So, if concupiscence is so alluring, leading us to become addicted to finite ends and to act as if they are transcendent, how do we get out of this state of being with Cupid?\u00a0\u00a0 This \u201cstate of being with Cupid\u201d often feels like a prison, with demonic guards who \u201cforce\u201d us to say \u201cyes\u201d when we should say \u201cno\u201d.\u00a0 This \u201cstate of being with Cupid\u201d makes one feel that she is a puppet and that someone from hell is pulling the strings.<\/p>\n
Peters mentions \u201cgrace\u201d.\u00a0 God overcomes our addictions.\u00a0 But usually that comes after the person has \u201chit bottom\u201d and has no choice but to ask God for help.<\/p>\n
Here Peters skirts one of the profound insights of Lacan (a French Psychoanalyst who wrote in the 1930s to 1970s): Some knowledge cannot be obtained unless one has committed an error.\u00a0 The grace sought to recover from addiction may lead to a providential moment where \u201cthe one who committed an error\u201d gains an insight that could not have been obtained directly.\u00a0\u00a0 The experience of the error itself plus the humiliation of asking for God\u2019s help sets the stage for discovery.<\/p>\n
Even though Augustine seems old hat to us today, what he discovered was nothing short of revolutionary.\u00a0 His theory of Original Sin became the \u201cgo to\u201d explanation for over a thousand years.<\/p>\n
Today, his formulation acts as a gargoyle keeping cerebral celebrities at bay.\u00a0 Like Pelagius, they are affronted by it and scandalized by it.\u00a0 They ridicule it.\u00a0\u00a0 They want to put a bag over its head and pretend its not there.\u00a0 They refuse to enter any Church ornamented with the abysmal gargoyle of \u201cAugustine\u2019s definition of Original Sin\u201d.<\/p>\n
What they cannot do is explain it.\u00a0 They have no method of explanation capable of showing how Augustine made sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, if concupiscence is so alluring, leading us to become addicted to finite ends and to act as if they are transcendent, how do we get out of this state of being with Cupid?\u00a0\u00a0 This \u201cstate of being with Cupid\u201d often feels like a prison, with demonic guards who \u201cforce\u201d us to say \u201cyes\u201d when […]<\/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-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-science-of-original-sin"],"yoast_head":"\n