Treatise on Purgatory

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Roger12345

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“Know that what man deems perfection in himself is in God’s sight faulty”
St. Catherine

How does this differ from the Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity?
 
There is a big difference between total depravity on the one hand and being less than perfect on the other.

Man as an imperfect being in an imperfect world does not have a directly available example of perfection to measure the ‘perfection’ of something against. Whereas God being perfection Himself has no such problem. As such given our limitations we see something and we see perfection where only good or very good exists. Radically different from calvinism.
 
Man’s imperfection lies in his being separated from true perfection: God, the source of his perfection. At the fall imperfection entered precisely because man determined that he was perfect enough without God, that his own morality/righteousness was better, i.e. that he could determine right and wrong for himself. But, simply by virtue of being created rather than being the creator, this was impossible; man is incapable of making such a determination.

But having done so, in spite of the command not to, we now operate according to an obscured conscience, going our own ways, based on self-righteousness, rather than on a directly God-based righteousness, which is possible only by communing with Him, His spirit dwelling and active within, the way it was originally meant to be. But as long as self-righteousness/self-determination rules this world instead, man’s “perfection” will always be less than* it *was meant to be.
 
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