From: Jeffrey Zents (jzents@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Jul 20 2003 - 23:40:00 EDT
-------Original Message-------
From: "Thomas D. Pearson" <pearson@panam.edu>
Sent: 07/10/03 01:38 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: Sin?
[My comments are at the very bottom]
>
Sondra Brasile <sbrasile@hotmail.com> wrote:
Think to yourself "what is my vice; my natural inclination?" we all have
them, we're all born with them, can we "help" them? Sometimes we can
hardly
stop ourselves, right? Maybe it's true that 90% of the time people can't
help themselves or even 50% of the time, but does that mean that we should
change all laws and moral codes to allow for these inborn vices? For some
reason you people think if you can prove it's a genetic predetermination
then it's allowed, God somehow forgot to mention that when he was writing
the Book that he says is his complete word (many of you don't believe this
and my mind boggles at why you identify yourself, then by the "Christian"
faith, you should start your own religion and stop dragging ours through
the
mud).
[To which Tom Pearson repied]
I think we should be cautious in using the phrase "natural
inclinations." For Thomas Aquinas, to pick just one example, our
"natural inclinations" are wholly good; they direct us to the
authentic human goods, chief among which is love of God. You
apparently mean to refer, Sondra, to "desires," or "personal
preferences," or perhaps even "tendencies to sin." But confusing
these with "natural inclinations" winds up suggesting that our
created being is oriented away from God, and this will make hash out
of any notion of the imago dei, among other things.
I also think we should be cautious in associating traditional
Christianity ("mere Christianity," to some folks) with a program for
moral improvement. The Christian doctrine of sin should alert us to
the fact that any such program of moral improvement is doomed to be
very short-lived.
Tom Pearson
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
Thomas D. Pearson
Department of History & Philosophy
The University of Texas-Pan American
Edinburg, Texas
e-mail: pearson@panam.edu
Tom,
I do not have a problem with the first part of your comments, its the second part that I cannot allow to go unanswered. You say that we should be "cautious in associating" traditional Christianity with "moral reform". That would be true if one performed a reduction of Christianity to morality or moral reform, as the liberals at the begining of the last century (Gad! does that still sound as weird to others as it does to me?)were alleged to have done. But if one does not make that mistake, then one had better associate Christianity with moral reform or else we will "make hash out of" the notion of repentance. It is precisely "traditional Christianity" that has always made that association. It is your up ... er . . . relatively recent form of Christianity that has made the disasociation to be the norm.
As you know it was Luther that could not see the way to reconcile James with Paul. Luther's problem was not that of traditional Christian teaching, Orthodox or Catholic. Rather it is the problem of any form of teaching on Justification that has no way to plug a sanctification module into the system. And that is characteristic of some forms of teaching since the Reformation, and that is what we should avoid, not traditional Christianity. Cheers my friend!
Jeff Zents
Center for Thomistic Studies
University of St. Thomas
Houston, TX
jzents@earthlink.net
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Mon Jul 21 2003 - 01:40:56 EDT