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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Original Sin - Augustine's Own Goal or Theological triumph?
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beatmenace
Shipmate
# 16955
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Posted
I apologise if this one is already in the knackers yard. I haven't been contributing to the Ship that long so i might have missed it.
In the discussion on Mary - our Orthodox friends mentioned that its not a Doctrine of the Eastern Church, but obviously is very foundational to Catholics - but is quite troublesome to the idea of Mary's perpetual holiness etc.
So was Augustine wrong on this and should Pelagus (who didn't believe this doctrine) have won the day? If so, Why?
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"I'm the village idiot , aspiring to great things." (The Icicle Works)
Posts: 297 | From: Whitley Bay | Registered: Feb 2012
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
It is strong in Protestantism too via Luther and Calvin. I was taught the Reformed version via the Cogregationalists.
More interesting to me isn't the question of whether original sin is wrong, but how it differs from ancestral sin.
Any of our Orthodoxen like to explain how ancestral sin works?
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
As always, Wikipedia is a helpful source:
quote:
Original sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective guilt.
So the term means different things to different people and groups. In my denomination it is the first of these, merely a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, and we call it "hereditary evil."
Augustine did not invent the idea:
quote:
The concept of original sin was first developed in the 2nd-century by Bishop of Lyon Irenaeus in his controversy with the dualist Gnostics. Its scriptural foundation is based on the New Testament teaching of Paul the Apostle (Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:22). Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose and Ambrosiaster considered that mankind shares in Adam's sin, transmitted by human generation.
But Augustine's formulation became the one best known in the West:
quote:
Augustine's formulation of original sin was popular among Reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin who equated original sin with concupiscence, affirming that it persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom.
The relation to Pelagius' idea is explained in the same article:
quote:
Augustine articulated his explanation in reaction to Pelagianism, which insisted that humans have of themselves, without the necessary help of God's grace, the ability to lead a morally good life, and thus denied both the importance of baptism and the teaching that God is the giver of all that is good. Pelagius claimed that the influence of Adam on other humans was merely that of bad example. Augustine held that the effects of Adam's sin are transmitted to his descendants not by example but by the very fact of generation from that ancestor.
My own opinion is that while Pelagius is wrong, Augustine is even more wrong.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I always rail against binary and dualistic tendencies these days - I'm a pain in the neck that way - so I'm wary of coming down too strongly on one side or the other. I'm not sure it's quite as simple as Augustine being completely right or wrong or Pelagius being completely right or wrong either - more like elements of rightness and wrongness on all sides.
My background and inclination leads me to side more with Augustine than with Pelagius, though, but I'm woolly enough and grey-scale enough to tolerate some fudge.
I certainly think that certain strands of both RC and Reformed thought went too far in one direction, though - but would be prepared to concede that semi-Pelagians may err too far in the opposite direction at times.
I can live with the ambiguity, but fence-sitting is difficult because you get spiky palings sticking up your bottom ...
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Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'm not sure it's quite as simple as Augustine being completely right or wrong or Pelagius being completely right or wrong either - more like elements of rightness and wrongness on all sides.
That's right.
I doubt that anyone would deny that human behavior has a hereditary component. Family traits clearly run in families, including negative ones such as bad tempers, the tendency to drink, a predisposition to narrow-minded thinking, etc.
I also doubt that anyone would deny that all people have a natural tendency to want to satisfy their own interests before those of others, to want to rest when they should work, etc. This is not so much sin as simply being human, but it is an important factor in sinful behavior.
So I expect that everyone would agree that there is a nature handed down from our earliest ancestors, as is also true with every other species, and that it differs slightly with every family, every group, every nation, and every individual.
Where the disagreement lies, I expect, is in the origin and its implications.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
I haven't actually heard it termed as "Ancestral Sin" since I became Orthodox. My understanding is that Orthodox do believe in Original Sin, but our understanding is not quite the same as the western understanding. Notably absent is what we call Original Guilt. That is to say, when a child is born he or she is not guilty of sins which were committed by parents, ancestors, all the way back to Adam.
However, the Fall led to all people having a natural tendancy toward sin, and that is why "all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God." Also with the Fall came death (the wages of sin).
As with many beliefs, I didn't have to change my understanding much from what I learned in my Confirmation classes in the C of E. I remember very well my vicar explaining to us that we are "sinful by nature" which is pretty much the same thing.
One distinguishing thing about Ancestral Sin for the Orthodox is that it is removed in baptism. So after baptism we still continue to have a sinful nature, but it is no longer called Ancestral Sin. One change in us after baptism is that spiritual warfare has started, ie. the flesh battling against the Spirit, and this continues all our earthly life.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
Option 3: it wasn't invented by anyone. It is a fact and it is in the Bible.
Which would be my vote, naturally.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
...The relation to Pelagius' idea is explained in the same article:
quote:
Augustine articulated his explanation in reaction to Pelagianism, which insisted that humans have of themselves, without the necessary help of God's grace, the ability to lead a morally good life, and thus denied both the importance of baptism and the teaching that God is the giver of all that is good. Pelagius claimed that the influence of Adam on other humans was merely that of bad example. Augustine held that the effects of Adam's sin are transmitted to his descendants not by example but by the very fact of generation from that ancestor.
own opinion is that while Pelagius is wrong, Augustine is even more wrong.
ISTM that Augustine, while right to defend the Gospel Tradition against Pelagius, went too far. His was a kneejerk reaction which led to the disparity of understanding between east and west. I don't believe that humans, left to themselves and apart from God's Grace, can do no good at all, but at the same time, they are unable to balance out their wicked deeds by their good deeds. That is why, if they claim they can, they deceive themselves and the truth is not in them.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Option 3: it wasn't invented by anyone. It is a fact and it is in the Bible.
Which would be my vote, naturally.
The Church Fathers (both East and West) had a very high veiw of Holy Scripture and would have said the same as you.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Option 3: it wasn't invented by anyone. It is a fact and it is in the Bible.
Which would be my vote, naturally.
The Church Fathers (both East and West) had a very high veiw of Holy Scripture and would have said the same as you.
I also agree. But it depends what you mean.
If it is about humanity's sinful nature, derived from our ancestors going back to Adam, then yes. This is clearly taught in the Bible.
If it is about original sin as a debt incurred by Adam and Eve, which Mary and Jesus were somehow born without, and which debt was paid by Jesus death, satisfying the Father's need for justice, then no, I don't agree. This isn't clearly taught in the Bible but is instead mistakenly inferred.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
quote:
Pelagius claimed that the influence of Adam on other humans was merely that of bad example. Augustine held that the effects of Adam's sin are transmitted to his descendants not by example but by the very fact of generation from that ancestor.
Whilst I wouldn't necessarily say that I agreed with Pelagius 100% in everything, from the above quote, I would definitely go with him rather than Augustine. Quite apart from anything else, it makes more sense if you don't see the early chapters Genesis as "historical fact". How can we inherit anything from Adam if "Adam" wasn't an actual person and the events in Genesis concerning him didn't actually happen?
I must admit that I increasingly find the concept of "Original Sin" to be abhorrent and not worth bothering with. We start life as human beings - equally capable of greatness and depravity. There never was a "perfect" human who "fell". One of the great insights of Jesus was that evil is not something that infects us from outside (which includes coming from a previous generation), but is something that comes from within.
We have to stop blaming Adam and start focusing on the logs in our own eyes.
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
If it is about original sin as a debt incurred by Adam and Eve, which Mary and Jesus were somehow born without, and which debt was paid by Jesus death, satisfying the Father's need for justice, then no, I don't agree. This isn't clearly taught in the Bible but is instead mistakenly inferred.
Here's something interesting. I understand that the Bible clearly implies that Jesus was born without sin, but Mary? "Hail Mary, full of grace" may imply this, one could argue, but such a doctrine as the Immaculate Conception is only necessary if you believe the full blown Augustinian version of Original Sin/Original Guilt. For Orthodox, and many protestants, this is not necessary, as Jesus wouldn't have inherited Mary's guilt as Roman Catholics insist.
As for penal substitution, there's a very interesting thread here.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
One of the great insights of Jesus was that evil is not something that infects us from outside (which includes coming from a previous generation), but is something that comes from within.
But it isn't. As Auden said, "Hearts that we broke long ago/have long been breaking others." That, in a nutshell, is ancestral sin to my mind. We are not born into a vacuum -- we are born into a context that includes a world of hurt.
There is some truth to the adolescent blaming his parents for his problems. Of course, there is also a real sense in which it is our job to climb out of the hole in which we find ourselves. As we Methodists say, "All need to be saved; all can be saved; all can know that they are saved; all can be saved to the uttermost."
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
Here's something interesting. I understand that the Bible clearly implies that Jesus was born without sin, but Mary?
That's right. There's a recent thread about this, dwelling on the fact that Catholicism isn't Sola Scriptura.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
That's right. There's a recent thread about this, dwelling on the fact that Catholicism isn't Sola Scriptura.
Neither is Orthodoxy - but then the concept didn't exist prior to the Reformation. I think it was Luther's idea wasn't it?
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
That's right. There's a recent thread about this, dwelling on the fact that Catholicism isn't Sola Scriptura.
Neither is Orthodoxy - but then the concept didn't exist prior to the Reformation. I think it was Luther's idea wasn't it?
Don't think so. Read about Wycliffe and Huss, who preceded Luther by many years. And they weren't the only ones. You might argue that Luther was the most prominent of the early voices.
Back on the main theme, Kallistos Ware's succinct book "The Orthodox Way" seemed to me to be very good. Here are a couple of quotes from the chapter "God as Creator".
quote:
The divine image in man was obscured but not obliterated. His free choice has been restricted in its exercise, but not destroyed. ....
Original sin is not to be interpreted in juridical or quasi-biological terms, as if it were a physical "taint" of guilt, passed on by sexual intercourse. ...
It means that we are each of conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being. And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin.
(p61-62, "The Orthodox Way")
Those seem to me to be clear distinctions cf Augustine and the uber-Calvinist "total depravity". But then, I'm not Orthodox (though I think I am pretty much the same page as Timothy Ware on this topic). Some Orthodox Shipmates may not be too keen on Kallistos Ware's observations. Feel free to wade in.
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Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
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Posted
It's probably a side track, but doesn't the Immaculate Conception require some special grace for St Anne?
And so on, how many generations does the Holy Spirit require to establish sinless people?
Well, as few or as many as the Divine Wisdom asserts would be my guess at your answer, should any of you knowledgeable Christians think the question is worth even contemplating - Hmm.
"Created sicke, commanded to be sound" presumably continues to apply to the rest of us.
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Refraction Villanelles
Posts: 464 | From: Southern England | Registered: Jul 2011
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
It's probably a side track, but doesn't the Immaculate Conception require some special grace for St Anne?
And so on, how many generations does the Holy Spirit require to establish sinless people?
This pretty much hits my discomfiture with the whole immaculate conception thing. It just seems that I've stumbled into the psychosexual pathology of some very creepy individual when this stuff comes up.
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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StevHep
Shipmate
# 17198
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Posted
As I understand it the concept of Original Sin means that man is by nature essentially good, since our nature comes from the hand of God and only good proceeds from that source, however we have a vulnerability to temptation, concupiscence, as a result of the Fall. This means that we are morally culpable for each sin we commit since individually each one is resistible as being contrary to our nature. The cumulative effect of all the temptations that concupiscence lays upon us is so great, however, that we require the powerful assistance of God's grace to resist them all, or at least to repent truly of them and seek repentance and reconciliation.
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Posts: 241 | From: Exeter | Registered: Jul 2012
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StevHep
Shipmate
# 17198
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
It's probably a side track, but doesn't the Immaculate Conception require some special grace for St Anne?
No, it doesn't. It is defined as an action of the Holy Spirit occurring within the womb of St Anne at the moment of conception and strictly speaking only requires her to have a womb. It is additionally worth mentioning that theologically the Immaculate Conception is described as an action which was fitting but not necessary. The economy of Salvation could have proceeded without it but God granted an additional privilege to Mary which would help her in her task and be suitable for her status as Theotokos.
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http://catholicscot.blogspot.co.uk/
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Posts: 241 | From: Exeter | Registered: Jul 2012
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by StevHep:
It is additionally worth mentioning that theologically the Immaculate Conception is described as an action which was fitting but not necessary. The economy of Salvation could have proceeded without it but God granted an additional privilege to Mary which would help her in her task and be suitable for her status as Theotokos.
That's very interesting, because it wasn't my understanding of what I thought Roman Catholics believed. But I've never been Roman Catholic, so much of my knowledge is second hand, so to speak.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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Edgeman
Shipmate
# 12867
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
Notably absent is what we call Original Guilt. That is to say, when a child is born he or she is not guilty of sins which were committed by parents, ancestors, all the way back to Adam.
As someone who believes in original sin, I don't believe in this either. Like others have said, one problem is that with this one term of original sin, many people mean many differing things. I believe, as it has always been explained to me that only Adam is personally guilty of original sin. The rest of us only suffer the effects of original sin, which is nothing more than the lack of grace. It only means that each human is born out of communion with God and lacking grace.
It's not so much that we are guilty or blamed for Adam's sin as it is that his sin removed part of what we were created to be. Think of it as if we are all born empty glasses rather than glasses full of the grace of God. Human nature is not evil or corrupted, and not the source of sin. Human nature is only weakened, and so each person has a proclivity toward evil. That is Catholic teaching as I understand it.
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Posts: 1420 | From: Philadelphia Penns. | Registered: Jul 2007
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Edgeman:
That is Catholic teaching as I understand it.
Is it? We need to establish this, because if it is so, it means Catholic, Orthodox and many protestants' understanding of Original Sin is pretty much the same IMO.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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Edgeman
Shipmate
# 12867
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
quote:
Originally posted by Edgeman:
That is Catholic teaching as I understand it.
Is it? We need to establish this, because if it is so, it means Catholic, Orthodox and many protestants' understanding of Original Sin is pretty much the same IMO.
Here's some pertinent quotes form the Catechism fo the Catholic Church:
quote:
Although it is proper to each individual,295 original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.
(#405)
quote:
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".
(416 & 417)
quote:
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.
(#404)
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Posts: 1420 | From: Philadelphia Penns. | Registered: Jul 2007
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Jason Zarri
Apprentice
# 15248
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Posted
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
quote:
403 Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam's sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the "death of the soul".291 Because of this certainty of faith, the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even tiny infants who have not committed personal sin.292
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.
405 Although it is proper to each individual,295 original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.
406 The Church's teaching on the transmission of original sin was articulated more precisely in the fifth century, especially under the impulse of St. Augustine's reflections against Pelagianism, and in the sixteenth century, in opposition to the Protestant Reformation. Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God's grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam's fault to bad example. the first Protestant reformers, on the contrary, taught that original sin has radically perverted man and destroyed his freedom; they identified the sin inherited by each man with the tendency to evil (concupiscentia), which would be insurmountable. the Church pronounced on the meaning of the data of Revelation on original sin especially at the second Council of Orange (529)296 and at the Council of Trent (1546).297
-- Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 1, Article 1, Paragraph 7, Section III
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Posts: 19 | Registered: Oct 2009
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StevHep
Shipmate
# 17198
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
quote:
Originally posted by StevHep:
It is additionally worth mentioning that theologically the Immaculate Conception is described as an action which was fitting but not necessary. The economy of Salvation could have proceeded without it but God granted an additional privilege to Mary which would help her in her task and be suitable for her status as Theotokos.
That's very interesting, because it wasn't my understanding of what I thought Roman Catholics believed. But I've never been Roman Catholic, so much of my knowledge is second hand, so to speak.
Well the popular Catholic Apologetics site
JimmyAkin.Com puts it like this
First, the Immaculate Conception prepares for the Cross by making Mary a fitting mother for the Son of God, who came to die on the Cross. It isn’t that God had to make Mary immaculate in order to send his Son into the world. He didn’t. God is omnipotent, and his power is not limited. He could send his Son into the world without an immaculate mother if he chose. But it was fitting that the mother of Christ be a holy woman, and in fact a woman who was a perfect example of holiness. Thus he prepared her for this role from the moment of her conception by giving her a special grace to preserve her from all stain of original sin. This is why in the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, in which he defined the Immaculate Conception, Pius IX spoke of it being “fitting” that Christ’s mother would be so prepared, not that it would be “necessary” that she be so prepared.
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Posts: 241 | From: Exeter | Registered: Jul 2012
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
One of the great insights of Jesus was that evil is not something that infects us from outside (which includes coming from a previous generation), but is something that comes from within.
But it isn't. As Auden said, "Hearts that we broke long ago/have long been breaking others." That, in a nutshell, is ancestral sin to my mind. We are not born into a vacuum -- we are born into a context that includes a world of hurt.
There is a whole world of difference (in my eyes, anyway) between saying "the actions of others from the past have continued (possibly disastrous) effects on me well into the future" (which is obviously true) and "the actions of others have infected me and made me a sinner". We are indeed "born into a world of hurt". But what matters when we are talking about MY need for forgiveness and salvation is not what others have done, but what I have done.
"Sin" is not an infection, or an inherited disease. It comes from within.
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
"Sin" is not an infection, or an inherited disease.
We (Orthodox) would say that it most definitely is.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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StevHep
Shipmate
# 17198
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Posted
What the practical implications of Original Sin might be were something that I touched upon in a blog entry I made after the murder of a little girl in Toulouse earlier this year. In La Bête Humaine I wrote
If one human is capable of acting in this fashion then all humans are, perhaps, also similarly capable. This suggestion is so revolting that faced with crimes of this kind we instinctively recoil from the notion and say "No, this man was no man but a monster, a beast, a madman!" In saying that we say nothing. He was not ... anything other than human and if he was mad, well if one human is capable of becoming mad in this fashion then all humans are, perhaps, also similarly capable....
...What Catholics call Original Sin is never vanquished in the living although God in His mercy always gives us the weapons to best it in any and every given situation. We are not compelled to accept these weapons but the more we reject them the more we find other weapons in our hands. The desire to hurt, even to hurt harmless little girls with long hair, is nothing more or less than the prolonged and anguished cry "Look at Me!"
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My Blog Catholic Scot
http://catholicscot.blogspot.co.uk/
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Posts: 241 | From: Exeter | Registered: Jul 2012
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
"Sin" is not an infection, or an inherited disease.
We (Orthodox) would say that it most definitely is.
Kallistos Ware mustn't be Orthodox, then. (Neither, I think, must your Shipmate Josephine).
Here is my post above.
Which contains this pretty decisive quote.
quote:
Original sin is not to be interpreted in juridical or quasi-biological terms
Infectious disease is a quasi-biological term when used for sin . If sin is inherited, it must be passed on by sexual intercourse. QED. Neither of those claims can be Orthodox.
Plus (said he, wearing his nonconformist hat) there is this powerful message from the Old Testament, which I personally find impossible to harmonise with the "inherited condition" argument.
Ezekiel 18 v 1-4
1 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel:
“‘The parents eat sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?
3 “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. 4 For everyone belongs to me, the parent as well as the child—both alike belong to me. The one who sins is the one who will die.
That's pretty conclusive about personal responsibility, and makes clear that it is wrong to blame sinning on inheritance.
So I'm not sure where you got your idea from, Mark. I've never heard any other Orthodox on board here argue as you have.
[ 24. August 2012, 13:02: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I LIKE what the Catechism says, but there again I would as I live in a Roman city and have a Roman name.
The Catechism is valid and so is Pelagius and so is Calvin. They ALL therefore miss the point.
Sitting firmly on the next spike Gamaliel!
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
...Infectious disease is a quasi-biological term when used for sin. If sin is inherited, it must be passed on by sexual intercourse. QED. Neither of those claims can be Orthodox...
So I'm not sure where you got your idea from, Mark. I've never heard any other Orthodox on board here argue as you have.
Kallistos Ware is not THE voice of Orthodoxy in the west, and I am not sure what he means by "quasi-biological" disease.
Reading from OrthodoxWiki, it seems that, re. Adam and Eve and Original Sin, "The Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that no one is guilty for the actual sin they committed but rather everyone inherits the consequences of this act; the foremost of this is physical death in this world. This is the reason why the original fathers of the Church over the centuries have preferred the term ancestral sin.
"The consequences and penalties of this ancestral act are transferred by means of natural heredity to the entire human race."
We are born with a "disordered passion" within us (which is inhereted), but it isn't total depravity.
"Orthodox Christians have usually understood Roman Catholicism as professing St. Augustine's teaching that everyone bears not only the consequence, but also the guilt, of Adam's sin."
Here's where the confusion arises, because it seems that current RC catechism teaching differs from dogma established previously, particularly with the Immaculate Conception. For example, current teaching claims that the Immaculate Conception was not necessary for Salvation, whereas previous teaching did (when the Dogma was declared in the 19th C.)
And from Introduction to Orthodox Christianity:
quote:
from Introduction to Orthodox Christianity
At the fall of man, Adam and Eve not only sinned in violation of God's commandments, but their ontological state shifted. Their nature was not changed in itself, but the image of God in them became obscured by sin, which is an ontological separation from God. Fallen man is thus not totally depraved, but rather suffers from the disease of sin which renders holiness much more difficult to attain to.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
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Posted
Sorry to double-post, but it would be interesting to hear what Josephine has to say here.
*Edited because I spelt Josephine's name wrong*
[ 24. August 2012, 14:10: Message edited by: Mark Betts ]
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Interesting, Mark. A couple of words make all the difference.
The source you quoted and Met. Ware certainly agree about guilt and also any hint of total depravity. But Ware seems very clear that the "disease" analogy is not a safe one , since it suggests a process independent of moral choice (which is of course where Ezekiel is coming from). On that issue, this Protestant remains with Metropolitan Ware. His argument seems sound to me.
It would be good to hear from Josephine - and if he is kibbitzing, Father Gregory.
[ 24. August 2012, 15:02: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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daronmedway
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# 3012
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Posted
I'm rather surprised that many people, including some eminent Orthodox theologians, do not correctly understand the term "total depravity".
Contrary to what is suggested on this thread (and Wikipedia apparently) the term "total depravity" does not mean "completely evil" or "utterly corrupt". It does not mean that human beings are incapable of moral goodness. And it does not mean that humans are wholely immoral.
The term "total depravity" simply means that all aspects of human nature are in some way and to some extent affected by sin. It simply stands over against the idea that there is some kind of golden, inviolate core of sinlessness at the centre of each human being.
Instead, it maintains that the totality of what it is to be human is to some extent corrupted by sin. It maintains that the effects of sin (corruption) go to the very roots (radix) of what it is to be human. This is why the term "radical corruption" is now used in preference to the term "total depravity".
In this sense the term "total depravity" is not a moral judgement about humanity, it is a theological conviction concerning the nature of sin's influence.
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Interesting too, daronmedway (I'll get used to your new name in time).
I think the central issue is how "helpless" we are. The real argument concerns the created image of God in human beings and what we are like post-fall. I think the language is probably too binary.
"Obscured but not obliterated" is Metropolitan Ware's language. This Chapter from the Institutes which nods approvingly at Augustine more than once, seems a lot more pessimistic! A reasonable paraphrase might be "all but obliterated" or "for all practical purposes obliterated".
So there is a scale of damage to the image of God in human beings, with Calvin and Augustine's view very much to the far, pessimistic end. At least, that's the way I see it.
I can't resolve, intellectually at least, how one determines the "true" position on that spectrum. On more general grounds, my own position is, again, with Timothy Ware. This succinct phrase of his (The Orthodox Way p59) captures my own thoughts and beliefs.
"Without freedom, there would be no sin. But without freedom, man would not be in God's image; without freedom man would not be capable of entering into communion with God in a relationship of love."
[ 24. August 2012, 15:35: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
As I understand it, what is inherited is the human nature: nothing more, nothing less.
Sinfulness is not a part of the human nature. Nobody inherits a state of being in sin, or a punishment for the sins of his forbears, or the guilt of their sin. (Thank you, Barnabas62, for that quotation from Ezekiel. You see? We Non-Conformists at opposite ends of the Non-Conformist spectrum do meet sometimes.)
The propensity to sin is also not part of the human nature as it is intended to be but is part of the human nature in its fallen state. Insofar as the human nature is inherited, all that it is in its current state is inherited, including the effects that the fall has had on the human nature: death, sickness, disordered passions, and likely other things that we may not know because all of our observation has been of the human nature as it is, under the conditions of the fall.
Insofar as this does not belong to the human nature as God intends for it to be and can be said to harm its health, I can certainly see how, in a metaphorical sense, this might be seen referred to as an illness - a disease. I wouldn't take issue with that. I would, however, be wary of drawing conclusions based on viewing it as a literal disease that is transmitted through reproduction as one might transmit a virus, say.
To summarise the Orthodox understanding, therefore, as it has embedded itself in my mind, we do not inherit sin. Each person is responsible only for his own sins. We experience the effects of the fall, both in our exposure to them in our experience of life (we are born into a creation that suffers the effects of the fall) and also in our very human nature which, being part of creation, is not exempt from this. Yet the human nature which we all inherit is one which, while fallen, is also redeemed, for Christ has taken it upon Himself and shared in the fallen effects of it to the point of death; and it may also ascend into oneness with God, for Christ has taken it into union with the Father and the Holy Spirit. I can wholly assent to what Metropolitan Kallistos* says, and indeed what our own Father Gregory writes here.
So yes, we inherit a human nature that brings with it the temptation to sin and which suffers the spiritual and physical effects of the sin of our first parents, but also one which has the ability for us to share in Christ's conquering of those effects.
If the above is also current Catholic teaching, well and good. However, statements of the past would seem to suggest that, if this is indeed so, then a significant change has taken place. The Tridentine Council, for instance, seems quite clear that not only the physical effects of Adam's sin but also sin itself is transmitted. It anathematises those who do not affirm that baptism remits the guilt of original sin. Furthermore, (and the Ship's Catholics will be better placed to tell us exactly what status this document had), the Catechism of going by the name of that council re-affirms this, here.
Myrrh was often castigated on these boards for misrepresenting Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and just about everybody, and rightly so. However, one thing that (s)he often said was that the current teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on some matters where there has traditionally been disagreement with the east has been revised or worded skilfully in more recent years so as to appease the Uniate churches who had previously been treated quite badly at times. I wonder whether there might have been something to that.
That would be the subject of a new thread, of course, should people wish to pursue it, but given some of the contributions thus far about the apparent similarity between Orthodoxy and Catholicism on this point, it seems pertinent to highlight these differences.
[i]*(A minor point of order: Orthodox clergy are referred to by their Christian names rather than surnames - so "Father James" rather than "Father Smith". Monastics in particular do not have surnames. When they are tonsured as monks/nuns, they leave behind the world, and that includes their family name, with its implications for inheritance, social order, ancestry, and so forth, often even absenting themselves from the funerals of parents and other relatives. Sadly the academic, publishing, and musical worlds seldom recognise this and continue to refer to monks and nuns by their surnames, or even to their secular or baptismal names prior to monastic tonsure, because a well-known name is a selling point and it damages business to refer to a well-known person by a new name. This is how we have names like "Hilarion Alfeyev", "Seraphim Rose", "Kallistos/Timothy Ware" often used in the media. This is quite incorrect in Orthodox practice - although even some Orthodox publishers and publicists do this - so a non-Orthodox person could be easily forgiven for thinking that this is right. In any case, the point is that the bishop in question is properly referred to as Metropolitan Kallistos.)
[ 24. August 2012, 17:29: Message edited by: The Scrumpmeister ]
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Thanks for that, Michael. Also for the "heads up" on mode of address. I'll do better.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
I have a lot of reading and thinking to do about this question, which will take some time.
My starting position is a gut feeling that the story of the fall is early theology, and the observation that sin is a necessary element of free will, spiritual growth and subsequent relationship with God.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Thanks for that, Michael.
You're very welcome, although I fear that I lost something important in copying and pasting from one place to another last night. I meant to say that Christ shared in the effects of our fallen nature, even to the point of death, and then overcame them in his glorious Resurrection, in which we are all to share. Somehow, the text wasn't in the finished post.
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
quote:
Pelagius claimed that the influence of Adam on other humans was merely that of bad example. Augustine held that the effects of Adam's sin are transmitted to his descendants not by example but by the very fact of generation from that ancestor.
Whilst I wouldn't necessarily say that I agreed with Pelagius 100% in everything, from the above quote, I would definitely go with him rather than Augustine. Quite apart from anything else, it makes more sense if you don't see the early chapters Genesis as "historical fact". How can we inherit anything from Adam if "Adam" wasn't an actual person and the events in Genesis concerning him didn't actually happen?
I'm the same but different. I think that the "bad example" explanation is wanting on far too many levels, and that, while I cannot accept the position that is commonly attributed to Saint Augustine (because my own beliefs, as stated above, conform strictly to neither his nor Pelagius' expression) if I had to choose between the two, I would veer more in the direction of the Augustinian view.
I say that as somebody who, like you, does not subscribe to a literal reading of Genesis 1-11, who accepts evolution, and who, while aware that this places me at odds with the historical understanding of many of the Church fathers, nonetheless understands this as being entirely in keeping with their deeper teaching on the infancy, innocence, and immaturity of man in his initial, created state, from which he was to be nurtured and grow in a relationship of union and grace with God into fully deified man (as explained in Father Gregory's piece, linked above), and from which he fell.
Within any evolutionary understanding, there would have been a point at which sentient man (literally 'adam) developed rational abilities. Therefore, while I do not subscribe to a literal reading that gives us the historical man Adam, (I usually refer to "our first parents", which seems a common expression), it doesn't seem to me as a Christian to follow logically that the fall did not happen in a way that has all of the effects on us today that are traditionally understood in Orthodox Christianity. These things do not cease to make sense just because of a non-literal reading of the earlier part of Genesis. Orthodox understanding is that man questioned his need for reliance on God, and departed from this nurturing, deifying relationship - seeking to be as God (worthy in itself, and indeed God's ultimate will) independently of God (which is where the fall takes place, for man was exposing himself to things for which he was not ready, and sought to do what man could not do without God). Pelagius fails to account for too much.
This all seems to me to be consonant with the Genesis account of the temptation of man to be as God, knowing good and evil; with the patristic understandings of man's lack of maturity at the time to access the forbidden fruit; the expulsion from Eden, and so forth. Many Orthodox would take a literal reading of Genesis 1-11 and nonetheless believe the same things about the nature of man and the effects of the fall.
[ 25. August 2012, 06:12: Message edited by: The Scrumpmeister ]
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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footwasher
Shipmate
# 15599
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Posted
A wolf brings down a deer in the wild. A natural act. Bring it into the city and it will savage anybody in the way of its attempt to escape from a broken cage. Natural. Recaptured, it will not be put down, killed, as long as it is not found to be rabid. It will,however, never be allowed free roaming.
A wild man brought from a desert island back to civilisation will savage any who similarly obstruct his escape. When recaptured, he will be not be put down, but he WILL be expected to conform. You could say he has FALLEN. Where he formerly had immunity, he now has requirements, Law.
Adam had immunity in the Garden, but for the one Law: Do not choose autonomy, you aren't ready. Believing God provided protection, permission to remain in the Garden, AND grow, learn.
Jews had immunity in Judaism, except for Torah, it's 613 precepts. Agreeing to it, seeking forgiveness for infraction, (in a nutshell, believing God), provided protection, permission to remain in the Community, the qahal, God's Chosen.As well as opportunity to learn, grow.
1 Corinthians 10:4 NET
and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.
Galatians 3:24 NET
Thus the law had become our guardian until Christ, so that we could be declared righteous by faith.
Those who continue in Torah have no benefit from Christ:
Galatians 5:2 NET
Listen! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you at all!
Christians have immunity IN Christ, except to believe that He makes it possible to learn and grow into what God intended for humankind.
If we believe, we are compliant. Doing anything else is against the new covenant.
Belief leads to the giving of the Holy Spirit.
The presence of the Holy Spirit is confirmed by "fruit":
Galatians 5:22 NET
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Against displaying this fruit, there is no law.
Living by belief leads to opportunity to be what God wants us to be:
2 Timothy 2:21 NET
So if someone cleanses himself of such behavior, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart, useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.
I repeat, the Fall is a displacement from immunity to requirement (now one is brought into need to compliance to Law).
It has nothing to do with the ontology of humankind.
Also, there always was provision for shelter while learning and growing, a garden, an ark, a camp, a Temple, a Body...
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Ship's crimp
Posts: 927 | From: pearl o' the orient | Registered: Apr 2010
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egg
Shipmate
# 3982
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Scrumpmeister:
If the above is also current Catholic teaching, well and good. However, statements of the past would seem to suggest that, if this is indeed so, then a significant change has taken place. The Tridentine Council, for instance, seems quite clear that not only the physical effects of Adam's sin but also sin itself is transmitted. It anathematises those who do not affirm that baptism remits the guilt of original sin. Furthermore, (and the Ship's Catholics will be better placed to tell us exactly what status this document had), the Catechism of going by the name of that council re-affirms this, here.
If I may sat so with respect, I find your whole post, and your others in this thread, very helpful. I have always referred to Augustine's teaching, as I read it in City of God Book 13, as the doctrine of Original Guilt rather than Original Sin, and the Tridentine Council to which you referred us seems to confirm this view.
No Roman Catholics have yet come forward to show when or where the Tridentine doctrine of Original Guilt has been modified or abandoned.
The current Catechism of the Catholic Church is careful to avoid the word "guilt", and indeed to play down the effect of Original Sin as stated by the Tridentine Council:
"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."
That seems to me more nearly acceptable; but has the concept of "guilt" in fact been abandoned? I think the idea that all human beings are born guilty of sin is one that puts off a number of people from the Christian, or at any rate the Roman, faith. It would be helpful to have an authoritative statement that the Tridentine doctrine of Original Guilt is no longer part of Roman Catholic doctrine.
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egg
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by egg:
No Roman Catholics have yet come forward to show when or where the Tridentine doctrine of Original Guilt has been modified or abandoned.
It hasn't at all...and indeed could not be. The key is to understand the word that is translated as "guilt". The word is reatus. It doesn't mean "guilt" in the sense of "personally blameworthy", but rather in the sense of "being liable" for the consequences of a situation. So the Tridentine doctrine is about protecting the notion of the necessity of baptism to remedy the effects of original sin, concupiscence, rather than to assert a personal culpability.
quote:
The current Catechism of the Catholic Church is careful to avoid the word "guilt", and indeed to play down the effect of Original Sin as stated by the Tridentine Council:
"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."
That seems to me more nearly acceptable; but has the concept of "guilt" in fact been abandoned? I think the idea that all human beings are born guilty of sin is one that puts off a number of people from the Christian, or at any rate the Roman, faith. It would be helpful to have an authoritative statement that the Tridentine doctrine of Original Guilt is no longer part of Roman Catholic doctrine.
There has been four hundred and sixty-odd years of theological development since the Tridentine synthesis and one of the defining characteristics of the call to theologians made at Vatican II was to try and recover the Christocentric heart or purpose of Catholic theology. This area was one in which there had been a great deal of work even before Vatican II. Important amongst those working in this area was the German Jesuit, Karl Rahner.
Rahner’s contribution here is to offer a synthesis which accepts the reality of Original Sin and the authority of Sacred Scripture and Holy Tradition whilst taking account of the understanding of human origins as understood according to modern scientific models. This attempt is heavily dependent upon being able to produce a new vocabulary to express those things that the Church holds to be true. Rahner grounds his thought in the best insights of modern biblical scholarship; adopting the historico-critical approach to the account in Genesis 2-3, he demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to see human descent from a small group of the earliest human beings and still to hold that the Sin of Adam (the very word implies not one man but mankind) has damaged original justice once and for all. Our participation in this Original Sin comes about by the very fact that each individual is a human being, born into a single, closely united race. The aboriginal assertion of human free will against the will of God determines the whole of the human future in which each individual participates, by preventing human nature from being the very vehicle through which God’s grace is mediated to each new human being by their generation, as was, in Rahner’s view, the original plan. Rahner’s approach preserves the key element of St Thomas’s theology of original justice and its loss through Original Sin in a way that understands that Man is not simply a biological reality with a biological inheritance but a social reality with a social inheritance – a key insight that is entirely congruent with the current understanding of the development and function of the human genome.
It is evident that Rahner’s contribution to the Catholic theology of Original Sin is a valuable attempt to understand the truth of the human condition and its salvation: he moves forward the way in which the doctrine can be faithfully expounded in a manner that preserves its credibility in the light of the insights of science. His theology of Original Sin in no way denies the reality of a Sin of Adam and the effect of that sin by propagation not imitation in all subsequent human beings but it does move decisively forward from the rather over-pessimistic conclusions drawn by St Augustine. By attempting to develop the vocabulary and by picking up on St Thomas’s focus on grace as the key to understanding the dogma, a focus perhaps less than fully developed in the intervening centuries, Rahner’s work puts Man’s relationship with God in Christ back at the centre of the truth conveyed by that dogma.
St Paul’s whole purpose in the Letter to the Romans, and particularly in Rom.5:12-19, is to show how it is Christ who is the key to understanding the human condition, in whom is the human condition recreated. That is the purpose of the Adam/Christ parallel and, far from watering down St Paul’s teaching, the development of the understanding of the doctrine of Original Sin, through St Augustine, St Thomas, the Council of Trent and Fr Rahner, to a point where that Christocentric reality is fully acknowledged, rather reinforces the strength of St Paul’s teaching to the infant Church of Rome that, as a later leader of that Roman Church has written, “Christ is the new Adam, with whom humankind begins anew.”
I'm afraid that, misanthropic pessimist that I am, I'm with Chesterton on this one: "Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved," (Orthodoxy, chap. 2).
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
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daronmedway
Shipmate
# 3012
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I think the central issue is how "helpless" we are. The real argument concerns the created image of God in human beings and what we are like post-fall. I think the language is probably binary.
The spectral image is helpful. Put simplistically, it would appear that Pelagian leaning soteriologies favour the notion of free will as the ground of its considerations.
At the other extreme, Reformed soteriologies put forward the concept of "radical inability" as its ground. So soteriologically speaking we have a related spectrum between free will and radical inability.
Radical or total inability is the belief that the very nature of post fallen humanity is the total inability to effect its own salvific rescue without the assistance of grace (cf. Augustine of Hippo).
In this respect, those who hold to Augustinian soteriology consider notions of free will to be misleading and unhelpful because we believe that sin has scewed the will of man to the extent that it is not in fact free, and ironicly the chief manifestation of that scewing is the mistaken idea that he is in fact "free".
[ 26. August 2012, 07:01: Message edited by: daronmedway ]
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
I've got time for a brief comment before heading off on a 2 week break.
Helpless in Romans 7 terms does not mean " completely unaware of right and wrong", or "completely unaware of one's own weakness". One might argue that it means both weak willed and confused about what to do. A condition which most of us, in our more honest moments, will admit applies to us at least some of the time.
Does Augustinian soteriology or "total depravity" convey that understanding?
Or Romans 7 applies to Christians, rather than the human race in general?
My sense that the binary language gets in the way of quite small differences remains in place.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Eirenist
Shipmate
# 13343
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Posted
Perhaps it would be more helpful to speak of 'original weakness' rather than 'original sin' or 'original guilt'?
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'I think I think, therefore I think I am'
Posts: 486 | From: Darkest Metroland | Registered: Jan 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
All of the time Barnabas, all of the time. And aye, exclusive, binary, polar language; false dichotomies are the perennial fruit of our Greco-Roman culture, with its innate fearful destruction of freedom by consensus.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eirenist:
Perhaps it would be more helpful to speak of 'original weakness' rather than 'original sin' or 'original guilt'?
Yes - or, "Ancestral sin".
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Posts: 2080 | From: Leicester | Registered: Apr 2012
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egg
Shipmate
# 3982
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Posted
@ Trisagion. Thank you, that makes matters a good deal clearer.
I'm interested that you refer to Augustine's conclusions as "rather over-pessimistic". That's my view too. Perhaps it is the consequence of his dissolute earlier life, from which he believed he was saved only by grace.
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egg
Posts: 110 | From: London UK | Registered: Jan 2003
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
I'm reluctant to speculate about such things - not least because the field where I do most of my theological work at present (Newman studies) is bedevilled by people running wild with their own cod-psychologies - but I'm sure that disgust at his earlier dissolute behaviour had a huge influence.
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
Posts: 3923 | Registered: Nov 2003
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