How does Original Sin work?

[simpleas]

It would be nice, I agree, but God is not unjust to give out original justice and holiness only the once and to bestow His grace in a different way on the rest of us.

The key thing that Adam and Eve lost was an intimate relationship with God. That was not essential to their nature and it was not owed to them; it was extended to them by God at His option.

When they spurned His friendship, God withdrew it (and certain other gifts He’d given them). He still offers that intimacy (and, indeed, through Jesus an even closer relationship than the one in the Garden) to us, their descendants, but He chooses to do so in a different way. Since we’re not owed that intimacy in any form, it is not unjust of God to make that change.

Not sure what you mean by :

The key thing that Adam and Eve lost was an intimate relationship with God. That was not essential to their nature

I would think that an intimate relationship with God was essential to their nature, as not having the intimate relationship with God is the cause of our fallen nature. When one is in the state of S.G, they are promised Heaven, but this would also mean that the way they live their life would be a life of holiness, may be not completely sin free, as I don’t think we can be 100% but very much a life that wouldn’t cause the amount of problems the fall did.

Thanks for your replies, much appreciated.

 

[fhansen]

Not sure what you mean by :

I would think that an intimate relationship with God was essential to their nature, as not having the intimate relationship with God is the cause of our fallen nature. When one is in the state of S.G, they are promised Heaven, but this would also mean that the way they live their life would be a life of holiness, may be not completely sin free, as I don’t think we can be 100% but very much a life that wouldn’t cause the amount of problems the fall did.

Thanks for your replies, much appreciated.

That relationship *is *essential for the purpose of man being able to retain his moral integrity and ultimate happiness. But it’s not essential in terms of what it means to be a human being. God made communion with Him optional, a matter of choice, and we’re just here to learn that truth, that a human being unpartnered with God is lost, without moral moorings, without the Spirit who alone can guarantee “life and life abundantly”. The relationship is essential in that full union with God is our very purpose, but non-essential in that we can exist-just exist-without it, even as we cannot exist at all without His sustaining it.

 

[Usagi]

This is where I don’t understand Justice, a person has not committed any offence to God, but still is not in a state of S.G.
There is no third state to be in.
When in a state sanctifying grace, one can lose this state through mortal sin, and lose Heaven.
When never being in a state of S.G (never baptised) one can not lose this state, of grace, but one may still enter Heaven should God desire them.

Right, there is no third state – and the state of grace is not the default. It’s not that humans would normally be in a state of sanctifying grace except that God is punishing us for someone else’s actions. God has to offer His grace – and He does, quite freely, but it’s not something that’s naturally part of us that He’s unfairly taken away.

Those who are saved without explicit baptism still die in a state of sanctifying grace given to them by God, just outside the normal means. You literally can’t experience Heaven without it.

 

[grannymh]

This is where I don’t understand Justice, a person has not committed any offence to God, but still is not in a state of S.G.
There is no third state to be in.
When in a state sanctifying grace, one can lose this state through mortal sin, and lose Heaven.
When never being in a state of S.G (never baptised) one can not lose this state, of grace, but one may still enter Heaven should God desire them.

Catholicism refers to Adam and Eve as being in the State of Original Holiness (aka Sanctifying Grace) and Justice.

Original Justice is “The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation” (CCC 376)

 

[grannymh]

Right, there is no third state – and the state of grace is not the default. It’s not that humans would normally be in a state of sanctifying grace except that God is punishing us for someone else’s actions. God has to offer His grace – and He does, quite freely, but it’s not something that’s naturally part of us that He’s unfairly taken away.

Those who are saved without explicit baptism still die in a state of sanctifying grace given to them by God, just outside the normal means. You literally can’t experience Heaven without it.

What in the world does “God is punishing us for someone else’s actions” refer to?

My apology if I read your post incorrectly. It has not been a good day for me.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Catholicism refers to Adam and Eve as being in the State of Original Holiness (aka Sanctifying Grace) and Justice.

Original Justice is “The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation” (CCC 376)

Interesting that the current Catechism departs from the usual formulation which also includes man’s harmonious subjection to God.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

What in the world does “God is punishing us for someone else’s actions” refer to?

It refers to Original Sin of course. Despite the more recent “lovey dovey” spin on Original Sin this teaching of Original Sin being a punishment on children consequent to the moral fault of their parents is both longstanding and mainstream.

It is important to note that this temporal punishment is not of the spiritual order (as God create’s souls directly from conception). It is of the bodily order.

For unbaptized babies this “punishment” after death traditionally only involves privation of heaven). Strangely privation of heaven was considered, if that is all, a very mild punishment. This is because one who is not aware of an inheritance they could have had does not pine it. They are happy enough with an immortal paradise. It is the will that burns in hell - and as the personal will of innocent babies is without fault it does not cause pain…and nor is punishment of the senses deserved.

The only reason that tradition talks so strongly of the punishments of hell (when in fact the top level is a place of natural paradise) was to oppose the Pelagians who held that infants had no sin at all and this was the reason they deserved no punishment.

 

[grannymh]

Interesting that the current Catechism departs from the usual formulation which also includes man’s harmonious subjection to God.

In the Catholic Church, “harmonious subjection to God” is the State of Original Holiness aka the State of Sanctifying Grace.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

In the Catholic Church, “harmonious subjection to God” is the State of Original Holiness aka the State of Sanctifying Grace.

I do not believe this must be so.
It is a disputed medieval point, I do not believe a definitive answer has yet been made.
Technically it is a “disposition” to SG.

“For if Adam had not sinned, he would have transmitted original justice to his descendants, to which justice belongs both that the soul is subject to God, and that the body is subject to the soul. And this excludes the capacity to suffer and die.”
Aquinas.

 

[Usagi]

What in the world does “God is punishing us for someone else’s actions” refer to?

My apology if I read your post incorrectly. It has not been a good day for me.

You may have misread slightly, but looking at my post again my sentence structure was kind of awkward to begin with.

I was responding to the notion that we all “should” start in a state of sanctifying grace by pointing out that such grace is a gift from God added on top of human nature, not something we had by right that God took away as punishment.

And Blue Horizon, while I appreciate the history of the concept, I don’t think “punishment for someone else’s actions” is the best way to look at Original Sin and its effects on us. “Consequences” might be a better word, as in the popular analogy of a man who squandered all his wealth and thus had nothing to pass down to his descendants (who, yes, could have been rich had their ancestor behaved better, but are not owed that wealth and are not being unfairly punished by its absence).

 

[grannymh]

You may have misread slightly, but looking at my post again my sentence structure was kind of awkward to begin with.

I was responding to the notion that we all “should” start in a state of sanctifying grace by pointing out that such grace is a gift from God added on top of human nature, not something we had by right that God took away as punishment.

And Blue Horizon, while I appreciate the history of the concept, I don’t think “punishment for someone else’s actions” is the best way to look at Original Sin and its effects on us. “Consequences” might be a better word, as in the popular analogy of a man who squandered all his wealth and thus had nothing to pass down to his descendants (who, yes, could have been rich had their ancestor behaved better, but are not owed that wealth and are not being unfairly punished by its absence).

The more I study the shift from Genesis 1: 25 to Genesis 1: 27, the more I see Adam’s immediate human nature as complete in the State of Original Holiness. There is no stage where a real human is without a rational soul. The reason for Genesis 1: 27 is that human nature is material/spiritual in order to share in God’s life which is what Original Holiness does.

It is a good thought that Original Holiness is a gift from God added on top of human nature, not something we had by right that God took away as punishment.

However, I do not find any indication that the first true human did not have immediate use of being in the spiritual image of God as it means sharing in the spiritual life of God.

Genesis 1: 25 is the close of the animal kingdom. Genesis1: 26 is clear that the next creature will be beyond material animals. Genesis 1: 28 shows that Adam is complete, body and soul, because he has a spiritual soul in the image of God. Because of Adam and his spouse Eve, true humans will fill the earth.

Genesis 3: 8-12 demonstrates the intimate relationship between the Lord God and themselves. Still, we need to go back to Genesis 2:15-17 which assumes that Adam is in in the State of Original Holiness because he is a spiritual being from the beginning Creator. It is possible for him to lose his Original Holiness.

The CCC actually does a better job describing the first human’s immediate State of Original Holiness aka Sanctifying Grace. Me, I like to see what I can find out in the first three truth-filled chapters of Genesis about human nature.
**CCC 375 **The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice”. This grace of original holiness was “to share in. . .divine life”.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

And Blue Horizon, while I appreciate the history of the concept, I don’t think “punishment for someone else’s actions” is the best way to look at Original Sin and its effects on us. “Consequences” might be a better word, as in the popular analogy of a man who squandered all his wealth and thus had nothing to pass down to his descendants (who, yes, could have been rich had their ancestor behaved better, but are not owed that wealth and are not being unfairly punished by its absence).

I think that when we come down to the level of technical and critical scholarly observations we are making here it is less than helpful to shy away from the traditional vocab in favour of better modern day pastoral formulations. This is a MT forum after all.

This serves as a warning that English translations of the original Latin words and concepts are themselves fraught and liable of misunderstanding. The word punishment truly is the best translation in my mind because it reminds us that these consequences are a privation, an evil, and taps into a tight ordering that Aquinas operates from in his understanding of evil, then sin (both physical and moral evil) then personal moral fault.

We cannot correctly grasp OS until we accept it is also a privation (“evil”) imposed on the human race by God and not just by some automatic consequential karma we did to ourselves. And by evil we of course simply mean God’s temporary withdrawal of privileges (certain freely given gifts of frienship) he initially gifted us. A privation. This was of course a charity given the actions of A&E who may have suffered eternally in “paradise” if God had not driven them out…even this is hinted at in Genesis.

Our 20th century preoccupation with democracy and personal freedom and individuality causes us to see scandal and even contradiction in God punishing us for the moral fault of another. Yet there truly is none and baptism is for the remission of sin (ie the restoring of some deprivations) however much we may want to emphasize the correlative imparting of grace. In fact in this light it seems remission of sin and giving of grace are almost one and the same thing but just seen from different perspectives.

 

[Usagi]

Right. As far as we can tell, Adam and Eve were created with sanctifying grace and the other preternatural gifts. But those are not required to be alive and human with a spiritual soul, as shown by the fact that the rest of us almost without exception spend some part of our lives outside a state of sanctifying grace. It’s necessary to our ultimate purpose and destiny, but it’s God’s to give, not something that belongs to us.

 

[grannymh]

Current humans, are in the State of Sanctifying Grace, or in a state deprived of Sanctifying Grace, or in the State of Mortal Sin, or they are dead.

 

[simpleas]

Every human is made in the image and likeness of God, there is a relationship.

 

[grannymh]

It just seems logically incoherent. Please enlighten me.

Naturally, it is logically incoherent because there is too much misinformation that the basics are either missing or turned inside out.

Let us start with a general foundation.

These three axioms of Catholicism are what make Original Sin work. There is the Divine Creator and the human creature.

1. God as Creator exists. Genesis 1: 1
2. God as Creator interacts personally with each individual human, that is, Adam. Genesis 2: 15-17
3. Every individual human, that is Adam, has the inherent capacity to interact with God as Creator. Genesis 3: 11-12

Please let me know if you are interested in this type of approach as a way of observing how Original Sin works.

Questions?
comments!

 

[grannymh]

Every human is made in the image and likeness of God, there is a relationship.

Absolutely.

 

[fhansen]

Current humans, are in the State of Sanctifying Grace, or in a state deprived of Sanctifying Grace, or in the State of Mortal Sin, or they are dead.

I’m trying to sort this out a bit. Are you now saying that all unjustified humans are in a state of mortal sin by virtue of being born that way, or for some other reason?

 

[grannymh]

I’m trying to sort this out a bit. Are you now saying that all unjustified humans are in a state of mortal sin by virtue of being born that way, or for some other reason?

Sorry. I am not familiar with the term unjustified humans.

 

[fhansen]

Sorry. I am not familiar with the term unjustified humans.

Sorry. We become justified at Baptism, sanctifying grace being a way to term that new justice wrought in us by God.