Which Came First? Redemption or Sin?

We humans love a sequence of events. It rains and the flowers grow. You cheated on me so I’m breaking up with you. Discerning cause and effect is both satisfying and necessary to our sanity. Great historical events have causes; we will argue about the cause of just about anything, but we always need a cause. World War II was caused by World War I; the recession of 2008 was caused by speculation in real estate.  But what about the Incarnation of Our Lord? What is the sequence of events for this?

When Jesus told the parable of the wicked tenants (or the absentee landlord), was he delineating a cause and event scenario as a metaphor of his own Incarnation and eventual death? I will begin by arguing in favor of this conclusion and end by arguing against it.

In the parable, a landlord goes away to a foreign land for a long time. He sends a series of agents to collect his share of the produce but each representative is either beaten or killed. In frustration and as a last resort, the landlord sends his own son to collect, thinking that surely the tenants will obey him and do the right thing, but his son, too, is put to death.

If we use this parable as a proxy for Christ’s Incarnation, we conclude that humankind were continually and stubbornly in error, and God, after his prophets failed to reform us, determined to send his son to finally straighten humanity out. Despite fire, flood, covenant, laws, prosperity, prophets and exile, human beings continued in error. The Incarnation was God’s last ditch effort to save his sinful creatures. This view ties neatly into our catechism teaching that Christ died for our sins and redeemed all mankind forever. The theory of cause and effect is served. We can feel more or less responsible, more or less grateful as our inclinations lie.

The problem with this interpretation of our history is that God does not follow a linear timeline. Human beings who wrote the Bible and who teach religion class do, but not God. An all-knowing God would just be kidding himself if he did. He would have to pretend not to see everything always. God sees all time at once. Humans use time to organize experience but God does not require this tool. God is outside of time and beyond it.

God’s decision, therefore, to send his Son to earth was not made under duress. It was the result of neither frustration with us nor desperation for our salvation. God did not look at humanity in 4 AD and say “I’ve tried everything else I might as well try this. You’re up, Son” The Incarnation was not God’s response to man’s sinfulness but his plan for sharing eternal life. It was not an act of frustration. It was an act of love.

I acknowledge that the sequence of events leading up to the Incarnation as recited in all the Eucharistic Prayers implies the popularly held imperatives of sinful mankind bringing about the need for Redemption. This is a traditional retelling of our history, but I believe we need to look deeper into how we know God.

The Incarnation was always going to happen. It was in the plan from the first moment of creation. No amount of sinfulness, no amount of goodness, no amount of repentance could have delayed or hurried it by one day. The God described in Psalm 139 whose

                               “…eyes beheld my unformed substance.
                                In your book were written all the
                                days that were formed for me
                                When none of them as yet existed.”               

always knew our need for redemption.

Our all-knowing God who forgives our sins before they’re committed, who hears our prayers before they’re uttered, needs no cues from us to send his Son to earth. God was not punting when he sent Jesus. God was acting according to his original will. Because people needed to believe that he was the Son of God, Jesus posits a sequence of events in this parable. People needed to identify him with the son in the story. But this narrative device should not blind us to the greater truth.

The nagging question here is that, if God always knew we would need Redemption, did he then create us to be sinful? Religion teachers are outraged when students ask this (trust me, I know). God certainly created us as we are. He created grass to grow and then to die. He created stars to shine and then to fade. He created us with our will, with our desires, with our freedom. An all-knowing God could not have fooled himself into thinking we would never be seduced by these things. But God knew he would win us back. He had an ace up his sleeve in the person of Jesus.

That’s why I believe that our Redemption was always assured. God did not create us to lose us. God was no gambler. His love, which will prove irresistible to every one of us in the end, could not allow us to dangle on the edge of any amount of sin. Our story has only one way to end.  

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from

T.S. Eliot Little Gidding