I plan to publish it for discussion in short installments as Catholic-Orthodox caucus threads. All Christians as well as non-Christians are very welcome, but I ask all to maintain the caucus discipline: no interconfessional attacks, no personal attacks, and no off-topic posts. Avoid mentioning confessions outside of the caucus for any reason.
Previous:
Cur Deus Homo I-III
Cur Deus Homo III-V
Cur Deus Homo VI-VIII: Is God Omnipotent and Wise?
Cur Deus Homo IX-X: Did The Father Wish Christ To Die?
Cur Deus Homo XI-XIV: God's Honor, Compassion, and Justice
Cur Deus Homo XV-XVIII: Men and Angels, Perfection and Election
Cur Deus Homo XIX-XX: No Satisfaction
Cur Deus Homo XXI-XXIII: Enormity of Sin
Cur Deus Homo XXIV-XXV: Unhappiness of Man
Cur Deus Homo Book Second I-IV: Holy, Happy Man
Cur Deus Homo Book Second V-VII: The Necessity of God-Man
Cur Deus Homo Book Second VIII: The Necessity of the Virgin Mary
Cur Deus Homo Book Second IX-X: The Sinless Word
Cur Deus Homo Book Second XI: Christ Chose To Die
The summary:
Christ is free from all our weakness: He is not miserable and does not partake of our ignorance. That is because He "will not take anything belonging to man which is only useless, but even a hindrance to the work which that man must accomplish", and he is happy going about His sublime plan.
While even a single sin is so monstrous as to be impossible for us to repay under our own power, the injury to Christ Who is without sin is an even greater sin than all other sin combined: "no enormity or multitude of sins, apart from the Divine person, can for a moment be compared with a bodily injury inflicted upon that man."
Christ's "life conquers all sins, if it be given for them", because Christ's "existence is as great a good as its destruction is an evil, then is it far more a good than those sins are evils which its destruction so far surpasses."
Christ's death removes even the sin of His murderers, because a sin "may be pardonable when done in ignorance".
We conclude:
reason of necessity shows that the celestial state must be made up from men, and that this can only be by the forgiveness of sins, which man can never have but by man, who must be at the same time Divine, and reconcile sinners to God by his own death. Therefore have we clearly found that Christ, whom we confess to be both God and man, died for us; and, when this is known beyond all doubt, all things which he says of himself must be acknowledged as true, for God cannot lie, and all he does must be received as wisely done, though we do not understand the reason of it.
keep alive