Original Sin

[simpleas]

My apology, but I do not know which questions and their answers you are referring to.

Human nature’s spiritual soul is a possibility. Another possibility is the difference between an uncreated transcendent Pure Spirit and a mortal anatomy. Or maybe it is the difference between sharing in God’s divine life and being a second god.

Then there is the simple possibility that humans have to eat in order to stay alive.

Pretty much all post’s in this thread, I don’t see it as an attack on God, I see it as a discussion, and for me a learning process!

What I seem to have difficulty with is the subject of A&E being immortal before the fall. If their human bodies were like ours, they had to eat and drink in order to survive, but they had the great gift of immortality, so they would never have died, bodily?
Isn’t that what the ccc teaches?
OR
If they were the same as us, would of died eventually, but their souls would move on, like ours, how can we say for certain that they were immortal?
In genesis, God says don’t allow man to eat from the tree of life and live forever, so doesn’t that mean they were going to die, so they could not have been immortal?

 

[fhansen]

Pretty much all post’s in this thread, I don’t see it as an attack on God, I see it as a discussion, and for me a learning process!

What I seem to have difficulty with is the subject of A&E being immortal before the fall. If their human bodies were like ours, they had to eat and drink in order to survive, but they had the great gift of immortality, so they would never have died, bodily?
Isn’t that what the ccc teaches?
OR
If they were the same as us, would of died eventually, but their souls would move on, like ours, how can we say for certain that they were immortal?
In genesis, God says don’t allow man to eat from the tree of life and live forever, so doesn’t that mean they were going to die, so they could not have been immortal?

Immortality was related to-contingent on-their obedience. This consequence, as others, simply points to the fact that 1) man is not God, 2) man is obligated, accountable for his actions. God has control over life and death, and has the right to use this power appropriately.

 

[OneSheep]

What about the force of fear? (not that you mentioned chimpanzees LOL, but people happen to commit suicide out of fear of punishment)

Indeed, fear could have been involved. What was also significant in the story, though, was that people projected the self-judgment first, which shows that the condition of conscience in the observers was fairly universal.

I guess you can successfully describe both OS and AS (and also the Protestant understandings) in terms of “punishing drive”. The AS shifts the blame to the devil more than the OS; that’s why I said that this kind of thinking is efficient, because it spares people both the risk of blaming God for punishing them too hard and the risk of blaming man for being too wicked and unworthy. That’s why at the end of the day only the deadly devil is killed and we can hate and fear the devil as much as we like, while managing to preserve our empathy, trust and hope in God and man: the devil is the ultimate scapegoat.

But the OS is also efficient, because establishes a more direct relationship between God and man, so even if you blame yourself for doing something so bad that you can’t repair it anymore and your thirst for self-punishment can’t be satisfied no matter what you do, you get a vicarious satisfaction by knowing that God can separate the part of you that deserves to be destroyed, can separate your sins from the rest of your being, like in a “bad bank”, and can allow you to continue your existence (love the sinner, hate the sin). That’s why at the end of the day only those who are totally and irevocably immersed in sin are really punished, others gladly suffer purification until their sins are paid for and those who reach heaven right after death and are beatified and fully preserve our empathy, trust and hope in God and man.

Yes, so in either case, people have an “out”. Otherwise, there would be no hope. In that sense, “harshness” doesn’t have much of a variance.

Forgiveness can be part of an informed conscience IMO because you cannot forgive if you pay attention only to the bad deed or only to the wrongdoer. When you talk about the path proposed by Augustine (trying to empathize with the other and understand or guess his initial good intentions instead of condemning him for his bad deed), you process the facts, look at the man and his circumstances, exercise judgment (discernment) and the tension between your innate + learned rulebook and the new knowledge that you acquire this way allows you to deepen your conscience.

Maybe it is just so much hair-splitting. When I refer to the conscience, I am referring to the circuit in which some emotional reaction is involved when there is a violation. When I observe that someone else has not forgiven, I don’t have that gut-level negative reaction happening, like I would, say, when someone insults someone else.

That said, the “conscience” is a rather difficult part of the psyche to pin down and draw borders. I am not married to the idea that the conscience only includes the emotional-reaction stuff, but it is that aspect that most closely appears to have a separate circuit.

When you forgive a woman who had an abortion instead of decreeing that all women who have abortions are ***, you exercise your discernment, intuition, understanding, based on the awareness that a woman is a real person capable of moral choices (not a dog) and on the awareness that an abortion is a bad thing. Is the real person beneath or beyond my conscience? Is my conscience doomed to behave so mechanically that it can’t process anything else than “all women who have abortions are ***”?

If you say:
conscience = knowing right from wrong = rulebook = automatic reaction = punishing drive = empathy shut off = the superficial voice within = teaching by fear
vs.
will = deciding to act = later effort = forgiveness = empathy shut on = the deeper voice within = teaching by love,
then it means that forgiveness can be only a painful effort that is always done against and despite your conscience, so your conscience won’t shut up and will make you wonder whether you have in fact merely denied or stretched your rulebook for the sake of feeling good about yourself.

I’m not understanding how this “wonder” comes about. Forgiveness is a painful effort, but is freeing when the grudge is seen for what it is, a burden on the soul. Maybe you could give an example to clarify?

On the other hand, you can skip your rulebook (which continues to exist) and skip the process of discernment etc. for the sake of the wrongdoer, when your pity is stronger than your anger.

I think that the “when” happens with subsequent experience. I have come to accept the fact, for me, that we are somewhat “doomed” to have conscience reactions. We can “skip” our rulebook when we are aware that the rulebook has been triggered in the first place. For me, sometimes I just have a feeling of general negativity, and then I figure out that I feel resentment, and then I realize I either broke my own rule or someone else did and I am reacting. Yes, I am that slow.

 

[OneSheep]

From Vames:

But if forgiveness were just a matter of feeling (my compassion comes before looking at my rulebook) or will (my decision to let go of grudges comes after looking at my rulebook), then I’d be encouraged to separate “the sin from the sinner” and my conscience from the rest of my being in an artificial way. The sinner separates himself from the sin when he repents and asks you to forgive him. Easy: at that moment, both of you love the sinner and hate the sin. But when he is solidary with his sin, immersed, unseparated, how can you really forgive him if you don’t look at his whole being, with your whole being?

Yes! It is a matter of looking at his whole being with my whole being! And realistically, I tried for years to “separate the sin from the sinner” and it never really worked for me. To really forgive, I have to take the painful steps of walking through the other person’s acts and seeing the good intent (and the blindness) the whole way through.

Last year I watched the video of the confession of a mass-murderer; it took me several weeks to work out all of my reactions and forgive. I am not introspectively “quick”.

 

[OneSheep]

I am sorry that I did not meet your expectations. We are simply not on the same page.
That being the case, instead of replying to your individual questions, I will continue to do my own posting. Most likely, you may find some “answers” within these posts.

Thank you sincerely for sharing your personal views.

Given that your response was only 20 minutes after my questions on post #779, I think you can do better. Give the questions some time, granny. The questions are central to the whole idea of love and forgiveness.

And please, this is a forum. Don’t do the lawyer thing and swamp me with a bunch of stuff to weed through in order to fish out answers. I want your sincere answers, not red herrings. Answer from your heart.

And no, granny, questioning the doctrine of original sin is not an attack on God or his goodness. The doctrine is a human creation, inspired, but human, and it has not been around very long in God-years.

 

[grannymh]

Given that your response was only 20 minutes after my questions on post #779, I think you can do better. Give the questions some time, granny. The questions are central to the whole idea of love and forgiveness.

And please, this is a forum. Don’t do the lawyer thing and swamp me with a bunch of stuff to weed through in order to fish out answers. I want your sincere answers, not red herrings. Answer from your heart.

And no, granny, questioning the doctrine of original sin is not an attack on God or his goodness. The doctrine is a human creation, inspired, but human, and it has not been around very long in God-years.

Proposing that the doctrine of Original Sin is a human creation is suggesting that when it comes to human nature, God is not capable of Divine Revelation. The elimination of Divine Revelation …

Readers need to think about that.

 

[grannymh]

Given that your response was only 20 minutes after my questions on post #779, I think you can do better. Give the questions some time, granny. The questions are central to the whole idea of love and forgiveness.

And please, this is a forum. Don’t do the lawyer thing and swamp me with a bunch of stuff to weed through in order to fish out answers. I want your sincere answers, not red herrings. Answer from your heart.

And no, granny, questioning the doctrine of original sin is not an attack on God or his goodness. The doctrine is a human creation, inspired, but human, and it has not been around very long in God-years.

This last part is in bold because I did not believe my eyes when I first read it.

Proposing that the doctrine of Original Sin is a human creation is suggesting that when it comes to human nature, God is not capable of Divine Revelation. The elimination of Divine Revelation …

Readers need to think about that type of suggestion. Thank you.

 

[grannymh]

As a follow up to this sentence in post 757
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11431320&postcount=757
In other words, the current attack on God because He is so mean seems plausible because the original facts of Original Sin have been set aside.
the following contains the reasoning.

The facts of Original Sin
include the fact that God is good as the Creator. He is so good that He gave to human creatures the opportunity (created in the image of God) to share in His divine life on earth and in heaven. As God is master over His acts, likewise, He created the human person to be the “master” over her or his acts via the faculties (rational intellect and free will) of the God-created spiritual soul.

The less harsh interpretations of Original Sin, including denial of its seriousness, are basically attempts to fix God to fit human standards of good. When God is believed to be good at the time of the real Original Sin, there would be no reason for this comment. “On the contrary, we try to find out the best arguments that He is good.” When people consider God as being good, there is no reason to find the best argument which will fix God, that is, bring God up to speed in the area of human goodness.

When God is believed to be good at the time of the real Original Sin, what kind of belief gives humans the idea that the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin needs to be a human creation.

The proposal that the doctrine (Original Sin) “is a human creation, inspired, but human, and it has not been around very long in God-years” is absolutely the best invite for us to willy-nilly downgrade Original Sin to a bad example. Or, as long as Divine Revelation has been eliminated because humans have taken over that job, it would be far simpler to eliminate any annoying facts such as a first human’s intelligent responsibility.

The various substitute suggestions for explaining conscience is like saying that God did not have enough creative power to create a whole human in His image.

Proposing that our “mastery” is guided by the content of our minds and that the conscience is a somewhat separate circuit in the human and that the conscience includes the prosecutor, judge, and executioner, and this is the “voice” we hear within, which by the way, is still to be valued as a guide, over-zealous it may be – is a handy way of eliminating some of God’s important interactions with His humans. Limiting God is another way of denying the nature of God.

Denying that God has the right to establish conditions for His forgiveness, is putting the human above the Divine. When we dictate to God what He should do in relationship with His creation, we place ourselves as equal partners with God or we consider ourselves as better examples of what God should be. The truth is that there can only be one God and when Adam ignored that … a piece of organic fruit gives Adam a tummy ache.

When we expand the meaning of Christ’s words on His cross to fit our wishes, we are ignoring the dominance of God. We are basically saying that the Creator needs to bow unconditionally to His creatures when human creatures deny His commandments.

Of course,
because we are told that we are born ignorant and in addition, our conscience blinds us,
there is no reason to look for the truth of God’s goodness at the time of the real Original Sin.

 

[Richca]

Quote:
Following Augustine of Hippo, the Latins teach that Adam and Eve sinned against God. The guilt of their sin has been inherited by every man, woman and child after them. All humanity is liable for their “original sin.”

Following the Holy Fathers, the Orthodox Church holds that when Adam sinned against God, he introduced death to the world. Since all men are born of the same human stock as Adam, all men inherit death. Death means that the life of every human being comes to an end (mortality); but also that death generates in us the passions (anger, hate, lust, greed, etc.), disease and aging.

Roman Catholicism has ordinarily paid little attention to the Orthodox conception of man as slave to death through his passions as manipulated by the devil. In fact, the devil has been pushed to the background. Thus, the Crucifixion has been understood by the Latins as Christ suffering punishment for the human race (“vicarious atonement”), when, in truth, Christ suffered and died on the Cross to conquer the devil and destroy his power, death.

In any case, Orthodoxy has always put great stress on “mastery of the passions” through prayer (public worship and private devotions), fasting (self-denial) and voluntary obedience and regular participation in the Eucharist (sometimes called “the Mysteries”). Thus, the highest form of Christian living (“the supreme philosophy”) is monasticism. Here all human energy is devoted to struggle for perfection.

ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/ortho_cath.html

The sacrifice and atonement that Jesus Christ made on the cross on our behalf was made for the forgiveness of our sins as Jesus himself said at the Last Supper when he instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist as the living perpetual memorial of his passion, crucifiction and death. “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, “Take and eat; this is my body.”Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt 26:26-28).

St John says " He is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world" (1 John 2:2).

Christ is our High Priest and " Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins" (Hebrews 5:1).

In the Old Covenant, once a year the high priest alone entered into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement and sprinkled the blood of the sacrificed animals on the gold mercy seat, the place of expiation, not only for his own sins but for those of the people too; “but the high priest alone goes into the inner one once a year, not without blood that he offers for himself and for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 9:7).
" But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come to be,* passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, he entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption…For this reason he is mediator of a new covenant: since a death has taken place for deliverance from transgressions under the first covenant, those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance…Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment, so also Christ, offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him" (Hebrews 9: 11-12, 15, 27-28).

The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the suffering servant of the Lord.
“Yet it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings he endured. We thought of him as stricken,
struck down by God* and afflicted, But he was pierced for our sins,
crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole,
by his wounds we were healed. We had all gone astray like sheep,
all following our own way; But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all…For he was cut off from the land of the living, struck for the sins of his people…But the Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity. If he gives his life as an offering for sin…My servant, the just one, shall justify the many, their iniquity he shall bear…Because he surrendered himself to death and was counted among the wicked; he shall take away the sins of the many, and win pardon for their offenses” (Isaiah 53).

Jesus also delivered us from the power of the devil as He says “Now shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John 12:31). For Adam and Eve succumed to the devil’s temptation which they could have resisted in the garden of Eden. And by succuming to the devil’s temptation they brought upon the whole human race spiritual and physical death which is the realm of the devils who are spiritually dead. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross redeemed us from the eternal death of the soul and the physical death of the body for He opened up the gates to the kingdom of heaven and we look forward to the resurrection of the body on the last day. By baptism, we are born into the life of grace and become the adoptive sons and daughters of God.

 

[simpleas]

Immortality was related to-contingent on-their obedience. This consequence, as others, simply points to the fact that 1) man is not God, 2) man is obligated, accountable for his actions. God has control over life and death, and has the right to use this power appropriately.

Thanks.
ok so they were immortal, their human body would have lived on forever in the garden and they would have walked with God everyday and all would have been heavenly right up until the fall.

 

[grannymh]

Thanks.
ok so they were immortal, their human body would have lived on forever in the garden and they would have walked with God everyday and all would have been heavenly right up until the fall.

Not quite heavenly.

The Garden was a temporary abode on earth. It was the physical/material place where Adam had to decide for or against remaining in obedience to his Creator. If Adam had made the perfect choice, only then, would he be taken up into heaven.

Heaven is the place we go to after we make our earthly choice to love God. and to remain in the state of Sanctifying Grace. Heaven is the spiritual, not earthy, kingdom where we see God face to face. In heaven, we are in the presence of the Beatific Vision. Big difference. In fact, being in heaven is where true perfection exists.

 

[Richca]

Because you said “the current attack on God because He is so mean seems plausible because the original facts of Original Sin have been set aside”

Nobody here has “attacked God because He is so mean”. On the contrary, we try to find out the best arguments that He is good. The very question that originates this thread, “Why are we held accountable for something someone did 1000s of years ago?”, wasn’t answered in the text of Genesis 2-3, but in the different interpretations of Genesis 2-3 that have developed throughout the history of Christianism, most of them by using St Paul’s Epistle to Romans, which in itself is an interpretation of Genesis 2-3, as a starting point. The understanding included in the CCC is not the only one that has been developed and not the only one allowed in Catholicism. To say that the CCC has the absolute, definitive monopoly over the mind of God is to say that all the saints and blessed ones who had different understandings about Genesis 2-3 were unenlightened by the Holy Spirit and that trying to explore what they have said is a waste of time or an attempt to “attack God”, as long as we already have the CCC. Others have “sola Scriptura”, but we don’t have “solus CCC”.

On the other hand, the reality is that often the CCC is ignored or misrepresented or people don’t know how to read it or just pick certain paragraphs and disregard the rest (yes, that’s me). So your posts are very useful, here and in other threads; again, thanks for your patience!

The CCC#85 states “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome."

In regard to original sin, the Catholic Church teaches that every person is born with original sin on their souls because every human being is implicated in Adam’s sin. " All men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as St. Paul affirms: “By one man’s disobedience many (that is, all men) were made sinners”: “sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.” (CCC#402).

The Council of Trent defined this teaching in its decree on original sin which had already been taught at the Councils of Orange and Carthage many centuries earlier: “for what the Apostle has said, by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned (Romans 5:12), is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church has everywhere and always understood it. For in virtue of this rule of faith handed down from the apostles, even infants who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are for this reason truly baptized for the remission of sins, in order that in them what they contracted by generation may be washed away by regeneration.” (Decree concerning Original Sin, Council of Trent).

Accordingly, the proper interpretation of St Paul in Romans 5 according to the teaching of the Catholic Church which is guided by the Holy Spirit, the principle author of Holy Scripture, is that all humankind has sinned in Adam. This is the very teaching of St Paul.

The CCC#404 asks the question “How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”(293). By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice.” The footnote 293 points us to the De Malo 4,1 of St Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas offers the same explanation in his Summa Theologica (Pt. I-II, Q. 81, Art. 1) which I’ll quote here:

"Accordingly the multitude of men born of Adam, are as so many members of one body. Now the action of one member of the body, of the hand for instance, is voluntary not by the will of that hand, but by the will of the soul, the first mover of the members. Wherefore a murder which the hand commits would not be imputed as a sin to the hand, considered by itself as apart from the body, but is imputed to it as something belonging to man and moved by man’s first moving principle. In this way, then, the disorder which is in this man born of Adam, is voluntary, not by his will, but by the will of his first parent, who, by the movement of generation, moves all who originate from him, even as the soul’s will moves all the members to their actions. Hence the sin which is thus transmitted by the first parent to his descendants is called “original,” just as the sin which flows from the soul into the bodily members is called “actual.” And just as the actual sin that is committed by a member of the body, is not the sin of that member, except inasmuch as that member is a part of the man, for which reason it is called a “human sin”; so original sin is not the sin of this person, except inasmuch as this person receives his nature from his first parent, for which reason it is called the “sin of nature,” according to Ephesians 2:3: “We . . . were by nature children of wrath.”

In JMJ, Richca

 

[OneSheep]

This last part is in bold because I did not believe my eyes when I first read it.

Proposing that the doctrine of Original Sin is a human creation is suggesting that when it comes to human nature, God is not capable of Divine Revelation. The elimination of Divine Revelation …

Readers need to think about that type of suggestion. Thank you.

Divine revelation unfolds, granny. It unfolds very slowly, and never unfolds completely.

We are not done learning about our creator, granny. Please, granny, try to find a stability in relationship, not in a book. Find God in your heart.

If God were to come tomorrow and tell you that the CCC isn’t complete, what would you do? Would you drop the faith? Does the idea of spirituality and revelation developing shake your faith?

I Cor 13:

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

It is the love, granny, not the book, that is everlasting.

I asked a soon-to-be-priest tonight the “retain sins” question. Like most priests, he does not memorize scripture. How did he answer? He answered from the basis that God is love. He did not have to look at a book. He answered from his heart.

I know, granny, change is scary. But change doesn’t shake a faith that is grounded in Love.

 

[OneSheep]

…
When we expand the meaning of Christ’s words on His cross to fit our wishes, we are ignoring the dominance of God. We are basically saying that the Creator needs to bow unconditionally to His creatures when human creatures deny His commandments.
…

I think that you are trying to respond to my question in the form of criticism and suggesting the dangers of differing view of OS. I appreciate the attempt, but here are the questions you have still left unanswered:
CCC 1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent

The first and the third conditions are possible, the second is the problem. Unless you are an Omniscient Glamorous Granny, the rest of us only sin out of ignorance and blindness.

Can you give either

a) give a counterexample to the assertion that all sin involves ignorance or blindness? (Please elaborate)

or

b) If you agree with me that all sin involves ignorance or blindness, then how could “mortal sin” ever occur? Again, please elaborate.

Granny’s Quote:

When we listen to Jesus’ words on His cross, Luke 23: 34,

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

we need to keep in mind that Jesus is True God and therefore He knows the state or condition of each person’s soul. We cannot assume that we have that knowledge.

What we do know is that Jesus was speaking about individuals who were part of a crowd, which did include Mary, His mother. There was Peter who knew his sin and began to weep bitterly. " …the cock crowed and the Lord turned and looked at Peter …" Luke 22: 54-62.

Jesus, being True God, knew which people were determined to remain in the state of full hatred toward Him. He also knew which people were sincerely sorry about what was happening to an innocent person even though they may not have known all the truths about Jesus. The forgiveness of Jesus on the cross settled on those who, in sorrow, sought God’s forgiveness. The choice to remain in mortal sin becomes a barricade to God’s forgiveness that includes Sanctifying Grace, that is, God’s gift of sharing His own life with human creatures.

1. By what means can we** assume** that Jesus from the cross only forgave those who were sorry? Do you have something from the CCC that says this?
2. In the story of the adulterous woman, she says no words of repentance, nor does Jesus ask her to repent until after He forgives her. Jesus calls us to love our enemies, He does not call us to only forgive enemies who are sorry. In fact, only the most bitter of us will continue to hold something against those who show sorrow and repentance. Do you see that the challenge is not to simply forgive those who want to be forgiven, which comes naturally from a satisfied conscience, but to forgive everyone we hold something against, as it states in Mark11:25? Please support your answer.
3. If you personally retain no one’s sins, then you do not retain the sins of the unrepentant either.

So, are you saying that God retains sins that you do not?

 

[simpleas]

I think that you are trying to respond to my question in the form of criticism and suggesting the dangers of differing view of OS. I appreciate the attempt, but here are the questions you have still left unanswered:
CCC 1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent

The first and the third conditions are possible, the second is the problem. Unless you are an Omniscient Glamorous Granny, the rest of us only sin out of ignorance and blindness.

Can you give either

a) give a counterexample to the assertion that all sin involves ignorance or blindness? (Please elaborate)

or

b) If you agree with me that all sin involves ignorance or blindness, then how could “mortal sin” ever occur? Again, please elaborate.

Granny’s Quote:
2. By what means can we** assume** that Jesus from the cross only forgave those who were sorry? Do you have something from the CCC that says this?

1. In the story of the adulterous woman, she says no words of repentance, nor does Jesus ask her to repent until after He forgives her. Jesus calls us to love our enemies, He does not call us to only forgive enemies who are sorry. In fact, only the most bitter of us will continue to hold something against those who show sorrow and repentance. Do you see that the challenge is not to simply forgive those who want to be forgiven, which comes naturally from a satisfied conscience, but to forgive everyone we hold something against, as it states in Mark11:25? Please support your answer.
2. If you personally retain no one’s sins, then you do not retain the sins of the unrepentant either.

So, are you saying that God retains sins that you do not?

The first and the third conditions are possible, the second is the problem. Unless you are an Omniscient Glamorous Granny, the rest of us only sin out of ignorance and blindness.

People do sin when they are fully aware of what they are doing I think. Isn’t that why we have so many problems in our world. But I do agree about ignorance and blindness to a degree…but so many do turn a blind eye knowing full well that it is the wrong thing to do.

 

[simpleas]

Not quite heavenly.

The Garden was a temporary abode on earth. It was the physical/material place where Adam had to decide for or against remaining in obedience to his Creator. If Adam had made the perfect choice, only then, would he be taken up into heaven.

Heaven is the place we go to after we make our earthly choice to love God. and to remain in the state of Sanctifying Grace. Heaven is the spiritual, not earthy, kingdom where we see God face to face. In heaven, we are in the presence of the Beatific Vision. Big difference. In fact, being in heaven is where true perfection exists.

Thankyou.
I never thought of the garden being temporary before. When i read Gen 2 telling us how God planted a garden in Eden to the east i imagined just that, as where God started everything off and it was there he wanted his creatures to dwell and then through time fill the earth. I didn’t see that God wanted to take man into heaven as such, because i thought that the world was created for man to live on.
Then through a temption the plan went wrong!
I understand some of how now because of sin we don’t live forever in our human bodies, and need help through grace to move on into heaven and see God.

 

[grannymh]

And no, granny, questioning the doctrine of original sin is not an attack on God or his goodness. The doctrine is a human creation, inspired, but human, and it has not been around very long in God-years.

Divine revelation unfolds, granny. It unfolds very slowly, and never unfolds completely.

The Catholic Church holds that Divine Revelation was completed in Jesus Christ, True God and True Man.

Yes, while Divine Revelation has been completed, it has not been made completely explicit. This is why the Holy Spirit continues to guide the formation of Catholic Doctrines because any Catholic Doctrine is not a human creation as proposed in post 790, last line

By the way, FYI, it is denying and not questioning any of the Catholic Doctrines surrounding Original Sin which becomes an attack on God’s goodness.
When *questioning *Catholic Doctrines, it is important to recognize that often the assumptions can involve some kind of attack on the Creator. Understandably, it can be confusing when one decides to tamper with the Original Sin doctrine(s).

 

[fhansen]

The Catholic Church holds that Divine Revelation was completed in Jesus Christ, True God and True Man.

Yes, while Divine Revelation has been completed, it has not been made completely explicit. This is why the Holy Spirit continues to guide the formation of Catholic Doctrines because any Catholic Doctrine is not a human creation as proposed in post 790, last line

By the way, FYI, it is denying and not questioning any of the Catholic Doctrines surrounding Original Sin which becomes an attack on God’s goodness.
When *questioning *Catholic Doctrines, it is important to recognize that often the assumptions can involve some kind of attack on the Creator. Understandably, it can be confusing when one decides to tamper with the Original Sin doctrine(s).

And yet the more explicit the doctrine becomes, the better we can understand it, and so the better we can believe it.

 

[fhansen]

The CCC claims that at the Fall trust died in man’s heart, and he conceived a distorted image of God. The purpose, IMO, of this life is to find out how empty and meaningless-and sometimes how very ugly-life ultimately is when man is alone, running the show, so to speak, apart from God-and the Atonement is for man to find out, when he’s ready, that there’s an answer, there’s hope; Adam was wrong about God, about our need of Him, of His trustworthiness and goodness- of His godhood- and therefore of His very existence. This simple basic “wrongness” is our disorder IMO, man’s injustice that needs to be set aright.

So why does the doctrine of OS present difficulties? We can always understand it better-much better IMO-but the basic idea of man existing in a state of injustice, an abnormal state that he’s not responsible for creating, considered as an offense against the natural order, a decrease in the overall goodness man was created for, is not at all offensive to me. That truth explains a great deal about why people do some of the things we do, things I can’t accept as normal, and I need to know that truth first of all, before I can then proceed to find a way to deal with it.

We can deny any validity to the story of the Fall in Genesis, and deny that it should have any connection to the Atonement as well, or, alternatively, we can try to get inside the mind of the author, attempt to distinguish more clearly what he meant to say and how it applies to us, which the doctrines of AS and OS have intended to do. When we try to analyze it objectively, exploring the fall on a psychological level, which is good and necessary, we should also keep in mind the church’s position: that the story of creation and the fall is revelation: information to us, about us, given from a perspective above us, beyond our natural ability to discern on our own. And if there’s any truth to the idea that the story contains such wisdom, or contains anything worthy of our consideration at all for that matter, this would be truly amazing in light of the fact that it came from a millennia-old source.

We seem to be discussing OS along with the story of creation from two different views: one , that man never fell; he simply started out without the maturity, knowledge, wisdom, empathy, love that he needed in order to have peace, harmony, and happiness. The other viewpoint is that he fell from a higher, innocent state to a lower one. And I!m not sure that both aren’t actually true. And another question comes up here: if ancient man would’ve known human death-if that was within the realm of his experience-how would that affect him- his sense of well-being? Did humans exist, from the beginning, with no ties to their Maker, no connection to the source of their lives, lost, with no direct knowledge of something greater than themselves? The story of creation tells us they did have such a connection and the Atonement solves the problem of death for those-for everyone-who came later, after that knowledge had reportedly been lost. Otherwise, would a loving God create sentient, rational beings in a state where death/non-existence was the obvious destiny-the world as an apparent slaughterhouse?

In any case, both perspectives allow for the idea that something isn’t quite right, change is in order. And I happen to think that justice would demand that change is in order, given the harm that humans are capable of commiting by remaining apart from God. IOW there’s an obligation, on the part of man, to change. And the New Covenant recognizes that we can’t do that on our own.

But sometimes i think we still really object to such demands being placed on us, that we still resist our obligation to be right, right according to God’s will. And that is essentially what Adam objected to. Just some rambling thoughts.

 

[vames]

The less harsh interpretations of Original Sin, including denial of its seriousness, are basically attempts to fix God to fit human standards of good. When

God is believed to be good at the time of the real Original Sin, there would be no reason for this comment. “On the contrary, we try to find out the best arguments that He is good.” When people consider God as being good, there is no reason to find the best argument which will fix God, that is, bring God up to speed in the area of human goodness.
Well, if the degree of harshness is a measure of truthfulness, then it means that Calvin and Luther have been blessed with the best understanding of Genesis 2-3: the more we accuse ourselves before God, the more guilty and worthless we feel, the harder is for man to attain salvation, the closer we are to understanding God’s mind.

I had known a German who was recovering after a mental illness. He firmly believed in all the teachings of his Protestant church, he didn’t “tamper” with the idea of Original Sin and he didn’t suggest at all that “God is so mean” because, as he was taught, people are born depraved after the Fall and God predestines some people to end up in hell. No, he was convinced that people deserve this fate. But he said that the idea that he could be among the ones predestined to hell gave him physical pains and persistent crises of anxiety.

So there’s no need to think that “God is so mean” and “to attack God” to ask the question of the OP. Not all of those who question a doctrine are just disobedient people who try to find an easier way, to encourage themselves that God won’t punish their sins.

Maybe they just can’t reconcile what they have learned in school about nature (biology, geography) with all this talk about “everything bad that happens in the universe is because of YOUR fault”. At the beginning everything was good and beautiful, no pain, no natural disasters, but YOU ruined it.

Maybe they just can’t reconcile what they know about God’s love with all this talk about divine wrath.

CCC 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.”

So we are told that THEY were to blame for having conceived a “distorted” image of God, when in fact God, according to the same doctrine, behaved exactly like “a God jealous of his prerogatives”: A&E didn’t throw themselves away from Eden, didn’t commission the cherubim to guard the entrance and didn’t punish themselves and all the creation with death and suffering, simply because they didn’t have such powers. They were creatures.

And to this day, the God described in our doctrine continues to feel offended, to take revenge and to demand payment. CCC 400: “Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay””. God is still offended by the souls of the unbaptized. Committing one single mortal sin can send a man to be eternally tortured in hell if he suddenly dies afterwards. And if someone asks why there are deadly typhoons and tsunamis and why they strike even a Catholic country like Philippines (as opposed to Japan or Indonesia), there are always people (here on CAF) who explain that all this is “because Adam sinned”, IOW people still deserve to feel guilty, to pay, to be punished because of Adam, to expect to be smitten anytime by a **wrathful **God.

And if one does not confess that this **wrath **exists, he deserves even more **wrath **and condemnation.

The Council of Trent
DECREE CONCERNING ORIGINAL SIN

1. If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously **threatened **him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema.