Saturday, July 25, 2015
Original Goodness
Organized religion seems to act as if we come into this world rotten, Original Sin, and need to get some virtues or goodness from God, else you burn. The righteous believe that they got the good stuff through hard work and discipline. Recovering drunks believe just the opposite. We come into this world good and then we get rotten by bad behavior from active addictions. This is much more biblical, and AA isn't even a religion. In Genesis, God makes us in God's image and likeness. Look at Step Six and Seven of the Twelve Steps of AA. Step Six asks to have defects of character, the rotten stuff, removed. The step does not ask to get some good stuff. The recovering drunk believes the good stuff is already within us. They just need to get rid of the bad for today. Step Seven says as much. The Righteous are trying to avoid hell. The Recovering Drunk has already been there.
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Father, I hope for your sake that you aren't doing any public preaching.
ReplyDeleteActually, saints and other holy people recognized as so in our church, do not buy into Original Sin. The Orthodox are not much for it either, I believe. Original Sin is a theology not a dogma. Theologies can differ on the same subject. Bonaventure, the Franciscan and Aquinas, the Dominican, received their degrees the same year and have different theologies. I suspect the Franciscan view is a bit more positive about creation than the Dominican.
ReplyDeleteDear Father
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect please allow me to comment on the above post.
Here is what the Council of Trent (Fifth Session) says on the issue of Original Sin:
"If any one asserts, that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity; and that the holiness and justice, received of God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone, and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only transfused death, and pains of the body, into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul; let him be anathema"
This is a dogmatic statement, not a mere theological opinion. Yes we can have different ways of explaining he notion of Original Sin and indeed the word itself is a mere theological tool, but what you said above seems to explicitly contradict the teaching of the Church.
Of course this very same teaching is found in the Catechism. Thus for example CCC 416 says thus: "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."
What you are suggesting sounds very much like Pelagianism, which is of course a very dangerous error.
In Christ
T
Trent decided that Aquinas would be the theologian used to explain the faith in the Counter Reformation. But there were other ways to look at things that were not disapproved. Bonaventure and the Franciscan vision for one.
DeleteSure, there are different ways of explaining the same thing - but as long as it does not contradict the teaching of the Church, which includes the Council of Trent.
ReplyDelete