Peet Schooenberg S.J. wrote \u201cOriginal Sin and Man\u2019s Situation\u201d in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
As he saw it, in a nutshell, sin is the guilt resulting from the decision to do evil.\u00a0 This decision was conditioned by one\u2019s situatedness in a disordered world. \u00a0The world is in fellowship with sin.\u00a0 This corresponds to the condition of Original SinME<\/sup>.<\/p>\n (Here comes the caveat: Wiley warns: In order to get to the meat of the nut, rather than what is here presented as \u201cin the shell\u201d, you have to read the author himself.\u00a0 So Schooenberg is on the list for a future blog.)<\/p>\n Schooenberg\u2019s formulation does not address the nature of the transition that made our disordered world possible.\u00a0 It corresponds to the claim by medieval theologians that Original Sin was a \u201csin of nature\u201d.\u00a0 As such, the Fall is existential.\u00a0 It is part of the individual\u2019s environment.\u00a0 The person accommodates.\u00a0 But is she doomed?<\/p>\n The Fall offers the possibility of Redemption.\u00a0 At root is a refusal to love.\u00a0 At root is an absence of an interior life of faith and love of God.\u00a0 But such a root, when planted in the soil of Christian community, the community of the redeemed, has the capacity to sprout in a most surprising way.\u00a0 The water of baptism enters into the soil.\u00a0 Through the soil, sanctifying grace enters a root that, if left alone, would grow into \u201crefusal and absence (Marx\u2019s word for it: \u201calienation\u201d)\u201d.\u00a0 With the waters of sanctifying grace, the root begins to grow into \u201cwhat it refuses to do and what it lacks\u201d.<\/p>\n In many ways, Schoonenberg\u2019s ideas mirror Rienhart\u2019s:<\/p>\n For Reinhart: \u201cWill to power\u201d(anxiety(egoism))<\/p>\n For Schoonenberg: \u201cSanctifying grace\u201d(baptism(growing out of refusal to love and absence of an interior life of faith and love of God)<\/p>\n With \u201cbaptism\u201d paired against \u201cexistential anxiety\u201d, charges of Pelagianism seem unfounded.\u00a0 The gap cannot be bridged by personal well-intended regimens.<\/p>\n Promises of a New Age of Self-Improvement are merely fashions of the \u201cwill to power\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Peet Schooenberg S.J. wrote \u201cOriginal Sin and Man\u2019s Situation\u201d in the 1960s. As he saw it, in a nutshell, sin is the guilt resulting from the decision to do evil.\u00a0 This decision was conditioned by one\u2019s situatedness in a disordered world. \u00a0The world is in fellowship with sin.\u00a0 This corresponds to the condition of Original […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-science-of-original-sin"],"yoast_head":"\n