Original Sin

[Exporter]

I do not want to say this as being “The Last Word”…that is beyond my abilities.

What I do want to do is to state the meaning of “ORIGINAL SIN” and it’s effects upon all of us. This is my understanding after years of sometimes serious aand sometimes lazy study and hearing on this subject.

From the Catechism, 389, 1440 and *417 we see this.

1. Who brought sin into the world? Satan
2. Did Adam and Eve sin due to Satan’s urging? Yes
3. What were the effects of this Original Sin? All would suffer death and their descendants would get their food by the sweat of their brow.
4. What was inherieted by the descendants of Adam and Eve? Death, had to toil to live, and the propensity to sin. The stain of the original sinin the soul causes that person to drift towards a sin nature. It is this propensity to sin that we think about when we hear the term ,“Original Sin”.

 

[Matt16_18]

Matt16-18

The key difference which really must be remembered, is that the Orthodox do not have a definition of Original Sin, the RCC do.

The Orthodox and the Catholics have the same bible, and the bible supports all the defined doctrines about original sin that the Catholic Church holds. Doctrines get defined when false teachings begin to spread in the Church. The Celtic monk Pelagius began to preach that Christian perfection was achievable by buckling down and becoming perfect through self-effort. Pelagius believed that Jesus merely set an example for humans on how to be perfect, and that all Christians needed to do was to follow Jesus’ example on how to live a perfect life. St. Augustine knew that Pelagius was not teaching correctly, and it was because of the false teaching of Pelagius that Augustine developed the theology of grace. Augustine further developed his theology of grace in his refutations of Julian of Eclanum and other Sempelagians. If the western Church developed the doctrine of Original Sin before the eastern Church, it was only because false teaching concerning this Original Sin first arose in the west. There was no Orthodox schism in the time of Augustine, and it is false for the Orthodox to claim that Augustine’s theology is not part of a heritage that they hold in common with Catholics. The Catholic Church does not think St. John was an “Orthodox bishop” because he lived in Ephesus, and was thus not relevant to the western Church.

The RCC has some 1500 centuries of defining and explaining Original Sin which is still the base of RCC thinking and which is still dogmatically taught as I’ve shown, by John Paul II etc. and so, I say, this must not be lost sight of in our discussion.

You are the only one that is saying that the RCC has changed her doctrines concerning Original Sin. But just because you say that, it doesn’t make it true. You haven’t been able to back up your assertion, because it isn’t possible to do so. The dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church about original sin are all supported by scriptures. The Orthodox cannot claim Catholic dogma concerning original in is false without also claiming the scriptures are in error.

You say there are so many errors in the River of Fire about your Church and think you can correct them, to what? With respect, you don’t even know your own Church’s teachings of the last 1500 years.

No, it is you has shown a misunderstanding of what Catholics believe, and you have quoted from books such as River of Fire that parrot the same errors that you make. Creating strawmen arguements from faulty Orthodox sources is not taking this debate anywhere. Please respond the the questions that I have raised, and quit responding to the strawmen you have created. It is obvious to all that have been following this thread that you have evaded answering the issues that I brought up in my last two posts.

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Matt16_18:

Since you don’t even know what the Catholic Church teaches about uncreated grace, how can you possibly know that what she teaches about uncreated grace is different than what the Orthodox teach?

You can read on the web the The Three Ages Of The Interior Life, by Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP.

I am not familiar with Garrigou and should spend some time reading him, but he is not describing what the Orthodox mean by uncreated grace and uncreated energies. Myrrh is correct on this point, as he is also correct that until quite recently the Orthodox doctrine of uncreated grace/uncreated energies was termed heretical by the Catholic Church.

The presuppositions of Garrigou, as given in this article

geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/yannaras.html(3) The divine grace is neither created nor uncreated, but rather is the causal presupposition for the efficacy of divine salvation (la causalité de grâce est l’efficacité salvifique), i.e., the presupposition for the creation in man of a habitus, a tendency or state that coordinates man with the divine will.

(4) Consequently, the deification of man is merely a union of will or intention (union intentionnelle).

This is somewhat remote from Orthodoxy.

PS: I had not realised that you are involved in this fascinating debate. Yesterday was Sunday here and I did not have much time for the computer and the Net. It will be interesting to get to grips with your discussions.

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Myhrr:

It can’t possibly mean the same thing because the Orthodox don’t have your doctrine of Original Sin. Give me some examples from your theologians, from Augustine onward on, your side of the Orthodox/RCC divide, and explain it from there.
Which councils talk about it?

The Council of Orange, still accepted as far as I know by the Roman Catholic Church, condemned the semi-pelagian position on original sin and grace as heretical. In the process this Council also condemned the Eastern Church, perhaps unwittingly, since they hold to a semi-pelagian stance.

What the West calls “semi-pelagianism” is of course the Orthodox doctrine of synergy - the co-operation/collaboration of God and man… until very recently, in my lifetime, this was condemned as a heresy by the Roman Catholic Church and you can dig up RC treatises of 50 years ago calling the Orthodox heretics for holding it. It’s nothing of the sort of course, but it is the middle way between Pelagianism and Augustine and it is the teaching adhered to by the Eastern Fathers. In the West it was held up for contempt because of the tall shadow cast by Augustine

The article below is an old one from Christianity Online. I cannot find it in their archives, so please foegive me if I have to give it here in toto.

Semi-Augustinians


A few monks-and eventually most of the church-found both Augustine and Pelagius a little too extreme.

David Allen

The verbal battle between Augustine and Pelagius raged for a full 25 years before the final condemnation of the latter's views at the Council
of Ephesus in 431. Though Augustine's views triumphed, not everyone was happy with the outcome.

In Provence, an area of southern France, a group of monks who had all
spent time in the important monastery on the Isle of Lιrins (opposite the modern resort of Cannes) set about correcting what they saw as the extremism of both Pelagius and Augustine.

John Cassian (360-433), while visiting Egypt to learn spiritual secrets
from its famed monks and hermits, heard this from a wizened monk named Chaeremon: "The grace of God always cooperates with our will for its advantage . and sometimes requires and looks for some effort of good will from it that it may not appear to confer its gifts on the
sluggish."

This is the earliest expression of what came to be known as Semi-Pelagianism-a view that Cassian embraced and later began to
propagate. The key word is cooperation: no one can save himself but, by cooperating with the grace of God, salvation can be appropriated by
anyone.

Cassian clearly felt that Augustine's stress on predestination ruled out
any need for human cooperation or consent. Cassian also disagreed with Augustine on the capabilities of the human will, especially after
salvation. "When God for any wise reason-discipline, for example-withdraws grace," Cassian wrote, "the will is able to hold on for some time awaiting its restoration."
 
continued...

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

…continued

Cassian’s misgivings were shared by Vincent of Lιrins (died 450). In his Commonitorium, Vincent catalogued heresies and dangerous theological innovations, and he also listed an “honor roll” of theologians, teachers, and bishops who had, in Vincent’s opinion, made significant contributions to the defense and spreading of the Gospel. Augustine’s name does not appear on that list.

Furthermore, Vincent makes the point that even “eminent men are
sometimes permitted by God to become authors of novelties in the
Church.” Many scholars interpret the omission of Augustine’s name and the reference to “eminent men” as an indication that Vincent disapproved of Augustine’s distinctive teaching.

Arguably the greatest of the so-called Semi-Pelagians was Faustus of
Riez (died 495), also from Provence. Faustus, a theologian and popular preacher, felt strongly that Pelagius and Augustine had both gotten it wrong. Pelagius stressed human effort and responsibility to the exclusion of God’s grace, but Augustine’s idea of predestination
“jeopardizes God’s justice and mercy.”

Faustus, in his De Gratia Dei (“Concerning the Grace of God”), argues
that though the Fall made all of us weak and sickly of will, we still
possess the ability-and responsibility-to turn to God. Once we turn to
God, then he steps in and adds the vital and crucial gift of grace.
Faustus is thus close to Augustine in regard to the effects of the Fall
but nearer to Pelagius in terms of human ability and responsibility.

The views of these Semi-Pelagians-they could just as easily have been labeled Semi-Augustinians-were not appreciated by Augustine’s many friends and supporters.

Caesarius of Arles (c. 470 -542), a forceful Augustinian who believed
all good works begin with God, “no merit of ours preceding,” presided
over the Synod of Orange (529), which condemned Semi-Pelagianism.
However, even the synod backed away from some of Augustine’s more
extreme views: his belief that God’s grace cannot be resisted and his
severe interpretation of predestination were quietly dropped.

David Allen is a senior lecturer at Mattersey Hall, an Assemblies of God Bible College in Mattersey, England.

 

[Matt16_18]

Fr Ambrose:

The Council of Orange, still accepted as far as I know by the Roman Catholic Church …

See GrzeszDel’s post # 12 in this thread:
Incidentally, I am not sure that we might say that the canons of Orange are “in force.” Orange is simply a local council and is thus pretty low down the magisterial force scale. The teachings of Trent & Florence, however, are quite definitely irrevocably binding.

Cassian clearly felt that Augustine’s stress on predestination ruled out any need for human cooperation or consent. Cassian also disagreed with Augustine on the capabilities of the human will, especially after salvation. … Pelagius stressed human effort and responsibility to the exclusion of God’s grace, but Augustine’s idea of predestination “jeopardizes God’s justice and mercy.”

If you want to argue that Augustine’s theology of predestination was flawed, you will get no argument from me. Augustine was a truly great theologian, but his theology of predestination was not a great work, and it does not define Catholic dogma.

Augustine’s later years were occupied with problems which had developed out of his debate with the Pelagians, and he busied himself more and more with the question of grace and free will. For him, the freely given love and acceptance of God were the beginning of salvation and the ground of all the good works of which the human being was capable. Far from interfering with free will, Augustine argued it is grace which creates it and empowers it. This view of Augustine has often been misunderstood, is a deep one, because he saw that freedom does not consist essentially in indifference but rather in the power to act rightly and well. Unfortunately, Augustine’s theology of grace was flawed by his philosopy, and he spoke at times as grace as a thing which could be possessed, gained and lost, and this conflicted with the deepest intent of his own thought, which equated grace with the freely given love of God.

As the years went by, Augustine became more and more obsessed with the problem of predestination, and this somber concept began to weigh more heavily that theat of God’s loving acceptance. In later times, theologians and teachers who were disposed to emphasize the divine justice at the expense of the divine love found a rich source for their theses in Augustine’s writings. The church never accepted Augustine’s teaching in this matter.

John C. Dwyer, Church History, Twenty Centuries of Catholic Christianity

 

[Matt16_18]

Fr. Ambrose

I have no desire to turn this thread into a debate about semiPelagianism.

I would appreciate it if you would answer the objection I raised to Myrr’s assertions in post #79. Myhrr states that the Orthodox believe that Adam and Eve were subject to death before the Fall, and that physical death in humans is not a consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience to the expressed will of God. Is this truly Orthodox theology - do the Orthodox believe that death was reigning in Paradise before the Fall? To me, it seems obvious that 1Corinthians renders this opinion untenable.

In my post # 78, I made this observation about Myhrr’s understanding of grace and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit:
It is clear to me that the Orthodox believe that the Uncreated Grace of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is bestowed by reception of baptism and chrismation. But that means that it must be possible for a man to NOT to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit if baptism and chrismation bestow this gift.

You [Mhyrr] have said that the ONLY way to conceive grace, is to conceive it as the Uncreated Grace of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and that you do NOT believe that people are born without grace. This is why I cannot fathom what you believe, because it seems to me to be full of contradiction.

How would you answer this contradiction?

 

[Matt16_18]

Fr Ambrose:

I am not familiar with Garrigou and should spend some time reading him, but he is not describing what the Orthodox mean by uncreated grace and uncreated energies.

I admit I don’t really know what the Orthodox mean when they talk about the “Energies” of God. I would have no idea if Orthodox beliefs about “Energies” are heretical because I have never seen a coherent definition of “Energies” that all Orthodox would accept as definitive.

It is only an intuition of mine that the Energies of God that the Orthodox speak about are somehow related to the Catholic concept of uncreated grace. I could be completely off base.

I found this in the Catechism when searching for a reference to “energy”.

**Catechism of the Catholic Church

Symbols of the Holy Spirit

696** Fire. While water signifies birth and the fruitfulness of life given in the Holy Spirit, fire symbolizes the transforming energy of the Holy Spirit’s actions …
The Catholic Encyclopedia article that I quoted in my post # 73, also uses the word “energies”:
A supernatural gift may be defined as something conferred on nature that is above all the powers (vires) of created nature. When God created man, He was not content with bestowing upon him the essential endowments required by man’s nature. He raised him to a higher state, adding certain gifts to which his nature had no claim. They comprise qualities and perfections, forces and energies, dignities and rights, destination to final objects, of which the essential constitution of man is not the principle; which are not required for the attainment of the final perfection of the natural order of man; and which can only be communicated by the free operation of God’s goodness and power.
Is this way of speaking about “energy” totally alien to Orthodoxy?

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Matt16_18:

Myhrr states that the Orthodox believe that Adam and Eve were subject to death before the Fall, and that physical death in humans is not a consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience to the expressed will of God. Is this truly Orthodox theology - do the Orthodox believe that death was reigning in Paradise before the Fall.

Death and corruption come from the sin of our first ancestors. The disruption of the relationship with God brought about by disobedience brought sin into the world, and death and corruption resulted from that. Whether man would have experienced some sort of death if the Fall had not taken place I do not know… on the whole the Fathers play down speculations of this nature. Possibly there would have been some sort of “passing.” We are only speculating. Does anybody have something about this written by the Church Fathers?

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Matt16_18:

It is clear to me that the Orthodox believe that the Uncreated Grace of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is bestowed by reception of baptism and chrismation. But that means that it must be possible for a man to NOT to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit if baptism and chrismation bestow this gift.
You [Mhyrr] have said that the ONLY way to conceive grace, is to conceive it as the Uncreated Grace of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and that you do NOT believe that people are born without grace. This is why I cannot fathom what you believe, because it seems to me to be full of contradiction.

How would you answer this contradiction?

Well, we are not talking about the same thing when we speak of grace. Grace is God Himself in His Energies. There is no such thing as created grace. Grace, God’s energy, is how He who is ineffable and untouchable in His Essence reaches outside His Essence and communicates with His creation, with us. His Divine Essence will be forever unknowable, but we can participate in His Divine Energies.

The distinction between Essence and Energy is an essential for all aspects of Orthodox theology.

If you find it full of contradiction, I am not surprised. Most Orthodox never have to think about it, no more than they think about quantum physics. We are, again, touching on the mstery of God’s existence and He is shrouded in mystery. On the other hand it is not so full of contradiction as you may think. Much of this theology is laid out in the two Palamite Councils of the 15th century. I am not sure if they are on the web. Failing that there are various books on Saint Gregory Palamas which will go into detail on these matters. There are also the two highly recommended books on the Divine Energy by the Jesuit George Malony (I have not seen them myself.)

I know that it is not quite satisfactory to refer you to books, but it is so difficult to cover this in the to-and-fro of an e-foruw, where we just write pelt one another with short paragraphs.

“Uncreated Energy: A Journey into the Authentic Sources of Christian Faith”
by George A. Maloney S.J.
ISBN: 0916349209

“Theology of Uncreated Energies of God” (Pere Marquette Lecture Ser.)
by George S. Maloney S.J.
ISBN: 0874625165

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Matt16_18:

It is only an intuition of mine that the Energies of God that the Orthodox speak about are somehow related to the Catholic concept of uncreated grace.

I have never heard of any Catholic concept of uncreated grace before this present discussion, so you need to spell it out for me. Where can I find the teaching covered in papal teachings, Catholic councils…?

I found this in the Catechism when searching for a reference to “energy”.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

**Symbols of the Holy Spirit **

696 Fire. While water signifies birth and the fruitfulness of life given in the Holy Spirit, fire symbolizes the transforming energy of the Holy Spirit’s actions …
The Catholic Encyclopedia article that I quoted in my post # 73, also uses the word “energies”: A supernatural gift may be defined as something conferred on nature that is above all the powers (vires) of created nature. When God created man, He was not content with bestowing upon him the essential endowments required by man’s nature. He raised him to a higher state, adding certain gifts to which his nature had no claim. They comprise qualities and perfections, forces and energies, dignities and rights, destination to final objects, of which the essential constitution of man is not the principle; which are not required for the attainment of the final perfection of the natural order of man; and which can only be communicated by the free operation of God’s goodness and power. Is this way of speaking about “energy” totally alien to Orthodoxy?

Yes, it is totally alien. It places grace in the realm of the supernatural. The supernatural, at least as the Orthodox understand traditional RC teaching, is NOT God Himself. It is not divine. It is in the realm of the created. Because it is created and not divine it has no possibility of bringing about the divination of a human being. What is not divine cannot effect theosis.

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Matt16_18:

I admit I don’t really know what the Orthodox mean when they talk about the “Energies” of God. I would have no idea if Orthodox beliefs about “Energies” are heretical because I have never seen a coherent definition of “Energies” that all Orthodox would accept as definitive.

Here is something which stretches the old brain cells

ENERGY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
AND IN LATER THEOLOGY
orlapubs.com/AR/R75.html

 

[Matt16_18]

No problema. The Orthodox often seem to think that that Catholic doctrine on grace is developed ONLY in terms of created grace.

The Uncreated Grace is God Himself in so far as He, in His love, from all eternity has pre-determined the gifts of grace, in so far as He has communicated Himself in the Incarnation of Christ’s Humanity (gratia unionis), in so far as He indwells in the souls of the justified, and in so far as He gives Himself to the blessed for possession and enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. The Hypostatic-Union, The Indwelling and the Beatific Vision, considered as acts, are indeed created graces, for they had a beginning in time. But the gift which is conferred on a creature in these acts is uncreated.

Created grace is a supernatural gift or operation really distinct from God.

Dr. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma

Note that Catholics do indeed believe that “created grace” is a supernatural gift. But we also believe that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a gift from God, and this is the greatest gift that could possibly be given to us. Catholics do not think that the Holy Spirit is created!

Father Garrigou-Lagrange on the gift of the Holy Spirit:

**THE HOLY GHOST, UNCREATED GIFT **

The Holy Ghost is called the Gift par excellence. Christ alluded and more than alluded to this title when He said to the Samaritan woman: “If thou didst know the gift of God!” The created gift of sanctifying grace, united to charity, in itself immensely surpasses all natural gifts, those of the richest imagination, of the keenest intellect, of the most energetic will. Grace, the seed of eternal life, even immensely exceeds the natural life of the angels, the natural strength of their intellect and will; it also exceeds, and that greatly, as St. Paul says, graces that are gratis datae and, so to speak, extrinsic, like the gift of miracles, the gift of tongues, and prophecy.

The Holy Ghost is the uncreated Gift, infinitely superior to that of sanctifying grace and of charity, superior to every degree of charity and every degree of glory.

He is, first of all, the uncreated Gift, as the final and eternal term of the divine fecundity of the heavenly Father and of His Son. By the eternal generation of the Word, the infinitely good Father communicates to the Son all the divine nature, gives Him to be God of God, light of light. The Father and the Son breathe forth the personal Love that is the Holy Ghost.(1) The third divine Person thus proceeds from the mutual love of the Father and the Son; He is the uncreated Gift which the first two Persons give each other, the unique gift, by an eternal spiration that communicates all the divine nature to the Holy Ghost.

St. Thomas explains (2) why the Holy Ghost is called the personal and uncreated Gift. He says that every gift proceeds from a gratuitous donation whose source is love, and the first thing we give to someone is the love by which we wish him well. Thus love is the first of all gifts, the principle of all the others. Consequently the Holy Ghost, who is personal subsistent Love, deserves to be called the personal and uncreated Gift.

1. Summa, Ia, q.38, a.2.

The Three Ages of the Interior Life

christianperfection.info/tta101.htm#bk1

 

[Matt16_18]

Fr Ambrose:

Here is something which stretches the old brain cells

ENERGY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
AND IN LATER THEOLOGY
orlapubs.com/AR/R75.html

It is a shame that so many Orthodox get their understanding of what Catholics believe about grace from articles such as this. The author of this article shows a very faulty understanding of the Catholic theology of grace. But when the author sticks to what he knows, he makes points that Catholics can understand and agree with.

In the New Testament (and the Septuagint Greek Old Testament) and in the writings of the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, there are numerous uses of enéryeia “energy, operative or actualizing power”), enérgema “effect(iveness), operation,” eneryés “energetic, efficacious,” and eneryeIn “energize, actuate, actualize.” (These words are cognate with Greek órganon “instrument” or “product.”) From Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics (in the middle of the fourth century before Christ) on, energy in Greek was related to dýnamis “power, capacity, faculty” as actual (realized) is related to potential: Those who thought and wrote in Greek, including the authors of the New Testament Epistles thought of energy is what makes a potential power actual or real; it is a basic aspect of being, whether created or uncreated (divine).

Catholic theology recognizes the difference between act and potency. Angels and humans possess both act and potency. God alone is pure act. God is also simple and cannot be divided into parts. Any concept of Divine Energy that makes Energy a *part * of God that can be distinguished from God’s Essence would indeed be heresy.

Catholics believe that when we are baptized, that we receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. To receive that gift, we must first receive surpernatural healing graces so that the soul becomes a purified vessel – an undefiled Temple in which the Holy Spirit can dwell. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit bestows sanctification upon the sinner, but sanctification is not a static state as the author of the article asserts. The scriptures speak of sanctification in both the present and future tense. We must grow in sanctity, and what we possess in potentcy must become actualized.

One must be careful in dealing with the contrast between erga “works” not energized by Grace and those so energized; cf. Rom. ll:6, etc., as well as passages commented on below, especially Philp. 2:13 …

Right. The good works that we do before we are baptized can never be wholly pleasing to God because these are works of the unregenerated man, and not the works of a man that has received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Certainly all this is related to the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin.

 

[Matt16_18]

Myhrr & Fr. Amrose

The article from Orchid Land Publications states that Adam could not have possessed complete theosis in the terrestrial Paradise. It also states that Adam and Eve possessed bodily immortality before the Fall, and that their bodily immortality was lost because of their sin. The Catholic Church teaches both these things.

To bring all of this together (one may tentatively suggest), we must think of a gradient of more and less Grace, or rather of omoíosis as a vectorial form of théosis, a vector of being energized with more and more uncreated Grace that eventually eventuates in complete théosis. Adam lacked theosis or he would not have sinned; but before sinning he remained as he had been created—according to the “Assimilation” to God (Gen. 1:26). The uncreated Grace of omoíosis received in Baptism and partaking of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Holy Communion undergoes those set-backs that every cognizant adult experiences through sinning prior to the ultimate theosis of those in Christ. Our first ancestors were, unlike us, not subject to death and decay prior to their sinning because they had the “Assimilation to God.” This was lost at the Fall; the Icon of God was not lost, for the loss of its powers of reasoning and free-choice would have reduced our first ancestors to animals.

ENERGY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT AND IN LATER THEOLOGY

**Catechism of the Catholic Church

Man’s first sin

397** Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of.[278] All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.

398 In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to “be like God”, but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God”.[279]

278 Cf. Gen 3:1-11; Rom 5:19.
279 St. Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua: PG 91,1156C; cf. Gen 3:5.

The “Assimilation” to God that is mentioned in the article is understood by Catholics as the sanctifying grace possessed by Adam and Eve in their state of Holy Innocence in their pre-Fall state. The sanctifying grace of Original Justice is not a state of complete divinization, because, as the article quoted states, if Adam and Eve were completely divinized, they could never have committed sin.

The fruit of the Tree of Life that grew in the center of the Garden is a type that signifies the grace needed for complete theosis. Adam and Eve were destined to eat of the fruit of the tree of life, but they were not able to eat of this fruit because of their sin of disobedience (the original sin).

 

[Matt16_18]

The orthodox among the Orthodox believe all of the following, they just use different terminology to express these beliefs:

**Catechism of the Catholic Church

416** By his sin Adam, as the first man, lost the original holiness and justice he had received from God, not only for himself but for all human beings.

**417 ** Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called “original sin”.

418 As a result of original sin, human nature is weakened in its powers, subject to ignorance, suffering and the domination of death, and inclined to sin (this inclination is called “concupiscence”).

419 “We therefore hold, with the Council of Trent, that original sin is transmitted with human nature, “by propagation, not by imitation” and that it is. . . ‘proper to each’” (Paul VI, CPG § 16).

420 The victory that Christ won over sin has given us greater blessings than those which sin had taken from us: “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5:20).

 

[Myhrr]

Matt16_18:

The Orthodox and the Catholics have the same bible, and the bible supports all the defined doctrines about original sin that the Catholic Church holds.

That’s not so, there’s been quite a difference between the Bibles used, the Latin Church had Jerome’s Vulgate version, which I can’t find on line in English, which was later updated to include corrections from the Greek and Hebrew, but that’s a whole different subject. There is a difference between Bible verses supporting doctrine and doctrine being created from out of context Bible verses…

I’ve pointed out three of the verses used by the RCC and its Protestant derivatives which are different from the Orthodox as I mentioned earlier:

Psalms has sins, plural, not sin, singular which doesn’t lend itself to your and some Evangelical Christian use to ‘prove’ Adam’s sin was a state of being for all humanity and passed on by generation, and, Augustine’s misreading of Genesis to have it that an angry God killed Adam for disobedience, your whole dogma of Original Sin is built on that point, also, OrthodoxXtian’s reminder that Paul has been mistranslated.

Post 11 on forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=1600

Doctrines get defined when false teachings begin to spread in the Church.

And some false teachings get defined as doctrines …

The Celtic monk Pelagius began to preach that Christian perfection was achievable by buckling down and becoming perfect through self-effort. Pelagius believed that Jesus merely set an example for humans on how to be perfect, and that all Christians needed to do was to follow Jesus’ example on how to live a perfect life. St. Augustine knew that Pelagius was not teaching correctly, and it was because of the false teaching of Pelagius that Augustine developed the theology of grace. Augustine further developed his theology of grace in his refutations of Julian of Eclanum and other Sempelagians. If the western Church developed the doctrine of Original Sin before the eastern Church, it was only because false teaching concerning this Original Sin first arose in the west. There was no Orthodox schism in the time of Augustine, and it is false for the Orthodox to claim that Augustine’s theology is not part of a heritage that they hold in common with Catholics. The Catholic Church does not think St. John was an “Orthodox bishop” because he lived in Ephesus, and was thus not relevant to the western Church.

I don’t know where to start unravelling all of that. But as a start, Augustine was teaching something of his own invention, he could be the patron saint of sola scriptura because he himself admitted to teaching something different from the rest of the Church from his own reading of Scripture. He considered his revelations from Scripture to be superior to the Church’s understanding and thought rather a lot of himself for being so much cleverer.

Jerome didn’t like Pelagius for reasons I don’t recall offhand and then Augustine joined in the attack when Pelagius rubbed him up the wrong way, but it really should be noted that whenever Pelagius could defend himself in person the councils always found for him and against Augustine whose ideas they considered heretical.

Augustine and Jerome together, as Father Ambrose noted, made a formidable enemy, Pelagius was Orthodox. British Orthodox. Some of these arguments attributed to him don’t come from him but from Augustine still arguing with a dead man and putting words into his mouth because Augustine couldn’t understand him. Augustine didn’t like to be corrected. The Church in the West couldn’t correct him, again as Father Ambrose has already mentioned, it was the fathers of the Church in the West who were critical of Augustine’s ideas.

What’s your reference to ST John mean in the last sentence?

continued

 

[Myhrr]

continued to Matt16_18

You are the only one that is saying that the RCC has changed her doctrines concerning Original Sin. But just because you say that, it doesn’t make it true. You haven’t been able to back up your assertion, because it isn’t possible to do so. The dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church about original sin are all supported by scriptures. The Orthodox cannot claim Catholic dogma concerning original in is false without also claiming the scriptures are in error.

I am not the only one who has ever said this, we’ve got 1700 years argument against Rome’s teachings including this one. The Church did not take Genesis II as the base for all its doctrine on creation.*

This was Augustine’s great contribution to the West and it has coloured the West’s perception ever since, an angry God only appeased by a human sacrifice for humanity’s sins, predestining some to damnation anyway… This was achieved first by destroying the common sense spirituality of Pelagius and replacing it with a fantasy revelation from Augustine, and secondly by Rome taking over all the Church in those areas it could get its mitts on and forcing its beliefs and traditions and ecclesiology onto them. Some of the various strange Protestant beliefs of today come from Rome, not from Orthodoxy.

No, it is you has shown a misunderstanding of what Catholics believe, and you have quoted from books such as River of Fire that parrot the same errors that you make. Creating strawmen arguements from faulty Orthodox sources is not taking this debate anywhere. Please respond the the questions that I have raised, and quit responding to the strawmen you have created. It is obvious to all that have been following this thread that you have evaded answering the issues that I brought up in my last two posts.

The River of Fire is part of the continuing Orthodox argument against Augustine which Pelagius started, we still say you’re wrong…

Please, slow down a little I will do my best to answer your last two posts, I haven’t been ignoring them, I have had other things to concentrate on.

Because you don’t like what I’m saying I think you’re being overly defensive, I’m still trying to respond the E-catholics questions about Original Sin which of necessity take us back to the beginning of these differences which is Augustine’s influence on the Church in rome and on the doctrines as they developed in the West because of this.

Please, and all who are reading this, take a few minutes to read the entry about Original Sin from a Jewish perspective and note what it says under the Eastern Orthodox heading below it.

encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Original%20sin

Augustine changed the rather more open minded approach of the Church by putting all the emphasis about creation on his personal misreading of Genesis II and consequently all RCC doctrines on Original Sin are grounded in this, this a fact. The Orthodox simply don’t have anything like it. Not having this as dogma the Orthodox don’t need to adjust everything they think around it, but that’s what happened in Rome as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception shows.

 

[Matt16_18]

Myhrr:

That’s not so, there’s been quite a difference between the Bibles used, the Latin Church had Jerome’s Vulgate version, which I can’t find on line in English, which was later updated to include corrections from the Greek and Hebrew, but that’s a whole different subject. There is a difference between Bible verses supporting doctrine and doctrine being created from out of context Bible verses…

I am not a language scholar, so I can’t prove that the NAB translation is not faulty. But here is a comment that GrzeszDeL once made on a different thread concerning this same point that I made to you:

“Indeed, in guilt I was born, and in sin my mother conceived me.”

The Greek of Ps 51:5 says “en anomiais sunelayfthayn”; “sunelayfthayn” is the first person aorist passive of “sullambano” - to conceive. “Anomiais” is the dative (as befits a noun with “en”), so this is not “conceived by sinful means.” The plain sense of the words would suggest that the author was conceived with sin from the first moment of conception. I do not speak a lick of Hebrew, so I do not know if the Hebrew bears this out, but a Christian ought to value the Septuagint more than the Hebrew anyway.
It is obvious speaking about St. Augustine is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. It is also equally obvious that you are unaware that not everything that St. Augustine ever wrote is considered Catholic doctrine. But your historical revisionism is more than a little far afield. The Pelegian heresy was condemned at the third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus. If you want to defend Pelegianism, go ahead, but you aren’t going to find much support among the orthodox of the Orthodox.

 

[Matt16_18]

Myhrr:

continued to Matt16_18

Please, slow down a little I will do my best to answer your last two posts, I haven’t been ignoring them, I have had other things to concentrate on.

I have already found my questions to you answered in the link that Fr. Ambrose provided. It is just as I suspected, that despite what you say, at least some Orthodox do indeed believe that Adam possessed the gift of physical immortality before the Fall, and that death came into the world because of Adam’s sin. The Catholic Church, of course, teaches exactly this.

The reason that I was asking you that question was also answered in the article that Fr. Ambrose referenced, and that is this: the Orthodox believe that Adam did not, and could not possess “complete théosis” before the Fall, which is also exactly what the Catholic Church teaches. The article also states that Adam possessed the holy gift of the “Assimilation of God” before the fall, and that Adam lost this holy gift because of sin. Adam not only lost this holy gift for himself; Adam’s sin caused the loss of this holy gift for his progeny born into a fallen world. All of this just the Orthodox way of stating what Catholics believe about original sin:
**Catechism of the Catholic Church

404** 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. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. [294] It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.

293 St. Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 4,1.
294 Cf. Council of Trent: DS 1511-1512