By Fr Joseph B Francis –
Sometimes people imagine that God is an angry God. In the past some people have tried to propitiate their gods by offering sacrifices of animals, birds and human beings. They thought the offering of life symbolized by the blood would make the angry god soft and kind again. Often such sacrifices ended with a meal made from the sacrificed animal or bird, a part of which the officiating priest was given. Symbolically this showed that the angry god shared a meal with his devotees and therefore he/she is not angry any more with them.
Angry God in Christianity?
Does Christianity also emphasize God as angry God? It is true that often in the Old Testament God is portrayed as being very angry with sinful mankind which broke his commandments; the accounts are for the most part anthropomorphic and not very accurate. They only portray the intense displeasure of God when human beings commit sin. Surely God cannot be indifferent to our sins by which not only do we go away from God, breaking our relations with him but we also are twisted out of our real image i.e., the image of God in which we were all made. So how do we expect God to react? If he loves us, and of this we can have no doubt, he is upset for our sakes when he sees the image of his Son, the model on which we were fashioned at creation in Love i.e., in the Holy Spirit.
Angry God and Martin Luther
We are told by some historians that Martin Luther had a very harsh father who would not let go of punishing him even for a very small fault. So psychologically Martin Luther transferred this to God and felt that God cannot really speaking forgive our sins; he will only punish and even punish us severely. The passage Rm 1.18 frightened him endlessly: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men…” It was only the ‘tower experience’ he had when he read and meditated on Rm 3.23-25 that he was consoled that God by his free gift of Grace justifies all those who believe in Jesus Christ. But unfortunately he understood this becoming ‘alright with God’ (justification) wrongly.
According to him we remain the rotten sinners we are or have become and our sins can never be really forgiven but ‘only covered over’ by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. This covering which is given to the man of faith protects him outside in such a manner that all the angry blows of the Father will be deflected. The Catholic position on the contrary, enunciated in the Council of Trent in 1545 AD, said that justification is imparted to us i.e., communicated to us and we are totally made alright with God inside and out!
The severity of Jansenism
In the XVII century arose a subtle error called Jansenism. Jansen wrote a book Augustinus and since he was a bishop and the book was explosive he gave it to his friend De Haurrane from France and asked him to publish it only after he died. Soon after, the bishop died in an epidemic and his friend duly published the book and it caused great havoc in the Church. According to Jansen God gave sufficient grace to all (otherwise God would be unjust!) but he gave efficient grace only to some.
All those who received such an efficient grace will definitely go to heaven (they are predestined for heaven). It is like a victorious grace in their life and somehow or other, they will be taken to heaven. Such a grace cannot be resisted. One way to find out if you have received this grace is by observing your life. If it is full of penance and you acknowledge your unworthiness before the Almighty and Transcendent God, it is a sure sign of your predestination to heaven.
With the dissemination of such a teaching a great severity came into the life of the Church especially in France. Holy Communion was rarely received saying that we are unworthy to receive it daily. Severe bodily penances such as fasting and self-discipline (scourging), wearing of chains etc were indulged in because each one wanted to prove to himself that he has received the “efficient grace” and is predestined for heaven. Such a severity in the Church lasted for more than 200 years in spite of the Church’s condemnation the Jansen’s book ‘Augustinus’.
In a way we could say it persisted in a mild form even up to the Vatican II council. A great counterpoise to this erroneous doctrine of Jansen was the providential rise and popularity of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Jesus appeared in a series of visions to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690 AD) emphasizing the great Mercy, Compassion of God and God’s desire to save all and offering a refuge to the sinners in his wounded, burning Sacred Heart.