O Felix Culpa

Last updated on: December 6, 2011 at 12:00 am by Henry Karlson

O Felix Culpa 2011-12-06T00:00:20-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Oh happy fault! Because of sin, the world has been raised up to a higher status than it had at its origin. O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem! O happy fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer! To see sin, evil, as the source of something great, of something good, seems paradoxical if not self-contradictory. And yet, because of sin, we have the incarnation coming to the world to save it. Because of sin, God has acted and brought about a new creation, one which was greater than the first. If sin is so bad, how can it produce something so great? One answer could be that things would be even better, even more exceptional, if there had been no sin – we do not know, we only know what has come about after sin. “To know what would have happened, child? […] No. Nobody is ever told that. […] But anyone can find out what will happen.”[1]

We know we have sinned, and, thanks to revelation, we know what will happen. God draws us to him and raises us so that we are better, greater, after our encounter with him than before. Our sin leads us away from the original intention of creation, but God is able to make something good – indeed, something great, out of what we have handed over to him. And why not? “But there is no reason why human nature should not have been raised to something greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written (Romans 5:20): ‘Where sin abounded, grace did more abound.’”[2]

Tolkien in The Silmarillion expresses how God (Ilúvatar ) brings everything together in the context of a musical choir, where evil (done by Melkor/Satan) is a kind of discord which God is able to employ and use for his greater musical composition, because all that evil has, all that discord has, is something which it takes from God:[3]

Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.[4]

This has a practical application in our own lives. We are born into the world contaminated by sin. We live in a world full of suffering due to the effects of sin. We are expected to do something about sin in our own lives, and also, to deal with the suffering of others. We are expected to become compassionate, loving persons helping others. In doing so, we grow, we become something greater than we were before our actions. Suffering, sin, has allowed us to develop all kinds of virtues which we would not have been able to possess if the challenges presented by evil were not there before us. This is not to say evil is good, but it shows how even we are able to make something good, indeed, something great, out of the evil which lies around us. We would have become different persons if such challenges were not there. We might not know what we could have become, but we can see and are encouraged to become all that we can be now that we have to deal with the problem of evil.

Philip K. Dick, in trying to understand himself and his own life, turned often to the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. In looking at it, he is brought to this paradox:

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, ‘The virtues instilled by suffering could be achieved another way.’ How does it know that – that they could be achieved another way; here the error lies. These virtues are essential, and there is no other way. A certain esthetically-graphically beautiful heroism is inevitably generated – to all humans – all. All be(come as) Christ, none less than Jesus. All men – creatures – suffer as he, hence, are equal to him. And therefore are him, dramatically. As in a sacred ritual drama, therefore us all.[5]

While PKD has previously said that Christ’s death was accomplished so that we do not have to share his fate, that is, so that the law behind suffering does not have to deface us, he also understands as a complementary truth, that we do all suffer, and so in a way we are tied to the life of Christ. We suffer, though Christ in his own work overcame suffering. Eschatologically, Christ has made it so the law of suffering of ends, and he is indeed the end point. But he also has made it that our lives connect to his, and so we can and do suffer, and when we do, we find this is a way in which Christ is brought into our lives. For it is when we enter such suffering, Christ comes and brings us his transcendent grace, effectively moving us beyond such suffering even as we encounter it.

But is it not blasphemous to say we are all equal to him? Only if we see him in his human equality to us without recognizing the divine hypostasis within him. If we see him in his humanity but ignore his divinity, we have lost him. We must remember his personality is divine, being one of the persons of the Trinity. But once we remember his divinity, we can remember his humanity is our humanity, that it is consubstantial with us; we can accept his human equality with us – it is because his humanity is one with our humanity that the divine hypostasis can act in the drama of salvation and render creation back to God. His humanity is our humanity, so that what happens to humanity happens to him, and what happens to him, affects the whole of humanity. His death and resurrection is the dramatic presentation of the human dilemma and how it is overcome; we must join him and enter into him in order to overcome the human dilemma in ourselves. And in doing so, we produce something of beauty, something greater than even ourselves:

All artists know they can’t avoid suffering, and out of it they forge their defiance; artist or not, they will duffer. Art is the ultimate defiance of fate. The heroic act deliberately done.

I saw this in the rat I had to kill: innocence and heroism and terrible beauty – nobility – in a mere rat. Oh God. There is nothing we know that the creature’s don’t know; they are our equals.[6]

It is not just our work which produces great beauty. All who have been given life and free will are able to show themselves as virtuous. God has become one of us, and so has become our equal. But we find ourselves united to the whole of creation. All that has life shares that life with us, and is our equal in relation to such life. God has become one of us and our equal, but we are equals to the rat. God saves the rat and shows himself one with the rat in and through our humanity. The rat, then, is capable of indicating its noble adherence to God through heroic virtue. The virtues are not just human, even if it is through humanity God has raised up the whole of creation. A rat can be our equal. Creation united in Christ follows Christ. We don’t have to suffer. But if we do, we can find a place for it and use it to connect us to Christ. The Logos dramatically entered creation, and everything else, including our lives, presents to us the dramatic outcome of the incarnation.

[1] C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (New York: Collier Books, 1978), 137.

[2] St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948), III-I.3.

[3] This musical work is seen, also, as the foundation of world history, including all the tragedies therein.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), 17.

[5] Philip K. Dick, Exegesis. ed. Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2011), 495.

[6] Ibid., 496.

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