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What Pelagius said or did not say is impossible to prove with any firmness. Nevertheless, the position ascribed to him is heretical.
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If this quote from Irenaeus is accepted dogmatically as reflecting the faith:
"Indeed, THROUGH the first Adam, WE offended God by not observing His command."
And if it is essential to believe this in order to be a Christian, then I am no longer a Christian, since Christianity teaches that God is unjust.
Joe Joe, The analogy I have seen used for original sin (I believe it is Patristic) is the notion of a woundedness at the root of our nature. The notion that we inherit this fundamental brokeness from our ancestor (absence of original justice and an inclination towards wrongdoing as well as corruption of the body, for example) is that we have inherited these things by virtue of our being the children of Adam and Eve. The sin of Adam we have inherited is NOT personal sin. It was for Adam, but not for us. The term "sin" here is used analogously, and does not mean "guilt" in the way we moderns understand this. Such is a biblical way of looking at the world, where we see in the lives of the Patriarchs the pattern of virtue and vice being played out in a corporate/tribal sense. The action of a Patriarch was not just their own, personal action, but had a corporate dimension across the generations. Ultimately we all descend from a single man who made a choice that affects us all. Is that unjust? Not exactly. Nor more than that it is unjust that I am probably genetically predisposed to get diabetes, which I have now in my 30's, as did my father and my grandfather. And I'm not even touching on some of the dysfunctional dynamics that have been based down...things that we always deal with. The definition of God's mercy is that He is able to bring good out of evil. We were redeemed by murdering the Redeemer. Can't get more merciful than that. God bless, Gordo
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Well, Pelagius himself never said that grace wasn't necessary. Even if Adam had not sinned, grace would be necessary in order to perfect his natural virtue and deify Adam.
Joe This position sounds very Western to me, because man -- even after the ancestral sin -- is not devoid of grace. Orthodox theology avoids the dialectical approach of Western theology. In other words, there is a distinction between nature and grace, but they are not separable. Grace (i.e., divine energy) pervades created existence, and in the process it keeps it in being from moment to moment. Moreover, salvation is not focused upon natures in the abstract, but upon persons ( hypostaseis), which is why the Eastern Fathers insist that salvation is synergistic.
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In light of the following:
"6. We confess we are sinners because it is true, not from humility.
7. The saints ask for forgiveness for their own sins.
8. The saints also confess to be sinners because they are."
Was Mary a saint? If we had asked her during her earthly life whether she was a sinner, what would she have said? And so we have one saint without sin? Yet, Christ alone is without sin? If Mary was without sin, then why couldn't she affect our salvation in place of Christ?
Joe Mary was not a divine person in two natures, restoring communion between God and man through the hypostatic union. Any sinlessness she possesed was by virtue of her participation in the sinlessness of Jesus Christ. The same principle applies to our own growth in theosis - it occurs to the extent that we participate in the life of grace given to us through, with and in Jesus Christ the One Mediator and High Priest. Any participation that Mary had in our salvation, granting that it was unique among all of mankind, was purely secondary and proximate. In ICXC, Gordo
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Mary was conceived and born like all of Adam's descendents, and so she was subject to the effects of the original sin (i.e., mortality and a principle of corruption leading to non-being). Nevertheless, she was not conceived or born sinful, but then no one else is conceived or born sinful either.
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The quote from Origen,
"EVERY SOUL that is BORN into flesh is SOILED by the filth of wickedness and SIN....And if it should seem necessary to do so, there may be added to the aforementioned considerations [referring to previous Scriptures cited that we all sin] the fact that in the Church, Baptism is given FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS; and according to the usage of the Church, Baptism is given EVEN TO INFANTS. And indeed if there were nothing in infants which REQUIRED a remission of sins and nothing in them pertinent to forgiveness, the grace of Baptism would seem SUPERFLUOUS. (Homilies on Leviticus 8:3)"
Do my Othodox brethren agree with this? St. Gregory of Nyssa says that infants are innocent and without sin. Who should one believe?
And isn't the western notion of original sin intinsically unjust? After all, it says that God condemns all of humanity for the sin of one man. None of us asked to be born. None of us asked to be here and to be born sinners and to be born in this condition. What kind of being would create individuals in a state where they were doomed to death when they didn't even have self-consciousness yet? If this is Christian doctrine, then Christianity teaches that God is unfair in his dealings with humans.
Joe Joe, I think one needs to distinguish btween original sin and personal sin. No one is asserting here that infants have committed personal sin. Original sin refers to the "state" of humanity descended from our ancestor Adam which exists in a broken - or at least severly wounded - covenant communion with God. This communion is restored in Jesus Christ, and applied personally (and corporately) through Holy Baptism. Despite our difficulties, life is still intrinsically good and our nature fully redeemed (as explicitly affirmed in Sacred Scripture). One need not descend into either an extreme Augustinianism as manifested in Protestant theology nor Pelagianism to find a via media that is fully orthodox and fully catholic. In ICXC, Gordo
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Mary was conceived and born like all of Adam's descendents, and so she was subject to the effects of the original sin (i.e., mortality and a principle of corruption leading to non-being). Nevertheless, she was not conceived or born sinful, but then no one else is conceived or born sinful either. Mary was fully human, sharing in our common nature. She was mortal, but, according to St. John of Damascus, only due to the fact that it was fitting that she participate in the mystery of death and resurrection in perfect conformity to her Divine Son. (It was also fitting that our spiritual mother go before us in death and glory, as any mother would desire to do for her children.) There is a tradition that she in fact asked to die, and her prayers were answered was announced to her by the Archangel Gabriel, who presented her with a Palm Branch from Paradise as a sign that God had heard her prayer. So far as I can tell from my reading of the various Dormition traditions and many of the homilies pertaining to her feast, it is absolutely false to say that Mary was subject to corruption. In fact, the opposite is stated expicitly in a number of passages.
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The quote from Origen,
"EVERY SOUL that is BORN into flesh is SOILED by the filth of wickedness and SIN....And if it should seem necessary to do so, there may be added to the aforementioned considerations [referring to previous Scriptures cited that we all sin] the fact that in the Church, Baptism is given FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS; and according to the usage of the Church, Baptism is given EVEN TO INFANTS. And indeed if there were nothing in infants which REQUIRED a remission of sins and nothing in them pertinent to forgiveness, the grace of Baptism would seem SUPERFLUOUS. (Homilies on Leviticus 8:3)"
Do my Orthodox brethren agree with this? St. Gregory of Nyssa says that infants are innocent and without sin. Who should one believe? Joe, Origen is not a Church Father, and his theological speculations were not finally purged from the Church until the time of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils. That said, the following quotation is from Fr. Meyendorff's book, Byzantine Theology, answers your question: The contrast with Western tradition on this point is brought into sharp focus when Eastern authors discuss the meaning of baptism. Augustine�s arguments in favor of infant baptism were taken from the text of the creeds (baptism for "the remission of sins") and from his understanding of Romans 5:12. Children are born sinful, not because they have sinned personally, but because they have sinned "in Adam"; their baptism is therefore also a baptism "for the remission of sins." At the same time, an Eastern contemporary of Augustine�s, Theodoret of Cyrus, flatly denies that the creedal formula "for the remission of sins" is applicable to infant baptism. For Theodoret, in fact, the "remission of sins" is only a side effect of baptism, fully real in cases of adult baptism, which is the norm, of course, in the early Church and which indeed "remits sins." But the principal meaning of baptism is wider and more positive: "If the only meaning of baptism is the remission of sins," writes Theodoret, "why would we baptize the newborn children who have not yet tasted of sin? But the mystery [of baptism] is not limited to this; it is a promise of greater and more perfect gifts. In it, there are the promises of future delights; it is a type of the future resurrection, a communion with the master�s passion, a participation in His resurrection, a mantle of salvation, a tunic of gladness, a garment of light, or rather it is light itself."
Thus, the Church baptizes children not to "remit" their yet nonexistent sins, but in order to give them a new and immortal life, which their mortal parents are unable to communicate to them. The opposition between the two Adams is seen in terms not of guilt and forgiveness but of death and life. "The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven; as was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:47-48). Baptism is the paschal mystery, the "passage." All its ancient forms, especially the Byzantine, include a renunciation of Satan, a triple immersion as type of death and resurrection, and the positive gift of new life through anointing and Eucharistic communion. [Fr. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, pages 145-146] God bless, Todd
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Mary was conceived and born like all of Adam's descendents, and so she was subject to the effects of the original sin (i.e., mortality and a principle of corruption leading to non-being). Nevertheless, she was not conceived or born sinful, but then no one else is conceived or born sinful either. Mary was fully human, sharing in our common nature. She was mortal, but, according to St. John of Damascus, only due to the fact that it was fitting that she participate in the mystery of death and resurrection in perfect conformity to her Divine Son. (It was also fitting that our spiritual mother go before us in death and glory, as any mother would desire to do for her children.) There is a tradition that she in fact asked to die, and her prayers were answered was announced to her by the Archangel Gabriel, who presented her with a Palm Branch from Paradise as a sign that God had heard her prayer. So far as I can tell from my reading of the various Dormition traditions and many of the homilies pertaining to her feast, it is absolutely false to say that Mary was subject to corruption. In fact, the opposite is stated expicitly in a number of passages. Mary is mortal because she is a descendent of Adam, and so it was not simply "fitting" that she be mortal. Only Christ Himself -- the God-man -- was mortal by choice.
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Moreover, salvation is not focused upon natures in the abstract, but upon persons (hypostaseis), which is why the Eastern Fathers insist that salvation is synergistic. Todd, But how do you reconcile that with the OT and NT passages of Scripture that focus on the corporate nature of salvation? All salvation is not purely individual. To say that Christ assumed our nature (taking the form of a servant, tabernacling among us) means that He assumed that which was common to us all to redeem us all. Otherwise would He not then need to assume each human person in order to redeem humanity? Perhaps I'm not grasping your full meaning here. Could you clarify please? Thanks. Gordo
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I do it by reading scripture as the Fathers did, and not as St. Augustine did.
Adam's transgression introduced mortality and a return to non-being in his descendents, but nature itself is not sinful. In other words, the defect in mankind introduced by Adam's sin is in the hypostatic enactment of our nature and is not in our nature itself. Christ, as I have said in other threads, assumed a nature identical to our own; and so, if we posit a moral corruption in our nature (as St. Augustine did) it leads to Christological heresies.
God bless,
Todd
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Mary is mortal because she is a descendent of Adam, and so it was not simply "fitting" that she be mortal.
Only Christ Himself -- the God-man -- was mortal by choice. I can appreciate that that is your position, but it incorrect if you assume that there is unanimity regarding this. As to the question of "mortal by choice", that is a matter of theological opinion. I go with the tradition that sees her death as voluntary...one could say an extension of her fiat at the Annunciation. But there are numerous passages which deny expicitly that corruption ever touched God's Holy Ark. At her death, her body remained in a state of incorruption like that of her Son. And the "fittingness" argument is, among others I believe, primarily that of St. John of Damascus'. God bless, Gordo
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I believe it is "fitting" that Mary died, but I do not accept that she dies only because it is "fitting."
God bless,
Todd
P.S. - We would have to do a detailed study of St. John Damascene's homily on the Dormition in order to see what he is actually saying. In my opinion, you are reading him in a Western fashion.
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But there are numerous passages which deny expicitly that corruption ever touched God's Holy Ark. At her death, her body remained in a state of incorruption like that of her Son.
And the "fittingness" argument is, among others I believe, primarily that of St. John of Damascus'. As I have already said, we read the texts (i.e., scripture and the Fathers) differently. Mortality does not involve a "moral" corruption, and so I see nothing wrong with saying that Mary is born mortal, just like everyone else.
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In other words, the defect in mankind introduced by Adam's sin is in the hypostatic enactment of our nature and is not in our nature itself. Christ, as I have said in other threads, assumed a nature identical to our own; and so, if we posit a moral corruption in our nature (as St. Augustine did) it leads to Christological heresies.
God bless,
Todd So how does the first quote differ from Pelagianism again, especially as condemned by the Council of Carthage? It is possible to affirm that Christ assumed our human nature fully while still affirming the doctrine of original sin as taught by the Catholic Church. His nature was simply the same as Adam in Paradise prior to the Fall. God bless, Gordo PS: Sorry - gotta run from the conversation until the 'morrow. My wife is ready to through a book at my head. Hopefully NOT the Catechism of the Catholic Church or the Code of Canon Law!
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