Many aspects of Christianity have never made sense to me. An anthropomorphic God, the Trinity, vicarious salvation, original sin, papal infallibility…all of this has always struck me as bizarre, utterly divorced from the real world as I experience and learn about it, and obviously irrational. And yet much of Christianity also seems beautiful and true. Since the whole Catholic package works fine for Dr. E. Michael Jones, who is uncommonly intelligent and rational, I can only shrug my shoulders and say “Allah knows best.”
Below is Dr. Jones’ response to my article “Zionism Is Antichrist”, specifically the part about original sin. It seems that the Catholic and Orthodox positions may not be all that different. In any case, they are both different from the Islamic position, which is that we are accountable only for our own sins, not for those of our ancestors.
Meanwhile, if you get tired of serious theology, check out my new theo-satire “ADL Says ‘God’s Mercy’ Is an Anti-Semitic Trope.”-KB
Of Camels and Unitarians
By E. Michael Jones
I remember riding through Tehran next to Kevin Barrett listening to him tell me the story of his conversion to Islam. This was probably in 2013 at the first of many conferences I would attend over the next ten years organized by the late Nader Talebzadeh, a man who brought east and west together in a way that has been sorely missed since his untimely demise. The bus was full of Iranians who were evidently listening to our conversation. I know this because when Kevin said that he had been raised as a Unitarian, I replied “All you did was add camels to your Unitarianism,” at which point the Iranians on the bus all burst out laughing.
I have nothing against camels, but as “America’s leading Catholic intellectual,” as Kevin put it, I have a congenital allergic reaction to Unitarianism and more importantly to the Puritanism which spawned the Unitarian reaction by promulgating the distorted notion of Original Sin that goes by the term innate or total depravity. Ever since Ralph Waldo Emerson gave his Harvard Divinity school address, American culture has been plagued by two equally false understandings of Original Sin. Kevin continues that great American tradition by perpetuating that misunderstanding in one of his recent articles.(1)
Kevin dives into the deep end of the theological pool by citing as his authority on matters Catholic a young man by the name of Paul Kingsnorth. Kingsnorth is an Englishman, who converted from England’s version of Greta Thunbergism to Eastern orthodoxy, without picking up a rudimentary understanding of Christian theology along the way. Kingsnorth’s conversion, however, did allow him to dress up England’s ancestral hatred of Catholicism in theological terminology, and that led him to excoriate the Catholic Church for consigning “countless Irish babies . . . to unmarked graves and presumptive hellfire or purgatory because they were unbaptized.” I’m not sure whether presumptive hellfire is hotter than normal hellfire, but the idea that the Catholic Church sends “countless Irish babies” to hell “or purgatory” is a preposterous claim unknown in Catholic theology. To begin with, only the baptized can go to purgatory, where their souls are purged of the effects of the sins they have committed in this life. The souls in purgatory are known as the church suffering because they have been saved and will eventually enter heaven.
The Catholic Church affirms that baptism is necessary for salvation, but it also affirms that those who through no fault of their own could not know of Christ or his gospel or the requirement of baptism will be saved by how they follow the moral law which has been engraved on their conscience. The doctrine is known as invincible ignorance, and, unfortunately, it does not apply to people like Kingsnorth, who is presumably a member in good standing of the Orthodox church even though he does not understand its theology, which is identical to Catholic theology on baptism and Original Sin.
In a recent interview with Ben Shapiro, Bishop Robert Barron misused the idea invincible ignorance by applying it to Jews alive today. After Shapiro asked him “Am I going to hell?” Bishop Barron hemmed and then he hawed and then he invoked a misunderstanding of documents of Vatican II, when he should have asked simply, “Ben, are you baptized?” Shapiro presumably would have said “no,” and at that point Bishop Barron should have said, “Ben, if you refuse to be baptized, you cannot be saved.” In doing that Bishop Barron would have established at least one Catholic principle—the necessity of baptism for salvation—in a clear cut case, namely, the fact that the Jewish refusal to accept baptism denies them salvation.
The case of unbaptized infants is different even though the same principle applies. Kingsnorth then brings up limbo, another theological concept which he does not understand. Limbo is a theologoumenon, which is to say, a category of the mind which has been deduced according to human reason from theological principles which are certain, like “Baptism is necessary for salvation.” Limbo occupies a middle space between the theological certainty that Baptism is necessary for salvation and the moral certainty that God does not punish the innocent for sins that they did not commit. Original sin is not the same as actual sin. Original sin is a “wound,” the key concept that separates the Catholic understanding from the Calvinist belief in total depravity and the Unitarian Emersonian overly optimistic American version which Kevin seems to have inherited when he claims that nature and man are “perfect.” How anyone can watch the behavior of the unbaptized Israelis and their genocidal attack on innocent women and children in Palestine without feeling the need to appeal to a metaphysical understanding of evil is beyond me, probably because I’m a Catholic who follows the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church, as expounded in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination toward evil and death cannot be understood apart from the connection with Adam’s sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the “death of the soul.” Because of this certainty of faith, the Church baptizes for the remission sin even tiny infants who have not committed personal sin.(2)
So, to answer the question posed by Kevin’s Muslim wife, who wondered “How could anyone possibly believe that innocent babies who haven’t done anything wrong are sinful?” the Catholic Church responds:
Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted. It is wounded in the natural powers proper to it: subject to ignorance, suffering, and the domination of death; and inclined to sin—an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence.” Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back toward God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.(3)
Kingsnorth to his credit brings up the concept of sin embodied in the Greek term “hamartia,” which he does not name, but which does derive from archery. Virtuous behavior is like the arrow which hits the target. Sin is the arrow which misses the target by going to one side—in this instance the Calvinist exaggeration—or the other—in this instance the Emersonian minimalization of Original Sin which still plagues the mind of Unitarianism insofar as it still has a mind left to plague. The Catholic understanding of Original Sin is related to the Catholic understanding of penance, or the effort required to remove the effect of sin even after the sin has been confessed. According to St. John Chrysostom, sin is like an arrow. Even after the arrow has been removed, the wound remains requiring healing. The same thing is true of Original Sin, which is the “wound” which Adam’s sin bequeathed to the entire human race. No one enters heaven until that wound has been healed by the grace of baptism.
Kevin Barrett, Zionism is Antichrist, December 3, 2023. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzGwHxsbrjdzWcfWjLxdxrvKCpsx
Catechism of the Catholic Church , para 403.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 404.
for christians, it's all about baptism. for muslims it's 'there is only one god and muhammad is his messenger'. oh, and prayer. and ask forgiveness every day 5 times at least.
Hi
Myths should be taught as myths.
Even though this will not be, is not, acceptable. As per dear old Socrates.
Love ya work guys. Heroic stuff.
When you move into your respective dogmatic belief systems, I think most of your audience simply rolls their eyes politely.
Interesting you are going nut to nut on this.
Maybe following Leo Strauss et al your audience thinks that myths can’t be taught as myths as it will destroy the city.
Maybe the deceitful city.
The unsustainable city.
The imperial city.
Best wishes
Michael Crighton