Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Venial sin

i) The Bible doesn't have an exhaustive list of sins.

ii) Catholicism has made-up sins.

iii) The gravity of sin ranges along a continuum. While it's easy to spot the extremes, it's blurry in the middle. So sin doesn't neatly bifurcate into two kinds of sin: mortal and venial. 

iv) Even the same sin can vary in culpability.

v) Outside of Christ every sin is a mortal (i.e. damnable) sin. 

4 comments:

  1. If I had to guess, this developed in the West based on something true. Some sins are indicative of an unregenerate heart. There's a lot of nuance I'd want to put there, since David, etc committed murder. And that's what the church discipline is for.

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  2. There is no degrees of sin as Catholicism teaches. However I do believe in hell various sins will be punished to certain degrees more severe then others as far as the unsaved are concerned.

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    1. Agreed. Sin separates you from God. There are no degrees in being separated from God.

      However, an ISIS executioner will be punished in hell much more severely than consenting adulterers.

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  3. It is fascinating reading the Twitter comments. They all believe in venial and mortal sins but no real idea what the distinction is. They all have different ideas.

    Some of the Bible passages they refer to are nothing about sin ie Paul finishing his race.

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