… it is a very important question whether, if there is personal immortality, we can secure it by our own efforts. The Christian answer is in the negative. As a result of the Fall, we are so out of right relation to God that nothing we could do could restore us to right relation.
This may be Christian, but it is not especially Catholic, or at least not especially Thomistic (in my view, it is more Calvinistic than Catholic). God is creating me right now out of nothing. Because it is God wWho is creating me there must be some dimension of my being that partakes of God's eternal being. What we humans have a hard time dealing with is that we are because God loves us — not as humans, members of a species, but as Jack, Jill, and Frank. It is not love that is hard. It is being loved that is hard.
Actually it's Augustinian. I agree that It's not Thomistic, but it is rather Catholic. All Calvin did was take it to an extreme.
ReplyDeleteAs has been pointed out elsewhere, ascribing original sin to be the consequence of the fall, or expulsion from the garden, is from Augustine. It's not even Biblical.
I think the story of the expulsion from Eden is a human alibi. I think man fled the garden and that God has been seeking to bring him back ever since.
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