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Traditional Catholic Faith => General Discussion => Topic started by: LaramieHirsch on February 04, 2015, 01:23:12 AM

Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: LaramieHirsch on February 04, 2015, 01:23:12 AM
So, the whole mess is being brought up again, and I figured I'd participate in it.  

This, over at Patheos:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2011/02/literature-and-literalism.html

Literature and Literalism
By Fr. Dwight Longnecker

You can read it yourself if you're interested.  But the comments that urged my participation included such statements as:

     - God gave us both faith and reason; religion and science. Sorry,
     fundamentalists...

     -In fact those who created the Old Testament could live quite happily with
     several different versions of the same story with conflicting details, and
     considerable complexity, irony, and self-mockery...

     -perhaps is not meant to be taken chronologically or scientifically. In no way
     does that view detract from Original Sin...

It very well may be that one of you is the actual author of one of these comments.  Hopefully so!  If not, let's move on.  

I therefore ask the following:

"The Creation story is a myth..." and so, therefore, we do not need baptism to be saved because there is no such thing as Original Sin. The story of Adam and Eve and their Fall was just a concept. Right?

If there was no disobedience in the Garden, if there was no singular act that doomed all living men, then where did Original Sin come from?
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: cassini on February 04, 2015, 06:53:46 AM
The problem you are discussing LaramieHirsch is the Pythagorean or Copernican heresy.

Recently I was made aware of what the Council of Constance (1414-1418) had to say with regard to the contradictions that non-literal interpretations of the Scriptures led to. It defined eight notes which attach to eroneous theological propositions. The third one states:

"Adherence to a doctrinal proposition which, though not directly contradicting a received dogma [a different version of Original sin in this case] entails consequences at variance with revealed truth, is an erroneous theological proposition."

The first rejection of the literal in the scriptures were the words 'sunset' and 'sunrise.' Up to the time of Galileo these words meant the sun setting as it moved and the sun rising as it moved around the earth to begin another day on that part of the earth. Believe it or not, by way of alchemy, magic, brain washing, Lucifer got every 'educated' person in the world to deny their view of the sun moving, including 'even the elect,' and to deny that GOD in His Scrtiptures meant 'sunset' and 'sunrise.' Interestingly these words were never changed after all were convinced they really meant 'earthset' and 'earthrise.'

Once that happened, Genesis itself came under attack. It too had to adhere to alchemy and a Big Bang (Pope Pius XII) that led to an evolutionary 'truth' for the origins of the world. Thus, as they invented every sophestry and excuse within the Church to comply with a non-literal heliocentric meaning Scripture, they also invented reasons to show the writers of Genesis did not record true history but used pagan myths and miracle-makers in a Genesis story.

The problem though is that these stories cannot be reconciled with dogmas of the Church.
Adam was the first human being. From him came Eve. Where in evolution does Eve come from?

De Fide: Our First Parents in Paradice sinned greviously through transgression of the divine probationary commandment. - THE ORIGINAL SIN
De Fide: Adam's sin {Original sin] is transmitted to his posterity, not by imitation, but by descent.
De Fide: Original sin is transmitted by natural generation.
De Fide: Souls who depart this life in the state of Original Sin are excluded from the Beatific Vision of God.

As to where did the MODERNIST version of Original sin come from, well we have a book telling us that called In the Beginning written by a Joseph Ratzinger, another who became a pope. Now modernist jumbo jumbo is difficult to read but what it did not say or defend were the dogmas, preferring instead that the human race just got bad by itself, a badness we refer to as Original Sin.

Any discussion on Original Sin has to include the EXEMPTION of the Mother of God from Original Sin. Play around with the literal account is to deny Our Lady that profound exemption. Remember this.

As Catholics we have to use our faith to detect and avoid theological, philosophical and metaphysical errors. The first criterion is to do as Jesus told us: 'By their fruits you will know them.' a non literal Genesis cannot be reconciled with the dogmas of the Church, and we also observe that every atheist on earth adheres to the non-literal. Indeed the history of mass Atheism began with the Copernican heresy, moved on to evolutionary drivil and gets great satisfaction and support for their naturalism when they see their origins worldview is now supported by most in the Catholic Church.

Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: PerEvangelicaDicta on February 04, 2015, 08:30:51 AM
Thanks as always for enlightening commentary, Cassini.
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: Matto on February 04, 2015, 11:31:03 AM
Quote from: LaramieHirsch
If there was no disobedience in the Garden, if there was no singular act that doomed all living men, then where did Original Sin come from?

I would like to see evolutionists who claims to be Catholic answer this question.
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: LaramieHirsch on February 04, 2015, 02:25:29 PM
I asked this at CAF:


Are there not ramifications for having a Creation account that is not to be believed?  If the story of Eden is a myth, and physically untrue,  then how can our entire religion be credible?  If Genesis' only use is to philosophically motivate us towards a particular end, can't I get that same use from another myth somewhere else?  If the Christian Creation account is not literal, doesn't that set a precedent for the credibility of the rest of the Scriptures?


If the Fall of Adam and Eve is a myth, then isn't the idea of Original Sin a mythological idea?  And wouldn't the sacrament (maybe all sacraments at this point) of baptism be a practice based on mythology?

Finally, wouldn't the idea of Genesis being a myth provide justification to the many glib atheists who mockingly state: "I don't have time to waste on silly Christian myths"?
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: Thurifer on February 04, 2015, 06:44:46 PM
Quote from: cassini
...Now modernist jumbo jumbo is difficult to read but what it did not say or defend were the dogmas, preferring instead that the human race just got bad by itself, a badness we refer to as Original Sin.

Any discussion on Original Sin has to include the EXEMPTION of the Mother of God from Original Sin. Play around with the literal account is to deny Our Lady that profound exemption. Remember this.


Cassini, I'm not entering into debate and I agree that playing around with literal accounts is ridiculous. But why would this exempt the Mother of God being conceived without Original Sin?

If according to the mumbo jumbo, they believe that Original Sin was acquired due to a general badness, and now all men are born with it, why couldn't God still create his Mother to be free from it? Are you saying this because of the verses which refer to the Mother of God in Genesis?

Seems to me that if they are fleeing from the literal account, the literal account is not required to explain our Lady in Genesis.

Ah, never mind, I think I just figured it out. Let me know if I am right. Genesis is the only place in Scripture where we can point to the Dogma being true of our Lady's holy and Immaculate Conception.

Sometimes I just have to talk this stuff out. Good post by the way, Cassini!
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: LaramieHirsch on February 04, 2015, 11:29:44 PM
How fun!  This just fell into my lap!

HUMANI GENERIS

37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the docuŠ¼ents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

(For an extra bonus, here's #40

40. Truly, we are aware that the majority of Catholic doctors, the fruit of whose studies is being gathered in universities, in seminaries and in the colleges of religious, are far removed from those errors which today, whether through a desire of novelty or through a certain immoderate zeal for the apostolate, are being spread either openly or covertly. But we know also that such new opinions can entice the incautious; and therefore we prefer to withstand the very beginnings rather than to administer the medicine after the disease has grown inveterate.

Too late, Pope Pius XII.  The incautious have already been enticed by the inveterate disease.)

And here, from the most recent Catechism (of all the material!  It's the almost-modernist Catechism of the 20th Century that attests to the first parents!)

374 The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ.

375 The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original "state of holiness and justice".250 This grace of original holiness was "to share in. . .divine life".251

376 By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man's life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die.252 The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman,253 and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called "original justice".

377 The "mastery" over the world that God offered man from the beginning was realized above all within man himself: mastery of self. The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason.

378 The sign of man's familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden.255 There he lives "to till it and keep it". Work is not yet a burden,256 but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation.

379 This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God's plan, will be lost by the sin of our first parents.

...

387 Only the light of divine Revelation clarifies the reality of sin and particularly of the sin committed at mankind's origins. Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc. Only in the knowledge of God's plan for man can we grasp that sin is an abuse of the freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving one another.

...

402 All men are implicated in Adam's sin, as St. Paul affirms: "By one man's disobedience many (that is, all men) were made sinners": "sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned." The Apostle contrasts the universality of sin and death with the universality of salvation in Christ. "Then as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men."

...

416 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".


Tremendous thanks to The Remnant for coming around just in time for this party:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgAMw0i_TLA

To deny Genesis is to remove the foundations of Catholicism.  And therefore, to deny God's literal work on a literal man and a literal woman is an anti-Catholic thing to do.  The Church teaches about Adam and Eve as literal people in a literal place in a literal situation.  

The people who have fallen into the modernist trap of trying to mesh Scriptures with their own comfortable modern mythologies--these incautious people are enticed and infected by an inveterate disease.  Much the same way as a man catches herpes.
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: cassini on February 05, 2015, 06:50:36 AM
Quote from: Thurifer
Quote from: cassini
...Now modernist jumbo jumbo is difficult to read but what it did not say or defend were the dogmas, preferring instead that the human race just got bad by itself, a badness we refer to as Original Sin.

Any discussion on Original Sin has to include the EXEMPTION of the Mother of God from Original Sin. Play around with the literal account is to deny Our Lady that profound exemption. Remember this.


Cassini, I'm not entering into debate and I agree that playing around with literal accounts is ridiculous. But why would this exempt the Mother of God being conceived without Original Sin?

If according to the mumbo jumbo, they believe that Original Sin was acquired due to a general badness, and now all men are born with it, why couldn't God still create his Mother to be free from it? Are you saying this because of the verses which refer to the Mother of God in Genesis?

Seems to me that if they are fleeing from the literal account, the literal account is not required to explain our Lady in Genesis.

Ah, never mind, I think I just figured it out. Let me know if I am right. Genesis is the only place in Scripture where we can point to the Dogma being true of our Lady's holy and Immaculate Conception.

Sometimes I just have to talk this stuff out. Good post by the way, Cassini!


Yes thurifer, Original sin is a dogma. Dogmas are explicit. In the case of Original sin the Council of Trent arrived at its dogma by way of the literal account in Gen. 2,17 and 3,I. Since Adam's sin is the basis of the Dogma of O.S. and because of it man needed REDEMPTION [from it] which is the foundation of the Catholic Church and its purpose in being. Thus Genesis goes on to tell us of the place Our Lady will play in in this salvation in the martial decree of Genesis 3:15

If Ratzinger's original sin is based on man's natural decline into badness, then there is no dogma, no plan for our salvation, no need for the Immaculate Conception, and no room for 'NO SALVATION OUTSIDE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.'

The historical accuracy of the basis of the dogma may not be inpugned. (The Biblical Commission of 1909) This commission also said 'That through the termptation of the Devil WHO TOOK THE FORM OF A SERPENT he (Adam) transgressed the Divine commandment.)

Now if that is not literally as Gen states - A SNAKE -  then nothing is for real. So Thurifer you reasoned well, thought it out like a Catholic and came to truth.
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: TKGS on February 05, 2015, 07:07:27 AM
I have found that there is no sense in arguing a point with an individual who simply takes a position on some matter as a self-evident truth.  This is what this gentleman has done with the whole of the creation story:  He's simply declared, with no evidence, that the first part of the book of Genesis is myth and that science has "proven" it to be false.

He will not answer your question, or, if he does, it will simply be nonsensical.

Only the grace of faith can convert him.  He is a heretic (if he claims to be Christian), but, more likely, he's just another run-of-the-mill pagan who only superficially calls himself a Christian for social reasons.

Christ told us that there are some things that can only be accomplished through prayer and fasting.  Logical arguments will not work in this case.
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: ClarkSmith on February 05, 2015, 10:47:45 AM
It's probably no  coincidence that atheist reject the part of the Bible that is about man's disobedience.  Atheists are the epitome of rebellion.  

Read it out loud. Genesis is beautiful,  powerful, and moving. It reflects both God's love for us and his power.  Why would we want to change it? or lessen it to appeal to the one's that don't have faith? I really don't understand the point of appealing to atheists in this matter.  You're basically telling atheists you don't need faith to believe in Bible. We can  rationalize it until it fits our own personal world view.
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: Matthew on February 05, 2015, 11:29:02 AM
Quote from: TKGS
I have found that there is no sense in arguing a point with an individual who simply takes a position on some matter as a self-evident truth.  This is what this gentleman has done with the whole of the creation story:  He's simply declared, with no evidence, that the first part of the book of Genesis is myth and that science has "proven" it to be false.

He will not answer your question, or, if he does, it will simply be nonsensical.

Only the grace of faith can convert him.  He is a heretic (if he claims to be Christian), but, more likely, he's just another run-of-the-mill pagan who only superficially calls himself a Christian for social reasons.

Christ told us that there are some things that can only be accomplished through prayer and fasting.  Logical arguments will not work in this case.


Well-said.

That is why I gave up such arguing (with non-Catholics) a long time ago. It's frustrating, and casting pearls before swine.

Remember, too, that casting pearls before swine is not just "wasting your time". That's not what Our Lord said about it. He said that it was DANGEROUS FOR US, because those swine can turn on you and tear you.

Hanging around them and living in "their world" (the world of reason alone) it might pull you in -- you'll get frustrated, see for yourself that you can't hit them over the head with any facts that will "force" them to believe, and in the end your own faith will be weakened if not killed. The swine will tear you to pieces.

St. Matthew's Gospel chapter 7:
[6] Give not that which is holy to dogs; neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and turning upon you, they tear you.
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: Ladislaus on February 05, 2015, 12:58:31 PM
Quote from: Matthew
Quote from: TKGS
I have found that there is no sense in arguing a point with an individual who simply takes a position on some matter as a self-evident truth.  This is what this gentleman has done with the whole of the creation story:  He's simply declared, with no evidence, that the first part of the book of Genesis is myth and that science has "proven" it to be false.

He will not answer your question, or, if he does, it will simply be nonsensical.

Only the grace of faith can convert him.  He is a heretic (if he claims to be Christian), but, more likely, he's just another run-of-the-mill pagan who only superficially calls himself a Christian for social reasons.

Christ told us that there are some things that can only be accomplished through prayer and fasting.  Logical arguments will not work in this case.


Well-said.

That is why I gave up such arguing (with non-Catholics) a long time ago. It's frustrating, and casting pearls before swine.

Remember, too, that casting pearls before swine is not just "wasting your time". That's not what Our Lord said about it. He said that it was DANGEROUS FOR US, because those swine can turn on you and tear you.

Hanging around them and living in "their world" (the world of reason alone) it might pull you in -- you'll get frustrated, see for yourself that you can't hit them over the head with any facts that will "force" them to believe, and in the end your own faith will be weakened if not killed. The swine will tear you to pieces.

St. Matthew's Gospel chapter 7:
[6] Give not that which is holy to dogs; neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and turning upon you, they tear you.


Plus they defile and trample the pearls (something precious and of great value); so often the do little but blaspheme the truth when you present it to them.
Title: If no disobedience in the Garden, whered Original Sin come from?
Post by: LaramieHirsch on February 07, 2015, 02:47:55 AM
Quote from: LaramieHirsch
I asked this at CAF:


Are there not ramifications for having a Creation account that is not to be believed?  If the story of Eden is a myth, and physically untrue,  then how can our entire religion be credible?  If Genesis' only use is to philosophically motivate us towards a particular end, can't I get that same use from another myth somewhere else?  If the Christian Creation account is not literal, doesn't that set a precedent for the credibility of the rest of the Scriptures?


If the Fall of Adam and Eve is a myth, then isn't the idea of Original Sin a mythological idea?  And wouldn't the sacrament (maybe all sacraments at this point) of baptism be a practice based on mythology?

Finally, wouldn't the idea of Genesis being a myth provide justification to the many glib atheists who mockingly state: "I don't have time to waste on silly Christian myths"?


Well, to follow up, it's been about three days now.  Still no answers from Catholic Answers Forum.  

However, they have responded to someone's question:

"Are pets capable of loving their owners?"



Toodles.