Mortal Sin
The concept of mortal sin has been an integral
part of the Christian message since the very beginning. Literally dozens
of passages in the New Testament proclaim it a fearful reality, and these
biblical teachings were fully accepted by, and indeed expounded upon, by
the early Church Fathers.
It was not until the time of John Calvin that anyone
would claim that it was impossible for a true Christian to lose his salvation.
That teaching, which was not even shared by Martin Luther and his followers,
was a theological novelty of the mid-sixteenth century, a teaching which
would have been condemned as a dangerous heresy by all previous
generations of Christians. It would drive people to the despair of thinking
that, if they had committed grave sins, they had never been true Christians.
Further, they would suffer similar anxiety over any subsequent conversion,
since their first would not have been genuine, according to this teaching.
Or it would drive them into thinking that their grave sins were really
not grave at all, for no true Christian could have committed such
sins.
In time the "once saved, always saved" teaching
even degenerated in many Evangelical circles to the point that some would
claim that a Christian could commit grave sins and still remain
saved: sin did not injure his relationship with God at all.
Fortunately, most Christians today reject Calvin’s
error, acknowledging that there are at least some mortal sins—sins which
kill the spiritual life of the soul and deprive a person of salvation,
unless he repents. Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists,
Pentecostals—all acknowledge the possibility of mortal sin at least in
some form. Only Presbyterians, Baptists, and those who have been influenced
by these two sects reject the reality of mortal sin.
The early Church Fathers, of course, were unanimous
in teaching the reality of mortal sin. They had to embrace the doctrine
of mortal sin precisely because they recognized not only the salvific power
of baptism but also the damning power of certain serious sins. The Church
taught that "baptism . . . now saves you" (1 Pet. 3:21; see the Catholic
Answers tracts Baptismal Grace and Born of Water and the Spirit).
However, since during the persecutions some baptized people denied Christ,
and since Christ taught that "whoever denies me before men, I also will
deny before my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 10:33), the Church Fathers
recognized that it was possible to lose the grace of salvation after baptism.
The idea that one could never lose salvation would
have been unimaginable to them, since it was evident from the Bible that
baptism saves, that the baptized can deny Christ, and that those who deny
Christ will not be saved unless they repent, as did Peter.
It was equally unthinkable to predestinarian thinkers,
such as Augustine, who, just two years
before he died, taught in his book The Gift
of Perseverance that not all who were predestined to come
to God’s grace were predestined to remain with
him until glory. This was, in fact, the teaching
of all the high predestinarians (Augustine, Fulgentius, Aquinas, Luther)—until
the time of Calvin.
The Didache
"Watch for your life’s sake. Let not your lamps
be quenched, nor your loins unloosed; but be ready, for you know not the
hour in which our Lord comes. But you shall assemble together often, seeking
the things which are befitting to your souls: for the whole time of your
faith will not profit you, if you be not made complete in the last time"
(Didache 16 [A.D. 70]).
Hermas
"And as many of them . . . as have repented, shall
have their dwelling in the tower [i.e., the Church]. And those of them
who have been slower in repenting shall dwell within the walls. And as
many as do not repent at all, but abide in their deeds, shall utterly perish.
. . . But if any one relapse into strife, he will be cast out of the tower,
and will lose his life. Life is the possession of all who keep the commandments
of the Lord" (The Shepherd 3:8:7 [A.D. 80]).
Ignatius of Antioch
"And pray without ceasing in behalf of other men;
for there is hope of the repentance, that they may attain to God. For cannot
he that falls arise again, and he may attain to God?" (Letter to the
Ephesians 10 [A.D. 110]).
Justin Martyr
"[E]ternal fire was prepared for him who voluntarily
departed from God and for all who, without repentance, persevere in apostasy"
(fragment in Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5:26 [A.D. 156]).
Irenaeus
"[T]o Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Savior,
and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, ‘every knee should
bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth,
and that every tongue should confess’ [Phil. 2:10–11] to him, and that
he should execute just judgment towards all. . . . [T]he ungodly and unrighteous
and wicked and profane among men [shall go] into everlasting fire; but
[he] may, in the exercise of his grace, confer immortality on the righteous,
and holy, and those who have kept his commandments, and have persevered
in his love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others
from [the date of] their penance, and may surround them with everlasting
glory" (Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).
Tertullian
"[Regarding confession, some] flee from this work
as being an exposure of themselves, or they put it off from day to day.
I presume they are more mindful of modesty than of salvation, like those
who contract a disease in the more shameful parts of the body and shun
making themselves known to the physicians; and thus they perish along with
their own bashfulness" (Repentance 10:1 [A.D. 203]).
"Discipline governs a man, power sets a seal upon
him; apart from the fact that power is the Spirit, but the Spirit is God.
What, moreover, used [the Spirit] to teach? That there must be no communicating
with the works of darkness. Observe what he bids. Who, moreover, was able
to forgive sins? This is his alone prerogative: for ‘who remits sins but
God alone?’ and, of course, [who but he can remit] mortal sins, such as
have been committed against himself and against his temple?" (Modesty
21 [A.D. 220]).
Cyprian of Carthage
"Of how much greater faith and salutary fear are
they who . . . confess their sins to the priests of God in a straightforward
manner and in sorrow, making an open declaration of conscience. . . . I
beseech you, brethren, let everyone who has sinned confess his sin while
he is still in this world, while his confession is still admissible, while
the satisfaction and remission made through the priests are still pleasing
before the Lord" (The Lapsed 28 [A.D. 251]).
Basil the Great
"The clergyman who is deposed for mortal sin shall
not be excommunicated" (Canonical Letter, canon 32 [A.D. 374]).
Pacian of Barcelona
"Stinginess is remedied by generosity, insult by
apology, perversity by honesty, and for whatever else, amends can be made
by practice of the opposite. But what can he do who is contemptuous of
God? What shall the murderer do? What remedy shall the fornicator find?
. . . These are capital sins, brethren, these are mortal. Someone may say:
‘Are we then about to perish? . . . Are we to die in our sins?’ . . . I
appeal first to you brethren who refuse penance for your acknowledged crimes.
You, I say, who are timid after your impudence, who are bashful after your
sins, who are not ashamed to sin but now are ashamed to confess" (Sermon
Exhorting to Penance 4 [A.D. 385]).
Jerome
"There are venial sins and there are mortal sins.
It is one thing to owe ten thousand talents, another to owe but a farthing.
We shall have to give an accounting for an idle word no less than for adultery.
But to be made to blush and to be tortured are not the same thing; not
the same thing to grow red in the face and to be in agony for a long time.
. . . If we entreat for lesser sins we are granted pardon, but for greater
sins, it is difficult to obtain our request. There is a great difference
between one sin and another" (Against Jovinian 2:30 [A.D. 393]).
Augustine
"[N]othing could have been devised more likely
to instruct and benefit the pious reader of sacred Scripture than that,
besides describing praiseworthy characters as examples, and blameworthy
characters as warnings, it should also narrate cases where good men have
gone back and fallen into evil, whether they are restored to the right
path or continue irreclaimable; and also where bad men have changed, and
have attained to goodness, whether they persevere in it or relapse into
evil; in order that the righteous may be not lifted up in the pride of
security, nor the wicked hardened in despair of cure" (Against Faustus
22:96 [A.D. 400]).
"[A]lthough they were living well, [they] have
not persevered therein; because they have of their own will been changed
from a good to an evil life, and on that account are worthy of rebuke;
and if rebuke should be of no avail to them, and they should persevere
in their ruined life until death, they are also worthy of divine condemnation
forever. Neither shall they excuse themselves, saying—as now they say,
‘Why are we rebuked?’—so then, ‘Why are we condemned, since indeed, that
we might return from good to evil, we did not receive that perseverance
by which we should abide in good?’ They shall by no means deliver themselves
by this excuse from righteous condemnation. . . . since it may be said,
‘O man, in that which you have heard and kept, in that you might persevere
if you want’" (Admonition and Grace 11 [A.D. 426]).
"But those who do not belong to the number of the
predestined . . . are judged most justly according to their deserts. For
either they lie under sin which they contracted originally by their generation
and go forth [from this life] with that hereditary debt which was not forgiven
by regeneration [baptism], or [if it was forgiven by regeneration] they
have added others besides through free choice: choice, I say, free; but
not freed. . . . Or they receive God’s grace, but they are temporal and
do not persevere; they abandon it and are abandoned. For by free will,
since they have not received the gift of perseverance, they are sent away
in God’s just and hidden judgment" (ibid., 13).
"[O]f two pious men, why to the one should be given
perseverance unto the end, and to the other it should not be given, God’s
judgments are even more unsearchable. . . . had not both been called and
followed him that called them? And had not both become, from wicked men,
justified men, and both been renewed by the laver of regeneration?" (The
Gift of Perseverance 9:21 [A.D. 428]).
Caesarius of Arles
"Although the apostle [Paul] has mentioned many
grievous sins, we, nevertheless, lest we seem to promote despair, will
state briefly what they are. Sacrilege, murder, adultery, false witness,
theft, robbery, pride, envy, avarice, and, if it is of long standing, anger,
drunkenness, if it is persistent, and slander are reckoned in their number.
Or if anyone knows that these sins dominate him, if he does not do penance
worthily and for a long time, if such time is given him . . . he cannot
be purged in that transitory fire of which the apostle spoke [1 Cor. 3:11–15],
but the eternal flames will torture him without any remedy. But since the
lesser sins are, of course, known to all, and it would take too long to
mention them all, it will be necessary for us only to name some of them.
. . . There is no doubt that these and similar deeds belong to the lesser
sins which, as I said before, can scarcely be counted, and from which not
only all Christian people, but even all the saints could not and cannot
always be free. We do not, of course, believe that the soul is killed by
these sins, but still they make it ugly by covering it as if with some
kind of pustules and, as it were, with horrible scabs" (Sermons 179[104]:2
[A.D. 522]).
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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