Original Sin

[grannymh]

Here is what I am saying that you don’t like, I think. I said that “All sin involves blindness and/or ignorance.” If you disagree with this, then provide an counterexample. And please don’t say something general like “mortal sin” again. Provide a simple counterexample or give up trying to disprove my point.

What I flat out disagree with is your two insulting statements in post 867, page 58.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11459340&postcount=867

“Blindness is automatic.” and “We are born ignorant.”

I do not give examples of human’s Mortal Sins because I cannot know what God knows about that person. Therefore, anyone can assume that there are mitigating circumstances. Nonetheless, I have had a duh moment. I have a counterexample for you.

Adam is the one person, whom we know well, who actually freely, with full knowledge, committed what would be known today as a Mortal Sin. :doh2:

 

[fhansen]

“CCC 2515: Etymologically, “concupiscence” can refer to any intense form of human desire. Christian theology has given it a particular meaning: the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason.” This supposes that the “inordinate” part can be attributed to a suspension or a defeat of reason and can be opposed to the power of reason, which is false. And the evolution from “sensitive appetite” from “inordinate sensitive appetite” is not a matter of this - as opposed to - that, white - as opposed to - black, but a matter of degree. Can you define the exact moment when sexual desire becomes lust, the appetite of eating becomes gluttony and the self-esteem and desire to dominate the environment becomes pride? Are you born fully equipped with such power of discernment and self-control?

Adam was born with that integrity, that self-control, according to church teachings. I’ve echoed the loss if it in my own life. But I never knew God as immediately as Adam is said to have known Him. Do you think that’s true, that at some point man knew God, communed with Him, in a way we don’t now? BTW, do you think that gluttony, for one, is reasonable?

 

[grannymh]

Wasn’t God looking at A&E negatively when they sinned?

Definitely, not.

If God had been looking “negatively” at the persons of Adam and Eve, they and humanity, you and I, would be gone in a flash. I don’t know about you. You may be a good looking computer chip. But, I am definitely here as a real person. :kiss4you:

It is a fact that God, as our Creator, gave us the ability to initiate and control our choices/actions. Adam was a real person who could seek our Creator, become obedient to our Creator and when the final choice was to be made, Adam had the freedom to choose between being in our Creator’s sacred friendship or not.

God loved all of the above about Adam, including Adam’s freedom. Sirach 15: 14 is powerful information about Adam’s freedom. The context, Sirach 15: 11-20 answers a number of questions in this thread. Catholicism teaches that “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.” (CCC, 1730; Smaller print in CCC, 1730 is supporting material by St. Irenaeus)

God looked “negatively”, in justice, at Original Sin, which belonged to Adam. Love the sinner, hate the sin.

In His love for Adam, God did not destroy him, which would be deserved. Instead, the effects of Adam’s devastating decision remained. Leaving the Garden, Adam and Eve were continually called to repent and return to God. There is a tradition that Adam and Eve returned to God’s friendship.

God continued His love for humanity by promising the Divine Messiah.

 

[vames]

Adam was born with that integrity, that self-control, according to church teachings. I’ve echoed the loss if it in my own life.

You say you have echoed the loss of it in your own life because you’ve lost your innocence when you saw others doing bad things and when you saw yourself doing bad things. I think anyone can say the same thing, so anyone can relate to Adam’s story. I can compare my first grave sin to a loss of virginity at the hands of a brutal stranger: I used to think that I am invulnerable and I can control myself and I simply can’t make this or that mistake, or that any harm done can be as easily reversed and undone like you wash the dust from a shirt. Of course I was wrong. I can blame myself now and say that I was too proud, too dumb, too forgetful about what I have been taught, too blind to see the value of other people, too confiscated by the thought of the immediate benefit of doing that bad thing, too confused by my fear of the immediate consequences of doing the right thing. But can I say that I wanted to be like God? No… being “like God” can’t imply anything that is conditioned and provoked by any particular circumstance that we have to avoid or fight or adapt to.

But I never knew God as immediately as Adam is said to have known Him. Do you think that’s true, that at some point man knew God, communed with Him, in a way we don’t now?

No living human being (including Adam) could have a better knowledge and communication with God than Jesus. And while He was on the garden, He said: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done”. And while He was on the cross, He said: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is assuming human nature. He was like us in all things except sin: the two quotes above don’t have to do with sin, but with human nature as it is, not as it we’d like to imagine it. The OT is full of stories where the people of Israel is directly adviced, helped, chastised, punished or consoled by an anthropomorphized God who sits somewhere on the mountain and sometimes is angry, sometimes takes pity on them, sometimes leads them in battle against other tribes. Do we believe that the people of Israel has enjoyed this special kind of direct communication with God and all the people who don’t live anymore in the biblical times can’t enjoy this kind of communication anymore? I don’t think so.

I don’t think that God has ever demanded animal sacrifices or circumcision or that He said “Nor shall you cut your hair roundwise: nor shave your beard” or “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material”. But this was the representation of God at that particular time, for that particular tribe/nation. This particular tribe had a strong need to individualize itself, to separate its beliefs and customs from other tribes, so its representation of God was that of a warrior God who issued a lot of commandments that included even the right way to eat and to dress. Was this a lie? No, because a myth is not a lie - this is anthropology 101. Any myth/mythology has a perennial value precisely because it isn’t a lie. We are of course amused by the stories about the Greek gods full of jealousy and pettiness, but these myths tell us that 1) man is a religious being, acknowledging that he and the world are the creation of a superior being and that he yearns for something supernatural (immortality, perfection, superior powers); 2) people have a tendency to imagine God/gods in their image and likeness, so when they feared the environment, they attributed to their gods what they couldn’t understand and interpreted it as a punishment generated by the anger of their gods; 3) it takes time until people abandon polytheism (the volcanic eruptions are caused by a god who dwells under the earth) and manage to worship God as a loving Father.

BTW, do you think that gluttony, for one, is reasonable?

Nope, gluttony is not reasonable (sound, healthy, moderate, with a long-term view), but it is not against one’s reason as long as reason can find enough reasons to justify and encourage it - otherwise we’d think that all the people who use to eat too much don’t use their reason

 

[vames]

In His love for Adam, God did not destroy him, which would be deserved.

Why do you think that Adam deserved to be destroyed?
Do you think that anything that a creature does can successfully sabotage God’s plan? Because God’s plan was “be fruitful and multiply” = the existence and flourishing of humanity. Not destruction at the first mistake committed by man. Not even a near-total destruction, like in the story of the Flood when God “repented” for having created human beings and animals.

 

[OneSheep]

Yes I think we connected many posts back about we can be just as others do, but we choose not too. I could choose to turn up late for work, take longer breaks than are given, tell lies about people, be disciplined by managers, but continue with my behaviour because I can get away with it, but I choose not to or more likely thats not the sort of person I grew to be. You can’t help to notice faults in people, just as they most likely see faults in me that i may not be aware of.

Your words take me back to the words that the priest told me, “it is not to condmemn or condone, but understand”.

Also fruitful in the journey, for me, is to take a good, honest, painfully humbling view at why I do all the “good” that I do.

For example, I want to make the world a better place.

Wow, OneSheep, cool, you are such a holy, good person! No, I am just as “good” as anyone else, but I like to fix things, a lot. I live to fix things, and I think the world needs a fix. Fixing things, to some degree, feeds my own desire to be in control and desire to create. A big part of the fix is forgiveness. Yes, I do enjoy helping people too, but so does almost everyone else. Nothing special there. In fact, there is an aspect of “selfishness” in every single thing I do, service to others included. I love serving people. I love challenging people to take a deeper look at creation and God, too. How “selfish” of me to do what I love to do!

So, when if I were to say “that’s not the sort of person I grew to be” this would be a red flag saying "wait a minute, am I a different sort of person, or do I make different choices for very understandable reasons?

Perhaps you choose to avoid those behaviors because you fear people’s condemnation. Perhaps you make the choices you do in order to avoid the condemnation of your own conscience. Perhaps you choose to avoid choices that favor yourself because your empathy has developed to extend to others’ feelings and needs, and you have learned how good it feels to behave in a way that considers the feelings of others.

I once asked a person “why do people sin?”. His answer was “because they think they can get away with it”. It took me awhile to figure out how to respond to this. His answer only explained why some people do not fear committing sin, but did not explain at all why a person wants to do something sinful in the first place.

Generally speaking, people sin because they want something so badly that they do not consider the feeling or needs of others, or they set out to punish someone for doing something contrary to their conscience. Blindness and/or ignorance is always involved.

 

[fhansen]

No living human being (including Adam) could have a better knowledge and communication with God than Jesus. And while He was on the garden, He said: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done”. And while He was on the cross, He said: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is assuming human nature. He was like us in all things except sin: the two quotes above don’t have to do with sin, but with human nature as it is, not as it we’d like to imagine it. The OT is full of stories where the people of Israel is directly adviced, helped, chastised, punished or consoled by an anthropomorphized God who sits somewhere on the mountain and sometimes is angry, sometimes takes pity on them, sometimes leads them in battle against other tribes. Do we believe that the people of Israel has enjoyed this special kind of direct communication with God and all the people who don’t live anymore in the biblical times can’t enjoy this kind of communication anymore? I don’t think so.

I don’t think that God has ever demanded animal sacrifices or circumcision or that He said “Nor shall you cut your hair roundwise: nor shave your beard” or “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material”. But this was the representation of God at that particular time, for that particular tribe/nation. This particular tribe had a strong need to individualize itself, to separate its beliefs and customs from other tribes, so its representation of God was that of a warrior God who issued a lot of commandments that included even the right way to eat and to dress. Was this a lie? No, because a myth is not a lie - this is anthropology 101. Any myth/mythology has a perennial value precisely because it isn’t a lie. We are of course amused by the stories about the Greek gods full of jealousy and pettiness, but these myths tell us that 1) man is a religious being, acknowledging that he and the world are the creation of a superior being and that he yearns for something supernatural (immortality, perfection, superior powers); 2) people have a tendency to imagine God/gods in their image and likeness, so when they feared the environment, they attributed to their gods what they couldn’t understand and interpreted it as a punishment generated by the anger of their gods; 3) it takes time until people abandon polytheism (the volcanic eruptions are caused by a god who dwells under the earth) and manage to worship God as a loving Father…

This didn’t really address my question. The people of Israel enjoyed no special communication with God-other than a handful of prophets. And, yes, I agree that the OT is often written from a myopic or self-serving viewpoint, understandably so. What I was asking is whether or not you thought humanity started out “walking with” God, with a direct relationship, perhaps knowing Him intuitively as some Catholic saints have reported to have experienced, but continuously in Adam’s case.

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[grannymh]

Why do you think that Adam deserved to be destroyed?

I was thinking about how mortal sin was a horrible abuse of our freedom.
If we were an animal, biting the hand that feeds us, we would be put down.

Do you think that anything that a creature does can successfully sabotage God’s plan?

That is a tad silly question. I may be older than dirt, but I am not that stupid to think that.

Because God’s plan was “be fruitful and multiply” = the existence and flourishing of humanity.

What are we, seven billion people! Even if I have the math wrong, I would suggest that humanity is flourishing.

Not destruction at the first mistake committed by man.
Not even a near-total destruction, like in the story of the Flood when God “repented” for having created human beings and animals.

Original Sin was not just the “first mistake.” It was a freely chosen total disaster. White washing it is futile.

 

[vames]

This didn’t really address my question. The people of Israel enjoyed no special communication with God-other than a handful of prophets. And, yes, I agree that the OT is often written from a myopic or self-serving viewpoint, understandably so. What I was asking is whether or not you thought humanity started out “walking with” God, with a direct relationship, perhaps knowing Him intuitively as some Catholic saints have reported to have experienced, but continuously in Adam’s case.

If A&E were mystics, it means they enjoyed such communication, just like any mystic saint. So why not? It’s totally possible.
I talked about the OT because Genesis 2-3 and the stories of OT where God communicates directly with the people are written in the same style, so the mindset of the writers was similar (in the Genesis, A&E aren’t narrators speaking about their own mystical experiences and nobody else was there to witness their communication with God and the rest of what happens).

 

[vames]

I was thinking about how mortal sin was a horrible abuse of our freedom.
If we were an animal, biting the hand that feeds us, we would be put down.

That is a tad silly question. I may be older than dirt, but I am not that stupid to think that.

What are we, seven billion people! Even if I have the math wrong, I would suggest that humanity is flourishing.

Original Sin was not just the “first mistake.” It was a freely chosen total disaster. White washing it is futile.

I asked the question because if God had destroyed Adam, it would have meant that Adam managed to sabotage God’s plan described in Genesis 1. Everything was so fine an promising, but all of a sudden God is taken by surprise by Adam’s disobedience (as if He didn’t have any foreknowledge about it, didn’t intend to allow it at all and didn’t have enough powers to stop it) and says with disgust, disappointment, anger or maybe with a sense of danger: oops, look at this beast Adam, he bites my hand that feeds him, so I must kill him!

An animal who bites your hand that feeds him must be put down because it endangers you and your family. How was Adam endangering God?

To say that humanity is flourishing now, despite the idea that Adam should have been killed like a rabid dog, is to say that because of Adam, each of our lives shouldn’t have existed and the true measure of God’s love is the fact that He managed to control His anger and didn’t kill Adam on the spot. But isn’t God our Father? Since when a father sees his disobedient children like animals that must be put down?

 

[fhansen]

A redo of post #910

No living human being (including Adam) could have a better knowledge and communication with God than Jesus. And while He was on the garden, He said: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done”. And while He was on the cross, He said: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is assuming human nature. He was like us in all things except sin: the two quotes above don’t have to do with sin, but with human nature as it is, not as it we’d like to imagine it. The OT is full of stories where the people of Israel is directly adviced, helped, chastised, punished or consoled by an anthropomorphized God who sits somewhere on the mountain and sometimes is angry, sometimes takes pity on them, sometimes leads them in battle against other tribes. Do we believe that the people of Israel has enjoyed this special kind of direct communication with God and all the people who don’t live anymore in the biblical times can’t enjoy this kind of communication anymore? I don’t think so.

I don’t think that God has ever demanded animal sacrifices or circumcision or that He said “Nor shall you cut your hair roundwise: nor shave your beard” or “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material”. But this was the representation of God at that particular time, for that particular tribe/nation. This particular tribe had a strong need to individualize itself, to separate its beliefs and customs from other tribes, so its representation of God was that of a warrior God who issued a lot of commandments that included even the right way to eat and to dress. Was this a lie? No, because a myth is not a lie - this is anthropology 101. Any myth/mythology has a perennial value precisely because it isn’t a lie. We are of course amused by the stories about the Greek gods full of jealousy and pettiness, but these myths tell us that 1) man is a religious being, acknowledging that he and the world are the creation of a superior being and that he yearns for something supernatural (immortality, perfection, superior powers); 2) people have a tendency to imagine God/gods in their image and likeness, so when they feared the environment, they attributed to their gods what they couldn’t understand and interpreted it as a punishment generated by the anger of their gods; 3) it takes time until people abandon polytheism (the volcanic eruptions are caused by a god who dwells under the earth) and manage to worship God as a loving Father…

This didn’t really address my question. The people of Israel enjoyed no special communication with God-other than via a handful of prophets. And, yes, I agree that the OT is often written from a myopic or self-serving viewpoint, understandably so. What I was asking is whether or not you thought humanity started out “walking with” God, with a direct relationship, perhaps knowing Him intuitively as some Catholic saints have reported to have experienced, but continuously in Adam’s case.

Nope, gluttony is not reasonable (sound, healthy, moderate, with a long-term view), but it is not against one’s reason as long as reason can find enough reasons to justify and encourage it - otherwise we’d think that all the people who use to eat too much don’t use their reason .

I think maybe they reason with their mouths.

 

[fhansen]

Of course we can’t blame the existence of free will for our sins. The harder part is to acknowledge that, like the free will, everything that we are endowed with is equally blameless for our sins - ex. the existence of genital organs and the sex drive are not bad things that Adam and his descendants could have done without. We throw the baby with the bathwater when we isolate the concept of “sensitive appetite”, draw an opposition between “sensitive appetite” and reason and name this opposition “concupiscence” (CCC 2515: Etymologically, “concupiscence” can refer to any intense form of human desire. Christian theology has given it a particular meaning: the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason), because sooner or later we end up by conceiving our being as fragmented, dissociated between “sensitive appetite” and reason and by suspecting, hating and repressing our “sensitive appetite”.

In reality, our reason and our “sensitive appetite” are equally solidary and unseparable when we do good things and when we do bad things. Isn’t our reason the best instigator and advocate of our sins when we commit them? All the arguments and excuses and loopholes and encouragements are the work of reason. Even when we say “I don’t want to think about that now, I only want to (insert grave matter)”, this is a work of reason. We allow ourselves to do that - we are not animals “dragged” by their instincts. That’s why we say at the Confiteor: “I have sinned in thought, in speech, in work, in the purity of mind and of the body” instead of saying “I have sinned because of a movement of my sensitive appetite contrary to my reason”.

A scrupulous man will seek to suspect, hate and repress his “sensitive appetite”, thinking (wrongly) that his senses and body and feelings are to blame, are inferior, despicable and can “drag” him on their own towards him, behind the back of his reason that somehow stands above, intact, detached when he sins. A very scrupulous man will realize the decisive role of reason in his choices and will seek to suspect, hate and repress his reason too. But living with such ideas is very problematic, so there comes the need to establish a “bad bank” (sooo… what to throw in it? the body, the sensitive appetite, the feelings) in order to preserve our self-esteem and our hope that the rest of our being is still good, like a city where God can still find 5 or 10 righteous people. There’s an old prayer that says “God, you know that in my soul there is a part that is still good”. The prayer is sincere, I have prayed it many times and I still do. But I know that such a separation is metaphorical and in reality we are one whole being: “in thought, in speech, in work, in the purity of mind and of the body” represent our whole being and not things that work separately on their own. That’s why I insist that an Adam without “concupiscence” wouldn’t have been able to sin.

(cont’d)

When it’s said that sin or moral evil is unreasonable, that it goes beyond the dictates of reason, it’s meant that reason, alone, should militate against, say, some ugly torture scene, that one’s desires must override or manipulate reason in order for one to carry them out. The most strong-willed and self-righteous people I know are also those who are capable of doing the most harm to others-and are the most difficult to reason with. This is related to Jesus’ comment, “They hated me without reason”, quoting psalms and referring to those who convicted, persecuted, and crucified Him, referring to all of us to the extent we might prefer our own agenda over truth and reason in one way or another.

 

[fhansen]

I asked the question because if God had destroyed Adam, it would have meant that Adam managed to sabotage God’s plan described in Genesis 1. Everything was so fine an promising, but all of a sudden God is taken by surprise by Adam’s disobedience (as if He didn’t have any foreknowledge about it, didn’t intend to allow it at all and didn’t have enough powers to stop it) and says with disgust, disappointment, anger or maybe with a sense of danger: oops, look at this beast Adam, he bites my hand that feeds him, so I must kill him!

An animal who bites your hand that feeds him must be put down because it endangers you and your family. How was Adam endangering God?

To say that humanity is flourishing now, despite the idea that Adam should have been killed like a rabid dog, is to say that because of Adam, each of our lives shouldn’t have existed and the true measure of God’s love is the fact that He managed to control His anger and didn’t kill Adam on the spot. But isn’t God our Father? Since when a father sees his disobedient children like animals that must be put down?

I think that the point in Genesis is more general than this-it’s meant to bring about an enlightenment, sort of a gestalt, as to the reality of sin, of there existing the possibility, and later a first event, of opposing God’s will, of committing acts unharmonious with the order of the universe. Christianity has always maintained that God has every right to oppose sin, that He allowed II for His purposes, knowing, before He created, that it would occur, that He began carrying out His higher purposes, working with man in his foolish self-exile from truth, reason, justice-from Him-right from the beginning…

 

[vames]

I think that the point in Genesis is more general than this-it’s meant to bring about an enlightenment, sort of a gestalt, as to the reality of sin, of there existing the possibility, and later a first event, of opposing God’s will, of committing acts unharmonious with the order of the universe. Christianity has always maintained that God has every right to oppose sin, that He allowed II for His purposes, knowing, before He created, that it would occur, that He began carrying out His higher purposes, working with man in his foolish self-exile from truth, reason, justice-from Him-right from the beginning…

Yes, very well said This is the archetypal value of the A&E story!

 

[grannymh]

I asked the question because if God had destroyed Adam, it would have meant that Adam managed to sabotage God’s plan described in Genesis 1.

Not really.
Adam sabotaged himself, not God. Obviously, God did not destroy Adam, so there is no need for me to worry about the alternatives.

Everything was so fine an promising,

Not really.
The prospect of eternal happiness still had to be earned. Thus, if one uses the word “promising” one needs to include the option that Adam had the “promised freedom” of scorning God. (CCC, 397-398; CCC, 415; CCC, 1730-1731)

but all of a sudden God is taken by surprise by Adam’s disobedience (as if He didn’t have any foreknowledge about it, didn’t intend to allow it at all and didn’t have enough powers to stop it) and says with disgust, disappointment, anger or maybe with a sense of danger: oops, look at this beast Adam, he bites my hand that feeds him, so I must kill him!

I use the older version of the New American Bible. What are you using for this scenario?

An animal who bites your hand that feeds him must be put down because it endangers you and your family. How was Adam endangering God?

Please see my first answer above.
In addition, the idiom “bite the hand that feeds” (see Google for ways this is used) should not be mistaken for an animal endangering a family in Scripture’s Garden of Eden. Especially when it is obvious that Adam, after Eden, lived long enough to have lots of children. No need to add unrealistic worries to the ones I already have.

To say that humanity is flourishing now, despite the idea that Adam should have been killed like a rabid dog,

My goodness! What book are you reading that refers to a rabid dog in Eden?

is to say that because of Adam, each of our lives shouldn’t have existed and the true measure of God’s love is the fact that He managed to control His anger and didn’t kill Adam on the spot.

Now, I do realize that you are using creative imagination to make a point. And I like to do the same. For example, I used “if we were”" in post 911, which referred back to us and not to God or to Adam. Originally, I had added an explanation that we, as in “If we were” was different from an animal that could bite the hand that feeds. I deleted it because I assumed readers knew that Adam was a person with a rational spiritual soul.

But isn’t God our Father? Since when a father sees his disobedient children like animals that must be put down?

That sounds like a “detective” television show. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the prospect of using the perp as a possible figurative way to describe the Creator’s actions.

P.S.
If any reader is interested in the actual outcome of Genesis, chapter three, please check out John 3: 16. Better yet, start reading the New Testament in one of the Catholic bibles.

 

[vames]

Now, I do realize that you are using creative imagination to make a point.

Yes Any comparison between A and B reflects the idea that A and B bear some resemblance. To me, saying that Adam deserved to be destroyed (post #906) and then comparing Adam/ourselves with animals that bite the hand that feeds them (post #911) implies that, indeed, there is a resemblance between Adam/ourselves and an animal who must be killed, because biting the master’s hand is an abnormal behavior that suddenly poses a danger to the master. I didn’t claim that the text of Genesis or the CCC support such a comparison. And no, the idea that Adam deserved to be destroyed and the comparison between Adam/ourselves and dangerous animals didn’t cross my mind. But it’s true that I have seen it before: there is a passage in Augustine’s City of God where he contemplates the offense of Adam and expresses his indignation by saying that A&E (and with them the whole humankind) deserved to be destroyed.

 

[OneSheep]

What I flat out disagree with is your two insulting statements in post 867, page 58.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11459340&postcount=867

“Blindness is automatic.” and “We are born ignorant.”

I think we settled the ignorance part. We are born with the “law” within, but our conscience is educated life-long. Ignorance is a relative term. Does a child “learn” something toward the education of their conscience in the womb? Possibly! We are born with an incomplete education. To me, that still says “ignorance”, but I am thinking that you attach other negatives to the word. Do you like that description better?

As far as “automatic blindness” goes, you are unwilling to admit that any blindness ever happens, so we cannot begin to discuss whether it is automatic or not. Stalemate.

I do not give examples of human’s Mortal Sins because I cannot know what God knows about that person. Therefore, anyone can assume that there are mitigating circumstances. Nonetheless, I have had a duh moment. I have a counterexample for you.

Adam is the one person, whom we know well, who actually freely, with full knowledge, committed what would be known today as a Mortal Sin. :doh2:

So, this is the way this will proceed:

For starters, the CCC says that A&E committed mortal sin, and mortal sin is defined as “with full knowledge”. This is the assertion that is being investigated.

If we talk about Adam’s mortal sin, it will proceed as follows:

OneSheep: So, let us begin the investigation. Why did Adam sin?

Granny: It is not much concern to me why Adam sinned. What is of more concern to me is (insert red herring here).

OneSheep: Well, we cannot determine if Adam had full knowledge unless we investigate why he sinned.

Granny: We already know that he sinned, and that he had full knowledge, it says so in the CCC.

This brings us back to the preliminary that I highlighted in green above. I almost wrote, in my previous post, “any example but Adam” but I thought “No, she won’t do it again, will she?” You did.

So, we can investigate Adam, but in order to do so, you must not use assertions from the CCC, because those are the very assertions being investigated. We are talking about understanding human behavior, Granny. This is not a new concept. As I mentioned before, St. Augustine did the same investigation.

Are you saying that the only sin you can say anything about is that of Adam and Eve? Isn’t sin obvious in the world? Pick one, pick something that people do to each other today, that way we do not have to enter a creation myth.

 

[simpleas]

Definitely, not.

If God had been looking “negatively” at the persons of Adam and Eve, they and humanity, you and I, would be gone in a flash. I don’t know about you. You may be a good looking computer chip. But, I am definitely here as a real person. :kiss4you:

It is a fact that God, as our Creator, gave us the ability to initiate and control our choices/actions. Adam was a real person who could seek our Creator, become obedient to our Creator and when the final choice was to be made, Adam had the freedom to choose between being in our Creator’s sacred friendship or not.

God loved all of the above about Adam, including Adam’s freedom. Sirach 15: 14 is powerful information about Adam’s freedom. The context, Sirach 15: 11-20 answers a number of questions in this thread. Catholicism teaches that “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.” (CCC, 1730; Smaller print in CCC, 1730 is supporting material by St. Irenaeus)

God looked “negatively”, in justice, at Original Sin, which belonged to Adam. Love the sinner, hate the sin.

In His love for Adam, God did not destroy him, which would be deserved. Instead, the effects of Adam’s devastating decision remained. Leaving the Garden, Adam and Eve were continually called to repent and return to God. There is a tradition that Adam and Eve returned to God’s friendship.

God continued His love for humanity by promising the Divine Messiah.

Well last I checked in the mirror I was still a full female human being, although the idea of being a good looking computer chip is quite appealing

I was probably being a little sarcastic to onesheep about the negativity. But thinking about it, God is neither male nor female, he is a spirit, his ways are not our ways, yet when we think of God we see the image of Christ a man. To have seen God was to see Christ as man. Now at the time of Christs ministery, God comes as a man in a mostly male dominated society, but also to be the new adam, because of course man was made first, Eve sinned first with full knowledge, but Adam gets the full blame, because he is the “head” of the human race.
If Gods ways are not human ways, why would he be inclined to impose human ideas that are sins only to humans?

 

[grannymh]

The first condition for God’s forgiveness.

In order for the Prodigal Son to reach the open arms of his father,
he had to first leave the foreign country.

Moving forward,

Vames, in post 895, page 60, made a good opening comment. “This was not a condition imposed by the father.”

Note that in the Parable of the Lost Son, Luke 15: 11-32, the father is meant to illustrate the joy when a sinner returns to the House of God. Note also, that the father gave the younger son his heritance without any attached strings. The younger son was given the freedom to do whatever he wanted and wherever he lived. The state of the younger son’s living conditions was not a condition imposed by the father. The fact that there was a distance between the son and his father is a geographical physical condition. Verse 20 says that the son was a long way off when his father caught sight of him and ran to him in compassion.

I am wondering if those of us who understand Mortal Sin will see a similarity between the state of being in Mortal Sin and the state of the younger son being in a distant country suffering from a severe famine. With his inheritance, the younger son had the freedom to choose which state he would live in, his home with his father or away from his father in a distant country.

Interestingly, verse 21 says: “His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son’.” If there is some kind of similarity between the Prodigal Son in a distant county and a person in the state of Mortal Sin, would there also be a similarity between the Prodigal son who recognizes that he did not deserve to be called his father’s son and the person who recognizes that he is not in the state of Sanctifying Grace because he has knowingly and deliberately committed a Mortal Sin?

 

[simpleas]

Your words take me back to the words that the priest told me, “it is not to condmemn or condone, but understand”.

Also fruitful in the journey, for me, is to take a good, honest, painfully humbling view at why I do all the “good” that I do.

For example, I want to make the world a better place.

Wow, OneSheep, cool, you are such a holy, good person! No, I am just as “good” as anyone else, but I like to fix things, a lot. I live to fix things, and I think the world needs a fix. Fixing things, to some degree, feeds my own desire to be in control and desire to create. A big part of the fix is forgiveness. Yes, I do enjoy helping people too, but so does almost everyone else. Nothing special there. In fact, there is an aspect of “selfishness” in every single thing I do, service to others included. I love serving people. I love challenging people to take a deeper look at creation and God, too. How “selfish” of me to do what I love to do!

So, when if I were to say “that’s not the sort of person I grew to be” this would be a red flag saying "wait a minute, am I a different sort of person, or do I make different choices for very understandable reasons?

Perhaps you choose to avoid those behaviors because you fear people’s condemnation. Perhaps you make the choices you do in order to avoid the condemnation of your own conscience. Perhaps you choose to avoid choices that favor yourself because your empathy has developed to extend to others’ feelings and needs, and you have learned how good it feels to behave in a way that considers the feelings of others.

I once asked a person “why do people sin?”. His answer was “because they think they can get away with it”. It took me awhile to figure out how to respond to this. His answer only explained why some people do not fear committing sin, but did not explain at all why a person wants to do something sinful in the first place.

Generally speaking, people sin because they want something so badly that they do not consider the feeling or needs of others, or they set out to punish someone for doing something contrary to their conscience. Blindness and/or ignorance is always involved.

Not really sure what you mean by “am i a different sort of person” because we are all different from each other?
Now if I was to say “I’m so much better than this person because I don’t do half the things they do” then i’d know i was lying to myself.
Yes I’ve “trained” myself to avoid certain behaviours because I was worried what people would think, (not so much now i’m older!) I like to make a good impression, to work to the best of my ability and provide a good service for a company I may work for, or now for my own customers.

I don’t see you as selfish to want to help fix the world, help people look deeper into creation and God, I see this as selfless.

Maybe people who don’t have some sense of God may think when they sin they might get away with it, not people who believe because we know God see’s everything.

Yes try to understand why the person sinned, not many people want to do this, they just want people to be punished for the crime.