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| Attributes of God in Christianity |
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Impeccability is the absence of sin. Christianity teaches this to be an attribute of God (logically God cannot sin: it would mean that he would act against his own will and nature) and therefore it is also attributed to Christ.
Early Christians questioned whether the victorious saints in heaven could sin. The widely influential Eastern Church Father and theologian Origen of Alexandria maintained that they could. Official Roman Catholic doctrine holds that they cannot. Although Catholics believe in the gift of free will, saints in heaven already see God face to face and are incapable of sinning (see Pope Benedict XII and beatific vision), i.e., they will necessarily remain in God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states (emphasis added):
1045 For man, this consummation will be the final realization of the unity of the human race, which God willed from creation and of which the pilgrim Church has been "in the nature of sacrament." Those who are united with Christ will form the community of the redeemed, 'the holy city' of God, "the Bride, the wife of the Lamb". She will not be wounded any longer by sin, stains, self-love, that destroy or wound the earthly community. The beatific vision, in which God opens himself in an inexhaustible way to the elect, will be the ever-flowing well-spring of happiness, peace, and mutual communion. 1060 At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. Then the just will reign with Christ forever, glorified in body and soul, and the material universe itself will be transformed. God will then be "all in all" (⇒ 1 Cor 15:28), in eternal life.
The 13th-century, Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas taught that souls in Purgatory cannot sin ( Summa Theologica , Second Part of the Second Part, Question 83, Article 11, Reply to Objection 3), let alone the saints in heaven. This is the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, although there are different opinions on the reasons for the impossibility to sin.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that Mary, mother of Jesus was, by a special grace of God, without sin her entire life. This included the moment of her conception, so Mary was even miraculously preserved from original sin and its effects.
The Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic dogma that asserts that Mary was preserved by God from the stain of original sin at the time of her own conception. Some theologians have asserted this special grace extended to impeccability (understood in this context as the inability to sin); others argue this could not be so: as a natural human being, she would have had free will, and therefore the ability to sin, but through her co-operation avoided it.
Protestant[ clarification needed ] Christian theology holds that Jesus died for the sins of even his mother.
Impeccability is sometimes confused with infallibility, especially in discussions of papal infallibility. Impeccability is an attribute not claimed by the pope, and few would deny that there have been bad popes – Saint Peter himself denied Jesus three times. On the other hand, Pope Gregory VII, intellectual progenitor of the Ultramontanes and nemesis of the lay faction in the investiture controversy, voiced an assertion of Papal prerogative beyond even the strongest of modern apologists:
The pope can be judged by no one; the Roman church has never erred and never will err till the end of time; the Roman church was founded by Christ alone; the pope alone can depose and restore bishops; he alone can make new laws, set up new bishoprics and divide old ones. ...He alone can call general councils and authorize canon laws; his legates ... have precedence over all bishops. ...A duly ordained pope is undoubtedly made a saint by the merits of St. Peter. [1]
Nevertheless, in Catholic thought, the exemption of the See of Rome from all error extends only to its definitive teachings on faith and morals, not to its historical judgments. Similarly, papal sainthood does not suggest that popes are free from sin. Quite the contrary, popes frequent the sacrament of Reconciliation (confession and penance) for the forgiveness of their sins, as all other Catholics are required to do. While occupying the papal office, Pope Benedict XVI confessed his sins once a week. [2]
Evangelical writer Donald Macleod suggests that the sinless nature of Jesus Christ involves two elements. "First, Christ was free of actual sin." [3] Studying the gospels there is no reference to Jesus praying for the forgiveness of sin, nor confessing sin. The assertion is that Jesus did not commit sin, nor could he be proven guilty of sin; he had no vices. In fact, he is quoted as asking, "Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?" in John 8:46. "Secondly, he was free from inherent sin ("original sin" or "ancestral sin")." [3]
According to Pelagianism, sin arises from free choice rather than being an inevitable consequence of man's fallen nature. Therefore, it is theoretically possible, although unusual, for anyone to live a sinless life. [4] [5]
In Catholic theology, Limbo is the afterlife condition of those who die in original sin without being assigned to the Hell of the Damned. Medieval theologians of Western Europe described the underworld as divided into three distinct parts: Hell of the Damned, Limbo of the Fathers or Patriarchs, and Limbo of the Infants. The Limbo of the Fathers is an official doctrine of the Catholic Church, but the Limbo of the Infants is not. The concept of Limbo comes from the idea that, in the case of Limbo of the Fathers, good people were not able to achieve heaven just because they were born before the birth of Jesus Christ. This is also true for Limbo of the Infants in that simply because a child died before baptism, does not mean they deserve punishment, though they cannot achieve salvation.
Original sin is the Christian doctrine that holds that humans, through the fact of birth, inherit a tainted nature with a proclivity to sinful conduct in need of regeneration. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3, in a line in Psalm 51:5, and in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 5:12-21.
Pelagianism is a Christian theological position that holds that the original sin did not taint human nature and that humans by divine grace have free will to achieve human perfection. Pelagius, an ascetic and philosopher from the British Isles, taught that God could not command believers to do the impossible, and therefore it must be possible to satisfy all divine commandments. He also taught that it was unjust to punish one person for the sins of another; therefore, infants are born blameless. Pelagius accepted no excuse for sinful behaviour and taught that all Christians, regardless of their station in life, should live unimpeachable, sinless lives.
In Christian theology, traducianism is a doctrine about the origin of the soul holding that this immaterial aspect is transmitted through natural generation along with the body, the material aspect of human beings. That is, human propagation is of the whole being, both material and immaterial aspects: an individual's soul is derived from the soul of one or both parents. This implies that only the soul of Adam was created directly by God, in contrast with the idea of creationism of the soul, which holds that all souls are created directly by God.
Infallibility refers to an inability to be wrong. It can be applied within a specific domain, or it can be used as a more general adjective. The term has significance in both epistemology and theology, and its meaning and significance in both fields is the subject of continued debate.
In Western Christian theology, grace is created by God who gives it as help to one because God desires one to have it, not necessarily because of anything one has done to earn it. It is understood by Western Christians to be a spontaneous gift from God to people – "generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved" – that takes the form of divine favor, love, clemency, and a share in the divine life of God. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, grace is the uncreated Energies of God. Among Eastern Christians generally, grace is considered to be the partaking of the Divine Nature described in 2 Peter 1:4 and grace is the working of God himself, not a created substance of any kind that can be treated like a commodity.
Pelagius was a Romano-British theologian known for promoting a system of doctrines which emphasized human choice in salvation and denied original sin. Pelagius was accused of heresy at the synod of Jerusalem in 415 and his doctrines were harshly criticized by Augustine of Hippo, especially the Pelagian views about mankind's good nature and individual responsibility for choosing asceticism. Pelagius especially stressed the freedom of human will. Very little is known about the personal life and career of Pelagius.
The magisterium of the Catholic Church is the church's authority or office to give authentic interpretation of the word of God, "whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition". According to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, the task of interpretation is vested uniquely in the Pope and the bishops, though the concept has a complex history of development. Scripture and Tradition "make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church", and the magisterium is not independent of this, since "all that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is derived from this single deposit of faith".
Semi-Pelagianism is a Christian theological and soteriological school of thought about the role of free will in salvation. In semipelagian thought, a distinction is made between the beginning of faith and the increase of faith. Semi-Pelagian thought teaches that the latter half – growing in faith – is the work of God, while the beginning of faith is an act of free will, with grace supervening only later. Semi-Pelagianism in its original form was developed as a compromise between Pelagianism and the teaching of Church Fathers such as Saint Augustine. Adherents to Pelagianism hold that people are born untainted by sin and do not need salvation unless they choose to sin, a belief which had been dismissed as heresy. In contrast, Augustine taught that people cannot come to God without the grace of God. Like pelagianism, semipelegianism was labeled heresy by the Western Church at the Second Council of Orange in 529.
In Christian theology, the beatific vision is the ultimate direct self-communication of God to the individual person. A person possessing the beatific vision reaches, as a member of redeemed humanity in the communion of saints, perfect salvation in its entirety, i.e., heaven. The notion of vision stresses the intellectual component of salvation, though it encompasses the whole of human experience of joy, happiness coming from seeing God finally face to face and not imperfectly through faith..
Caelestius was the major follower of the Christian teacher Pelagius and the Christian doctrine of Pelagianism, which was opposed to Augustine of Hippo and his doctrine in original sin, and was later declared to be heresy.
A dogma of the Catholic Church is defined as "a truth revealed by God, which the magisterium of the Church declared as binding". The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
The Church's Magisterium asserts that it exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging Catholics to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.
Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra is preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine "initially given to the apostolic Church and handed down in Scripture and tradition". It does not mean that the pope cannot sin or otherwise err in most situations. This doctrine, defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council of 1869–1870 in the document Pastor aeternus, is claimed to have existed in medieval theology and to have been the majority opinion at the time of the Counter-Reformation.
In Christianity, sin is an immoral act considered to be a transgression of divine law. The doctrine of sin is central to the Christian faith, since its basic message is about redemption in Christ.
The Latin Church is the largest autonomous particular church within the Catholic Church, whose members constitute the vast majority of the 1.3 billion Christians in communion with the pope in Rome. The Latin Church is one of 24 churches sui iuris in communion with the pope; the other 23 are collectively referred to as the Eastern Catholic Churches, and have approximately 18 million members combined.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Catholic Church:
Augustinianism is the philosophical and theological system of Augustine of Hippo and its subsequent development by other thinkers, notably Boethius, Anselm of Canterbury and Bonaventure. Among Augustine's most important works are The City of God, De doctrina Christiana, and Confessions.
The sinlessness of Mary refers to the doctrine in which Mary, mother of Jesus chose not to sin. It is upheld by the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as by high church Lutherans.
Hell in Catholicism is the "state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed" which occurs by the refusal to repent of mortal sin before one's death, since mortal sin deprives one of sanctifying grace. Like most Christian views on hell, the Catholic view is based on Sheol and Gehenna in Judaism. The church regards Sheol or Hades as the same as hell, being the place where Jesus descended to after death.
Catholic hamartiology is a branch of Catholic thought that studies sin. According to the Catholic Church, sin is an "utterance, deed, or desire," caused by concupiscence, that offends God, reason, truth, and conscience. The church believes sin is the greatest evil and has the worst consequences for the sinner, the world, and the l Catholic Church itself. Based on the Bible, the Catholic Church distinguishes between two kinds of sins: mortal sin and venial sin. The Catholic Church also distinguishes between the state of being in original sin and the commission of actual sin.