thinking, has argued in his book on original sin that sin has become our quasi-nature.  It is a warped nature in that it has parasitically latched on to our humanity and abused our "good" human nature.  As you can see, like Blocher, I tend to affirm the classic Augustinian view of good and evil, even though I tend to depart from Augustine on original sin.

Do we sin "by nature"?  If by "nature" we mean "easily," then Yes, but we are no longer using nature in the traditional sense of those necessary properties that constitute a certain thing.  If we maintain a traditional sense of this word, then No; we do not sin by nature but παρὰ φύσιν, against or contrary to nature, which is how Paul describes homosexual behavior in Rom 1.  Anyway, I think this is important because it not only reminds us that being human is a good thing, even though humans are sinners.  It allows us to affirm the goodness of God in spite of evil. It also helps us view our life as being renewed in the image of the Son, and it validates the necessity of the virtues in the life of the Christian, which the Fathers championed so well.  Much more could be said on a number of these points, but this will suffice for now.

ethical consistency - the life of Bonhoeffer

Wheaton just completed their 21st annual Theology Conference on April 12 and 13, which was dedicated to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. My wife and I gladly attended both evening plenary lectures, the first given by Dr. Stephen Plant on Bonhoeffer's theopolitics and the second by Dr. Charles Marsh on Bonhoeffer's conversion. One question on Thursday night was about the difficulty of reconciling Bonhoeffer's ethical claims about suffering and loving others with his willingness to get involved in the assassination plots of Hitler. As I discussed Plant's answer with another colleague of mine who attended, we were not sure if we found his answer satisfactory. I'll let you find the audio of his lecture on your own as I won't go into his answer here, but this question of consistency has caused me to pause. My question is whether or not a presupposed standard of consistency, which more often than not allows us to identify the inconsistent speck in our brother's eye without noticing or reflecting on the inconsistent log in our own, is a realistic goal. I have always thought that it was a realistic goal, and I certainly am not willing to change my mind yet. However, is consistency something that can even be achieved in the changing world? Eric Metaxas, in his recent biography, has argued that Bonhoeffer's circumstances led him to believe that one cannot simply live by an unchanging set of principles if they want to be obedient to God's call. Bonhoeffer's life highlights the "anxious middle" as Charles Marsh spoke of last night. He was spared from being drafted because he had friends in high places. Many of his confirmands were not as fortunate. What is interesting is that Bonhoeffer still wrote letters of encouragement to his former students who were fighting against the anti-Nazi forces in service of Hitler. Being a conscientous objector, which meant you were weak and traitorous, would have landed these young men in the fast lane to prison, and so some did not resist being drafted. Bonhoeffer tried (and it appears he was quite successful) not to impose on his students the beliefs that were unique to him, which means that he had to be quite aware of himself, a task that is far from easy. And if Plant is right in saying that Bonhoeffer believed he was in some way vicariously taking upon himself the sinful act of assassination and all the deception that came with it, then he was actually sinning so that other would not have to. Bonhoeffer's later years are a display of the life application of Luther's pecca fortiter, sin boldly, which is only successful if the application is matched by a confidence in God as the Justifier; that is, Luther's pecca fortiter only works if you believe in Luther's justification by faith. Bonhoeffer embodies an ethic that resists any extreme position on Christians and politics, whether pacifism or civil responsibility, which is why I am so interested in his life. Maybe consistency is only a virtue for those theologians who fail to put at least one foot in the mess which is the world.

"we have no king but Caesar"

This cry found in John 19.15 has become for me one of the most chilling lines of the passion narratives, for it is here that we see these Jews betray their monotheism - Shema Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD! What causes this betrayal? Perhaps they actually fear what Jesus is capable of doing. If he lives will the bureaucracy of the Temple change? Will the Sadducees be out of a job? Will they lose their wealth? What about the Pharisees and their devotion to the Law? Will Jesus' authority usurp their power with his teachings? Perhaps it was fear combined with the power of the mob. The crowd knows that both Pilate and Herod are puppets to their will. Perhaps their allegiance to Caesar is a sham, and they only tell Herod what he wants to hear. They already tried to persuade him that Jesus was a threat by calling him king of the Jews, the precise title assumed by the Herodians. Whatever their motivation was for chanting "no king but Caesar," it is a betrayal of their monotheism, because even if they are only feigning allegiance to Caesar, their injustice has already violated their covenant with the one true God. I wonder how many Christians have committed this same betrayal. A brief look at the Creed may help remind us of Christianity's indebtedness to the monotheism of Judaism, even though Christianity redefined the nature of this one God in light of God's revelation of the Son and Spirit.

Monotheism is maintained by the first stanza: "We believe in God, the Father, the Almighty; Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen." This is fairly traditional Jewish language. It is possible that they would have put Almighty before Father, but even so this is classic monotheism. It is the second set of affirmations that provides us with elements of redefinition. "And in one Lord, Jesus Christ the only Son of God." We now, with the earliest Christians, ascribe to Jesus the title, Lord, which used to be only appropriately given to God by the Israelites of the OT. It is also the title used by the Caesars: Caesar is Lord, Caesar is divine, whether in a quasi or full sense. The proclamation κύριος Ἰησοῦς, Jesus is Lord, is a rival claim to the power of Caesar; it is a rival claim to any power, authority, kingdom in heaven, on earth, or under the earth that seeks to deceive and destroy the world. Read Phil 2.5-11 in this political light - what does every prostrated creature confess when they hear the name Jesus? κύριος Ἰησοῦς. Read Eph and Col in this light with all the talk of principalities and powers. Think of this if you are a voter. κύριος Ἰησοῦς.

If these Jews were persuaded by fear, the prospect of losing security and power, then let us all think of the ways in which these same things have blinded us to our own idolatry. If the lordship of Jesus would have changed the temple system, the Torah system, and the power structures of the Jewish people, do we not think that his lordship will also challenge every "Christian" system? I recently heard one Republican candidate who is a professing Christian give a speech to a state where he said something like, "We are the 'give us our Bible and guns' people!" Our problem is certainly not that we don't have access to the Bible, it is that nobody reads it. And the problem with guns is similar but with an important difference: we also have access to guns but unlike the Bible we actually use them! Jesus is Lord, not your security in America, not the constitution, not the EU and the Euro, not your "autonomous" will, not __________. We have betrayed Jesus for far more than 30 pieces of silver.

On this Good Friday, as my wife and I participate in the stations of the cross and our Good Friday service, I pray that I will continually renew by baptism, my death into the body of Christ, which is a simple affirmation of the truth that Jesus is Lord, not me.

David Bentley Hart on the Nihilism of the Western Notion of Freedom

"The issue for me is whether, within the moral grammar of modernity, any of these good souls could give an account of his or her virtue. I with, that is, to make a point no conspicuously different from Alasdair MacIntyre's in the first chapter of his After Virue: that is, what an odd bricolage ethics has become in the wake of a morality of the Good. As far as I can tell, homo nihilisticus may often be in several notable respects a far more amiable rogue than homo religiosus, exhibiting a far small propensity for breaking the crockery, destroying sacred statuary, or slaying the nearest available infidel. But, love, let us be true to one another: even when all of this is granted, it would be a willful and culpable blindness for us to refuse to recognize how culturally arid and spiritually impoverished our society has become - which any unprejudiced survey of the artifacts of popular culture will effortlessly confirm. How, after all, should Christians regard the present age when, in America alone, more than 40 million babies have been killed in the womb since the Supreme Court invented the right to abortion, and when there are many who see these deaths not just as tragic necessities, but as blameless consequences of a moral social triumph? When the Carthaginians were prevailed upon to cease sacrificing their babies, at least the place vacated by Baal reminded them that they should seek the divine above themselves; but our culture offers up its babies to "my" freedom of choice, to "me." Surely a Christian must doubt that any other society's moral vision has ever shown itself to be more degenerate."

"Christ and Nothing (No Other God)," in In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments

a brief word from Cardinal Newman

"Those whom Christ saves are they who at once attempt to save themselves, yet despair of saving themselves; who aim to do all, and confess they do nought; who are all love, and all fear; who are the most holy, and yet confess themselves the most sinful; who ever seek to please Him, yet feel they never can; who are full of good works, yet of works of penance. All this seems a contradiction to the natural man, but it is not so to those whom Christ enlightens. They understand in proportion to their illumination, that it is possible to work out their salvation, yet to have it wrought out for them, to fear and tremble at the thought of judgment, yet to rejoice always in the Lord, and hope and pray for His coming."

From his sermon, "The Lapse of Time"

http://www.newmanreader.org/controversies/guides/selection.html

abortion: sex-selection vs. equal opportunity

In the first issue of The Economist for the new year, the Banyan (the journal's column devoted to Asia) wrote a piece on the challenge of sex-selective abortion among Asian countries. In general, it lamented the practice because it targets girls who are not viewed as highly as boys. I'll spare you the details as you can read it for yourself, but what I find so very interesting is that it seems to go without question that sex-selective abortion is wrong. The article does not bother to argue why it is wrong. My guess is that some notion of women's rights is the driving force of the article. In so many ways I am all for women's rights! But that is not the primary reason why sex-selective abortion is wrong. It is an important part, but it is not the ultimate reason. It is wrong because killing the unborn, girl or boy, is wrong. Contrast this method of abortion with the "equal opportunity" abortion policy of western countries where a mother can have an abortion simply because it was an accident, she was not old enough or mature enough to care for baby, she didn't have enough money, etc. Please hear me, I know there are scenarios that are very complicated, and although I still think abortion is wrong on principal, I want to sympathetically acknowledge such occasions. However, most abortions are probably not due to such unique circumstances. Most, I would venture to say, are due to irresponsible and selfishness behavior.

I know a girl who has had two abortions, although I knew her only when she had the second, and it was simply inconvenient to her and her extended family. Her mother told her that she could not bring the baby into her house, where my friend needed to stay for financial reasons. My friend's mother bears her own guilt for making such a requirement, but my friend made an entirely selfish choice. She soon got rid of that boyfriend, who wanted nothing to do with the child whom she aborted, and she found another guy with whom she'll have to be more careful. The "equal opportunity" abortion practice in the West is assumed by many to be a justified practice, something that goes without explaining. (Obviously abortion is still debated, but culturally and politically it is often assumed to be the "human rights" position. Some Republican candidates are pro-life only to tow the party line. And many who are against abortion support many anti-life issues! Another topic for another day.)

The irony is that from the West's perspective sex-selective abortion is assumed to be morally evil while non-selective abortion is assumed to be morally okay. What's more offensive? The overall thoughtlessness that this requires, or the latent hypocrisy that seems so obvious?