Martin Luther
Part II
Uploaded on Jun 21, 2011
Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
Collected Works Online
Uploaded on Jun 21, 2011
Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
(A) The sense of ‘beatitudo’.
The first job is to determine what ‘beatitudo’ meant simply as a matter of ordinary language, reserving til later the question of its learned definitions (rationes). There are three options: happiness, well-being, and fulfillment. To see which option is best, one needs to consider the following facts.
2006
In a notorious article of the Prima Secundae, Aquinas claimed that the first moral decision of an unbaptized child could not result in a venial sin. If the decision was bad, the sin could only be mortal. On the other hand, if the decision was good, the same unbaptized child was freed from original sin. The common doctor’s argument for these claims wove together threads of psychology, moral theology, and eschatology, to fashion a controversial doctrine — elegant, but hard to defend, and in conflict with his own work on faith and justification. This paper will unravel the threads and propose a revised doctrine, less elegant but more plausible, and free of conflict.[1]
Continue reading “Grace And Sin At The Dawn Of Moral Experience”
March, 1999
1979
Christendom College
This paper is devoted to refuting the so-called debitum hypotheticum or conditionatum. In general, a debitum is expressed by the claim that Mary, thanks to her connexion with Adam, was under a necessity to contract original sin; the debitum conditionatum is expressed by the claim that, thanks to the same necessity, she would have contracted original sin, if one or another condition had been fulfilled (e.g., if God had not preserved her).[1]
Continue reading “A Critique Of Marian Counterfactual Formulae: A Report Of Results”
Christendom College
1978
Reprinted from MARIAN STUDIES (1978)
The long-standing theological debate over whether Our Blessed Mother can be said to have had a debitum peccati begins and ends, it seems, with both sides admitting the truth of the following contrary-to-fact condition:
(A) If she had not been preserved, Mary would have contracted original sin.[2]
The necessity of affirming this or similar counterfactuals is usually said to lie in the Church’s doctrine that Our Lady’s redemption was a “preservative” redemption. It is asked, what can “preservative” mean, if an assertion like (A) is not true?
Continue reading “A Logician’s Reflections On The Debitum Contrahendi Peccatum”