The Lost Soul of Scott Hahn

Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism. Scott and Kimberly Hahn. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993. Foreword by Peter Kreeft

What sorts of people write autobiographies when they are healthy and well at 35? Generally there are three sorts: egotists, egomaniacs, and megalomaniacs. There seems to be no other plausible reason for writing the story of one's life when it has barely begun. But the fawning Peter Kreeft, a confused mind who wrote the Foreword for this book, disagrees. According to Kreeft, Scott and Kimberly Hahn are "one of the beautiful and bright-shining stars in the firmament of hope for our desperate days." The Hahns, writes Kreeft shamelessly, "are simply very bright, clear-thinking and irrefutably reasonable... passionately in love with Truth and with honesty. They are incapable of fudging anything except fudge." Kreeft calls the Hahns "stars" for only one reason: their noisy rejection of Christianity and conversion to Roman Catholicism. They have no other "achievement."

I once knew Scott Hahn. I met him about twelve years ago when he was a Presbyterian minister living in the Washington, D.C. area. (I had spoken to Hahn by phone before that: When he was a student at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, I paid him to record the guest lectures of Gordon Clark at the seminary.) Being an administrative assistant to a Member of Congress at the time, I invited Hahn (and others) to speak to a group of Congressional staffers, and he spoke on his favorite topic, "familism," which is his apotheosis of the family. At the time I had no knowledge of Hahn's real theological views; I was naive enough to think that a Presbyterian minister actually believed Presbyterian doctrine, and Hahn dissembled well enough. He fooled me, and a number of other people as well. In a discussion I had with Hahn after his lecture, it became clear that one of Hahn's preoccupations – in addition to his obsession with the notion of family – was eschatology: He was a postmillennialist who had been heavily influenced by the Reconstructionist movement. In fact, he was the (unordained) pastor of a Reconstructionist church in Fairfax, Virginia.

Hahn is one of a few seminary-trained, apparently well-educated Protestant ministers who have joined the Roman Catholic Church over the last few years. The Hahns have gained some notoriety from their speeches and tapes, and now this book, which is based on their speeches, will add to that notoriety. One remark his wife makes in this book suggests that Hahn's desire to be noticed is great: "Scott suffered tremendous loneliness. He was misunderstood and rejected by many Protestant friends who didn't want to talk to him.... He felt that former professors didn't think he was worth pursuing to convince him he was wrong [about Scripture]. And he couldn't understand the nonchalance of a number of [Roman] Catholics at Marquette [University, where Hahn was a student at the time] over his conversion, acting rather hohum over the whole thing, rather than welcoming him for all he had risked and left behind" (109). What good is being a martyr if no one notices you?

Two other men defected to Rome as a result of Hahn's influence: his seminary classmate Gerald Matatics, and Presbyterian Church in America minister William Bales. Other defections, such as that of author Thomas Howard, are apparently unrelated to Hahn's. Why were these men seduced by Rome? The answers to that question are complex. Each man's seduction is probably unique. But there are some features of Hahn's seduction that reveal fatal weaknesses in what passes for contemporary Protestant Christianity. Today Hahn teaches at the Franciscan Seminary of Steubenville (Ohio), a charismatic Roman Catholic institution. His wife, the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman, is also a graduate of Gordon-Conwell: She wanted to be a pastor, she says.

The first of the reasons for Hahn's conversion to Romanism is liberalism and Arminianism. Hahn tells us that he was "baptized a Presbyterian" and "raised in a nominal Protestant home. Church and religion played a small role in my life and for my family...." As a teenager, he was a drug-using criminal who lied his way out of jail: "Faced with a yearlong sentence to a detention center for a variety of charges, I barely lied my way out of the sentence and into six months of probation instead" (1). In high school Hahn became active in Young Life, an Arminian evangelistic group. There he read Paul Little and C. S. Lewis. He also had some religious experiences: "Before finishing my sophomore year, I experienced the transforming power of God's grace in conversion. Within the next year, I experienced a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a personal and life-changing way." Apparently Hahn had both a conversion experience and a charismatic experience in high school. In his senior year, he met the Presbyterian John Gerstner, "one of my favorite theologians" (31). While in high school, Hahn also became enamored of Luther and Calvin, apparently because they appealed to his need for heroes: "I decided the figures in Christian history who most appealed to me...were the great protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin" (5). But the theologies of Luther and Calvin seemed to play relatively small parts in Hahn's thinking; he was fascinated by other things. A guitarist, Hahn liked modern music: "The summer before going off to college, I toured the United States, Scotland, England and Holland, playing guitar in a Christian musical group, the Continentals" (13). Hahn attended the theologically liberal but economically conservative Grove City College, a college affiliated with the mainline Presbyterian church, where he concentrated in theology, philosophy, and economics, and continued his activity in Young Life. While in college, Hahn "discovered that the covenant was really the key for unlocking the whole Bible" (17). Beware the man who thinks he has discovered some sort of "key" for understanding the Bible, whether it is the idea of covenant, a scheme of dispensations (instituted by covenants), or a five-point covenantal model.

The second major factor influencing Hahn's conversion to Rome seems to be the official Roman Catholic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and evidentialism. While at nominally Protestant Grove City College, Hahn "had become enamored with and steeped in the philosophy of Saint Thomas. In spite of my anti-Catholic outlook, I had known a good thing when I found it, and in my mind, no one could compare to Aquinas.... I had devoured his philosophical writings, especially his metaphysics, eventually acquiring the odd and unlikely reputation for being an ‘evangelical Thomist' " (101).

During his first years in Gordon-Conwell Seminary, 1979-81, Hahn suffered from a confused mental state: "At this point I would describe my study as a detective story. I was searching Scripture to discover clues as to the whereabouts of real Christianity" (25). Although Hahn does not mention it in the book, his tuition at Gordon-Conwell was paid by a Calvinist Christian businessman who wanted to support a student who understood both free market economics and Christian theology, for the purpose of being able to teach economics to clergymen and Christian theology to economists. Hahn was highly recommended to the businessman by the Chairman of the Economics Department at Grove City. What Hahn learned at Grove City was Thomism, and his interest in economics – which he says he studied only to mollify his "practical" father, not because he was genuinely interested in the subject – has disappeared. Hahn's obsession is to convert Christians to Catholicism, not to educate clergymen about principles of economics or economists about Christian theology. He owes one Christian businessman many thousand dollars and his former economics professor an apology.

While he was at Gordon-Conwell being supported by a Calvinist Christian businessman, Hahn adopted the Roman Catholic view of justification: "When Christ formed the New Covenant with us, then, it was much more than a simple contract or legal exchange, where he took our sin and gave us his righteousness, as Luther and Calvin explained it.... In fact, I discovered that nowhere did Saint Paul ever teach that we were justified by faith alone! Sola fide was unscriptural! "I was so excited about this discovery. I shared it with some friends, who were amazed at how much sense it made. Then one friend stopped me and asked if I knew who else was teaching this way on justification. When I responded that I didn't, he told me that Dr. Norman Shepherd, a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary (the strictest Presbyterian Calvinist seminary in America) was about to undergo a heresy trial for teaching the same view of justification that I was expounding. "So I called Professor Shepherd and talked with him. He said he was accused of teaching something contrary to the teachings of Scripture, Luther and Calvin. As I heard him describe what he was teaching, I thought, Hey, that is what I'm saying" (30-31).

As for Kimberly, "At this point [more than halfway through seminary] I was not steeped in Reformation theology, so the change in how I viewed justification did not seem momentous" (42). Please consider the import of that statement. Here are two graduates of a Presbyterian College, two students nearing completion of their studies at reputedly one of the best evangelical Protestant seminaries in the country, two professing Christians – and the meaning of justification is not all that important to them. As we shall soon see, despite – or rather because of – their education, the Hahns – especially Scott – could not defend the Reformation principles of the Bible alone, faith alone, and Christ alone.

The fourth major influence on Hahn's conversion to Romanism was the Reconstructionist movement. After attending seminary, Hahn had intended to study theology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where he had been acc.epted, but he changed his mind because of Margaret Thatcher: "Margaret Thatcher made it almost impossible for Americans to have babies at British taxpayers' expense; so we took this as sign for us to look elsewhere for work, delaying doctoral studies for a while" (32). Not having paid for his own education, Hahn apparently did not intend to pay for his children either. The principles of economics seem to have been quite forgotten.

Instead, Hahn was hired as pastor and schoolteacher by a Reconstructionist church in Fairfax, Virginia: "When I candidated for the position at Trinity Presbyterian Church, I shared my views and concerns regarding justification – that I took Dr. Shepherd's position. They understood and said they did, too. So shortly before graduation, I accepted the pastorate at Trinity, as well as a teaching position in their high school, Fairfax Christian School" (33). The Reconstuctionist church was not fooled: They knew quite well that Hahn had defected from the Biblical doctrine of justification by faith, and they wanted him for that reason.

While pastoring the Reconstructionist church, Hahn "began to see how important liturgy was for the covenant.... Liturgy represented the way God fathered the covenant family..." (43). "My parishioners grew excited. The elders even asked me to revise our liturgy." While teaching his ideas at the school, his Roman Catholicism was so obvious that several of his students told him he would join the Roman Catholic church. (Someone should write a book about Reconstructionist churches and their affinity for Roman Catholic and Orthodox liturgy and doctrine.) Hahn was also invited to teach at Dominion Theological Institute (which later merged with Chesapeake Theological Seminary). During this period he became convinced of the Roman doctrine that Jesus Christ was physically present in the bread and the wine. Thus, when one participates in mass, one is eating the physical body and drinking the physical blood of Christ. The proper name for the practice – if Catholics were actually doing what they dogmatically assert that they are doing – is ritual cannibalism.

Hahn was also teaching his seminary students – contrary to what the seminary itself believed, contrary to what he was being paid to teach, and without informing the leadership of the seminary – that justification by faith alone was false. The fact that he was denying the Christian doctrine of justification while being paid to teach it does not seem to bother him. Oddly, Hahn opens his book with this story designed to illustrate his lifelong honesty: "I recall the last time I ever attended our family's church. The minister was preaching all about his doubts regarding the Virgin Birth of Jesus and his bodily Resurrection. I just stood up in the middle of his sermon and walked out. I remember thinking, I'm not sure what I believe, but at least I'm honest enough not to stand up and attack the things I'm supposed to teach" (1). But that is exactly what Hahn did when he taught seminary classes, and that is exactly what he did when he accepted money for seminary tuition under false pretenses. After Hahn attacked sola fide in his seminary classes in Virginia, one of the students challenged him to defend sola scriptura. He could not (51-52). After seven years in "Protestant" educational institutions, and now a Presbyterian minister, Hahn, who by all accounts was an excellent student, could not defend the major principles of the Protestant Reformation.

The Hahns left Virginia and moved back to Grove City, where Scott took a job as assistant to the college president and instructor in theology, of all things. Liberalism, Arminianism, Thomism, evidentialism, and Reconstructionism had persuaded Hahn of the truth of Catholicism, and now Mary clinched the argument: Hahn began feeling that God was "calling me into the [Roman] Catholic Church" (60). Scott and Kimberly got "feelings," "leadings," "nudges," "peace," "impressions," and "callings," – alleged messages from God and his mother, Mary. While teaching theology at Grove City College, Hahn drove down to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh for theology classes. There he was "the only student defending Pope John Paul II!" (66), and there he first became involved with Opus Dei (67). After someone mailed him a Rosary, Hahn decided to perform an experiment by praying to Mary about an "impossible situation." Hahn prayed, and the impossible situation resolved itself within three months. In Hahn's irrational mind, praying the Rosary obviously worked. As a result, Hahn now prays to Mary daily.

That, of course, is how all superstitions begin: committing the logical fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Leaving Grove City, Hahn decided to continue his studies at Marquette University. While in Milwaukee he learned that his seminary classmate, Gerald Matatics, was going to be absorbed into the Roman Catholic church two weeks later at Easter, 1986. Hahn, who had talked Matatics into Roman Catholicism, could not stand to have him go first, yet Hahn had promised his wife that he would not become a Roman Catholic until 1990. He asked her to pray about releasing him from his promise, and she did so. Hahn and Matatics were both absorbed by the Roman Catholic Church in 1986. Hahn says that he "had fallen head over heels in love with our Lord in the Eucharist!" (88).

Kimberly was jealous of Scott's long walks and talks with Mary. During Christmas 1986 Kimberly, who was pregnant, got a "word from the Lord" concerning her baby (115). When the baby was baptized a Roman Catholic, Kimberly "was astounded at the beauty of the liturgy" (117). Kimberly "came to appreciate that [baby] Hannah had become a child of God through baptism, being born again by water and the Spirit. As I studied baptism, it connected with what I had already done on justification. As with Scott, my study in seminary had led me to reject as unscriptural the Protestant teaching of justification by faith alone" (137). Note well: "As with Scott, my study in seminary had led me to reject as unscriptural the Protestant teaching of justification by faith alone."

When Hahn was confirmed, he chose Francis de Sales as his "patron saint," because "de Sales happened to be the Bishop of Geneva, Switzerland, while John Calvin was leading the people farther away from the Catholic Faith.... [He] was such an effective preacher and apologist that, through his sermons and pamphlets, over forty thousand Calvinists were brought back into the Church" (133).

Before defecting to Rome, Hahn and Matatics had met with John Gerstner, the evidentialist Presbyterian theologian who was unable to persuade them of the errors of Roman Catholicism. After his conversion, Hahn debated with Robert Knudsen, the Dooyeweerdian and Van Tilian professor of apologetics at Westminster Seminary, about sola fide and sola scriptura. Hahn writes: "I never dreamed of such a positive outcome. Not only did the Westminster Seminary students in attendance express their surprise and excitement at the end," his wife was impressed too. I have listened to that debate on cassette tape, and Apologetics Professor Knudsen's performance is embarrassing and incompetent.

In January 1992, Dr. Jerry Kirk, Hahn's father-in-law, a Presbyterian minister in Cincinnati, invited Hahn to accompany him to Rome to meet the pope. There he met the "Holy Father" for a few seconds and the next day went to a chapel for mass with the pope. He embraced the pope, giving him a personal letter and a check. "As I left the presence of Pope John Paul II – the one anointed by my heavenly Father and eldest Brother to shepherd the covenant family of God on earth – I had a strong sense that God was saying, ‘Scott, the best is yet to come' " (172). Hahn does not explain this dark, oracular saying: Does it mean that he will be elected the first American pope? Appointed cardinal? Invited to Rome to join the Vatican lowerarchy? Named Grand Inquisitor? We are not told.

Hahn's defection is one of several similar defections. They are occurring, not because Rome is a true church, but because of the apostasy of "Protestantism." The largest American Protestant denominations are either unbelieving or unknowing, priding themselves on their rejection of Scripture, their vacuous faith, or their limited knowledge. Many smaller denominations and independent churches are in little better condition. They are largely Arminian – which is semi-Romanist already, believing in man's free will; revivalist – which is informed by Roman Catholic experientialism; or charismatic – which continues Rome's theology of miracles and gifts. American "Protestantism" is mostly Roman Catholic already. Some of the more conservative churches have been led astray by Reconstructionism, by religiously cooperative efforts in the anti-abortion movement, by programs of social and political reform. Just when the preaching of the Gospel is most urgently needed, it is rarely heard in "Protestant" pulpits. It is doubtful that most graduates of theological schools could give a clear and accurate summary of the Gospel. The Roman Catholic church is by far the largest ecclesiastical organization in America with about 58 million subjects; it operates tens of thousands of churches, thousands of schools, and hundreds of colleges. Worldwide, it claims more than 950 million subjects. Its loyal American subjects are becoming more and more militant in every area. Hahn's own zeal for the pope is reflected not only in this book, but in the scores of tapes he and his wife have produced and which have been distributed by the hundreds of thousands. Only the grace of God can save us from another Dark Age and the church that Luther recognized as the slaughterhouse of souls.

I suspect that your "conversion to Geneva" did not come about as a reaction to Alex Murphy posting this John Robbins article or to the John Robbins article itself. It would be silly of me to deny that many who have been Catholic have become reformed Christians just as many reformed Christians have become Catholic. In the former cases, the gross dereliction of duty by a couple of generations of leftist mushroom and gutless excuses for bishops in AmChurch (what passed for Catholicism in the US from those heady days of the cramming down our throats of the "spirit of Vatican II" to the increasingly focused attention of the Vatican to appointments of actual Catholics as bishops here late in the pontificate of John Paul the Great and thereafter) bears much guilt and responsibility as those squishy bishops who failed to catechize.

My real point as to the posted article is that those who write, denying the Christianity of the members of the original Christian Church haven't much of a case and aren't going to be converting any Catholic with a knowledge of his/her Faith. That is not to say that conversions from Catholicism to reformed Christian faiths do not occur in good faith when the individual converted finds that he/she is genuinely more consistent in belief with the reformation.

In any event, I have sworn off attacking reformed Christians on FR over good faith differences in theology, limiting myself to responding to direct attacks on the Catholic Faith as such. Your Saviour and mine wept in the garden at Gethsemane over the fact that His flock would not be as one. I take that to mean that the Roman Catholic Church is within His flock and that reformed Christian churches are also within His flock. Some of my fellow Catholics are as certain that you are not of Christ's Church (they are wrong according to Vatican II) as Robbins is certain that Catholics are not part of Christ's flock (they are wrong also). In any event, I have retired here from arguing with the reformed over the question, choosing instead to defending the reformed from fellow Catholics who deny that reformed Christians can be part of Christ's Church.

I need to avoid arguing with reformed Christians on this matter right now because I am elsewhere trying to raise my Catholic voice in protection of the Evangelical Rev. Mr. Haggard who has been viciously attacked by the lavender crowd as an election tactic designed to divide Christ's flock on Tuesday, November 7 in our mutual secular efforts to defend that which was commanded by God from the agenda of those who despise all of us and God.

Whatever God's plan may be, it just has to be better than yours, mine or anyone else's. May we find out what it is and serve Him accordingly. May God bless you and yours.

I haven't seen you rebut the Scriptures I posted; you just offer skepticism.

And you haven't explained why you quoted half a verse out of Phillipians and you haven't given me the rest of the verse. There's more than Biblical illiteracy here; there's concealing evidence, which to me is a very grave matter indeed. Or perhaps there is some special method of exegesis which involves choosing the parts of a sentence which suit the propostiion you're defending, while failing to mention the part -- the main clause -- that says, "Work out your own salvation," (which, of course, I, as a Biblically illiterate Catholic, do not know).

What's wrong with skepticism -- with taking a look? Didn't somebody say "Come and see?" Bei8ng a Biblically illiterate Catholic I don't know who said that, but I do recall the invitation.

And the word skepto is about taking a look, seeing, examining. So I'm examining your propositions to see if there's anything there which will bear examination, and you get all huffy about it. Mind you, after suppressing part of Scripture to make your point, I can understnad the desire to do so, but I cannot condone it.

And I didn't know I was under any obligation to rebut the verse from Scripture that you cited. Is that a work I must do to be saved, or am I under some other compulsion? After all I'm still waiting for you to cite one sentence completely. Then we'll see. ANd there must be some explanation of moral expectation and requirement if works are not necessary to Salvation.

Yes, I'm aggressively holding your feet to the fire. You and your co-religionists come on-line and make some very insulting generalizations about me and my co-religionists and then claim you are doing so in the name of the full understanding of the God of Love. Seems to me you got some splainin' to do.

"...and as an outsider..."

You may indeed be a beloved son of Holy Orthodoxy, but an outsider you are not.

Thank you for the post, Kolo, I'll have to chew on it for awhile. I used the theological term "Original Sin," with the hope of opening up room for patient discussion and mutual understanding. Perhaps I should have avoided it, since it opens up avenues for misunderstanding between Protestants and Catholics, since we apparently use different theological definitions of the word.

"If the Theotokos was not fully human, which is to say, that she was somehow preserved from the effects of either Original Sin, as the Latin Church would have it, or from the effects of the Sin of Adam, as the Pre-Schism Church had, and Orthodoxy still does have, it, then Christ, born of a "goddess" cannot be "True God and True Man"

Well, nobody is saying that St. Mary was a godddess or that she gave Christ his divine nature. I'm not sure I follow the above reasoning though, Kolokotronis, because it posits that the Sin of Adam is a necessary condition for being fully human. That would mean that Adam was not created "True Man."

"The Christian East never accepted the Augustian construction of Original Sin and thus there was never a need for a doctrine like the Immaculate Conception;"

Let me honest, Kolo, I have a very poor understanding of original sin, or alternatively, the sin of Adam. Also, I'm sure you've read more of St. Augustine than I have. Just to be clear, however, It's my understanding that St. Augustine's ideas of original sin were flawed and rejected by the Church in the West in the 11th century and after.

If I understand the situation correctly, the Church agrees in teaching that Mary was without sin. There is also agreement that She was cleansed of the Sin of Adam at some point during her early life. It's a question of when and how. With regards to the Immaculate Conception, the underlying questions center on concept of original sin. Do I have that correct? The Catechism identifies original sin as a deprivation of the holiness and justice which our first parents possessed prior to the fall. Do you think that's consistent with an Orthodox understanding of the sin of Adam? I've seen an Orthodox explanation which describes the Sin of Adam as a separation from God. (I've also had a Dominican friar explain original sin to me as an absence of relationship to God as adopted children.)

Would it be correct to say that in the Latin West, the consequence of original sin is a tendency toward sin, whereas in the Greek/Orthodox conception, the Sin of Adam is seen as a sort of "original mortality" that produces a tendency toward death and moral corruption? Do you believe that St. Mary had an inclination or tendency toward sin?

"I'm not sure I follow the above reasoning though, Kolokotronis, because it posits that the Sin of Adam is a necessary condition for being fully human. That would mean that Adam was not created "True Man."

Adam was created "in the image and likeness of God". As such he was capable of, but had not yet succeeded in prior to the Fall, fulfilling his created purpose which was to become "like God" or put another way, to achieve theosis which is a union with the uncreated energies, but not the essence, of God. By committing sin, Adam's created nature was so distorted that he and his descendants could no longer respond to God's unmerited grace in such a way as to "become like God", achieve theosis. That distortion by sin has descended to all men including, Orthodoxy believes, Panagia. I think it is important to understand that the One Church never taught that Adam was perfect, that he was in a state of perfect theosis (if he had been, there would have been no Fall). Post Fall humanity, of which Panagia was a member, while being in the image of God, was not in His likeness. he Incarnation took place at a discrete moment in time when humanity, men, were in a certain state. Christ was born of Mary into that world as a True Man, born of a very human young woman. But that young woman, though as incapable of "becoming like God" as anyone else, nevertheless was in some fashion given the grace to completely resist sin, or alternatively, whatever sins she did have were wiped away at the moment of the Annunciation...but she was not conceived and born as a creature ontologically different from you or me. If she had been, Christ would not have been born of woman but of some other sort of creature. Blessed Augustine's notions of Original Sin generally lead to a couple of other notions, one being the idea that Adam was in fact in a state of complete theosis before the Fall and second, that having sinned he became utterly depraved and that depravity extends to us in the form of Original Sin. Now as I said, if that were in fact true, then the Immaculate Conception dogma is necessary because Christ could not be born of an utterly depraved womb and in any event, because such a Mary would not have been able to respond to God's grace, she necessarily would have sinned because in +Augustine's world man couldn't not sin. But take away that pre-Fall theosis and subsequent utter depravity, and we can see why, first, Christ is called the Second Adam, Mary the Second Eve, because humanity is given a second chance, so to speak, by His birth. As +Athanasius said, "God became man so that men might become god." In other words fulfill our created purpose.

"The Catechism identifies original sin as a deprivation of the holiness and justice which our first parents possessed prior to the fall."

That isn't Orthodox teaching. In a nutshell, Adam's Sin deprived us of the ability to attain theosis through a response to God's uncreated grace which the Fathers taught falls on the good and the evil like rain on the earth. Consequently, we were in bondage to death and there wasn't a thing we could do about it. Christ restored the possibility of theosis by destroying the bonds of death as is graphically demonstrated in the icon of the Resurrection.

"Would it be correct to say that in the Latin West, the consequence of original sin is a tendency toward sin, whereas in the Greek/Orthodox conception, the Sin of Adam is seen as a sort of "original mortality" that produces a tendency toward death and moral corruption? Do you believe that St. Mary had an inclination or tendency toward sin?"

I can't say as to the West. For Orthodoxy, I think it is fair to say that the effects of the Sin of Adam were such that no matter how hard we tried, we "sinned". But here it is important to know that the Eastern concept of sin is different from that in the West. In Greek the word for sin is pronounced "amartia" and means "missing the mark". The mark is Christ. Thus sin is when we are not conforming ourselves to the "likeness of Christ", preferring ourselves and refusing to "die to the self". Of course we all do this, but unlike our pre Resurrection ancestors, we have the ability through a response to God's grace, to indeed die to the self. They couldn't. As for Panagia, I think that she always had the same potential to "miss the mark" that we all have, at least until the Annunciation and as I have said, at least one Father, +John Chrysostomos of all people, believed that in fact she did sin both before and after the Annunciation. The Church, of course, in conformity with the consensus patrum, says she was always sinless because despite her humanity, allowed her an option no one else had, which was to choose not to miss the mark. But her humanity, what she shared with all of us, was real and one of the effects of the Sin of Adam, physical death, came to her just as it will for us.

Well, at least everyone's learning something, if they're paying attention. Scott Hahn is a high-level Biblical scholar who also produces popular-audience books on Scripture (in a Roman Catholic way, of course.) He's a very popular speaker and writer, and, in my opinion, is generally careful to make it clear where his interpretations are just his own opinion, and where there is firm guidance from Sacred Tradition.

His general direction is not exactly apologetical, at least not all the time, but it's certainly reaching toward a Protestant-acculturated audience (such as myself :-), rather than toward an Eastern readership. However, I understand that he speaks Greek, so he's not a heretic.

I like his recorded lectures because he talks very fast, so I feel like I'm getting my money's worth. Father John Hardon spoke veeeerrrrryyyy slooooowwwwly, with lots of repetition, yes, I said repetition, over and over again, as it were, so even though I loved his content, I always felt like I should get a discount because there were fewer words per hour.

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