Original Sin and Concupiscence

[Jon_Mallory]

The Catechism states here:

*405 Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence”. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle. *

I am perplexed by the language here. If concupiscence did not exist until after the Fall, why did it not exist before the Fall? Before the Fall, Adam and Eve apparently were inclined to sin and the Serpent knew this. Therefore, at the moment of his creation, was man not inclined to evil as well as to good?

“inclined to evil” seems to casual a description of our nature before baptism. That sort of language seems to suggest that we can conquer our inordinate desires through sheer willpower alone. Does the Bible not teach that we are slaves to sin?

 

[Vico]

You ask Vico the above.
I wish this wasn’t a rhetorical question.
I’ve been waiting for the answer for 40 years!

God bless

And Aquinas refers to pride as inordinate self-love. So, where did inordinance come from in Adam in the first place?

If the demons were at some time good, what made them become bad?

You see, you keep quoting explanations of why there’s evil in the world. I think we know this stuff. No need to ask Thomas about that.

What we here all want to know is where did that evil come from? Why did satan angel have pride? What put that pride in him? He wasn’t the devil yet.

There’s some basic misundersanding here. It’s not like I would actually expect you to answer the question Vico. It’s just that I’m wondering if you’ve ever really thought this out, and I don’t mean that in an insulting way.

God bless

I posted it before, from Isaiah 45:7 **I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things. **

I have thought about it much, including studies of non Christian religions. God knows the destiny and gave supernatural gifts of grace to angels and Adam and Eve bringing the power to resist the sin of pride, which power may not exist naturally in rational creatures. God makes choice possible, but has not revealed every detail, such as the fate of unbaptized infants that die. God would know before creating, that one-third of the angels were going down and that Eve and Adam would fall. And we have to remember from the Gospel that what is impossible for man is not impossible for God. However God provides a plan of redemption for man. *Too bad *about the fallen angels – which is something we do not fathom. Are you willing to leave some mysteries unanswered, as Jesus did when he said (Matt. 24:35-36)?:35 Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.
36 But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone.

 

[Bahman]

How would we ever know where it came from unless it was revealed to us?

Why it didn’t revealed to us? Because there is no solution for the origin of the evil in a perfect good creation.

Did it come from within? Was it revealed to him by the Father that his Son would reign as Christ the King and His son’s mother would reign as the Queen of Heaven; and so full of himself, Satan could not believe it and refused to bow to the will of the Father?

Satan couldn’t possibly have any sense of pride over Jesus because He is God and because he was the best servant of God. Servant by definition is a person who does not have any sense of pride. Another important question is that why all Angels didn’t fall when Satan fall? He was the best so the situation of fall of Angels is problematic. Moreover, there is many paradoxes related to story of Jesus and Satan when Jesus was on Earth, such as temptation and examination of Jesus by Satan! So the story of fall of Angels seems fallacious.

Then where evil comes from in Satan would be his own envy. He would rather be the enemy of Christ on Earth than the friend of Christ in Heaven.

The evil couldn’t comes from anywhere in a perfect heaven.

 

[fhansen]

I posted it before, from Isaiah 45:7 **I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things. **

This verse is often misunderstood IMO. From the Catechism:

311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:
For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.

Are you willing to leave some mysteries unanswered…

Grugingly, eventually maybe, but I know not the day or the hour.

 

[Rohzek]

I don’t see why you’re all willing to leave this as a mystery or make it such a difficult question to answer. What is good is solely determined by God’s will. We, humanity, were made in God’s image, which means we have an individual and free will just as God does. Furthermore, we have a creative potential. We can come up with tons of new ideas, languages, devices, and theories. In these aspects, we are like God. With free will, we are free to decide whatever. God’s will is that we have an honest relationship with him. Roughly speaking, that is what good is. However, because we have our own will, we don’t have to agree with God. When our will is contrary to the will of God, that is evil.

Evil is not a substance, so we should cease treating it like it is or this conversation really won’t progress much further. Evil is the crossing of the will of God. This does not involve material substance. It involves thought, which is abstract. Thought is not concrete/substantial. The problem of evil is relatively simple and so is the answer, as I have aptly demonstrated. The problem of evil is not a problem at all. Nor is the problem of evil reflective of some sort of imperfection/abomination embedded into Creation from the beginning or some defect of God himself. We can avoid this problem easily too if we also abandon the whole conceptual model of Aristotle’s/Aquinas’ notion of perfection: the potentiality & actuality model. It’s not a useful model mostly because people use it to describe essence/nature, when really it can only be used to describe abstract actions (if that).

Why did Lucifer have excessive pride, as Aquinas put it? The answer again is simple: Because Lucifer willed it and consciously chose to cultivate it through his own will and creative enterprise. Why did Lucifer make the choice he did? Well, that’s something probably only he and God knows.

 

[Vico]

…Why did Lucifer make the choice he did? Well, that’s something probably only he and God knows.

That all makes sense. The mystery however is in the last statement I left in your quote above

 

[Vico]

This verse is often misunderstood IMO. From the Catechism:

311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:
For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.

Grugingly, eventually maybe, but I know not the day or the hour.

I can see how someone could misunderstand that God creates moral evil, but thinking that there is no free will.

 

[fhansen]

I can see how someone could misunderstand that God creates moral evil, but thinking that there is no free will.

Didn’t quite get your meaning here.

 

[fhansen]

I don’t see why you’re all willing to leave this as a mystery or make it such a difficult question to answer. What is good is solely determined by God’s will. We, humanity, were made in God’s image, which means we have an individual and free will just as God does. Furthermore, we have a creative potential. We can come up with tons of new ideas, languages, devices, and theories. In these aspects, we are like God. With free will, we are free to decide whatever. God’s will is that we have an honest relationship with him. Roughly speaking, that is what good is. However, because we have our own will, we don’t have to agree with God. When our will is contrary to the will of God, that is evil.

Evil is not a substance, so we should cease treating it like it is or this conversation really won’t progress much further. Evil is the crossing of the will of God. This does not involve material substance. It involves thought, which is abstract. Thought is not concrete/substantial. The problem of evil is relatively simple and so is the answer, as I have aptly demonstrated. The problem of evil is not a problem at all. Nor is the problem of evil reflective of some sort of imperfection/abomination embedded into Creation from the beginning or some defect of God himself. We can avoid this problem easily too if we also abandon the whole conceptual model of Aristotle’s/Aquinas’ notion of perfection: the potentiality & actuality model. It’s not a useful model mostly because people use it to describe essence/nature, when really it can only be used to describe abstract actions (if that).

Why did Lucifer have excessive pride, as Aquinas put it? The answer again is simple: Because Lucifer willed it and consciously chose to cultivate it through his own will and creative enterprise. Why did Lucifer make the choice he did? Well, that’s something probably only he and God knows.

I understand that maybe the best we can do is to say that the reason Lucifer sinned-and the reason Adam sinned- is because they willed to sin. But I can’t help but want to dig a little deeper. Adam was told, in one way or another, that he would die if he ate of the forbidden fruit. It’s said that he had full knowledge and deliberate intent. But does Adam know better now, after having tasted/experienced death, both spiritually and physically, than he did before? Does Adam now have an even fuller knowledge that may have helped lead him at some later point to repentance, metanoia?

I see this world as a reprieve, so to speak, from the eternal death suffered by the fallen angels, so that man may have the time and opportunity to change his mind. I don’t see Adam as some super-being. He was just a guy, like us in so many ways, but gifted/graced to one degree or another to a greater extent, and in possession of an innocence we can never quite seem to retain-or attain to-here in this present world. And he blew it, as God knew He would, while already having a plan to ultimately nurture Adam/humanity back to life, to an even fuller life than Eden originally provided, in fact.

 

[frangiuliano115]

“inclined to evil” seems to casual a description of our nature before baptism. That sort of language seems to suggest that we can conquer our inordinate desires through sheer willpower alone. Does the Bible not teach that we are slaves to sin?

Inclined to evil, sin nature, concupisensce is not removed at baptism. Not the catholic baptism and not the protestant baptism.

At baptism catholics remove original sin. The inclination toward evil remains.

Sheer will power alone does not conquer concup. because it is part of our nature, slaves to sin as you and the book of Romans puts it. The Israelites tried this. They tried but could not keep the law - the Mosaic Covenant.

Only Jesus, in the New Covenant, could put that law into our hearts and make us want to follow the law with His grace.

So you’re right but that’s not the problem. The problem is where did the evil that inclines us toward that evil come from?

God bless

 

[frangiuliano115]

I posted it before, from Isaiah 45:7 **I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things. **

I have thought about it much, including studies of non Christian religions. God knows the destiny and gave supernatural gifts of grace to angels and Adam and Eve bringing the power to resist the sin of pride, which power may not exist naturally in rational creatures. God makes choice possible, but has not revealed every detail, such as the fate of unbaptized infants that die. God would know before creating, that one-third of the angels were going down and that Eve and Adam would fall. And we have to remember from the Gospel that what is impossible for man is not impossible for God. However God provides a plan of redemption for man. *Too bad *about the fallen angels – which is something we do not fathom. Are you willing to leave some mysteries unanswered, as Jesus did when he said (Matt. 24:35-36)?:35 Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.
36 But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone.

So if we take Isaiah as proof text, what you’re saying is that God created evil? So God is not a good god?

Interesting that you bring up Mathew 24. Jesus didn’t say a lot of things that I wish He had. But He was in His human form and was limited, as we all are, in knowing everything because He was on the earth and although He was 100% man and 100% God, He was limited. Another idea for another day. You could pick the bible apart pc by pc, but I don’t mean like an atheist would. More in the sense that if you study it enough you come to see that what Jesus said and what Paul teaches is sometimes in conflict. But that has nothing to do with evil.

God bless

 

[frangiuliano115]

Why it didn’t revealed to us? Because there is no solution for the origin of the evil in a perfect good creation.

Satan couldn’t possibly have any sense of pride over Jesus because He is God and because he was the best servant of God. Servant by definition is a person who does not have any sense of pride. Another important question is that why all Angels didn’t fall when Satan fall? He was the best so the situation of fall of Angels is problematic. Moreover, there is many paradoxes related to story of Jesus and Satan when Jesus was on Earth, such as temptation and examination of Jesus by Satan! So the story of fall of Angels seems fallacious.

The evil couldn’t comes from anywhere in a perfect heaven.

Okay. So are you ready to say that God didn’t create everything perfectly? That would be a solution; although it would have had to be intentional and that’s diffcult to accept.

God bless

 

[fhansen]

Okay. So are you ready to say that God didn’t create everything perfectly? That would be a solution; although it would have had to be intentional and that’s diffcult to accept.

God bless

God could always create something better, but could He create something perfect, as He is perfect; could He create another God? Maybe the Catechism can help here:

310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better. But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.

 

[Vico]

So if we take Isaiah as proof text, what you’re saying is that God created evil? So God is not a good god?

Interesting that you bring up Mathew 24. Jesus didn’t say a lot of things that I wish He had. But He was in His human form and was limited, as we all are, in knowing everything because He was on the earth and although He was 100% man and 100% God, He was limited. Another idea for another day. You could pick the bible apart pc by pc, but I don’t mean like an atheist would. More in the sense that if you study it enough you come to see that what Jesus said and what Paul teaches is sometimes in conflict. But that has nothing to do with evil.

God bless

It is illogical to conclude that God is not good because he allows free will.

What we hold as dogma of faith as Catholic is:

• Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the Devil.
• The Devil possesses a certain dominion over mankind by reason of Adam’s sin.
• There is a supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul, which precedes the free act of the will.
• There is a supernatural influence of God in the faculties of the soul which coincides in time with man’s free act of will.
• For every salutary act internal supernatural grace of God (gratia elevans) is absolutely necessary.
• Internal supernatural grace is absolutely necessary for the beginning of faith and of salvation.
• Without the special help of God the justified cannot persevere to the end in justification.
• The justified person is not able for his whole life long to avoid all sins, even venial sins, without the special privilege of the grace of God.
• Even in the fallen state, man can, by his natural intellectual power, know religious and moral truths.
• For the performance of a morally good action Sanctifying Grace is not required.
• In the state of fallen nature it is morally impossible for man without Supernatural Revelation, to know easily, with absolute certainty and without admixture of error, all religious and moral truths of the natural order.
• Grace cannot be merited by natural works either de condigno or de congruo.
• God gives all the just sufficient grace (gratia proxime vel remote sufficiens) for the observation of the Divine Commandments.
• God, by His Eternal Resolve of Will, has predetermined certain men to eternal blessedness.
• God, by an Eternal Resolve of His Will, predestines certain men, on account of their foreseen sins, to eternal rejection.
• The Human Will remains free under the influence of efficacious grace, which is not irresistible.
• There is a grace which is truly sufficient and yet remains inefficacious (gratia vere et mere sufficiens).
• The sinner can and must prepare himself by the help of actual grace for the reception of the grace by which he is justified.
• The justification of an adult is not possible without Faith.
• Besides faith, further acts of disposition must be present.
• Sanctifying grace sanctifies the soul.
• Sanctifying grace makes the just man a friend of God.
• Sanctifying grace makes the just man a child of God and gives him a claim to the inheritance of Heaven.
• The three Divine or Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity are infused with Sanctifying grace.
• Without special Divine Revelation no one can know with the certainty of faith, if he be in the state of grace.
• The degree of justifying grace is not identical in all the just.
• Grace can be increased by good works.
• The grace by which we are justified may be lost, and is lost by every grievous [mortal, serious] sin.
• By his good works the justified man really acquires a claim to supernatural reward from God.
• A just man merits for himself through each good work an increase of sanctifying grace, eternal life (if he dies in a state of grace) and an increase of heavenly glory.

 

[Bahman]

Okay. So are you ready to say that God didn’t create everything perfectly? That would be a solution; although it would have had to be intentional and that’s difficult to accept.

God bless

That only means that the story of fall of Angels is fake, a simple myth people has accepted long time ago and still persist to believe!

 

[Bahman]

God could always create something better, but could He create something perfect, as He is perfect; could He create another God? Maybe the Catechism can help here:

310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better. But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.

So you want to put the weight of origin of evil on shoulder of God! In the same time you believe that God is absolutely just but He punishes others (fallen Angels, Adam and Eve, etc.) for what He is responsible for. That seems like a Joke! Hence accepting that perfect God can always create a better or worst creation is complete nonsense.

 

[grannymh]

Evil is a result.

That is plain and simple truth.

Evil describes a result.

That, too, is plain and simple truth.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

God could always create something better, but could He create something perfect, as He is perfect; could He create another God?

Certainly anything God creates has to be less than God, which by definition means imperfect.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

That only means that the story of fall of Angels is fake, a **simple myth **people has accepted long time ago and still persist to believe!

O.K. so now your calling Catholics on this board simple minded?

This is a typical atheist strategy. Are you atheist?

 

[frangiuliano115]

I believe its inherent in any being other than God. We’re all inordinate, to one degree or another, relative to Him. As such we cannot “operate” apart from Him, and yet He gives us the very choice to do so if we wish, or experiment with doing so as Prodigals who’ve left home and have the opportunity-the need- to learn that there’s no place like home, as Dorothy put it; home’s really an awesome place after all, in fact.

God saw fit, obviously, not to abandon Adam even as serious consequences of his sin did redound nonetheless. I tend to think that Adam’s limitations, however we want to characterize them, reduced his culpability to some extent, even as some seem to insist that this couldn’t be the case. Adam was seriously culpable. And yet Adam was also limited. In fact he could learn-and apparently needed to learn-in order to contribute in his own way to his perfection.

Yes. I agree with much of the above. Some differences however. I was taught, and taught, that Adam was VERY culpable. God spoke directly to him and he disobeyed. How are we to behave if Adam couldn’t? He was also doubley responsibel (did Ijust make up a new phrase?) by accepting the fruit from Eve. I mean, if the serpent had offered it his resistance might have been more understandable, but Eve offered it - his equal - and he accepted.

I’d have to agree with those who believe his culpability was not reduced. He had enough knowledge to make the correct decision. Plus, who needs a lot of knowledge? We should just do what God wants us to do.

I also don’t understand what you mean by:

**In fact he could learn-and apparently needed to learn-in order to contribute in his own way to his perfection.
**

I agree that he could learn, and had to if he wanted to live outside the Garden, but how did he contribute to his own perfection? Have never heard this concept before.