Still Running Off at the Keyboard

CARDINAL RATZINGER'S THEOLOGY AND JACOB BOEHME

On account of the disobedience of our first parents, we all share in their sin and punishment, as we should have shared in their happiness if they had remained faithful.

It is not unjust to punish us for the sin of our first parents, because their punishment consisted in being deprived of a free gift of God; that is, of the gift of original justice to which they had no strict right and which they wilfully forfeited by their act of disobedience.

The loss of the gift of original justice left our first parents and us in mortal sin because it deprived them of the Grace of God, and to be without this gift of Grace which they should have had was to be in mortal sin. As all their children are deprived of the same gift, they, too, come into the world in a state of mortal sin.

[Those are the answers to questions 256, 257, and 258 in the Baltimore Catechism.]

In March 2004 one segment of a multi-part article by James Larson run in consecutive issues of "Christian Order" addressed the teaching of Cardinal Ratzinger on original sin, and the departure of this teaching from the traditional understanding of the Church.

Larson delves into the theological contradictions expressed in Ratzinger's book IN THE BEGINNING...A CATHOLIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE STORY OF CREATION AND THE FALL, one of which is the subtle changes to the doctrine of original sin which begins with a change in the definition of the human being.

I had a hard time getting past this first concept in order to go on to dealing with further ideas.

Larson, quoting Ratzinger:

In the story that we are considering [Ch. 3 of Genesis], still a further characteristic of sin is described. Sin is not spoken of in general as an abstract possibility but as a deed, as the sin of a particular person, Adam, who stands at the origin of humankind and with whom the history of sin begins. The account tells us that sin begets sin, and that therefore all the sins of history are interlinked. Theology refers to this state of affairs by the certainly misleading and imprecise term ‘original sin’. What does this mean? Nothing seems to us today to be stranger or, indeed, more absurd than to insist upon original sin, since, according to our way of thinking, guilt can only be something very personal, and since God does not run a concentration camp, in which one’s relatives are imprisoned because he is a liberating God of love, who calls each one by name. What does original sin mean, then, when we interpret it correctly?

Finding an answer to this requires nothing less than trying to understand the human person better. It must once again be stressed that no human being is closed in upon himself or herself and that no one can live of or for himself or herself alone. We receive our life not only at the moment of birth but every day from without – from others who are not ourselves but who nonetheless somehow pertain to us. Human beings have their selves not only in themselves but also outside of themselves: they live in those whom they love and in those who love them and to whom they are ‘present.’ Human beings are relational, and they possess their lives – themselves – only by way of relationship. [emphasis mine]

Larson follows up that passage with:

First of all, I would suggest that we might search 2,000 years of history and never find another statement so clearly and profoundly heretical made by a member of the Church in as high a position as that occupied by Cardinal Ratzinger.

Now the man making that statement about original sin has risen to the highest office.

I don't believe even a Pope can redefine original sin away from the Tradition of the Church, and original sin is a long-standing Tradition.

How did we come to the point of bewilderment over the theology of our pope? It would seem that the answer lies in Jacob Boehme.

James Webb mentions him several times as the source of occult doctrines in THE OCCULT UNDERGROUND. He was a German shoemaker and a philosopher. According to Webb:

[Eliphas] Levi had read widely in Traditional literature ever since leaving school--Boehme, Swedenborg, Saint-Martin and, in particular, Knorr von Rosenreuth's Kabbala Denudata. He was familiar with the works of Mickiewicz and he thought Towianski "an enthusiast of great magnetic power." (p. 263)

Levi, as anyone who has studied the occult knows, was a forerunner of Aleister Crowley. Swedenborg was a channeler. Saint-Martin was the founder of the Martinist Order, a form of gnostic Christianity clearly condemned by the Catholic Church. Mickiewicz exerted particular influence on John Paul II, and Towianski influenced Mickiewicz. With these historical figures we are deep into occultism.

Jacob Boehme was a major influence on Hegel. How much has Hegel influenced Catholic theology?

The history of Neoplatonism is given in short and conceise terms in an article at the Wisdom World website titled "Ancient Landmarks". The article first appeared in "Theosophy", Vol. 28, No. 2, December, 1939. From the article:

Jacob Boehme, the mystic-philosopher of the early seventeenth century, faithfully reflected the archaic wisdom in his writings. Boehme was a fountain of inspiration to later German schools of philosophy.

The article puts Martinism in the Hegel camp:

Although Schelling and Hegel drew copiously upon Jacob Boehme's Mysterium Magnum for their inspiration, the truly occult theories of this great mystic are most faithfully mirrored in the works of the "unknown" philosopher of the eighteenth century, Louis Claude de St. Martin.

A website which provides information on the Martinist Order offers the following:

The decision for independence came in September 1975, during the "Martinist Days", the annual gathering of the members of the Order in the Netherlands. A new Constitution was adopted and subsequently, the "Ordre Martiniste des Pays-Bas" was founded on September 12th of the same year, by the transmission of the powers of the National Representative of the French Martinist Order to the newly created Supreme Council of the Netherlands.

This body was formed by the Officers of "Jacob Boehme" which name was changed into "Suprême Conseil de l'Ordre Martiniste des Pays-Bas, No 1, collège d'Amsterdam". The former Group "Jacob Boehme", becoming "Jakob Boehme Nr. 2, college van Amsterdam" according to the first Charter issued by the new Supreme Council.

Jon Mills, Ph.D., in a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Association for the Philosophy of the Unconscious, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Meeting, Dec. 28, 1998, outlines the influence of Boehme on Hegel. He writes:

Hegel himself did not originate the notion of the unconscious abyss. Rather he took it over in large measure from Boehme, neo-Platonism, and Schelling. The concept of the abyss (Ungrund) derives from Boehme's theosophic Christianity.

And:

As a forerunner of the German Romantic movement, Boehme was an inspiration to poets and intellectuals and was also praised by philosophers such as Baader, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Hegel--leading Hegel to further credit Boehme as "the first German philosopher."(23) Through Boehme, German philosophy had come into its own.