Original sin--links

on original sin
In answer to a question on original sin:{from comment 99 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/09/nature-grace-and-mans-supernatural-end-feingold-kline-and-clark/#comment-163868http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/09/nature-grace-and-mans-supernatural-end-feingold-kline-and-clark/#comment-163868

I suppose in this condemnation then, original sin in the Catholic view is a bit different that just “sin nature”, supposing that even without sin, Adam needed grace to confirm humanity in relationship with God?

You are correct. In Catholic theology, there is no “sin nature,” which would be a contradiction in terms (since sin is by definition a violation of nature). There is only a “fallen nature,” in that it is deprived of the grace that was provided in its original condition.

Can you explain original sin from the Catholic perspective?

Original sin is this deprivation of the grace with which Adam was gifted as a consequence of his sin. It is only “sin” by analogy, in that it is a deprivation associated with wrongdoing, but not one for which we ourselves our responsible. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”. By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” – a state and not an act.

405 Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin – an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence”. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/lawrence-feingold-on-original-justice-and-original-sin/

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/protestant-objections-to-the-catholic-doctrines-of-original-justice-and-original-sin/  This one is long and detailed and worth studying. He goes into detail on some of the Protestant objections and then explains why he feels they are wrong. (Needs a lot of thinking!). Here is a quote:

The problem with fallen man is not a matter of frequency of obedience. The problem with fallen man is that he is not a partaker of the divine nature, and so all his righteousness, no matter how frequent, falls short of the supernatural end to which God has graciously called us. Fallen man can do good works that are ordered to man’s natural good. This is why pagans can do virtuous deeds. If however, those persons are not in a state of grace, those deeds are not ordered to man’s supernatural end. Those works are still rewarded at the Judgment, but the reward is not man’s supernatural end; the hierarchy of hell is determined not only by punishments deserved but also by rewards on the order of nature, rewards infinitely inferior to the Beatific Vision.

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/03/aquinas-and-trent-part-7/

below from comment 65  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/12/signs-of-predestination-a-catholic-discusses-election/
 St. Augustine’s view was that babies who die unbaptized end up with a mild form of hell forever. That view stemmed directly from his conviction that original sin is personal culpa. Aquinas softened that by putting such babies in a permanent “limbo,” a place of purely natural happiness. That became the common doctrine until the mid-20th century. But in response to the Calvinist and Jansenist challenges, the Church came gradually to repudiate the underlying premise that original sin is personal culpa. See CCC §405. Once that happened, the rationale for a permanent limbo disappeared. The Pope does not believe there is such a thing.[not sure which Pope--may have written this article during Benedict's time]

from  comment 19 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/protestant-objections-to-the-catholic-doctrines-of-original-justice-and-original-sin/ :

As explained in “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark” and “Lawrence Feingold on Original Justice and Original Sin,” according to a Catholic anthropology, human nature is distinguished from the four preternatural gifts (i.e. integrity, infused knowledge, impassibility, and immortality), and from the supernatural gifts of faith, hope, agape and sanctifying grace. When Adam sinned, he retained human nature intact, but he lost all four preternatural gifts, and he lost all the supernatural gifts. Because he lost the supernatural gifts, he was without the life of God, and dead in sin, living for himself in the curved-inwardness of Godless narcissism. Because he lost the preternatural gift of integrity, he acquired the disorder of concupiscence. Because he lost the preternatural gift of infused knowledge, he acquired the condition of ignorance. Because he lost the preternatural gift of impassibility, he became subject to suffering. And because he lost the preternatural gift of immortality he became subject to death. All his offspring likewise were born in this condition, i.e. with human nature intact, but without these preternatural and supernatural gifts. To be conceived and born without the supernatural gifts is to be conceived and born in what is called “original sin.”


 Protestant anthropology does not distinguish between human nature, preternatural gifts, and supernatural gifts. Protestant anthropology distinguishes only between original human nature (which is righteous), and fallen human nature which is disposed to sin. According to Protestant anthropology, Adam and Eve were created with original human nature, but when they freely sinned, their nature fell. So all their children are born with fallen human nature, which is intrinsically subject to disordered desires, to ignorance, suffering and death. Because Adam and Eve lost their created nature, they were a different kind of creature before their fall, than they were after their fall. When they sinned, they changed species, not necessarily by a change in their DNA, but because of the change in their nature, i.e. the kind of being they were. What we call ‘human’ is what Adam and Eve became only after the fall; before the fall they were a higher kind of being, because they had a higher nature than the nature we now have.

Given Protestant anthropology, and given the patristic principle that what is not assumed is not redeemed, it is not difficult to see the motivation for claiming that Jesus must have assumed a fallen human nature, for if He assumed only an original human nature, he would have not have assumed ourfallen nature, but only that of the original pre-fall couple who, while they had that pristine nature did not [according to Protestant theology] need saving. (See “Pelagian Westminster?“) Moreover, if one does not distinguish between human nature and the preternatural gifts, then since we see clearly in Scripture that Jesus suffered and died, then it will seem that Jesus must have possessed a fallen human nature. At His resurrection He changed species, back to the original human nature of Adam. Salvation for us also will, at our glorification/resurrection, involve a species change, back to Adam’s original nature. If Jesus came “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” and suffered the curse from Genesis 3, and our only two options to choose from are Adam’s “original human nature” or Adam’s “fallen human nature,” then Jesus must have had Adam’s “fallen human nature.” And if Jesus received His humanity from Mary, then it is difficult to see how He could have received “original human nature” from Mary, unless she was immaculately conceived and never sinned (at least did not sin until after Jesus was conceived); that’s not really an option for Protestants. Either she was immaculately conceived or at the moment of Jesus’s conception, God took Mary’s [fallen] human nature and transformed it to a different nature, namely, Adam’s original human nature. But then Jesus’s human nature would have been a different created species than was Mary’s. And that runs against the meaning of Theotokos, which is not that Jesus merely used the womb of the Virgin, but that He took His flesh from her, and was truly her Son, bone of her bones, and flesh of her flesh, homousious with her according to His humanity, and homousious with God the Father according to His divinity. (See the Athanasian Creed, which says that as man He was born of the substance of His mother (et homo est ex substantia matris in saeculo natus.)

In the Catholic understanding there is no ‘fallen human nature.’ God did not make two species of human. There is either human nature accompanied by preternatural and/or supernatural gifts, and human nature unaccompanied by preternatural and/or supernatural gifts. Every human being who has ever lived has had the same human nature possessed by Adam before Adam’s fall. Otherwise we wouldn’t all be human, because either the pre-fall Adam wouldn’t be human, or the post-fall Adam wouldn’t be human. Jesus was conceived having two of the preternatural gifts (i.e. integrity and infused knowledge), but He purposefully gave up the other two preternatural gifts (i.e. impassibility and immortality), because He came into the world to suffer and die, as I explained in comment #12 above. This is the meaning of the verse teaching that Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh. By forgoing the preternatural gifts of impassibility and immortality, He made Himself subject to the suffering and death that was the result of the curse of Genesis 3, yet without sinning or being subject to the concupiscence resulting from original sin. He was conceived with the supernatural gifts (excepting faith and hope, because already He possessed the beatific vision), and thus without original sin. So the Catholic answer to the question “Did Jesus Assume a Fallen Human Nature?” is “It depends on what one means by “fallen human nature.” If one means a lower nature than that possessed by the pre-fall Adam, then no, because there is no such thing. And if one means “a human nature having concupiscence,” then no. Jesus did not have concupiscence, because he never had original sin. But if one means “a human nature subject to suffering and death,” then yes, not because He received a different human nature than that had by the pre-fall Adam and Eve, but because He chose not to receive the preternatural gifts of impassibility and immortality, so that He could fulfill the mission for which He came into the world, to suffer and die for our salvation.

This position does not suffer from the problems I described above. Everything we are in our human nature, Christ assumed. For example, He did not have to forgo the preternatural gift of integrity in order to become fully human. Adam prior to his fall was not less human than Adam after his fall. Moreover, on this anthropology, Christ’s passibility and mortality do not entail that He also possessed concupiscence, since these are each conditions due to the absence of preternatural gifts, not essential properties of a singular fallen human nature. Nor do His passibility and mortality indicate that He was internally at enmity with God, since the latter is the result of the absence of the supernatural gift ofagape, not something intrinsic to a particular kind of human nature that Christ would have had to assume in order to redeem us. And given Catholic anthropology, Jesus could receive from Mary the same human nature she had received from Adam, since there is only one human nature. What is known as “the sinful nature” is not a second human nature, but rather concupiscience, i.e. the absence of the preternatural gift of integrity. This “sin nature” is not redeemed and retained in the saints in heaven; it is removed, by the restoration of the preternatural gift of integrity. Salvation does not involve becoming a different species of human, but becoming a partaker of the divine nature, through the infusion of the supernatural gifts of sanctifying grace and agape, and at Christ’s return, the restoration of all the preternatural gifts.

found in the footnote of the article -footnote 8 : http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/protestant-objections-to-the-catholic-doctrines-of-original-justice-and-original-sin/  :

Kuyper wrote the following regarding the Catholic doctrine of original righteousness and original sin:

However tracing the next step in the course of sin we meet a serious difference between the Church of Rome and our own. The former teaches that Adam came forth perfect from the hand of his Maker even before he was endowed with original righteousness. This implies that the human nature is finished without original righteousness, which is put on him like a robe or ornament. As our present nature is complete without dress or ornament, which are needed only to appear respectable in the world, so was the human nature, according to Rome, complete and perfect in itself without righteousness, which serves only as dress and jewel. But the Reformed churches have always opposed this view, maintaining that original righteousness is an essential part of the human nature; hence that the human nature in Adam was not complete without it; that it was not merely added to Adam’s nature but that Adam was created in the possession of it as the direct manifestation of his life

If Adam’s nature was perfect before he possessed original righteousness, it follows that it remains perfect after the loss of it in which case we describe sin simply as carentia justitiae originalis, i.e. the want of original righteousness. This used to be expressed thus: Is original righteousness a natural or supernatural good? If natural then its loss caused the human nature to be wholly corrupt; if supernatural then its loss might take away the glory and honor of that nature, but as a human nature it retained nearly all of its original power. (The Work of the Holy Spirit, by Abraham Kuyper, pp. 88-89.)

In the article to which the footnote above is attached, it states:

..........  the loss of sanctifying grace is an infinite loss, because it is the loss of participation in the divine nature, which is infinite in intellect and will and every perfection.² By contrast, a corruption of human nature [ie Luther's view] is a finite loss, because what is lost is only finite. So, even according to the philosophical criterion Luther provides, original sin according to the Catholic doctrine is far more evil than original sin according to Luther’s theology. Luther’s theory therefore minimizes original sin far more than does the Catholic doctrine concerning original sin.

Luther urges his reader to believe that it was Adam’s nature to love God, believe God, to know God, just as natural for Adam as it is natural for the eyes to receive light. Luther reasons from the fact that Adam knew and loved God prior to the fall, to the conclusion that doing so was “truly part of his nature.” The problem with this claim, as was pointed out in “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark,” is that it makes man by his very nature into God, and thus denies the Creator-creature distinction. God cannot create another God, because God by His very nature is uncreated. So any created being cannot in its primary nature be God; it can at most participate in the divine nature through a condecension by God to grant the creature the gift of participating in the divine nature. But if man by his very nature saw God, knew God, and loved God, this would entail that the Beatific Vision is intrinsic to man by his very nature. But the Beatific Vision can be intrinsic only to God, because the Beatific Vision is God’s vision of Himself. Hence Luther’s theology is fatally flawed here, by positing that God can make a creature that has as its primary nature something that can be had intrinsically only by God

from comment 180 below

 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/do-you-want-to-go-to-heaven/

As a starting point, while it’s hard to remember as limited human beings, we have to keep in mind that God is not at all like us. The instinct when we see anthropomorphic language in Scripture is to latch onto it and to apply it as if we know God in the same way we would know another human, but that instinct must be avoided. When we speak of God’s “sovereignty” or God’s “purpose” or even God’s “will,” it’s no more literally true of God than saying that God has hands or feet. God as God does not operate in a human way in any sense; these are (poor) analogies that are nonetheless the best we can do.

You appeal to one of those analogies as follows:

The flaw in your argument is the failure to understand God’s “revealed will” as opposed to His “decretive will”. The result of this logic requires God to be subject to fate. Since God created everything, this obviously cannot be, as fate itself was created by God.

This is, I would submit, an anthropomorphism of what is otherwise a helpful analogy. Clasically, there is no distinction between God’s “revealed will” and God’s “decretive will.” That was an invention of the Reformation by analogy to human beings, and it is simply inapplicable to God; God only has a single, perfect will that cannot be divided. The Scholastic distinction, which instead draws distinctions with respect to God’s effects, is the appeal to God’s “permissive will,” and this distinction was rooted solely in the Biblical and philosophical fact that God cannot sin. As St. Thomas succinctly says, “God therefore neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills to permit evil to be done; and this is a good.” That does not create a (false) separation in the will of God; instead, it says something about the existence of created things (and in this case, evil in created things) relative to God’s eternal will.

So just as when we see Scriptures describing God’s hands and feet as not being literal, we have to do the same when God is described as actively or positively causing evil. God isn’t surprised by evil either, but He “plans around” it by willing good to come of it rather. To say that God positively wills evil goes beyond a “hard teaching” over to blasphemy, although I recognize that you would not intend it that way. We have to stop short at that point. So the idea that people without a rational will, i.e., infants are born evil is impossible, because that would be God positively willing, rather than permissively allowing a rational will to exercise, evil. That is why the Catholic Church also rejects the idea that original “sin” is guilt of fault.

Now this is usually the point at which people pipe up and say “what about Augustine?” As we all know, Augustine said that infants and other unbaptized people fall into what he called a massa damnata et damnabilis, a damned and damnable mass. This was what he suggested Paul had in mind when he said vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath were formed from the same “lump,” taking that analogy quite literally. How did he, who recognized that evil had only a negative existence and that God could not cause it, somehow miss this basic fact?

The reason is that Augustine held an odd (although not for his time) belief about human souls calledtraducianism. This viewed the soul as a kind of metaphysical substance that was passed on to children in generation in the same way genetic material might be understood today. So from Augustine’s perspective, it was possible for this common “soul stuff” to be tainted by its previous holder’s sin. Hence, it wasn’t God creating something evil; rather, it was this defective “soul stuff” that Adam had tainted by his sin that caused the infant to be part of the lump. Hence, Augustine took the analogy too far based on a philosophical belief; he saw the lump of clay as the lump of “soul stuff” out of which humans were formed. This belief was also responsible for some of Augustine’s unusual beliefs about the evils of sex, some of which were shared even by other traducian Fathers who did not hold Augustine’s beliefs about original sin.

Now that we’ve developed considerably in the philosophy of the soul and that we understand that the soul is specially created by God in each infant, we have a better understanding that Augustine did. Therefore, because we cannot appeal to this idea of “soul stuff” that Augustine did, we realize that we have to stop short in saying that original sin involves actual evil or that the negative predestination of certain souls to damnation lies in anything other than the person’s own fault. In other words, now we know that what goes for evil in general (God is the cause of everything, but He does not cause evil positively) applies to predestination in the same exact way (God predestines everything, but He does not positively predestine faults leading to damnation). Hence, when we read in Romans 9 that God created vessels of wrath or hardened hearts, we have to remember that we are not allowed to interpret this as God positively creating the evil in anything, including the will, as if he were a human, so we can’t take this as negative predestination.

Is that clear so far? If you can understand that basic philosophical principle, then we can turn to how to apply it in exegesis.

also from comment 92 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/07/habitual-sin-and-the-grace-of-the-sacraments/

You’re right that among the early Reformers the term “saving graces” was used. I noted as much incomment #3 of the “Pelagian Westminster?” thread, and in #87 above. But Clark has a good reason for wanting to use a different term for what the WLC refers to as “saving graces.” See Sinclair Ferguson’s statement in comment #54 of the “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End” thread. Ferguson’s position is the contemporary Reformed (and Protestant) position. I see it over and over coming from Reformed leaders, not just Clark and Horton. Timothy George says something similar in his bookAmazing Grace. In fact, I can’t think of a single Reformed leader who would take issue with what Ferguson says there.

The reason Clark does not want to use the term ‘grace’ for what the early Reformers were referring to when they used terms like “saving graces” is that what they were referring to is entirely different from what in Catholic theology is meant by the terms ‘actual grace’ and ‘sanctifying grace.’ In Reformed theology these ‘saving graces’ are God working in us to repair our fallen nature. So we could more accurately describe them as divinely wrought repairs to our human nature. In Reformed theology nothing divine is actually “infused” into us; rather, God works in us to repair what is fallen to its original nature. That’s why it is misleading (given Reformed theology) to speak of graces being infused into the believer; it is like saying that a repair was infused into your car at the shop. Repairs are not the sort of things that are infused; repairs are made, effected or accomplished, not infused.

In Catholic doctrine, grace is ordered to our supernatural end, and human nature is not itself fallen, as I have described in “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and the Clark.” So in Catholic doctrine grace is rightly described as infused, because it is not a repair, but is a participation in the divine nature, not something we have by nature, or effected by repairing something we have by nature.

Of course Clark is not denying sanctification, and not denying that the Spirit effects sanctification through Word and sacraments. So he is not denying the selections from the WLC and the WSC to which you refer. He is trying to avoid semantic confusion between the Catholic understanding of grace as infused participation in the divine nature, and the Reformed notion of the Spirit working in us to repair our fallen human nature. See pages 575-579 of volume 3 of Bavink’s Reformed Dogmatics. Repairing our fallen nature does not entail that there is any ontological union with Christ, or any participation in the divine nature, i.e. theosis. So, I don’t see that the statements to which you are referring (in the WSC, WLC, etc.) falsify anything I said. No Reformed person I know would ever say that God doesn’t sanctify believers, and nothing I said, so far as I can tell, entails or implies that Reformed theology denies that God works in believers to sanctify them. So if sanctification is all that is meant by “infusion of graces,” then of course Reformed theology affirms that. But, at that point we’re meaning something so different by “infusion of grace” that we’re equivocating and possibly misleading, for the reasons I’ve just explained. And that’s what Clark is trying to avoid, it seems to me.

also comment 464 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/imputation-and-paradigms-a-reply-to-nicholas-batzig/

The sense in which we all “sinned” in Adam is not the same as the sense in which Adam himself sinned. He sinned by a deliberate act of the will (from a state in which he possessed even the preternatural gift of infused knowledge, making him even more culpable); we “sinned” in him not by an act of our wills (which did not even exist), but because we all existed in him potentially, and acted (in an analogous sense) in the human nature he himself exemplified and instantiated at that time, through which he sinned, which he subsequently handed down to us, and by which we are what we are as human.

from comment 470: ..........................You’re not seeing the middle position between Adam’s descendants being “pure potentiality” (which would give them no relation to Adam), and Adam’s descendants being entirely actual in Adam. But there is a middle position, because through biological reproduction we receive human nature from Adam by coming from him, and in that sense (through that shared nature we received from him) we existed in him.

from comment 109 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/09/nature-grace-and-mans-supernatural-end-feingold-kline-and-clark/

Feingold makes the point that mankind, even in a perfect state, in and of himself, cannot know God nor have a Fatherly love for God, nor can he live forever, without infused sanctifying grace.

Careful. Without sanctifying grace man cannot know God as Father, but he can know God as Creator, as First Cause.

Thus, original sin = being born without sanctifying grace.

Correct.

However, the complaint that Robert has is that it seems as though, from the Catholic perspective, man was made in and of himself with the propensity (?) or possibility of concupiscence, and natural break down and death in his body. And that without sanctifying grace, man in innocence would otherwise die. This, to Protestants at least, sounds like man was made incomplete or lacking.

I addressed this objection in the body of article above, in the Clark section, especially in the paragraph that begins “Another objection to the Catholic doctrine is the claim that it implies that human nature in itself (even prior to the fall) is defective or fallen.” I also addressed this objection in “Protestant Objections to the Catholic Doctrines of Original Justice and Original Sin.” I also addressed it in “Michael Horton on Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life”,” and in comments #41 and #43 of “A Reply To R.C. Sproul Regarding the Catholic Doctrines of Original Sin and Free Will.”

from comment 111 on the same post :

I still don’t see how you escape the charge that God must elevate us beyond our humanity in order to make sin impossible. That points to a flaw in human nature, or at least a tendency to go bad.

As I’ve explained in the links in #109, “flaw” and “defect” are relative to a nature. For example, it is not a defect or deficiency in humans that we have only one stomach, while cows have four, or two legs while octopi have eight. That’s because having only one stomach and only two legs belongs to the very nature of the human person. Likewise, not having the ability to avoid sin necessarily, apart from grace, is not a flaw or defect in a nature of just that sort, i.e. one that does not naturally have that ability. Angels too, though greater in nature than humans, do not by their nature have the ability to avoid sin necessarily, which is why some fell, even while in a state of grace. (cf. Summa Theologica I Q.62 a.3) If it is possible to fall (i.e. to sin) while in a state of grace, then a fortiori it is possible to fall (i.e. sin) while not in a state of grace, all other things being equal. But that doesn’t entail that angel natures are defective or faulty. Rather, that’s necessarily a limitation of the very nature of any created thing. Only God by His very nature has the ability to avoid sin necessarily, because only God is by nature Goodness Itself. Just as human nature is not defective by not including omnipotence, so human nature is not defective by not including the ability to avoid sin necessarily. Claiming otherwise is using the divine nature as the standard for what counts as a defect or flaw in a human nature. And that would make every creature necessarily flawed and defective, for not being omnipotent, omniscient, etc., etc.

from comment 114

But the problem is that God doesn’t condemn cows for having 4 stomachs or human beings for lacking omnipotence. He does condemn human beings for being sinners, however. And if he created human beings with the necessary tendency to go bad, then creatureliness is a bad thing.

This is sloppy in its leaps, non sequiturs and over-simplifications. First, God never condemns or punishes anyone for doing what he could not help doing, that is, if he could not do otherwise. Only free choices to sin are punishable. Second, in actuality, God does not condemn human beings “for being sinners,” but rather for freely committing actual sins, freely refusing to repent, and freely refusing the [operative] grace of repentance at work in them. Third, lacking the ability to avoid sin necessarily is not the same as being ordered toward sin; a creature can be ordered to the good, and yet not have the ability to avoid sin necessarily. Lacking the ability to avoid sin necessarily does not entail being directed to evil, and therefore does not make the creature bad. Fourth, from the fact that all creatures as such necessarily lack the ability to avoid sin necessarily, it does not follow that creatureliness “is a bad thing.” That conclusion would follow only if the divine nature were the standard of perfection for every creature, thus entailing that all creatures are bad for lacking omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, etc. Created things as such are good even when they lack uniquely divine attributes. I explained that in my previous comment.

We must therefore become more than creatures to avoid condemnation. This starts to blur the Creator-creature distinction,

Not only does that conclusion not follow from the premises, but the shoe is on the other foot, as I’ve explained both in the article at the top of this page, but also in the two other articles linked in comment #109 above. In no way is the Creator-creature distinction “blurred,” if by “blurred” you mean eliminated. In Catholic doctrine every human person always remains a creature. Receiving grace does not make a creature into a non-creature. (Of course if by ‘blurred’ you mean only that in such a teaching you don’t see the Creator-creature distinction, that would be a statement about yourself, and your own epistemic limitations.)

and it once again makes God a being who created something that was already disordered but he then had to fix by adding grace to take it out of the realm of creatureliness.

Again, this conclusion also does not follow from the premises. From the fact that creatures as such lack the ability to avoid sin necessarily, it does not follow that they are disordered. Once again you are using a uniquely divine attribute as the standard by which to determine whether creatures are ordered or disordered. And the problem with that move, for you, is that either it makes all creatures necessarily defective (for not being omnipotent, omniscient, etc.), or your position is ad hoc in only arbitrarily picking one uniquely divine attribute (while leaving out the others) and using it as the standard by which to judge whether creatures are ordered or disordered.

In the peace of Christ,

– Bryan

P.S. I should add as well that if lacking [the ability to avoid sin necessarily] makes creatures bad and disordered, then in Reformed theology all the humans God has created were bad and disordered, because all the humans God has created have lacked the ability to avoid sin necessarily.