Disorder

[Apotheoun]

Duplicate post.

Edited June 11, 2013 by Apotheoun

[beatitude]

If homosexual acts are sinful, does it mean that borderline acts are sinful?

 

I think you are missing the point of what is being said here. Homosexuality is not a psychological disorder and the Church has never said that it is. You can't compare it to mental illness.

 

I have noticed that you are making a lot of threads about culpability and sinfulness in people with mental health problems, especially personality disorders. I am going to ask a question that you don't have to answer: have you been diagnosed with BPD or a related illness, and is it causing you worry? If yes, then fishing about for reassurance in the way that you are doing is not the most appropriate way to address your concerns - you need to speak openly with people you trust. If no, then I think you need to ask yourself why you are so preoccupied with people experiencing mental distress.

[Apotheoun]

I should also point out that the phrase "sins, voluntary and involuntary" is commonly used in the Byzantine liturgy, and as the old saying goes, "the rule of prayer determines the rule of faith."

[Anastasia13]

Seems others have answered your main question, so I'm just wondering

 

 

 I have hear Oriental Orthodoxes telling me that they think even just having homosexual disorder is sinful.

 

 

Is this an official teaching of their Church(es) or their private opinion?

A cursory look at

THE COPTIC ORTHODOX CHURCH'S VIEW ON HOMOSEXUALITY BY FR. M. MIKHAIL, D. MIN

would indicate that homosexuality as in one engaging in such thoughts and interests is a sin, but the predisposition to those is distinct.

 

1. A homosexual psychological outlook (predisposition toward homosexuality)

which usually occurs so early in life that the person thinks he was born with
it, yet no one is born homosexual. It is formed in him or her.

There are many factors which develop homosexual behavior such as a hostile
father or mother. The majority of men and women with a predisposition toward
homosexuality did not turn out to be homosexuals, but married and learned to
be completely heterosexuals.

2. Homosexuality is a learned behavior. Homosexuals are made and not
born. They develop homosexuality by thinking positively of homosexual
practices. Participating in such practices provides pleasure and consequently
leads to more positive thoughts toward homosexuals.


As his or her thoughts and activities become more same sex oriented, he or
she tend to think negatively about the opposite sex, so, a predisposition
toward homosexuality itself does not implement it. Homosexuality requires an
initial experience followed by same sex thought patterns and more experience.

Source: http://www.coptic.net/articles/OnHomosexuality.txt

[Nihil Obstat]

I should also point out that the phrase "sins, voluntary and involuntary" is commonly used in the Byzantine liturgy, and as the old saying goes, "the rule of prayer determines the rule of faith."

Are they perhaps simply not making a distinguishment in culpability, where we Latins typically do? Edited June 11, 2013 by Nihil Obstat

[Anastasia13]

Perhaps the catechism 2352 on masturbation

Part two: To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.

 

Would be of help in understanding involuntary sin?

[Apotheoun]

Do you have any handy resources on that subject?

Although I have only read the first part of the MA thesis written by Hieromonk Maximos (i.e., the portion that compares and contrasts the views of St. Augustine and St. Maximos) on involuntary sin, I would recommend reading it. I also recommend reading Fr. Farrell's book "Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor" in order to better understand the Eastern patristic view of free will and predestination.

 

Sins Voluntary and Involuntary: John of Damascus, Natural integrity and the Moral Vision of Eastern Orthodoxy by Hieromonk Maximos

 

and

 

Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

[Apotheoun]

Are they perhaps simply not making a distinguishment in culpability, where we Latins typically do?

No. It has more to do with the completely different views of East and West on the nature of the human will.

 

The West has been influenced by St. Augustine who tends to reduce the self to the will; while the East holds more with St. Maximos by seeing the will as a natural component of man's entire being.

[Byzantine]

No. It has more to do with the completely different views of East and West on the nature of the human will.

 

The West has been influenced by St. Augustine who tends to reduce the self to the will; while the East holds more with St. Maximos by seeing the will as a natural component of man's entire being.

But if you don't will to do something, how can it be your fault?

Edited June 12, 2013 by Byzantine

[Apotheoun]

But if you don't will to do something, how can it be your fault?

Again, what do you mean by the word "will"? Do you mean what St. Augustine means by it? Do you identify it with the essence of the being in question and say in some sense that being and will are identical? Or do you mean what St. Maximos means by it, and do you then distinguish between the natural will, which is always ordered to the good, and the gnomic will (i.e., the human mode of willing), which comes about as a consequence of the fall, and which has to deliberate between the different ends / objects of choice?

Edited June 12, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Byzantine]

Again, what do you mean by the word "will"? Do you mean what St. Augustine means by it? Do you identify it with the essence of the being in question and say in some sense that being and will are identical? Or do you mean what St. Maximos means by it, and do you then distinguish between the natural will, which is always ordered to the good, and the gnomic will (i.e., the human mode of willing), which comes about as a consequence of the fall, and which has to deliberate between the different ends / objects?

Let me respond to that with one word:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OUCH.

[Apotheoun]

Did Christ have to deliberate between things in choosing to do the good, or did He simply do the good?

[Apotheoun]

For St. Augustine multiplicity is itself a sign of being created, for there can be no multiplicity in God. St. Augustine conceived God as an absolutely simple essence, and man cannot share at all in God's essence. The fact that human's exist in a world of multiplicity means that they are by definition going to be at odds with God. This idea is foreign to St. Maximos and St. John Damascene, firstly because for them God is both one and many (the Trinity of persons in the Godhead involves real diversity), and secondly, because they do not reduce God to a simple essence. In fact, divine simplicity itself - according to St. Gregory Nazianzen - is a divine energy, and God has many divine energies.

 

As far as the nature of the will is concerned, that - for the Eastern Fathers - is always seen in the light of the incarnation, which means that they (i.e., the Eastern Fathers) must distinguish not only between the two natures, but also the two wills and natural operations, in the one person of Christ. Where Christ differs from the rest of humanity is in the fact that He does not need to deliberate between options, because His divine hypostasis naturally does (and wills) the good. To put it another way, Christ always actualizes His natural wills (both divine and human) and chooses the good. Fallen man, on the other hand, does not always choose the good in that his personal mode of willing (i.e., his gnomic will) may not - for any number of reasons - discover the true good (i.e., the natural good which his natural will moves him toward). As a consequence, fallen man can sin by choice (i.e., voluntarily) or through ignorance (i.e., involuntarily), but in both cases his gnomic will is active, and that is true even in the latter case where he acts contrary to the good of his nature. Of course that is why - in the Byzantine liturgy - we pray that God forgives both our voluntary and involuntary sins.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Not The Philosopher]

Wasn't the doctrine of Divine Simplicity declared to be dogma at the fourth Lateran council and Vatican I?

[Apotheoun]

Wasn't the doctrine of Divine Simplicity declared to be dogma at the fourth Lateran council and Vatican I?

What is meant by the phrase "divine simplicity"?

 

In the East divine simplicity is not identity of essence and attribute in the Scholastic or Augustinian sense, but is instead the coinherence of the divine essence as a whole in each and every divine energy. As. St. Gregory Palamas liked to say, "God is indivisibly divided in all His many energies." In Eastern Christian theology God is simple, but not in the pagan Greek philosophical sense of the term (as used by the medieval Scholastics), because if that were the case the Trinity itself would become a mere pretense, a thing that we believe without being at the same time real.