S
simpleas
Guest
They aren’t in a complete state of alienation from their creator or how else would an atheist be converted. The holy spirit is within everyone, believer or non believer.
- Status
F
fhansen
Guest
There’s difference between fallen and non-fallen, between Adam’s prior state and our own, in terms, among other things, of darkness. We simply, honestly, do not even* know* that there’s a God, from birth. That was not the case with Adam & Eve in Eden. We may well have a sense of His existence, and a desire to look for something outside of and “bigger” than ourselves, but the direct knowledge, that this world needs, is gone, except for revelation & grace.
G
grannymh
Guest
I am so glad I am not posting.
G
grannymh
Guest
I am so glad I am not posting.
B
Blue_Horizon
Guest
OS is often misunderstood by us moderns who have an excessive regard for individual freedom and independence. It is my experience that when we find ourselves significantly at odds with a traditional Church teaching it is often an indicator of an unrealised weakness in our own approach to life that has yet to be purified by the Gospel.
Every age and every person, due to OS, has such intellectual shortcomings even though graced.
B
Blue_Horizon
Guest
Being in a state without being able to self merit grace due to “contraction” of sin is obviously not as hopeless as entering that state through actual commission of a mortal sin.
So it is agreed that unbaptised infants are NOT in a state of complete alienation from God. However that does not mean the HS is “within” them. But the HS is certainly “with” them. You may like to brush up on the distinction between sanctifying graces and actual graces.
That is exactly why the Church also holds out so much hope for the destiny of the infant unbaptised.
But it simply is not within the Church’s ancient mandate to speak with certainty on such a fate because it clearly was never revealed by Christ to the Apostles so we must loyally remain silent on such matters though trusting in the God we do know to have their best interests at heart. We simply cannot be certain on some matters.
V
violetgreen
Guest
If any one of us were in Adam and or Eve’s position, they most likely would have done the same thing. Because we are NAUGHTY by nature, so to speak. Disobedient and headstrong. Yet not too smart, so we have been given some slack, unlike the fallen angels who knew the score when they turned away from God. That’s the original sin we inherit.
We are like Adam and Eve, nearly all of us. Few would automatically from an early age say Yes to God and obey like Mary. Thank you, Mary!
I don’t know about all this theological stuff too much, but I do remember that Jesus was against following the letter of the law instead of the spirit of it.
He told people to pick up their bed on the Sabbath and let the apostles pick a few grains of wheat as they passed a field on the Sabbath, both of which were technically working on the Sabbath. The Pharisees said Jesus was bad because he broke the Sabbath commandment, but it was nitpicking.
Wondering if unbaptized babies go to hell is probably nitpicking. That’s not the spirit of the thing. You have to be tested to fail, I think. They are not tested yet.
We are like Adam and Eve, nearly all of us. Few would automatically from an early age say Yes to God and obey like Mary. Thank you, Mary!
I don’t know about all this theological stuff too much, but I do remember that Jesus was against following the letter of the law instead of the spirit of it.
He told people to pick up their bed on the Sabbath and let the apostles pick a few grains of wheat as they passed a field on the Sabbath, both of which were technically working on the Sabbath. The Pharisees said Jesus was bad because he broke the Sabbath commandment, but it was nitpicking.
Wondering if unbaptized babies go to hell is probably nitpicking. That’s not the spirit of the thing. You have to be tested to fail, I think. They are not tested yet.
V
Vico
Guest
The idea of being tested to fail is a difference between Catholic and non-Catholic beliefs. Per St. Augustine merit is required to attain the Beatific Vision and it is not acquired without the state of sanctifying grace.
Catechism 1036 " we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed". 619 LG 48 § 3; Mt 22:13; cf. Heb 9:27; Mt 25:13,26,30,31-46.
G
grannymh
Guest
We need to recognize the two persons totally involved in Original Sin. God, His very Self, is totally involved because He is the Creator. Genesis 1:1. The first human on earth is created in the image of God. Genesis 1: 27. God is a transcendent, super-natural, above all nature Pure Spirit without material or human restrictions. The Catholic Church teaches that “Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.” (CCC 1730, small print) That simple sentence beginning with the powerful word “man” (humankind) is the basic reason Adam, himself, could be totally in a friendship relationship with his Creator God.
At this point, we need to avoid the error that the Creator and Adam are equal. It is true that Adam is a spiritual creature–note the word creature–because he has a rational spiritual soul. It is also true that there cannot be two equal in power supreme gods at the same time. Therefore, Adam has to live in free submission (obedience) to his Creator. (CCC 396)
Over time, all kinds of creative descriptions of Adam have appeared on this free speech public message board. This leads to all kinds of descriptions, some good, some not good, of the Creator God. Therefore, this is a proper place for Daniel and others to pop in with both the real and the weird descriptions of Adam.
After misconceptions and misunderstandings are discussed, we can continue exploration of the real Original Sin.
Links to the universal, not local, Catechism of the Catholic Church.
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/ccc_toc.htm
usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/
usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/
G
grannymh
Guest
Continued from post 183.
Adam’s nature is not like any animal created by God. God did love all His creatures. Genesis 1: 25. Still, in His love for Adam and Eve and their future descendants, God gave them a rational spiritual soul. Genesis 1: 27. This great gift made it possible for Adam and Eve, and our future selves, to know and love God and “to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life.” (CCC 356)
As clearly stated in post 183.
“At this point, we need to avoid the error that the Creator and Adam are equal. It is true that Adam is a spiritual creature–note the word creature–because he has a rational spiritual soul. It is also true that there cannot be two equal in power supreme gods at the same time. Therefore, Adam has to live in free submission (obedience) to his Creator. (CCC 396)”
In Genesis, chapter 2, the talented author clearly pictured the difference between human nature and Divine nature. Genesis 2: 15-17.
**CCC 396 **God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God. The prohibition against eating “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” spells this out: “for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die.” The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom.
The rest of the story, the flat out disobedience of Adam, Genesis, chapter 3, is familiar to the point that it is possible to skip over the deep serious consequences of Adam’s free act of disobedience. (CCC 397-400)
The human nature of Adam and Eve was immediately deprived of their State of Original Holiness and Justice. (CCC 399-400) We use the words Adam and Eve’s deprived human nature because originally their State aka State of Sanctifying Grace was intended for all human nature. (CCC 404)
We often wonder why we are not born in Adam’s State of Original Holiness and Justice. The answer is that our wounded human nature is what Adam and Eve transmitted to human descendants … (CCC 404-406)
The act of disobedience itself affected original human nature. Now, human nature is deprived of what should have been transmitted. God did not wound future humans with His disobedience. It is Adam’s act, severance itself, which becomes the “proper punishment.”
Links to the universal Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition are in post 183.
F
fhansen
Guest
None of that answers the question as to why Adam’s descendants should be “properly punished”, why “human nature is deprived of what should’ve been transmitted.” We only know that it is so deprived.
V
Vico
Guest
“In modern English uses of should are dominated by the senses relating to obligation” - Oxford Dictionary
St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica II, II, Q 108 Vengeance, A4
Punishment may be considered in two ways. * First, under the aspect of punishment, and in this way punishment is not due save for sin, because by means of punishment the equality of justice is restored, in so far as he who by sinning has exceeded in following his own will suffers something that is contrary to this will. Wherefore, since every sin is voluntary, not excluding original sin, as stated above (I-II:81:1 *), it follows that no one is punished in this way, except for something done voluntarily. * Secondly, punishment may be considered as a medicine, not only healing the past sin, but also preserving from future sin, or conducing to some good, and in this way a person is sometimes punished without any fault of his own, yet not without cause.
It must, however, be observed that a medicine never removes a greater good in order to promote a lesser …
- Excerpt: And just as the actual sin that is committed by a member of the body, is not the sin of that member, except inasmuch as that member is a part of the man, for which reason it is called a “human sin”; so original sin is not the sin of this person, except inasmuch as this person receives his nature from his first parent, for which reason it is called the “sin of nature,” according to Ephesians 2:3: “We . . . were by nature children of wrath.”
B
Blue_Horizon
Guest
Can you comment on the testing?
Not heard this one before. Is it Catholic or Protestant?
B
Blue_Horizon
Guest
Where are the quotes from?
Perhaps so “they would not become like us.”
Actually I personally believe Genesis is, amongst other things, an explanation, an aetiology for what is already accepted and taken for granted…that humanity suffers as a whole for evils not of their personal choosing. This raises the question of how can this be if the good are rewarded in this life by God and evil doers are punished.
It also seems taken for granted that descendants often suffer good and evil by the actions of their forebears or tribal leaders. That too is seen as a self evident fact of life.
The only question that really remains is why these evils are a personal response of “the gods” (“us”).
Granny doesn’t accept that it is. For her it’s pure natural karma for Adam’s disobedience.
I personally think not.
After sinning Adam still walked with God in the cool of the evening to begin with (God asks who told you that you were naked) is but one example.
Therefore some consequences were personally initiated withdrawn by God personally not by karma.
You question is why?
It is not explored, only hinted at.
To save us from even worse karmic consequences perhaps.
To demonstrate at a later date God’s even greater love for us.
The Father’s of the Church lightly touched on this question I believe.
One problem for us moderns and our excessive love of freedom is that we tend to think all forms of imposed deprivation are intrinsically evil and unjust.
Thus we think of “punishment” as something unworthy of God, especially for us descendents.
Yet punishment is not always so and not always unjust but actually redemptive.
Medievals clearly did not see punishment as always a dirty word.
It was more like “lovingly imposed discipline”.
If we see it in that light a lot of heat can be removed from this topic.
V
Vico
Guest
There are some non-Catholics that believe that mankind does not have free will and are predetermined to heaven or hell. The Catholic theology of merit is that merit does not mean earning but rather reward. When tempted to sin, there is a reward for successfully cooperating with the grace give by God using free will. That temptation is a test.
Also there are different conceptions about merit.
- St Augustine of Hippo: a child may die without earning either merit or demerit and merit is required for heaven.
- Latin tradition: even though an infant has not acted, he is bound with the devil due to no merit. (Stain of original sin: lack of sanctifying grace.)
- St Maximus the Confessor: a child may not die without demerit since his first motion was demeritous.
- Greek tradition: we have actual sin by the mere fact of our existence.
F
fhansen
Guest
From the post I quoted.
But it was too late by then according to Gen 3.
It’s a bit difficult to understand why man would fall corporately-and I think that’s one of the OP’s questions, which is why I brought it up. Granny said,** "We often wonder why we are not born in Adam’s State of Original Holiness and Justice. The answer is that our wounded human nature is what Adam and Eve transmitted to human descendants … (CCC 404-406)
The act of disobedience itself affected original human nature. Now, human nature is deprived of what should have been transmitted. God did not wound future humans with His disobedience. It is Adam’s act, severance itself, which becomes the “proper punishment.”.**
My response was that none of that really answers the question she posed: “We often wonder why we are not born in Adam’s State of Original Holiness and Justice”.
IMO God simply deemed it to be worthwhile for man to spend some time in the pigsty, so to speak, so he’ll hopefully gain wisdom, the wisdom to reject his ancestor’s decision, to reverse it within himself, so, like Prodigals, we might choose to turn and run back to the God whom Adam spurned. Here we literally know, by experience, good and evil, and so here we have all the more impetus, or should have, to ultimately choose the former over the latter.
In this way we struggle, and “own” our justice more fully as we cooperate with revelation and grace in achieving that justice even as it first comes strictly as a gift, resulting from faith, which is, itself, a gift of grace. Even then, however, faith is credited to us as justice -because we can always resist and reject grace. In any case God is working on the will; Adam freely fell, and we’re being drawn to freely rise, to the best we can with the gifts we’re given. But He won’t force that to happen.
F
fhansen
Guest
Yes, and I think, looking at the bigger picture, God uses the second “punishment” not so much as strictly punitive but more as reformative-or *formative *really-having made His world in a “state of journeying to perfection” as the catechism teaches. And man’s perfecting is the greatest endeavor of all, as we actually participate in it:
**1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him."26
Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.27
1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.**
Adam sort of got the ball rolling. He could’ve chosen rightly instead, which would’ve been the best course…but perhaps not in one sense? Perhaps God used the Fall as He did because the greater good can ultimately be realized with man experiencing the Fall. In any case He certainly deemed creation to be worth the creating, even while knowing the Fall would occur.
B
Blue_Horizon
Guest
Interesting thanks.
Can you better explain Maximus, the way you put it doesn’t seem to make sense.
B
Blue_Horizon
Guest
Ah, I see what happened.
It comes purely from Granny’s personal views not the Magisterium.
No surprises there then.
Also you didn’t actually quote her accurately.
Granny said “proper punishment” but you quoted her as saying “properly punished” which is why my search didn’t find it.
F
fhansen
Guest
Ah yes- I see that. Should’ve worded it more carefully.
- Status