On the Road to Emmaus

In the last post I developed the idea of flesh/spirit, particularly from the angle of eschatology. To understanding the Spirit biblically, it must be considered in light of eschatology because the Spirit is the life and power of the age to come. The Spirit is not simply a force or power, but a person who is drawing the entire created order towards God’s future, renewing life and overcoming the powers of death and disorder. Understanding what the “flesh” is, has extremely practical implications for the life of faith and the orientation of one’s focus with regard to sanctification.We all know the “flesh” is bad and we should be against it, therefore the identification of this enemy is crucial in warring against it. In the last post I employed the methodology that we start with the solution and then explicate the problem rather than vice versa. Instead of beginning with a description of the flesh, we first described the nature of the Spirit and then were able to discern the contours of our enemy “the flesh.” In that post we looked at the Spirit through the lens of eschatology. Now we will look at the Spirit through the lens of the Trinity and seek to explicate “the flesh” from that perspective.

The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God’s own being resides in the inter-relations between Father, Son and Spirit. The foundational underlying reality of God’s being is not the individual persons of the Godhead, but their communion of love with each other. Since humans are made in God’s image, this tells us that contrary to Boethius, the “basic atomic reality of humanity,” the essential indivisible constituency of humanity is not the individual, but the community. The existence of the community is ontologically and biologically prior to the individual. Our true humanity is only expressed, not as individuals, but as persons in loving relationship. This illuminates the fundamental characteristic of holiness – perfect love. The holy person is the person who loves in relationships. Notions of holiness cannot be abstract, detached or impersonal. Rather, they must be concrete, involved and relational.

The Trinitarian understanding of human relationality also illuminates the negative dimensions of human existence that holiness and sanctification seek to overcome. Sin is often understood as either “pride” or alternatively “self-centeredness.” Advocates of both views often claim Augustinian grounding. Some see understanding “self-centeredness” as an improvement over “pride” in that it is rooted in a Trinitarian theology of love. Sin is disordered and inwardly focused love rather than simply pride. The phronema tes sarkos, the “mindset of the flesh” is thus understood as a “self-centered mind-set” or “mind set purely on human goals and values.” The problem with humanity is that it is inwardly bent in pursuit of self-sovereignty, self-glorification, self-promotion, self-sufficiency, self-importance and self-gratification.

However, what the doctrine of the Trinity tells us is that we cannot allow the individual to be the fundamental unit of reality. Thus our foundational concepts of sin and depravity cannot be at center individualistic. Sin and the flesh cannot be confined to the isolated disorder of the individual. They cannot solely be understood or explicated in terms of self-centeredness. They cannot be explained only with reference to the self if it is truly impossible to rescind one’s relational nature. As long as one exists in relationship, others are involved. Therefore the nature of sin and the disordered motivation of the flesh are better viewed as an active anti-love or even hatred towards others. One’s attitudes towards one’s self and the actions of one’s self always involve others in the form of their presence or absence.

Self-sovereignty always means other-subjugating. Self-glorification always means other de-valuing. Self- promotion always means other-diminishing. Self-sufficiency always means other-rejection. Pursuit of self-importance always means other-insignificance. Misbegotten self-gratification always entails the utilitarian exploitation of others or the refusal to be generous to others. The sin of “self” is in fact not merely the “sin of self.” It must always be interpreted and articulated in the light of the relationality that one fails to exist without. Hence, these self-bending sins are all in fact forms of anti-love, or even hatred.

This demonstrates that the application of the centrality of relationality to harmartiology (the doctrine of sin) does not “reduce” a concept of sin. Humans are not in fact indicted for “selfishness” alone but for various forms of hatred and violence against others. The concept of sin through the doctrine of the Trinity seems to actually radicalize the doctrine of sin. This furthermore necessitates that any solution to the notion of sin, as manifested in a form of positive holiness and sanctification, must radically address that while humans have an insatiable craving for relationship and an instinctual urge to abscond their unavoidable sense of loneliness, they simultaneously possess an, at times insidious and at times unambiguous, fear, aversion and hostility towards the very thing they crave.

Related posts

• The Person and History of the Holy Spirit Part 2: Trinitarian Ecstasy (0)
• The Person and History of the Holy Spirit Part 2: Trinitarian Ecstasy (cont.) (0)
• We’ve Been Unbabeled – When the Day of Pentecost Had Fully Come (Part 2) (1)
• The Ability to Love is Within Each of Us (0)
• Spirit and Flesh – Part 1 (1)