We only know Jesus because of original sin?

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BenRosa

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I’ve been wondering about that thought for awhile. To expand on it, suppose Adam & Eve had never committed the first sin, original sin, nor any of their descendents. Question: Would we have still known Christ? Would the Son of Man had been made known to us (even though He would not have been our “savior” and made flesh)?

Kind of a wild thought and probably does not matter but I still wonder about it.

Thanks in advance for any and all comments.

May His peace be with you today and always…
 
I believe so…that it was God’s plan all along to participate in life with man through the Incarnation, because it is how He revealed Himself to us…but I tend to think Jesus would not have had to have been brutally beaten and slain had it not been for the Fall.

Then again, if Adam and Eve hadn’t fallen, there would not have been death…the planet would be overly populated without death…I wonder if assumptions would have been the order of the day then…kinda like Mary…since she didn’t have original sin - she was assumed into heaven body & soul. Moses and Elijah were assumed…

And yet, since Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament, the Old Testament wouldn’t have even been around had there been no Fall…

But going along that thought…we can say since there was a Fall, the Old Testament had to take place as it did and Jesus had to fulfill it…

Had there not been a Fall, I suppose there’d still be an Old Testament but it would have had an entirely different story to it…still foreshadowing the Incarnation…but not one of salvation as much as a joyous sharing of life??? to tell us more about God and heaven??? He’d come to fulfill a different purpose???

:hmmm:
 
I have had this discussion before with a friend and my spiritual director and we both came to the conclusion that Christ would have still walked amongst us…perhaps not to fix our brokeness, but for us to experience God…let us remember that Christ is Co-Eternal with The Father and The Holy Spirit…therefore I believe our Blessed Virgin was always in God’s plan and Christ dwelling among us was always in God’s plan…I truly believe it was always the plan for Christ to become flesh and dwell among us…however, I think the circumstances changed as to why He would dwell among us once Original sin became a factor.
 
Hello BenRosa,

Here is another thought. If Jesus appeared in a world where there was no original sin, would He know He was naked? Would He have knowledge of good and bad as we inherited from original sin or would He not have knowledge of good and bad like pre-sin Adam? Would Jesus just talk to people about the their single choice to obey God and not eat of the tree of knowledge or to sin and eat of the tree? That would be the only good and evil that such a non-sinning community would know and understand.

NAB GEN 3:9The Lord God then called to the man and asked him, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.” The he asked, "Who told you that you were naked? You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!
 
Steven Merten:
Hello BenRosa,

Here is another thought. If Jesus appeared in a world where there was no original sin, would He know He was naked? Would He have knowledge of good and bad as we inherited from original sin or would He not have knowledge of good and bad like pre-sin Adam? Would Jesus just talk to people about the their single choice to obey God and not eat of the tree of knowledge or to sin and eat of the tree? That would be the only good and evil that such a non-sinning community would know and understand.
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That question is easier in that Jesus is God therefore He’s all-knowing regardless of whatever man knew or didn’t know.
 
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YinYangMom:
That question is easier in that Jesus is God therefore He’s all-knowing regardless of whatever man knew or didn’t know.
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Hello Yin,

Do you believe that Jesus knew the square root of 7,138,693,145,943,256,902,331 to the fiftieth decimal point? Did He know the answer to cold fusion? Did He know all right and wrong when He was two?

If scientists were to clone Jesus from a drop of blood from the shroud of Turin, would you have a person who knew everything? Or would you have a person who was very similiar in knowledge to the rest of human kind?

Was Jesus biologically similiar to post-sin Adam but Spiritually blessed with religious wisdom beyond any man that ever lived or did He have a biological super brain knowing all that is unknown on earth?

Please visit Jesus Loves God

NAB ISA 7:14Therefore the LORD himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall be living on curds and honey by the time he learns to reject the bad and choose the good.
 
If there was no original sin and man had never sinned then wouldn’t our lives be what will happen at the end of the world, where Jesus lives amongst us, our body and souls are united, and we live in the new earth/heaven/paradise?

God’s plan for mankind was for them to glorify GOd by living like Jesus. Without sin we would have done that, so I think the whole salvation plan (end of world) is getting us back to the original intent (paradise)
 
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BenRosa:
… suppose Adam & Eve had never committed the first sin, original sin, nor any of their descendents. Question: Would we have still known Christ?
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Duns Scotus would say “yes”.

Incarnation in Franciscan Spirituality
Duns Scotus and the meaning of Love

By Seamus Mulholland OFM

John Duns Scotus (c.1265-1308) is one of the most important thinkers in the history of Christian thought …

In Scotus, the Incarnation is not a contingency plan when the original creative process of God goes awry because of sin. Scotus rejects this notion as too central an emphasis on Man to the extent that the freedom of God to act in love is determined by an external necessity i.e. the redemption from sin. Scotus understands the Incarnation as always being in the mind of God even before the historical and existential physicality of creation itself and the fact of sin.

The Incarnation is the model for creation: there is a creation only because of the Incarnation. In this schema, the universe is for Christ and not Christ for the universe. Scotus finds it inconceivable that the ‘greatest good in the universe’ i.e. the Incarnation, can be determined by some lesser good i.e. Man’s redemption. This is because such a sin-centred view of the Incarnation suggests that the primary rôle of Christ is as an assuager of the universe’s guilt. In the Absolute Primacy, Christ is the beginning, middle and end of creation. He stands at the centre of the universe as the reason for its existence …
 
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awalt:
If there was no original sin and man had never sinned then wouldn’t our lives be what will happen at the end of the world, where Jesus lives amongst us, our body and souls are united, and we live in the new earth/heaven/paradise?

God’s plan for mankind was for them to glorify GOd by living like Jesus. Without sin we would have done that, so I think the whole salvation plan (end of world) is getting us back to the original intent (paradise)
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God predestined man for a glory greater than what he possessed in Original Justice in Paradise – God predestined man for divinization (theosis).

Catechism of the Catholic Church
398 …. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory.
 
Steven Merten:
Hello Yin,

Do you believe that Jesus knew the square root of 7,138,693,145,943,256,902,331 to the fiftieth decimal point? Did He know the answer to cold fusion? Did He know all right and wrong when He was two?

If scientists were to clone Jesus from a drop of blood from the shroud of Turin, would you have a person who knew everything? Or would you have a person who was very similiar in knowledge to the rest of human kind?
Click to expand...
Jesus was still Divine even on earth.
He’s God…always…
He had a body
He did not have original sin
He knew/knows everything because He created everything
He didn’t reveal everything to us…though He could have…
but it was His Father’s will to reveal to us only that which we needed to know in order to believe…

Just because He didn’t reveal everything to us as documented through Scriptures doesn’t mean He didn’t know everything.
 
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BenRosa:
I’ve been wondering about that thought for awhile. To expand on it, suppose Adam & Eve had never committed the first sin, original sin, nor any of their descendents. Question: Would we have still known Christ? Would the Son of Man had been made known to us (even though He would not have been our “savior” and made flesh)?
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We may have known the Second Person, since as man advanced, God may have eventually revealed his Trinitarian nature. However, the Logos would not have been the Son of Man, because the Church in her liturgy seems to think that the Fall was necessary for that to happen. Hence, the important “Felix Culpa” line in the Exsultet at Easter Vigil:

“O happy fault! O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”

Many (and I among them) believe that had the Fall not occured, we would still be within God’s friendship and destined to be with him (which was our original destiny), but not at the level we enjoy now because of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery. Because the Fall had to be remedied by man, only a man could make amends. However, man was not capable of making such amends; only God could do so. Hence God had to become Man, while remaining fully God, and the Incarnation made that so. The One who was fully God and fully Man died to pay the price for sin, rose to destroy the power of death, and ascended to be our eternal High Priest before the Father. Because of the Ascension, there is now humanity within the Godhead. And because we have been reconciled to God by one who was like us and united humanity with divinity, we have been called to adoption as sons, as St. Paul says, and partakers of the divine nature, as St. Peter writes. In other words, our destiny now is to share God’s very own life, and no longer live lives purely our own.

I believe none of this would have been possible without the Fall.
 
St. Thomas Aquinas considered the question of whether Christ would have become incarnate if there had not been sin. His answer can be found here:

newadvent.org/summa/400103.htm

Basically, he says that there’s no definitive answer. He seems to personally believe that Christ would not have become incarnate, but he acknowledges that God could have become incarnate even if man had not sinned.
 
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porthos11:
Many (and I among them) believe that had the Fall not occured, we would still be within God’s friendship and destined to be with him (which was our original destiny), but not at the level we enjoy now because of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery.
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So at least a part of mankind is better off in the long run because of rebellion against God? I agree with Duns Scotus, this is inconceivable – that the greatest gift man ever received is a reward for man’s rebellion against God.

What then shall we say? Shall we persist in sin that grace may abound? Of course not!
Romans 6:1
 
First, I guess I should begin by asking that no one suggest or infer that I am Satanic or demonic or anything like that because I sometimes seem to diverge from Main Line Catholic theology. A second thread has been shut down by one of the moderators apparently because I was asked if I am under the influence of the Devil. Please, stop the Devil business. All you will do is smother good discussion.

Next, the main question in this thread is, “uppose Adam & Eve had never committed the first sin, original sin, nor any of their descendents. Question: Would we have still known Christ? Would the Son of Man had been made known to us (even though He would not have been our “savior” and made flesh)?”

The problem with that question is that Adam and Eve probably never existed, and their story is a hypothetical teaching that all of the human line are profoundly alienated from God and so would be ineligible for salvation BUT FOR the grace purchased from God’s Own perfect justice by the suffering and death of Christ.

The Paradise for two first humans never existed. An historical act by two people, only, never caused us to lose such a place.

In effect, we are being asked, in this thread, what the world would be like if Spot and Puff had never existed.
 
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Matt16_18:
So at least a part of mankind is better off in the long run because of rebellion against God? I agree with Duns Scotus, this is inconceivable – that the greatest gift man ever received is a reward for man’s rebellion against God.
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No, of course not! It’s not a reward at all, but rather a happy consequence of God’s loving act in sending his Son to become Man to reconcile us. Had Adam not sinned, the Incarnation would not have been necessary. Whether or not the Word would have become man without the Fall is not part of Revelation. What is part of Revelation is that because of the Fall, God became Man, and as a result, made us partakers of the Divine Nature, which is why the Church loudly proclaims this in her liturgies.

So yes indeed. Mankind is better off in the long run because of the Fall. This is one major reason God did not prevent it, for he was to bring a greater good out of it. So our destiny now is not a reward, but is because of grace.
 
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