Original Sin

[Matt16_18]

GrzeszDeL:

… Darwin’s account of the origins of life cannot be reconciled to the idea that nothing at all died until the fall. There is, in other words, a contradiction between your claim that physical death originated in the fall and the claim that Darwinian accounts of the origin of the earth can be reconciled to Catholic teaching.

I don’t see the contradiction, because Darwin’s theories only apply to life in the fallen world, and have nothing to do with life in the Terrestrial Paradise. Evolution is a scientific theory to explain what happens in the world ruled by death, and this is not the world that is described as being created in Genesis.

The scriptures do not say that the Terrestrial Paradise was destroyed, it says that Adam and Eve were cast out of that world, and into a world that is subject to death and decay – i.e. Satan’s Kingdom. Decay is written right into the laws of physics of our world, as can be seen by the the Second law of Thermodynamics (it is also this law that gives an arrow to time in our world). We have physical bodies that are governed by the physical laws that govern the Fallen world. It is therefore necessary that the physics of the Terrestrial Paradise were different than the physics of the fallen world, since there was no death or decay in the Terrestrial Paradise.

Adam and Eve lost bodily immortality when they were cast out of the Terrestrial Paradise. Genesis doesn’t provide details about how it came about that Adam and Eve had immortal bodies at one time and mortal bodies at another time.

When Eve was created, Adam was cast into a sleep and something was removed from his flesh to create Eve. All of this is symbolic of course, but this brings an image to my mind: I imagine that Adam and Eve were like a beautiful young couple that got way to carried away partying in Club Paradise. They ended up passed out, and then woke up with the worst hangover that can be imagined. The night before the party, Adam had a gorgeous wife that was free from all physical defects. But when he woke up after the Fall, he looked at who laying beside him in bed, and he saw that his wife has gained fifty pounds, had cellulite and pimples. Then he looked at himself in the mirror and discovered cavities, a bad comb-over, and a pot gut. The horror, the horror!

All evolution is saying it that our mortal bodies have DNA that came from lower forms of life. But hey, Genesis says that Adam’s immortal body was created out of dirt of the Terrerstrial Paradise. I don’t see the big deal that our mortal bodies have DNA whose origin was in the primordial slime of the Fallen world. That would be an appropriate punishment for committing the original sin. Adam and Eve were created as masters of nature, and because of their sin they became subject to nature in their corrupted bodies. Adam and Eve listened to a creature that was lower than a human, and they preferred the lies of a creature to the truth of the Creator.

(Did you know that 70% of our DNA is the same as a turnip?)
Uh oh, Eve, I think we made a big mistake listening to that devil music last night.

 

[Myhrr]

Welcome back **GrzeszDeL! **

…maybe Matt will finally explore his Church’s dogmas…

Matt16_18:

Puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze!

You accuse Catholics of not understanding grace, and then when I ask you what alternative the Orthodox have to offer, you say that is irrelevant! Anyone can see that you resort to being evasive when asked to respond to a direct question that you don’t know how to answer.

I’ve already given the common sense Pelagius (nb not the mangled version of him via his detractors) against an Augustinian influenced Rome, taken up by the Franks and enforced or attempted to force on everyone they had contact with. Quite honestly, if I knew nothing of Christianity and was introduced to it via RCC dogmas as the only available source I would be an atheist.

But you didn’t want to discuss him.

Bye for now and I leave you with a couple of alternative views to add to our collection here.

users.owt.com/stoffels/theology.htm

orthodoxcanada.org/062002/theology.html

 

[Myhrr]

I found this on a list:

In the present order of salvation death is a punishment for sin. (De fide.)

All human beings subject to original sin are subject to the law of death. (De fide.) D789

And this:

Sanctifying Grace is a created supernatural gift really distinct from God. (Sent. fidei proxima.)

What’s the status of this, how does it differ from de fide?

If you’re interested this is the page on Paul by the orlapubs man

romanity.org/htm/rom.10.en.original_sin_according_to_st._paul.01.htm

Matt16_18:

The scriptures do not say that the Terrestrial Paradise was destroyed, it says that Adam and Eve were cast out of that world, and into a world that is subject to death and decay – i.e. Satan’s Kingdom.

…but they had nooky, what happened to the immortal children they produced? If you say they didn’t produce children then what’s Gen I about and why the reference in Gen II ‘for this reason shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife’?

If God blessed them to be fruitful and multiply then it can’t refer to the expulsion description of child bearing etc. - or is God’s blessing really a curse…?

OK, OK …I’m going…

 

[Matt16_18]

Myhrr:

… what happened to the immortal children they produced? If you say they didn’t produce children …

Adam and Eve lost the preternatual gift of bodily immortality when they committed the original sin. The lost that preternatual gift for themselves, and for their children by their sin. This is something that most Orthodox know is true simply by reading their bibles.

Adam and Eve were cast out of the Terrestrial Paradise before they ever had any children. Of course Adam and Eve had children! They had mortal children that could die - Cain killed his brother!

And you are going to explain Augustine to Catholics?

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Matt16_18:

And you are going to explain Augustine to Catholics?

Saint Augustine should be judged by his peers, by the quite large number of Church Fathers who were writing at his time and later on. It is from the consensus of the Fathers that true doctrine emerges and not from an emphasis on any one of them. One or two, for example taught Apocatastasis - that in the end all will be saved, so that God will have the final victory, “God being all in all.” They were mistaken and the Church Fathers naturally corrected that mistake.

The Fathers as a whole were not well acquainted with what Saint Augustine wrote. He is mentioned with high favour at one of the Ecumenical Councils. As his theology began to come to the attention of other Church Fathers, their reaction to his errors was quite charitable - they insisted that we must not be so gross as to “uncover our father’s nakedness” but we should leave his errors to one side and look only at his true and excellent theology. And this is precisly what the Council of Orange did - it politely ignored his slips in theology on predestination and the damnation of children and the whole rather nasty “massa damnata.”

One of his commentators, Saint Photius, had such a high respect for Augustine that although he wrote a lot about Augustine’s errors, in his charity he actually thought that Augustine had not written them but they had been added in later at the hands of heretics.

 

[GAssisi]

Bless me, Father.

No doubt you realize that not everything taught by Augustine is regarded as part of the official theology of the Catholic Church (if you don’t realize it yet, I hope this has given you a heads up, something, Matt16 will easily second).

Given this, how can you be certain that what Orthodox have traditionally rejected from Augustine is not the same thing that Catholics have not accepted from Augustine? I am sure you know that Protestants read Augustine in a very different manner than Catholics do. Are you certain that the Orthodox criticisms are not directed against the PROTESTANT reading of Augustine?

Here are A FEW Protestant heresies as a result of the Protestant reading of Augustine:

1. Legal Imputation of sin and guilt
2. Total depravity
3. double predestination

The first one I have seen you (and other Orthodox) consistently and WRONGLY attribute to the Catholic Church. Orthodox THINK that Augustine taught it; Protestant THINK that Augustine taught it, but Catholics DO NOT BELIEVE Augustine taught it, and we can prove it from Augustine’s own writings. So even IF you are actually condemning the notion of the legal imputation of sin and guilt, even IF you say Augustine taught it, YOU cannot say that this is the official teaching of the Catholic Church herself. To say so is simply dishonest.

God bless,
Greg

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

GAssisi:

Here are A FEW Protestant heresies as a result of the Protestant reading of Augustine:

1. Legal Imputation of sin and guilt
2. Total depravity
3. double predestination

The first one I have seen you (and other Orthodox) consistently and WRONGLY attribute to the Catholic Church. Orthodox THINK that Augustine taught it; Protestant THINK that Augustine taught it, but Catholics DO NOT BELIEVE Augustine taught it, and we can prove it from Augustine’s own writings.

I am sure that Myrrh will give an answer to this. There is also an article on the web by Father William Most

ST. AUGUSTINE ON GRACE AND PREDESTINATION
ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/AUGUSTIN.htm

 

[GrzeszDeL]

Fair enough. In any case, given that we all agree that not every word which fell from Augustine’s pen is regarded (or ever has been regarded) as the teaching of the Catholic Church, it would be a bit of an unnecessary distraction to try to track down exactly what Augustine held on the matter of inherited guilt. It will suffice simply to look at that in Augustine’s writings which the Church has explicitly claimed as the Faith.

 

[GAssisi]

Bless me, Father.

I read the link and there was nothing there to prove the case for #1. There was nothing that said that we inherit Adam’s actual sin and actual guilt. All it ever said regarding sinfulness is that the sinfulness for which we are condemned is OUR OWN, NOT ADAM’s.

Or perhaps you intended that essay to prove something else?

God bless,
Greg

P.S. I look forward to Myrrh’s presentation of Augustine. I want to see where it is that Augustine taught that we are condemned for Adam’s actual sin and guilt, and not our own.

 

[GAssisi]

P.S. I also want to challenge anyone to give an official Catholic statement that states that we are condemned for ADAM’S sin and guilt, and not our own.

Greg

 

[Matt16_18]

GAssisi:

P.S. I also want to challenge anyone to give an official Catholic statement that states that we are condemned for ADAM’S sin and guilt, and not our own.

Greg

That is the straw man that is often trotted out by the Orthodox. If God is condemning men and women to eternity in Hell for a sin that someone else committed, then God isn’t just by any standard that a human being can comprehend. The most bitter of the anti-Catholics among the Orthodox don’t want to accede that Catholics don’t really have such a hideous and unjust view of God. Hence, Myhrr’s comment that the Orthodox don’t worship the same God as the Catholics. Or Alexandre Kalomiros equally inane comments in his book River of Fireid you ever try to p(name removed by moderator)oint what is the principal characteristic of Western theology? Well, its principal characteristic is that it considers God as the real cause of all evil.

What is evil? Is it not the estrangement from God Who is Life? Is it not death? What does Western theology teach about death? All Roman Catholics and most Protestants consider death as a punishment from God. God considered all men guilty of Adam’s sin and punished them by death, that is by cutting them away from Himself; depriving them of His live-giving energy, and so killing them spiritually at first and later bodily, by some sort of spiritual starvation. Augustine interprets the passage in Genesis “If you eat of the fruit of this tree, you will die the death” as “If you eat of the fruit of this tree, I will kill you.”
Sheesh! Why wouldn’t sane people despise Catholicism if Catholics really did believe that God is the source of all evil. Catholics would be better off worshipping Satan, than worshipping such a monstrous God, since Satan would not be the source of all evil, but merely a conduit of God’s evil.

I sometimes get the impression that there are Orthodox that have defined themselves not so much by what they believe, but by their hatred of anything that is Catholic. Look at the links that Myhrr is posting. There is hardly a one of them that can simply explain what the Orthodox believe without contrasting those beliefs to grossly false assertions about what Catholics believe. And that is a shame, because when some of these Orthodox writers speak about what they actually are competent to address, they have some good things to say. But it is hard for a Catholic to get to the good stuff, since that are bound to gag on all the anti-Catholic bile that is spewed out, and they will simply give up reading when they see these false statements about what Catholics believe.

That is why I don’t want to “discuss” Augustine with Myhrr. I already know that it is pointless, since Myhrr’s mind has been poisoned by the anti-Catholic tripe that she reads and accepts as Gospel truth.

Obviously, Myhrr’s understanding of grace seems highly contradictory to me, and I have asked for Myhrr to clairfy the contradictions that I see. Instead of responding to that, Myhrr wants to drag the debate back to a bunch of uninformed nonsense about Catholic’s monstrous view of God (under the guise of speaking about Augustine). Myhrr could simply explain what the Orthodox believe about the Fall and grace, and we could have a reasonable debate. We could compare what the Orthodox believe to what Catholics really believe, and see if there is a difference. But Myhrr won’t do that, because Myhrr wants to flail on a straw man of false ideas that Catholics don’t believe, and never have believed.

 

[GAssisi]

Well put, Matt16. I agree that as far as this topic regarding original sin is concerned, Myrrh’s misrepresentations should just be ignored. I pray he has some fruitful thing to say in some other topic.

God bless,
Greg

 

[Myhrr]

Matt16_18:

Adam and Eve lost the preternatual gift of bodily immortality when they committed the original sin. The lost that preternatual gift for themselves, and for their children by their sin. This is something that most Orthodox know is true simply by reading their bibles.

Not in my Orthodox Bible, Septuagint. Says that they were chucked out before they could eat of the tree of immortality…

Adam and Eve were cast out of the Terrestrial Paradise before they ever had any children. Of course Adam and Eve had children! They had mortal children that could die - Cain killed his brother!

In my Bible it talks about man shall leave daddy and mummy and cleave to his wife because of the preceding explanation that Eve was made out of Adam. It continues that Adam and Eve were naked and knew no shame. So all this mother and fathering of those who are not Adam and Eve which produces children who grow up, get married which continues to be where men cleave to their wives as one flesh being fruitful and multiplying as blessed previously is all happening before Adam and Eve got tempted by the juicy fruit of knowledge of good and evil.

Further, it says that Eve will give birth in pain and work for food would be sweaty, which to me reads that previously childbirth was a doddle and food plentiful and easy pickings.

And lastly, for now, and Adam called his wife Life, because she was the mother of all living …

If you say that she didn’t have children pre exit from Paradise then the children produced after ‘original sin’ are alive not dead. De fide or not.

And you are going to explain Augustine to Catholics?

How am I doing so far in showing that he misread Genesis?

P.S. As for wrathful, I think God was angry because Adam tried to blame Eve.

 

[Matt16_18]

Myhrr:

In my Bible it talks about man shall leave daddy and mummy and cleave to his wife because of the preceding explanation that Eve was made out of Adam. It continues that Adam and Eve were naked and knew no shame. So all this mother and fathering of those who are not Adam and Eve which produces children who grow up, get married which continues to be where men cleave to their wives as one flesh being fruitful and multiplying as blessed previously is all happening before Adam and Eve got tempted by the juicy fruit of knowledge of good and evil.

Better open up your bible again. Adam and Eve did not have children in the Garden. They had their first child when they were cast out of the Garden, a child that was subject to the evil of death, the evil that God said would surely come by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

As for wrathful, I think God was angry because Adam tried to blame Eve.

I suspected I was trying to argue with a woman!

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

GAssisi:

I read the link and there was nothing there to prove the case for #1. There was nothing that said that we inherit Adam’s actual sin and actual guilt. All it ever said regarding sinfulness is that the sinfulness for which we are condemned is OUR OWN, NOT ADAM’s.

P.S. I look forward to Myrrh’s presentation of Augustine. I want to see where it is that Augustine taught that we are condemned for Adam’s actual sin and guilt, and not our own.

Well, one could ask on what grounds Augustine taught that every unbaptized soul and every unbaptized baby went to hell - what Augustine calls the “massa damnata” of the human race. The answer to that question will demonstrate the link to “imputed guilt.”

But… I am now ***totally ***confused about Catholic teaching!

Are you saying that the teaching of the Catholic Church is that we DO NOT inherit sin and guilt from Adam?

Can somebody lay out Catholic teaching for me in a paragraph or two? It is all seeming quite nebulous at the moment.

 

[Myhrr]

Matt16_18:

Better open up your bible again. Adam and Eve did not have children in the Garden. They had their first child when they were cast out of the Garden, a child that was subject to the evil of death, the evil that God said would surely come by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Doesn’t say that. It says they had nookie and Eve conceived and brought forth a man, that’s why they didn’t give him a girls name, she said: “I have brought forth a man through God”

I suspected I was trying to argue with a woman!

I’m flattered, but it’s a classic argument. Or do you mean that I’ve not included the second half of that? That Eve’s sin was in blaming the serpent?

Original sin according to Judaism

The sin of Adam and Eve was not the eating of the fruit — but the attempt to pass the blame for the action. Adam pointed his finger to Eve who in turn tried to blame the serpent. Jewish tradition doesn’t attach any particularly negative symbolic significance to the serpent. In fact, the coiled serpent is the symbol for the Israelite tribe of Dan.

encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Original%20sin

I think it was Adam’s fault because he’s still sleeping, it’s all a dream…

…the Original Sin Nightmare

 

[Myhrr]

P.S. You can argue about children, except you haven’t given any arguments, but how can you argue that they were immortal when God expelled them from Paradise before they could eat of the Tree of Immortality??

Doesn’t compute.

And God said, Behold, Adam is become as one of us, to know good and evil, and now lest at any time he stretch forth his hand, and take of the tree of life and eat, and so he shall live for ever - So the Lord God sent him forth out of the garden of Delight to cultivate the ground out of which he was taken. And he cast out Adam and caused him to dwell over against the garden of Delight, and stationed the cherubs and the fiery sword that turns about to keep the way of the tree of life.

That’s another key you could try and claim for your petrine apologetics…

 

[Matt16_18]

Myhrr:

… how can you argue that they were immortal when God expelled them from Paradise before they could eat of the Tree of Immortality??

Doesn’t compute.

Genesis doesn’t say that the tree in the center of the Garden is the tree of immortality, it says that there are two trees in the center of the Garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. What is God’s commandment to Adam concerning the tree of knowledge of good and evil?
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Gen. 2:16-17
You are saying that Adam was going to die even if he obeyed God’s commandment to avoid eating the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So then why did God even bother telling Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? You can’t answer that question. It is your theology that does not compute, and that is why neither the Orthodox nor the Catholics accept your spin on Genesis.

 

[Matt16_18]

Fr Ambrose:

Can somebody lay out Catholic teaching for me in a paragraph or two? It is all seeming quite nebulous at the moment.

See my posts # 95, #96 and #100 of this thread.

There are no differences in the essentials between what the Catholic Church teaches about the original sin of Adam and its consequences for the human race, and what the Orthodox Church teaches.

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Matt16_18:

See my posts # 95, #96 and #100 of this thread.

Thanks.

I cannot reconcile what you have given in Post 100 that it is a sin transmitted by propagation to all mankind with what is in Post 96 that it is not sin which is transmitted but the deprivation of original holiness and justice.

Post 100 – CCC 404:
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.

Post 96 – CCC 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”.

Also I have to admit that I have not a clue what is meant by the “deprivation of… original justice”? What does this mean?