What is Reddit's opinion of The Godly Image: Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas (Sacra Doctrina)?

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Oh man. Lots to unpack here. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of a lot of key topics such as sin, punishment, salvation, etc. There is a lot of legalistic language in the Church mostly due to American Protestant terminology being so rampant in American culture (not sure if you are American but that has been my experience).

Let’s see if we can clear some stuff up. It’s going to be impossible for me to clarify all of this theology but hopefully we can remove some of your concerns.

> if i masturbate once, or hook up with one girl that automatically means i’m condemned to hell.

Two things here. First, sin is not the “breaking of a law” or a legal infraction of some kind. Sin is wrong for one reason, it bad for us — bad for our souls. When we sin, the problem is that we damage our souls by damaging our relationship with God. So we “turn away from Him” by choosing actions that do not help us achieve our ultimate end as human persons (more on that in a bit).

When we sin, we are not hurting God or changing God in any way. We can’t make God mad. We can’t cause Him to want to punish us. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how God works.

Secondly, God does not “punish” us for our sins or condemn us to Hell. When we sin, we damage ourselves, and the natural consequence of that damage cause us pain, suffering, and need for healing. The “punishment” that often gets talked about in regards to sin, are the natural consequences of our immoral actions that damage our souls and our relationship with God.

God is not a tyrannical parent who abuses us when we do something wrong. Our wrong doing is it’s own punishment. And God wants to heal us from our affliction and the disease of Sin that has enslaved humanity.

God does not “send people to Hell”. Hell is a state of being we exist in when we choose to reject God. According to [CCC 1035] “the chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God.” (remember punishment in this sense doesn’t mean something God is DOING to us, but rather the natural consequence of our free choices and actions).

> Nevermind all the good i’ve done in my life, this one sin condemns me. I have to say, that’s quite cruel, random, and makes absolutely no sense.

You’re right. That view makes no sense, luckily that isn’t the view of the Church. Salvation is a ladder, not an on/off switch. The Catholic Church has a doctrine known as theosis (sometimes goes by deification or divinization in the Western tradition) Read more here.

The idea is that we exist as wounded creatures in need of healing and purification. Our call to holiness, is a call to climb the ladder of being up into God (St. Bonaventure has a beautiful book on this called The Journey of the Mind to God). Through participation with God’s grace, we can become sanctified and perfected so as to become “partakers of the divine nature” as 2 Peter 1:4 tells us.

This is the end for which humanity was made, that through our deification, we might become one with God and share in His divine life. And to do that, we have to become perfected, through grace.

Many people treat salvation like an on/off switch where one moment you’re saved and then as soon as you sin again you’re not. This is a misunderstanding of what being in a “state of grace” and how salvation works.

We become one with God through the perfection of our being through grace. It’s not a legal system we need to game or time right so as to enter Heaven. Salvation is not about being in the proper legal state with God, it is about being the right way in our souls so that we can become united to Him.

God does not want to punish you for your sins. He sees how sin hurts you and wants to heal you of your woundedness. That is what the Christian story is, that we, broke ourselves off from God, and God, who loves us, became Incarnate so as to unite Man to God. He saw how we were enslaved to sin and death and so He came to defeat death by dying and so transform our human condition from within and opened up the gates of salvation by literally carrying humanity up into God through His becoming flesh and defeating Sin and Death.

> Besides, if Jesus died on the cross for us, why are we still threatened with hell for doing one sinful action?

I’m not quite sure this is what you mean but this sounds a lot like Penal Substitionary Atonement Theory which is actually a Reformed Protestant doctrine and NOT Catholic teaching. This idea that we sinned and therefore God demanded justice to satisfy His wrath and so He killed His Son in our place. That is not how the Passion of Christ is to be understood. It’s true Christ died for our sins, but he wasn’t punished for our sins in the sense that God gave the punishment we deserved to Christ. The Catechism is clear on that in [CCC 603] when it says “Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned. But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin.”

This is saying what I said before, that Christ enters into our brokenness and transforms humanity from within through the greatest act of love. This article does a good job of explaining this. God is not a tyrannical Father punishing Christ instead of us. Christ is performing the greatest act of love.

It sounds to me like you have a lot of puritanical Christian theology that has influenced the way you think about this. It’s ok, you’re not the only one. I recommend reading some of the Church Fathers and Aquinas. I would also recommend this book which is written by one of the most knowledgeable Thomists loving today The Godly Image: Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas (Sacra Doctrina) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0813232937/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_PS704M7GST09RTTWB9WD

I know this was long and I probably wasn’t clear in places. Feel free to ask questions I’d love to chat about this.