Looking for an in-depth explanation of CCC389 (original sin)

[fhansen]

It would be the dim view of humanity that a person who actually knows God, but does not heed His word is intending to put himself above God. People refuse to heed His word because they are either blind or ignorant, and strongly desire something, not because they want to put themselves above God. Eve did not say or believe, “I am above God” or “My own desires have priority above God”. She believed “you will surely not die” and “the fruit is good”, which were both arguably falsehoods.I

Our actions speak loudest. And one of the lies was “you shall be like God…” To disbelieve God, to favor ones opinion over His,* is* to place oneself above Him. It’s sin because it’s an anomaly, against reason, out of sync with God and the rest of creation. And the first such sin or disordered action was to reject God by rejecting His word.

I’m not saying that ignorance doesn’t play a role; we’re here to learn something alright; I’m saying that they knew enough to know better-the accountability factor is critical for man. Otherwise God may as well have not withheld the Beatific Vision to begin with; why not just place everyone in His immediate presence where unending happiness rules the day? Instead He placed Adam-and Adam’s descendants-in a position of needing to choose Him and therefore that happiness that comes only from Him.The greatest good should be the greatest attractant. Falling away from that good and towards a lesser good is the instance of opening the door to evil.

When a person begins to understand that there’s something basically wrong or impaired with the world, with the state of human affairs, then she can begin to seek outside of herself and the world she finds herself in. And that seeking eventually leads to God.

 

[fhansen]

Arguably, the author(s) of Genesis 2-3 did not intend to depict some kind of omniscient superhuman, and God creates creatures from His own goodness today just as He always has, rather than the dim view that God creates something of lower value or capacity today (having an inclination to sin) . Being good from the start does not mean one cannot sin.

The “inclination to sin” doesn’t come from creating something of lower value; our basic value remains the same. Rather that inclination comes from not being united to ones ultimate end, God, Himself. Until then we exist with a sort of open wound that cannot be fully healed until that union is completely consummated. We were designed for happiness; we’ll continue look for it in a myriad of places until we finally rest in Him.

 

[simpleas]

Originally Posted by fhansen

Otherwise God may as well have not withheld the Beatific Vision to begin with; why not just place everyone in His immediate presence where unending happiness rules the day?

Good question to put to God, we after all can not know the ‘mind’ of the creator of this vast universe.

I wonder why God created a creature that would be capable of thinking for itself and in thinking for itself could actually choose itself over God.

I also reflect on what was wrong within the Garden of Eden for the first created humans to seek to be like gods, were they bored? Spiritually speaking, they would have been on their way to seeing God, then the temptation to be like gods was far too good to turn down.

 

[simpleas]

The “inclination to sin” doesn’t come from creating something of lower value; our basic value remains the same. Rather that inclination comes from not being united to ones ultimate end, God, Himself. Until then we exist with a sort of open wound that cannot be fully healed until that union is completely consummated. We were designed for happiness; we’ll continue look for it in a myriad of places until we finally rest in Him.

So we are just born human to suffer and die because we are not united to God? There is no point to that. There is something wrong in the human conscience that is why some of us humans are the most cruel of the creatures God ever created.

 

[fhansen]

Good question to put to God, we after all can not know the ‘mind’ of the creator of this vast universe.

I wonder why God created a creature that would be capable of thinking for itself and in thinking for itself could actually choose itself over God.

I also reflect on what was wrong within the Garden of Eden for the first created humans to seek to be like gods, were they bored? Spiritually speaking, they would have been on their way to seeing God, then the temptation to be like gods was far too good to turn down.

IDK. For whatever reason they must’ve thought they could maximize their happiness/fulfillment by bypassing God. To be like God is the ultimate in good either way. And don’t we echo that thought at times, wondering if freedom from any constraints whatsoever would be best?

 

[fhansen]

So we are just born human to suffer and die because we are not united to God? There is no point to that. There is something wrong in the human conscience that is why some of us humans are the most cruel of the creatures God ever created.

The “something wrong” is that we’re not united with God-this was Adam’s choice. Our choice is to undo that, to reverse Adam’s choice within us, so to speak. That’s really all there is to it. We experience or know good and evil in this world, whereas Eden’s experience was strictly one of good. We’re simply not born with knowledge of God now, let alone relationship with Him, let alone love for Him. We’re here, in quasi-separation from God, in a world sort of halfway between heaven and hell, to learn of our need of Him, to learn to hunger and thirst for heaven, for Him. Jesus revealed God’s true nature, apparently when the time was ripe in human history, so we could begin to turn to that light as we’re able, within our own histories. We begin to approach the light now, but there’ll be no perfection here on earth, and no perfect happiness until the the struggle here is over. It’s all about choice, about our wills, informed by revelation and experience, aided by grace.

 

[faithsmind]

Good Morning Vico

It depends on the definition of “inclination”.

Looking again at this quote:

“I answer that, Man like any other being has naturally an appetite for the good”

• St. Thomas Aquinas

A “natural appetite” is very easily substituted for “inclination”, so people are not inclined to evil using that synonym.

I could state: “People are inclined to illness.” In this usage, I am saying “capacity”. So, with this synonym I could say that “People are inclined to sin” in the same way as “People are inclined to illness.”

Concerning concupiscence, we have this:

I answer that, As the Philosopher says (Rhet. i, 11), “concupiscence is a craving for that which is pleasant.” - St Thomas Aquinas

So, when CCC405 says: “an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence” we could say that the craving for that which is pleasant is in itself an inclination to evil. Obviously, the CCC and Aquinas are referring to two different phenomena. Aquinas is referring to “strong desire”, and the CCC is referring to capacity to do evil.

Again, there is obviously some variation in the way of looking at humankind and God’s approach to people, His image. As Usagi said, some tampering has been done, so the question has been answered for this thread, and there has been no undermining of faith.

Or perhaps it is an innate craving to be loved and in communion with God. Original sin resulted in man veiling himself because of his shame and fear of rejection. It was man who separated himself from God because he wanted to avoid the pain of rejection. But God would not be able to come as a bridegroom and unveil us as His bride; holy, sacred, and beautiful so that we may intimately fall in love with Christ’s strength and unconditional love.
The Magnificat seems to answer the original question, as well as Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1: 27-30
And our frailties endear us to Him.

 

[faithsmind]

Or perhaps it is an innate craving to be loved and in communion with God. Original sin resulted in man veiling himself because of his shame and fear of rejection. It was man who separated himself from God because he wanted to avoid the pain of rejection. **But God would not be able to come as a bridegroom **and unveil us as His bride; holy, sacred, and beautiful so that we may intimately fall in love with Christ’s strength and unconditional love.
The Magnificat seems to answer the original question, as well as Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1: 27-30
And our frailties endear us to Him.

Sorry, edit- Original sin allows Christ to come as a bridegroom. Although… Mary is without original sin. ? Anyhow, I won’t comment anymore, I’m in way over my head but enjoyed reading this thread. Please don’t stop the discussion.

 

[simpleas]

The “something wrong” is that we’re not united with God-this was Adam’s choice. Our choice is to undo that, to reverse Adam’s choice within us, so to speak. That’s really all there is to it. We experience or know good and evil in this world, whereas Eden’s experience was strictly one of good. We’re simply not born with knowledge of God now, let alone relationship with Him, let alone love for Him. We’re here, in quasi-separation from God, in a world sort of halfway between heaven and hell, to learn of our need of Him, to learn to hunger and thirst for heaven, for Him. Jesus revealed God’s true nature, apparently when the time was ripe in human history, so we could begin to turn to that light as we’re able, within our own histories. We begin to approach the light now, but there’ll be no perfection here on earth, and no perfect happiness until the the struggle here is over. It’s all about choice, about our wills, informed by revelation and experience, aided by grace.

Adam and Eve were really not good candidates for choosing were they…

I can not help but think one person should not have made a choice for me, let alone millions of humans…what if this is all an untruth, that we are all united with God, but because we are told from the moment we can talk that we are sinners in need of God’s mercy we need to do certain things to gain grace and become better humans, yet we still in some ways will not reach this ‘better’ human.

 

[simpleas]

IDK. For whatever reason they must’ve thought they could maximize their happiness/fulfillment by bypassing God. To be like God is the ultimate in good either way. And don’t we echo that thought at times, wondering if freedom from any constraints whatsoever would be best?

From what I understand about the garden of Eden it would have been nothing like how the world became or is now. Two people alone, together in the good, no bad, no sin…a certain bliss I would think.Very different from our world, so I don’t know how it’s compared to our world and how we need to make choices, we have it a lot more difficult you could say, they had it pretty easy I would think (though I was not there, so can’t be sure). They had God over them and I can’t see how that was an un-freedom, we have other humans over us that restrict what we do to some degree, no where near the same as having God alone…

Just some thoughts that bug me…no attack intended upon you or the faith…I’m just rambling…

 

[Vico]

Okay, it isn’t tampering, it is clarification. A little more clarification wouldn’t hurt, then.

Catechism

302 Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created “in a state of journeying” (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call “divine providence” the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection:

By his providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, “reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well”. For “all are open and laid bare to his eyes”, even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.161

1704 The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good. He finds his perfection "in seeking and loving what is true and good."7

 

[fhansen]

Adam and Eve were really not good candidates for choosing were they…

I can not help but think one person should not have made a choice for me, let alone millions of humans…what if this is all an untruth, that we are all united with God, but because we are told from the moment we can talk that we are sinners in need of God’s mercy we need to do certain things to gain grace and become better humans, yet we still in some ways will not reach this ‘better’ human.

If we were all united with God would humans beheading humans be a possibility? And not everyone on this planet are told that they’re sinners anyway. And, BTW, guilt is operative in all people, with or without religion in the background.

 

[fhansen]

From what I understand about the garden of Eden it would have been nothing like how the world became or is now. Two people alone, together in the good, no bad, no sin…a certain bliss I would think.Very different from our world, so I don’t know how it’s compared to our world and how we need to make choices, we have it a lot more difficult you could say, they had it pretty easy I would think (though I was not there, so can’t be sure). They had God over them and I can’t see how that was an un-freedom, we have other humans over us that restrict what we do to some degree, no where near the same as having God alone…

Just some thoughts that bug me…no attack intended upon you or the faith…I’m just rambling…

According to the story they still had a choice to make, to make the right choice or avoid the wrong one. In any case it would seem that they didn’t yet appreciate what all they had.

 

[simpleas]

If we were all united with God would humans beheading humans be a possibility? And not everyone on this planet are told that they’re sinners anyway. And, BTW, guilt is operative in all people, with or without religion in the background.

Yes, because of freewill. Not all of us go around beheading people, most of the human race are not murders because they naturally know this is wrong, how do we know this if we are not untied to the creator of humans?
The truth is written on our hearts.

 

[simpleas]

According to the story they still had a choice to make, to make the right choice or avoid the wrong one. In any case it would seem that they didn’t yet appreciate what all they had.

Yes we all have choices to make, but never a choice like that of the Adam and Eve couple.

 

[fhansen]

Yes, because of freewill. Not all of us go around beheading people, most of the human race are not murders because they naturally know this is wrong, how do we know this if we are not untied to the creator of humans?
The truth is written on our hearts.

Ok, if from birth we were born united with God as He desires, as justice presumably demands; if we loved Him with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbor as ourselves IOW, would humans beheading humans, or gossiping about humans, or lying to humans, or stealing from humans, be a possibility?

 

[fhansen]

Yes we all have choices to make, but never a choice like that of the Adam and Eve couple.

We can choose, in the light of revelation and grace, not to continue on the pathway they placed us on. We can turn back to God, following Jesus on the right path. The choice, good over evil, life over death, God over no God, isn’t really much different. Humankind has just benefited, in a sense, by having experienced the wrong path, “the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors” 1 Pet 1:18

 

[OneSheep]

Good Morning fhansen,

Our actions speak loudest. And one of the lies was “you shall be like God…” To disbelieve God, to favor ones opinion over His,* is* to place oneself above Him. It’s sin because it’s an anomaly, against reason, out of sync with God and the rest of creation. And the first such sin or disordered action was to reject God by rejecting His word.

We have been here before, I think. To disbelieve God, to favor one’s opinion over his is indeed disordered. It is a disorder in that it indicates ignorance or blindness. Of course, it is against reason because reason assumes complete awareness in order to make accurate choices. So, while the choice made may have been to reject His word, the choice is made not with the intent to reject God, because a true rejection of God would involve knowing God and knowing that rejection of His word was indeed a rejection of Him.

So, we have three cases:

1. Rejection of His word without intent to reject Him. This is mostly described above.
2. Rejection of His word with intent to reject Him. In this case, the rejection is disordered because anyone with full knowledge of God, seen and known as the source of Love and all that is good would not reject Him other than the decision to self-destruct.
3. A decision to self-destruct is disordered because it involves seeing oneself as having little or no value, which is an untruth.

I’m not saying that ignorance doesn’t play a role; we’re here to learn something alright; I’m saying that they knew enough to know better-the accountability factor is critical for man.

Yes, we accuse people of knowing enough to know better, but the fact is that their reason is disordered, so they do not know better. Regardless of what they know, though, people are to be held account for their actions, such is critical in relations.

Otherwise God may as well have not withheld the Beatific Vision to begin with; why not just place everyone in His immediate presence where unending happiness rules the day?

That’s a very good question, fhansen. If people did not have a disordered view of things, if we were not ignorant, then we would not make bad choices. So, why not simply imbue all people with omniscience? I don’t have an answer to this, it is a mystery.

Instead He placed Adam-and Adam’s descendants-in a position of needing to choose Him and therefore that happiness that comes only from Him.The greatest good should be the greatest attractant. Falling away from that good and towards a lesser good is the instance of opening the door to evil.

The greatest good is the greatest attractant, and that is discerned through experience and learning, correct?

When a person begins to understand that there’s something basically wrong or impaired with the world, with the state of human affairs, then she can begin to seek outside of herself and the world she finds herself in. And that seeking eventually leads to God.

Yes, I agree.

The “inclination to sin” doesn’t come from creating something of lower value; our basic value remains the same.

What I was referring to was concupiscence. It is common for people to resent concupiscence (strong desire); it is a resentment that leads to seeing/believing that people have a lower value than we had previously.

In conclusion, “original ignorance” answers the questions without the dim view, the view that ultimately leads to people having a negative view of humanity or human nature.

 

[fhansen]

Good Morning fhansen,

We have been here before, I think. To disbelieve God, to favor one’s opinion over his is indeed disordered. It is a disorder in that it indicates ignorance or blindness. Of course, it is against reason because reason assumes complete awareness in order to make accurate choices. So, while the choice made may have been to reject His word, the choice is made not with the intent to reject God, because a true rejection of God would involve knowing God and knowing that rejection of His word was indeed a rejection of Him.

So, we have three cases:

1. Rejection of His word without intent to reject Him. This is mostly described above.
2. Rejection of His word with intent to reject Him. In this case, the rejection is disordered because anyone with full knowledge of God, seen and known as the source of Love and all that is good would not reject Him other than the decision to self-destruct.
3. A decision to self-destruct is disordered because it involves seeing oneself as having little or no value, which is an untruth.

I tend to think there’s still something missing here: pride. Pride is obstinate, a sort of exalting of the self is spite of or in opposition to the inconvenient truth of who we are-and who God is. It’s rebellious and ultimately destructive/harmful. It may prefer ignorance. It constitutes something less innocent and more insidious than your “ignorance alone” model IMO.

Yes, we accuse people of knowing enough to know better, but the fact is that their reason is disordered, so they do not know better. Regardless of what they know, though, people are to be held account for their actions, such is critical in relations.

That’s a very good question, fhansen. If people did not have a disordered view of things, if we were not ignorant, then we would not make bad choices. So, why not simply imbue all people with omniscience? I don’t have an answer to this, it is a mystery.

The greatest good is the greatest attractant, and that is discerned through experience and learning, correct?

Yes, I agree.

What I was referring to was concupiscence. It is common for people to resent concupiscence (strong desire); it is a resentment that leads to seeing/believing that people have a lower value than we had previously.

In conclusion, “original ignorance” answers the questions without the dim view, the view that ultimately leads to people having a negative view of humanity or human nature.

Concupiscence should be resented, in the sense of wanting to overcome it. Self-mastery is way more desirable. The benefit, however, is that we can become aware, by experience, of the futility of concupiscence, of a “freedom” that brings enslavement in the end. Concupiscence, in a manner of speaking, is freedom from the constraints God placed on creation, on us. As we come to freely recognize and accept our limitations, our “creaturely status” vis a vis God, an awareness that comes as we begin to know and love Him, then order rather than disorder begins to hold sway; we become increasingly balanced, grounded, and in control. Ironically, perhaps, Adam actually lost control by seeking to gain total control. Anyway, I like St Basil’s summary of how this all plays out:

**“If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, . . . we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands . . . we are in the position of children.” **

The New Covenant in a nutshell.

 

[OneSheep]

Good Morning, faithsmind, and welcome to you

Or perhaps it is an innate craving to be loved and in communion with God. Original sin resulted in man veiling himself because of his shame and fear of rejection.

Yes, perhaps original sin can be defined as an original self-veiling. This could be part of the “distorted image”:

399 Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness. They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.

It was man who separated himself from God because he wanted to avoid the pain of rejection. But God would not be able to come as a bridegroom and unveil us as His bride; holy, sacred, and beautiful so that we may intimately fall in love with Christ’s strength and unconditional love.

(Original sin allows Christ to come as a bridegroom.)

The Magnificat seems to answer the original question, as well as Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1: 27-30
And our frailties endear us to Him.

I think you are saying that the veil itself is what necessitates the incarnation. Because the veil indicates a shame when there is no reason for such fear, as God loves us unconditionally, then the incarnation takes place to show that He loves us as we are, that there is nothing we do that compromises His love for us. Makes sense.

In addition, the veil itself distorts His image. Arguably, the veil distorts our own self-image too. Original sin as an original veil, I can definitely see the merits of that approach!