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Commenting on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Coronation Sermon
Nobody has made a post about the coronation yet. There weren't any major culture war incidents. It went off without a hitch in other words. I'm reaching to find something to talk about. Here is my reaction to the sermon given by the archbishop of Canterbury during the ceremony. The sermon states the ceremonial role of the British monarch in plain terms and tries its best to skirt around the fact that the king has no power. He likens Charles III to Jesus. Here is the full sermon:
https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2023/05/06/archbishop-of-canterburys-coronation-sermon/
The archbishop likens Charles III to Jesus, not by elevating Charles to the level of a god, but by bringing down Jesus to the level of a man. Christians believe that Jesus was both a man and a God. The fact that he was and is an omnipotent deity is essential to Christian theology. But having the limitations of a man is what makes the telling of Jesus' life in the Gospels a compelling story. The archbishop's sermon depicts Jesus as a very talented preacher who relies on the power of persuasion to save souls. This aspect of the Gospel story most closely resembles Charles III's role as archon basileus of a parliamentary democracy. But unlike the British monarch, Jesus had real power to back up his preaching.
The sermon oversells what Charles III can accomplish with mere persuasion. It states with confidence that "showing unity" and "giving a good example" are sufficient to "bind us together", to "offer a society that is strong, joyful, etc." and to "bear heavy weights". By speaking of the ceremonial role of the British monarch as sufficient to accomplish the duties of kingship, the archbishop leaves no consideration for what happens if persuasion fails to produce the advertised results.
I was raised Christian but became an atheist a long time ago. When I think back on Christianity, there are certain concepts that that strike me as peculiar. One of these is the concept that a one's salvation may hinge on a chance encounter with another person whose intervention changes one's life for the better. It strikes me as chaotic, random and therefore unfair. My naïve understanding of Christianity when I was a Christian was influenced by growing up in an individualistic culture and a school system organized along individualistic lines. Every person was tested by God individually, I imagined. Sharing notes or copying answers from other test takers was not part of the test. I believed my choices in life would just determine whether or not my soul was saved. But the thought that my choices in life could be the determining factor in making somebody else a good person literally never occurred to me, and if it had, it would have greatly discomforted me. I would have perceived it as an added burden. Again, it would never have occurred to me that other people were sharing the burden of making me a good person. I would have perceived the sharing of responsibility only as an increased burden. I imagine that people raised in collectivist cultures perceive the sharing of burdens as generally resulting in a decreased burden. The concept of a mutually supporting community taking collective responsibility for the salvation of their souls is probably much closer to how people thought about Christianity in the past. It almost gives me warm fuzzy feelings, but I still find the chaotic, random nature of it discomforting.
Service and helping people is the unifying theme of the archbishop's sermon, but there is something lacking in his call to service. I like to help people. I like to be of service. I like giving people presents. I like teaching. I'm pretty good at it. But something I don't try to do is influence friends and family and coworkers to make them better people. I shrink from any situation where somebody is doing something immoral that I could intervene to correct. It's one thing teach somebody practical knowledge, and quite another to stage an intervention.
Christianity used to take the collectivist approach to saving souls. It wasn't enough to lead the horse to water. Responsible people had to dunk the horse's head and make it drink. The king was often the one doing the dunking. Since the time of the Glorious Revolution, the power of the state has grown enormously. But liberal democracies impose artificial limits on how they use their enormous power. Faced with equine dehydration, or any other societal problem, the solution must be more education, free counseling and state-sponsored therapy. It's fitting that the land of the NHS should refer to kingship as a service. The solution is always a service. Yet there remain certain classes of societal problems that are best solved—or that can only be solved—by issuing a command.
For what it's worth (not that I am trying to get you back in the fold or anything), that is not really true as far as I know. The way I was always taught is that God deals with people with their circumstances taken into account. So if you consciously reject Jesus, you will likely be judged unrighteous after death (though in the end only God knows, at best we can just speculate). But if you just wind up never having heard of him during your life, that isn't going to factor in. Instead you would be judged based on how much you tried to do right insofar as you were taught it, and what your conscience nudged you to do.
Obviously Christianity has many different schools of though, so there are probably Christians who really do believe that if someone in an isolated Amazon tribe dies without ever having heard of Jesus, they're going straight to hell. But it definitely isn't what I was taught, at least.
Actually, the belief that they're damned is a pretty normal belief, I'm pretty sure.
Among the Roman Catholics, there's the teaching of Extra eccleasiam nulla salus—outside the church there is no salvation, although I'm not sure what Vatican II did to things. The council of Florence has a statement saying that neither pagans nor Jews nor heretics nor schismatics will be saved. Eastern Orthodoxy I think has at times expressed similar thoughts, although I know that universalism is also kind of popular among them, at least in the present day.
Protestants are more varied, I think, but I think with the emphasis on sola fide, there should be the same belief.
Christianity really is an exclusive religion. As Christ says, "I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father, except through me." John 3:16 is perhaps the most famous verse in the bible: "For God loved the world thus: he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life." Paul writes, "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe."
If you're wondering, how is this just, well it's not as if Christians think they don't deserve hell. Their own salvation is an enormous gift, and it isn't as if it's owed to everyone else that they come to believe in Christ.
Edit: It looks like I understated the effect of Vatican II, Vatican II seems to have reinterpreted the things I was saying so as that they're probably not representative of current Catholic teaching.
The catholic dogma was interpreted this way at the time of the Council of Florence (see also Dante), but it stopped to be long before Vatican II. For example:
John Carroll, first bishop of the US.
For the protestant, I don't get it. I was taught that they believe in fate, so that your salvation was decided by God before your birth and your actions don't matter, but I'm no expert.
In my experience only some Protestants believe that (notably Calvinists). Though, I also like the explanation I've read from Catholics. God exists outside of time, so he sees all of your life in one instant, like a single endless now. Therefore he knows what will happen, but you have free will nonetheless.
I realize that not everyone will jive with that explanation, but I personally rather like that one.
Right, I think that might end up being isomorphic to the Molinist interpretation, depending on how things fit into that. You still have to account for how any of that relates to God. Is it all dependent upon God's will in some way? Is any aspect of it independent? God being eternal doesn't make all the problems go away, since I would image there would still be some doctrine of providence.
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I'm pretty sure Luther did not believe in free will, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Bondage_of_the_Will
It seems to me that for the catholics God knows (before your birth) if you will be saved, while for the protestants (at least those who don't believe in free will), God decides it.
Actually, that depends on the Catholic in question. The two predominant ideas on predestination are the Molinistic and the Thomistic views, I believe. Thomas Aquinas would see God as predestining, while Molina sort of would. (Predestinating which choices are instantiated, but not the output of the choices themselves, if I understand it correctly.)
Dominicans vs. Jesuits.
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