Cardinal Ratzinger v. Catholic Encyclopedia: Did humanity owe a debt?

[OneSheep]

Adam was not omniscient by any means. He had knowledge of what would happen, and was born with knowledge, but he was not omniscient. Only God is omniscient.

Welcome, CHCL!

There is a bit of background, it’s an inside thing. You see, as a matter of introspection, I have come to find an absolute, that is all sin has a component of ignorance or blindness, there is some gap in awareness. Devoid some lack, sin simply doesn’t happen, in my observation, and I have yet to find a counterexample. (there are some situations where a person is forced to pick a lesser of two evils, but that is a different category). Search this thread for the belabored attempts:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=879640

Anyway. I got into an extremely long discussion once with Granny about Adam, and every time I tried to find the knowledge gap leading to his sin, Granny would insist that Adam already knew that, knew that, etc. and was incapable of blindness, etc., until we came to the point that Adam was essentially omniscient, but for some unknown reason sinned anyway. We can kick this around if you like, all in good cheer!

So, I agree with you, Adam was not omniscient, but I am also saying that it was because of his lack of omniscience that he was capable of the sins he did. BTW, I see the creation story as an allegory, not a true account. Its a story, to me, about the creation of man and the world, meant to explain a number of phenomena.

Thanks for your reply!

 

[OneSheep]

Hi Simpleas, and welcome!

God never changes, it’s us that change our way of thinking about him.
What pickles my brain about Adam is that he had all he needed in the garden, yet he seeked to be like God/ a God and so fell to the temptation of the devils lies.
After the Original sin, he know longer was able to commune with God and so he must have felt very abandoned by God, as only a human could feel. God no longer “walked with him in the cool of the day” nor taught him any more on how to be a human being.
He would have to work the ground and his wife would be tormented by pains in child birth. So as God had left him and his wife the sole task of procreation, he must have desparately looked for things to give to God in the hope that God would relent and forgive his sin.
But was it all in Adams mind?

Well, if the story is non-fiction, then perhaps it was all in Adam’s mind that God banished and punished, that definitely makes some sense. If you check Cardinal Ratzinger’s writing, though, one of the main points was that there was no debt incurred, that God does not give and then take away. So, if the creation story is non-fiction, it seems to contradict the Cardinal’s message, for it is quite clear in the story that God gave, and then took something away, from Adam and Eve.

Did God leave him, or was God right there all the time, like in Jacobs ladder?

I just don’t know how Adam and Eve went from being in union with God, knowing Love etc, to feeling alone and needing to offer sacrifices. Their sin has got to be more on a cosmic level than on a human level, imo.

When Jesus paid the debt, then he righted the wrong. God does not require any more sacrifce from man, we are now made righteous again. But it’s taken 2,000 years for us to even start to begin to believe that God never left us…

That’s just it, Simpleas, Cardinal Ratzinger is saying what distinguishes Christianity from other religions is that there is no expiation (debt) involved, instead God himself comes to man to gather them to him, it is a “foolish love”. Check that website, and read it a few times, I can help you if parts are confusing.

To me, I think that it is within the umbrella of Christianity that people really do think that there is a debt involved. To me, it seems that the debt view has to be accepted as a valid aspect of spiritual pathways.

Do you, or did you, think that you owe(d) something to God?

That is the big question, right?

Thanks!

 

[grannymh]

Anyway. I got into an extremely long discussion once with Granny about Adam, and every time I tried to find the knowledge gap leading to his sin, Granny would insist that Adam already knew that, knew that, etc. and was incapable of blindness, etc., until we came to the point that Adam was essentially omniscient, but for some unknown reason sinned anyway. We can kick this around if you like, all in good cheer!

I do compliment your creative thinking.

granny would never agree that Adam was essentially omniscient. She can barely spell the word.

granny understands the Catholic theology expressed in CCC, 1730-32 and CCC, 355 which point to human nature of which Adam possessed.

 

[grannymh]

So, I agree with you, Adam was not omniscient, but I am also saying that it was because of his lack of omniscience that he was capable of the sins he did. BTW, I see the creation story as an allegory, not a true account. Its a story, to me, about the creation of man and the world, meant to explain a number of phenomena.

When you speak about the creation story as an allegory, not a true account, are you referring to the first three chapters of Genesis?

In the Catholic Church, Divine Revelation about God and humans flows from these first chapters. Would you say that Genesis 1:1 is not a true account? I do not believe you would do that because in the Sunday Catholic Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, those attending profess their belief in this essential doctrine. (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed)

I am sure you meant to qualify your comments by saying that a number of verses affirm a primeval event using some figurative language. (CCC, 390)

Regarding the comment about a number of phenomena. I certainly understand that–it really is great.

 

[grannymh]

How do we know that God gave Adam and Eve the sole responsiblity to decide the fate at that time of the whole human race?

We use a bit of logic.

Adam is the first human. Therefore, his descendants would automatically inherit his human nature.

 

[grannymh]

I am going to repeat a question from a previous post:

Adam abandoned God? That, again, is also a new one to me. Adam stopped loving God and abandoned God: I understand the conclusion, but I don’t see Adam the same way. Can you understand the conclusion that Adam did not abandon God or stop loving God?

Heavens to Betsy!

There are hundreds of understandable conclusions about Adam.

What is really fascinating is the way conclusions can overlap so that there is more than one meaning. This occurs often when we speak of love and loving. Of course, there is more than one understandable conclusion about Adam’s love. Adam’s human nature has both a working brain and a working heart with intellective free choice actions thrown in. (Genesis 2: 15)

 

[fhansen]

Adam abandoned God? That, again, is also a new one to me. Adam stopped loving God and abandoned God: I understand the conclusion, but I don’t see Adam the same way. Can you understand the conclusion that Adam did not abandon God or stop loving God?

Thanks again.

In the New Covenant, obedience-to Christ, to God’s law, to God- comes about authentically only as we love Him. This love is what man’s wholeness, justice, righteous, holiness consists of. Man is obligated to love God for justice’s sake, where, again, obedience and subjugation flow naturally, the right way, because this is where man’s perfection, happiness, and integrity lie. Without it we begin to descend to something less than we were created to be, and our behavior and relationships suffer as a result. Man has no existence, no life, apart from God, but God leaves man to his own counsel; it’s up to us to decide whether we’ll begin to ascend or descend, whether we remain with or depart from God.

Had Adam known God better than he did, any love he may have began with would’ve been that much greater, and the desire to obey would’ve been that much more spontaneous. To know God is to trust in and love Him. To reject God’s authority is to fail to recognize God as God.

We’re here in this life, away from Eden, to learn of our need for God, to grow in knowledge of Him, to garner first of all what Adam failed to grasp or retain, basic trust in God, so from that point we can begin to fulfill our goal, our purpose, the ascent to even greater heights than Adam began at, the ascent to full communion with God, with His help.

 

[grannymh]

Good Morning Dear!

Fine morning for some philosophy. Went on a long hike with an old friend yesterday, and we talked theology the whole time. We were so caught up in it that we missed a turning point and walked off the map we had. He has a much greater scope than I in theology, and he said that no two theologians agree on everything. It is such a freeing thing, Granny, to have the ability to let our minds go to whatever idea without thinking that one will get zapped by a bolt of lightning.

skip

Or is it scary to you, Granny? Can you hold my hand, and break bread together, even though opinions vary? No, I am not talking about having lunch. And no, I am not downplaying the sacred. Jesus broke bread with the disciples, and we are called to do the same.

Talk about scary and having the ability to let our minds go to whatever idea without thinking that one will get zapped by a bolt of lightning. I recently attended a funeral service for a friend. In grief, I could hug others, but “breaking bread together”-- that was impossible for me. As far as I know, this funeral worship service is not widespread. In fact, I was surprised to see it in this particular geographical area.

OneSheep.
“Breaking bread together” sounds more ecumenical than a funeral worship service “mass” mimicking nearly every element in the Catholic Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The program for this funeral service mass included “Liturgy of the Eucharist” and “Breaking of the Bread,” but there was no Real Presence of God in the Holy Eucharist because there was no valid Consecration.

“Breaking bread together” sounds like a good motto or metaphor for events which include Christians from all kinds of faiths. It also serves as a good description for personal feelings. Nonetheless, I think you should know that there are well-intentioned groups which use the concept of “Breaking bread together” in a way that downgrades the doctrines of the Catholic Religion.

I told my story in the thread “Which Catholic doctrines are currently being challenged by emerging christianity” in the Apologetics Forum, post 109.

 

[OneSheep]

Good Morning, CrossofChrist, what a pleasant fellow you are with whom to discuss these items!

You are right, it does. In fact, Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazereth: Holy Week addresses the problem expiation creates for some exegetes. He goes on to defend the idea, but clarifies it is love that takes away our sin, not anything else.

Interesting, I would love to see how he defends it, and then distinguishes it from the “false image” aspect. I guess I need to read the book!

And you also have to understand the context of the time Ratzinger wrote Introduction to Christianity. Unlike today, expiation was addressed using words like “destruction”. Which can give some observers a wrong impression on what expiation consists of.

I don’t know if you actually own a copy of the book, or if you just got your information from that website (which, BTW, was something I frequently visited before I got the book ). But looking at the context in which he says that is very helpful to understanding what he is getting at. He’s addressing the idea (brought up earlier ca. p. 230) that by giving man an impossible task (making up for sin) he is being gracious by making up for it himself, when it was he who established that criteria in the first place. On the contrary, the point of the crucifixion wasn’t about the act itself, but about Christ’s infinite love that brings us back from a situation that we created for ourselves. God takes the initiative, not man.

It just so happens, then, that you and I both visited the website many times before reading the book. I won’t be with my copy until tomorrow night, and I will look into it. Again, is there a “making up” for anything, or is it more a matter that man himself perceives that there is some “making up”, that somehow God’s creature has fallen out of His favor?

From Catholica.com:

This participationist approach [St.Paul] is also implicit in the later Franciscan understanding of redemption, which as we noted last week was based primarily on the teaching of John Duns Scotus in the 13th century. Duns Scotus did not believe in any “substitutionary atonement theory” of the cross: Jesus did not have to die to make God love us; he was paying no debt, he was changing no divine mind. Rather, God gave us Jesus as a sacrament of transformative encounter. The divine Word was incarnated into the historical Jesus to change our mind about the nature of God!

catholica.com.au/ianstake/016_it_print.php

Sin is incompatible with God’s love. But man can’t win back favor with God; it can only come from God’s free initiative.

Yes and no. Christ’s sacrifice has merits that go into eternity and count for all time, because by his Incarnation he has given man and creation a place in God. We can communicate with God at any time in the history of creation because he did with us (IOW, the supernatural dignity of man applies for all time yet is entirely through Christ). Perhaps this quote from Rahner will explain better what I’m getting at, “God’s self-communication as offer is also the necessary condition which makes its acceptance possible” (FCF 128).

OTOH, since man also sinned within time via original sin and other sins afterward, man lives opposed to God. Christ both gives the option of communion with God by his Incarnation and restores it by his death.

“Sin is incompatible with God’s love” needs some development here. Again, does sin incur a debt? This would be an existential conclusion, would it not? I am interested in answers to the last question I put on my continuation of this post. It is an anthropological question.

The Rahner quote, to me, does not fully address the topic unless we get into what was the motivation of the offer and the impact of the acceptance.

The “restoring by death” still sounds like the “injured and restored right” view that Cardinal Ratzinger was countering. To me, the Cardinal was lining up more with Duns Scotus and St. Gregory. (post 2, and my response in post 9)

(cont’d)

 

[OneSheep]

CrossofChrist:

Ratzinger is saying what distinguishes Christianity from other religions is that it is God that takes the initiative to expiate our sins, not man that takes the initiative.

Christianity isn’t unique because it ignores sin, but because God is the one addressing it.

Yes, I see that as part of the distinction the Cardinal was making, but not all of it. Christianity certainly does not ignore sin, and it is true that man is in a “state” that calls for a savior. In the view of many, Jesus provided a transformative encounter, as the Catholica article stated. However, the view that expiation was called for is also part of our tradition. Can you step back and see the value in both views, as can I? It is difficult, now that I am reading this more, to determine if the Cardinal is walking a line, or is he taking a definite position? He is looking at Anselm and saying “definitely not that” but look at this line from the Cardinal, does it not reflect a give-and-take, and expiation?:

He restores disturbed right on the initiative of his own power to love, by making unjust man just again, the dead living again…

Doesn’t “disturbed right” sound like a bit of a contradiction to his own “In the Bible the cross does not appear as part of a mechanism of injured right”. Indeed, if there is a “disturbed right” then it is only logical that we humans will conclude that Jesus had to come, and even die, in order to gain favor with God. This begs, again, the last question in this post.

This is a spiritual issue at its heart. Does God disfavor the sinner, or does God forgive the sinner? Did God need Jesus to pay a debt in order for Him to forgive us? It goes further into our own experiences and outlook: Can I forgive without “receiving” some kind of apology or statement of repentance, or instead do I condition my forgiveness on the repentance of the trespasser? Do you see what I’m saying? The answers to those questions will depend on the individual’s own experience of forgiveness and reconciliation. And shouldn’t our great Church include those with a variety of experience concerning forgiveness and reconciliation? These experiences certainly help account for a variety of approaches to the atonement.

Onesheep:

Man does not have God’s favor, in many other religions, until something is done to make up the debt.

Your response:

CrossofChrist:

That’s also true for Christianity, but God makes up the debt. Man is also lifted up to a role that gives him an opportunity to participate in the act of expiation via unity with God.
Yes it is. The language is used throughout the history of Christianity. Debt can be used interchangeably with sin.

Or, are you grasping the other view, that God came (among other reasons) to us to show us that there was no debt?

Here’s expiation used in the Catechism (notice it’s under the title speaking of God’s love):

God takes the initiative of universal redeeming love

604 By giving up his own Son for our sins, God manifests that his plan for us is one of benevolent love, prior to any merit on our part: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins."408 God "shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us."409

Bingo. This section of the CCC contains aspects of Anselm “giving up his own Son for our sins” (debt payment) and Cardinal Ratzinger “shows his love for us while we were yet sinners”. So, unless one says that God loved us but disfavored us, that is, he loved us without bound but “needed” something to happen in order to gain his favor(which is rather confusing, in the mind of this sheep, because then there is a bound), then something has to eventually “give”:

Either God withheld love (forgiveness) when man misbehaved, or God never disfavored us in the first place. It seems to me that both approaches can be found in our tradition, and both are to be respected.

It was his crucifixion that gave us a chance to respond to his invitation he gave at the Incarnation, an invitation thrown away by our sin.

The Incarnation is fruitless (although certainly not valueless) for us without the Cross and Resurrection.

You can’t have a theology of the Incarnation without a theology of the Cross.

I was referring again to debt, in light of (from the Introduction:

Many devotional texts actually force one to think that Christian faith in the cross visualizes a God whose unrelenting righteousness demanded a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own Son, sinister wrath makes the message of love incredible.

We broke the relationship offered by God through our sin, clearly an offense to justice. But God’s love is greater by bridging that gap for us, in our place.

An “offense to justice” is an interesting phrase. The Catholic encyclopedia I quoted avoided any use of “debt to God” as part of our pedagogy, but ended with the phrase “debt to justice” in the final paragraph.

It is so fascinating that we humans are so married to the idea of debt that when we cannot say the debt is owed God or satan, we find a noun (in this case, “justice) to say that the debt needs to be paid to something, anything! Augustine said that the debt was to be paid to satan, and Anselm said it was to be paid to God. The encyclopedia says it is to be paid to “justice”, which is not an entity, but a concept.

So, here, in my mind, is the biggest question of all:

Why does the human (universally!) think that there is a debt to be paid?

What do you think, my brother? Obviously, I have thought about the question and have my own humble answer to offer, but I am interested in your view.

Thanks, again, for all of your insightful responses.

 

[Bookcat]

Just passing through - not planning to stay…(and without getting into the discussion -not time to read whole thread etc)…

Read* Jesus of Nazareth* - Pope Benedict XVI

Also read his Weds. Audiences and Homilies during the Paschal Seasons each year.

*(remember too in discussing earlier works of Joseph Ratzinger - that there are often later works to read…and whole large volumes discussing his works over the many years)

 

[OneSheep]

Good morning, fhansen!

In the New Covenant, obedience-to Christ, to God’s law, to God- comes about authentically only as we love Him. This love is what man’s wholeness, justice, righteous, holiness consists of. Man is obligated to love God for justice’s sake, where, again, obedience and subjugation flow naturally, the right way, because this is where man’s perfection, happiness, and integrity lie.

The part that most pertains to this thread is “for justice’s sake”. Justice is a concept that comes from a mind. Is this obligation from the mind of God, or is it from the mind of man, or is it from another source, or is it all of the above? If it is an obligation, then it is easily seen as a debt, which is what the Cardinal was addressing.

Without it we begin to descend to something less than we were created to be, and our behavior and relationships suffer as a result. Man has no existence, no life, apart from God, but God leaves man to his own counsel; it’s up to us to decide whether we’ll begin to ascend or descend, whether we remain with or depart from God.

“Descend” is an interesting word. Do we change in our being? And in so doing, does God disfavor? And in this process, is a debt incurred? Does Jesus restore an injured right, as countered by Cardinal Ratzinger?

Had Adam known God better than he did, any love he may have began with would’ve been that much greater, and the desire to obey would’ve been that much more spontaneous. To know God is to trust in and love Him. To reject God’s authority is to fail to recognize God as God.

I agree, but I would modify the last sentence. We reject God’s authority, which we do unwittingly, because we do not recognize God.

We’re here in this life, away from Eden, to learn of our need for God, to grow in knowledge of Him, to garner first of all what Adam failed to grasp or retain, basic trust in God, so from that point we can begin to fulfill our goal, our purpose, the ascent to even greater heights than Adam began at, the ascent to full communion with God, with His help.

I think that we can all agree on this. Well stated!

Thanks for your response!

 

[simpleas]

We use a bit of logic.

Adam is the first human. Therefore, his descendants would automatically inherit his human nature.

So God gives Adam the power to decide the fate of his human race?

No one shares the same nature, I mean sole being, we may all come from a set of first parents, but our thoughts, conscience etc are all very different.

We talk about Gods Justice. How can it be justifiable to allow a none omniscient human being to make a choice that will effect millions of other human beings. Giving Adam pre-natural gifts which he abuses and decides it would be more important for him to become a God, and well the billions of other humans will just have to accept that God allowed the first two to make that decision.

My logic isn’t in line with most people…

 

[simpleas]

Hi Simpleas, and welcome!

Well, if the story is non-fiction, then perhaps it was all in Adam’s mind that God banished and punished, that definitely makes some sense. If you check Cardinal Ratzinger’s writing, though, one of the main points was that there was no debt incurred, that God does not give and then take away. So, if the creation story is non-fiction, it seems to contradict the Cardinal’s message, for it is quite clear in the story that God gave, and then took something away, from Adam and Eve.

That’s just it, Simpleas, Cardinal Ratzinger is saying what distinguishes Christianity from other religions is that there is no expiation (debt) involved, instead God himself comes to man to gather them to him, it is a “foolish love”. Check that website, and read it a few times, I can help you if parts are confusing.

To me, I think that it is within the umbrella of Christianity that people really do think that there is a debt involved. To me, it seems that the debt view has to be accepted as a valid aspect of spiritual pathways.

Do you, or did you, think that you owe(d) something to God?

That is the big question, right?

Thanks!

Yeah thats what I mean, God didn’t take anything away, he was always there, yet Adam some how believed he had been rejected, that he was less than he was before.

The only thing I have believed I owed God is love.

 

[fhansen]

Good morning, fhansen!
The part that most pertains to this thread is “for justice’s sake”. Justice is a concept that comes from a mind. Is this obligation from the mind of God, or is it from the mind of man, or is it from another source, or is it all of the above? If it is an obligation, then it is easily seen as a debt, which is what the Cardinal was addressing.

Good morning, OneSheep-at least it’s still morning here!
The Cardinal was addressing the debt of sin. That is directly related to our (or Adam’s) obligation to obey God. The story of the Fall is about man’s obligation-man’s need-to remain in communion with God-or else man/creation is none but the loser. So yes, like it or not, man has an obligation, his own part to fulfill, so that order may prevail in God’s universe. God didn’t have to set it up this way, but in His wisdom, He did. Once man truly does love God, the obligation is rendered more or less irrelevant, because it’s been fulfilled; it, the greatest commandment, has been fulfilled, and any other law is automatically fulfilled by it. God’s plan of bringing His universe into perfection via a “state of journeying” has been completed in us.

Jesus came to reconcile man with God-to prove God’s trustworthiness after all, man having “conceived a distorted image” of Him as the Catechism puts it, a distorted image that would remain within fallen man’s conception of God. Apparently His death was required in order to drive that point home to us. And with the help of grace we’re enabled, barely at first, to grasp the width and breadth and depth of God’s love in that act. The biblical language is quite symbolic. And anyone who claims to fully understand the way in which the legal concepts employed by St Paul and others might apply or work to explain how Jesus managed to reconcile man with God by His sacrificial act is fooling themselves IMO. What we do know is that He did, indeed, sacrifice Himself for us. All God wants, ultimately, is our love in return for His. In that way, simple as it sounds, creation’s perfection has been attained.

Descend" is an interesting word. Do we change in our being? And in so doing, does God disfavor? And in this process, is a debt incurred? Does Jesus restore an injured right, as countered by Cardinal Ratzinger?

We lose something: communion with God, the same as saying that we lose original holiness, original justice, sanctifying grace, His Spirit dwelling within-or at least operative within.* Something* changes in man or else we wouldn’t have the kind of world we have today, a world where man’s born without intimate knowledge of God or certainly forfeits it early enough without much struggle, an earth where God’s will is not at all necessarily done as it is in heaven.

 

[grannymh]

So God gives Adam the power to decide the fate of his human race?

Not exactly. Because Adam is the first human, his descendants, being human, receive Adam’s human nature.

No one shares the same nature, I mean sole being, we may all come from a set of first parents, but our thoughts, conscience etc are all very different.

Those of us who are human share the nature of a human person. Humans today still have to make the same choice that was offered to Adam.

We talk about Gods Justice. How can it be justifiable to allow a none omniscient human being to make a choice that will effect millions of other human beings. Giving Adam pre-natural gifts which he abuses and decides it would be more important for him to become a God, and well the billions of other humans will just have to accept that God allowed the first two to make that decision.

In other words, would it really be better to be a mechanical robot with no chance to share in God’s divine life in joy eternal? Humans need to think about that.

 

[simpleas]

Not exactly. Because Adam is the first human, his descendants, being human, receive Adam’s human nature.

Those of us who are human share the nature of a human person. Humans today still have to make the same choice that was offered to Adam.

In other words, would it really be better to be a mechanical robot with no chance to share in God’s divine life in joy eternal? Humans need to think about that.

How so? God allowed Adam to use his freewill in making his choice to choose God or himself, thus allowing that decision to be made, wounding the Human nature that was first created.

Yep, but Adam had it all to begin with, a sinless, ordered Human nature, as did Eve. He did not want to remain in this graceful state it seems, he wanted it all. God knew he would, and allowed him to go ahead, because of human freewill, but then God gives him that power in the first place, so Adam does (name removed by moderator)art create the human fallen nature.

No, it would have been better to remain in a state of grace, then we would not be seeing the atrocities that humans have committed in the past and now still in our present time.

 

[ynotzap]

Good morning, fhansen!

The part that most pertains to this thread is “for justice’s sake”. Justice is a concept that comes from a mind. Is this obligation from the mind of God, or is it from the mind of man, or is it from another source, or is it all of the above? If it is an obligation, then it is easily seen as a debt, which is what the Cardinal was addressing.

Thanks for your response!

Justice: It includes essentially the concept of right, objectively, is that which is due another It is evident that “right” implies a relationship between two persons, so that to the right of one there corresponds a duty of the other. Justice as an act consists in giving each his own, eg. what is due him, what by right belongs to him. Applying this concept to the relationship to man not only to his fellow man, but also toward God, we have justice in the broad sense which is equivalent to holiness,as in the language of the Bible in which the holy man is the just man, it can be “commutative” regulating the relationship between single individuals; distributive, between superiors and subjects, legal, between individuals and society Strictly speaking the true justice is the commutative justice According to Catholic doctrine with sanctifying grace God infuses into the soul the theological virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and with them the cardinal virtues, among which is justice which inclines the will to give to each his own, according to the various relationships mentioned above. Taken from the Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology

At the Eucharistic prayers of the Mass, the people respond "Let us give thanks to Our Lord our God, it is right and just. The priest continues, It is truly right and just, o ur Duty, and salvation, always, and everywhere to give You thanks, Father most High through Jesus your Son… So it is our duty, and it is right and just to give God his due

 

[CrossofChrist]

Good Morning, CrossofChrist, what a pleasant fellow you are with whom to discuss these items!

Thank you! :tiphat:

Interesting, I would love to see how he defends it, and then distinguishes it from the “false image” aspect. I guess I need to read the book!

It’s a very good read.

I’m skipping the Scotus part because I’m not too familiar with him.

“Sin is incompatible with God’s love” needs some development here. Again, does sin incur a debt?

Yes. vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/alpha/data/aud19861105en.html

The “restoring by death” still sounds like the “injured and restored right” view that Cardinal Ratzinger was countering.

But he wasn’t countering the idea of expiation per se. He was countering a particular way of understanding expiation.

• The gaze of Jesus embraces individuals and multitudes, and he brings them all before the Father, offering Himself as a sacrifice of expiation.* - Pope Benedict XVI, Lent, 2006.

The idea of expiation is also part of Catholic dogma (see Trent’s Canons (#3) on the Sacrifice of the Mass).

Here is something that seems to draw on the same line of thought:

Why “was it… necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (cf. Lk 24: 26) This question sometimes receives what might be termed a “weak”, and in a certain sense, reassuring answer. Christ, in revealing the truth of God, necessarily provokes the opposition of the forces of evil and darkness, and these forces, as happened with the prophets, will lead to his rejection and elimination. “It was necessary that Christ suffer” would then be understood in the sense of “it was inevitable that Christ suffer”.

Paul gives a very “strong” answer to that question. The need is not of the natural order but rather of the supernatural. In countries where the Christian faith has existed since antiquity the idea of suffering and the cross is almost always associated with sacrifice and expiation. Suffering, it is thought, is necessary to atone for sins and to placate God’s justice. This is what has provoked, in the modern epoch, the rejection of every idea of sacrifice offered to God, and in the end, the very idea of God.

It cannot be denied that we Christians have possibly exposed ourselves to this accusation. But we are dealing with a ambiguity that a better understanding of St Paul’s thought has already definitively clarified. He writes that God has preordained Christ “whom God put forward as an expiation” (Rom 3: 25). However, this expiation does not act on God to placate him, but on sin to eliminate it. “It can be said that it is God himself, not man, who expiates sin… the image is that of removing a corrosive stain or neutralizing a lethal virus rather than anger placated by punishment” [2].

Christ has given a radically new meaning to the idea of sacrifice. In it, "it is no longer man who exerts an influence on God in order to placate him. Rather it is God who acts to make man stop hating him and his neighbour. Salvation does not start with man asking for reconciliation; it begins with God’s request: “Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5: 20ff.) [3].

 

[CrossofChrist]

God always favors the sinner. There was no time when that wasn’t true. Yet without Christ man doesn’t have the means to come back to God–God is there, yet infinitely distant. With Christ, God becomes infinitely close.

By God’s nature being pure justice (presupposing pure love), a sin is by definition an offense against God that incurs a debt to justice. But it’s not like God wasn’t willing to forgive unless man came with an offer (the point Ratzinger is countering). God forgives anyway, and Christ is the only means whereby man can participate in that forgiveness.

Can I forgive without “receiving” some kind of apology or statement of repentance, or instead do I condition my forgiveness on the repentance of the trespasser?

God’s forgiving is his receiving.

Or, are you grasping the other view, that God came (among other reasons) to us to show us that there was no debt?

But there is a debt for someone in a state of sin. An infinite debt, an infinite “gap” we can’t make up.

Christ came to show us his love. His love by his example for us (in various ways outlined many times by various saints), but most importantly by his dying for us to lift us up from sin.

Bingo. This section of the CCC contains aspects of Anselm “giving up his own Son for our sins” (debt payment) and Cardinal Ratzinger “shows his love for us while we were yet sinners”.

The idea of a debt payment isn’t just Anselm’s; it’s part of the larger Tradition. Certainly he had his own spin on it, but the idea of propitiation itslef is enshrined in Christianity.

So, unless one says that God loved us but disfavored us, that is, he loved us without bound but “needed” something to happen in order to gain his favor(which is rather confusing, in the mind of this sheep, because then there is a bound), then something has to eventually “give”:

He didn’t need anything to happen, BUT, his life, death, and resurrection IS his favor. The means for us to live in a state where WE participate in God’s favor is given in Christ. A parent can love a child even when they don’t love the parent back. But the parent’s extended hand to the child when they are fallen on the ground is both the expression of the parent’s love and the offering of the parent’s love to the child.

What makes up for our sin isn’t any change in God, but our being brought into God (so to speak). The offering of Christ isn’t an offering to appease God’s anger but to bring us into God’s love.

So what about those who lived before Christ? Well, this goes back to how Christ’s divinity and unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit ensures that his merits are for all time, that there is no time within time when they don’t exist.

Either God withheld love (forgiveness) when man misbehaved, or God never disfavored us in the first place. It seems to me that both approaches can be found in our tradition, and both are to be respected.

They aren’t different approaches because it is de fide that God both loved us eternally and that Jesus’ sacrifice has expiatory value. The question is how to reconcile those two teachings, and that is what accounts for the differences among various saints.

I was referring again to debt, in light of (from the Introduction:

Many devotional texts actually force one to think that Christian faith in the cross visualizes a God whose unrelenting righteousness demanded a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own Son, sinister wrath makes the message of love incredible.

Right, going back to the above where I mentioned how God’s love isn’t “changed” (God can’t change), but that our status before God is changed because we are brought into God and can participate in the divine life after Christ’s life/death/resurrection.

An “offense to justice” is an interesting phrase. The Catholic encyclopedia I quoted avoided any use of “debt to God” as part of our pedagogy, but ended with the phrase “debt to justice” in the final paragraph.

Perhaps because “debt to God” can seem to imply we’d be able to pay it back.

Augustine said that the debt was to be paid to satan, and Anselm said it was to be paid to God.

And both are right, in a way.

The encyclopedia says it is to be paid to “justice”, which is not an entity, but a concept.

Well, God is justice.

Why does the human (universally!) think that there is a debt to be paid?

Because there is. We have created an infinite debt to God that only God can make up. And God does so by his love. If my understanding is correct that means that God forgives by his very nature. So what makes up for, what pays for, our sin is God. God repays God.
How did he choose to do so? By making his infinite act of love for us within time through Jesus.

And BTW, if you have any solution to the time/eternal question, where I suspect the conversation could be headed, let me know. It’s IMO the greatest mystery, involving the very nature of God. So naturally we can’t have a solution. (Sorry for begging the question–literally! )

Then we have Augustine, questioning how the Trinity could be three in one. That’s the problem with us being human–we have our concepts used to describe reality that we know is true (It’s dogma that the Trinity is 3 in 1, and this is but one example), yet our reason is never able to grasp how it can work. We can only apprehend, never fully comprehend (only in heaven).

But I digress.

What do you think, my brother? Obviously, I have thought about the question and have my own humble answer to offer, but I am interested in your view.

I gave it my best.

Thanks, again, for all of your insightful responses.

You’re welcome!