He is the Prime Mover because the yearning of the sphere of the fixed stars for perfection causes it to rotate in a never to be satisfied search for pure actuality
This is sort of like what I was trying to say. That is, that the world seeks to be perfect (or pure actuality) like God. But I wouldn't say it is endless.
Anyway I am still working on this.
Here is some encarta material from the scholatics to Martin Luther.
4 articles (or excerpts of), Grace, Pelagianism, original sin, Martin Luther
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IINTRODUCTION Grace, in Christian theology, unearned favor, freely bestowed by God on individuals who are thereby redeemed and sanctified. Grace (Hebrew hen) in this sense is mentioned in Hebrew Scripture. In the New Testament, grace (Greek charis) is associated almost exclusively with the figure of Christ. By Christ's atoning death, the limitless favor of God was revealed (see Atonement).
IIPELAGIUS AND AUGUSTINE The first theological conflict over the nature of sin and grace occurred in the late 4th century between St. Augustine and the British theologian Pelagius. Pelagius argued that every person is free to obey or disobey God. Everyone sins from time to time and needs the grace of God. In Pelagius's view, however, grace consists of God's having given the teachings and the example of Jesus, so that by grace one can know the right and good. One might further pray for God's grace as assistance in performing the good. Such grace is "resistible," however; one is free to refuse it. Pelagius regarded salvation as God's reward given for a life of freely chosen obedience.
Augustine agreed that God had created humanity free to obey or disobey him, but argued that the taint of original sin is transmitted to succeeding generations by the act of procreation. Humanity is therefore unable not to sin. Only the irresistible grace of God can free his creation from the power of sin, and that grace was given in Christ. It is made accessible to individuals through the ministry of the church and especially through baptism and the other sacraments (see Sacrament). Believers may still sin, but those whom God elects persevere and finally achieve salvation, not by their merit or good works, but by the triumphant grace of God (see Predestination).
IIITHE MIDDLE AGES Scholastic theologians, especially St. Thomas Aquinas, somewhat altered the Augustinian doctrine of grace, which they intended to affirm. Aquinas introduced a distinction between the realm of nature and the realm of the supernatural. The realm of nature, he argued, can be known by unaided reason. The realm of the supernatural can be understood only through the grace of God and by his gracious revelation of truth. Thus, Aquinas made room for both Aristotelian reason in the natural realm and traditional Augustinian theology in the supernatural realm. For him, reason is untainted by sin and yields adequate knowledge within its inherent limitations. Grace does not contradict or supersede nature, but perfects it.
The Scholastics also made a series of distinctions concerning the realm of grace itself. Grace belongs to the supernatural realm; yet an act of grace is necessary to elevate a person to the realm of grace. This is justifying grace, or grace of elevation (see Justification). It takes a further act of grace, called sanctifying grace, to make a person holy and sanctified and thus able to enter communion with God. In addition, there is gratuitous grace: God's grace cannot be bound to any predetermined channel. Grace may be permanent, as recognized in the steadfast, virtuous life of its recipient (habitual grace); it may also be received on rare occasions to allow certain extraordinary acts of obedience to God (actual grace).
Scholastic theology tied grace almost exclusively to the sacramental system. Grace, according to this doctrine, is infused by each of the seven sacraments, so that the proper kind of grace is available when needed.
IVTHE REFORMATION The 16th-century Protestant reformers dissociated grace to some extent from the sacraments. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin emphasized the personal quality of grace. For Luther, grace depends on a personal relationship with God and cannot be imparted to an individual apart from or against that individual's will. Calvin contended that grace is an irresistible force within the individual that frees the will from its natural bondage and is given only to those predestined by God for salvation.
Protestant reformers also rejected the Scholastic belief in the efficacy of unaided reason in the understanding of the natural realm. Luther and Calvin argued that all creation is corrupted by sin, including nature and reason as well as human will and feeling. Thus, they reverted to an interpretation of sin and grace more Augustinian than that of the Scholastics.
VMODERN DEVELOPMENTS Liberal Protestant thought in the 19th and early 20th centuries developed an optimistic and almost Pelagian view of human nature. After the disillusionment of World War I and its aftermath, however, the most influential Protestant theologians, including Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich, sought to recover a more Augustinian doctrine of sin and grace. This neoorthodox movement did not, however, revive Augustine's idea of the transmission of sin by procreation, and it retained the traditional Protestant emphasis on the personal quality of grace without denying the centrality of sacraments. The work of certain 20th-century Roman Catholic theologians, such as Karl Rahner and Hans Küng, moves in similar directions, under the influence of existentialism.
Contributed By:
Charles P. Price
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Pelagianism, in Christian theology, a rationalistic and naturalistic heretical doctrine concerning grace and morals, which emphasizes human free will as the decisive element in human perfectibility and minimizes or denies the need for divine grace and redemption. The doctrine was formulated by the Romano-British monk Pelagius, a man of considerable learning and austere moral character. About 390 he went to Rome, where, appalled by the lax morals of Roman Christians, he preached Christian asceticism and recruited many followers. His strict moral teaching had particular success in southern Italy and Sicily and was preached openly there until the death (circa 455) of his foremost disciple, Julian of Eclanum.
Pelagius denied the existence of original sin and the need for infant baptism. He argued that the corruption of the human race is not inborn, but is due to bad example and habit, and that the natural faculties of humanity were not adversely affected by Adam's fall. Human beings can lead lives of righteousness and thereby merit heaven by their own efforts. Pelagius asserted that true grace lies in the natural gifts of humanity, including free will, reason, and conscience. He also recognized what he called external graces, including the Mosaic law and the teaching and example of Christ, which stimulate the will from the outside but have no indwelling divine power. For Pelagius, faith and dogma hardly matter because the essence of religion is moral action. His belief in the moral perfectibility of humanity was evidently derived from Stoicism.
Pelagius settled in Palestine about 412 and enjoyed the support of John, bishop of Jerusalem. His views were popular in the East, especially among the Origenists (see Origen). Later, his disciples Celestius and Julian were welcomed in Constantinople (present-day Ýstanbul) by the patriarch Nestorius, who sympathized with their doctrine of the integrity and independence of the will (see Nestorianism).
Starting in 412, St. Augustine wrote a series of works in which he attacked the Pelagian doctrine of human moral autonomy and developed his own subtle formulation of the relation of human freedom to divine grace. As a result of Augustine's criticisms, Pelagius was accused of heresy, but he was acquitted at synods at Jerusalem and Diospolis. In 418, however, a council at Carthage condemned Pelagius and his followers. Soon afterward Pope Zosimus also condemned him. Nothing more is known of Pelagius after this time.
Contributed By:
Margaret A. Schatkin
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IINTRODUCTION Original Sin, in Christian theology, the universal sinfulness of the human race, traditionally ascribed to the first sin committed by Adam. Sin, in Christian doctrine, is considered a state of alienation or estrangement from God.
IISCRIPTURAL FOUNDATION The term original sin is not found in the Bible. Theologians who advocate the doctrine of original sin argue, however, that it is strongly implied by Paul (see Romans 7), by John (see 1 John 5:19), and even by Jesus himself (see Luke 11:13). Behind this New Testament teaching lies the world view of late Jewish apocalyptic writings. Some of these writings attribute the corrupt state of the world to a prehistoric fall of Satan, the subsequent temptation of Adam and Eve, and the immersion of human history thereafter in disorder, disobedience, and pain (see 2 Esdras 7). In this apocalyptic framework, Paul and other New Testament writers interpreted the work of Christ as overcoming the tremendous power of inherited sin and evil once and for all, reconciling humanity to God, and thus making peace.
IIIST. AUGUSTINE The decline and fall of Rome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries produced a similar apocalyptic atmosphere of crisis and despair. In his controversy with the Romano-British monk Pelagius over the nature of sin and grace, Augustine was able to appeal powerfully and effectively to the Pauline-apocalyptic understanding of the forgiveness of sin (see Pelagianism). In his elaboration of the doctrine, however, Augustine imported an idea foreign to the Bible: the notion that the taint of sin is transmitted from generation to generation by the act of procreation. He took this idea from the 2nd-century theologian Tertullian, who actually coined the phrase original sin.
IVSUBSEQUENT THEOLOGY Medieval theologians retained the idea of original sin, with certain qualifications. It was asserted again in a more recognizably Augustinian form by 16th-century Protestant reformers, primarily Martin Luther and John Calvin. In subsequent Protestant thought, the doctrine was diluted or circumvented. Liberal Protestant theologians developed an optimistic view of human nature that was incompatible with the idea of original sin. The extended crisis of Western civilization that began with World War I, however, has aroused renewed interest in the original, basically apocalyptic, outlook of the New Testament and in the doctrine of original sin. Such neoorthodox or postliberal theologians as Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich, however, were unwilling to attribute the transmission of sin to procreation, instead attributing it to an already corrupt society.
Contributed By:
Charles P. Price
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THEOLOGY Luther was not a systematic theologian, but his work was subtle, complex, and immensely influential. It was inspired by his careful study of the New Testament, but it was also influenced in important respects by the great 4th-century theologian St. Augustine.
ALaw and Gospel Luther maintained that God interacts with human beings in two ways-through the law and through the Gospel.
The law represents God's demands-as expressed, for example, in the Ten Commandments and the golden rule. All people, regardless of their religious convictions, have some degree of access to the law through their consciences and through the ethical traditions of their culture, although their understanding of it is always distorted by human sin. The law has two functions. It enables human beings to maintain some order in their world, their communities, and their own lives despite the profound alienation from God, the world, their neighbors, and ultimately themselves that is caused by original sin. In addition, the law makes human beings aware of their need for the forgiveness of sins and thus leads them to Christ.
God also interacts with human beings through the Gospel, the good news of God's gift of his Son for the salvation of the human race. This proclamation demands nothing but acceptance on the part of the individual. Indeed, Luther argued that theology had gone wrong precisely when it began to confuse law and Gospel (God's demand and God's gift) by claiming that human beings can in some way merit that which can only be the unconditional gift of God's grace.
BSin Luther insisted that Christians, as long as they live in this world, are sinners and saints simultaneously. They are saints insofar as they trust in God's grace and not in their own achievements. Sin, however, is a permanent and pervasive feature in the church as well as in the world, and a saint is not a moral paragon but a sinner who accepts God's grace. Thus, for Luther, the most respected citizen and the habitual criminal are both in need of forgiveness by God.
CThe Finite and Infinite Luther held that God makes himself known to human beings through earthly, finite forms rather than in his pure divinity. Thus, God revealed himself in Jesus Christ; he speaks his word to us in the human words of the New Testament writers; and his body and blood are received by believers (in Luther's formulation) "in, with, and under" the bread and wine in Holy Communion (see Eucharist). When human beings serve each other and the world in their various occupations (which Luther called vocations) as mothers and fathers, rulers and subjects, butchers and bakers, they are instruments of God, who works in the world through them. Luther thus broke down the traditional distinction between sacred and secular occupations.
DTheology of the Cross Luther asserted that Christian theology is the theology of the cross rather than a theology of glory. Human beings cannot apprehend God by means of philosophy or ethics; they must let God be God and see him only where he chooses to make himself known. Thus, Luther stressed that God reveals his wisdom through the foolishness of preaching, his power through suffering, and the secret of meaningful life through Christ's death on the cross.
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