- Whether Incarnation would have happened without any need for redeeming Adam's sin?
- Whether Redemption was a payment by Crucifixion precisely for Adam's sin and for ours?
To the first question, would God have been man, St Thomas says no and St Bonaventura yes to even if Adam had not sinned, St Bonaventura arguing, it would have happened anyway to ennoble the human race.
To the second question, check session 6 of Trent, as cited via Catholic Encyclopedia:
"Whence it came to pass, that the Heavenly Father, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1, 3), when that blessed fullness of the time was come (Galatians 4:4) sent unto men Jesus Christ, His own Son who had been, both before the Law and during the time of the Law, to many of the holy fathers announced and promised, that He might both redeem the Jews, who were under the Law and that the Gentiles who followed not after justice might attain to justice and that all men might receive the adoption of sons. Him God had proposed as a propitiator, through faith in His blood (Romans 3:25), for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for those of the whole world (I John ii, 2)."
Doctrine of the Atonement
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02055a.htm
Key word : propitiator.
propitiation (n.)
late 14c., from Late Latin propitiationem (nominative propitiatio) "an atonement," noun of action from past participle stem of Latin propitiare "appease, propitiate," from propitius "favorable, gracious, kind, well-disposed," from pro- "forward" (see pro-) + stem related to petere "to make for, go to; seek, strive after; ask for, beg, beseech, request" (from PIE root *pet- "to rush, to fly").
The sense in Latin is perhaps because the word originally was religious, literally "a falling or rushing toward," hence "eager," and, of the gods, "well-disposed." Earliest recorded form of the word in English is propitiatorium "the mercy seat, place of atonement" (c. 1200), translating Greek hilasterion.
So, when God is "propitius", He is eager to come to us. When Christ (the God-Man in human highest dignity of king, priest and prophet) is propitiator, He makes God so.
Here is a citation from Mc Cabe, via Mark Shea:
"So my thesis is that Jesus died of being human. His very humanity meant that he put up no barriers, no defences against those he loved who hated him. He refused to evade the consequences of being human in our inhuman world. So the cross shows up our world for what it really is, what we have made it. It is a world in which it is dangerous, even fatal, to be human; a world structured by violence and fear. The cross shows that whatever may be remedied by this or that political or economic change, there is a basic wrong, persistent through history and through all progress: the rejection of the love that casts out fear, the fear that without the backing of terror, at least in the last resort, human society and thus human life cannot exist. The cross, then, unmasks or reveals the sin of the world. (p. 97)"
Taking apart the false theory of penal substitutionary atonement
May 16, 2019 by Mark Shea
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2019/05/taking-apart-the-false-theory-of-penal-substitutionary-atonement.html
In this theory, God would be made propitius towards us in what exact sense?
Unmasking human evil to God is not needed since He is omniscient, and is also not exactly apt to propitiate Him. One could argue, seeing the Son helpless on the Cross propitiates Him towards every helpless victim of human evil.
But Adam was not a helpless victim of previously existing human evil, he was a consenting victim to his wife's disobedience, or covictim with her, and she was a consenting and not totally helpless victim of Satan's guile.
This other theory, not Mc Cabe's but my para-Cabe, would therefore leave him out of atonement, whereas tradition says Christ going down went to take both Adam and Eve by the hands and raise them from the misery into which they had gotten themselves, exclusion from Heaven, as extant even to just men up to Crucifixion (Henoch and Elijah were and perhaps still are not living in Heaven properly, but one of the heavens, well below the pearly gates in space), and therefore a correct understanding of atonement cannot stand on my para-Cabe, because it leaves out Adam from redemption.
Again, this view of redemption means the victims of human evil are redeemed and the perpetrators damned as if Christ had never died for them.
This is also false, since forgiveness is offered to horrible evil-doers. Killing God (insofar as it lay in their hands, that is not quite so) is a very horrible offense, and therefore Christ would not have died for those crucifying him. This para-Cabe therefore leaves out the then Jews and Romans (with those sympathising with their act?) and at least some dictators and murderers and rapists and some more from the offer of redemption. Ergo, this view is not possible either on this ground.
So, Christ cannot have unmasked human evil to God the Father Who already knew all about it, excluding this understanding of Mc Cabe, and He cannot have unmasked human helplessness before evils of others either, because as just said that would leave out from redemption those who did evil without being just victims. Also, God already knew about human helplessness and therefore did not need God-as-Man to "rub it in", excluding my own best try to make sense of it.
Other version of what Mc Cabe could have meant by "unmasking human evil" is unmasking human evil to us.
Yes, the Crucifixion really does that, it reveals our sins needed Christ to die on a Cross to fully pay for them. So, the Crucifixion is pædagogic in helping to convert us. However, we are not supposed to be "propitii" towards God, but to be God-fearing and God-loving from all our heart. Therefore this conversion of us is something other than the propitiation. It helps us profit from propitiation, but it is not propitiation.
So, while Crucifixion unmasks human evil to us, therefore converts us, this is one reason why God chose this mode of propitiation, but it is not what propitiation consists in.
So, Mc Cabe cannot as far as I see argue Crucifixion unmasks human evil to God, therefore propitiating Him, and certainly cannot say Crucifixion unmasking human evil to ourselves is what makes it propitiatory of God. Therefore, arguing with Mc Cabe Crucifixion unmasking human evil is why it is propitiatory is false. And arguing it is why Crucifixion was chosen (as mode of propitiation) is something other than arguing wherein Crucifixion is propitiatory.
In fact, the theory of Mc Cabe doesn't square with the definition by Council of Trent.
Now, the funny or sad thing, at least ironic thing, is, Mark Shea is elsewhere considering assent to Fr. Aidan Nichols OP as bowing to a magisterium alternative to Rome. One irony is, assent to Mc Cabe is bowing to a magisterium clearly alternative to and not assenting with Trent. One other is of course, Mc Cabe is not trying to explain Council of Trent was not magisterial, but Fr. Aidan Nichols is very much trying to explain that "Pope" Francis is not magisterial. Therefore, that assent to him is not to a "magisterium alternative to the Pope" but to magisterium of previous Popes condemning a non-Pope.
In fact, SSPX is arguing* that this open letter by Fr. Aidan Nichols is a "third step" from 1) a private letter just after Amoris Laetitia, 2) the Filial Correction. In other words, that the considering of "Pope Francis" as a heretic is a procedure analogous to the procedures when superiors, ultimately Popes, consider an inferior as a heretic. I'd argue it is not so. We cannot judge the Pope as Pope, but we can judge a non-Pope as heretic and therefore non-Pope. And that this recognition is only a canonic act if there is a real canonic POpe or at least Council doing such judging, in other cases, it is a so to speak pre-canonic prudential judgement. One from which it follows one does not regard him as Pope, asks if someone else is, and if not how the Church can have a Pope again. Which is what Pope Michael** did when still layman in 1990 or a few months before, when convoking the emergency conclave. Therefore I hold the procedure of Pope Michael is better than that of Fr. Aidan Nichols. However, the then layman David Bawden was of course aware that 1986 showed someone previous to "Pope Francis" and by many presumed to be Pope as heretic or apostate if knowing sufficient, or as schismatic if not. Visit to Synagogue and Assisi prayer meeting were huge no-nos. This Fr. Aidan Nichols is not dealing with.
And I wonder exactly how Mc Cabe's explanation would have motivated the steps by Wojtyla which by traditional Catholic theology were forbidden.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Audoux
St. Paschalis OFM***
17.V.2019
* FSSPX News / Fr : A propos d’une lettre ouverte aux évêques de l’Eglise catholique
https://fsspx.news/fr/propos-lettre-ouverte-aux-eveques-de-eglise-catholique-47843
** Having own dubia about canonicity and Catholicity of his pastoral theology, but that is another matter. Here are the offending words on his media, not sure of his words or those of Fr. Francis Dominic, who was Baptist before conversion and ordination:
How old do I have to be before I am out from under authority?
We never outgrow the need to be under authority, and, in fact, we are commanded to be under authority at all times. Ye young men, be subject to the ancients. And do you all insinuate [to gently introduce] humility one to another, for God resisteth the proud, but to the humble he giveth grace.(I Peter 5:5)
Command to be subject to someone else in humility is not the same as command to be under someone else's authority!
*** Apud Villam Regalem, in Hispania, sancti Paschalis, ex Ordine Minorum, Confessoris, mirae innocentiae et poenitentiae viri; quem Leo Papa Decimus tertius caelestem eucharisticorum Coetuum et Societatum a sanctissima Eucharistia Patronum declaravit.
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