Post
by Priestly1 » Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:27 pm
Greetings,
The Latin Church's ideas of Original Sin, civil authgority used to supress and execute "heretics" and Amillenialism are the babies of Agustine of Hippo. His erros have never been made dogma exept in the West by Papal decree and various Protestant Church Synods. Most Protestant and Reformed Christians subscribe to at least the first and the last.....but Jean Calvin believed in all three.
In the rest of the Chrisrianity we speak of ancestral sin. An Saint Morgan of Wales, known to all of you a that British heretic Pelegius, denounced Roman toleration of sin and superstition. He shouted reformation to all of Western Roman Christianity by the biblical and Orthodox Docrine of taking personal responsibility for one's actions, repentance, reform and with God's grace working out your salvation with fear and trembling. He renounced Augustine's notions as Manichaeanism and novel to the faith once for all delivered complete to the saints.
Augustine had Pelegius tried by proxy in his courts, but in Jerusalem and the Eastern Roman Empire he was present before synods and refuted Augustine's doctrinal erros, denounced his misrepresentations of his preachings and Letters and renounced all who held such false doctrines. Saint Morgan was found Orthodox and was free to preach in the East, and did so until his death. Morgan's disciple was made a Presbytewr in greece soon after his condemnation in African Synods. The Patriarch of Rome was forced by Imperial threat to condemn Pelegius.....and so you have the origins of error.
Adam needed no inclination or sin nature in order to be tempted and to exercise his free will and action to sin. Nor does any soul. Each soul that sins, that soul shall die. The parent shall not be held guilty of a child's sin; nor shall a child be held guilty of a parent's sin. Each soul is held responsible for it's own sinful actions. Sin the the wilfull misuse of one's own free will in defiance of god's revealed Law and Design.
Paul is clear:"Just as sin, and death because of sin, was introduced into this world by one man, so too death has befallen all mankind, because in the same manner all of us have likewise sinned." Romans 5:12
God has always presented humanity with Two choices: Life or Death. In Eden it was the Tree of Life or the Tree of Good and Evil. It is bbWater or Fire, Prosperity or Curses.....Obedience in loving Faith, or Rebellion in self loving unbelief. Moses, the Prophets, Christ and the Apostles all repeatedly taught humanity this......and so we have all chosen at one time the highway to hell instead of the narrow path to heaven. All have sinned of their own accord and fallen short of the glory of God...and all who continue in Adam's Path shall perish. But Christ has offered us all another Path, a path to life. And all who continue in Christ our forerunner's Path shall find Life Eternal.
So we all have ancestral sin....we all like Adam our ancestor sin by a misuse of our free will. And Each will be judged according to our works unless we have Christ as our Mediator and spokesman to plead for us at judgment day. If we freely accept Him and follow his path in the obedience of faith...then we break the chain and are united to god in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I cannot place the Manichaean grid of Augustine upon the text of the Holy Scriptutres, nor can I accept 5th century novelties as Apostolic, Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Like Origen of Caesaraea and others before and after Augustune, who could not shake their pagan education and esogetics from their walk in Christ...most of Protestantism's founding reformers inherited their ancestral doctrinal erros from Rome. The Reformation was not a return or restoration of pure Apostolic, Catholic and Orthodox Unity in Faith and Practice, which was corrupted by Latin innovations and Papal authority.....it was an imperfect reactionary movement against Papal domination in civil and spiritual realms. It was a rejection of all that smacked of Roman corruption, without the sense of restoring what was lost since 800 AD. So intent were they in purifying the western church, they threw out the Baby of Christian Orthodoxy with the dirty water of Latin Papal error.
In so doing they held on to much core errors of Rome while attempting to recreate what they envisioned of the primative Jerusalem and Greek Churches. They did so with noble intensions but without reasoned actions......the Church preceeded the Gospels, Acts, Epistles and the Revelations.
The Church received the Faith orally direct from the Apostles, and soon after in various stages the Gospels and other written documents. Long before all the communities of the Church had complete collections of all these works they susisted on the Old Testament and the Faith once for all received from the Apostles. Those Churches which were directly started by the Apostles (Jerusalem, Caesaraea, Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, Smyrna, Alexandria, Rome, Babylon etc) became centers of this deposit of Faith and assisted in collecting, reviewing, accepting and rejecting all materials used by christians around the known world. It was not until 250 AD that most of the 27 Books we know as the New Testament were vetted by these Apostolic Churches and approved by General Assembly as passing the test of Apostolic Tradition. Any Book that failed the test was not accepted into the New Testament Canon.
I digress......but Protestant faith in many notions are not based upon Sola Scriptura...but are bits of clinging Roman error.
As for New Testament Faith, Organization, Practice and Customs, they are implied or directly revealed. But the Church was not based upon the Texts within the Canon of the New Testament...for She preceeded them some 27 to 70 years. By the time they were copied, distributed, collected and universally accepted as a complete canon.....it was some 300 years. So the the reformers tried to recreate from NT what already existed complete before it was even written, copied, distributed, accepted and compiled into a Received Text. That's goofy logic and it has failed to produce a unified community of faith. The fruit of the Reformation has been a ever schismatic sect of groups all claiming to be Sola Scriptura, but continue to divide over even essential christian dogmas. Original Sin is but one of many notions which still divides. The Reformation has been the source of revival to many ancient heresies, sectarain practices and innovations too. So for a movement seeking to reform the Roman "Catholic" Church, it has desolved into a morass of never ending revivals, restorations, revelations and moves of God. As a former Protestant who swam in the murky waters of the Tiber river of Reform.....I think a return to the goals of +Rev. Fr. Martin Luther, D.D. aught to be the goal of any Christian in the West..no matter if that soul be a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, an Anglican, an Old Catholic or whatever.
Original Sin is just that,a doctrinal Sin that is Original to Bishop Augustine of Hippo.
PS
If one accepts Original sin, than Calvinism's T.U.L.I.P. is logical, rational and necessary. Also, the basis for the notion of the Mother of Christ for being herself conceived without sin (The Immaculate conception) is a direct and logical necessity...as Christ is sinless so the chain of Adam's guilt and sin nature had to be halted in Mary to ensure God's incarnation. Ah ha! In order to buy the Edsel, you gotta accept FORD. So this is why Mary must also have been resurrected and taken to Heaven three days after her death and then made Queen of Heaven! The Dogma of Original Sin leads to the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which ends in the Dogma of the Assumption of Mary!!! Holy Cow Mahatma Orthodox Catholic Christianity has never held to this error. I wonder why Jean Calvin didn't. Can't reject the Pig while holding tightly to it's Bacon!
In Christ,
Rev. Kn Huffman
