Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: st0o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Steven Timm) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Benjamin Britten's pagan? carol Message-ID: Date: 5 Jul 90 08:15:30 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 50 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In Benjamin Britten's "A Ceremony of Carols," he sets to 20th century music ten or so carols which I understand to date from English antiquity. One of them is the carol "Deo Gracias" which despite its Latin title is in English. In referring to the fall of Adam, (I don't remember the words exactly, this is a paraphrase) .... if the appil had not taken been then would not Our Lady 'a been hevene Queen Blessed be the day the appil taken was.... Do Catholics really believe this? Or does anyone else? I know the idea that the fall was a good idea appears in Mormon literature, but this is the only reference to the benefits of the fall I've seen elsewhere. [I suppose if you believe that the Virgin is heaven's Queen, then it's true enough. But do you really praise God for sin?] Steve [There was a debate in later Calvinism over the question of whether God willed the fall. The two views are called infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism. I find that in the whole area of God's "eternal decree" there are no easy answers, and I can only advance tentative conclusions. But my own view is that we have to imagine that God intended what actually happened. The infralapsarian view is that while this may be true, we don't want to say that he positively wanted people to sin. However God did at least wanted something that implied that in fact they would sin. E.g. he wanted children who had chosen him responsibly, and there was no way to get this without eventually having them sin. The best support of the supralapsarian view is in Romans. We can read Paul as taking the more radical position that God intended to save people through sin. Much of Romans is dealing with the problem of how the Jews could have rejected Christ. First Paul suggests that it was to provide an opportunity for the message to spread to the Gentiles. Then in Rom 11 he says that their rejection is only temporary: eventually all of Israel will be saved. Finally, he explains that this is only a special example of God's general way of proceeding: "The Jews now disobey God, in order that they also may now receive God's mercy. For God has made all people prisoners of disobedience, so that he might show mercy to them all." (Rom 11:31-32) This suggests that rather than making people who are intrisically perfect, he chooses to start with people who are intrinsically not capable of righteousness on their own, so that all of their righteousness can come from his grace. This seems very close to what Deo Gratias is saying. However it is a very controversial vision of God's will. From what I know of the Catholic approach to these issues, this view is far more Protestant than Catholic. --clh]