Bruce Charlton's Notions

It is very difficult, sometimes, to avoid being gripped by fear - and by 'fear' I do not mean that acute emotion which leads to adaptive behaviours such as 'fight or flight'; but that chronic existential fear (or 'angst') which gets hold of the emotions, distorts thinking, and Will Not Let Go. 

It is important to recognize that such fear is a sin. 

It is a sin because it is is a consequence of lack of faith (i.e. lack of trust, lack of confidence...) in the goodness, love and creative power of God; and the salvation of Jesus Christ.

And sin itself is - in its deepest meaning - death (including that which conduces Men to choose death). That is, death as understood as the severance of the (eternal) soul from the (dead) body; with consequent loss of our agency, our consciousness of our-selves - so that we would become witless, demented, discarnate 'ghosts'. When Jesus offered the possibility of saving Men from 'sin' - it was this condition from which he was saving Men.  

 

There are always causes for fear; and fear may (it seems) strike anyone. I have read many accounts of World War One pilots, that make clear that the most courageous people one can imagine - men who have risked death, three times a day for months on end, in single combat with superior enemy forces - can, and eventually will experience, paralyzing fear. 

And such fear of death can be so extreme and unbearable, as itself to lead to either deliberate, or semi-deliberate, seeking of death - death to 'put an end to' (as it seems) the fear of death.

But even in what is apparently the safest and most secure individual lives - perhaps especially in such lives - there may be an intense dread of losing safety and security. 

Thus, fear is part of the human condition. 

If so, if sin is unavoidable - how can it be sin? And how can sin be overcome if it is part of the human condition?  

Well - sin is part of the human condition; and sin cannot be overcome fully and finally in this mortal life on earth... 

But this inevitability of failure does not matter in the ultimate scheme of things, since this mortal life on earth is intended as a time of learning and preparation, a time of tests and opportunities - the benefits of which learning may be 'enjoyed' through eternity (in resurrected Heavenly life), as well as providing glimpses and hope for that eternity.  

The inevitability of fear is, in a sense, liberating! Because it diminishes the delusory hope of avoiding fear, and puts the emphasis on what we do when we fear. 

In sum: fear cannot be avoided, it will always come back again - and again; but fear can be dealt with when it does return. 

Fear can be dealt with every time it returns, no matter how many times it returns - and it is this dealing-with fear that is what does us good...

And does us good, not here in this mortal life on earth; but good ultimately and eternally. 

This way of understanding sin (which, in my case, derives-from a close reading of the Fourth Gospel) is liberating, and hope-full; since it is attainable by anyone; even (perhaps especially) those most prone to fear. 

Each experience of fear is an occasion for recognizing that it arises only from the weakness of our faith; and repenting that fact. That is: recognizing that our existential angst about 'the future', about what might or will happen - is a sin arising from the mortal inadequacy of that confidence and hope which ought to come from our belief in God and following of Jesus. 

It is such 'knowing and affirming what is right' that constitutes repentance. 

Such a perspective (albeit temporarily achieved) may provide some here-and-now relief (albeit temporary) from the fear that afflicts us. It may stop such fear from getting worse, rather than (as otherwise usually happens) feeding upon itself. 

But even if no relief is obtained, even when we cannot 'make ourselves' feel the love of God and Jesus we know we ought to feel; the very act of repentance is valuable - permanently valuable. 

It is this knowing what is right, and wanting-to-want what is right, that is most important.

A candidate for The Big Question is: why does this 'world of sin' exist at all? 

I am here using sin as in the Fourth Gospel to mean, mainly, death; and therefore to encompass the idea that this is a world of inevitable death; thus of ubiquitous change - decay, degeneration, sickness, pain... 

Why did God create such a manifestly-imperfect world as this one? A world dominated by death? 

The only satisfying answer is that this world is necessary. By necessary, I mean necessary to God's plans for creation. 

In other words, this world of sin is needed for the fulfilment of God's creative plans. 

Needed, yes - but obviously not as an end-point - because this changing world is intrinsically Not an end point. Here, the end of every-thing is death...

But as a necessary step towards God's goal. This world is a means towards an end. 

And God's goal with creation is to raise Men up to his level - to enable Men (who are already sons and daughters of God) to choose to become fully divine; which means fully capable of creation. 

God therefore needed both to make it possible for Men to become fully divine (i.e. to create Heaven); and also to enable Men to choose this possibility (i.e. to exercise agency, or free will). 

What is the necessary step that 'this world of sin' enables? 

Well, the one thing shared by all the diversity of Men of all human eras and situations is - A Body. 

In other words, the primary fact of Man's experience is incarnation: getting a body. 

And the body we get is a mortal body, a body that will die. 

Therefore, we may infer that this is the primary purpose of this world is to provide all men with a mortal body: thus the purpose is the totality of mortal incarnation - necessarily including death.*  

Jesus was born into this world of sin for the same reason as the rest of Men - he shared our fate: he was born to get a body - mortal body - and therefore to die. 

The difference was that when Jesus's mortal body had died; he was (him-self) then resurrected with an immortal body. 

Since Christians regard Jesus as the example we wish to follow; we implicitly accept that the best immortality is an incarnated immortality - that it is better to have an immortal body; than it would be to be immortal but without a body.

For Christians therefore; eternal incarnation is better (i.e. higher, more in accordance with God's plan) than eternal life as a spirit.  

So this world of sin is a necessary step in God's plan of creation because it provides us with a mortal body; and by Jesus's birth and death in this world - he made eternal incarnation possible (which is, for God, the best possible kind of eternal life.

Incarnation and death is the only experience shared by all Men - including those who die in the womb, and those who die as babies or children. But if getting a body that was the only purpose of this mortal world, then we would not live such varied lives - and some people would not live for so many decades...

So there must be a secondary purpose to this world, and it must be a purpose that explains why each Man's experience of mortal life is unique. 

In a nutshell; this secondary purpose to this mortal world is quantitative, rather than the qualitative fact of 'getting a body'. 

'Living' our own unique life is about what is best for us, rather than what is absolutely necessary for all Men. 

Our various experiences are in order that each of us, each specifically, has the best chance to learn those particular lessons we personally most need for the best possible eternal resurrected life. 

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus into this world of sin which all Men share with him. 

We celebrate Jesus getting a mortal body, and commencing a mortal life that would inevitably terminate in death. 

It was what happened next, after his death, that was the primary work of Jesus, by which he changed reality forever.  

*This clear understanding seems first to have been attained by the Mormon prophet: Joseph Smith.

The spiritual war is fought in public over whether the 'sins' of mainstream, totalitarian leftist-materialism ought to be regarded as primary (e.g. racism, sexism' climate- or peck-denialism...); or whether instead the traditional Christian sins such as adultery, fornication, drunkenness etc.) ought to be the major focus. 

(The mainstream has the advantage in this dispute because they deny that the Christian sins are sinful at all, but rather virtues; while the self-identified Christians usually agree with the totalitarian left that attitudes such as racism, sexism, and -denialism are indeed sins - and will, for example - routinely and officially exclude leaders who disagree with any of the mainstream leftist definitions of 'sin'.) 

My usual list of the most dominating sins of this time and place includes fear, resentment, dishonesty and despair. 

But these are - at best - almost completely neglected by Christian teaching - which continues to focus on more traditional (and spectacular!) sins of a sexual nature; or sins that are (at least officially) still against the law: things like murder, rape, theft etc. 

Such a focus has the unfortunate (but probably deliberate) effect of creating and sustaining "Pharisaism" among Christians, which I would here define as the belief that sin can be avoided - with enough effort. 

Well, yes! Spectacular sins can indeed be avoided. And avoiding these is made much easier by the fact that they are socially dis-approved, and if detected they will be punished. 

But my understanding is that Jesus said this was not only insufficient, but a harmful attitude to life. 

Sin, as such, is so pervasive in the human condition as to be unavoidable; and the belief that sin can be avoided leads to what Jesus termed 'hypocrisy' - that is, to assumptions of purity and authority on the basis of being (at least publicly) able to avoid a few extreme and spectacular sins; while neglecting the far more frequent, but equally in need of repentance, sins of everyday life - such as dishonesty.

Did you murder anyone yesterday? Probably not. And, if you did, you probably repent it. 

But were you dishonest yesterday? Yes You Were! And probably dozens, maybe hundreds of times; especially if you are a manager or a professional or any kind of leader. 

Indeed, most middle class people are dishonest as an essential (and growing) element of their job: they are strategically, calculatedly dishonest for-a-living.  

Did you repent these dishonesties - did you even notice them at all? Even worse - do you regard yourself as a truthful person, and deny that you were and are dishonest? 

Sins such as dishonesty are un-noticed and therefore un-repented because they are socially-approved, and often socially rewarded: 

Back in 2020-2021; we were all socially expected to fear the birdemic - and anyone who did not express sufficient fear was regarded as a danger to public health. 

Resentment is the motivational basis of antiracism, feminism, socialism and many other leftist ideologies (and several actually-left but supposedly-right ideologies such as nationalism); and nowadays such resentment (whether personal, or vicariously expressed 'on behalf of' the 'oppressed') is mandatory in public discourse. 

A manager and a politician is rewarded for dishonesty (e.g. calculated misleading, untruthfulness and indeed lying - if lies effective and deniable); and will be sacked if he refuses. Much the same applies to scientists, doctors, lawyers, church leaders, economists, the police and military... essentially it applies everybody in leadership or 'expert' positions in major social institutions. 

My point here - which I think was also Jesus's point in His teaching - is that we sin all the time, and deliberately - and we have no intention of ceasing to sin when those sins are socially-allowed/ mandatory; because to do so would put us out of a job, and exclude us from human society. 

Fortunately (!); Jesus came to save sinners, and not those (non-existent) persons who are sin-less.  

Jesus asks 'merely' that we acknowledge that we sin all the time, and cannot (indeed we do not wish to) stop sinning: and 'yet' these and we are exactly those who Jesus can and will save... So long as we are prepared to acknowledge and repent the fact.  

How does this fit with salvation? Well, in the Fourth Gospel ("John") the word "sin" is mostly used to mean "death" - that is, death without resurrection, death without salvation. 

Resurrection (i.e. eternal life, instead of death) depends on what we can call repentance, not on ceasing to sin. 

And repentance is necessary to salvation because resurrection requires that we are prepared to acknowledge sin as sin, and leave it behind us before we can proceed to eternal life in Heaven. After all, Heaven would not be Heaven if sin was still present - there can be no sin in Heaven; but we are all sinful, nearly all the time; therefore we must reject All sin before we can be resurrected into Heaven.

Repentance can therefore be thought of as the firm intent to leave-behind all sin (spectacular and unnoticed) when the choice and chance of resurrection comes to us (presumably, after death), and when all such sins shall be brought to our attention*. 

To "follow Jesus" means to repent all our sins. And it is those sins that are socially un-recognized, denied, or rewarded which are far less likely to be repented than the big and obvious sins on which nearly-everybody is agreed.   

*We cannot, of course, recognize all our individual sins during this mortal life - there are too many, and we lack sufficient discernment! But we can avoid falling into the damnation-trap of denying sin, especially when it is brought to our awareness. That way, when we come to the point of decision, we will not be held back from salvation by our habitual, ingrained and calculated unwillingness to let-go of 'the least of' our sins. For instance; someone who has spent forty years 'justifying' his own deliberate dishonesties in the workplace; may find it very difficult to acknowledge that dishonesty Must utterly and forever be repudiated in Heaven. 

Sin could usefully be defined as 'the condition of mortal life' - since that encompasses its two main aspects of wrong behaviour and death.

The Fall was therefore, primarily, moving into the condition of incarnated mortality - with its consequent inevitability of both death, and those behaviours that are a consequence of being imperfectly aligned with the divine will.

Reading the Fourth Gospel, we can see that the term 'sin' refers to a wider range of phenomena that more recent usage - in particular it is used sometimes to mean death; and by death is meant the ghostly, half-existence of demented souls that have been severed from their bodies, and wander 'witless' in the underworld that the ancients termed Sheol or Hades (later translated and reconceptualised as Hell).


The Fall refers to the choice and decision made by all of us mortal Men to leave the child-like, unfree, un-conscious Eden-paradise of our immortal pre-mortal spiritual life; where we were immersed-in God's will and lacking in personal agency - hence unable to act otherwise than in harmonious accordance with divine motivations.

When we became incarnated, we increased our free agency; but at the cost of becoming separated from God's will. Mortality (as a state) is characterised by change, corruption, disease and decay - as well as inevitable death.

Thus, no mortal Man (except for Jesus) has been fully aligned-with God's creation. We are all, therefore, 'sinners' in the dual sense of being not-fully-aligned with the divine will, and also destined to die.


However, The Fall is sometimes rightly described as a Felix Culpa - a blessed transgression; because it enables us to attain a higher level of divine nature.  

Only after being separated from our previous state of unconscious immersion God's will; are we are (potentially) able to make the free choice of aligning ourselves eternally with God's will; and after mortal death, as resurrected eternal children of God, then actively-participating in God's work of ongoing creation - as ourselves gods.

 (i.e. Small 'g' gods, working within God the creator's reality.),

(All this is made possible by our mortal incarnation, but we are free agents, so it is not guaranteed. Indeed, in the modern West, it looks like only a small minority are choosing to choose salvation and resurrection.)


At the same time, because we are not-fully-aligned with God's will in this mortal life, we will inevitably think, say and do many things that are opposed to God's will: that is, we will inevitably commit 'sins' in the more common usage of the word.

Those familiar lists of behavioural sins (e.g. the behaviours proscribed by the Ten Commandments, or the Seven Deadlys - or mortal and venial sins; or the Scriptural prohibitions from Paul's letters) can be understood as broad categories of behaviour that tend to be characteristic of those who are not-fully-aligned with God's will.

Behavioural sins (such as these lists) are therefore Not to be taken as 'sin-itself' - which is subjective; but observable 'signs' that are typically 'correlated-with' actual sin - sin itself being the mortal state of being unaligned with God's will.


The specific focus of these familiar 'behavioural correlates of sin' tends to be on those behaviours that are either especially tempting, or especially destructive of society in general or church order in particular. That is the reason why sexual correlates of sin are so prominent.

And this focus certainly seems to be necessary - in the sense that we can now observe the subversive effects of removing such restraints. The outcome has been moral inversion: i.e. the worst of all possible outcomes: the one most likely to lead to self-damnation.

However, on the flip side, there is a relative neglect and softness of attitudes to other types of more 'private' sin; such as envy, spite, cowardice, dishonesty and bearing false witness - which are in themselves probably more dangerous to the soul.


In sum; we are all Fallen in the sense that we will all die; and because our mortal lives are never fully-aligned-with God's creative motivations. And the inevitable difference between God's will and our own will leads to many thoughts, words and deeds ('sins') that are a consequence of this disharmony.

And the cure for sin - both mortality and behavioural disharmony - is on the other side of 'biological death'; when we may choose to be resurrected to Life Eternal in a condition of everlasting harmony with the divine work of loving-creation.

*
Christians call Jesus Christ "our saviour", or simply The Saviour - but it is not clear to secular modern people what we mean by this; indeed, I believe that the meaning (or emphasis) has changed over the centuries, because Christ did not save us from just one bad fate; but from many, many bad things - and different people at different times feel themselves in need of different savings: so that what I understand Christ as saving-me-from may not be your understanding.

*

At the time of his ministry and for many centuries, Christ was understood as saving us from death; and by 'death' people meant that the soul would usually endure in a (literally) nightmarish underworld (Sheol, Hades etc) where we would persist forever as demented, gibbering, desolate ghosts.

In effect, death meant death of 'the self' - death of consciousness and the will - but not an end to existence.

*

Christ was also saving us from sin; and it seems clear that through most of history Men felt this to be necessary: felt that we absolutely needed to be saved from our sins; and that if we were not saved from our sins, then we would be tormented by them forever. 

*

But modern Western Man does not feel himself in need of saving from death - because he regards death as extinction and therefore the end of suffering (not death as the doorway to endless suffering, as in the past).

And modern Man does not feel he needs to be saved from sin, because he regards 'sin' as an arbitrary cultural category - and Modern Man has redefined many sins as virtues, virtues as sins.

So in effect, Modern Man 'saves himself' from sin by promoting, enforcing, and believing, legislation and propaganda to abolish any sin he cannot stop or does not wish to stop; and making new sins from whatever threatens the continuation of this process.

*

But Modern Man still needs to be saved - he needs to be saved from meaninglessness, purposelessness, existential isolation, alienation, and nihilism (the sense that all truth, beauty and virtue are 'relative'; that values are 'subjective', that nothing is really-real).

Modern Man needs to be saved from the retrospective pall cast by the meaning-destroying pseudo-reality of death-as-extinction; and the nothingness of a world where profundity is repeatedly dissolved and remade, and where Man is become a mere conduit for ever-changing psychological manipulations.

*

Another thing Man always has needed saving-from is suffering; the suffering of this world.

And Christ saves us from this suffering in two ways, at two levels. In the first place he offers a significant, albeit partial, alleviation of suffering in this world - mainly by putting suffering into a perspective of eternal hope.

An analogy would be the suffering of childbirth. Childbirth can be agony: in a purely physical sense childbirth may be as painful as torture - but the suffering is put in the perspective of a parent participating in the birth of a child and this makes a very big difference. Indeed, the perspective utterly transforms the meaning of pain, and drastically reduces the suffering.

And secondly, the long-term effect of suffering is likewise transformed by Christ - because there is the prospect of complete healing from all the ill effects of suffering at the resurrection.

So all earthly sufferings are re-framed by Christ as temporary.

*

Christ is still our Saviour, as before; but now Christ is perhaps primarily (upfront) most-often our saviour from the void.

Christ is now, mostly, our saviour from the denied but pervasive existential terror that nothing really matters.

*

With salvation it is not a matter of either/ or; but a matter of all-this-and-more.

Because death, sin, suffering and alienation are all facets of the same evil fate - therefore Christ is The Saviour.

However, maybe when we state this great truth to non-Christians, we need to consider what they personally most need saving-from.

*

I have often commented on the deep problems with the double-negative theology in mainstream Christianity. 

It is double-negative because it regards the problem of this life as sin, and the work of Jesus Christ as purging us of this sin - of removing this sin from us. 

This mortal life is therefore conceptualized negatively, as dominated by sin; and Jesus's work is the negation of this negative - i.e. removing sin, so that we can be resurrected into Heaven: a double-negative. 

This concept regards Heaven as a perfection, and mortal Men as imperfect due to sin; so we cannot enter Heaven until we are ridded of sin - and that is what Jesus made possible. 

So, by one means or another (and this means differs between Christian denominations), before we get to Heaven we go through a process whereby sin is removed (purged) from us, and what is left-over is wholly-good, and therefore we are allowed to enter Heaven.

To enter Heaven is understood as a willingness to undergo this purgation, this 'amputation' of our sinful elements.   

I find many problems with this set of ideas - which boil down to this concept being an implicit an assertion of the idea that God (the Creator and our loving Father) has put us into a sinful world, ourselves being riddled with sin; and that to reach Heaven we must have this sin stripped out from us - implying that what is allowed into Heaven is an incomplete version of ourselves... 

(Indeed, perhaps, for very sin-full people, there will not be much of ourselves remaining, by the time we are suitable for Heaven.)

The purpose of this mortal life - according to such theology - is to reject sin: a negative purpose.  

I find this kind of behaviour - imputed to God - incompatible with him being a loving Father; who might have created things differently and better.

And I find the idea of this mortal life as a negative motivation (against sin, which sin is against-God) both inadequate and somewhat repugnant. It points at the via negativa - a life of rejection that amounts to life turned-against life.

Whereas I feel in my heart (and from the example of Jesus Christ, who was incarnate, active, positive), that this mortal life is - or ought to have - a positive purpose. We ought to be able to become better through our living (experiencing and learning), rather than merely 'avoiding becoming worse'.   

Instead, I see 'sin' as essentially meaning 'death' (which is clear from the Fourth Gospel) - and also the other forms of anti-creative innate corruption and decay that lead up to death (and which modern physics terms entropy). 

Sin in this sense, is the severing of our souls from our bodies at death - and it is this 'death' which Jesus overcame himself, and made possible for those who followed his path. 

Sin, more broadly, is a turning-away from what God desires from us. And a turning-away is not dealt with by purgation but by turning us in the right direction - permanently!

In other words, the main thing that Jesus did is to bring the possibility of eternal life; and this life as a resurrection of our real selves, and with a body - destined for a Heaven where all beings are turned in a direction in harmony with divine creation. 

All beings in Heaven have made an eternal commitment to God's creative goals. 

Rather than a purgation of all that is worst in our-selves; I see the work of Jesus in terms of an amplification of our-selves at their best. 

In this mortal life we find ourselves, intermittently and infrequently - turned in a Heavenly direction. So we know from experience what it is like to live in harmony with divine creation - to work with (rather than against) God.

(We also know what it is like to be turned-away from God and creation - what this feels like, where it leads; and we may learn something of how to overcome this turned-away state in ourselves) 

To prepare us for life in Heaven is therefore something like making it possible for us to stay permanently turned in the direction of Heaven and Creation, in permanent harmony with God's creative will. 

For this to happen, we each must choose whether to allow it to happen. 

Do we want the best in ourselves to become our whole self - or not? 

(This naturally entails leaving-behind those things that can only be achieved by going against God and creation - but the positive reason is that we desire wholly to be our best selves; and because we want to dwell eternally in a situation where we can whole-heartedly and actively work for such goals.)

It is a matter of what we want, and what we want most. 

By analogy; if this mortal life is a walk; then it is a walk when we spin around: sometimes walking with God, sometimes off on a tangent, sometimes pushing against the direction of God. 

Those who choose to follow Jesus Christ, are those who value most - indeed, at root, deeply-value only - those times when they are walking with God (times when they are motivated by love, and participating in the work of divine creation). 

Those who choose Heaven are those who want to do this walking-in harmony with God and sharing God's goals all the time - because they value love and creativity above all else; and indeed these are ultimately the only things of mortal life that they truly, everlastingly value. 

JRR Tolkien quoting - with agreement - Simone de Beauvoir:

[De Beauvoir]: "There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation." 

[JRR Tolkien]: Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord of the Rings.

On the one hand, death is universal and thus, apparently, natural; on the other hand, death is also experienced as profoundly un-natural, accidental, a violation. 

Traditional Christian theology has attempted to deal with this using the concept of Original Sin; but I find this unsatisfactory - both for having been (I would have thought obviously) inserted post-Jesus and therefore not genuinely Christian; and also because Original Sin theory fails to do what it claims, which is to explain the prevalence of evil among Men without implicating God. 

Instead; my understanding of death is that it is experienced as both natural and unnatural because of our situation in mortal incarnation - which I regard as (for Christians) situated between a potentially deathless pre-mortal spirit existence; and the post-mortal incarnated state of resurrection. 

This mortal life of ours is temporary, a phase not an end-state - but our basic expectations deriving from pre-mortal spirit life are that we 'ought to be' eternal and deathless. Furthermore, since the life and work of Jesus Christ, Christians have hope of an eternal and deathless state to follow this mortal life. 

Yet, the actuality of this mortal life and its inevitable termination - is unnatural. It is also not under our control; since other factors (primarily God, but also Men and other Beings and happening) influence how and when we die. 

We cannot, therefore, take death for granted. Death comes, and will be a time of transformation. It is a severing of soul from body, as the body dies - and (because we are incarnate Beings) the body's death changes us, removing part of our-selves - and what remains after death is naturally-speaking incomplete. 

In other words; the spirit after death - which has been variously conceptualized throughout history - is significantly like a different person, and (it has been believed) is often severely diminished in its coherence, identity, agency etc. 

I think we sense exactly this (mostly implicitly), when we consider death. It probably lies behind the yearnings for 'peace' after mortal-death, which are so often the wish of non-Christians (including many self-identified Christians who do not want the resurrection that Christ actually offered). 

...Anyone who felt sure that death will certainly annihilation would not be concerned to ask for peace; anyone who was confident that death was naturally a peaceful state would not feel compelled to pray for peace.  

There is a fear (clearly expressed by Hamlet in his famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy) that after our death we will experience a state of inescapable nightmare; and that this may be the 'default' condition - unless... something else happens, or we take some particular actions or make choices.  

Thus, from our perspective here-and-now in mortal life; death is indeed the threat of a violation that seems unjustifiable; unless made-sense-of by resurrection - or some other desired outcome. And that death seems to be non-optional makes matters worse. 

Original sin was and is an attempt to make sense of this, but since it does not work then we need something else - and the explanation ought to be a clear and graspable kind of truth (as indeed it surely would be, given the nature of our God).  

  

Ever since I began to consider the matter seriously; I have found the ways that sin and forgiveness are discussed to be incoherent. They just don't seem to add up, or hold together. 

What I think I was sensing, was a clash between the temporary and the eternal, the individual and the social -- resulting from changes in human consciousness and the concept of 'Christianity' since the time of Jesus. 

I think it likely that, when Christianity was developed as an institutional, then a state, religion; it became bound-up with the prescription and enforcement of good, pro-social, 'Christian behaviour' - and this became regarded as the pre-requisite to salvation. 

So we get the idea of 'sin' as transgression of laws, and 'forgiveness' as some mixture of punishments, penances, and wiping the slate clean of past transgressions. In practice, 'sin' was externally, socially, defined. 

Thus laws and other rules of conduct were societally developed, validated and imposed; the individual was the sinner (law-breaker); and some representative of society decided what ought to be done about it.

This pragmatic system relating to social behaviour (primarily) was then harnessed to the 'cosmic' aspects of Christianity; i.e. the fact of Jesus Christ having change created reality - made possible a new Heaven of eternal resurrected life etc. 

This was the - to me - peculiar picture from Christianity; of a reality made up of moral laws/ legal codes and the system for developing and enforcing them; which was strangely linked with a narrative of the history of everything. 

It seemed hard to grasp how - in creating - God had built-in objective morality of this social kind... I just couldn't picture how this might work. 

When I spent a year or so, reading and re-reading the Fourth Gospel ("John") - I gradually became aware of a very different way in which sin was being conceptualized. 

The IV Gospel (overall) saw sin as ultimately death; and milder sins as including sickness and others kinds of dysfunction, corruption (away from proper purpose and function), wrong attitudes towards God, expounding of false realities, and so forth. 

I gathered that Jesus's work in taking-away sin, was to take-away death; in other words to offer Men the possibility of resurrection into life everlasting. 

Miracles of healing were perhaps Jesus taking-away lesser 'sins' of disease and disability. 

'Forgiveness' is not mentioned as such in the Fourth Gospel; but in some parables and miracles, Jesus seems to be declaring something about a change of mind or heart, or a reorientation, on the part of the one who is healed - this (here-and-now) commitment to Jesus is the 'faith' that has made the miracle possible. 

But this is not necessarily an eternal transformation of behaviour. I don't think we are meant to assume that one who has had faith, and received a miracle, would 'never sin again' in the sense of never again breaking any of the Laws of morality. 

The transformation of those who encountered Jesus was not a permanent change of their behaviour; but a here-and-now change of heart, of desire, of attitude. 

It seems possible that Jesus was talking about repentance or forgiveness in terms of a person turning to Jesus as Saviour, as Good Shepherd - as recognizing that only by 'loving' and following Jesus can we have eternal resurrected life. 

This can only be guaranteed as a temporary state of affairs in this mortal life - because somebody might at first decide to follow Jesus, and then later change his mind. As a sheep might begin following the Shepherd to safety; but change his mind, stray, and fall off a precipice to his death (i.e. to choose damnation). 

Thus, concepts such as 'repentance' and more generally 'faith' may best be understood as referring to the here-and-now; to the current situation in mortal life. 

These concepts are also, at root, personal and not institutional - at least to us modern men. 

Personal and institutional were, indeed, de facto inseparable in earlier stages of Man's development of consciousness, including the time of Christ and the centuries that followed. 

It was only from the late medieval era that Western Men began mentally to distinguish the individual group his group, more and more fully, and then to experience as a fact of reality. 

So, my confusion about 'sin' (and the confusion of Christian teaching, from which my confusion derived) was - in part - a consequence of trying to combine concepts from different stages of Man's consciousness.  

My conclusion is that we have now arrived at a very different point from where Christianity arrived at after the ascension of Jesus and the rapid development of first the Church, and then the Christian State. We are, indeed, now returned to a situation much closer to that described in the Fourth Gospel, during the life of Jesus. 

'Faith' is now something-like a here-and-now determination to follow Jesus to eternal life; and 'sin' is... anything else, i.e. any other commitment or purpose than that of following Jesus to resurrection-specifically. 

'Repentance' (the word itself isn't used in the Fourth Gospel) is (perhaps) simply the renewed commitment to following Jesus; whereas 'apostasy' is, like Judas Iscariot, referring to one who once had faith, later changing his mind and deciding Not to believe or follow Jesus. 

(And then, of course, apostasy may be repented.) 

So 'sin' is ultimately choosing death - meaning not-resurrection; but choosing instead some other fate for our post-mortal soul.

Thus 'damnation' may entail something like loss of personhood, loss of agency, loss of consciousness... Or refusing to leave this mortal world, and remaining bound to the domination of entropy and death. Damnation may be many or several possibilities, because it is anything-but resurrection. 

And, from this, 'sin' is used more generally to refer to mortal life and its innate nature - this world, dominated by entropic change: corruption, disease, decay, degeneration... 

In other words: 'sin' is all of that from-which we are rescued by resurrection into eternal life. 

The usual understanding of Christians is that sin is moral transgression against God's law; and that this leads to the just punishment of being excluded-from Heaven and sent instead to Hell. 

But a close reading of the Fourth Gospel paints a very different picture of what Jesus taught about sin. 

In the Fourth Gospel - sin means death, primarily. 

Death here means to die physically, biologically, death of the body - and thereby to lose our-selves - without a living body we would cease to be our-selves. 

This seems to have referred to the condition of sheol - in which, after death of the body, each Man's soul was reduced to the state of a demented ghost who did not know his own identity.  

Jesus came to take away the sin of the world, for those who would follow him; and this meant that after biological death, instead of every-Man going to sheol, those who followed Jesus would be resurrected to eternal life.  

Thus Jesus came to change Man's previous universal destiny of death/ sheol - and this applied to those who chose to follow Jesus to resurrected life eternal. 

So, after Jesus made 'salvation'/ resurrection a possibility for all Men; then the meaning of sin began to include not only death; but any-thing that would prevent a Man from choosing to follow Jesus. 

That is how moral transgressions' work' in causing damnation. They are those moral choices that need to be recognized as preventing us from following Jesus to life everlasting in Heaven. They are moral choices that are incompatible with Heaven. 

Repentance is the recognition that these moral choices are incompatible with Heaven - and our willingness to discard these moral choices when we are resurrected. 

This is necessary, because for resurrection to eternal life to be possible, we must each voluntarily choose to discard that in our nature which is incompatible with Heavenly life among resurrected men. 

The reason is that Heaven is a state of full alignment with God's creative purposes; and Heaven is the situation in which Men work-with-God on divine creation. (This is becoming fully sons and daughters of God). 

Sins are what prevent us from having full alignment with God's creative purposes; and thereby intrinsically prevent us from being resurrected into Heaven. 

We need to be able to recognize sins as sins, and to repudiate them: to be prepared to discard them forever when we are resurrected. 

We must be able to discard these aspects of our-selves at resurrection - or else we physically-cannot be resurrected - and this choice of discarding  sin at resurrection is repentance in action. 

*

I have had great difficulty in finding an acceptable and effective metaphor to comprehend Christ's atoning sacrifice.

If YOU personally are satisfied with your current understanding of this matter, with what Christ did, why and how - then I would advise you NOT to read my essay; since it could only annoy you, or perhaps (much worse) confuse or damage your understanding.

This is for those who need to explore different ways of understanding what is without question the greatest fact of Man's existence.

***


The Copernican inversion in this explanation is that I try to understand the work of Christ in terms of what Christ needed to do in order to be able to save Man.

The fact of Christ's incarnation implies that it was necessary; the fact that the incarnation was necessary implies that without it Christ could not save Man.

In other words, prior to the incarnation there was something lacking in Christ's ability to save Man; and as a result of the incarnation Christ gained the ability to save Man.

(God the Father, it should be noted, could not in and of Himself, save Man. Without the incarnation man could not be saved.)

*

The incarnation increased the capacity of Christ. So the work of Christ can be understood in this sense - opposite from the usual approach - of what Jesus Christ needed to learn some vital capacity - or needed to experience something crucial - in order to be able to save Man.

*

Christ's incarnation and atonement can therefore be conceptualized as that being born, living, experiencing joy and temptation, suffering, dying, being resurrected and ascending to Heaven... some or all of this was necessary such that from that point (after those experiences) Christ could save us.
 
So what was crucial? What was the focus of the incarnation? To save us from sin and death. Revelation tells us it was his atoning sacrifice - his suffering of the sins and pains of Man - and his death.

So, it seems that Christ's ability to save us from death and sin depended upon Him personally experiencing and learning from His own suffering of the consequences of Man's sins; and suffering too the death of His mortal body.
  
*

By Christ's suffering of all possible sin and suffering including death, He became capable for saving us from them.

His gift was his own voluntary and chosen suffering needed in order that he might learn and become enabled to save us - this being done for us, from Love.

Christ did not - by this account - remove sin nor absorb it nor even counteract it; nor did he suffer on our behalf for reasons of justice; instead Christ suffered the sin and death of each and every Man, and so He knows us fully, and knowing us, therefore becomes able to forgive us - each one individually.

So to understand why only Christ can save us - we need to understand that God the Father could not save us; and that before His incarnation Christ could not save us - but that because of His divine experience of incarnation and death Jesus Christ is uniquely able to save us - and that all of this was done for Love.

So we are saved, we have been saved; but in order for this to be enacted requires that we accept what has been done as Good; and this is what it means that we must Love God (whose plan this was from the first) and acknowledge Christ as our Saviour; and this entails that we Love our fellow Men - because the plan was for all Men (not only for us as individuals).

*

The above is a "Copernican inversion" of the usual theology, because it is a 'God's eye view' and a 'Jesus Christ's eye view' (inverting the usual human-centred perspective), concerning what needed to be done to save Man from sin and death.

*

*

Two things.

1. Kept alive by the will of God. Essentially because we have something yet to do - repent, accept forgiveness, love, praise, serve...

2. Because we cling to life.

Possible because we have been equipped with free will, so we may defy God and refuse to die when we are called. For a while.

(This is, of course, a profound sin.)

*

So, part of the increase of human 'lifespan' we observe today in the West is due to reducing the contigent causes of premature death; but part is also due to the refusal to die when called, clinging to a-bit-more-life at any cost and at any price.

And we can, I think, observe that this artificially-extended lifespan is a Faustian bargain - a false hope, a trick, a depraved state.

*

Death is a terrible thing, due to original sin and the process of synergystic accumulation of sin which was set into play by the original sin.

Thus death was not part of the original plan (or hope) but is a terrible punishment.

Death is un-natural, in an ultimate sense, but must be accepted as just and inevitable in this world, because death is a consequence of what we are.

*

Yet death is now the way to eternal life - and the only way to eternal life.

We therefore must suffer the terrible and unnatural punishment; but on the other side of death we are promised an infinite gift.

Justice and mercy.

*

Death may be premature; but there is a proper time for death; which we know when it comes - except we blind ourselves.

Death cannot be defeated, nor can it be eluded; but death can be deferred.

However the price of refusing the call, when it comes, is immediately to fall into an appalling and increasing state of corruption, from which deteriorating state the likelihood of repentance dwindles and dwindles.


*

In the early Chapters of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus repeatedly tries to explain the nature of his 'mission' - what he brings - using a contrast between water on the one hand, and that which water becomes through following Jesus after death: spirit or some other. 

More exactly; Jesus uses "water" to mean this life, this temporary life in this mortal world - and contrasts it with what he offers - which is "not of this world". 

Indeed, throughout the Fourth Gospel, involving everybody from the disciples through to Pilate, we can see Jesus struggling (over and again) to make people understand that what he offers is not of this world; that he is not a would-be "king" who claims to offers a better life in this realm of "water" in which everything is temporary... 

Instead of that; Jesus describes the Kingdom of life-everlasting coming after death, and only after death: to reach it we must first die, and then be 'reborn', born-again - that is resurrected.  

In Chapter 1, John says that he himself baptizes with water - but Jesus's is a baptism of the spirit - which refers to the distinction between this and the next world, the spirit being from Heaven:

And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.

In Chapter 2, the contrast is given in the nature of the water-to-wine miracle of Cana; where water is perhaps understandable as this-worldly life, and "wine" may be taken to stand for the transformed life after death. 

In Chapter 3; Jesus talks to Nicodemus about being "born again" - which means first to die and then to be resurrected - i.e. a kind of rebirth, but into an everlasting condition: 

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Here we see "water" of this life, again contrasted with the "Spirit" of the next. And again that the Spirit must be preceded by the water. Man must first be born into this mortal world (of "water") if he wishes ultimately to enter the eternal kingdom of God. 

Jesus also introduces a further "analogy" for this mortal life as "the flesh" - to explain that there is no possibility of achieving the Kingdom of God on earth and in this mortal life; but only by passing-through death and re-birth ("Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God). 

A man that is born into this mortal world of the flesh can only be mortal ("the flesh is flesh"); but he that is re-born (i.e. resurrected) into the world of Spirit, beyond death, will himself partake of the immortality of that life-after-life ("the Spirit is spirit"). 

In sum; for a man to become eternal he must be born (that is, re-born; which entails mortally-dying first) in the eternal world.  

Chapter 4 describes Jesus at Jacob's well, talking with a Samaritan woman who is drawing water. 

Again Jesus contrasts the water of this mortal and temporary life which the woman draws from the well, with what He Himself brings to the world: which is everlasting water ("living" water - i.e. by analogy life that is eternally-self-renewing) - for those who desire it, and ask for it. 

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?

Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

In Chapter 5, Jesus goes to the pool at Bethesda, where the "impotent" seek to enter the water and be healed. The "impotent" implies all men in this mortal life and world. 

In this world, therefore temporarily. Jesus heals the man ("Take up thy bed, and walk") but Jesus explains that what he has come to do is not about temporary healing in this temporary world; but is about "sin" (by which, in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus mostly means death without resurrection).

Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more...

I think that Jesus's admonitions - here, and sometimes elsewhere - to sin no more, or not to sin, make no sense if understood as ordering people to cease from moral transgression - which Jesus knew (as we know) to be an impossibility in this mortal life. 

"Sin no more" - in the Fourth Gospel - means (more or less) that people should die no more; that is, that they should instead understand, believe, and accept Jesus's gift of eternal resurrected life. 

The instruction to sin no more is therefore roughly equivalent to Jesus urging people to accept the gift of resurrected life eternal, through believing and following Him.

"Sin no more" actually means therefore - as we might say it - "convert to Christianity". 

In Chapter 6 Jesus varies the symbol, somewhat: 

[The people said:] Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.... 

[Jesus replied:] Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. 

Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Again the contrast is between the only temporarily-satisfying "bread" of this world, and the eternally-satisfying bread from heaven after-which we will never hunger (and also the drink which permanently abolishes thirst, presumably "living water") - that shall be given - after death - to those who "come to" Jesus. 

Chapter 7: In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Here there is again implicit the earlier idea (from Jacob's well) the idea of ordinary water versus "living" water - to mean resurrected life everlasting. The man who thirsts is one who desires eternal life in the Kingdom of God. 

And the path to that life leads through death via "believing-on" Jesus - implying "belief" entails trusting and following the person of Jesus, at, and after, our death. 

Other similar passages can be cited, where contrast is drawn between, on the one hand, this-worldly and temporary ameliorations (such as Moses's provision of manna); and, on the other hand, the eternal and transformative life-beyond-life that Jesus brings and offers. 

It seems to me that there is a pattern through the Fourth Gospel of Jesus repeatedly denying that His business is to offer what we might term secular improvements - e.g psychological and sociopolitical benefits; and instead many attempts to explain (with various 'analogies', or symbols) that his message is not about this, but about the next, world. 

Now, of course, belief-in and desire-to-accept, Jesus's offer of eternal resurrected life in the Kingdom of God is almost certain to have effects on this mortal life... But any such effects on this-life are secondary to expectation of the-life-to-come. 

This is worth emphasizing, because I think many or most Christian get it the wrong way around - and thereby fall into the error Jesus strove so often to correct. They assume that Christianity is about doing particular stuff in this world in order to get to the next world. 

Indeed, some Christians put so much emphasis on the particular stuff that must be done in this world; that they hardly ever even think-about the next world. 

Some even ignore the primary promise of Heaven; and instead focus almost-exclusively on the quadruple-negative life purpose; of not-doing stuff that must be eschewed, in order to avoid-Hell!  

But Christianity is primarily about resurrected life after and beyond this mortal life; therefore, the effects of Christian belief on this mortal life are secondary to, contingent upon, the anticipated fact of resurrection in a mortal life.

Effects of Christian belief on this mortal life are thus a secondary consequence of the expectation of eternal life.

Any changed behaviours ought-to derive from the different perspective on this-life that results from belief in the life-to-come.  

***

Note: Then there is a long-running disputation about whether we can, or should, be confident about the life-to-come - i.e. "salvation". 

Many Christians have believed that salvation is difficult, complex, rare, only possible via a church and its requirements...

But that is not what comes across in the Fourth Gospel. In the Fourth Gospel; it seems that salvation is something like a decision and a commitment; and that those who have chosen salvation (by means of following Jesus) ought to be confident of salvation (so long as they continue to remain committed to it); and then... live their lives on the basis of this confident expectation. 

Over the past few years, since I spent a year or so multiply re-reading the Fourth Gospel ("of John") in isolation; I have often emphasized the covertly-deceptive way in which double-negative formulations have colonized and distorted our minds and motivations - both in Christianity and in mainstream modern secular 'leftism'.  

*
I think it likely that the concept of Original Sin derived from the philosophical insistence on the absolute/ infinite/ abstract 'Omni' definition of God - omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent -  which attempted to fuse Christianity with Greek-Roman Classical Philosophy. 

The Fall is described in Genesis in the Bible, but not the concept of Original Sin - this is a philosophical inference, a second-order interpretation.

Simply, Original Sin has it that since the Fall, all men are born in a state of sin - and it is this situation which Christ's Atonement was needed to remedy. 

*

I think that once God had been defined philosophically in terms of Omni properties, and also as having created everything (except Himself) from literally nothing (ex nihilo) then the most pressing question for these early intellectual Christians was to explain the function of Christ.

Because a God that could do anything would seem not to need to go through this elaborate, messy and contingent business of Himself being incarnated into mortal life, dying, being resurrected and ascending to Heaven.

I think that Original Sin was intended to explain the function of Christ in the context of a God that could do anything. The idea being that God made everything perfect, but Man exercised his God-given free will to sin in the Fall; and this wrecked creation permanently - requiring a further act of God in Christ's incarnation (with an 'equation' or contrasted equivalence made between Adam and Christ).

But, it has, over the centuries, proved difficult/ impossible to hold-the-line on Original Sin - because the idea of inborn sin implies we are tainted at source, all humans are fundamentally wicked (or else we would not have required a Saviour), and this negative evaluation tends to spread and contaminate everything that humans feel, think and do.

Indeed, belief-in (living-by) Original Sin tends to paralyse the will, because it puts us at odds with God, and it removes any level of self trust, or any confidence in our own evaluations - we cannot (it seems) even evaluate which is a real or valid church - we cannot even get started on our Christian life, because our essence is wrong.

The effect of Original Sin is almost like philosophical relativism - in the sense that in relativism the only core possible belief is that all truths are relative and all other truths are made uncertain; whereas with original sin the only core belief is that we are fundamentally sinners, and all other beliefs are made uncertain by that.

*

The Restored Gospel of Mormonism goes right back to first philosophical principles, and rejects the concept of God as primarily an abstract and philosophical 'omni' deity creating everything from nothing - and replaces it with the primary concept, from the Old Testament, of God as a primarily a person: primarily our Heavenly Father, and we as his children. This relational definition is made primary, and any philosophical definitions must fit within this primary 'metaphor'.

Because God is not Omni, and therefore works within the universe, then it is reasonable to assume that the work of Christ was necessary - it was the only (or best) way that God could achieve his purposes.

God could not just make everything as he wanted, by an instantaneous act of will; rather God must work within time and within the matter and laws of the universe, to help his children whom he loves.

*

So the Fall happened, and had a permanent effect on possibilities and arrangements - but there is no such thing as Original Sin and modern men and women are born as innocent as were Adam and Eve - but born into a different and corrupted world, and a world of birth and death.

On the other hand, the dawn of consciousness, the reality of birth and death and need to overcome the corruptions of the world offer vast possibilities for spiritual development which would have been impossible without the Fall.

Because our God is not an Omni-God who can do anything instantly, means that the universe sets constraints on action - things can only be done in some ways and not other ways. The Atonement of Christ can be seen as necessary, as the only way that God could achieve his hopes for Man.

The complex 'rigmarole' of having the maker and ruler of this world Christ born into this world as an incarnate Man, his life and teachings, his death by crucifixion, his resurrection and ascension - all these can be understood as a necessary mechanism for our spiritual progression towards godhood, as Sons and Daughters of God to become more like God, more like Jesus Christ.

*

My basic point is that the dark and often paralysing concept of Original Sin is only made necessary to explaining the work of Christ by the primacy of an abstract and philosophical Omni concept of God.

But when God is seen as our Father, then Original Sin is seen as firstly unnecessary, and secondly as tending to be pernicious - so it can be and is discarded.

The way is then open for a simple and non-paradoxical understanding of the human condition which has men and women as very mixed but fundamentally good (more-or-less prone to corruption - but not fundamentally and intrinsically sinful); and Christ's work as giving us salvation by (in some way) living the path to eternal resurrected life.

Therefore, without Original Sin, we have all already been-saved by Christ for eternal resurrected life in (some degree of) happiness; so long as we do not choose positively-to-reject that salvation.

For those who accept Christ's salvation; the emphasis of mortal Christian life moves onto exaltation, theosis, sanctification, the process of becoming more god-like - or divinization.

*

So, the contingent decision to assimilate the common sense, personal, and family based ancient Hebrew and Christian narrative into the pre-existing Greek/ Roman abstract philosophical understanding can be seen as having had a profound and lasting effect upon Christianity as originally demonstrated and taught by Christ and the Apostles.

The Mormon Restoration goes back to before this philosophical re-conceptualization and reveals what seems to be a simpler, clearer, more positive, optimistic and motivating understanding of the human condition and of Christ's work in transforming it: I believe it is a better way of understanding the difference that Christ made.

Having said that, it is of course perfectly possible to be a real and good and devout Christian with what I would regard as an inferior conceptual understanding of Christianity - indeed that is and always has been the usual situation; not least because most Christians most of the time pretty much ignore the metaphysics and philosophy of their Christianity - and in practice they fit their abstract understanding into their primary personal relationship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

Mormonism simply takes this 'plain man's' Christianity of loving relationships as its official theology - and there is no need for the doctrine of Original Sin, and little benefit from it (some benefits, but little), and considerable possibility of harm from it.

*

But it only makes sense to discard Original Sin if first you discard the Omni concept of God - otherwise you will end-up without any necessary function for Christ, and then Christ becomes an 'optional extra' as in Liberal Christianity - and then, with an optional Christ, the way is open to people, en masse, choosing actively to reject the salvation which comes only by Christ.

Which is the current situation. People who cannot accept Original Sin end up rejecting Christ - but usually unaware that there is a strong and coherent 'third way' that combines full recognition of Christ as our Saviour but without need for Original Sin: which is Mormonism.

*

I am fascinated by the descriptions of Tolkien's Numenoran Men; and how one of their gifts was to know when it was that they should die. This evoked one of the most beautiful passages Tolkien ever wrote:

Then going to the House of the Kings in the Silent Street, Aragorn laid him down on the long bed that had been prepared for him. There he said farewell to Eldarion, and gave into his hands the winged crown of Gondor and the sceptre of Arnor, and then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed. 

And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. "Lady Undómiel," said Aragorn, "the hour is indeed hard, yet it was made even in that day when we met under the white birches in the garden of Elrond where none now walk. And on the hill of Cerin Amroth when we forsook both the Shadow and the Twilight this doom we accepted. Take counsel with yourself, beloved, and ask whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and rail from my high seat unmanned and witless. Nay, lady, I am the last of the Númenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will, and give back the gift. Now, therefore, I will sleep. 

"I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men." 

"Nay, dear lord," she said, "that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear the hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." 

"So it seems," he said. "But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"

The Numenoreans had been gifted (by the Valar, the gods) with a lifespan several-fold greater than ordinary Men; and they were also immune to both illness and the degenerations of ageing. So they would (unless killed) remains healthy and vigorous until they became aware that their proper lifespan was ended; and at this recognition they - willingly, by choice - ought-to embrace death, as did Aragorn. 

If they rejected death, the Numenoerans could indeed live about a decade longer; but at the cost of rapid decline in physical health and the onset of what we would term dementia. But more significantly, by clinging to life, they had succumbed to spiritual corruption. And this corruption itself shortened their life span.  

It was when the Numenoreans, especially their Kings and Queens, began clinging to life; that the corruption of the race began to get a grip and to accelerate. Because this clinging represented their rejection of the divine will that Men (but not elves) should naturally die and their souls would then leave the circles of the world. 

I feel that there is a deep lesson in Numenor about life and death. Our life is of value, as a time of experience and learning, and for so long as this life continues it is ordained by God. Death is inevitable for men - however, the inevitability can be accepted or rebelled-against; can be embraced at the proper time, or delayed for a while. 

There will come a time when we know that Christians ought to surrender life willingly - and more with faith and hope onto the next stage. 

But - for this choice to be a real choice, it is possible to refuse to die now and move-on - and it is possible that death can be delayed. There is no guarantee of successful delaying of death, for those who choose that path - but the spiritual crux is whether we accept timely death, or whether we strive to delay it. 

We can either acknowledge that this mortal life has now fulfilled its divine purpose and that it is now best to undergo the transformations of death and resurrection... 

Or, we can refuse death, and remain alive for some while longer - but at the cost of physical and mental degeneration and spiritual corruption. 

In other words, we can - at death - align our-selves with God's purposes; or we can turn-away-from God's purposes and hold to our own.

 

When I talk of willing embrace of death at the right time, I mean more than a stoic acceptance of the inevitability of death; and more than the acceptance of death as the least-worst of alternatives - for someone worn-down by pain and weariness. In other words, the willing embrace of death means more than death as analgesia, sleep and rest. 

Death should go beyond mere passive acceptance to a voluntary and positive choice. When a Christian follows Jesus through death to resurrected life eternal; this is an active and conscious matter - which entails repentance (recognizing and discarding the sins that are incompatible with Heaven).   

The willing embrace of death was modelled by Jesus in the Gospel accounts; but it follows naturally from a desire for salvation - which can only come via death.  

It may be of vital importance to know the point at which the price of life becomes too great. 

A Man may find himself confronted with the possibility of 'clinging to life' at the cost of doing, saying or thinking some-thing that he knows to be a deep and damning sin. At such a point; a Christian needs to be able to recognize that this is the time to die. 

Such a situation may become more frequent in the world as it has become. In this totalitarian world of surveillance and control, ruled by powers of evil; more and more Men are in a position analogous to the slave of a wicked master. 

Ultimately a slave may be compelled to do his master's will, or else die: there may be no other alternatives.

Therefore, we need to be prepared to die, prepared willingly to accept death; when what we are being asked to do is would destroy our own capacity for repentance. 

Each Man will know when this point is reached (God will make sure of this) - although he may, of course, choose to pretend that he does not know. 

Obedience and death-delayed; or refusal and death-now... 

The devil delights in presenting such a choice when he feels confident of the outcome; and he must surely be confident that most modern Men would do or destroy literally anything when they believe it may delay their own death - as the 2020 birdemic made crystal clear. 

If that choice comes to us, and when the price of obedience is damnation; a Christian needs to acknowledge the fact, and the irreversibility of the decision. To refuse martyrdom may be to embrace damnation.

It is as well to be prepared. The cost of wrong choices we can see depicted in the History of Numenor.   

 As a young child, aged about five or six, I quite suddenly became afraid of death. That is, I became afraid of other peoples' death - I became afraid that someone I loved, among my family, relatives and close family friends - would die and be lost to me. 

At this point in my life I was not an atheist; but neither was I a Christian. I was, indeed, somewhat hostile to Christianity as it was taught me. And I was (as perhaps all Men are) a natural pagan; therefore I did not love the gods, and I assumed that the gods did not love me; but instead they wanted propitiation, worship, sacrifice. They did not want to be 'asked', but needed to be begged. 

Thus I prayed - whenever the thoughts of death came to mind - with desperate pleading and multiple repetitions. I prayed for the preservation of those I loved; that they would not be taken from me and lost from my life. 

Death seemed like the greatest disaster that could befall me - but at that point I could hardly comprehend my own death; so the worst I could imagine was to be left bereft, unprotected, in a world of strangers who were probably indifferent and uncaring at best; and some were spiteful, hostile, nasty. 

I realized, with perfect truth, that to live within the loving warmth of family was the greatest possible benefit the world had to offer; and that death threatened this happiness and security more - and more irreversibly - than anything else. 

In general; I think that these spontaneous and natural beliefs of early childhood are truths - truths implanted by God or known from our pre-mortal lives. Therefore, not only truths about this earthly mortal life; but eternal truths. 

...Yet, of course, truths as understood by the mind of a child. 

Therefore, our best goal as adults to to return to these spontaneous childhood beliefs, but this time consciously and by choice; and understanding what they really mean in an eternal context. 

I now understand my young-childhood fear of death to be representative of the real terribleness of death when (as naturally) understood as an end to mortal life with loss of the self - loss of what makes each person who they are. 

It is this legitimate fear that Jesus Christ came to save us from. A child could understand it - and indeed a young child is nowadays more likely to understand what Jesus offered than almost anyone else. 

A child's fear comes from the fact that he knows, deep down, that the death of our loved ones in mortal life can only be delayed - and that sooner or later everyone will die. It is indeed, the awareness of death that triggers this stage in childhood. 

Spontaneous human thought (among children, and those whose minds are child-like) cannot get further than this the fear of death and the desire to delay death. The child cannot see past the fact of death. Neither, apparently, could the ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament who regarded all Men's lives as terminated in Sheol, nor the Ancient Greeks who regarded all lives as terminated in Hades - both of which entailed loss of the self. 

The dead were not the people they had been in mortal life; and so there was no consolation in their persistence as 'ghosts'.   

Nonetheless, a Christian knows that he has been instructed Not to fear, that fear is a sin - and this prohibition on fear includes death. So for a Christian the fear of death is just the beginning of the matter - not its end. 

As an adult we can and should realize that the best (and only) possible gift to address this childhood fear of death would be that this mortal life would be followed by an immortal life in which were still our-selves, and could (potentially) live forever with those that we had loved in mortal life. 

In other words, The Answer to death is: that-Heaven promised by Jesus Christ - that Heaven (I would add) particularly as clarified by more recent, more detailed Mormon revelations concerning the nature of Heaven and the continued existence and importance of the family*. 

Unlike paganism; Heaven is not a spontaneous insight of childhood. Its necessity - as the only solution to the problem of death which answers to the desires of a loving young child - could perhaps consciously be derived from the conviction that the Christian God the creator is our loving parent (thus very far from the gods of paganism, and from the abstract deities of some philosophies and religions). 

But the Christian Heaven - that is, of resurrected Men living eternally as 'children of God' (ie. as ourselves creative gods) and in familial 'brotherhood' (i.e. in families and divine friends) and knowing the ascended Jesus... such a Heaven could not realistically be inferred by a child. The child would need to be told; and then he might - or might not - believe Heaven was true. 

I decided (as child of about six, a while later than the above-described stage) that the Heaven I was told-about was not true, but was made up from manipulative motives... 

I would still agree - that Heaven as it was told me (or, as I understood it) was Not true; and that the description had been contaminated by this-worldly motives related to making me behave in certain ways. 

Yet I erred in throwing-out the whole idea of Heaven; rather than (as I should have done) thinking more deeply about Heaven, aimed-at discerning how Heaven really was. 

I disbelieved in the Heaven that I was told-about - but I should have believed in Heaven as it really is; and I should have made it my life's task to comprehend that that real Heaven offers the only full and satisfying answer to the problem of death. 

My suggestion is that others should do the same. You should think upon the idea of Heaven, and how Heaven would need to be in order to answer the problem of death. 

Only when you have grasped what Heaven really would answer that problem, have you discovered what it is that Jesus is asking you to believe... Or, more exactly, what Jesus is offering to those who want Heaven.

And you will find that when the problem of death has been answered; then the fear of death - I mean that inescapable existential angst - is indeed cured. 

At least, such fear is cured whenever we have Faith and Hope based upon Love (or 'Charity'); and even when we don't experience the cure, we can know that restoration of that Faith, Hope and 'Charity' will drive-out our fear. 

*I regard mainstream Christianity as having lost sight of some of these key revelations about the nature of God, Heaven and the Family - which was why I believe that Joseph Smith and some of the other Mormon prophets were inspired to articulate these vital truths in a new, radical, and superior metaphysical theology. This appears in the work of early Mormons and some recent writers - along with other non-essentials and errors; therefore requiring, as always, discernment. But these truths having been articulated was of great value to me. Instead of having to work them all out, I was more easily able to recognize intuitively their truth, beauty and virtue; then (without too much effort) to organize them in my understanding.