Catholic view of Atonemnt?

[brb3]

Is it RC teaching that Christ bore the punishment, weight and guilt due to our sins? Did he take care of and atone of all different degrees of sins?

You mean Mortal & Venial sins ?

Christ taught we needed to be perfect, like him, …to enter heaven, since nothing unclean can enter heaven…per scripture ! ( Rev. 21:27 & 1 Corinthians6:9-11)

 

[Vinny213]

Thats not really answering my previous question brb. Did Christ bore the punishment and guilt of our sin? Did he take care of all our sins on the cross?

 

[brb3]

Thats not really answering my previous question brb. Did Christ bore the punishment and guilt of our sin? Did he take care of all our sins on the cross?

Would he of atoned for only some …a partial atonement ? I don’t see any scripture teaching a partial atonement. But, how do we fully understand a FULL ATONEMENT by Christ for ALL SIN ? Clearly scripture teaches we are FULLY GRACED, via justification, upon our Baptism and Confirmation. How could we be viewed by the Father as fully justified, fully clean… if not for Christ having borne fully our sins on Cross, making full atonement !! And, upon our FAITH IN THIS REALITY, that Christ’s suffering & shed blood Can Wash Us Clean of All Sins … the Father adopts us, thru and Into Christ…as New Creations,born of the New Adam JESUS CHRIST.

Now, how do we atone for our FREE WILL COMMITED sins …after this Rebirth ? They are also atoned for by Christ’s blood sacrifice on Cross, provided we persevere in our faith, continue walking InChrist, following his commandments and confessing our errs and serving penance ( as set by GOD’s priesthood ), and receiving that atoning grace via weekly receipt of it via the Elexer of Immortality (the Eucharist ‘todah’ meal).

 

[guanophore]

Is it RC teaching that Christ bore the punishment, weight and guilt due to our sins? Did he take care of and atone of all different degrees of sins?

Both are true.

He bore our sins.

1 Peter 2:24-25
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

He made satisfaction (paid the debt)

Col 2:13-15
3 And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, 14 erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

Heb 1:3
When he had made **purification **for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

NT:2512

katharismos (kath-ar-is-mos’); a washing off, i.e. (cer.) ablution, (morally) expiation

1 John 2:2
He Himself is the **propitiation **for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

Propitiation is the translation of the term hilasmos (hil-as-mos’); atonement, i.e. (concretely) an expiator

Propitiation/atonement/expiation is what brings the reconciliation of God and humankind through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ

It also is reparation for an offense or injury : satisfaction

 

[JEJL]

The virtue of Justice; CCC 1807:

Note, there is nothing specific to punishment or wrath in the definition.
But, more importantly, Jesus as the God-Man, and our Judge – has the virtue of Justice in its fullness. His work, Justice, is to establish harmony in human relationships.

Thank you for pointing out the CCC, the best source to go to when in doubt of official Catholic teaching! Then, yes, justice is a perfect relationship. Justice here is what many translations of the Bible call “righteousness”; in French and Spanish, there is no word for “righteousness” and it is simply “justice”. Yet I cannot ignore the aspect of God also using His “righteous” wrath against certain people, this is evidenced in our faith. God punished people in the OT, but this is not simply an OT reality; there is the example of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11. Perhaps you are in complete agreement with me, so forgive me if I missed that. St. Augustine said, “justice is that virtue which gives every one his due” (City of God, Book XIX, ch. 21). Therefore, in light of the this, the passage in the Catechism makes complete sense. In the New Covenant, it is justice to help the poor and do socially good deeds (“social justice”), because it is God’s will as revealed in Christ and His love for the poor; it is justice for God to forgive our sins in Christ, since He is just, and bore our sins, so it is only “normal” (a wrong term to use for God but for lack of a better word) for a loving God to forgive the sins of those who believe in His Son and follow His commandments; and it is justice for God to render to the wicked their due of punishment, something revealed throughout Scripture time and time again. In all these examples the word “justice” could easily be replaced by “right”, i.e., it is right to do such-and-such because the holy and loving God wills it. It would seem to me that the virtue of justice is to do the will of God, simply put. In other words, God’s wrath is a part of His justice/goodness, and goodness by definition hates that which is evil, sin.

Much of the OT is divine justice as a target, and not as a present reality.
Nor do I see every sin as worthy of God’s wrath; eg: I’m not a Thomist that I should think that a sin against God is infinite, merely because God is infinite. I read things like:

Job 6:17-21; usccb.org/bible/job/7
Psalm 8:5; usccb.org/bible/ps/8:5

And I recognize that God’s forgiveness can be obtained by those who really were incapable of harming him in the first place. (There are clearer passages than I quoted…)

Hate does not have to be malicious; although that’s the English connotation of the word. Biblicly, it often means simply to drive away, or forcibly separate.
A perpetual sinner has a destructive relationship (hence un-just) with their neighbors; It is for this reason, that justice requires a separation – and hence, hell.

I agree, hate does not have to be malicious; when the Psalms and Prophets speak of God’s hatred, it’s as though this kind of hatred springs not at all from malice but from a loving, caring and wounded husband faced a the adultery of His wife, a language we can see often used in Scripture. Indifference would be the more likely culprit of a hatred springing from malice; God’s “anger” is His caring reaction to human sin, which destroys the sinner before anyone else. Also in the Psalms and Prophets we see that these same emotions (God evidently does have emotions as seen in the Scriptures, or at least Scripture’s anthropomorphisms make these higher realities understandable to us in this way) in a sense “push” God, if He could even be pushed by anything, to decide to send His Son to save us (e.g. Isaiah 42:14); therefore, again, His Son’s mission is justice personified.

Regarding not every sin meriting wrath, what do we mean by wrath? For Catholic teaching is that even the most minor of venial sins, though forgiven, will have to be paid for, either here or in Purgatory (or hell eternally for the unrepentant); is this punishment of God something different? Perhaps I am equating the two, God’s just punishment and His wrath, which in your mind are not the same thing. Perhaps “wrath” is what is reserved only for the souls of the damned? But anyway I don’t think this distinction is very important to our discussion and it would just be exchanging over minor semantics.

 

[JEJL]

Faustina is a wonderful mystic & saint.
The saying she has here is difficult; I am not sure if it is translational (she was polish?) or not.

Also: Faustina’s devotion promises the ability to send anyone to heaven (period). Just complete the devotion for them applying Jesus’ cross to them.

If this doesn’t make the TULIP radar go ping! nothing will.

But; It follows along St. Paul’s line of thinking when he said, (paraphr.) "for I wish that I were anathema, cut off from the Christ far-beyond my brothers…
Roman 9:3 usccb.org/bible/romans/9

People think that Anathema=curse… but biblical usage indicates trophies of war, usually golden, taken from an enemy in battle, run through a purging fire to clean them, and then hung up on the temple in Jerusalem as decoration.
ana=again/another, thema=theme; anathema=another theme. (The outer decorations.)

In St. Paul, the irony is supreme when we realize he killed Christians at first, and then played the lawyer in Roman 9:3 – only to get burned by Jesus’ saying: (Paraph). “He who loves … brother … more than me, is not worthy of me.”

Ahhh… WORTHY anathema can be cleaned up by expurgation w/ fire; but not unworthy… I sometimes wonder when St. Paul would have had to account to Jesus for what he said in Romans 9:3. But, Somehow, I’m sure he was destined to loose his head once the cross examination began. (Puns intended.)

I don’t think it’s a translational issue, but that it springs from what seems to me to be the common understanding among Catholics and Christians in general, that, again, justice includes God’s wrath, and in this context, the saying clearly is in reference to God’s exacting hands. He is both merciful infinitely, and He also is severe (cf., for example, Matthew 25:14-30, especially verse 26-30). For those who persevere in faith in His mercy, bearing fruit, He rewards; those who persist in unbelief, bearing no fruit since they have not made the sacrifices necessary for that fruit to be borne, since they did not trust Him, He will punish.

Regarding St. Paul’s wishing to be “cut off”, do you think this could be understood as his being a small part of Christ’s sacrifice, for the good of his brethren? You’re right, “anathema” does not mean accursed. The Church uses this language in reference to those who affirm contrary doctrines to her own; if they repent and are reconciled to her, and thus to God, they are no longer “anathema”, so it cannot mean “accursed”, or at least not forever.

I missed something there… How did you come to that conclusion based on 1John 1:9; I’m wondering if that’s a misquote?

I do see a few line later that if we do sin, we have an advocate (paraclete); and that is the only nearby sentence talking about justice (dikaion)

usccb.org/bible/1john/2
In the original Greek its:
1John 2:1 τεκνια μου ταυτα γραφω υμιν ινα μη αμαρτητε και εαν τις αμαρτη παρακλητον(Paraclete) εχομεν προς τον πατερα ιησουν χριστον δικαιον (Just).

The sentence is grammatically awkward; But I would translate it “…if we sin, we-have [a/the] Paraclete to the Father, Jesus christened just”

It’s not entirely clear how the christening is meant.
Since this is St. John, I would point you here:

See also particularly John 16:7 – 8
usccb.org/bible/john/16

The word Paraclete means the Holy Spirit; and as you can see in John 16:7-8; without Jesus taking the cross-road exodus – the Spirit would never come to us.

Spirit means life; it is breath, it is the blood carrying breath, and it is the sign Water: Faustina calls attention to two, blood and water. On Pentecost, angels under the sign of flame are driven by wind. The cross opened a fountain.

Anyway, I’m guessing too much — what was that you were saying?

No, the reference is what I intended, a lot translations have the saying (loosely) “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us”; the Bible on newadvent.org says this: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity.” This is not in disaccord with your interpretation of the original Greek, since Christ is faithful and just, christened just, and therefore, since it is God’s will that sinners should be forgiven in Christ, it is “right” or “just” for God to forgive those who confess their sins to Him, since that is what He intended. In other words, His justice here is as you said, a right relationship; at His initiative and at the sinner’s free response, God “rights” the relationship that was wounded by sin.

So Christ’s death does avert from us the wrath of God, a reality revealed to us in Scripture, both the Old and the New (and I would say in history and anthropology, though that is a whole other topic), not because He takes the wrath upon Himself, but because His death opens up the wellspring of life, of God’s forgiveness, as you said (“the cross opened a fountain”), and this is His very justice at work.

 

[Huiou_Theou]

Thank you for pointing out the CCC, the best source to go to when in doubt of official Catholic teaching! Then, yes, justice is a perfect relationship. Justice here is what many translations of the Bible call “righteousness”;

dikaios; as Joseph was called.

Yet I cannot ignore the aspect of God also using His “righteous” wrath against certain people, this is evidenced in our faith. God punished people in the OT, but this is not simply an OT reality; there is the example of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11. Perhaps you are in complete agreement with me, so forgive me if I missed that. St. Augustine said, “justice is that virtue which gives every one his due” (City of God, Book XIX, ch. 21).

St. Augustine. yes.
You have an aptitude for scholarly study.

I, too, do not wish to artificially break the “OT God” from the new.

Our conversation is focused on a narrow issue regarding God’s attributes when we talk about the need for atonement and wrath; and there is something subtle here I want to draw your attention to – or at least, I have been trying to do so. ( bear with me )

I meant to distinguish the process ( pedagogy ) of learning about God, from their Goal, lawfulness.

A person (even God) may want one thing, but do another. ( 1Timo 2:4 )
Death itself is a punishment; and we have, for example, the example of the thief “We are only paying for what we have done”, and the example of purgation (prefiguring purgatory) by Joshua 7:19-26, and the example of the Maccabees praying for the dead sinners.

In all these examples, eternal wrath is not guaranteed; nor even is it guaranteed in the Case of Annanias and Sophira. Yet, God’s “Justice” as spoken of by Faustina is referring to the final Judgment.

It is perhaps not obvious in the case of Annanias and Sophira; so I’ll elucidate.
When someone is condemned to wrath – there is no point in doing a corporal work of mercy. Throughout the O.T. the bodies of Jezebels’ and ultimate traitors to the faith are not buried. They are left for the dogs to eat, and the worm to attack; for the ultimate sins, their bones are placed in a fire who’s heat is raised high enough to calcine the bones and return them to dust. (A big deal is made of this. They “burnt up his bones”; cf. the church’s historical ban on the cremation of the faithful.)

Annanias and Sophira were buried;

But there is more; In their case, it was a priest – St. Peter – in the context of the power of confession (during a legal cross examination) who passed judgment upon them. The Holy Spirit had no need of a trial or cross examination to condemn and judge them. For this reason, there are two points to bear in mind – 1) the Judgment came through an incarnate persona Christi, who only came into being in the fullness of time; 2) such wrath does not apply (a-priori) to history without that incarnation; or the logic leading to the necessity of the incarnation for the purposes of atonement. { We may speak of finding Christ prefigured in the O.T. but even then, Jesus only guarantees that it is in the Prophets that such is found; St. Augustine not withstanding.)

The case of Annanias and Sophira, then, is pedagogy; but not necessarily about the eternal.

Therefore, in light of the this, the passage in the Catechism makes complete sense. In the New Covenant, it is justice to help the poor and do socially good deeds (“social justice”), because it is God’s will as revealed in Christ and His love for the poor; it is justice for God to forgive our sins in Christ, since He is just, and bore our sins, so it is only “normal” (a wrong term to use for God but for lack of a better word) for a loving God to forgive the sins of those who believe in His Son and follow His commandments; and it is justice for God to render to the wicked their due of punishment, something revealed throughout Scripture time and time again.

What I see clearly revealed is a temporal rendering of wrath; and the self defense of God’s holy name ( for example,in Sodom’s act against the tri-angels )

In all these examples the word “justice” could easily be replaced by “right”, i.e., it is right to do such-and-such because the holy and loving God wills it. It would seem to me that the virtue of justice is to do the will of God, simply put. In other words, God’s wrath is a part of His justice/goodness, and goodness by definition hates that which is evil, sin.

Yes; I agree.
Sin and righteousness can not dwell together (But reacall 1Tim again).
But I don’t clearly see (perhaps I will?) how it is that images (?hyperbolic?) of a human wrath projected onto God can be guaranteed to accurately represent the “why” of wrath.

I am more concerned with human mis-interpretation of the intricacies and subtleties involved, than I am with it’s existence.

I agree, hate does not have to be malicious; when the Psalms and Prophets speak of God’s hatred, it’s as though this kind of hatred springs not at all from malice but from a loving, caring and wounded husband…

if He could even be pushed by anything, to decide to send His Son to save us (e.g. Isaiah 42:14); therefore, again, His Son’s mission is justice personified.

Point taken.

Regarding not every sin meriting wrath, what do we mean by wrath? For Catholic teaching is that even the most minor of venial sins, though forgiven, will have to be paid for, either here or in Purgatory (or hell eternally for the unrepentant);

Let me think about this some more. You’re very observant. Could you cite a specific reference, so I may review it in detail ?