Fundamental Option Theory & Mortal Sin

[AnneTeresa]

I just ran across a definition of Fundamental Option Theory and realize that I have this kind of thinking-that’s why mortal sin doesn’t seem that serious at times.

At least one pope (that I read of) has said this theory is heresy. I think it is a kind of relativism but I don’t know how to change it–it makes sense to me. I find it hard to believe that ONE single mortal sin would send a person to to hell, and that God would consider look at the general direction of your life.

Some people tell me that God looks at our general direction of where we are headed and takes into consideration our intentions and whether we intentionally reject him. But isn’t that what the fundamental Option Theory says? How do I change this thinking? Can anyone help?

 

[smichhertz]

You need to keep in mind that this is a relationship between you and Christ.

If I were married to a woman, and was perfectly loyal to her MOST of the time, but then just one time, I cheated on her. Well I have mortally offended our relationship, and (assuming she knew about it) it’s not really possible for us to move on until I apologize and make amends.

Same with Christ. Even if you have lived a good life, that doesn’t excuse you from seriously offending Him. One mortal sin ruptures your relationship with Him, and until you are sorry, that relationship cannot really continue.

As an aside: technically speaking, you can believe in the fundamental option theory as long as you recognize that a single mortal sin will change your fundamental option. The idea of a fundamental option in and of itself is fine. The problem is most people hijack that into the idea that you can commit unrepentant serious sins and still go to Heaven.

 

[Bookcat]

One is either “in life” …or not.

When one is alive in Christ…in a state of grace via Baptism etc …one knows true life…

What a wonderful reality!! In Christ we already share his resurrection. In him we have life.

But we can choose (for whatever reason) something grave…with full knowledge and complete consent…and thus commit a mortal sin.

The Church clearly teaches that one single mortal sin…removes one from a state of grace. That is one is no longer “in life”.

Hence the use of “mortal” (deadly) to denote it.

Just as it takes only one act of murder to kill the natural life in one…

If we should have the experience of committing a mortal sin…seek the grace of an act of perfect contrition right away…and then get to confession as soon as possible.

As to dying in such a state…yes God can give us the needed grace …even in the last moment…but we should not presume on this.

Rather as Jesus tells us in the Gospel…we need to watch… we need to be ready…

We know not the day or the hour…

The “fundamental option” idea (as erronously proposed) is not an option)

Indeed we change our “fundamental option” by a single mortal sin…and again by confession if we should fall. So the term could be used in that way.

In Jesus Christ we know indeed “true life”

let us remain in him. And in life.

 

[teachccd]

It would seem to me that what most here consider as mortal sin would have to be discerned, however. Many here are so conservative that any breaking of the ten commandments is a mortal sin. Mortal sin is a complete and wilfull rejection of God. Many people will commit grave acts and through various circumstances not be in mortal sin. If indeed one action is deemed as a mortal sin then that action had to be fully consented without any mitigating circumstances.

While I agree that mortal sin exists, I do not agree that people are in that state as often as we are led to believe. Satan hopes that we think that way for his sake but God would do anything to find that we are in union with Him. He knows the very depths of our being and absolutely every minute detail as to why we make the choices that we make. So, yes, cheating once on your wife ruptures your relationship but that is because your wife is not an infinite loving God who can fully discern to the infinite degree why you made that choice and exactly how your relationship remains with her. We can never compare how we judge peoples actions and how God judges our hearts.

Ok, I am done. Throw tomatoes if you choose but please don’t play God. God knows who absolutely rejects Him and His knowledge is not for us to know… teachccd

 

[PilgrimToChrist]

Fundamental Option states that those who are “basically good” go to Heaven, those who are “basically bad” go to Hell. Informally, it’s the kind of thinking that people use when they say, “Well, why wouldn’t I go Heaven, after all I’m not Hitler…” as though only Hitler goes to Hell.

Formally, the Fundamental Option is a condemned proposition, as it is contrary to the consistent teaching of the Church. It is one of those confused ideas that has come out of the New Theology.

We can be a “pretty decent person” and still go to Hell. It takes one single unrepentant mortal sin, such as a fully deliberate unclean thought, once in your life to send you to Hell for all eternity. The idea of the “Fundamental Option” is intended to eliminate the idea of mortal sin and turn morality into a general ruling about whether you are a “basically good” person or a “basically bad” person, whether you have a positive view of God (nearly everybody) or you are vicious and hate God (very few people). It is near universalism.

CDF:

There are those who go as far as to affirm that mortal sin, which causes separation from God, only exists in the formal refusal directly opposed to God’s call, or in that selfishness which completely and deliberately closes itself to the love of neighbor. They say that it is only then that there comes into play the fundamental option, that is to say the decision which totally commits the person and which is necessary if mortal sin is to exist; by this option the person, from the depths of the personality, takes up or ratifies a fundamental attitude towards God or people. On the contrary, so-called “peripheral” actions (which, it is said, usually do not involve decisive choice), do not go so far as to change the fundamental option, the less so since they often come, as is observed, from habit.

Pope John Paul II:

Some authors, however, have proposed an even more radical revision of the relationship between person and acts. They speak of a “fundamental freedom”, deeper than and different from freedom of choice, which needs to be considered if human actions are to be correctly understood and evaluated. According to these authors, the key role in the moral life is to be attributed to a “fundamental option”, brought about by that fundamental freedom whereby the person makes an overall self-determination, not through a specific and conscious decision on the level of reflection, but in a “transcendental” and “athematic” way. Particular acts which flow from this option would constitute only partial and never definitive attempts to give it expression; they would only be its “signs” or symptoms. The immediate object of such acts would not be absolute Good (before which the freedom of the person would be expressed on a transcendental level), but particular (also termed “categorical” ) goods. In the opinion of some theologians, none of these goods, which by their nature are partial, could determine the freedom of man as a person in his totality, even though it is only by bringing them about or refusing to do so that man is able to express his own fundamental option.

A distinction thus comes to be introduced between the fundamental option and deliberate choices of a concrete kind of behaviour. In some authors this division tends to become a separation, when they expressly limit moral “good” and “evil” to the transcendental dimension proper to the fundamental option, and describe as “right” or “wrong” the choices of particular “innerworldly” kinds of behaviour: those, in other words, concerning man’s relationship with himself, with others and with the material world. There thus appears to be established within human acting a clear disjunction between two levels of morality: on the one hand the order of good and evil, which is dependent on the will, and on the other hand specific kinds of behaviour, which are judged to be morally right or wrong only on the basis of a technical calculation of the proportion between the “premoral” or “physical” goods and evils which actually result from the action. This is pushed to the point where a concrete kind of behaviour, even one freely chosen, comes to be considered as a merely physical process, and not according to the criteria proper to a human act. The conclusion to which this eventually leads is that the properly moral assessment of the person is reserved to his fundamental option, prescinding in whole or in part from his choice of particular actions, of concrete kinds of behaviour.

So thus you could murder someone and still be a “pretty good person” and thus be saved even if you died unrepentant because concrete acts are not actually what make a sin, but are Gnostically separated from the reality of the soul’s “fundamental choice towards good”. Again, since man by nature can only choose those things which appear good to him, no one can choose that which seems evil (but can choose those things which seem good, but are actually evil), this is a form of Universalism. Both these documents condemn the Fundamental Option theory.

 

[Bookcat]

It would seem to me that what most here consider as mortal sin would have to be discerned, however. Many here are so conservative that any breaking of the ten commandments is a mortal sin. Mortal sin is a complete and wilfull rejection of God. Many people will commit grave acts and through various circumstances not be in mortal sin. If indeed one action is deemed as a mortal sin then that action had to be fully consented without any mitigating circumstances.

While I agree that mortal sin exists, I do not agree that people are in that state as often as we are led to believe. Satan hopes that we think that way for his sake but God would do anything to find that we are in union with Him. He knows the very depths of our being and absolutely every minute detail as to why we make the choices that we make. So, yes, cheating once on your wife ruptures your relationship but that is because your wife is not an infinite loving God who can fully discern to the infinite degree why you made that choice and exactly how your relationship remains with her. We can never compare how we judge peoples actions and how God judges our hearts.

Ok, I am done. Throw tomatoes if you choose but please don’t play God. God knows who absolutely rejects Him and His knowledge is not for us to know… teachccd

No tomatoes…some other kind of fruit

Yes God knows us very well…completely. He will know if we had full knowledge and complete consent (deliberate consent) needed to commit that one mortal sin which separates us from him.

And yes one needs not only grave matter but those other two as well.

As to the 10 commandments --yes they do denote grave matter. But it is also true that there is in many of them “parvity” or “smallness” of matter (it is not “conservative” to for some to think otherwise --it to be mistaken)…for example…the so called “white lie”.

I would though note that the Church does not teach that “Mortal sin is a complete and wilfull rejection of God.”…One does not have to be willing to reject God…or “completely reject God”. Pope John Paul II actually corrected this idea that some had. One has to choose a grave matter with full knowledge and deliberate consent …for but any reason…one does not need to think of rejecting God etc…

But I think perhaps you are trying to say that mortal sin is a grave thing…not something that is light…and that one needs to know sufficiently the sinful nature of the act…and that some may be “invincibly ignorant” etc…and that things can exist that mitigate guilt somewhat at least.

Hope my few tossed strawberries are helpful…

 

[Joel_PF]

Whoever goes to Hell goes out of their own free decision.

What is a mortal sin? It is a sin whereby we turn away from the Creator and towards a creature. We forsake the infinite good for a finite good.

A person may have been good for decades, but then chooses evil; that choice determines him; we are a person who exists in the present, not a series of events. Another might have been evil all their life but truly repented and aimed at the true good in his last moments.

God is not an angry judge waiting for someone to step out of the line to send them to Hell. He is Love and wants to unite all to Himself. However, when someone turns away from Him, they go their own way, and pain lies in that direction. God, the greatest delight of those who cooperate with His grace and unite themselves to Him, is a source of pain and torment to those who deny Him.

God is like the column of smoke/fire that accompanied the Jews out of Egypt. To the Jews, it was a protective pillar, something they held fast to. To the Egyptian soldiers it was a terrifying menace. God is the same, but the reaction of sinners and saints to Him are radically different.

Mortal sin is this choice of turning away from Him, of looking at God not as our highest goal but as something to be avoided. The result of this choice is unhappiness and torment, that is, Hell. Of course, no-one or almost no-one thinks “I’m rejecting God right now”, or even “I’m rejecting the good right now”. But that is what they effectively do when they prefer a smaller good to a greater one.

 

[smichhertz]

…we are a person who exists in the present, not a series of events…God is like the column of smoke/fire that accompanied the Jews out of Egypt. To the Jews, it was a protective pillar, something they held fast to. To the Egyptian soldiers it was a terrifying menace. God is the same, but the reaction of sinners and saints to Him are radically different…

Excellent points!

 

[Neil_Anthony]

At least one pope (that I read of) has said this theory is heresy. I think it is a kind of relativism but I don’t know how to change it–it makes sense to me. I find it hard to believe that ONE single mortal sin would send a person to to hell, and that God would consider look at the general direction of your life.

Hi AnneTeresa,
You’re on to something - there’s a relationship between your fundamental stance towards God and whether you will die in a state of grace or not. Consider these ideas:

1. Our ability to remain in a state of grace comes from the free gift of graces from God. We can certainly hope that if we truly love God, He will bestow the graces we need to remain in a state of grace at the hour of death (final perseverance).
2. Our fundamental direction towards or against God develops habits in us that become virtues or vices, which are a tendency to do good or to do evil. These will increase our “chance” of being in a state of grace at death. Not that God leaves anything up to chance.
3. Jesus said that he would not allow the devil to steal any of the souls entrusted to Him. He goes after the lost sheep. If you are one of His sheep, He will go after you. This may mean ultimately that He leads you away from mortal sin at the time of death.

But, these points must not lead us to presumption, which is the sin of assuming that God will take care of everything and that we need not try.