Anecdotal Theology, the Donum Superadditum, Revoice, Concupiscence, and a Key to Unlocking Roman Catholicism (Part 1)

 Anecdotal Theology, the Donum Superadditum, Revoice, Concupiscence, and a Key to Unlocking Roman Catholicism (Part 1)

Flying Air-Italia to Rome from Lisbon, Portugal, to celebrate our 25th anniversary, I ended up sitting next to an engineer from the city of Corinth. I told him I knew a little Greek from seminary days and wanted to ask a question. Was it true that there is a verb in Greek “Corinthinize” and if so, did it mean living a life of debauchery and immorality? (Probably not the best way to begin a cross-cultural evangelistic chat, but I had to satisfy my curiosity) I had read somewhere that it did though there is no such verb in the NT. His answer spoke volumes. No, he had not heard that. “However, we do have a saying in Corinth today that the world’s first prostitute was a Corinthian.” Words that describe a city have a way of hanging on through the centuries, and in this case, millennia. The ruins of the Temple to Aphrodite sitting above Corinth no doubt have helped keep the tradition alive. “Corinthize” is no longer a verb, if it ever was, but present day Corinthians self-identify, if you will, that their city has this illustrious immoral past. 

My second story was in Portugal when I was taking Dr. John Stott back to the airport. He had been the keynote speaker at a pastors’ convention about two hours north of Lisbon. Somewhere in the conversation I asked him if he had ever heard of the Donum Superadditum and if he knew who would have been the first church father to use it. He knew the term but didn’t know the origin, telling me that his area of expertise was in modern church history and not Patristics. 

Finally, getting off the plane in Philadelphia and waiting at the baggage counter, I thought I spied Dr. R.C. Sproul. It was him. We had been on the same plane. Introducing myself as a PCA pastor, I took advantage of our few minutes waiting for luggage to ask about the Donum Superadditum. Without missing a beat, Dr. Sproul said I should check out Augustine’s writing against Pelagius. That said, in my cursory searches, I have not found anything. Perhaps someone reading this article can help. My latest reading is that it was Irenaeus who first coined this term, but I have no proof of that either. 

For that matter, I am requesting help, feedback, documentation for all of what I going to suggest. I’m an amateur writer and this is my first attempt to put these thoughts into words. On the other hand, I am a convert to Calvinism from the Roman Catholic Church and have a great part of my ministry ministering to Roman Catholics, primarily in Portugal and among Portuguese and Brazilians. And, it should be said that while some of my expressions may seem caustic, I have deep affection for my Catholic family and friends. I also believe that there are many Catholics who enjoy the blessed inconsistency of trusting only in Christ, in spite of Rome’s official teaching. 

The PCA is currently in a struggle about words. And they too have to do with the self-identity of words of a sexual nature. Is is appropriate for elders and deacons of the church to describe themselves as “same-sex Christians,” “gay Christians,” “Side B Christians,” or “SSA Christians?” 

And, switching now to Latin, there are a small set of words that also have to do with sexual identify and have exercised great influence in the history of Christian thought. The GA’s study paper goes into detail about the place of “concupiscence” in Roman Catholic theology. Reformed theology doctrine of Original Sin differs substantially from the RC view. In Catholicism, concupiscence, in and of itself, (what we would typically call “the lusts of the flesh”) is not sin. It is not sin because in the RC view, sin includes volition. So concupiscence is not sin, but, “tends toward sin.” That is, acted up, those sinful desires can quickly become sin, but without an act of the will, they remain a neutral factor in our relationship with God. For documentation, Trent’s canons on Original Sin clarify this novel and potentially disastrous view of human sin. 

The study paper, however, does not explain how Catholic theology has developed this curious interpretation. In my simple way of thinking it has everything to do with this little understood doctrine of the Donum Superadditum, (from here forward, simply DS). It is the  “gift added after the fact.” It is part of a small circle of terms related to the RC doctrine of Creation. Those terms are ex puris naturalibus (today, apparently meaning “stark naked” or “in your birthday suit” so be careful Googling this) iustitia originalis, donum concreatum, gracia praeveniens, status purorum naturalium, donum naturale, donum intrinsecum, and even a bit further out from the circle, “meritum de condigo” and “meritum de congruo.” 

Dr. Norman Giseler’s affirmation, “Catholics and evangelicals share a common view of the origin, nature, and the fall of human beings. Both believe God is the creator, human beings are made in his image and likeness, and human beings are immortal.” is short-sighted. (“Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences,” pg. 53) Giseler is right but only at a superficial level. The reality is that the RCC doctrine of Creation and the Reformed doctrine couldn’t be more unalike. The real story of creation, in traditional RC theology, is that Adam and Eve were created in a two-step process. Of course, the Bible does not affirm anything of the sort. There are no explicit references to a two-stage creation. It’s true that God first made man from the dust of the earth, and then breathed into him, the breath of life. But, surely it is reading too much into the biblical narrative to suggest that these were distinct stages or that matter was, by definition, opposed to spirit. It has also been suggested that the use of the terms “image” and “likeness” represent these two steps. Again, nothing in subsequent biblical revelation would support that. On the contrary, Moses ends his description of the sixth day, saying, “And God saw all that He had made and it was very good.” Still, the Roman church would have us believe that matter is ontologically evil and incapable of existing harmoniously with spirit. Greek dualism we could imagine has slipped its nose under the tent. Summarizing, in stage One, Adam is formed of two mutually opposing substances. Conflict is immediate and inevitable. Paul’s dictum “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh: these are contrary to one another…” (Gal 5:17) is a post-Fall truth and in either case, the context supports the capitalization of “Spirit.” As such, it can’t hold the weight of an imagined war between Adam’s newly formed body and sensual nature and his spirit or rational powers. And even less, is there any suggestion that God remedied a soon to erupt spiritual war by conferring or infusing sanctifying grace. Again, Rome’s classic, though not widely publicized, view that God gave remedial grace before the Fall, is not part of the biblical account and can in no way be squared with it. 

Specifically what does the DS accomplish? It does three things. It provides a check, or a potential check to the raging (or so it is imagined) lusts that would lead to open rebellion and sin. It provides positive righteousness, as before the gift, Adam was a zero, morally speaking. He was not righteous, nor was he sinful. Finally, the gift provided immortality to Adam’s physical body. Without the gift and even before sin, simply by virtue of being made of matter, Adam’s body had a built in shelf life.  

The DS resolved these three issues, instantaneously, even if inefficiently. The three elements are Integrity (the supremacy of the rational powers of the spirit to rule over the desires of the flesh). Righteousness, and Immortality.

(Note: documentation is hard to come by. This is my synopsis of what I believe the DS accomplishes. I leave it to others to correct me, or elucidate me further). The DS functioned, in my simple way of thinking as something like an early and defective computer code. It sat in the background doing its nefarious work while the RCC has, to my knowledge, never formally acknowledged its existence). 

Curiously, in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1914, perhaps the largest work of its kind - and now available online - there is no reference for the DS. There are entries for: Dagon, Damascus, De Soto Hernando, Deism, Determinism, Diaspora, Didache, Dias Bartholomew, the Donation of Constantine, and then many, many obscure figures and concepts. But, the Donum Superadditum is nowhere to be seen. The same thing occurs with the letter “P.” There’s: Padua, Paganism, Papal States, Paschal, Patron Saints, Penance, Pietism, Pilgrimages, Purgatory, Pontifical Decorations and Pontifical Mass, but no reference to the Pontifex Maximus. Pontifex Maximus is perhaps the oldest and perhaps now, it would seem, the most offensive term to be used for the Pope. Yet, any tourist to Rome will tell you that Pon.Max or P.M. is written in stone after the names of numerous Popes from the Basilica of St. Peter’s to even the Trevi Fountain. In an Encyclopedia so rich, one wonders if the concept of a Pontifex Maximus or a Donum Superadditum is perhaps an embarrassment and better left unmentioned. (In the later case, the fact that the Vulgate calls Jesus our “Pontifex Magnus” (great high priest) and not the “Pontifex Maximus” (the greatest high priest) could be a problem). 

That it may not be possible to ascertain the origin of the DS, nor point to it in official RC dogma, is not an argument against its existence. It could be analogous to what occurred in the last century in the field of atomic studies. The Higgs Boson was proposed by Peter Higgs in 1964. It predicted the existence of a subatomic particle that gives mass or perhaps holds together other subatomic particles. (Don’t ask me to explain that) While quantum mathematics pointed to such a particle, it was only in fact discovered in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Higgs won a Noble Prize in Physics the next year for his efforts. In a similar fashion, the doctrines and practices of Roman church, while perhaps silent as to the existence of the DS, point to its existence. It is suggested that the DS is either the cause, or at least provides the pattern, for the following dogmas: 

1. A Novel Definition of Grace
2. The Infusion of Grace vs the Imputation of Grace
3. The Necessity of Baptism for Salvation
4. The Uncertainty of Salvation
5. The Morally Neutral Nature of Concupiscence
6. The Immaculate Conception and Sinlessness of the Virgin Mary
7. A Two-Step Process of Justification
8. The Recently Cancelled Doctrine of Limbo
9. The Counsels of Perfection
10. Meritum de Condigno and Meritum de Congru
11. The Matter-Spirit, Nature-Grace Dualism
12. A Less than Apostolic Apostolic Succession
13. Without Our Help, Can God Ever Get Anything Right? 

1. Rather than grace being God’s unmerited favor to sinners, grace comes on the scene before the Tempter appears and before our first parents rebel. Without God’s second touch, Adam is almost for sure a failed project. Though there is not a word of Scripture to even hint at this two stage or two step creation, it is assumed to have occurred, even if as a concurrent act. God joined spirit and matter, and immediately conferred sanctifying grace for the good of their souls. Certainly God is always gracious and certainly, he is always good, but God’s beneficence only becomes grace when it is displayed to hell-deserving sinners. While the means of grace do strengthen us in our spiritual growth, they are always, in the first instance, expressions of God’s mercy to sinners and are for that reason offered on the basis of Christ’s doing and dying in our behalf. Being made in part of material, our first parents were on the precipice of imminent. total, moral collapse. The material component of their person was generating a knee-jerk response of resistance and rebellion to God’s commands. They desperately needed a spiritual soaking to put out the flames of their matter-spirit generated concupiscence. Sanctifying grace, the DS, would be God’s quickly applied remedy. But where is the proof? And how does that change our understand of grace?

Grace, rather than being God’s unmerited favor to sinners, grace becomes a mere spiritual steroid, a pick-me-up that should have given Adam the strength to resist manfully. But it didn’t. 

2. It has been said that the Reformation could be boiled down to a debate between two words: “Imputation” and “Infusion.” Is the full righteousness of Christ imputed to the sinner on the first instance of genuine repentance and faith, or is in infused? The DS would suggest the later. Before the fall, grace is infused. After the fall, it is delivered sacramentally, and again, in Trent’s own words, by infusion. It is also said to be “conferred” but never imputed. Sacramental grace comes first through baptism and then is augmented through the sacraments. Infusion and injection are similar concepts. Before our first parents had even faced their first temptation, yet in the middle of an intractable war raging between their rational powers and their sensual nature, sanctifying grace was “injected” if you will. And, it goes without saying that God’s grace failed to produce its desired results, While there is certainly a past, present and future dimension to imputed righteousness, it is not understood as a series of infusions. 

3. Baptism, in the language of Trent, is the “first plank” of salvation. As such, it is of course, necessary for salvation. (Thankfully, there are caveats: one may also be baptized by having the intent to be baptized and dying before the sacrament could be administered. And an unbaptized person martyred for their faith has also been baptized by virtue of their martyrdom) That grace was needed before the fall, and in fact, for man to be man, implies that Adam had no need to believe in order to receive God’s grace. How could he believe? He was still being created. In the same way, sanctifying grace is poured into the passive souls of children and they are born again. Faith is not necessary for the Roman sacraments work “ex opere operato” with mechanical seamlessness. Covenant baptism, we know, operates with a completely different mindset. The lack of baptism keeps no one out of heaven and our children are presented for baptism on the basis of the covenant promises to believers. God may or may not regenerate our children in infancy. The grace promised in baptism to covenant children is not tied to the moment of their baptism. And children of the covenant must still come to faith in order to be saved. 

(Baptism could simply be the new covenant version of the DS, albeit in a reconfigured sense. It is a kind of 2/3 DS. The sanctifying grace of baptism does not bring Immortality, but it does provide the initial doses of Righteousness and Integrity. And, just as in the first infusion of the DS, said Righteousness and Integrity are soon dissipated and must be renewed by frequent use of the sacraments) 

4. Just as the DS secured nothing for our first parents, in the same way, baptism and the faithful use of the Roman sacraments secures salvation for no one. They are a help, for sure, and the way one could better one’s chances. The ultimate issue is if one takes their last breath in the State of Grace or in the State of Mortal Sin. And while faithful use of the sacraments in principle, increases the percentage of time one is, as if were, above the line, in the State of Grace, it in no way guarantees that one will find himself there in their last moments. Venial sins are not the problem. You may sin venial sins all day long and remain above the line. In fact, it is imagined that this describes most Christians and for that reason, dying in the State of Grace still necessitates passage through Purgatory. There one is purged of the stain of sinful corruption and pays the temporal penalties due to sin. But, the key is to take one’s last breath “above the line.” One mortal sin committed at the wrong time and followed by sudden death condemns even the most faithful Catholic to hell. So again, sanctifying grace secures nothing. And, of course, Adam’s fall happened in spite of the DS. Consistent with this reality, Trent forbids believers from having assurance of their salvation. (There is a caveat. Rome allows one to receive a special revelation in regard to assurance of eternal life, but by definition, this is only enjoyed by a select few and provides a “pre-canizonation” as it were, of future saints). Trent’s chapter on Justification, First Decree, Chapter 9, concludes, “….seeing that no one can know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God.”

5. Concerning the morally neutral nature of concupiscence, we ask: How can concupiscence be sin when it was an integral part of our initial Stage One constitution? It’s part and parcel of who we are as people made in the image of God. The struggle is real, but it is not culpable. When the fall occurs, God’s punishment is simply to take back his gift. Adam and Eve are relegated to a Stage One existence. If there was ever a question about the existence of a prelapsarian DS, that doubt is removed when we see how God punishes his children. He removed the gift. The fall pushed mankind back down the ladder of ascent to God. It assigned them to the inferior Stage One where death becomes real again, where righteousness has been taken out of their account, (they’re back at zero - not positively wicked or unrighteous) and concupiscence again becomes his unhappy condition. Man is back to his primitive constitution; we are just spirit and matter. In that light, it is perfectly logical that concupiscence does not incur moral liability. The “lusts of the flesh” or “the passions of our sinful nature” are perfectly normal. They are part and parcel of what it means to be men and women made in the image of God. Says Trent: Concerning Original Sin, Chapter 1, “This concupiscence, which the apostle sometimes calls sin, the holy Synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood it to be called sin, as being truly and properly sin in those born again, but because it is of sin, and inclines to sin.”

This reality is seen every time a Catholic goes to the Sacrament of Penance. There, mortal sins must be confessed. Overly scrupulous souls may also confess venial sins. But confessing a heart pushed and pulled into every manner of evil is not a legitimate concern to bring before a priest. I learned that at age seven or eight, making my “First Confession.” We were given a booklet to help us learn what to say in the confessional. It was a kind of examination of conscience. The questions were: “How many times did I disobey my parents? How many times did I hit my brother and sister? How many times did I lie?” etc.. There was no requirement, however, that I say to the priest, “But Father, the biggest problem I face is that I have an evil heart. I want my own way all day long. If it were up to me, I would be God and everyone would do my bidding. Father, I’m a horrible, lost sinner.” (Curiously, in our time in Portugal, I learned that Portuguese Catholic children had a similar booklet. It was contextualized, it would seem, to the times. And older woman in our church told me that her booklet asked, “How many times have you taken sugar cubes out of the sugar bowl?”) 

The evangelical approach is world’s apart from this form of spirituality. We urge our children to come to faith and to call out to Christ as their Savior from sins, and from sin. We understand that sins are the symptom and that God’s desires purity in our innermost being. In Rome’s understanding sin is not sin if there is not an act of the will attached to it. What we call a sinful heart is simply the demonstration that we have been made in the image of God. We take part in God’s failure to make a better model. 

6. The Immaculate Conception of Mary: in so many words, the Virgin Mary was simply conceived in a Stage One condition, without the stain of original sin, and with an additional benefit that Eve herself did not enjoy. While the language may not be employed, the fact is that Mary gets, as it were, a stronger dose of sanctifying grace. She cannot fail. (Again that this grace is “sanctifying” when sin is not even present says something curious about the use of the word “sanctifying”). Is it any wonder that Mary is called the New Eve or the Second Eve? 

The Immaculate Conception proves that even God can learn from his mistakes. He wasn’t going to let it happen twice. Mary had to succeed. Given that her world was a fallen world, and not the Garden of Eden, that her husband was a sinner, and not Adam under the sway of the DS, made her task infinitely more difficult. To my knowledge, official dogma concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary does not connect the dots to the DS. But, it would appear that the link exists. Mary must have received a double dose or triple dose of the grace imparted to Eve. How else could she not only have been conceived without sin, but also live her whole earthly existence in complete and total submission to the will of God? She is as sinless, says the RCC, as her sinless Son. That’s quite a claim!!!

7. A two-step, uncertain justification: This is perhaps the most curious point of all. It is well established that justification by faith was the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation. The debate, of course, continues to this day, in spite of the Evangelicals and Catholics Together declarations or Rome removing the Tridentine anathemas against Lutheranism. Whole libraries could be filled with the works from both sides that have addressed this critical theme. Yet, to my limited knowledge, no one has suggested that Rome’s admittedly two-step justification (Baptism being the “first plank” and final entrance into glory the second - after the necessary time in Purgatory) might have any link to its teaching on the two steps posited by Rome in man’s creation. 

It may be overstating the case to say there is a causal relationship but it may well be. Better minds than mine might make that case. At the minimum it provides a paradigm for how Justification works in the RCC system.

That’s the end of part One. Lord willing, part Two (sounds like I’m obsessed with two steps, but really, it’s just the press of time and the length of this article) will cover numbers 8-13.

How does this relate to Revoice and Side-B homosexuality or Same Sex Attraction? Well, for one, it tells us a lot about concupiscence. It’s not a neutral quantity within the human soul. Never has been. For that reason we bemoan our inward corruption, confess it, and fight against it. Secondly, the DS introduced an unbiblical notion that appears to have woven its way into the warp and woof of RC theology, and with serious corrupting effect. How might the current language apparently used in the SSA, Side-B debates have a similar effect? They don’t seem to be concepts that jump out of the pages of Scripture. Where is the exegesis supporting these 21st century concepts? Are current spiritual struggles by those who experience SSA causing one to read back into the text that which the divine author had not intended? That certainly seems to be what has happened within the RCC and its “unspoken dogma” of the DS. 

I welcome feedback, corrections, and documentation. More to follow in Part Two.