Short Summary of Theory

Blessed Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe! Giving our heart, our tree of life, into her protection, into the protection of our rib, our dear and powerful mother, we have complete confidence that she will keep our tree strong, and so we will have life; she will help us obey and trust her Son, and in so doing we will have life and have it abundantly. Rivers of living water will flow from our heart, and we will bear fruit twelve months of the year. She is the follower of Christ par excellence and the sure way to her Son.

A friend of mine regularly visits another blog; yesterday (was it only yesterday?), he alerted me to the fact that a discussion on that blog was addressing the question of whether or not the Fall had anything to do with sex. I had never been to that blog, but he told people about this site. Some of them commented about what I was saying on that site, so I responded over there. Today’s entry will be what I wrote over there; if you want to see the discussion going on there, go here. It is a rather long discussion, and the material relating to this blog begins toward the bottom.

Here is what I posted there tonight:
Fr. John Wauck wrote, "...Pullman is wrong to describe the Church as spending the last 2,000 years advocating a theological position that hasn’t even existed for 2,000 years, that flies in the face of the scriptural text, and that the Church not only never officially taught but also had to combat and condemn on a number of occasions?" From what I understand, Pullman is saying that Christianity has been saying since its inception that sex is bad; the Church surely condemns such a position. I am not sure if Father's comment was meant as a response to my blog and the theory I am defending there. Maybe not, but if it was, that is a misunderstanding of my theory. In fact, my theory doesn't even make sense if marital relations are not good; my theory makes most sense if marital relations are the highest good of the natural world.

The hinge of my theory is that the tree of life is the believing, trusting, obedient, loving heart and that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is marital relations. As far as I am aware, the Church has never condemned such a position. If it has, I need to disavow myself of my error; please let me know. As someone who desires above all to be a faithful son of the Church, I am "prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of the faithful" (Humani Generis #36). However, at this moment, it is my understanding that my theory has never been condemned; if it has, then there is no further discussion needed.

Marriage is a "great mystery" symbolizing the relationship between Christ and His Church. Nothing is more important, other than the Trinity itself, than the relationship between Christ and His Church, and therefore, there is nothing greater on this earth than marriage. God gives us free will, hides Himself, and tests us to see if we truly trust and love Him. In the Old Testament, there is no one tested as severely as Abraham, other than the man and the woman. His test? He was to kill his only son, the son through whom God promised to give Abraham descendants as many as the sand on the seashore.

He asked our first parents (Eve was only named after the Fall because she has just conceived Cain) to forgo the highest natural good, which is the symbol of the highest supernatural good, to obtain the highest supernatural good. Their trial of faith, which went beyond their intellect, was to tell them to be fruitful and multiply but not to have relations. Relations are good, and that is what the woman saw, but God had a higher gift planned. He wanted to give them more than the symbol (marriage), He wanted to give them the reality (mystical marriage). We are all called to holiness, but there is no holiness without deep prayer; the endpoint of prayer is mystical marriage, and the reason there is no marriage in heaven is because we are all married to God as members of His Body, the Church.

My main point is that God wants you and me as His spouse; He calls each and every one of us to the deep prayer of mystical union. That is true for priest, nun, husband, wife, and single from every occupation.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
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