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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

To sin or not to sin

Two statements by Perry Robinson:

“Our view is in short that for agents that have a begining, namely Adam and Eve their use of the their natural faculties, namely their will and intellect are not yet fixed in the natural goodness. So while good and innocent, they are not yet righteous. That is acquired through practice. So while it is possible for them to fall here, once fixed in virtue, it is impossible for them to sin in heaven.”

“Fourth, if you wish to focus on the information we have about human nature then we had best start with the humanity of Christ since there is far more information about his human nature than we have about human nature in general. Furthermore, Christ is the model for all of humanity and all of humanity is summed up in him. And so the proper relation between humanity and divinity is set forth in Christology, not anthropology.”

On the face of it, this is a rather odd conjunction. Does this mean there was a time when Jesus lacked the property of righteousness? Before Jesus had acquired the virtue of righteousness through trial and error?

Likewise, does this mean there was a time before Jesus was impeccable? Was he able to either do good or evil until he acquired impeccability? Learn from his mistakes?

If Jesus is the paradigm of humanity, then Perry can’t invoke the divinity of Christ as the differential factor to ground the intrinsic righteousness or intrinsic impeccability of Christ, for that would also entail the intrinsic righteousness or intrinsic impeccability of all humanity in union with divinity via the hypostatic union.

2 comments:

  1. What he is giving you is an Ordo of understanding. We seek to understand what free will qua free will IS by looking at Christ and the Saints in the Eschaton and understand what that is constituted BY, rather than the effects of the fall where opposition between person and nature exist. Where there is opposition, confusion can result in the model. If you start from above with Christ and do so faithfully, rather than below with man centered religion, you eliminate the possibility of error in your theologizing.

    "Does this mean there was a time when Jesus lacked the property of righteousness? Before Jesus had acquired the virtue of righteousness through trial and error?"

    The capacity for righteousness is a property of the nature, but according to the use of his human will, Christ's humanity didn't start out as a 'perfect' humanity. It had to be changed from a corrupted humanity as inherited from Mary -- bearing the iniquities of falling apart -- and recapitulated to a new humanity, that is Christ inherited all the effects of the Ancestral Sin.

    But...Christ cannot fail to recapitulate humanity, since in Him there is no gnomic will. That is, Christ's mode of willing as to Person lacks a beginning and as such He can never cease to do good things.

    "If Jesus is the paradigm of humanity"

    Of course, he's the paradigm of humanity, because he is the model of what humanity qua humanity is and the Saints in the Eschaton have an analogous mode of willing that Christ has (though not identical).

    "for that would also entail the intrinsic righteousness or intrinsic impeccability of all humanity in union with divinity via the hypostatic union."

    You're confusing the categories of Person and Nature. The power to be righteous or impeccabile, as a property of the nature, is distinct from actually being righteous or impeccabile, which is of the person. Christ heals all the capacities of human nature in taking it on and recapitulating, but that does not entail the particular use, which is unique and absolutely unique to person.

    Photios

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  2. I didn't use the nature/person categories in my analysis. Therefore, my analysis didn't confuse them.

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