Commonplaces: Superbia

“¹¹ The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”

Luke 18:11, ESV

Among the different church traditions there is an inclination to identify sin as an infraction of God’s law and, historically, “God’s law,” “the law,” and “law” are taken to be something like a codified body of edicts or regulations. As with criminal law, we naturally want to consider the severity of the offense as a way of framing the basis for our defense and, consequently, our forgiveness. How bad is this sin, really? Isn’t it more like a misdemeanor, requiring merely the payment of a fine? Or is it more serious? If it’s serious, were there extenuating circumstances? “Yes, I broke the law, but it could’ve been so much worse if I hadn’t tempered by actions, forbearing from all-out sin, and when the court hears all the evidence I will be exonerated. After all, I’m not a bad person, and the circumstances were, well, complicated.”

“When the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”

The People, Yes. Carl Sandburg

We’re more comfortable with this imaginary courtroom scenario than the bitter humiliation of God’s perfect judgement. But, it’s not so much the doing, or the sinning, it’s the defiance, the pridefulness, the superbia that condemns us.

For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?

A Man For All Seasons, Robert Bolt

In everyday life we may encounter the dictum that “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” (ignorantia juris non excusat). We can see that God made known by direct communication to Adam the only decree humans were to live by.

¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Genesis 2:16-17, ESV

This admonition is a defining moment between the Creator and the created. On one hand it can be seen as a simple caution distilled to its essence. Think “Click it or Ticket.” The brevity of it can trivialize the consequences. On the other hand, the unembellished starkness of it is terrifying. Humans having the knowledge of good and evil results in death.

Intimations of being like God, the lie told by the serpent, made ignoring God’s warning inevitable. While eating the fruit didn’t imbue humans with the attributes of God, that hasn’t prevented us individually from believing ourselves to be more God-like than our fellow humans (See the Pharisee’s self-congratulation above).

“The first principle is you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” 

Richard Feynman

The entire history of humanity can be compressed into a few simple words: God created the universe and it was good; God created humans and it was good; human knowledge of good and evil results in death. To say history repeats itself every time the world teeters on the brink of self-extinction implies that “history” has this annoying and inevitable characteristic but, in actuality, it’s just humans being human, over and over again. We cannot unlearn our very nature. We must be rescued from it.

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Romans 1:18-32, ESV

Therein is the devastation of superbia and why I find it a more meaningful word for understanding the human condition than “sin” or “sinning.” There is a notion of something done in sinning, a behavior, an action, whereas the motive for it, superbia, is far more damning, as well as completely indefensible given our shared experience with God from our origins in the garden.

noun unreasonable and inordinate self-esteem (personified as one of the deadly sins)

synonyms pride

types arrogance, haughtiness, hauteur, high-handedness, lordliness

overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors

condescension, disdainfulness, superciliousness

the trait of displaying arrogance by patronizing those considered inferior

contemptuousness

the manifestation of scorn and contempt

hubris

overbearing pride or presumption

domineeringness, imperiousness, overbearingness

the trait of being imperious and overbearing

superiority

displaying a sense of being better than others

snobbery, snobbishness, snobbism

the trait of condescending to those of lower social status

type of deadly sin, mortal sin

an unpardonable sin entailing a total loss of grace

Vocabulary.com

The tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil was part of creation before God breathed life into dirt to make man. What was the purpose of the tree? To establish God’s Law? Or to make manifest God’s Love? Or both?

The phrase “the Fall” suggests a directional sense of what resulted. Up is God. Down is where we sinners are. Before the Fall Adam and Eve were welcomed by God in a middle space, the Garden. God with Man. Having done the thing which shall not be done, Adam and Eve lost access to this communal space. The world was now simply God / Not God.

Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Leininger in his valuable book examining Luther’s teaching on vocation turns the direction of the fall around to provide a fresh insight.

It’s common to talk about humanity’s original rebellion against God as “the fall.” Although there’s great value in this, another and perhaps more helpful way of talking about it is as “the climb.” God’s human creatures, together with His good creation in all its physical wonder, exist in peace and contentment being what God made them to be. The serpent tempts them not so much to become lower but to reach higher. “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5), hisses the evil one. Doubting God’s Word and disparaging their simple creatureliness, Eve and then Adam climb over each other in order to reach their way up to God.

Callings for Life: God’s Plan Your Purpose. Jeffrey Leininger

“The climb.” It’s embedded in superbia. “Super” means above as in superior, Superman, superstar, and all the rest. But it’s reaching for knowledge of Good and Evil, not super powers or super status, that causes us to lose our balance and fall. It’s knowledge that God has from above and that Adam and Eve, tempted and deceived by the serpent, desired looking up from below.

“You shall have no other gods.

What does this mean? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”

Luther’s Small Catechism

Creation contained the means by which it could be corrupted. To our eternal comfort, God created the world in order that He might redeem it. Punishing sinners was never the point. Creation reflects the steadfast love of the Creator that was before the beginning, and in His delight in saving the lost, and without God to fear, love, and trust above all things, we are truly lost.

²¹ But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶ It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Romans 3:21-26

Superbia is not simply a Judeo-Christian notion, either. Cultures around the world have myths that explore the trap of over-weening pridefulness. The tragedies of the ancient Greeks, performed before a city-state’s entire population at annual festivals, place the cause for the downfall of social elites to hubris, “a personal quality of extreme or excessive pride.” All of humanity bears the burden of sin in the weight of pridefulness.

Popular culture today extols the virtues of self-love as the starting point for healthy relationships with others. Yet we predictably fail to contain pride within the bounds of healthy self-esteem and it grows unbound beyond the point of obsession. Popular culture, accelerated by social media, aggressively encourages narcissistic personality disorders. But, if we think observance of God’s Law will save us, Christ assures us that pride in our performance against the Law is itself an example of superbia.

²⁵ And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶ He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” ²⁷ And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸ And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

²⁹ But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 

Luke 10:25-29, ESV

Jesus answered the lawyer with the parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s important to note that Jesus’ teaching on what loving our neighbor means in a real-world sense is framed within a proper relationship with God. That relationship is defined by making God the object of our love with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind before we can begin to love our neighbor as God would have us do. Loving our neighbor will not save us on its own merit, no matter the extremes we go to to express it. Loving our neighbor is not the antidote for superbia but, rather, the fruit of fearing, loving, and trusting in God above all things.

The Fall is not the defining event in the epic story of God and Man. It was the precipitating action for the epic to follow. While sinners were obsessing on making satisfaction for sins God was meticulously laying out His plan. The story of God and Man begins with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and finds its climax there as well with the Son of God sacrificing Himself on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. His triumph over death is the consummation of Creation known by God from before the beginning.

⁸ “Remember this and stand firm,
    recall it to mind, you transgressors,
⁹     remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
    I am God, and there is none like me,
¹⁰ declaring the end from the beginning
    and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
    and I will accomplish all my purpose…’”

Isaiah 46:8-10, ESV