Original Sin: Is There Anything New Under the Sun?

Saint Ambrose of Milan,

mentor of Saint Augustine

Yesterday I wrote on the subject of prevenient grace as the prayer over the gifts in the new translation made a reference to it, but it might be worth our while to take a look at the history of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.  It is curious because the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception  is only held in the Western Church and not shared in the East (including those Churches which are in Communion with Rome)  which celebrates the conception of the Virgin but, because it has a very different understanding of original sin,  avoids the issue of Mary’s being conceived without (original) sin.  The Eastern Churches pass over the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in silence—not denying it but also not teaching it.  They hold that Mary was sinless but do not attribute this to her not having been conceived subject to original sin.  As I just pointed out, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is dependent on one’s understanding of original sin. 
       Saint Augustine is usually “blamed” for introducing the concept of original sin into Catholic (and Protestant) theology, and this explains why the doctrine is held in the Western Church where Augustine is a major figure and not in the Churches of the East where his influence is minimal.  In fact, however, while Augustine devoted considerable paper and ink to the subject of original sin, he inherited the doctrine, at least in seminal form, from earlier Church Fathers such as Iranaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, and Ambrose who saw in the disobedience of Adam the origins of human rebellion against God.  One of the reasons this doctrine of original sin never “ took off” in the East is that in the early Patristic era (the second through the fifth centuries) the Eastern Churches had more of a challenge from the Gnostic heresies that tended to grossly overstress the role and power of evil and that forced Eastern theologians to stay focused on the essential goodness of God’s Creation.  To admit that human nature is somehow essentially flawed, even by the inherited effects of Adam’s sin, would have played into the hands of the sin-obsessed Gnostics.  Of course Augustine had himself belonged to a Gnostic sect and while he rejected Manicheanism even before his conversion to Christianity, he was far more given to reflect on the dark side of human nature than most, indeed any, of the earlier Church Fathers.  Augustine took the tradition of an inherited sinfulness that had come down from Tertullian through Ambrose and runs with it, developing a very negative anthropology in which the human person is enthralled by Adam’s disobedience and only by grace regains the freedom of the will.  Augustine came into conflict with a Roman priest by the name of Pelagius who argued that the human will is essentially free and able to choose between sin and grace.  This positivist view of human nature and the consequent superfluity of grace was more than Augustine could bear.  He knew from experience—his experience—the evil that lurks within the human heart.  (Sort of like “The Shadow” of old-time radio fame.)    The Church would come down on Augustine’s side—they had to as he was (and still is) the most prolific theologian in the history of the Church and lays the foundation for all subsequent Western Theology—thought in practice we Catholics have a tendency to slide into Pelagianism which is what triggers our attraction to “salvation by works.”  Anyway, as I have said, Augustine taught that the human person has inherited a nature that, while created good, is inherently flawed by the disobedience of our first parents and that this flaw, rooted in human concupiscence, is passed down from father to child through the act of sexual intercourse by which the child is begotten.  This is not to say that Augustine understands concupiscence exclusively in sexual terms.  Augustine gets a bad rap for being anti-sex while in fact he is just about anti-everything, one of those persons who believe that if something is at all enjoyable it must be sinful.  By the way, I am a big fan of Augustine and think that he is the greatest mind in the history of Christian thought so I am not slamming him but the fact of the matter is that he has an incredibly negative understanding—not necessarily wrong, just incredibly negative—of human nature. And then, if human nature is so corrupted by sin, the problem becomes how could the Blessed Mother be tainted by this human nature?  How indeed?   That is the conundrum the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was formulated to resolve. 

What do the Blessed Mother and Billy Graham Have in Common?

Saint Augustine, Doctor Gratiae, the great

theologian of grace. 

Well, the word that is getting attention today is “prevenient” as in “prevenient grace.”  It is used in the “prayer over the gifts” in the revised translation of the Roman Missal.  I must have had three phone calls and a dozen emails asking me about it—including at least four messages from priests who don’t know the doctrine of prevenient grace.  What are they teaching in seminaries nowadays?   If there is anything good that might come out of this revised translation it might be that people have to learn their theology.  If you know “Consubstantial” you have your Christology half learned; if you know “prevenient” you have your Christian anthropology (the theology of grace) pretty much done.  And if you have Christology and Grace under control, you have pretty much what you need to know.  Other than ecclesiology everything else is commentary.  And actually, ecclesiology is simply an expansion of Christology.  Prevenient Grace is that gift of God that precedes any good work on our part, even an act of faith, but come totally gratuitously from God and empowers us to believe, to yearn for holiness, and to seek a righteousness in the sight of God.  You see, given our fallen nature—or what we Christians believe to be our fallen nature—we are incapable on our own of any choice for the good.  God loves us as we are—in our sin, our brokenness, our weakness, whatever one may call it—and God begins the process of salvation by giving us that which we need to be saved.  Anyway, that is pretty much what the Council of Trent says about it, though in somewhat different words.  Trent does call it prevenient grace however.  The interesting thing  both about Trent and the new translation is that the concept of prevenient grace is really more a preoccupation of Protestant theology than Catholic.  This is because Catholics almost invariably fall into a Pelagianism that affirms that we can do good on our own.  I am amazed how many priests have an exaggerated concept of free will.  According to Saint Augustine, a favorite of Pope Benedict, Martin Luther, and my own, the human will is not free except as it is aided by grace.  Without grace we would always choose sin, with grace—and only with grace—the will is free to choose between sin and the Will of God.  The Will will not choose evil—it will always choose what it perceives to be “a good;” but it is only with grace that it is free to choose God’s good rather than the perceived good our own self-interest would otherwise select.  Anyway, I love the idea of prevenient grace.  First of all I love the word.  When else do you hear it?  And it is such a neat word. Very, very, Latin—from pre and venire.  It is the affirmation that God loves us just as we are even before we can come to him in repentence.  He doesn't love us because we have repented but rather gives us the grace of turning to him because he loves us.  As the old Methodist piano thumper sings: 

Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.


Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.


Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.


Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.


Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.


Just as I am, Thy love unknown
Hath broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.


Just as I am, of that free love
The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,
Here for a season, then above,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!


Thank you Ms. Charlotte Elliott for writing this hymn back in 1835.  Billy Graham heard this song as sixteen year old boy and “gave his life to Jesus.”  When he began his ministry of revival preaching, he used this hymn as his altar call song that would move people to come up and surrender themselves to the Lord.  Dr. Graham used the hymn title” Just as I Am” as the title of his 1997 autobiography.  So what do the young Virgin of Nazareth and the young Baptist of Charlotte, North Carolina have in common: prevenient grace.  And we would never have known that except for this revised translation.