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How Messed Up Are People?

How Messed Up Are People

  • Totally Messed Up (Augustine, Calvin)

    Votes: 15 55.6%
  • Partly Messed Up (Catholicism, Arminianism)

    Votes: 10 37.0%
  • Not Messed Up (Pelagius, Liberal Christianity)

    Votes: 2 7.4%

  • Total voters
    27

trophy33

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Can it be technically a sin, when there is no commandment? Animals, for example, are not sinning, because they do not have knowledge of any commandment. Animals can break some human or animal rules, but they cannot sin against God.
 
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Tree of Life

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Nup.
 
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RDKirk

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Can it be technically a sin, when there is no commandment?

The first commandment is to "Love the Lord thy God with all your heart and all your mind."

An infant is not doing that. Of course, the infant does not know to do that...and as I said, God takes that ignorance into account.
 
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trophy33

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The first commandment is to "Love the Lord thy God with all your heart and all your mind."

An infant is not doing that. Of course, the infant does not know to do that...and as I said, God takes that ignorance into account.

But that commandment was given to adult Jews, not to infants and not to Aztecs, if you understand what I mean.

Or, maybe you believe that just the declaration of this commandment in some time to somebody makes it a general rule for every creature and for all times, both past and future, and therefore made every creature to be a sinner, no matter if the creature heard it?
 
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RDKirk

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The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
-- Romans 1

Anyone who has lived long enough will have seen enough to realize that God exists and is virtuous.

Paul could say that because he knew of the doctrine of the Unknown God--a formal philosophy of Greeks who had determined through the study of nature (principally astronomy) that a supreme, perfectly virtuous creator God existed, although He could not be known by less-than-perfectly virtuous man.
 
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ripple the car

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I would go with 2. We are indeeed damaged by sin and separation from God, but by His grace are still capable of virtue, faith, charity, selflessness, reason, and concluding and doing what's right. The law that is written on our hearts.
 
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trophy33

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The context is that the wrath of God is against them because they made idols and served the creation instead of Creator... So, the infant baby is still out of game. It does not have anything revealed and it does not make any rebellious choices. Can we still call it "a sinful baby"?
 
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Tree of Life

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I would go with 2. We are indeeed damaged by sin and separation from God, but by His grace are still capable of virtue, faith, charity, selflessness, reason, and concluding and doing what's right. The law that is written on our hearts.
So not only is the Law written on our hearts, but the capabilities of obedience to the Law also still exist within fallen, unregenerate man?
 
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RDKirk

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The context is that the wrath of God is against them because they made idols and served the creation instead of Creator... So, the infant baby is still out of game. It does not have anything revealed and it does not make any rebellious choices.

The infant serves its own body--a created thing. Most pagans serve their own flesh, and their idols are their flesh.

"...their gods are their bellies" Philippians 3
 
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ripple the car

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So not only is the Law written on our hearts, but the capabilities of obedience to the Law also still exist within fallen, unregenerate man?
Within everyone. I work retail, and have seen things like virtue, kindness, generosity, selflessness, forgiveness, patience, temperance, self-control, love, and mercy at work in folks who do not profess any kind of Christian faith, but they are still capable to doing good things.
 
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Tree of Life

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Are these good things meritorious and capable of earning eternal life?
 
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DamianWarS

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It seems you favour totally messed up. The question is good but it could have been presented with less bias.
 
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Tree of Life

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Apart from faith in Christ, no. But they are still evidence of an innate capacity for virtue among non-Christians.

If their actions are virtuous, why are they not acceptable to God?
 
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ripple the car

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If their actions are virtuous, why are they not acceptable to God?
Well, God, the Triune God, is the source of ultimate goodness. He has created us, loves us, and has given us a conscience. It is between us and Him to seek Him, respond to His grace, and to the Gospel, if we have access to it. If a soul has no access to the Gospel, God will not judge them unjustly, and there is no point at which God's Divine Mercy stops pursuiting us. Until we finally will to reject it. Beyond this, it is a mystery and ultimately between the soul, and God.
 
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Tree of Life

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I think my question still stands.
 
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HatGuy

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The Arminian view is not semi-Pelagian but semi-Augustinian.
 
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