Recently I've thought a lot about sin. I've thought that sin is to be completely avoided, and that to do terrible things is undoubtedly worth nothing but every last attempt at denial. However the more I've come to think of the future and it's knocking on my door I've thought that perhaps there are instances where sin is not only permissible but preferable.
Firstly, we must understand the predicament of Boethius. In his Consolation of Philosophy, we see his struggle to reconcile God's foreknowledge and all-encompassing wisdom with humanity's free will. For if God knows all, wouldn't that knowledge require the necessity of actions predetermined on behalf of humans? If humans lived in a predetermined state yet deny this foreknowledge, are we not then merely puppets playing piano keys who think we've written our own song?
Wouldn't those sentenced to death, and those rewarded for virtue, have no say in their destiny--and be sentenced to their fate before their birth? Would not virtue and wickedness themselves not create a confusing spectrum of unreachable goals? Most of all for Boethius is the concern that in a determined world, one cannot truly love God, for hoping for a better future is useless--what will come is what is destined beyond any human control--and even then, you are destined to pray at the moment you do, so you aren't genuinely asking for anything from your God.
His consoler--and embodiment of philosophy itself, his rational capability (it really was interesting to think that he wrote both his own part and his counterparts', for this indicates we too can have a dialogue with ourselves), called Lady Philosophy--then assures that the type of foreknowledge God embodies is not one that bounds necessity to the human world. She does this by separating Providence from Fate. Providence is the knowledge that God is.
We can look to John 1:1, "In the beginning was the word, God was the word, and God was with the word." Word translates as logos. Logos is the root of logic, dialogue. If there is one thing all Hellenistic philosophers agree (except for the skeptics, though we shall forget their impossibility for the time being) on, it is that the most human thing one can do is use their capacity for rationality and clear-headed thinking.
Chinese philosophers follow a similar line, as Lao Tzu advocates we mediate between yin and yang through a conscious rearrangement to find the way and Xunzi can sum a Confucian doctrine about learning into a simple phrase, "to stop [learning] is to become a beast."
Anyways, God is this knowledge, God is with this knowledge--God is providence. Wisdom itself is encapsulated within, and we only get an intimation of this truth--through what you call our conscience (for who can lie to themselves? this is to be made 'in the image' of God).
Providence is still, unmoved, living for itself. Fate spins around it, searching for the center.
Fate, then, is separate and deals with the physical reality we live in with which we are presented potential paths of action--and where we actuate only one of those potential actions. Fate is what happens, Providence is the moral code behind the curtains.
Let's relate it to Monopoly.
In Monopoly, there is an unspoken but well-known set of rules: buy all the property, form strategic allegiances, hope you don't land on expensive territory, etc. We can call this providence, for it is the truth and wisdom that helps win the game, and everyone hopes to act in this--and most of the time they do, for it is easy to do these things if the dice permit you to. Fate is when we actually do them. Say you land on a vacant property, and choose not to buy.
Providence has the knowledge that it is best to buy the property, yet it knows that if one thing is best there must be something it is better than. Therefore providence exists not just because it knows that to buy a house is best, but because to not buy one is worse. Because it exists as knowledge, and knowledge is applied in action, you either embody the knowledge and buy property or in this case, betray it and don't.
Yet, Providence is there in your decision. Remember, to be logos and be with logos is to encapsulate the wisdom within the actions humans strive toward or move away from in action. This is why Providence is still, and all moves around it. For nobody has a perfect monopoly game, and nobody lives a perfect life. We are presented with free choices, and we are given that which lets us win the game by our own accord: choice itself.
Fate being separate from Providence, then, is Lady Philosophy's answer. For then humans can choose to love God authentically, and then they will. Then they can choose to aim towards virtue (or not), and when they achieve it, it truly will be theirs (or they truly will have dug themselves a deeper hole). Humans, then, are merely reading sheet music, with the choice to stand up and walk away from the piano--yet still playing a beautiful melody. However, they are no longer puppets.
Within life, then, we can accept truths, things like preferring compassion over hatred and truth over deceit. We can work in the name of these provincial aims as they serve as our God (it's funny how modern people shirk away from the word "God" as if having eaten a sour lemon, for don't you all know you worship something?
Be it truth, be it compassion, be it the image of your best self, you value something more than something else--yet in saying one isn't religious all you've done is prove you understand Christianity as much as the fundamentalists, who've buried their heads in the sand and screamed into a dark pit).
However now we can really ask the question, is there a time where we will need to break from these truths? Where must we lie and kill? We know all too well that if one is presented the opportunity to save a group of people, yet it comes at the cost of killing a school shooter (let's say you're a police officer with such a chance), would this not be a scenario? This would contribute, say, to the intricacy of Providence. For there is a distinction between manslaughter and murder.
I mean scenarios where there is no upside. Let me introduce Aristotle. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle clearly defines virtue as "a deliberately choosing state, which is in the medial condition in relation to us, one defined by a reason and the one by which a practically-wise person would define it. Also, it is a
However, upon closer thought, I again heard future itself ringing my bell. For are there not times where one must be cowardly? And likewise, are there not times where one must be courageous? Even in killing a school shooter, one must be more courageous than they've most likely ever been! Yet is it not virtuous?
Of course, it is (though God forbid they must die, better for them to be rehabilitated and bettered through the work of compassionate and patiently loving people, showing them the goodness they can work to actuate in their own life) virtuous! So what does Aristotle mean by claiming virtue is a medial condition?
He elaborates further that "extremes lay claim to the middle." Think about it, within your life you are presented with opportunities to be courageous and cowardly, two polar opposites--yet there will be times where those situations are correct.
Do you want to talk back to an angry police officer when you did nothing wrong? Perhaps it is best to be cowardly, complacent, and silent in such a situation. Yet if you are the police officer and you find yourself in the aforementioned school shooter scenario, is taking the shot not also the best thing to do?
We can admit, then, that Providence must entail a foreknowledge that we will not always have control of the situation we find ourselves in--and that virtue doesn't come by finding the immediately medial condition between two extremes, two vices without application to an environment (for cowardice on it's own is not virtuous, neither is being overly courageous). Instead, use of rational judgment (again, the highest value of the Hellenistic philosophers--logos, God himself to the Christians) finds the extreme that is appropriate for a given, individual moment, which contributes to one person's nature as an extreme component. Yet over time, the appropriate amalgam of cowardly and overly courageous actions creates an average--the medial--which is only found through virtue. If virtue, then, must be used to find the appropriate extreme to embody within an individual moment, and if doing so over a long period of time creates an average between the two extremes that is a medial condition, is it not necessary to occasionally act in sinful manners if the underlying environment calls for it?For the underlying message here is that characteristics themselves are mere potential, void of virtue and prone more towards vice--cowardliness and being overly courageousness--and only become real upon voluntary action (a Stoic tenant--thank you Seneca).
Therefore, virtue is the prerequisite to finding appropriate times to embody an extreme, which over time yields ourselves as embodied averages between two vices--virtue finds itself.
Well then! It seems we must sin from time to time! This train of thought is now satisfied, yet my brain is opening a new can of worms--it'll serve as a conclusion. Shadow integration was a big part of Carl Jung's psychiatric advocacy. For I think he knew better than most what Aristotle implied with "extremes lay claim to the middle."
Jung once noted that he'd rather be "whole" than "good." He characterized the shadow as a permanent, evil connection with Satan that binds humans to hell as much as we'd like to think we belong in heaven. All our evil, our malice, our vengeance, our hatred, every despicable voluntary element emerges from the shadow.
Yet we know extremes are the path to the middle, and rationale is necessary to decide which extreme to embody from moment to moment--only then will we find ourselves virtuous later on. Shadow intergration is necessary then, for it entails the extremes we think we'd do better without. Accept your monsterous elements, they provide half of the road to virtue. Yet you cannot get there on half a road alone. Who can stand to only be a coward?
So I tell you, sin. Sin properly so that you may be forgiven and gifted virtue. Do not look to do so, merely be perpared. For your situation only allows one of your hands to control it--so look out for randomness's calling. Look out, and sin.
