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Et_Cetera
Guest
How can people be held accountable for an act that they did not commit? It seems to imply that humans are inherently bad and weak.
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JuanCarlos
Guest
Think of Original Sin as a disease- if two parents are carriers, the children will have it too.
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Et_Cetera
Guest
So it is really believed that if a child dies without first having been baptised, it will be condemned to suffering?
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Claire_from_DE
Guest
Imagine that when they were young your parents ignored a warning sign and went into a radioactive building. The radioactivity damaged their genes and resulted in a mutation that was passed down to their children. They owner of the building accepted their apologies for breaking into the building and didn’t prosecute them. The owner even made available to them and their descendants a medication could help them overcome the weakness of the mutated gene when they took it regularly.
We do inherit a weakness from our first parents. We have a fallen nature. God has given us a medication (grace). But, left to ourselves, we aren’t by nature good and generous. Don’t you see weaknesses in yourself that you must work hard to overcome?
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Kronos
Guest
No…
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Claire_from_DE
Guest
It hasn’t been revealed to us what happens to unbaptized children. God is both just and merciful. We don’t assume that the child is condemned to suffering; we leave his fate to divine mercy.
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JuanCarlos
Guest
The traditional understanding is while the child does not have the grace to enter heaven, the child does not have the sins to be punished in hell. It goes instead to a place of perfect natural happiness- a happiness better than anything on this earth
Here’s another analogy- Heaven is like an underwater city. You simply can’t go unless you were given grace, or scuba gear.
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Nickkname
Guest
God is not bound by His sacraments. He can give the children the graces necessary for salvation. Infact, Baptism is in three forms: Water, desire, and blood. Baptism by water is the usual form, Baptism by desire is when someone would want a Baptism if they knew about it (in other words, they would choose to be baptized if they had knowledge of Christ), and Baptism by blood is when someone dies for Christ. A child can very well have a Baptism of desire. Moreover, God excludes no one from His Mercy - He desires all to be saved.
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Sam_Maloney
Guest
As psychology, I think it makes perfect sense.
Every human being seems to have this nagging feeling that the world around us-- life itself, including us-- isn’t what it should or could be. As though the world is broken.
Why do babies cry when they are fed, clean, and warm? Why do teens always say ‘That’s not FAIR!’? Because on some level they recognize that the world as it is isn’t the world they were made for.
The Fall of Man is the only story I’ve heard that adequetly explains or even recognizes this instinctive disconnect between our expectations and the world we find ourselves living in.
Every human being seems to have this nagging feeling that the world around us-- life itself, including us-- isn’t what it should or could be. As though the world is broken.
Why do babies cry when they are fed, clean, and warm? Why do teens always say ‘That’s not FAIR!’? Because on some level they recognize that the world as it is isn’t the world they were made for.
The Fall of Man is the only story I’ve heard that adequetly explains or even recognizes this instinctive disconnect between our expectations and the world we find ourselves living in.
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Nickkname
Guest
It is not just Adam who sinned, but we too. We have all sinned. In the sin of Adam we participate by committing sins ourselves.
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Namesake
Guest
If that is true then an omnipotent God would ensure that all *would be saved, no?
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benedictus2
Guest
**BRILLIANT!
**
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Nickkname
Guest
Can man not choose love or refuse it? Is God not love? (rhetorical questions)
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Namesake
Guest
If God wants all to be saved, then if not all are saved, God doesn’t get what He wants. If God is omnipotent He should get what He wants. So maybe God doesn’t want all to be saved after all. Or maybe God isn’t omnipotent.
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benedictus2
Guest
What more can God do? He has first off, become incarnate, then continues to dwell with us in the Eucharist.
But He will not usurp our free will.
Think about it, when Adam and Eve sinned, they were in perfect posession of Sanctifying Grace. Yet they still oposed God.
A priest once commented that the greatest quality of God is not so much love but humility. And this is an answer to Adam’s pride.
After all it is Adam’s desire to be God that brought about the fall in the first place.
We need to accept our creaturedness for there in lies our greatness. We need to accept that God’s foolishness (if there is such a thing) is way above our wisdom.
And I think questions of why God is allowing this or that is really a re-phrasing of what must have gone through Adam and Eve’s head before they chose to rebel.
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Nickkname
Guest
Maybe you don’t know what “omnipotent” means? You act as if everything is God’s fault, as if you have no fault of your own. Do you presume that man is as white as snow?
Omnipotent means that God has the power to do all the good He wants, how He wants, when He wants. where He wants. and why He wants. It dosen’t mean He has the power to destroy the grace of free-will. In fact, destruction is evil, and God is not in the least evil - He is all-good, goodness itself.
God certainly wants all saved, and He has said this in His Word. Open the Bible and read.
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Namesake
Guest
So you thereby limit the power of God?
So God doesn’t get what He wants? How is that omnipotent? He wants something that He can’t have?
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Nickkname
Guest
Do you really think my words have an effect on God, or are you just grasping for straws now?
God is love. Meditate on that.
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Namesake
Guest
You said “It dosen’t mean He has the power to destroy the grace of free-will.”
Do you mean that there is something God can’t do?
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PKinsale
Guest
God wants us to love him and choose Him freely. We can all talk about what we think is right and fair according to our paltry earthly standards, but Our Lord is pretty clear in the Gospels that some people are doomed to hell. Those who are in hell (and we know not whom) are there because they chose it.
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