A Theology of Everything

Part 6, The Moral Rupture

Having dwelled upon the ontological consequences of the fall, in this post I want to linger a bit on the moral consequences. This is a speculative bit of hamartiology, a theology of sin. 

Again, borrowing from Maximus the Confessor, at the instant of creation humanity falls from grace. Man steps away from God and chooses non-being. This is a delusional and prideful attempt to exist independently of God, primordially so and in every personal recapitulation of the fall. 

Again, while there are ontological consequences for this turn toward non-being, our focus here is upon how humanity creates moral separation from God. A moral rupture is introduced into the relationship between creature and Creator. Human sinfulness sits in stark contrast with the Holiness of God. We are plunged into darkness while God sits in inaccessible light.

This moral separation between the creature and Creator is painful and distressing when brought into awareness, when our eyes are opened to "the knowledge of good and evil." Guilt, shame, and fear enter consciousness. This conscious confrontation with the moral rupture is well captured by Isaiah when he beholds the glory of God:

"Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

Biblically, this experience of "Woe is me, I am lost!" is described as the judgment of God and the wrath of God. Crucially, these descriptions do not speak to God's emotional state, for God is ever tranquil and exists only as boundless love. God's impassivity in the face of human sin, God's loving oceanic stillness, means that God is not triggered, disturbed, aggrieved, agitated, or angered by human sin. God is ever and only love. Beneficent and calm. As Julian of Norwich described when she gazed into the love of God:

"I saw no wrath except on man’s part, and that He forgives in us. For wrath is nothing else but a rebellion from and an opposition to peace and to love..."

The words "judgment" and "wrath," therefore, are relational terms which name the moral distance between the creature and God and the psychic and ontological impacts of increasing distance from God. Sin is "judged" simply as a consequence of our distance from God, along with the consequences incurred by that very distance. As the creature moves further away from God any goodness or virtue it experiences in life is eroded by non-being. The creature experiences the encroachment of non-being as pain and torment, as a "burning" akin to fire. 

And yet, while the creature can descend into this torment, deeper and deeper into "hell," the creature cannot extinguish its own life. The existence of the creature is ex Deo, as a continuous ontological dependence upon God. As long as the creature exists a tether of grace abides. No creature, as created existence, can be wholly separated from God. Otherwise, the creature could not exist. Given this ontological tether, despite any present separation or torment, the creature's future remains eternally open to God.

To conclude with a clear and vivid Biblical vision of the theology of sin and judgment described here, we can turn to Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son. Note in the story that there is no wrath on the father's side. The father's love remains constant. Any separation between the son and the father is wholly due to the son's rebellion. This is Julian's vision: There is no wrath on God's side, only on our side. Our experience of being "in a far country" from God--judgment, wrath, torment, hell--is wholly due to our movement away from God.