In an attempt to critique the LDS rejection of Original Sin, Matthew Paulson shoots himself in the foot with the following attempt to use Hans Urs Von Balthasar who himself refutes Paulson’s Reformed soteriology:
Although Roman Catholics tend to
be cautious in discussions of original sin, some have noted that this
doctrine can be used against Satan’s lie of deification. Catholic writer, Hans
Urs Von Balthasar, stated, “Original sin does not sit somewhere on the
periphery of human nature; no, the very promise eritis sicut dei [you
shall be like gods] is the perversion of the original core of man’s being
itself. Not in the way the Protestants interpret this, as if the innermost
center of human nature had been annihilated by original guilt, but it has been ‘tinged,’
‘saturated,’ distorted’ by sin.” (Matthew A. Paulson, Breaking the
Mormon Code: A Critique of Mormon Scholarship Regarding Classical Christian
Theology and the Book of Mormon [Livermore, Calif.: WingSpan Press, 2006], 143, emphasis in bold added)
We are also treated to this inane comment:
It is interesting to note this
doctrine is not stipulated in the earliest Christian creeds. Neither the Apostles’
Creed nor the Nicene Creed mentions original sin. Apparently, the early
church did not find it necessary to state what they taught was scriptural about
the inherited sin, the depravity of man and the need for a Savior for mankind.
(Ibid., 135)
Paulson would have no consistent response to a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox who would say the something about the Dormition and Assumption of Mary.
