Did early Christians fear falling into Mortal Sin so often as many do today?

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If chuckling out loud and rolling my eyes is a sign of feeling “skewered”, then yup, super skewered.

I’m guessing you’re that guy who tells the doctor he or she is wrong based on something you googled on webmd.
 
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BoomBoomMancini said:
If chuckling out loud and rolling my eyes is a sign of feeling “skewered”, then yup, super skewered.

I’m guessing you’re that guy who tells the doctor he or she is wrong based on something you googled on webmd.
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Actually I’m just the opposite in that case. THEY have credentials.
 
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None of this is proving what you think it is or helping your argument, but I don’t think we’re gonna get anywhere, so I’m off. Happy skewering.
 
NO ONE accidentally falls into mortal sin. I think that much we should all agree on.

How common do people deliberately commit what they know to be gravely wrong?

That’s the question of this thread.

To me at least, many modern Catholics suggest it is quite easy to do this – and be in the state of mortal sin – even every other week. But I wonder if this is how Catholics approached the matter in the early church, when (1) Confession operated differently; (2) absolution was given more rarely; and (3) the identification of “Mortal Sin” seemed more restricted — murder, adultery, apostasy for sure!

Again I’ll give an example. I wonder how common it was for a second or third century Christian to go around asking others “Is this a mortal sin?” Or “I missed liturgy on Sunday. Am I going to hell?” Etc.

I’m no scholar. But my gut feeling is to say that we have been influenced by our Western legalistic mindset and constant definitions to worry more than perhaps the early Christians were on this question.
 
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RealisticCatholic said:
Mortal Sin — that you can willingly sin and fall out of grace — is a scriptural and historical teaching. “Once Saved Always Saved” is a novelty brought on by the Protestant Reformers.
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Based on your statement, I think you have a very grave misunderstanding on what those of the Reformed tradition believe about the Perseverence of the Saints. I would suggest you contact @TULIPed to set you straight.
 
Once Saved Always Saved is a Protestant belief, whether or not all Protestants believe it. That was the point. Mortal Sin is not a Catholic novelty; but the rejection of it is a Protestant one.
 
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It seems I have been summoned by @Hodos from the ether. I am curious RC - what exactly do you think the “Once Saved Always Saved” belief is? As a beginning point of discussion, would you say that it more closely resembles:

a. Since I am saved, I can sin as much as I want because “once saved always saved”; or
b. Since I - if I am actually saved - was “chosen by God before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight”, I can’t trump God’s sovereignty and “un-choose” myself.

With regard to “Mortal Sin” - Reformed Protestants completely agree with the concept of “Mortal Sin” in that we believe all sin to be deadly. Said another way, a Reformed Protestant doesn’t believe there are any “Venial” sins.

There are clearly some sins that are far more harmful if committed, e.g. 7 deadly sins, to ourselves and others. However, as far as our relationship with God goes any sin at all makes us “enemies” with God and is therefore lethal.
 
The OP raises an interesting issue. I’ve read that a common idea in the early Church was that once a person became a baptised Christian, then they weren’t going to repeatedly commit severe sins. So I guess that for sincere early Christians, it wasn’t necessarily a fear - they just thought that if they were faithful then repeated mortal sinning wasn’t going to happen. But then again, maybe it was a real fear, because I’ve read that some Christians delayed baptism until they were getting closer to death (like Constantine) so that they wouldn’t end up being baptised Christians who repeatedly sinned. I think that there was even an early heresy called Donatism that claimed that a Christian couldn’t be repeatedly forgiven for repeatedly repenting of the same multiply-committed sins. And there was a 1st-2nd century Christian document called the Shepherd of Hermas that seemed to teach that you can’t repent of major sins committed more than once if you’ve repented of them before. I wrote about this on another thread and would like to hear what you think about it: THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS (1st-mid-2nd century) Two Questions about its instructions on denial and repentance
 
Two thoughts:
  1. How well catechized were those early Christians, really? A large percentage of them must have been illiterate, right? How could they have had knowledge of exactly what was (or wasn’t) a mortal sin?
  2. Most of the population lived in poverty and didn’t exactly get to Mass every week, I bet. It’s not like they were beating themselves up because they missed Mass once. Unless they lived in a city, how many of them got to Mass very often at all?
 
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Loud-living-dogma said:
How well catechized were those early Christians, really? A large percentage of them must have been illiterate, right? How could they have had knowledge of exactly what was (or wasn’t) a mortal sin?
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Some of them, like the leadership, might be better catechized than anyone since in history, having known Jesus or the apostles directly. In talking with them, they might get as good an idea as possible about how Christianity must view issues of sinning and repentance and forgiveness. The leaders of the church communities typically were literate, and besides, literacy doesn’t necessarily mean that someone has a right or wrong idea on those issues.
 
I actually wonder how many of us will actually make it anyway, whichever century we live in.

The narrow gate Jesus spoke of makes me think only the very devout will make it.
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
How well catechized were those early Christians, really? A large percentage of them must have been illiterate, right? How could they have had knowledge of exactly what was (or wasn’t) a mortal sin?
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Illiteracy in oral cultures tends to be very different than illiteracy in largely literate cultures. When most of the population is illiterate, catechesis tends to take on an oral form, and people tend to have much better memories.
 
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