Giving Others a Reason to Be Christian, by Michael Pakaluk

By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, April 13, 2021

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America.  …

We may speculate whether God would have become incarnate if man had not fallen. But the only reason that Scripture suggests is he did so to save us from our sins.   So says St. Thomas Aquinas, echoing the Fathers.  So says, the Creed too – “for us men and for our salvation.”

It is salvation from sin that Christ won, after all, and not any other salvation, in this life.  “He saved others; he cannot save himself,” mocked the Scribes and elders (Mt 27:42), wrongly understanding by “salvation” merely his miracles – his healings and exorcisms.  A strange mockery, this, which leads the mockers to take up common cause with disease and the devil! …