Caesarius, active in the late fifth and early sixth centuries, was one of those very careful, exacting persons who may well have been able to count the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin (but see the thug angel discussed in a recent blog post). Perhaps Caesarius’ crowning achievement was when he presided over two all-Church Councils, and took upon himself the task of drawing up the canons (writing up the doctrinal laws) decided there.
These are the two positions that the Church took at that time (and since), declaring that any disagreement was heretical, anathema, and blasphemous (quite the trifecta!):
- God NEVER predestines any human being to damnation; AND
- God ALONE is the author of any and all human conversion/salvation.
There is no human agency possible in seeking out God AND human agency is the sole reason for the damnation of those who do not seek out God.
The supposed reconciliation of these contradictory assertions is explained something like this: Human beings are by nature pieces of crap, incapable of even knowing that they need God. They are all sinners from birth (excepting Adam, Eve, Mary, and Jesus), and that alone is sufficient to merit their damnation by a Wholly Holy God. But because this God is so Gracious and Compassionate, God sends stirrings of grace to human beings that will tickle their fancies to seek out God, so that they might be delivered from the damning consequences (literally) of their otherwise-inescapable crappiness.
Got it so far? Humans are crap. God is good. God makes it possible for crappy human beings (who don’t even know how crappy they are) to seek deliverance through God (a seeking that would never occur to them independently, because they are Just That Crappy and Ignorant).
So God stirs up human beings with grace to the extent that they are put on the hook for any decision thereafter to seek out God or not. Thus God cannot ever be accused of being a sadist who would create a human being only to consign that human being to suffer eternal hellfire…despite how much any human deserves that fate by virtue of being born a human being.
To recap this last part–God graciously pokes you and wakes you up to your shittiness and subsequent need for God. At that point only, you either affirm your shittiness and need for God, or else you don’t; if you don’t, then it’s your fault for being shitty and not admitting it, and off to hell you go! Meanwhile, God is hailed as righteous and just AND merciful and gracious.
Mind you, at no point is the fact of your essential shittiness changed–it simply is either imputed to the public shaming and execution of a sinless Jesus Christ (and you escape eternal torment!) or it isn’t (and you get what you deserve = hell). To come full circle: do NOT ever think that you got the idea in your own head to go to God to be relieved of your shittiness, because only God can give you that thought (= call you to repent). Zero credit to you, ever, any and all credit to God, always. And, no, the system is not rigged at all.
As Butler tells us:
This (above), and other like points, are confirmed by passages of the holy scriptures and fathers, chiefly St. Austin [aka Augustine, whose yuk is featured in another blog post], which establish the necessity of [God’s] grace to all our good thoughts and actions which conduce to eternal life. (emphasis added)
And that is how you suppress human-ness and call it godly.