Orthodox: Why object to Immaculate Conception?

[Mickey]

Can an Orthodox poster explain the concept in depth?

Well, I think some of the Orthodox posters here have done a good job to answer your question. But sadly (and as usual) dvd and others have jumped in to turn it into a brawl.

I hope that the Orthodox position is a bit more clear for you.

Peace,
Mickey

 

[Azurestone]

Well, I think some of the Orthodox posters here have done a good job to answer your question. But sadly (and as usual) dvd and others have jumped in to turn it into a brawl.

I hope that the Orthodox position is a bit more clear for you.

Peace,
Mickey

This is unfair and dishonest to place the entire blame of the polemical blame dvdj and all the other Catholics.

 

[Azurestone]

From Online Etymology Dictionary.

**hamartia **
Greek, lit. “fault, failure, guilt,” from hamartanein “to fail of one’s purpose; to err, sin,” originally “to miss the mark.”

I trust that Catholics actually intend the use of ‘inheriting the guilt of Adam’ to mean sharing the consequences.

Be it as I may, I’m less likely to throw spear and insist someone should believe what they don’t because I’m convinced they’re wrong.

 

[dvdjs]

Capital punishment isn’t therapeutic, penology is of one mind about that.

Is that well-designed?

There is no dispute between us about “punishment” component towards Adam & Eve by expulsion form Paradise, although it was also the cure, the medicine. But their punishment isn’t ours. We inherited their expulsion as a cure only.

It is what it is, whatever name you call in one case versus the other.

 

[dvdjs]

You accused me of playing gotcha in my comments on “guilt”. I simply don’t understand the connection. What was it that i supposedly gotcha doing?

 

[dvdjs]

Thank you for nitpicking my spelling & grammar.

Sorry. I make more typos than most; I just wanted to be explain before I adjusted the text to what I thought you meant.

Possibly I don’t, but I don’t bother with it. I restrict myself with what RCs express as their belief.

But this is a recurrent problem: non-Catholics espousing a view on what Catholics express as their belief, rather than being informed by Catholics what their belief is.

Nonsense.
You are not a qualified lawyer to be able to have “a serioius discussion” about the notion of guilt.
“The guilt” is a legal term, and its meaning hasn’t been altered through the ages. Some specific cases of it are added as examples during the time, but the meaning of the word has been clarified prior to Justinian having passed his famous code, about some 15 centuries ago.

I don’t think one needs to be a lawyer, to get beyond the false idea that it “does not have alternate meanings and/or understandings.” Or to realize that we are talking of a translation from Latin, and that whatever the nuances of the English we need to go back to the source from which we better can understand the mind of hte church.

 

[dvdjs]

I hope that the Orthodox position is a bit more clear for you.

Me too. That is why i gave the link to the Altena post at Mere Comments. It is really good, points to the differences, while avoiding the common misperceptions that tend to corrupt these discussions.

 

[dvdjs]

I trust that Catholics actually intend the use of ‘inheriting the guilt of Adam’ to mean sharing the consequences.

Thanks for bringing up “hamartanein”, originally “to miss the mark.” That was the next stop. This very Eastern sense of sin should be enormously helpful in understanding how being born missing the mark, we are born in sin.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=8077740&postcount=22

 

[thenobes]

Thanks for bringing up “hamartanein”, originally “to miss the mark.” That was the next stop. This very Eastern sense of sin should be enormously helpful in understanding how being born missing the mark, we are born in sin.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=8077740&postcount=22

That is a good point. Inheriting the guilt is just another way of sayng that absent an explicit pledge to follow Christ’s path, by belief in Him and His teachings, and exercising this pledge, when possible, by baptism, that is by making the external symbol of our actual entry into Christ’s death as our death to that which might separate us from God, that is, absent this, we are by default under bondage of sin.

peace
steve

 

[dvdjs]

I thought that I would add some comments from Orthodox catechsims that I found on line. Not a systematic search - just googled "orthodox catechism.

Many jurisdictions link to the work of Archbishop Sotirios (GOC Canada)
orthodoxcatechism.org/

The disobedience and transgression of Adam and Eve is called Original Sin. …And its consequences? A.) Spiritual death. That is, the separation of man from God, the source of all goodness. B.) Bodily death. That is, the separation of the body from the soul, the return of the body to the earth. C.) The shattering and distortion of the “image.” That is, darkness of mind, depravity and corruption of the heart, loss of independence, loss of free will, and tendency towards evil. Since then "the imagination of man’s heart is evil "(Genesis 8:21). Man constantly thinks of evil. D.) Guilt. That is, a bad conscience, the shame that made him want to hide from God. E.) Worst of all, original sin is hereditary. It did not remain only Adam and Eve’s. As life passes from them to all of their descendants, so does original sin. We all of us participate in original sin because we are all descended from the same forefather, Adam. This creates a problem for many people. They ask, Why should we be responsible for the actions of Adam and Eve? Why should we have to pay for the sins of our parents? they say. Unfortunately, this is so, because the consequence of original sin is the distortion of the nature of man. Of course, this is unexplainable and belongs to the realm of mystery, but we can give one example to make it somewhat better understood. Let us say that you have a wild orange tree, from which you make a graft. You will get domesticated oranges, but the root will still be that of the wild orange tree. To have wild oranges again, you must regraft the tree. This is what Christ came for and achieved for fallen man, as we shall see in the following sections.

Our Creator and Maker, ours is the fault. Adam and Eve, listening to Satan, blasphemed. Out of egotism, they allowed themselves to be misled. They distorted the “image.” They darkened the beauty of the soul. They weakened the nature of mankind. Because of them, we became unrecognizable. “The imagination of our heart is evil.” We constantly think of evil. We feel so guilty. We are so far away from You. We have been grafted to evil. We have lost our self-control and our free will to do good. We thank You for Your love, and for sending Your Only-begotten Son to regraft us to goodness. For giving us the possibility of returning to You. You, Lord “want every man to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Do not deprive us of this. Do not deprive anyone of salvation. We thank You Lord.

 

[dvdjs]

This Online Orthodox Catechism is adopted from ‘The Mystery of Faith’ by Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev. orthodoxeurope.org/page/10/1.aspx#24

The consequences of the Fall for the first humans were catastrophic. They were not only deprived of the bliss and sweetness of Paradise, but their whole nature was changed and disfigured. In sinning they fell away from their natural condition and entered an unnatural state of being. All elements of their spiritual and corporeal make-up were damaged: their spirit, instead of striving for God, became engrossed in the passions; their soul entered the sphere of bodily instincts; while their body lost its original lightness and was transformed into heavy sinful flesh. After the Fall the human person ‘became deaf, blind, naked, insensitive to the good things from which he had fallen away, and above all became mortal, corruptible and without sense of purpose’ (St Symeon the New Theologian). Disease, suffering and pain entered human life. Humans became mortal for they had lost the opportunity of tasting from the tree of life.

The consequences of the Fall spread to the whole of the human race. This is elucidated by St Paul: ‘Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned’ (Rom.5:12). This text, which formed the Church’s basis of her teaching on ‘original sin’, may be understood in a number of ways: the Greek words ef’ ho pantes hemarton may be translated not only as ‘because all men sinned’ but also ‘in whom [that is, in Adam] all men sinned’. Different readings of the text may produce different understandings of what ‘original sin’ means.

If we accept the first translation, this means that each person is responsible for his own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression. Here, Adam is merely the prototype of all future sinners, each of whom, in repeating Adam’s sin, bears responsibility only for his own sins. Adam’s sin is not the cause of our sinfulness; we do not participate in his sin and his guilt cannot be passed onto us.

However, if we read the text to mean ‘in whom all have sinned’, this can be understood as the passing on of Adam’s sin to all future generations of people, since human nature has been infected by sin in general. The disposition toward sin became hereditary and responsibility for turning away from God sin universal. As St Cyril of Alexandria states, human nature itself has ‘fallen ill with sin’; thus we all share Adam’s sin as we all share his nature. St Macarius of Egypt speaks of ‘a leaven of evil passions’ and of ‘secret impurity and the abiding darkness of passions’, which have entered into our nature in spite of our original purity. Sin has become so deeply rooted in human nature that not a single descendant of Adam has been spared from a hereditary predisposition toward sin.

The Old Testament writers had a vivid sense of their inherited sinfulness: ‘Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me’ (Ps.51:7). They believed that God ‘visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation’ (Ex.20:5). In the latter words reference is not made to innocent children but to those whose own sinfulness is rooted in the sins of their forefathers.

From a rational point of view, to punish the entire human race for Adam’s sin is an injustice. But not a single Christian dogma has ever been fully comprehended by reason. Religion within the bounds of reason is not religion but naked rationalism, for religion is supra-rational, supra-logical. The doctrine of original sin is disclosed in the light of divine revelation and acquires meaning with reference to the dogma of the atonement of humanity through the New Adam, Christ: ‘…As one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous… so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom.5:18-21).

 

[dvdjs]

One more: C A T E C H I S M O F THE EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH by Rev. Constas H. Demetry, D. D.

            ON THE FALL OF OUR FIRST PARENTS

Q. Were our First Parents happy, and why?
A. Our First Parents were happy because they were innocent.

Q. Did God give them any commands and why?
A. He commanded them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
that He might test their obedience. (Many people think that the fruit
which the First Parents ate in disobedience to God was the carnal
connexion. This is not true, because the lawful carnal connexion of man
and woman and procreation of children is in accordance with the will of
God, since God, as soon as He created the First Parents, blessed them and
said to them:
“Be Fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth…”
…Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 28.

Q. Did they remain faithful to God?
A. No, they fell into temptation, disobeyed, and sinned.

Q. What good would they have had if they had obeyed?
A. Their bodies would have become immortal like their souls, and they would
have insured for themselves forever the happiness which they had.

Q. What did they suffer through the sin of disobedience?
A.
1. Their minds became darkened and they lost God.
2. Their hearts became perverted and they began to love the evil more
than the good.
3. They fell into sickness and various other evils.
4. Their bodies became mortal.
5. Their souls were condemned to moral death, which is separation
from God, i.e. eternal misfortune.

Q. Did only our First Parents suffer from their disobedience?
A. Unfortunately the whole human race born since has also suffered. They
inherited the same evils, just as they would have inherited immortality
and happiness, if our First Parents had obeyed; because just as impure
water proceeds from an impure fountain so also sinful men are born of
sinful ancestors.

Q. Did the rest of creation suffer anything from the disobedience of our
First Parents?
A. Assuredly; and because of this, since then, “the whole creation groaneth
and travaileth in pain together until now.”, as the Apostle Paul writes in
the Book of Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 22.

Q. What is that sin of disobedience, with all the evils which it brought,
called?
A. The original sin.

Q. Are we responsible for the original sin?
A. Personally none; because we did not personally commit the sin of our First
Parents; but we are charged with it by inheritance because we were in Adam
and Eve when they sinned, and for this reason the Apostle Paul writes:

            "..all have sinned."  ...Book of Romans, Chapter 5, Verse 12.

Q. Has anyone been exempted from the original sin?
A. Only Jesus Christ, because He was incarnate of the Holy Spirit, which,
being God, is without sin, and of the Virgin Mary after her cleansing of
original sin by the Holy Spirit when the Angel announced to her the
conception and birth of Christ.

Q. Does man also carry the burden of other sins besides the original sin?
A. Assuredly; personal sins. (The personal sins are mortal and non-mortal.
Mortal are those which destroy any hope of repentance, because they bring
the death of the soul, namely, moral, eternal death. But every sin may be
forgiven by since repentance.

…

Here is a link to other Orthodox Catechisms in English.
orthodoxwiki.org/Orthodox_Catechisms_in_English

 

[Mickey]

What was it that i supposedly gotcha doing?

I do many things. None of them are “gotcha” moments.

What you are doing…is attempting to say that Rome uses an alternative usage of the word “guilt.” But as we all know, there is a plain meaning of this word. The alternative usage is odd.