Good news everyone: I have a new outlet. I’m writing for Catholic365 now, and my first article just went up (they’re on a different set up, so I have more control over when my articles go up there). It’s a topic I think I’ve covered before; the honesty of God and its consequences:

It is sometimes said, even by great and wise Christians, that God could have simply forgiven Adam upon his fall, but chose, of love for us, to redeem mankind in the more sublime manner of the Cross. That the Incarnation and the Cross were an overabundance of mercy beyond a mere cancelling out of the sins of man is not to be doubted, of course, but speaking under correction, I don’t think it’s quite so simple as that.

The key factor here is that God can neither deceive nor be deceived. That is, He cannot say that which is not. When we combine this with creatures who have free will, we run into something of a stalemate situation. That Adam had sinned is a fact; it can never be made otherwise. That something has happened means that it will always have happened, no matter what happens afterwards. So, God could not say that it had never happened.

Nor could He say – for He made it so – that it did not mean anything, for despite what many of our contemporaries think, actions carry meaning within them, by their own internal logic as related to the world as it is. That Adam had sinned, and sinned infinitely, was and is a fact. It cannot be made as if it had never been, because to do so would be for God to unsay what He had already said.

It bears focusing on this for a moment, since, as I say, it is not a popular view in the present age. Meaning derives from nature; that two-plus-two equals four is the inevitable consequence of the meaning of ‘two’ and ‘four’. In fact, stating this is simply another way of stating what ‘two’ and ‘four’ mean. If you were to say that two-plus-two equals five, you would be changing the meaning – the nature – of either two or five.

We, who are liars, can claim to do this, but God, who cannot lie, cannot. Therefore He could not say that Adam’s sin was not a sin and was not infinitely grievous and did not separate him and his progeny from God, for it was the nature of things as He made them that it should do so. The fact is that Adam had sinned and had not made a sufficient restitution for it.

Read the rest here, and check out the site; there’s some good stuff there.