This is a ch__ch. What's missing?
Posted on 01/17/2006 6:56:20 AM PST by HarleyD
History article...
Ping!
This is a ch__ch. What's missing?
First, apologetics aside, this is a good, if limited, exposition of +John Cassian's work.
Second, reliance on the Council of Orange and the Council of Carthage, while certainly a fair thing to do, must be tempered with the understanding that neither of those councils were ecumenical and thus not at all binding on the entire Church. They were completely local councils.
Third, while +Augustine was not proficient in Greek and had only a very limited knowledge of the writings of the Eastern Fathers, or indeed of the New Testament itself save in translation, +John Cassian was fully fluent in both Latin and Greek. I cannot stress enough the importance of this because it goes to the very heart of what +Augustine wrote. Take for example the word "sin". In NT Greek the word is "amartia" which means "to miss the mark".
For Eastern Christians, the "mark" is Christ. Our created purpose, before the Fall, was to become like God. The Sin of Adam distorted humanity (indeed all of creation) to such an extent that we could not progess to fulfillment of that purpose. By the Incarnation, our potential to fulfill our created purpose was restored. Indeed, as +Athanasius the Great wrote, "God became man so that men might thereby become gods". Christ thus is called the "New Adam". Because Christ is the "mark", because in order to attain theosis we must become "like Christ", we need to respond to God's grace, which all the Eastern Fathers agree falls on the good and the evil equally, by living our lives in such a fashion as to "die to the self" and in that process, which is fueled only by God's grace, become like Christ. The Orthodox view of Judgment stems from this. We believe that we are not judged by our good or bad deeds at all but rather by how much like Christ we have become, have we "hit the mark" or not. Our good deeds and bad, by the time judgment rolls around, are quite meaningless, indeed they are merely tools to transform ourselves and thus become more open to grace. As you can see, with that sort of understanding of sin, especially of the Sin of Adam, coupled with the East's understanding of what exactly salvation is, there is bound to be quite a difference between Western and Eastern theology if Western theology fully adopts what we in the East believe to be +Augustine's erroneus concept of sin, again, especially, "Original Sin". Its the difference between failing of a purpose and "insulting" God.
This article is seriously misleading, even false. It concludes with a dishonest half-truth. Cassian's influence on the Western Church was indeed immense. But that influence did not include semipelagianism in any way shape or form. The article implies that it did, implies that medieval monks were closet pelagians and semipelagians.
This is simply not true. I wrote my dissertation on the theology of grace in medieval western monasticism. The very beginning of conversion to the monastic life was solely and totally a work of God's grace in the heart of the monk.
If you want to read about John Cassian, read Columba Stewart's book of that title or, if you prefer an honest account by a partisan Protestant, then read Owen Chadwick's older but very valuable book on John Cassian.
This monergism-site article is using John Cassian to try to score points against the Catholic heirs of Augustine, who did retain both the absolute priority of God's grace and the complete freedom of the human will to reject God. That is not semi-pelagianism.
And on this point, there is no quarrel between Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholics. Augustine's concept of original sin is faulty and was abandoned by the Western Church in the 11thc and following. But Augustine's teaching on sin otherwise is not false--he defends human freedom to the end and equally defends the absolute priority of God's grace. I really don't see why it was necessary to take out after Augustine on original sin in the context of this article.
Dear Dionysiusdecordealcis,
"And on this point, there is no quarrel between Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholics. Augustine's concept of original sin is faulty and was abandoned by the Western Church in the 11thc and following."
I really appreciate many of your posts, and learn a lot from them.
If you have a little spare time, I'd be very appreciative if you could make a basic comparison and contrast between Augustine's view and that which is held by the Church.
If you don't have the time, that's okay.
Either way, thanks for all your contributions to this forum.
sitetest
I don't know if I would agree that Augustine's concept of original sin was faulty. I would agree most of the Western Church abandoned it in the 11th century. There are those of us who still believe in original sin.
"And so the more complete majesty of God's work in saving a people for Himself out of sin has gone through the centuries half-veiled, until the Day when the last vestiges of our self-reliance are stripped away, and all the earth trembles at the total sovereignty of the God whose pleasure it was to save some, sola gratia.
Incidentally, a series of sermons misattributed to Augustine paraphrases this statement of Athanasius and was incorporated into the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa under Augustine's name.
Cassian's influence in the West was driven by St. Benedict, whose rule mandates reading Cassian's Institutes and whose iconography often depicts him carrying that same work.
St. John Cassian
Augustine was convinced by Rom. 5 (in the Old Latin, pre-Jerome translation which mistranslated slightly) that our solidarity in Adam (which is very true) required us to understand that the condition inherited from Adam was that of sin damning to hell. Anselm and then Innocent III began the process of distinguishing more clearly original "sin" from freely chosen actual sin after one knows the difference between right and wrong. Eventually this led to the position represented by Aquinas and others that, since only knowing, deliberate, free choice can condemn to hell and our original condition cannot involve knowing, deliberate choice, original "sin" does not condemn to punishment in hell but, if not remedied by baptism, does deprive of the beatific vision of God.
The original condition as described after Innocent, Aquinas, Anselm etc. is a lack of original righteousness. It seriously disorders us and even after this condition is removed by baptism, something of it still remains with us as the inclination to sin called concupiscence.
The Eastern Church Fathers always retained the term sin as referring solely to freely chosen actual wrongdoing and never applied "sin" to the original condition, though they agreed that the original condition is disordered--no longer capable, without first being redeemed, of being transformed into divine sonship (theosis/divinization), we come into the world subject to the disorder of mortality, subject to the trajectory leading to death--from which only Christ's work on the cross and resurrection saves us. This disordered original condition leads inexorably to actual sin as the child gains the use of reason and ability to distinguish right from wrong.
I believe in original sin too. I don't believe it is what you believe it is. I believe it is lack of original righteousness and does not condemn to hell. This is one place where you interpret Augustine correctly and where my difference with you is a difference also with Augustine. Much of the rest of the time I'm with Augustine and disagreeing with you, who misinterpret Augustine on free will.
Could you explain what you mean by "lack of original righteousness"? Are you saying the absence of good and evil?
When, despite this overwhelming (but not coercive or puppeteering) assistance of God's grace, Adam and Eve knowingly did wrong, the graced righteousness that had up to that point surrounded them and drew, wooed, pushed, attracted them (but did not force or coerce) to do right, was gone. It had to be gone because God's righteousness which he had surrounded them with cannot coexist with active sin.
So they lost for themselves and every human being since them the original righteousness of their original graced existence. God comes back with redemptive grace, yes, ultimately the redemptive grace of the Cross but even before that preliminary forms of grace: salvation in crossing the Red Sea, the grace of the angel of death passing over the bloodmarked doorposts in Egypt, the grace of the law itself, the grace of all the prophets' teaching, all of these graces culminated in the once-for-all act of redemption on the Cross.
So they lost for themselves and their progeny the original righteousness that so aided them to choose rightly, but that does not mean that God gave up of them and they were not abandoned by other means of God's grace. The disorder produced by being deprived of the original righteousness meant that their descendents, we, could scarcely choose right rather than wrong (after reaching the age of reason) if not aided by the grace of baptism, the grace channeled through loving parrents who teach us to choose right, the other sacraments that come after baptism, and the many other graces that God gives. We come into the world in a state of disorder in which the aids to doing right that Adam and Eve had are missing but in which a different set of aids (baptism, which removes the disorder, though traces remain in concupiscence) has been given us since Adam and Eve and especially since Christ. We are free, as Adam and Eve were, to reject those aids and choose to do wrong. We find it easier to choose wrong because we lack the original righteousness enjoyed by Adam and Eve.
Baptized Christians no longer suffer from the disorder of congenital lack of original righteousness. So they are better prepared to accept the other graces God gives them and which they absolutely need in order to choose rightly (sola gratia). But they can still, if they choose, after being baptized, reject all those grace-aids God gives them and choose to sin and reject God.
The unbaptized have not had the original disorder/lack of original righteousness removed. They still receive graces to help choose rightly as they learn right from wrong, as they encounter acts of genuine love from other people, as they might hear the preaching of the Gospel etc., or even observe the beauty of God's creation--that too is a grace that can, if received rather than rejected, lead one to choose right rather than wrong--but they have a larger hurdle (lack of original righteousness) to overcome. They can overcome it--solely with God's help, sola gratia--but it's a bigger reach.
This is an excellent exposition of patristic thinking on what happened before and at the Fall as well as on what Free Will means. Orthodoxy does look at a couple of things a bit differently, or would speak of them differently. Rejecting the "aids to grace" in and of itself is not sin, though certainly it could be. All the aids to grace do is allow us to die a bit to the self, thus opening ourselves to God's grace which effects to a greater or lesser degree the theosis we were created for. Sin is choosing to remain "human like" and refusing to become "like God"; as I have said elsewhere, it is "missing the mark" which is Christ. You also speak about the Redemptive grace of the Cross. Here's something Orthodoxy agrees with but wouldn't speak of it that way. It is the entire Mystery of the Incarnation which restored our pre-Fall righteousness (which Orthodoxy believes was a potential theosis) not only the Cross (I understand that the Latin Church doesn't say it was only the Cross). In fact, Orthodoxy focuses more on the descent into the place of the dead and the Resurrection than the Crucifixion.
I normally include Incarnation, Death, Resurrection but I get tired of typing it all. The Cross without the Resurrection would have accomplished nothing, the Incarnation led inexorably to the Cross, if He had not died on the Cross there'd have been no Resurrection or descent to the place of the dead in triumph etc. So my use of Cross to epitomize the drama was not meant to deny any of the others.
It is true, of course, that devotion to the Passion has been characteristic of Latin Catholicism far more than Eastern Orthodoxy. It is so very clear (and is found already in Augustine) but this is one Western characteristic I have yet to figure out an explanation for. It is not a doctrinal matter that conflicts with Eastern emphases on the Resurrection and descent into the place of the dead--we Westerners love the Resurrection too. Rather, the differing emphases in my view are much closer to differences of taste and mentalite that undoubtedly stem from some of the ancient cultural differences between Greek East and Latin West. So you are right to underscore that I used the term Cross as my epitome and that Orthodox would choose a different epitome but we have in common a practice of epitomizing, of drawing the epic drama to a point for the sake of brevity or some other reason.
I appreciate your irenic spirit and firm defense and explication of the Orthodox faith. I seek to do nothing other than that with the Western tradition.
For clarification. I was not saying that rejecting grace-aids was itself sin. I wrote elliptically to try to be brief(er). In order to choose to do wrong (that's what sin is) one has to ignore, reject, refuse all the help God constantly gives us to choose to do right. The sin lies in the doing, the choosing, of wrong. But if one chooses to do wrong, then one will have in fact rejected grace assistance, because if one had accepted grace assistance, if one had gone along with grace, one would have chosen to do right.
My only purpose in making my comment was to point up, for lurkers mostly, the difference emphasis which, for whatever reason, the East and the West put on elements of the Incarnation. I know you understand. I believe this is particularly important for Protestants as their focus, so it seems, is almost exclusively on the Crucifixion and atonement. As you so rightly point out, it is all one piece. Western Christians in particular do seem, however, to pass over the descent to the dead, so vividly expressed in the icon of the Resurrection and in the words of +John Chrysostomos in his Paschal Sermon which is read in every Orthodox parish as the Sermon at the midnight Paschal Liturgy. A too intense focus on the Passion, which we Orthodox commemorate with the various services of Great Friday, capped by the entombment of Christ on Great Friday evening effectively close a week of intense sadness. Our true joy is then all the more evident at midnight on Pascha when the priest emerges through the Royal Doors, the Paschal candle held aloft proclaiming "Christ is Risen!"
It is a blessing, D, that we are having this discussion right now. This morning, one of the best friends I have ever had, a fine Orthodox Christian gentleman, the father of 10 children, died. I'm heading "down South" to the funeral on Thursday. As we all know, its a hard thing to lose a close friend, an older brother really in this case. But I know he lives now with the Risen Christ and that God has prepared a place for his servant in a place of refreshment, where there is no pain, sorrow or suffering and where the faithful find their rest. Please pray for the soul of the servant of God, Albert.
Be assured of my prayers.
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