Redemption... "How... how does it work?"

"I know not, my liege"

But let us not too much quote Monty Python. It is a silly bunch.

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Last note tried to sketch something of what "heritable guilt" looks like and in what ways it is a reasonable idea, and furthermore how its operation is visible to anyone who has spent sufficient time with children (and some of us (like me) will remember it of ourselves in our own childhood, and later).

We also outlined how willingly suffering "transference", of debt or danger, can, with prudence and care, be a heroic way of acting amongst our neighbors. To be sure, a reckless (literally: without reckoning) neglect of the shaping our neighbours also need will leave them... more apt to shapelessness; but so will careless trampling of them when that is in our power. The betterment of our fellows and ourselves requires both correction and forgiveness, in the respectively right times and places and proportions. (Towers are held together by opposing forces of gravity (down) and [electrochemical] elasticity (up, sideways, twisty...), carefully managed)

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The word "redemption" (I don't know what the Hebrew or Greek names are for the Theological Event) in Latin looks like "buying back", re[d]-emptio. It refers to a payment of a debt or ransom, and that gratuitously, by one who has means though maybe it was not his debt. The ancient discussion of what this means in Theology, by the Fathers of the Church, does include (or in places does assume) that part of this debt was owed to the Godhead; that Adam offended God, which in itself was to incur a debt which no Merely Human Act could ever repay. In deference to their wisdom, I do not wish to contradict them; I should say, rather, that certain modern readers put too much emphasis on this thread of Church Thought, to the neglect of things Jesus himself says and does in the Gospels. (Similarly, I've no wish to deny the scriptural evidence that God can be wrathful, but neither do I wish to doubt that God is always just; His wrath is not merely overwhelming, but enlightening) God may retain the Impossible Debt (like the King owed many talents from a servant, who was in turn owed a few pennies from another servant); but God can also forgive what is (in strict justice) owed Him. It's a big part of the Gospel, the Good News, that God will, in fact, gladly forgive the truly penitent. Man's right relation to God and the remaining debt we owe Him is to repent, and give thanks² for His forgiveness. Still, I also think there was Something Else that needed to be... payed-off? ... (or... held-off), which God "could not" (logically) hold-off by forgiving anything.

What Can God Not Forgive? Well, there is the Unrepented Sin; but neither can God forgive a grudge He does not hold. I don't think there is even proper grammar to suggest, for example, something like "God Forgives On Satan's behalf", and you can be sure that Satan does not forgive anything. Happily, it is not necessary for God to make Satan forgive. The devil only has to be denied what he covets; but we, apparently¹ are quite apt to get ourselves caught in his snares, that much needing to be rescued again and again... More: we are apt to sell ourselves into diabolical bondage. From those snares, from that bondage we surely need rescuing; the Devil must be opposed, forcibly if we are to be redeemed.

This actually fighting the Devil is described, for instance in Paul's letters (as something we have to do, "Induite vos armaturam Dei, ut possitis stare adversus insidias diaboli: quoniam non est nobis colluctatio adversus carnem et sanguinem, sed adversus principes, et potestates, adversus mundi rectores tenebrarum harum, contra spiritualia nequitiæ, in cælestibus"), and seen still more vividly in the Gospels, such as in John (reading with Timothy George) when Jesus raises Lazarus.

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Paul also tells us that the Law cannot save. Jesus says of himself that He is the fulfillment of the Law. In recent years (I think I picked up this idea from Mark Shea, before he was a Professional blogger... it is surely much older) the Law of the Old Testament may be likened to an X-Ray machine, a series of tests that will tell you when and where you have gone wrong, and even tell you what you should do and be instead; but it is not itself medicine: the Law itself will not make you better without your cooperation.³

The Fulfillment of the Law, in the diagnostic sense, happens when we find — when it is Revealed to us — that trusting in ourselves alone and in our little laws and in our princes, trusting the mere knowledge of good and evil, we have Crucified All That Is Good. Of course, we cannot see this if we cannot see that Jesus is All That Is Good — if we have not faith that He Is The Way and The Truth and The Life. That we might find this faith is part of why He spent three years teaching in public and working marvels in our sight... and part of why He says "Generatio mala et adultera signum quærit: et signum non dabitur ei..."

Amazingly, God forgives them that Crucify Him: first, as it is happening, and what is more He does not forever hide himself, but rises again, on the Third Day. Even after we have killed him, he returns full of life to accept our repentance, to forgive us.

"... nisi signum Jonæ prophetæ".

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There is ever so much more to Jesus' Crucifixion, Death, and Resurrection than this; Jesus' forceful combat against the devils, His actually rescuing us, His gift to us of the grace and strength to oppose evil ourselves and walk upright before Him...

But I hope this slender portion is something good to think on.

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1) that is, it really is apparent, even if you are only happy to think of "the devil" as a merely metaphorical notion (which is, I suggest, a dangerous idea)

2) "gratias agere", occasionally says the Latin, to enact thanks; giving thanks is done in word and deed.

3) We must ourselves be moved: “‘Turn to me’ says the Lord ‘and be saved’”