Radio Replies Vol 3 - Catholic Apologetics Online

Original sin has left a certain disorder in man's nature, warping his mind and disturbing the balance which should prevail between his will and his passions. Yet, although original sin was due to Satan's treachery in the first place, his influence now is not confined to these transmitted deficiencies. Over and above inherited evils, he is still able to tempt men within such limits as God permits.

The devil has a keener intelligence than man, but the scope of his knowledge is not without limits. He cannot read man's secret thoughts and intentions. He can conjecture from our conduct what is most likely to prove our downfall, and tempt us accordingly. Even so, he has no direct power whatever over our will. Again, God has promised to supply by His grace for our deficiencies. "My grace is sufficient for thee," He said to St. Paul. And we are told, too, that God permits no man to be tempted beyond that which he is able. God expects us to resist temptation, but He also expects us to ask for the necessary graces by prayer. Christ constantly urged such prayer. If a man, therefore, is condemned for yielding to the temptations of the devil, it is not because he could not resist them, but because he would not, and refused to ask the necessary help of God.

God does not will all men to be saved in spite of themselves. He intends that those who choose to die in a state of grace and in His friendship should be saved. And to every man He gives sufficient grace for that. In no single case has Satan been able to defeat this purpose of God so that souls through no fault of their own have been lost. God respects man's freedom. But if He will not compel men to be good, neither can Satan compel men to be evil. If a man wants to be good, he can be good; and Satan cannot prevent him. If a man wants to be evil, he can be evil, and God will not prevent him even though He forbids evil by the moral law. Men choose for themselves to take their stand either under the banner of God, or under that of Satan.

Firstly, God will not do away with the devil because the devil is an essentially spiritual being whose nature is immortal of its very nature. And God does not create a being endowed with immortality only to destroy it. Secondly, God knows that human souls, with the help of His grace, can themselves prevent the devil from doing them any moral harm by refusing consent to his evil suggestions. Thirdly, since there is no particular merit in being good if never tempted to do evil, God knows that the temptations of the devil are the occasion at least in which men have the chance to practice and to grow in virtue. Fourthly, since all previous generations of men have had to endure the sedulous attentions of the devil, there is no particular reason why the present and future generations should be exempt. We must battle through the same trials as others, conscious that with God's help we can come through victoriously, as so many others whose example is offered for our encouragement.

Since they must believe in Holy Scripture they must believe that there will be an Antichrist. And they must believe that all the prophecies in Scripture are true prophecies, and that they will be duly fulfilled. But all this is in the sense intended by Scripture itself. We have not to believe whatever people think Scripture to mean by Antichrist, and by the prophecies concerning him. And very many absurd ideas have been taught by irresponsible people on this subject. There will come an Antichrist who will fulfill in the sense intended by Scripture the mysterious prophecies concerning him. More than that we are not obliged to believe.

The Antichrist is a reality, and not just a myth. We are not allowed to suggest that Almighty God would inspire the Sacred Writers to set down myths for our instruction. Antichrist will be a reality in the sense God knows and intends. Is Antichrist to be an individual being, or rather a general spirit of unbelief? We are free to interpret the future reality in either sense. But authors think that more probably Antichrist will be some definite human being because St. Paul calls him "the man of sin"-an unbelieving and immoral beast who will come by the power of Satan. That is the more general interpretation. But it is not a defined article of faith, and Catholics are obliged to believe simply that some great force opposed to Christ will arise prior to His Second Coming-a force which will deceive many members of the Church, and drag them into apostasy.

Death means the separation of body and soul. The body thereupon disintegrates and returns to dust. But the soul survives in a state of separation from the flesh, to experience either pleasant or unpleasant consequences according to the good or evil accomplished in this life.

The Bible tells us that the soul is the principle of life; that it is made in the image and likeness of God who is a Spirit possessing intelligence and will power; that the created spirit of man, although united with a material body, is not to be identified with that body, but that it differs from the body in its very nature. For the soul is spiritual, not material; it is immortal, not mortal. Thus Scripture declares that at death "the body returns to the dust from which it came, and the spirit to the God who gave it." If the soul simply perished with the body, it could not go back to the God who gave it. It would simply cease to be.

There is not a single text in Scripture proving the soul to be mortal. And certainly no Christian who understands his religion can deny immortality. Christ's reference to those who can kill the body, but who cannot kill the soul can mean only that the soul survives the fate of the body. Again, Christ refuted the Sadducees, who denied the immortality of the soul, by quoting the Scriptures where God said, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And He added, "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." St. Paul desired that the union between his soul and his body might be dissolved that he might be with Christ. He knew quite well that his soul would not become simply nonexistent. St. Peter tells us that the spirit of Christ, after His death on the Cross, went to preach to the souls of the departed-souls which had certainly survived the death of the body and were conscious of the doctrine manifested to them by our Lord. So clear is the evidence of the Bible in favor of immortality that those who profess belief in Scripture yet deny immortality must be accused of doing so merely because they do not want to believe that the soul survives.

Yes. When Christ quoted the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as being the God of the living, and not of the dead, He drew His reference from the Book of Exodus, III., 6. In Deut. XVIII., 11, God forbids the Jews to seek knowledge from the spirits of the dead. The text supposes the continued existence of departed souls, and merely forbids attempts to enter into communication with them. 1 Kgs. (Sam.) XXVIII., 15, narrates the fact that the soul of Samuel appeared to Saul, which could not be were the human soul not immortal. The Book of Wisdom describes the wicked as denying immortality for themselves but affirming it for the good. "For they have said, reasoning with themselves, but not rightly ... we are born of nothing and after this we shall be as if we had not been . . . our body shall be ashes, and our spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, passing away as the trace of a cloud. . . . But the souls of the just are in the hands of God; and the torment of death shall not touch them." Wisd. c. II. & III. Again, we read in the Old Testament, "It is a holy thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins." 2 Machabees, XII., 46. If the souls of men are nonexistent after death, they could not benefit by our prayers.

Yes. The most eminent of German Jewish Rabbis, Leo Baeck, in his book, "Das Wesen des Judentums," declares that the immortality of the soul is a doctrine of Judaism, and that "this life receives its meaning from the next." Dr. Kohler, Principal of an American College for the training of Jewish Rabbis, in his authoritative work, "Jewish Theology," says, "We all close our lives without having attained the goal of perfection towards which we strive." And he adds that our very nature demands a future life, and that the doctrine of immortality corresponds with the belief in God who cannot deceive the human heart. Another Rabbi, Morris Joseph, in his book, "Judaism as Creed and Life," writes, "The doctrine of immortality is an integral part of the Jewish creed. The transgressor who has not worked out his atonement here must complete it hereafter; whilst the Just, who can but have imperfectly realized their possibilities in this life, will realize them to the full in the life to come." In an essay on the subject, published in London in 1934, the Rabbi C. G. Montefiore writes, "The modern Jewish hope of immortality is sound and pure. The essence of our belief is this: With all the imperfections, the evil, the agony, the horrors, which have ever existed among men, and which still exist today, immortality seems to us to be the inseparable corollary or 'sequitur' to a belief in a ruling, a righteous, and a loving God. To that belief we wistfully cling because, hard as the world is to explain with God, harder still, as it seems to us, is it to explain the world without God. Into the character and nature of that immortality, Jews inquire seldom and little; yet whilst they do not depreciate this life because of that other life, it is just as false to say that, at the expense of that life, they unduly magnify this life." Such quotations prove the Jews to know that belief in immortality is quite in accordance with the teachings of the Old Testament.

There is not a single text in Scripture opposed to the Catholic doctrine of immortality.

The reference in Genesis is to preservation from that natural death of the composite human being which results from the dissolution of the union between soul and body. It is true that death in that sense is natural to man. For, although the soul is a spirit and immortal by its very nature, the body is by nature material and mortal. God gave our first parents the special privilege by a supernatural gift of immunity even from the law of natural death. The reference you quote merely indicates that, after sin had been committed, such immunity was lost irrevocably to humanity. We are all subject to the law of death, and to the necessity of separation between soul and body when the body is no longer fitted for the purposes of life. But the soul survives this dissolution; and nothing in the passage you quote suggests that it does not.

That is true. But when God spoke, Adam possessed the natural life of body and soul, and also the supernatural life in the spiritual order of God's grace. He was also, by special privilege, immune from that natural death which results from dissolution of soul and body. When he sinned, Adam lost the grace of God, his soul dying immediately to the supernatural life it gave; and also he at once forfeited any right to the privilege of immunity from natural bodily death in due course.

Correct. Our first parents, therefore, had either to believe God, treating Satan as a liar; or else to believe Satan, treating God as a liar. They preferred the word of Satan, and became subject to the penalty of death in the sense I have explained.

No. Such a conjecture would be as erroneous as that of the enemies of Christ who accused Him of casting out devils with the help of the devil.

The doctrine of immortality is not a denial of death in the sense Satan intended. The death God had threatened was the separation of the soul from His grace and friendship, and the later separation of the soul from the body. He did not threaten such a radical change in the very nature of the soul that it would cease to be immortal. Our denial that the soul will cease to exist is in no way based on Satan's denial of God's threat, and has no connection with it at all.

Man, consisting of body and soul, is certainly subject to death. No one denies that man, as a composite being in this life, is mortal. All must die. But whilst we bury the body from which the soul has departed, the soul lives on in a state beyond our control. And the continued life of the soul does not render Job's statement false, nor does Job's statement render the doctrine of the soul's immortality false.

The word "soul" is there used as a general expression for the complete living man still in this life; much as the distress signal S. O. S. is sometimes popularly interpreted as "Save Our Souls," meaning, "Save Our Lives." Or, again, as we might say, "There were 150 souls on board when the vessel sailed." To describe a complete thing by a part is quite a common figure of speech, as when we say, "So-and-so took sail for Europe." The passage you quote, therefore has no reference to the nature of the soul in itself; and no application whatever to the question as to whether it is immortal or not.

The verse you mention says that the eye of the Lord is upon them that hope in Him, to deliver their souls from death and "to keep them alive in famine." The last words should have shown you that the reference is to continued bodily life in this world, requiring the presence of the soul in the body. The text does not refer to the condition of the soul after death has separated it from the body.

That is true. But the Sacred Author is warning us simply that death ends all our activities in this world. He is referring in no way to what occurs beyond the grave. He speaks as any normal man would speak in similar circumstances. Thus, immediately prior to those words he says, "This is thy labor which thou takest under the sun." He intends, therefore, that death will end all opportunities of activity so far as life this side of the grave is concerned. How true this is you will discover by going to a cemetery and inviting those buried there to assist you in some enterprise, or to benefit you by their advice and instruction. But to the condition of the soul in the next world to which it has gone, the text has no reference whatever. And any ambiguity you might like to imagine is removed by the very author you quote, for in Ch. XII., 7, of the same Book we read that, when a man dies, the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the "spirit to God who gave it." It is against all sound principles of interpretation to forsake passages quite clear in themselves for fantastic opinions based upon strained and forced meanings read into texts which fit in quite well with the clearer passages if taken reasonably.

The personal pronoun is quite legitimately used without any implication concerning the future lot of the soul. If I were to say, "When I die, bury me in the family grave," no reasonable person could argue from that that I did not believe in the immortality and survival of the soul.

St. Paul tells us that the thought of death was most attractive to him. Why? Was it that he might lie unconscious in the grave? No. It was that he might "be with Christ," which is far better than living on still in this world.

That is a typical Hebraism intending no more than the complete destruction of living things from the face of the earth in a given area. The text has no reference to the immortality of the soul of man. Without any notion of the sense of a passage some people have but to see the word soul, and at once they conclude that they have further evidence of what they want to believe. It is useless to quote passages whose sane and normal explanation does not touch the question of the soul's immortality against others which admit of no other explanation save that the soul is not subject to death as is the body.

Correct. But you will notice that His death is described as due to the separation of His soul from His body. When He had poured out His soul, His body remained lifeless on the Cross. If at the moment His soul left His body it ceased to exist, it was nothing. One does not pour out nothing. Also, when dying, Christ said, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." He was commending something to His Father which was not suffering the fate of His body. It was His human and immortal soul.

In the passage you quote, Christ says, "Fear not them that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear them that can destroy both body and soul in hell." The first part of this text shows clearly that the death of the body inflicted by men does not involve the death of the soul. The soul, therefore, survives the death of the body, and is immortal. The second part of the text refers to the eternal and living death of all bodily comfort and of all the soul's fondest aspirations, which God will inflict on the wicked at the last judgment. According to Christ, this will mean continued consciousness in a never-ending state of misery where the worm of remorse dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. No wonder He warns us that this is the evil fate we should fear rather than a temporal death which affects the body only, and cannot wreck our eternity. The passage justifies, and does not militate against the doctrine that the soul is immortal.

I have no doubt at all as to that fact.

That was strictly true when Christ spoke. By the sin of our first parents, heaven was closed against human souls. Christ Himself was the Eternal Son of God, who came to redeem mankind, and who opened heaven to men by His death, resurrection, and ascension. At His ascension He was the first in human form to enter heaven. With Him at the same time went the souls of the just who had died previously in God's grace and friendship. And good souls now who go from this world find their heavenly reward quite accessible to them. Thus Christ said, "I go to prepare a place for you that where I am you also may be." St. Paul, therefore, longed for death saying, "I desire to be with Christ, which is far better."

The soul of David did not, and could not, enter heaven until Christ had paid the price of sin on Calvary, and had Himself entered heaven in His own glorified human nature. The fact that the soul of David did not go to heaven immediately when he died does not exclude his admission to heaven after Christ had opened heaven to men. Until then the soul of David was amongst those spirits to whom the still living soul of Christ went after His death on the Cross. 1 Pet. III., 18-19.

If you read the context from which you have taken your words, you will notice that St. Paul is speaking of God's judgment. He tells us that God is going to render to every man according to his deeds. And as this judgment is to take place after death, it follows that every soul, good or bad, will survive to experience that judgment. In verse 7 we are told that eternal life will be the reward of those who have sought "glory and honor and immortality." In verse 8 and verse 9 we are told that the unrighteous will meet with indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish. The eternal life and the immortality, therefore, which will be the reward of the good, will be a share in the very happiness of God and in that life of glory which alone is fully deserving of the name of life. St. Paul takes the ordinary immortality of the soul for granted, and warns us to seek an immortality of happiness by a life of virtue, rather than prepare for ourselves an immortality of tribulation and anguish by our sins and vices.

The reference is to the life of eternal happiness as opposed to a life of eternal misery. The text has no application in a discussion of the soul's natural survival.

That text refers explicitly to the resurrection of the body. No one denies that the body is mortal. But it will rise a "spiritual body," says St. Paul, "and put on immortality" in order to share once more the life of the soul which is immortal by nature.

The difference you imagine between the two teachings does not exist. The text you quote from the Bible means that God alone is immortal by a supreme and uncreated right, and that He is the source of any immortality possessed by others. In the same way Christ said, "God alone is good." That cannot be used as an argument that no man can possibly be "good." As regards the teaching of the Catholic Church concerning man, you are again inaccurate. The Church teaches that man, in his present composite state, is mortal; and that every man will surely die insofar as the present union of soul and body is concerned. But, whilst death will mean the separation of soul and body, the soul will persist in existence in accordance with its own spiritual nature; and precisely because, as the Bible teaches, the soul is made in the image and likeness of God, one of whose characteristics is immortality. He, the Uncreated Immortal, creates souls immortal like unto Himself. He owes His own immortality to no one; we owe the immortality of our souls to Him. So it is quite true that God alone has immortality both in Himself, and to confer it on others by His creative activity. The passage you quote also refers to that supernatural destiny of a heavenly immortality, which makes men happy with the very happiness of God when they attain to the very Vision of Him. Thus St. Paul promises the sight of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality of Light inaccessible, and whom no man by his own natural powers has seen or could see. Such immortality in the sense of never-ending happiness is to be found in God alone.

All who attain to an eternal life of happiness will owe it to the merits of Christ and union with Christ. The text has no reference to the question of the soul's inherent and natural immortality.

The passage refers explicitly to troubles to come upon the earth and, therefore, to men still in this world. People are called souls by synecdoche, or a figure of speech by which a complete being is described by a principal part. So one will say that he intends "to take sail" for a distant place, intending the complete boat on which he will travel. The death referred to was the dissolution of soul and body, even as we say the 18 souls perished in a railway accident. Your text has no application to the question of the soul's immortality.

The doctrine of original sin dates from the origin of humanity, hundreds of centuries before such legends as that of Pandora's Box were invented. But, granted original sin, it is most natural that vestiges of the primitive truth would find expression in just such stories. In whatever form various peoples have preserved the story of the original fall of man, the fact that they all have a tradition of original sin points to a common origin from which such a tradition could be drawn. And that common origin was not a myth. It was the actual fall of our first parents.

One would be justified in saying that humanity hasn't risen very far; and that modern materialistic philosophy tends only to drag it down rather than to lift it to further heights. It is quite true that the account of the fall is contained in ancient Hebrew literature. But you beg the question when you declare it to be a legend, as if it may thus be dismissed as fiction. For the whole point at issue is as to whether it is fiction or not. It is for the critic to prove that it is fiction, not just to say so. Meantime, science has really nothing to say on the subject. For the fall of man was a fact of the moral order, which is beyond the scope of science.

I believe the Biblical truth that our first parents were endowed with a proportionate natural perfection, and that they were further enriched with additional spiritual gifts and privileges, I believe that by sin they lost these additional privileges, and gave rise to a posterity deprived of them, and prone also to moral weaknesses. This belief in no way conflicts with any scientific facts.

There are. If you deny original sin, you will find man a much greater mystery than original sin itself. It is fearfully difficult to understand the human race without admitting original sin; whilst the difficulty vanishes the moment we accept the doctrine. We know that God has revealed the doctrine, and by faith we accept it- the only reasonable thing to do. But reason alone points always in the direction of an original and inherited moral catastrophe. Nature does not know paradox; yet we have the human paradox. Our very miseries are our greatness because they proceed from our high aspirations; and our greatness is our misery because our high aspirations seek such miserable things. Meantime, we see inherent in man monstrous egotism, pride, covetousness, and iniquity. He who denies sin in himself is always denouncing it in others, and accusing God of not being either wise or good. We see in man the misery of a dethroned king. He is fallen from his true place, and cannot recover it. What is good in him is from his Creator; what is bad is the unhappy effect of his fall.

We do not believe that a fall was the very first result. The very first result was the service of God with the initial perfections God gave to our first parents. There is no indication in the Bible that they fell immediately from their state of innocence. However, we know that eventually they did fall from a state of supernatural grace and holiness into a state of sin. But this was not the result of their gifts. It was a result of a misuse of the powers conferred upon them. By the very gifts which were a condition of its possibility, they could have avoided moral evil. However, our first parents fell into sin, and original sin has been transmitted to all men through the centuries.

When we say that man is made in the image and likeness of God we do not mean that man is a perfect replica of God. We mean that he is truly like God insofar as his soul is spiritual, and endowed with intelligence and free will. And he is relatively perfect in these things according to the demands of his own created, human, and finite level. How could the perfect fall? The absolutely perfect could not fall. Thus God, infinitely perfect and supremely free, could not fall into imperfect or sinful conduct. He is not free to sin precisely because He must be free from evil or the possibility of evil. But man has a freedom of will which is associated, not with infinite intelligence, but with a finite intelligence. And since the finite intelligence cannot see all aspects of everything at once, it is possible for man to concentrate upon one aspect rather than another. Thus a man can concentrate on the advantages of $500 which he has an opportunity to steal, and omit to give his attention to the aspect of dishonesty. It is obvious that, if he has free will, sin is possible. Granted an object with both a good and a bad aspect, he who has free will can choose to dwell upon an alluring aspect, to the exclusion of all other aspects. Your difficulty would be insoluble in the case of an infinitely and absolutely perfect being; but not where only a relatively perfect creature is concerned.

Correct.

He could not make anything morally evil or wicked. Nor, from the merely physical point of view could He directly make anything positively imperfect. Positively and directly His work is always good. But He can grant to some creatures a few good qualities, and to other creatures a greater number of good qualities. Each thing will then be relatively perfect in its own degree and according to His plan. For example, a cabbage may be relatively perfect as a cabbage, but it is imperfect in comparison with an animal which has the additional powers of sensation and locomotion, and still more imperfect in comparison with man who possesses intelligence. Although God is infinitely perfect, therefore, He can distribute created perfections in varying degrees in order to secure a gradation and harmony of different beings in the universe. Lesser creatures are imperfect in comparison with higher creatures, but they are perfect in their own kind and degree. But you are concerned chiefly with the problem of moral imperfection, not physical limitations. So let us turn to your next remark.

Man was created perfect in the sense that he was all that God intended a man to be. Of course, as a creature, he necessarily had the limitations proper to all creatures as such. But you wrongly argue from his disobedience to some radical imperfection in his nature which should not have been there. As a matter of fact, the disobedience of which man was guilty was due, not to an imperfection, but to a perfection over and above the perfections of lesser creatures. It was due to freedom of will. That is man's great dignity. Free will, however, whilst it gives us the power of self-chosen good actions also carries with it the risk of self-chosen bad actions. But in man, as he was created by God, there were no implanted tendencies to evil, and he was given the knowledge of what ought to be avoided. But there was no physical compulsion to choose either good or evil. That had to be his own choice. And, despite God's warning, man chose evil. This misuse of freedom was not due to the fact that he was not created perfect. It was rendered possible precisely because he was given the perfection of self-determination. The abuse of that perfection was not God's responsibility, but man's own responsibility.

God did not create us imperfect. Had He not given us free will, we would have been less perfect than He actually made us. You are confusing the abuse of a good gift with the possession of that good gift. The possession of free will is a perfection. The abuse of free will is the imperfection, but God neither created nor caused that abuse. You may say that God at least gave us the ability to make a bad choice. But you must look at it from the other viewpoint also. God gave us the ability to make a good choice, to exercise a moral virtue of which irrational creatures are not capable. And He intended that we should freely make that good choice, warning us against an evil choice, and forbidding it. Since we were not obliged to make an evil choice, but forbidden it, and warned against it, the responsibility for any evil choice made rests with man himself. We cannot shift the blame from ourselves to God.

Correct.

It had. But you were reasoning from wrong premises. And if your logical process is sound, you can arrive only at a wrong conclusion from wrong premises.

The invoking of the law of universal causation is one thing. The application of that law to the wrong cause is quite another.

Correct.

Not for a moment do I forget that some object must be presented as attractive in some way before a choice is made. But whilst I admit that no deliberate choice is made without a motive, I deny that the motive necessitates the choice.

I do not deny that there were natural appetites in man which were stimulated by the attractive object wrongly chosen. But I do deny that the responsive instincts compelled the will to make the evil choice of pleasures forbidden by God. God would not forbid what man must necessarily do.

You are mistaken as to the Christian belief. Man would not have been perfect as a man unless he had natural instincts.

They are implanted in us by God. Man consists of a soul and a body. His soul is spiritual, intelligent, and endowed with free will; and it is made in the image and likeness of God. His body is material, sensitive, and animal; and from the very beginning it was endowed with instincts proper to an animal nature. Those instincts are not evil in themselves.

I agree.

Correct. But you are not making much headway. What you have to prove is that animal instinct necessarily impels the will to act in accordance with it. You are not making the required distinctions between the sensitive bodily nature of man with its sensitive appetites, and the intelligent spiritual soul with its rational appetite for the things of the spirit. A child may profess to see a sentence written on a blackboard. But it may not have the least understanding of what the sentence means. It sees only chalk marks with bodily eyes, a sense of sight possessed equally by a dog or any other animal. When the teacher throws light on the meaning of the sentence, the child cries, "Now I see." The child saw before, with eyes only. Now it sees with its mind. Human beings have two classes of knowledge, sense knowledge, and rational knowledge. And to each type of knowledge corresponds an appetite power, animal passion, and the rational will. The will is not compelled to follow animal instinct. Thus a child may like cakes yet be forbidden to touch them. The sight of the cakes may stimulate an animal craving for them, and awaken strong imaginations of the pleasure to be got from eating them. But the intelligence may perceive a different kind of goodness in the virtue of obedience. It is free to omit due consideration of this aspect, concentrate only on animal cravings, and choose to eat the cakes. Or it can choose to concentrate on the good of obedience, and put aside all thought of disobediently following its natural instincts to eat the cakes. What you have to prove is that the child is not free to resist its lower animal appetites.

I do. For man had no evil propensities as he commenced his career. He had a twofold nature, spiritual in his soul, material in his animal body. The body, being sensitive, was naturally subject to sensations, or instinctive feelings. These instinctive feelings or natural appetites were in no way evil in themselves. Nothing that God implanted in human nature could be bad in itself. But the natural bodily instincts were subject to the control of the soul. By his intelligence man knew clearly how his instincts ought to be controlled and regulated according to their true purpose and God's designs. By his will, man was well able to exercise due control. His passions did not control him. He controlled them. But man's will was free. God gave him the perfection of liberty, that he might not be a mere automaton, but live according to the self-chosen virtue which constitutes man's real dignity. God forbade any evil choice which would be an abuse of this freedom of will; but He would not compel man to be good. Despite his ability to do well, and despite God's warning, man disobeyed God. And God was not responsible for that sin, which man need not have committed, which God forbade, and against which God had warned him.

You seem inclined to deny both the justice of God, and the freedom of the will. From both viewpoints that would land you in far greater difficulties than any that confront me. But, before I continue, I must clear up your misconception as to my own position. We were discussing the sin of the first man, who possessed human nature as God created it. But now you have in mind human nature as possessed by man subsequently to that first sin. You must remember that, because of that first sin, we are children of a fallen race. Our natures are warped to some extent. For when man's soul would not be controlled by God, he found disorder in his own nature, bodily passions tending to revolt against the control of the will. This did not destroy the power of free will, but it made its exercise more difficult; and diminished the limits of responsibility, according to the duration and intensity of the interference with freedom of choice. I do not, therefore, maintain the entire freedom of the will. The degree of freedom varies in different individuals, and in the same individual under different conditions. But this does not justify an entire negation of free will. Virtue and vice as such are confined to the will. There can be no sin except in a will freely choosing to do an evil it is not compelled to do. And there are many evils deliberately chosen by men which they were free not to choose.

I agree. Both heredity and environment give men a very unequal start in life.

That would be unfair. God, therefore, will not do so.

I do not remember ever having said that. I have maintained the general proposition that human beings are endowed with free will. In disputing that you appeal to particular cases which do not prove the universal negative that no human being has free will; also you omit my allowance for the warped nature of man since the first sin brought disorder in its wake.

So do I. But granted relative limitations in the exercise of freedom, I maintain that insofar as each is genuinely free to refuse individual immoral decisions, he is guilty of sin before God, and personally responsible for it. And I deny that he is never sufficiently free in any individual decisions as to be guilty of sin, unless he be an imbecile devoid of the use of reason.

I do. But that does not affect my contention that human beings as human beings are endowed with free will. It proves only that some human beings in some circumstances will have greater difficulty in exercising their free will than others; a proposition I have never denied.

He would certainly be the exceptional man who could entirely resist the influence of such surroundings. But I deny that any man, provided he be sane, is never able at any time to resist any of the evil influences around him. And if he is ever able on any occasion to exercise freedom of choice, the thesis stands that human beings are endowed with free will.

If God judged men solely upon their actual conduct, without making any allowance for factors mitigating responsibility, justice would be a mockery. But God does not judge men like that. God will never blame any man for what is really involuntary. And where evil conduct is due to one's voluntary choice, God will make every allowance for degrees of volition. Semi-deliberate actions will be less guilty in His sight than fully deliberate actions. All the obstacles to a free choice in a right direction will be taken into consideration, ignorance, external violence, inherited evil tendencies, vicious habits, personally acquired antecedently to each sin to be judged, physical and nervous health, fears, imaginary or real, influences of environment, all will be weighed in the scales of justice. And that justice will not be a mockery. There is nothing in your letter which warrants a denial of free will in man. In fact, deny free will, and justice becomes a mockery. For then a man in the most favorable circumstances and environment is no more to be blamed for evil conduct than the one in the most unfavorable environment.

I do.

I do not. He is responsible for their welfare. He is not responsible for their sins. God fulfills all that His responsibility demands, a responsibility due, of course, to His own justice and wisdom and goodness. He has endowed us with all the good gifts we possess, including the dignity of intelligence and free will. He endows us with a moral sense or conscience to warn us of the evils we must avoid. He will see to it that everyone is given sufficient grace for salvation, so that no soul will be lost save through its own deliberate fault. In fact, He will see to it that multitudes are given sufficient grace to repent and be saved despite the fact that they have deserved to be lost through their own deliberate sins.

I do not teach that. The Catholic Church condemns as heresy the doctrine that any single soul is doomed to eternal suffering. The only destiny human souls are meant by God to attain is a destiny of eternal happiness; and every single soul is able to attain eternal happiness. But man's destiny is in his own keeping. If he goes to hell, it will be due to a choice of evil which he is not compelled to make, for which he is fully responsible, which God forbids, and of which he does not repent before death. A man cannot be said to be doomed to a disaster he need never encounter. Likewise, even granted that those who do choose to lose their souls are not compelled to do so, the Catholic Church has no teaching as to the number of men who will do so. She teaches that man is endowed with free will; that God gives to every man sufficient grace for salvation; that man is capable of resisting that grace and of losing his soul; that if he does lose his soul he will justly reap the fruit of his own evil choice by eternal suffering in hell. How many will make that final evil choice is known only to God. But since the choice can be made, it is each man's duty to avoid making it, repenting of past sins, and endeavoring to comply with the requirements of virtue. And so the Church contents herself with the advice to each man which Christ gave when He said, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he suffers the loss of his soul? Seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice."

It is, precisely because human beings are endowed with free will, and can, therefore, decide for themselves what shall be their eternal destiny. But if there be no such thing as free will, then the problem is of comparatively little importance; for it's a waste of time to worry about the inevitable. However, the matter is important; and for that reason I have given such lengthy treatment to your letter. I can only hope that my treatment of it has clarified some aspects of the question even if it has not yet removed all your difficulties. I would be rather astonished if it did remove all your difficulties, for I haven't succeeded yet in removing all my own. But I know that free will is a fact despite all the residual problems it leaves for the human mind, even as I know that wireless transmission is a fact though it teems with mysteries. But ten thousand difficulties concerning a fact do not make us doubt the fact. It is a fact that God is just. It is a fact that men have free will. If we cannot reconcile those two facts to our entire satisfaction, the only reasonable thing to do is accept the limitations of the human mind, and not begin tampering with the facts in order to get an answer we like, whether it be true or not.

No. The eating of the forbidden fruit was an action which was the outcome of an interior disposition of rebellion against God's will.

The first sin was not the sin of adultery. Had Adam and Eve never sinned, they would have propagated children by the ordinary law of physical marital union which prevails today. The first sin could not have been one of sensuality. Man consists of body and soul; and it is clear that the soul, noble and spiritual, is meant to control the material body and its sensitive passions. Now before sin came, man was just as he ought to be. In our first parents then the body was perfectly subject to, and controlled by the soul. Bodily passions were subject to reason and will, and could not get out of control until the soul itself had lost that control. It was only after the soul itself had rebelled against God that passions in turn rebelled against the soul. When man would not be controlled by God, he found that he had great difficulty in controlling his own lower passions.

That cannot be admitted. God does nothing in vain; and He intended the proper use of all the powers with which He endowed human beings. Man is not merely spiritual. He is a composite being, consisting of both a spiritual soul and a material body. Moreover, God created both sexes, male and female, intending their union as a means towards cooperating with Him in the work of creation. There is nothing evil, but only that which is beautiful, in what God originally intended; and until sin came to pervert the right order which prevailed, quite normal relationships would have existed between Adam and Eve.

Because they had the limitations of finite intelligence, and free will. When Satan tempted them, two goods, the one real and the other only apparent, were put before them. The real good of which God had told them was obedience to their Creator. The apparent good proposed by Satan was independence of God, and self-sufficiency. "Do this," said Satan, "and you will know even as God knows." The limitations of their intelligence meant that the more they concentrated their attention on one of these aspects the more they would take it off the other. Now their wills were free. No outside pressure inclined them to the one side rather than to the other. They could have chosen to obey God despite all the suggestions of the devil. But they omitted due attention to God's command. They allowed their minds to become absorbed by the apparent advantages proposed by Satan. And from their original equilibrium they inclined more and more towards the fascinating prospect held out by the devil until it seemed far the better. In the end they actually chose the forbidden thing-with consequent sin. Then, when the will had gone wrong, all else went wrong; and they experienced for the first time the disorderly rebellion of sensuality and passion; and shame overwhelmed them. The first sin, therefore, was one of proud independence and disobedience in the higher faculties. It was possible because of the limitations of the human mind, and the possession of freedom of will. It became actual because of an abuse of that freedom. And this led to a derangement of the whole human personality, including ill effects upon both soul and body-a derangement which, in all its complexity, has become the inheritance of all children born of our guilty race.

Yes. Prior to the first sin men were free from suffering.

It is true that animals suffer. But the Catholic Church does not teach that all the pain in this world of both human beings and of animals is due to original sin. A certain amount of pain is natural to living sensitive beings. Even God could not create sensitive beings naturally devoid of sensations. And, granted sensations, some of them are bound to be unpleasant, if only from climatic changes. But in many ways animals suffered before our first parents sinned at all. St. Thomas Aquinas denies that there was no suffering amongst animals before the first sin of mankind. "There are those who say," he wrote, "that animals which are now wild and kill other animals for food would have been meek and gentle, not only towards men, but towards other animals. But this is unreasonable. For by the sin of man the nature of animals was not changed. Those animals which now live on the flesh of other animals would not then have lived on vegetation." We do not teach, then, that the sufferings of animals are due to the sin of man. By a special act of His providence, however, God exempted human beings from any unpleasant sensations which would otherwise have been normal to their sensitive natures. And they would have continued to enjoy this exemption had they not sinned. This privilege animals did not enjoy. Unhappily, our first parents did sin, lost their exemption, and encountered the sufferings as a penalty. To refuse the Christian doctrine one would have to prove, not that animals suffer, but that God did not exempt human beings from such sufferings; and that they did not forfeit this exemption by their sin. No man will ever succeed in proving that God granted no such exemption to our first parents, and that they did not lose it by sin.

That human beings have to die is a punishment for sin. We have God's word for that, and we could not have a better authority. Man is, of course, by virtue of his material and bodily nature liable to death. No one denies that. But by a special privilege man was granted immunity from the necessity of having to die. By God's special power man was to be immortal both in soul and body. This privilege was not natural, but supernatural. In Gen. II., 17, God warned our first parents that they would lose this privilege of immunity from death should they sin; and in Gen. III., 19, He told them that, as a result of their sin, they would return to the dust from which their bodies were made.

They did. But no claim is made that animals ever received the privilege of immunity from death.

Yes. Henceforth men found in themselves an inordinate tendency to devote themselves to material things beyond the due limits dictated by God's laws and by sound reason. The body is of the earth, but the soul is spiritual, made in the image and likeness of God. The soul is obviously intended, as the nobler element in man, to dominate and control the material body. And its normal tendency should be to do so. But, since the fall, man's nature is not normal. It is warped to some extent. And instead of the soul lifting man to God, the body only too often succeeds in dragging man down to the mud of mere materialism. Since the fall, therefore, man has a more difficult fight in his efforts to resist the fascination of merely material things.

No. Remember that millions of men, learned and holy, have reverenced this mystery; and no unbeliever has loved justice as they. But let us take the problem: Injustice is the depriving of a right. But we had no right to be born in a state of grace and of supernatural dignity and immunities. The very word grace means gratuitous. Can the son of a poor man complain that it was unjust that he was not born of a rich man? Our first parents fell from a state of supernatural wealth compared with which a merely natural state is poverty indeed. And we were born in a state of spiritual bankruptcy. Original conditions are imposed upon all of us because of our fathers. We may regret inherited disabilities, but we cannot say that they are unjust. We have not lost what was due to us. It is curious that unbelievers scoff at the idea of grace and of the supernatural, insisting that everything is natural only; yet they worry over what they call the injustice of our being born without superfluous privileges.

The chief effect is the privation of grace. But other effects followed, as if heirs to great wealth, losing their fortune, fell into other evils owing to an environment for which they were neither intended nor suited.

Original sin is not strictly speaking an individual responsibility. It is a sin of human nature which is ours as sharers in that human nature. Nor, strictly speaking, are you punished. But a member of a guilty race cannot expect to be treated as if he belonged to a faithful race.

No. That text does not really refer to original sin. God said, "I am the Lord, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon their children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto thousands to them that love Me and keep My commandments." The passage is really a warning against parental bad example. Evil parents leave a legacy of scandal, their children imitating their vices. And so powerful a force for evil is such parental bad example that it will scarcely die out under three or four generations. As the punishment of sin will fall upon all who hate God, such parents will be punished not only personally, but in their very children. If the children sin also, it is not because they are compelled to do so. Only the generations that hate God will be punished. God will show mercy to all who try to love and serve Him, even though they be children of evil parents.

In the sense in whichI have already explained, the text rather predicts a family influence than conveys a threat. Human beings are not only isolated individuals. There is a bond of solidarity between parents and children. Parents live over again in their children; and even in ordinary affairs parents and children are affected by the family fortunes. God merely told the Jews that the same principle would affect their spiritual state. It was a telling way of bringing home to the Jews the consequences of their sins. It struck them where their natural love was strongest-in their offspring. And, as should be clear, it was a warning to the parents rather than to their children. God also made it clear that, by their own fidelity, children could avert an evil inheritance. For by the Prophet Ezechiel He says that, if a child sees all his father's sins, and is afraid, and refuses to do the like, then such a child shall not suffer for the sins of his father. And if men say, "Why hath not this son borne the iniquity of his father?, it is because the son hath wrought justice and hath kept all My commandments."

No. But that is not a parallel case. For you are introducing, not a relationship between the Creator and the creature, but a relationship between creature and creature. We are not God. Also our punishment of the children of criminals would not be by the withdrawal of supernatural privileges from them and from their parents. Your difficulties are based on mistaken notions of what the fall and punishment of the human race really means.

Such a verdict is the utterance of folly itself.

Independently of the death of Christ, God will make provision for them in perfect harmony with His justice, and in a way which will in no point conflict with His mercy.

No one teaches that it is a sin to be a descendant of Adam. The only sin of such children is that which they inherit from Adam. That sin is not a positive personal sin, but a privation of grace, or of a gratuitous supernatural gift never due to human nature. And to be without a gift to which one never had a right involves no injustice.

That is not true. God no more prevents them from seeing Him than He can be said to prevent kittens from flying because He did not give them wings. Is God unjust to kittens because He does not make them flying foxes? Would they be justified in bitter complaints against His justice because He has not endowed them with a power with which He could have endowed them? If kittens cannot fly, it is their own natural incapability which prevents them from flying. And if unbaptized infants cannot see God after their death as God sees Himself, it is their own natural incapability which prevents them from doing so. They are simply without the superadded gift of being capable of operations proper to God, and retain merely the capability of operations proper to human nature. Again, you are wrong in saying that they are prevented from attaining perfect happiness. They do not attain the perfect happiness made possible to those who participate by Baptism in the supernatural and gratuitous destiny purchased for us by Christ. But they attain a perfect happiness proportionate to their nature and all its legitimate aspirations. A kitten can be perfectly happy as a kitten, even though it does not enjoy the additional happiness of flying which is the prerogative of animals endowed with wings.

No trace of injustice enters into this matter. Unbaptized infants will bless God for all eternity in their perfect natural happiness. Their very existence is due to God's mercy; for that in itself was a gratuitous gift which justice did not demand. And their eternal natural happiness is assured. It may be on a lower plane than is possible to human nature elevated by divine grace. But it is still a very great gift, filling the souls of those children with gratitude to God. If I give five dollars to a beggar, and later on ten dollars to another beggar, could the first beggar accuse me of "merciless injustice" for having been good to him to a less extent than to the other?

It would not have been more merciful to deprive all men of that noblest gift which makes their true dignity, and makes it possible for them to attain an eternal supernatural destiny. It is because unbaptized infants have not attained to the use of free will that they cannot gain, even by baptism of desire, that supernatural destiny. And, therefore, it is because they have not attained to the use of free will that they are provided with eternal happiness on a lower plane than that possible to those able to make a choice. And you call this provision for them "merciless injustice." Now you suggest that it would have been more merciful for God to have reduced all men to a similar condition.

It is probable that He was born on December 25th, our present Christmas Day. I say that this is probable, because there is really no strict proof in favor of the exact day. Traditionally, we can say that there is much more for it than against it. There is more difficulty as regards the exact year. It is certain that Christ was born after the Roman year 747, and before the Roman year 749. That is, He was born between 5 and 7 years before the usually accepted year 1 of the Christian era.

From the mistakes of those who originated our present calendar. In the year 525, Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, decided to draw up an exact calendar for the Christian era. He calculated that Christ was born in the year 753 after the founding of Rome. But it is certain that he was mistaken. For Herod, who persecuted Christ and slaughtered the innocents, died in April, 750. Herod could not have persecuted Christ if our Lord was not born until 3 years after Herod's death! Again, Herod was in Jerusalem when he sought to destroy Christ, yet left Jerusalem for good in November, 749. Therefore, our Lord must have been born by then. Moreover, Herod made diligent inquiry of the Wise Men as to the circumstances of our Lord's birth, and decided to kill all the male children of two years and under. Evidently, then, our Lord was at least one year old, or even perhaps 18 months. If we deduct two years from 749 we get back to 747. If Christ was born in 747, after the founding of Rome, instead of 753 as Dionysius thought, He was born six years before our present mistaken calendar supposes. It need scarcely be said that the uncertainty of human calculations as to time in no way affects the fact of the birth of Christ.

Our Lord's life, from the moment He commenced it, was a practical instruction for all time. But our Lord did not undertake the public preaching of His religion until He was about thirty years of age. There were several reasons for this. He wished to sanctify home life by His long submission to Joseph and Mary, setting the example of obedience to parents, and showing the supreme importance of domestic society. What home life is the national life will be. Again, our Lord wished to do and to teach; and, therefore, He gave years to the exemplification of virtue before He preached it. He wished also to be faithful to the Jewish Law, which did not permit one to teach religion until 30 years of age, which was regarded as the age of maturity of thought and judgment. Christ would not give the Jews the excuse to reject Him on the score that He was under the legal age of teachers in religious matters.

That is not quite true. St. Luke tells us that Jesus went down to Nazareth, and that He was subject to Joseph and Mary. The Greek word used by St. Luke implies that He was continuously subject to them.

St. Luke's assurance that He went down to Nazareth and continued there in subjection to Joseph and Mary certainly does not bear out the notion that He went off to India. Nor is there a trace of evidence that He did. And most certainly Christ neither preached Buddhistic doctrines, nor derived His teachings from Buddhism in any shape or form. Christ said simply, "My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me." To the Apostles He said, "All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known to you." He did not say, "All things that I have heard from the Buddhist monks." Again He said to Nicodemus, "No man hath ascended into heaven but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven ... how will you believe if I speak to you heavenly things?" He did not say "Indian" things. Christ's character merits credence. The accusation that He preached Buddhism denies His veracity; and not only is there no evidence for it; it is against the evidence that does exist.

That is not really true. Religion is natural to man as well as a conscience dictating natural ethics. The moral aspirations of men will, therefore, lead to certain similar ethical principles. But to construct a journey to India, and to picture Christ sitting at the feet of Buddhist teachers on a few vague similarities is fanciful in the extreme; and above all, when the dissimilarities are far more significant. In reality the moral teachings of Buddhism are nothing like those of the Sermon on the Mount. Such good and natural ideas as exist in Buddhism bear only a superficial likeness to the doctrine of Christ. Christ taught supernatural virtue to be exercised with the help of God's grace, and from motives of pure love of God. Buddhism knows nothing of this. It teaches natural virtue only, from motives of self-love, or merely natural sympathy. There is nothing in Buddhistic teaching which surpasses the natural ingenuity of man; and the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount is entirely different from anything in Buddhism. St. Matthew records that, when Christ finished speaking, the "people were in admiration at His doctrine, for He was teaching them as one having power, and not as the Scribes and Pharisees." And we can equally say, "not as the Buddhists." Christ's doctrine in itself, and in the manner in which He taught it, and in the source He claimed for it, rules out any possibility of its derivation from Buddhism.

Christ was God in human form; and God does not make mistakes.

The Gospels show just the opposite. Asked when the end of the world would come, Christ expressly said that He would give no information on that point. "Of that hour and day," He said, "no man knoweth. No, not the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone." When He said "nor the Son," He meant that Son as talking to those around Him; i. e., the Son in human form. The time when the end of the world would occur was not part of His message to mankind. He taught that judgment will come unexpectedly, deliberately leaving it uncertain as to when it would happen. However, He implies that it would not soon arrive-certainly not before the death of His immediate hearers. When He commissioned the Apostles to go and to teach all nations, likening His Church to a slowly growing tree, He knew that there would be time for all these things; and He promised to be with His Church all days, even till the consummation of the world. He could not have spoken like that had He thought the end of the world to be close at hand.

Both that He was without sin of any kind, and that He was absolutely incapable of sin. That necessarily follows from the Catholic doctrine that He was truly God, and could never cease to be God.

Satan was obviously unaware that Jesus was the very Son of God in human form. He would not have tempted Him had he known that. But he at least knew that God had endowed Him with supernatural power, that Jesus was perhaps the Messiah, and that he himself had all to fear if Jesus used this power according to God's will. So he tried at least to induce Jesus to violate God's will. The temptation was permitted, even though Christ was impeccable, not as a matter of mere routine, but for our instruction. We are taught that, no matter how holy we may be, we cannot expect to be free from temptation; and Christ gives us an example how to behave when actually tempted. Moreover, by undergoing the temptation He fills us with confidence in His mercy, that He should deign to share our temptations; and also, by His victory, He merits for us the grace to overcome our own trials.

Jesus could not sin; yet the temptation was real. You will say, "But how can that be?" It could be a non-use of His divine power on the part of Jesus to the extent of allowing His human nature to experience quite natural cravings, even as He allowed that human nature to endure the sufferings of the agony in the garden of Gethsemane, and even the sense of dereliction on the cross. By calling on His divine power, Christ could have spared Himself those sufferings, but He did not. In the temptation He permitted His lower and created nature a distressing struggle between the adherence of His human will to the will of God, and the satisfaction to be found in yielding to what Satan proposed. The struggle was never allowed to get out of bounds, but it was endured. Though Jesus could not have consented, He encountered the suggestion of attractions, and experienced them as attractions, even as the Saints who could but do not consent, or sinners who do consent. And the deliberate conforming of His human will to the divine will was not less violent because it had to be, than it would otherwise have been.

God

Man

Religion

The Religion of the Bible

The Christian Religion

A Definite Christian Faith

The Problem of Reunion

The Truth of Catholicism

The Church and the Bible

The Dogmas of the Catholic Church

Moral Teachings of the Catholic Church

The Church in Her Worship

The Church and Social Welfare

Catholic Apologetics in Question & Answer Form

God

Man

Religion

The Religion of the Bible

The Christian Religion

A Definite Christian Faith

The Problem of Reunion

The Truth of Catholicism

The Church and the Bible

The Dogmas of the Catholic Church

Moral Teachings of the Catholic Church

The Church in Her Worship

The Church and Social Welfare

QUESTIONS IN VOLUME 3

601. Is his influence confined to the effects of original sin?

602. Why should a man he condemned if he falls a victim to the super-intelligence of the devil?

603. If God wills all men to he saved, why does He ever allow Satan, to defeat that end?

604. Since the devil has some success in persuading men to choose evil, why doesn't God do away with him to prevent further harm?

605. Must Catholics believe in an Antichrist?

606. Must we believe that he is a real being, or that he is just a myth?

607. What happens when a man dies?

608. Please tell us from the Bible what the soul is.

609. Thousands of Christians can quote texts which unmistakably prove the soul to be, not immortal, but mortal.

610. Is there any reference in the Old Testament supporting the idea that the soul is immortal?

611. Do Jews, who accept the Old Testament, believe in the immortality of the soul?

612. You quote the Bible where it suits you, but you ignore all those sections of the Bible which exclude the idea of immortality.

613. Genesis tells us that God guarded the Tree of Life lest men should eat of it and "live forever." Man cannot, therefore, have immortality by nature.

614. In Gen. II., 17, God told Adam that he would die if he ate the forbidden fruit.

615. In Gen. III., 4, Satan said, "Ye shall not surely die."

616. Did not Rome get its doctrine of immortality from the word of Satan?

617. Satan said men would not die.

618. Job, c. XIV., declares that man is mortal.

619. Job, XXXIII., 18-30, speaks of the soul as in danger of destruction.

620. Psalm XXXIII., 19, says that the soul is subject to death.

621. Ecclesiastes, IX., 10, says, "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest."

622. The words in the text, "Whither thou goest" indicate that more than the body goes to the grave. It means man's whole being.

623. It seems to me that the dead lie unconscious in the grave until Christ's Second Coming.

624. Isaiah X., 18, says that the glory of the forest shall be consumed "from the soul even to the flesh."

625. Isaiah LIII., 12, says that Christ's soul "was poured out unto death."

626. Matt. X., 28, speaks of the destruction of both soul and body in hell.

627. Do you think the soul of David has survived and is in heaven?

628. In Jn. III., 13, Christ says, "No man hath ascended into heaven."

629. St. Peter said, "David ascended not into heaven."

630. Rom. II., 7, tells us to seek for immortality. One does not seek for what he already possesses.

631. Rom. VI., 23, tells us that eternal life is the gift of God.

632. 1 Cor. XV., 53, tells us that "this mortal must put on immortality."

633. 1 Tim. VI., 16, says that "God alone hath immortality." The Catholic Church teaches that man is immortal. Who is right?

634. 1 Jn. V., 12, says, "Only he that hath the Son hath eternal life."

635. Rev. XVI., 3, says that "the souls that were in the sea died."

636. To the modern mind your doctrine of original sin is but the old myth of Pandora's Box in a new dress.

637. The idea that mankind has fallen is clearly a legend of ancient Hebrew literature. It finds no sympathy with modern scientific thought which holds that man has risen continuously from primitive beginnings.

638. Do you still believe in these days that man fell from some higher kind of existence?

639. Surely there are some indications of original sin still available!

640. So you believe that the very first result of all man's wonderful gifts was a fall; in fact, such a terrific crash that it has resounded through all succeeding centuries!

641. If man was made in the image and likeness of God, he must have been perfect. How could the perfect fall?

642. God is infinitely perfect, and omnipotent.

643. Then how could He make anything evil or imperfect?

644. Man was not created perfect, otherwise he would not have disobeyed in the Garden of Eden.

645. If it is just as easy for God to create perfection as imperfection why did He create us imperfect?

646. You said it was a fallacy to conclude that God was responsible for man's fall into sin if the creation story be true.

647. At least my proposition has a basis of reasoning behind it.

648. It conforms with the law of Universal Causation.

649. You say that the cause of man's sin was man's own free will?

650. You forget that there must first have been forces operating upon this intelligence or free will itself.

651. These forces, I submit, were the natural instincts of man, implanted by God in his very nature.

652. Of course, I know that you will say that this is not Christian teaching, because Christian belief is that man was created perfect, and could not, therefore, have had such natural instincts.