Invitation

Dear Anonymous Paul Tillotson

Yes, take up blogging, tell us your stories!

(write to qnoodles at gmail, and I will tell you who I am, too)

You mention the names of one or two Church Dogmas (Orginal Sin and Inherited Guilt), one Theory of Maybe How the Passion Effects Salvation ("Transference", mentioning also Substitution), and one ... thing... "retributive justice"... and report that whatever unexpressed ideas you connect with these names, you connect with the Church and would reject them from yourself. (And, Sheila, you apparently agree with this Paul's unexplained ideas? But how do you know?) So, I still don't know what your objections are. All I can do, therefore, is report how I myself understand what it seems to me that The Church means by these names, how entirely reasonable they seem to me, and ... well, you can decide whether to explain what you mean by them, why you think your impressions of the the Church's Meaning may be closer to the Church's meaning, and ... so forth.

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Simplest first, "Retributive Justice". "Justice" refers to harmony — harmony between neighbours, harmony within ourselves, harmony between Self and Goodness; "justification" being the restoration of this harmony, in more litteral harmony-talk known as tuning; a justified soul is a well-adjusted soul. It is retributive justice at work when buyer and seller happily agree on the price of a thing, when labourer and employer happily agree on wages.

The theory of practical justice is particularly about restoring harmony when it has been disturbed, particularly by the misdeeds of some individual. Now, discerning whether some particular misdeed actually happened, and then was mistake or malice, is jurisprudence, and not justice per-se (though justice demands we attempt it carefully). Restoring the harmony, however, usually demands someting be done. The disharmony that results from theft, for example, includes how the thief (for a time) holds wealth that belongs to another, and restoring harmony should ordinarily begin with some kind of restitution (if that is possible). But any crime (indeed, 'most any act at all) has broader effects than merely its immediate object: theft engages not merely loss of property but also the attempt at recovery (which has costs) and also a proclamation that property is negligible. A thief apprehended bears some responsibility for (has knowingly caused) the property stolen as well as his own detection and trial, general fear regarding security, mischief inspired in immitation, et.c., and so his natural debt is greater than that which he stole.

Practical Justice requires communicating somehow that, to the best of our ability, what could be was recovered, peace has been restored, and our neighbours are not in more danger afterwards than they were before. It's very easy to go wrong in the search for this kind of justice, which is why it is, in developed societies, delegated by society to a few specialists known as The Authorities — and it would still be wrong to neglect it. Something needs doing to restore harmony, lest (at the very least) the thief still be inclined to theft afterwards. (that can happen anyway by his stubbornness, but let us not say it was for want of care on the part of his neighbours!). Restoring Harmony requires Some Action, requires that Some Return be made for works of malice.

In short All Practical Justice Is Retributive. Justice isn't about whether retribution is required, but which. Real justice may at times be more strictly, at times more magnanimous than, equal return on pains incurred, but it is still our duty to our neighbours.

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"Transference." Transference (and particularly "of guilt") can in part be understood as a principle moderating the retributive character just described of all justice. A thief who, caught, shows true repentance may in fact be making a greater sacrifice, out of his own being, than one could pay for with money; it can be good for all, in that circumstance, for the original owner to dismiss some of the material debt owed him.

But, even more basically, we are all born rather helpless and useless; it is not we who make or pay for our first clothes or food, but our parents. It is also true that it is our parents, and not we, who are proximately responsible for our being, but we certainly benefit, without doing anything to deserve it, by our first food and clothing — and that goes on for many years.

Transference is also going on when a rich man pays for the education of a poor child; and would anyone say that was an unjust (discordant) act? Transference of this sort is illustrated, for example, in the Parable of the Labourers in the vineyard, by the owner who pays a day's wage for an hour's work.

It is also a kind of transference (and greatly laudable) when anyone takes pains or risks upon himself for to rescue someone in trouble (noting that poverty-simpliciter is still quite compatible with cheerfulness and even contentment). The reason we do these things isn't (I suggest) out of the necessity of Justice as such, but because neglecting them hurts ourselves, in our very natures. It is common enough a trope to almost being a cliché, that anyone the newspapers will call a hero says of themselves they were "only doing what anyone else would have done". But foolish or not, they really believe it, too.

I want to say more about transference and supernatural debts and all that... it being Lent, afterall... but that would make this letter much too long.

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"Original Sin" and "Inherited Guilt". Since you name both of them, we can treat them separately, but they do go together.

First-firstly, I want to address what I think is a problem in the Anglophone general-public understanding of Sin and Guilt (I don't know if you make this mistake yourself, but others object to the same names as you do, moved by this mistake). It seems to me that the modern common-English-speaker has lost the distinction between guilt and compunction. This is of a piece with the overwhelming sentimentalization of all matters spiritual and social and political, though I can't put a time-frame on it... my point is that guilt is simply a fact, it's the sort of thing that can be studied (with only the ordinary difficulties) by forensics and adjudicated in forum. The only questions about "guilt" are whether a thing happened and is someone responsible for it. And in particular, Sin is guilt (responsibility for a failing) in supernatural matters. And when the Church (and I do mean the Church, not clerics) seeks to convince us that we are guilty of sin, it isn't so that we'll feel bad — chances are, we feel bad already and are trying to ignore why — but so that we can confront it and be justified anew and hopefully then feel better.

The question then seems to be: how can children be responsible for failings that, ostensibly, are caused by ancestors they never knew nor who ever knew them?

Well, it's easier than that makes it sound: e.g., someone has to take care of Pripyat near Chernobyl in Ukraine; we and our children have inherited a bad situation, there, but more than that: we know it is a bad situation, and why, and what sorts of things can be done to keep it from getting worse (and what sorts of "worse" are hard to address). Knowing even a little of good and evil is a heavy responsibility indeed.

In particular, we haven't inherited any kind of responsibility for Adam's (or Eve's) Choice. But we are responsible for what we already know, in ourselves.

And this is the really hefty thing: Children have a rather keen intuitive sense for "fairness".¹ I'm sure you know someone between three and twelve who has lamented "it's not fair!", and quite possibly been quite right about it. I'm even sure you know someone who has both so lamented and been rather unfair themselves, whether in that moment or shortly thereafter. I know I did, though I can't remember specifics that clearly...

In other words, the moral sense seems to be innate (it is evident as soon as we can speak), but its operation seems at first to be entirely self-interested (almost, I should say, self-defensive). We are born with a sense of good and evil, but not wanting to be good. I'm not saying we're born monsters, or under threat of immediate damnation, but that we are born in need of forming, in need of justification, supernaturally lacking, and that we are nonetheless born with the means to know it already.

And that's the sense in which we inherit the Guilt of Adam: we initially know and can't not know just enough of right and wrong, and we develop into reasoning agents; but to desire our own goodness needs external help. What we have inherited from Adam is the knowledge, the instinct that demands some kind of fairness, and hence the responsibility of knowledge and reason, together with this failing in our wills.

Why is the sense heritable (instinctive), and the discipline not? I don't know! It might be integral to moral freedom? But I don't think that why really matters.

Finally, "Original Sin": The peculiarly Jewish and Catholic take on the history of this frustrating inheritance is that it started with one free choice confirmed by a second; and, as it happens, that both free choices were made at the very begining of Humanity. The Catholic discussion of Original Sin also involves ideas of "sanctifying grace" and distinguishing "vision of God" from "happiness", and I think it is still developing, still grasping for precise expression.

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Anyway, that's what I've learned about those ideas from going to Church and listening to smart people and reading good books. I don't know what you've picked up from the same quarters (or what other quarters you've picked up). But so long as you (Paul T.) are trying to be good and responsible, I won't bother with your take on the historical question.

Bat the Mathematician

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PS 1) C. S. Lewis makes this same observation about cultures instead of Children: every society has some kind of mythology, and has some articulated moral code, and is repeatedly breaking that same moral code and feeling bad about it; and it gets into their mythology. Both the code and their own failings are so important they have to be remembered. Everywhere.