[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]mertdawg wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
“Amazing Grace” is core to what Christianity is all about. Just because it wasn’t written by a Catholic doesn’t make it any less biblical.[/quote]
Actually, it’s not. Two things, men are not wretches. And Grace does not appear when we do something. Grace is the free gift of G-d given to us on His free will when he wants and not when we do something.
Michael explains it better.[/quote]
- It’s funny (and heartening) to hear a Catholic claim that men aren’t wretches, given your historical beliefs about original sin and fallen man. Having seen much of the original Catholic art in Italy and France, it’s blatantly obvious that the original Catholic church saw men as fallen, disgusting, depraved creatures.
[/quote]
There is a commonly held theory, perhaps even majority, among historians, including many who are Roman Catholic that the theology of the Immaculate Conception (of Mary by her parents, as opposed to just a “miraculous” conception which is clearly biblical and traditional), became the theology of the Pope because he had preached that all sex was a “necessary evil” for human procreation because of the fallen nature, and that Original Sin was passed down from generation to generation by the act of sex. She was still the genetic daughter of her parents but not via intercourse according the the interpretation of the Theology as it has been presented to me.
I believe that this is one of only 2 statements made “infallably” by the Pope?
Since Orthodox don’t believe that Original Sin is passed down generationally in humans, but rather by the belief that the very molecules of nature are fallen, the “need” for the theology of the Immaculate Conception does not make sense to us-Mary’s nature would have been no more or less “fallen” had she been conceived by sexual intercourse.
Discuss… [/quote]
I’ll let my Catholic friends comment, but my understanding is similar to yours. The Fall occurred when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden, and were no longer able to dwell in the presence of God.
[/quote]
On Augustine:
Original sinMain article: Original sin
Augustine taught that Original sin of Adam and Eve was either an act of foolishness (insipientia) followed by pride and disobedience to God or the opposite: pride came first.[71] The first couple disobeyed God, who had told them not to eat of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17).[72] The tree was a symbol of the order of creation.[73] Self-centeredness made Adam and Eve eat of it, thus failing to acknowledge and respect the world as it was created by God, with its hierarchy of beings and values.[74] They would not have fallen into pride and lack of wisdom, if Satan hadn’t sown into their senses “the root of evil” (radix Mali).[75] Their nature was wounded by concupiscence or libido, which affected human intelligence and will, as well as affections and desires, including sexual desire.[76] In terms of Metaphysics, concupiscence is not a being but bad quality, the privation of good or a wound.[77]
Augustine’s understanding of the consequences of the original sin and of necessity of the redeeming grace was developed in the struggle against Pelagius and his pelagian disciples, Caelestius and Julian of Eclanum,[56] who had been inspired by Rufinus of Syria, a disciple of Theodore of Mopsuestia.[78] They refused to agree that libido wounded human will and mind, insisting that the human nature was given the power to act, to speak, and to think when God created it. Human nature cannot lose its moral capacity for doing good, but a person is free to act or not to act in a righteous way. Pelagius gave an example of eyes: they have capacity for seeing, but a person can make either good or bad use of it.[79] Like Jovinian, pelagians insisted that human affections and desires were not touched by the fall either. Immorality, e.g. fornication, is exclusively a matter of will, i.e. a person does not use natural desires in a proper way. In opposition to that, Augustine pointed out to the apparent disobedience of the flesh to the spirit, and explained it as one of the results of original sin, punishment of Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God:
For it was not fit that His creature should blush at the work of his Creator; but by a just punishment the disobedience of the members was the retribution to the disobedience of the first man, for which disobedience they blushed when they covered with fig-leaves those shameful parts which previously were not shameful.
(…) As, therefore, they were so suddenly ashamed of their nakedness, which they were daily in the habit of looking upon and were not confused, that they could now no longer bear those members naked, but immediately took care to cover them; did not theyâ??he in the open, she in the hidden impulseâ??perceive those members to be disobedient to the choice of their will, which certainly they ought to have ruled like the rest by their voluntary command? And this they deservedly suffered, because they themselves also were not obedient to their Lord. Therefore they blushed that they in such wise had not manifested service to their Creator, that they should deserve to lose dominion over those members by which children were to be procreated.
â?? Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.31-32
Augustine had served as a “Hearer” for the Manicheans for about nine years,[80] who taught that the original sin was carnal knowledge.[81] This allowed Augustine, after his conversion, to find narrow path between the Manichean and Pelagian positions.
The view that not only human soul but also senses were influenced by the fall of Adam and Eve was prevalent in Augustine’s time among the Fathers of the Church.[82] It is clear that the reason of Augustine’s distance towards the affairs of the flesh was different than that of Plotinus, a neo-Platonist[83] who taught that only through disdain for fleshly desire could one reach the ultimate state of mankind.[84] Augustine taught the redemption, i.e. transformation and purification, of the body in the resurrection.[85]
Some authors perceive Augustine’s doctrine as directed against human sexuality and attribute his insistence on continence and devotion to God as coming from Augustine’s need to reject his own highly sensual nature as described in the Confessions. But in view of his writings it is apparently a misunderstanding.[86] Augustine teaches that human sexuality has been wounded, together with the whole of human nature, and requires redemption of Christ. That healing is a process realised in conjugal acts. The virtue of continence is achieved thanks to the grace of the sacrament of Christian marriage, which becomes therefore a remedium concupiscentiae - remedy of concupiscence.[87] The redemption of human sexuality will be, however, fully accomplished only in the resurrection of the body.[88]
The sin of Adam is inherited by all human beings. Already in his pre-Pelagian writings, Augustine taught that Original Sin was transmitted by concupiscence,[citation needed] which he regarded as the passion of both, soul and body,[89] making humanity a massa damnata (mass of perdition, condemned crowd) and much enfeebling, though not destroying, the freedom of the will.
Augustine’s formulation of the doctrine of original sin was confirmed at numerous councils, i.e. Carthage (418), Ephesus (431), Orange (529), Trent (1546) and by popes, i.e. Pope Innocent I (401-417) and Pope Zosimus (417-418). Anselm of Canterbury established in his Cur Deus Homo the definition that was followed by the great Schoolmen, namely that Original Sin is the “privation of the righteousness which every man ought to possess”, thus interpreting concupiscence as something more than mere sexual lust, with which some Augustine’s disciples had defined it[90] as later did Luther and Calvin, a doctrine condemned in 1567 by Pope Pius V.[46]
Lutherans and Calvinists disaccordingly claim that, according to Augustine, human beings are utterly depraved in nature. According to them, humans are spoiled by the original sin to the extent that the very presence of concupiscence, fomes peccati (incendiary of sin), is already a personal sin.[91] Augustine’s doctrine about the liberum arbitrium or free will and its inability to respond to the will of God without divine grace is interpreted (mistakenely according to Roman Catholics) in terms of Predestination: grace is irresistible, results in conversion, and leads to perseverance. The Calvinist view of Augustine’s teachings rests on the assertion that God has foreordained, from eternity, those who will be saved. The number of the elect is fixed.[56] God has chosen the elect certainly and gratuitously, without any previous merit (ante merita) on their part.
The Catholic Church considers Augustine’s teaching to be consistent with free will.[92] He often said that any can be saved if they wish.[92] While God knows who will be saved and who will not, with no possibility that one destined to be lost will be saved, this knowledge represents God’s perfect knowledge of how humans will freely choose their destinies.[92]
