One of the disputed questions Aquinas deals with is: whether a child who is born in the desert where no water is available, and dies without baptism, can be saved in virtue of its mother's faith: It seems that a child born in the desert can be saved without baptism in virtue of its parents' [...]
Archive for the ‘sin’ Category
Only excerpts or summaries of the posts are shown on this page. Click on the title of a post to see the whole post.Christian Children Dying Without Baptism
Monday, September 20th, 2010Whose Idea was Limbo
Sunday, September 19th, 2010There is a narrative commonly accepted both by theologians and by popular authors, according to which limbo is a hypothesis first invented by medieval theologians to reconcile the necessity of baptism for infants to attain grace and salvation with God's justice that does not punish people with the pains of hell except for their actual [...]
An Argument Against Limbo
Monday, September 13th, 2010Ezekiel and Jeremiah's prophesy that "every one shall die for his own sin" provides one of the stronger arguments that at the end of time, no one will die (be separated from God) for original sin alone, and thus an argument against the state of limbo.
Aquinas, Sin and Fundamental Option
Thursday, June 17th, 2010In the previous post I summarized various evidence pertaining to a fundamental option in the sense of an orientation that changes through a series of acts. This post attempts a sketch that does justice to all of the evidence, as far as that is possible. (1) A person who is strongly committed to the love [...]
Summary of Evidence on Rapidity of Sin or Conversion
Sunday, June 6th, 2010In this post and the next I will try to wrap up the considerations of sin, fundamental option, etc., which I have been considering in recent posts. If we somewhat generalize the theory that mortal sin and conversion consist in the exercise of a single, fundamental option that lies at a deeper level than the [...]
Permanence of Grace
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010In discussing what grace is, Aquinas raises an objection that it cannot be a habit, because it is easily lost: "if grace is something in the soul, it seems that it must be a habit… but it is not a habit, for a habit is a quality that is not easily altered, as the Philosopher [...]
Mortal Sins and Ignorance II – Where and When is the Mortal Sin?
Thursday, May 20th, 2010When a person commits a mortal sin out of ignorance, when does he commit he a mortal sin, and in what does it consist? Take the case of a married person believes that contraception is not intrinsically wrong, and consequently judges in a particular case that he or she is obliged to use artificial contraception [...]
Aquinas on Mortal Sins and Ignorance
Thursday, May 20th, 2010When speaking about the influence of passions on the will, Aquinas takes the position that so long as people retain the use of reason and free will, if they are moved by passion to do a gravely disordered act, then they sin mortally. Only if they are so overcome by passion that they no longer [...]
St. Augustine, Penance, and the Forgiveness of Sins
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010In the early Church, the practice of the sacrament of confession was not a very common affair. While there is certainly testimony to the confession of light sins in the sacrament of confession, it was most associated with severe sins that demanded a canonical and public penance. St. Augustine frequently connects the forgiveness of light [...]
Aquinas on Mortal Sins of Passion
Monday, May 17th, 2010Though Aquinas clearly affirms that the influence of passions on the will can decrease the degree of voluntariness, and thus the merit or demerit of good actions or sins, when it comes to gravely disordered acts, such as fornication, masturbation, or theft, he still sees the issue as basically black or white: either the act [...]
I am a Catholic seminarian and deacon in Vienna, and a teacher at the