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Maximus1
Guest
Atonement Theory might be an example.
Atonement Theory integrates original sin in Genesis to Christ’s incarnation and death on the Cross.
When Jesus died suddenly, there was no formal theory of Atonement.
Origen is generally credited with developing Ransom Theory.
It was described by Saint Augustine :slight_smile:The Redeemer came and the deciever ( devil) was overcome. What did the Redeemer do yo out captor? In payment for us He set up a trap, HIS CROSS. with His blood for bait. He(Satan) could indeed she’d that blood, but he deserved not to drink it. By shedding the blood of One who was not his debtor, he was forced to release his debtors.
Obviously this is very different than our modern view of Substitutionary atonement.
In the 4th Century Saint Anathanasius of Alexandria developed an alteration,
Saint Anselm 11 centuries after Christ died developed what is the main teaching of the church today. He didn’t like Satan receiving Ransom, Satan is a created being, and he thought it made God deceptive. God as debtor and deceiver.
Still the Catechism makes reference to the Ransom idea. The text of the CCC omits reference to the devil and is silent on who is paid.
Our modern Substitution Theory added Saint Thomas satisfaction Doctrine rooted in the idea of penance.
So here you can argue a great deal of our integrated redemption narrative from original sin to the cross has changed dramatically.
Atonement Theory integrates original sin in Genesis to Christ’s incarnation and death on the Cross.
When Jesus died suddenly, there was no formal theory of Atonement.
Origen is generally credited with developing Ransom Theory.
It was described by Saint Augustine :slight_smile:The Redeemer came and the deciever ( devil) was overcome. What did the Redeemer do yo out captor? In payment for us He set up a trap, HIS CROSS. with His blood for bait. He(Satan) could indeed she’d that blood, but he deserved not to drink it. By shedding the blood of One who was not his debtor, he was forced to release his debtors.
Obviously this is very different than our modern view of Substitutionary atonement.
In the 4th Century Saint Anathanasius of Alexandria developed an alteration,
Saint Anselm 11 centuries after Christ died developed what is the main teaching of the church today. He didn’t like Satan receiving Ransom, Satan is a created being, and he thought it made God deceptive. God as debtor and deceiver.
Still the Catechism makes reference to the Ransom idea. The text of the CCC omits reference to the devil and is silent on who is paid.
Our modern Substitution Theory added Saint Thomas satisfaction Doctrine rooted in the idea of penance.
So here you can argue a great deal of our integrated redemption narrative from original sin to the cross has changed dramatically.
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Cor_ad_Cor
Guest
Care to explain this further?
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goout
Guest
Capital T Tradition is a living thing, and it is a continuously living thing. In the Church’s living Tradition the past and the present are brought together in living continuity.
The fact that Tradition is living also means it is organic. You could also say the Church is growing and developing. It is flowering. It is journeying. Tradition is not to be stuck in the ways of the past. And development is not to exalt the current at the expense of things past. The Church has one foot in timeless eternity and one foot in the present.
The fact that Tradition is living also means it is organic. You could also say the Church is growing and developing. It is flowering. It is journeying. Tradition is not to be stuck in the ways of the past. And development is not to exalt the current at the expense of things past. The Church has one foot in timeless eternity and one foot in the present.
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ontheway1
Guest
It is not for me to question the will of God.
Withing the context of discussion about modern Catholic teachings, I did ask if a statement signed by the current pope; a statement which seemingly contradicts the very foundations of Christianity, should be part of the teachings of the church.
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Dovekin
Guest
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ontheway1
Guest
I think you misunderstand my statement because you take it out of context. If you would care to follow the entire discussion, it might become understandable.
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RolandThompsonGunner
Guest
I mean, at some point the old and traditional was new and novel. I think everyone agrees the Rosary is a “traditional” Church practice, but it didn’t exist for (at least) the first few centuries of Christianity.
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Dovekin
Guest
That is what I said, “I do not understand these questions.” If you think there is some context I missed, I would be happy to hear about it.
I do not question the will of God, creator of all things, seen and unseen. I do not see how that contradicts our faith instead of affirming it.
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Magnanimity
Guest
Usury, slavery, sacramental marriage, freedom of conscience, capital punishment, no salvation outside the church - aren’t these all varieties of developments? Some of these can be seen as legit developments (eg, sacramental marriage).
But others are complete 180 degree flips (usury, slavery).
Absolutely. Vatican 2 expressly condemned slavery. In prior centuries, popes bought and sold slaves and sometimes gave slaves away as gifts. Now, slaves were always taught to have “equal standing before the Lord,” as St Paul affirms. But there’s no denying that slavery went from being an accepted practice to an affront to human dignity.
Usury was condemned for centuries by the church as being a vehicle that takes advantage of the poor. I’m not sure that that moral position ever became false. Payday lenders and even banks clearly have taken advantage of the poor and still do. I’m assuming that the driving force behind the Catholic church’s silence on the issue nowadays is the rise of capitalism. So this is an issue that was once condemned as immoral and now isn’t even spoken about, as far as I’m aware.
I don’t have a problem with any of these changes within the church because (with the possible exception of usury) all of these developments within the church seem to end up in a morally superior destination.
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Polak
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Well I also didn’t say anything about doctrines specifically, just about whether something a Pope has stated in the past, particularly the distant past, could be considered void now if a more recent Pope says something contrary to that statement.
This is an interesting one actually. The Vatican has never accepted it, but it’s true, it isn’t one of the things it condemns (and it condemns a lot). I wonder if somebody put such a question to the Vatican, or even directly to the Pope, what the response would be.
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It all falls under the rubric of legitimate “development of doctrine”, but agreed, it is harder to see with slavery, and harder still to see with usury.
I would be surprised to see that heritable generational chattel slavery, based upon characteristic skin color and ancestry (as well as an evil notion of people of that ancestry being a lower form of man, almost subhuman) where the slave-owner has the power of life and death over his slaves, can beat or abuse them when they disobey, keep them in absolute ignorance, does not have to compensate them in any way (providing only room and board at the most economical, primitive level possible, to avert death and starvation), and can break up families at will (sell some, keep some, or sell all of them and break them up among different owners), was ever approved of by the Church. If it was, I would really like to know that. That would be a problem.
There have been different forms of “slavery” throughout history that fell short of this — slavery for a period of time, conquest of a nation’s enemies, indentured servitude, and even, I would submit, the contemporary creation of massive, sometimes ruinous, non-dischargeable student debt that takes a huge portion of a person’s income for many years. (What happens if you get out of school and can’t get a good enough job to pay back your loan? You can’t repossess an education.) Not all of these have been absolutely condemned by the Church. You can even argue that military service is a form of “slavery”, sacrifice of one’s preferences and liberty for the good of one’s country.
Usury is tricky. If I am understanding the situation correctly, at one time the Church absolutely condemned the taking of any interest whatsoever, even a nominal amount. For reasons I don’t understand, you could “rent” anything under the sun — a horse, a chariot, a plow, what have you — and there was no injustice whatsoever, but you could not “rent money”. If you borrowed 100 denarii, you paid back 100 denarii, not 105, not 110, but 100 and only 100.
Then, somehow, the Church came to accept collection of just, modest amounts of interest. If I had to guess, I would say that it was because money was no longer seen as a finite good — if a crown or government issues money, there could be an increasing amount of money, and if it is fiat money (such as we have today), theoretically there could be an infinite supply of it (never mind the inflation that can result from that). In the present day — and this is a gross oversimplification — the regime in charge of “creating money” (in our case the Fed) is able to put more money into circulation in response to increased economic activity. In other words, more work and more value added necessitates “making more money”. I’m sure there is a more refined way of describing how the Church came to accept usury without vitiating her original teaching, but I’m not aware of it.
As far as I am aware, the Church never condemned paying usury, if there was no other way of getting necessary money. That is how non-Christians were able to become moneylenders for Christians. (That is not a derogatory comment about any ethnic group, just a non-judgmental statement of historical fact.)
BTW, this is a good, civilized, beneficial discussion. Is there any way it could be kept open for longer than another four hours?
Then, somehow, the Church came to accept collection of just, modest amounts of interest. If I had to guess, I would say that it was because money was no longer seen as a finite good — if a crown or government issues money, there could be an increasing amount of money, and if it is fiat money (such as we have today), theoretically there could be an infinite supply of it (never mind the inflation that can result from that). In the present day — and this is a gross oversimplification — the regime in charge of “creating money” (in our case the Fed) is able to put more money into circulation in response to increased economic activity. In other words, more work and more value added necessitates “making more money”. I’m sure there is a more refined way of describing how the Church came to accept usury without vitiating her original teaching, but I’m not aware of it.
As far as I am aware, the Church never condemned paying usury, if there was no other way of getting necessary money. That is how non-Christians were able to become moneylenders for Christians. (That is not a derogatory comment about any ethnic group, just a non-judgmental statement of historical fact.)
BTW, this is a good, civilized, beneficial discussion. Is there any way it could be kept open for longer than another four hours?
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Mike_from_NJ
Guest
The Church has absolutely endorsed slavery until the last century – so long as it is not Christians being enslaved. This can be seen in papal bulls like Creator O,mnium, Regimini Gregis, and Sicut Dudum. This is especially evident in that last one. The Portuguese were taking natives as slaves from The Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa. The Portuguese were not at war with The Canary Islands, nor were those taken in debt to the Portuguese. In the bull the pope did not lament that slaves were taken, but that they were also taking those natives who had either been baptized or had made a promise to become baptized (in what the bull calls “a promise of safety” but which can more properly be called blackmail). The pope in the bull also says that because there was no discretion in who was taken that those who had promised to become baptized were backing out (since there is no point to acceding to blackmail if you’re going to feel the brunt of the threat any way).
We see in the bull In Supremo Apostolatus that Pope Gregory commanded that the slave trade be abolished, but not the owning and breeding of slaves. Check out this paper which demonstrates why the bull was not a condemnation of slavery as a whole. It was only as part of Vatican II did the Church change its position and denounce slavery completely.
We see in the bull In Supremo Apostolatus that Pope Gregory commanded that the slave trade be abolished, but not the owning and breeding of slaves. Check out this paper which demonstrates why the bull was not a condemnation of slavery as a whole. It was only as part of Vatican II did the Church change its position and denounce slavery completely.
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Magnanimity
Guest
Yeah, I’m not aware of such either. There is a blog entry at the Library of Congress site that I think has a good discussion on the history of it. It goes into Pope Alexander III’s vehement opposition to usury so much so that he drafted up a decree that would have made it grounds for excommunication from the church. And this is the pope who oversaw Lateran III. So, it’s no small matter and not easily swept under the rug of Catholic theological history.
Canon 25 of that council reads like this:
“Nearly everywhere the crime of usury has become so firmly rooted that many, omitting other business, practice usury as if it were permitted, and in no way observe how it is forbidden in both the Old and New Testament. We therefore declare that notorious usurers should not be admitted to communion of the altar or receive Christian burial if they die in this sin. Whoever receives them or gives them Christian burial should be compelled to give back what he has received, and let him remain suspended from the performance of his office until he has made satisfaction according to the judgment of his own bishop.“ (Tanner, Norman, ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol 1, p. 223.
That’s just about as strong a condemnation as one could imagine, short of a death penalty. I’m not sure how the Catholic Church (of which I am happily a part) can skirt around this particular matter. It once very clearly condemned a practice as immoral that is no longer condemned. Perhaps a clever enough theologian could couch the change within the context of the advent of capitalism in Modernity. That’s about the only theological-sociological road that I see available.
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Ender
Guest
Not necessarily, no. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote this back in 1972:
“On the contrary, criticism of papal pronouncements will be possible and even necessary, to the extent that they lack support in Scripture and the Creed, that is, in the faith of the whole Church…”
Ratzinger held that even an “ultimate binding decision” by the pope wouldn’t be valid if there was “no clear evidence from the sources” of Catholic doctrine.
“When neither the consensus of the whole Church is had, nor clear evidence from the sources is available, an ultimate binding decision is not possible. Were one formally to take place, the conditions for such an act would be lacking, and hence the question would have to be raised concerning its legitimacy…”
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Mike_from_NJ
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TD Bank can’t beat me because I’m not their property (see Exodus 21:20-21). To call working with a bank “slavery” is to gravely misunderstand what slavery is.
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