The Lost Soul of Scott Hahn

Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism. Scott and Kimberly Hahn. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993. Foreword by Peter Kreeft

What sorts of people write autobiographies when they are healthy and well at 35? Generally there are three sorts: egotists, egomaniacs, and megalomaniacs. There seems to be no other plausible reason for writing the story of one's life when it has barely begun. But the fawning Peter Kreeft, a confused mind who wrote the Foreword for this book, disagrees. According to Kreeft, Scott and Kimberly Hahn are "one of the beautiful and bright-shining stars in the firmament of hope for our desperate days." The Hahns, writes Kreeft shamelessly, "are simply very bright, clear-thinking and irrefutably reasonable... passionately in love with Truth and with honesty. They are incapable of fudging anything except fudge." Kreeft calls the Hahns "stars" for only one reason: their noisy rejection of Christianity and conversion to Roman Catholicism. They have no other "achievement."

I once knew Scott Hahn. I met him about twelve years ago when he was a Presbyterian minister living in the Washington, D.C. area. (I had spoken to Hahn by phone before that: When he was a student at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, I paid him to record the guest lectures of Gordon Clark at the seminary.) Being an administrative assistant to a Member of Congress at the time, I invited Hahn (and others) to speak to a group of Congressional staffers, and he spoke on his favorite topic, "familism," which is his apotheosis of the family. At the time I had no knowledge of Hahn's real theological views; I was naive enough to think that a Presbyterian minister actually believed Presbyterian doctrine, and Hahn dissembled well enough. He fooled me, and a number of other people as well. In a discussion I had with Hahn after his lecture, it became clear that one of Hahn's preoccupations – in addition to his obsession with the notion of family – was eschatology: He was a postmillennialist who had been heavily influenced by the Reconstructionist movement. In fact, he was the (unordained) pastor of a Reconstructionist church in Fairfax, Virginia.

Hahn is one of a few seminary-trained, apparently well-educated Protestant ministers who have joined the Roman Catholic Church over the last few years. The Hahns have gained some notoriety from their speeches and tapes, and now this book, which is based on their speeches, will add to that notoriety. One remark his wife makes in this book suggests that Hahn's desire to be noticed is great: "Scott suffered tremendous loneliness. He was misunderstood and rejected by many Protestant friends who didn't want to talk to him.... He felt that former professors didn't think he was worth pursuing to convince him he was wrong [about Scripture]. And he couldn't understand the nonchalance of a number of [Roman] Catholics at Marquette [University, where Hahn was a student at the time] over his conversion, acting rather hohum over the whole thing, rather than welcoming him for all he had risked and left behind" (109). What good is being a martyr if no one notices you?

Two other men defected to Rome as a result of Hahn's influence: his seminary classmate Gerald Matatics, and Presbyterian Church in America minister William Bales. Other defections, such as that of author Thomas Howard, are apparently unrelated to Hahn's. Why were these men seduced by Rome? The answers to that question are complex. Each man's seduction is probably unique. But there are some features of Hahn's seduction that reveal fatal weaknesses in what passes for contemporary Protestant Christianity. Today Hahn teaches at the Franciscan Seminary of Steubenville (Ohio), a charismatic Roman Catholic institution. His wife, the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman, is also a graduate of Gordon-Conwell: She wanted to be a pastor, she says.

The first of the reasons for Hahn's conversion to Romanism is liberalism and Arminianism. Hahn tells us that he was "baptized a Presbyterian" and "raised in a nominal Protestant home. Church and religion played a small role in my life and for my family...." As a teenager, he was a drug-using criminal who lied his way out of jail: "Faced with a yearlong sentence to a detention center for a variety of charges, I barely lied my way out of the sentence and into six months of probation instead" (1). In high school Hahn became active in Young Life, an Arminian evangelistic group. There he read Paul Little and C. S. Lewis. He also had some religious experiences: "Before finishing my sophomore year, I experienced the transforming power of God's grace in conversion. Within the next year, I experienced a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a personal and life-changing way." Apparently Hahn had both a conversion experience and a charismatic experience in high school. In his senior year, he met the Presbyterian John Gerstner, "one of my favorite theologians" (31). While in high school, Hahn also became enamored of Luther and Calvin, apparently because they appealed to his need for heroes: "I decided the figures in Christian history who most appealed to me...were the great protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin" (5). But the theologies of Luther and Calvin seemed to play relatively small parts in Hahn's thinking; he was fascinated by other things. A guitarist, Hahn liked modern music: "The summer before going off to college, I toured the United States, Scotland, England and Holland, playing guitar in a Christian musical group, the Continentals" (13). Hahn attended the theologically liberal but economically conservative Grove City College, a college affiliated with the mainline Presbyterian church, where he concentrated in theology, philosophy, and economics, and continued his activity in Young Life. While in college, Hahn "discovered that the covenant was really the key for unlocking the whole Bible" (17). Beware the man who thinks he has discovered some sort of "key" for understanding the Bible, whether it is the idea of covenant, a scheme of dispensations (instituted by covenants), or a five-point covenantal model.

The second major factor influencing Hahn's conversion to Rome seems to be the official Roman Catholic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and evidentialism. While at nominally Protestant Grove City College, Hahn "had become enamored with and steeped in the philosophy of Saint Thomas. In spite of my anti-Catholic outlook, I had known a good thing when I found it, and in my mind, no one could compare to Aquinas.... I had devoured his philosophical writings, especially his metaphysics, eventually acquiring the odd and unlikely reputation for being an ‘evangelical Thomist' " (101).

During his first years in Gordon-Conwell Seminary, 1979-81, Hahn suffered from a confused mental state: "At this point I would describe my study as a detective story. I was searching Scripture to discover clues as to the whereabouts of real Christianity" (25). Although Hahn does not mention it in the book, his tuition at Gordon-Conwell was paid by a Calvinist Christian businessman who wanted to support a student who understood both free market economics and Christian theology, for the purpose of being able to teach economics to clergymen and Christian theology to economists. Hahn was highly recommended to the businessman by the Chairman of the Economics Department at Grove City. What Hahn learned at Grove City was Thomism, and his interest in economics – which he says he studied only to mollify his "practical" father, not because he was genuinely interested in the subject – has disappeared. Hahn's obsession is to convert Christians to Catholicism, not to educate clergymen about principles of economics or economists about Christian theology. He owes one Christian businessman many thousand dollars and his former economics professor an apology.

While he was at Gordon-Conwell being supported by a Calvinist Christian businessman, Hahn adopted the Roman Catholic view of justification: "When Christ formed the New Covenant with us, then, it was much more than a simple contract or legal exchange, where he took our sin and gave us his righteousness, as Luther and Calvin explained it.... In fact, I discovered that nowhere did Saint Paul ever teach that we were justified by faith alone! Sola fide was unscriptural! "I was so excited about this discovery. I shared it with some friends, who were amazed at how much sense it made. Then one friend stopped me and asked if I knew who else was teaching this way on justification. When I responded that I didn't, he told me that Dr. Norman Shepherd, a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary (the strictest Presbyterian Calvinist seminary in America) was about to undergo a heresy trial for teaching the same view of justification that I was expounding. "So I called Professor Shepherd and talked with him. He said he was accused of teaching something contrary to the teachings of Scripture, Luther and Calvin. As I heard him describe what he was teaching, I thought, Hey, that is what I'm saying" (30-31).

As for Kimberly, "At this point [more than halfway through seminary] I was not steeped in Reformation theology, so the change in how I viewed justification did not seem momentous" (42). Please consider the import of that statement. Here are two graduates of a Presbyterian College, two students nearing completion of their studies at reputedly one of the best evangelical Protestant seminaries in the country, two professing Christians – and the meaning of justification is not all that important to them. As we shall soon see, despite – or rather because of – their education, the Hahns – especially Scott – could not defend the Reformation principles of the Bible alone, faith alone, and Christ alone.

The fourth major influence on Hahn's conversion to Romanism was the Reconstructionist movement. After attending seminary, Hahn had intended to study theology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where he had been acc.epted, but he changed his mind because of Margaret Thatcher: "Margaret Thatcher made it almost impossible for Americans to have babies at British taxpayers' expense; so we took this as sign for us to look elsewhere for work, delaying doctoral studies for a while" (32). Not having paid for his own education, Hahn apparently did not intend to pay for his children either. The principles of economics seem to have been quite forgotten.

Instead, Hahn was hired as pastor and schoolteacher by a Reconstructionist church in Fairfax, Virginia: "When I candidated for the position at Trinity Presbyterian Church, I shared my views and concerns regarding justification – that I took Dr. Shepherd's position. They understood and said they did, too. So shortly before graduation, I accepted the pastorate at Trinity, as well as a teaching position in their high school, Fairfax Christian School" (33). The Reconstuctionist church was not fooled: They knew quite well that Hahn had defected from the Biblical doctrine of justification by faith, and they wanted him for that reason.

While pastoring the Reconstructionist church, Hahn "began to see how important liturgy was for the covenant.... Liturgy represented the way God fathered the covenant family..." (43). "My parishioners grew excited. The elders even asked me to revise our liturgy." While teaching his ideas at the school, his Roman Catholicism was so obvious that several of his students told him he would join the Roman Catholic church. (Someone should write a book about Reconstructionist churches and their affinity for Roman Catholic and Orthodox liturgy and doctrine.) Hahn was also invited to teach at Dominion Theological Institute (which later merged with Chesapeake Theological Seminary). During this period he became convinced of the Roman doctrine that Jesus Christ was physically present in the bread and the wine. Thus, when one participates in mass, one is eating the physical body and drinking the physical blood of Christ. The proper name for the practice – if Catholics were actually doing what they dogmatically assert that they are doing – is ritual cannibalism.

Hahn was also teaching his seminary students – contrary to what the seminary itself believed, contrary to what he was being paid to teach, and without informing the leadership of the seminary – that justification by faith alone was false. The fact that he was denying the Christian doctrine of justification while being paid to teach it does not seem to bother him. Oddly, Hahn opens his book with this story designed to illustrate his lifelong honesty: "I recall the last time I ever attended our family's church. The minister was preaching all about his doubts regarding the Virgin Birth of Jesus and his bodily Resurrection. I just stood up in the middle of his sermon and walked out. I remember thinking, I'm not sure what I believe, but at least I'm honest enough not to stand up and attack the things I'm supposed to teach" (1). But that is exactly what Hahn did when he taught seminary classes, and that is exactly what he did when he accepted money for seminary tuition under false pretenses. After Hahn attacked sola fide in his seminary classes in Virginia, one of the students challenged him to defend sola scriptura. He could not (51-52). After seven years in "Protestant" educational institutions, and now a Presbyterian minister, Hahn, who by all accounts was an excellent student, could not defend the major principles of the Protestant Reformation.

The Hahns left Virginia and moved back to Grove City, where Scott took a job as assistant to the college president and instructor in theology, of all things. Liberalism, Arminianism, Thomism, evidentialism, and Reconstructionism had persuaded Hahn of the truth of Catholicism, and now Mary clinched the argument: Hahn began feeling that God was "calling me into the [Roman] Catholic Church" (60). Scott and Kimberly got "feelings," "leadings," "nudges," "peace," "impressions," and "callings," – alleged messages from God and his mother, Mary. While teaching theology at Grove City College, Hahn drove down to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh for theology classes. There he was "the only student defending Pope John Paul II!" (66), and there he first became involved with Opus Dei (67). After someone mailed him a Rosary, Hahn decided to perform an experiment by praying to Mary about an "impossible situation." Hahn prayed, and the impossible situation resolved itself within three months. In Hahn's irrational mind, praying the Rosary obviously worked. As a result, Hahn now prays to Mary daily.

That, of course, is how all superstitions begin: committing the logical fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Leaving Grove City, Hahn decided to continue his studies at Marquette University. While in Milwaukee he learned that his seminary classmate, Gerald Matatics, was going to be absorbed into the Roman Catholic church two weeks later at Easter, 1986. Hahn, who had talked Matatics into Roman Catholicism, could not stand to have him go first, yet Hahn had promised his wife that he would not become a Roman Catholic until 1990. He asked her to pray about releasing him from his promise, and she did so. Hahn and Matatics were both absorbed by the Roman Catholic Church in 1986. Hahn says that he "had fallen head over heels in love with our Lord in the Eucharist!" (88).

Kimberly was jealous of Scott's long walks and talks with Mary. During Christmas 1986 Kimberly, who was pregnant, got a "word from the Lord" concerning her baby (115). When the baby was baptized a Roman Catholic, Kimberly "was astounded at the beauty of the liturgy" (117). Kimberly "came to appreciate that [baby] Hannah had become a child of God through baptism, being born again by water and the Spirit. As I studied baptism, it connected with what I had already done on justification. As with Scott, my study in seminary had led me to reject as unscriptural the Protestant teaching of justification by faith alone" (137). Note well: "As with Scott, my study in seminary had led me to reject as unscriptural the Protestant teaching of justification by faith alone."

When Hahn was confirmed, he chose Francis de Sales as his "patron saint," because "de Sales happened to be the Bishop of Geneva, Switzerland, while John Calvin was leading the people farther away from the Catholic Faith.... [He] was such an effective preacher and apologist that, through his sermons and pamphlets, over forty thousand Calvinists were brought back into the Church" (133).

Before defecting to Rome, Hahn and Matatics had met with John Gerstner, the evidentialist Presbyterian theologian who was unable to persuade them of the errors of Roman Catholicism. After his conversion, Hahn debated with Robert Knudsen, the Dooyeweerdian and Van Tilian professor of apologetics at Westminster Seminary, about sola fide and sola scriptura. Hahn writes: "I never dreamed of such a positive outcome. Not only did the Westminster Seminary students in attendance express their surprise and excitement at the end," his wife was impressed too. I have listened to that debate on cassette tape, and Apologetics Professor Knudsen's performance is embarrassing and incompetent.

In January 1992, Dr. Jerry Kirk, Hahn's father-in-law, a Presbyterian minister in Cincinnati, invited Hahn to accompany him to Rome to meet the pope. There he met the "Holy Father" for a few seconds and the next day went to a chapel for mass with the pope. He embraced the pope, giving him a personal letter and a check. "As I left the presence of Pope John Paul II – the one anointed by my heavenly Father and eldest Brother to shepherd the covenant family of God on earth – I had a strong sense that God was saying, ‘Scott, the best is yet to come' " (172). Hahn does not explain this dark, oracular saying: Does it mean that he will be elected the first American pope? Appointed cardinal? Invited to Rome to join the Vatican lowerarchy? Named Grand Inquisitor? We are not told.

Hahn's defection is one of several similar defections. They are occurring, not because Rome is a true church, but because of the apostasy of "Protestantism." The largest American Protestant denominations are either unbelieving or unknowing, priding themselves on their rejection of Scripture, their vacuous faith, or their limited knowledge. Many smaller denominations and independent churches are in little better condition. They are largely Arminian – which is semi-Romanist already, believing in man's free will; revivalist – which is informed by Roman Catholic experientialism; or charismatic – which continues Rome's theology of miracles and gifts. American "Protestantism" is mostly Roman Catholic already. Some of the more conservative churches have been led astray by Reconstructionism, by religiously cooperative efforts in the anti-abortion movement, by programs of social and political reform. Just when the preaching of the Gospel is most urgently needed, it is rarely heard in "Protestant" pulpits. It is doubtful that most graduates of theological schools could give a clear and accurate summary of the Gospel. The Roman Catholic church is by far the largest ecclesiastical organization in America with about 58 million subjects; it operates tens of thousands of churches, thousands of schools, and hundreds of colleges. Worldwide, it claims more than 950 million subjects. Its loyal American subjects are becoming more and more militant in every area. Hahn's own zeal for the pope is reflected not only in this book, but in the scores of tapes he and his wife have produced and which have been distributed by the hundreds of thousands. Only the grace of God can save us from another Dark Age and the church that Luther recognized as the slaughterhouse of souls.

"Could it have come out any other way? Absolutely not."

Interesting take on the meaning of Luke 1:38. The Fathers generally pointed out Panagia's "assent" or "obedience", both terms in Greek implying a free choice, not the act of an automoton and therefore, while her assent freely given was foreseen, it was not inevitable. For example:

"And when she asked in her perplexity, How can this be, seeing I know not a man ? the angel again answered her, The Holy Spirit shall came upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God . And she said to him, Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to Thy word . So then, after the assent of the holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit descended on her, according to the word of the Lord which the angel spoke, purifying her , and granting her power to receive the divinity of the Word, and likewise power to bring forth." +John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, Chapter 2

"For inasmuch as He had a pre-existence as a saving Being, it was necessary that what might be saved should also be called into existence, in order that the Being who saves should not exist in vain. In accordance with this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” But Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. And even as she, having indeed a husband, Adam, but being nevertheless as yet a virgin (for in Paradise “they were both naked, and were not ashamed,” inasmuch as they, having been created a short time previously, had no understanding of the procreation of children: for it was necessary that they should first come to adult age, and then multiply from that time onward), having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race." +Irenaeus Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 22

"Wherefore we acknowledge one Christ, one Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; knowing that being coeternal with His own Father as touching His Godhead, by virtue of which also He is creator of all, He deigned, after the assent of the Holy Virgin, when she said to the angel ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word’ to build after an ineffable fashion a temple out of her for Himself, and to unite this temple to Himself by her conception, not taking and uniting with Himself a body coeternal with His own substance, and brought from heaven, but of the matter of our substance, that is of the Virgin." Blessed Theodoretus, Bishop of Cyrus, Dialogue II

In consequence of this, Orthodoxy also teaches and holds, and I suspect the Latin Church does too, "...the Virign Mary is honored noy only because God chose her, or because she bore the Son of God in the flesh, but also because she herself chose to believe and obey God firmly."

"...the Virgin Mary is honored noy only because God chose her, or because she bore the Son of God in the flesh, but also because she herself chose to believe and obey God firmly."

I don't disagree at all. I think you have trouble with my concept that inevitability doesn't destroy the reality of her free-will decision to assent. The difference, I think is that I am friendlier to the concept of predestination than you by virtue of my Reformed tradition.

I think we agree a lot more than we disagree. We agree Mary was freely obedient, that she was preserved righteous by sanctifying grace, and this sanctifying grace was not intrinsic to her, but was rather divine in origin. The disagreements between me as a Protestant and you as Orthodox and Campion as Catholic are relatively small. The outer bounds of Mary's sanctifying grace are the main source of our disagreement - the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics believe Mary must have been preserved sinless (although I understand the logical chain of inferences the Catholics and the Orthodox follow to get to that conclusion), whereas I as a Protestant do not see that as theologically necessary. With that reservation, as a Protestant, I stand with Calvin and Luther in noting that Mary was quite the virtuous woman and one of the premier models for a Christian to emulate for obedience to the Almighty.

So Doc:

I gave you three quotes from Scripture. And you STILL haven't 'splained how it is okay to present a dependent clause from a sentence in the New Testament as evidence for a point of view, when the main clause would bring out nuances and challenges that substantially weaken the effectiveness of the dependent clause as an argument clincher.

This isn't high school forensics, here. Someone posts and incredibly venomous attack on someone -- all in the name of Love, don't you know. Then some folks who seem, more or less, to agree with the poster, if not with the writer of the article come roaring in, like orcs behind the boss Nazgul, to make a lot of offensive and mendacious comments about Catholics, again in the name of Love. And, then, like the skyrockets at the end of a hot July 4th evening, we end with ears_to_hear telling us he knows better than we do what we really mean and we're wrong to mean it and you offering half a verse to support an argument.

Reminds me of the time I called up one of my profs to help find a citation -- I'd left my concordance in my other pants -- and he said,"Darn it, Dawg, I'm asleep." I apologized profusely and said I'd call again in the morning. He said, "No, I'm awake and up now. I'm going from bed to verse."

Okay. Maybe you had to be there.

the English WORD priest is alleged by people who do that kind of thing, do be derived from presybuteros though it is often used in English to mean what is signified by hierous.

English cognates are irrelevant. The argument that presbuteros is the root for our word "priest," so presbuters must, of course, have cultic priestly duties (using "cultic" as a term of art, not as an attack) is an exegetical fallacy. The fact that, 2000 years later, presbuteros has come to mean "priest" in an unrelated language that has undergone centuries of cultural evolution is of no probative value in this discussion. Far more important is the semantic domain of presbuteros in the secular and ancient Christian world near the first century.

In the ancient secular world, presbuteros was frequently used as a title for the Spartan president of a college, in Egyptian inscriptions both in the Ptolemaic and Imperial periods to describe the board of national husbandmen, members in a miller's guild, and village government officials with administrative and judicial functions. In the ancient Jewish world, the term "presbyter" was used to refer the entire aristocratic gerousia, and eventually came to refer to the lay members on the Sanhedrin who were not members of the priestly families (and so the Sanhedrin was never within the hands of the presbuteroi.)

In the New Testament, presbyters clearly had teaching and disciplinary powers (1Pt. 5:2, Ac. 20:28, 1Ti. 5:17). In 1Timothy, Paul seems to use the phrase episkopos and presbuteros interchangeably, since they have the same powers (cf. 1Ti. 5:17 with 3:5, 3:2, and Tit. 1:9). This would lead to the inference (though not necessary) that the two are the same office.

Now, admittedly, the cultic ministry of the presbyters is referred to in the earliest of extrabiblical Christian literature (specifically, 1Clement 40:2; 44:2-6). According to Clement, the presbyters were tasked with presenting the offerings of the congregation (44:4) and were cultic officers of the church's Eucharist. Importantly, 1Clement 40-43 placed presbuteros expressly in the line of succession with Old Testament priests. By the time the Shepherd of Hermas was written, there was clearly an established presbyteral order with dignity derived from their association with the apostles. (Shep. visions 3, 5, 1).

This entire post is plagarized (but paraphrased) from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 6, pp. 672-673.

"The difference, I think is that I am friendlier to the concept of predestination than you by virtue of my Reformed tradition."

Its a hard topic, but one which the Fathers wrote on a good deal. What do you think of this from +John Damacene Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith Book II Chap. XXX:

"We ought to understand that while God knows all things beforehand, yet He does not predetermine all things. For He knows beforehand those things that are in our power, but He does not predetermine them. For it is not His will that there should be wickedness nor does He choose to compel virtue. So that predetermination is the work of the divine command based on fore-knowledge . But on the other hand God predetermines those things which are not within our power in accordance with His prescience. For already God in His prescience has prejudged all things in accordance with His goodness and justice.

Bear in mind, too, that virtue is a gift from God implanted in our nature, and that He Himself is the source and cause of all good, and without His co-operation and help we cannot will or do any good thing, But we have it in our power either to abide in virtue and follow God, Who calls us into ways of virtue, or to stray from paths of virtue, which is to dwell in wickedness, and to follow the devil who summons but cannot compel us. For wickedness is nothing else than the withdrawal of goodness, just as darkness is nothing else than the withdrawal of light While then we abide in the natural state we abide in virtue, but when we deviate from the natural state, that is from virtue, we come into an unnatural state and dwell in wickedness.

Repentance is the returning from the unnatural into the natural state, from the devil to God, through discipline and effort.

Man then the Creator made male, giving him to share in His own divine grace, and bringing him thus into communion with Himself: and thus it was that he gave in the manner of a prophet the names to living flyings, with authority as though they were given to be his slaves. For having been endowed with reason and mind, and free-will after the image of God, he was filly entrusted with dominion over earthly things by the common Creator and Master of all.

But since God in His prescience knew that man would transgress and become liable to destruction, He made from him a female to be a help to him like himself; a help, indeed, for the conservation of the race after the transgression from age to age by generation. For the earliest formation is called 'making' and not 'generation.' For 'making' is the original formation at God's hands, while 'generation' is the succession from each Other made necessary by the sentence of death imposed on us on account of the transgression.

This man He placed in Paradise, a home that was alike spiritual and sensible. For he lived in the body on the earth in the realm of sense, while he dwelt in the spirit among the angels, cultivating divine thoughts, and being supported by them: living in naked simplicity a life free from artificiality, and being led up through His creations to the one and only Creator, in Whose contemplation he found joy and gladness.

When therefore He had furnished his nature with free-will, He imposed a law on him, not to taste of the tree of knowledge. Concerning this tree, we have said as much as is necessary in the chapter about Paradise, at least as much as it was in our power to say. And with this command He gave the promise that, if he should preserve the dignity of the soul by giving the victory to reason, and acknowledging his Creator and observing His command, he should share eternal blessedness and live to all eternity, proving mightier than death: but if forsooth he should subject the soul to the body, and prefer the delights of the body, comparing himself in ignorance of his true dignity to the senseless beasts , and shaking off Iris Creator's yoke, and neglecting His divine injunction, he will be liable to death and corruption, and will be compelled to labour throughout a miserable life. For it was no profit to man to obtain incorruption while still untried and unproved, lest he should fall into pride and under the judgment of the devil. For through his incorruption the devil, when he had fallen as the result of his own free choice, was firmly established in wickedness, so that there was no room for repentance and no hope of change: just as, moreover, the angels also, when they had made free choice of virtue became through grace immoveably rooted in goodness.

It was necessary, therefore, that man should first be put to the test (for man untried and unproved would be worth nothing), and being made perfect by the trial through the observance of the command should thus receive incorruption as the prize of his virtue. For being intermediate between God and matter he was destined, if he kept the command, to be delivered from his natural relation to existing things and to be made one with God's estate, and to be immoveably established in goodness, but, if he transgressed and inclined the rather to what was material, and tore his mind from the Author of his being, I mean God, his fate was to be corruption, and he was to become subject to passion instead of passionless, and mortal instead of immortal, and dependent on connection and unsettled generation. And in his desire for life he would cling to pleasures as though they were necessary to maintain it, and would fearlessly abhor those who sought to deprive him of these, and transfer his desire from God to matter, and his anger from the real enemy of his salvation to his own brethren. The envy of the devil then was the reason of man's fall. For that same demon, so full of envy and with such a hatred of good, would not suffer us to enjoy the pleasures of heaven, when he himself was kept below on account of his arrogance, and hence the false one tempts miserable man with the hope of Godhead, and leading him up to as great a height of arrogance as himself, he hurls him down into a pit of destruction just as deep."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.