- Apr 30, 2013
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I'm still kind of puzzled what he did or said that was actual heresy. While I haven't really studied the letter in depth, it seems to me there are seven major points it makes:
- A justified person has not the strength with God’s grace to carry out the objective demands of the divine law.
- A Christian believer can have full knowledge of a divine law and voluntarily chose to break it in a serious matter, but not be in a state of mortal sin as the result of the action.
- A person is able, while he obeys a divine prohibition, to sin against God by that very act of obedience.
- Conscience can truly and rightly judge that sexual acts between persons who have contracted a civil marriage with each other, although one or both of them is sacramentally married to another person, can sometimes be morally right, or requested or even commanded by God.
- It is false that the only sexual acts that are good of their kind and morally licit are acts between husband and wife.
- Moral principles and moral truths contained in divine revelation and in the natural law do not include negative prohibitions that absolutely forbid particular kinds of actions, inasmuch as these are always gravely unlawful on account of their object.
- God not only permits, but positively wills, the pluralism and diversity of religions, both Christian and non-Christian.
Sounds a bit like Francis ethics are closer to my own denomination's. It sounds vaguely Lutheran, albeit of a modernist sort.
I may not really understand this but the first one seems to be saying God's grace is insufficient to obey divine law post conversion (aka justification).
This is true, inasmuch as we cannot obey perfectly. It is consistent with Luther's teachings. As Philip Melanchthon wrote, "The Law always condemns".
Ok, that could be dismissed as awkward wording. The second one, the believer could have full knowledge of a divine law, break it and not be guilty of mortal sin. The question becomes, how? I don't know.
Because the only mortal sins are those that attack the gifts of faith, hope, and love within the subjectivity of the believer.
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