§29But this "intimate and vital bond of man to God" (GS 19 # 1) can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man.3 Such attitudes can have different causes: revolt against evil in the world; religious ignorance or indifference; the cares and riches of this world; the scandal of bad example on the part of believers; currents of thought hostile to religion; finally, …

§397Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of.278 All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.

§399Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness.280 They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.281

Proofs of the resurrection from Isaiah and Ezekiel; the same God who created us will also raise us up. 1. Now, that He who at the beginning created man, did promise him a second birth after his dissolution into earth, Esaias thus declares: The dead shall rise again, and they who are in the tombs shall arise, and they who are in the earth shall rejoice. For the dew which is from…

2. And ye indeed say that you know even His substance, but that the Son not even the day, the Son, who is always in the bosom of the Father; and yet His substance is much greater than the days, even infinitely greater. How then, while assigning to yourselves the greater things, do you not allow even the less to the Son, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.…

1. What I have often said, I will now say, that Christ looks not so much to His own honor as to our salvation; not how He may utter some sublime saying, but how something able to draw us to Him. On which account His sublime and mighty sayings are few, and those also hidden, but the humble and lowly are many, and abound through His discourses. For since by these men were the rat…

1. There are many things characteristic of Christianity: but more than all, and better than all, Love towards one another, and Peace. Therefore Christ also says, My peace I give unto you. John 14:27 And again, By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. John 13:35 Therefore Paul too says, Follow peace with all men, and holiness, that is, purit…

Chapter 15.—That Adam in His Sin Forsook God Ere God Forsook Him, and that His Falling Away From God Was the First Death of the Soul. It may perhaps be supposed that because God said, “Ye shall die the death,”595595 Gen. ii. 17. and not “deaths,” we should understand only that death which occurs when the soul is deserted by God, who is its life; for it was not deserted by God, …

The Fullness of Interpersonal Communication What is shame and how can we explain its absence in the state of original innocence, in the depth of the mystery of the creation of man as male and female? From contemporary analyses of shame - and in particular of sexual modesty - we can deduce the complexity of this fundamental experience, in which man expresses himself as a person…

1. The Parable of the Tares: the House of Jesus. Then He left the multitudes and went into His house, and His disciples came unto Him saying, Declare to us the parable of the tares of the field. Matthew 13:36 When Jesus then is with the multitudes, He is not in His house, for the multitudes are outside of the house, and it is an act which springs from His love of men to leave t…

We believe that our good God, by marvelous divine wisdom and goodness, seeing that Adam and Eve had plunged themselves in this manner into both physical and spiritual death and made themselves completely miserable, set out to find them, though they, trembling all over, were fleeing from God. And God comforted them, promising to give them his Son, born of a woman, to crush the h…