Any good priest will tell the penitant that being scrupulous is wrong. Sure some folks get a little crazy but any solid priest will try to help them out of it. I know people like this but it is spite of the church that they are like this.

Many interesting and thoughtful posts on this subject. But I have not seen anything that addresses the question I raised, which was prompted by the very specific recollections of the person posting:

In Orthodox teaching, is a child below the age of reason (say, 7 years) capable of committing a sin of any kind? More specifically, is a less-than-two-year-old child capable of committing a sin of any kind? If the answer is yes, is such a child capable of committing both a voluntary and an involuntary sin? If such a child commits a voluntary sin, what are the immediate spiritual consequences for that child? If such a child commits an involuntary sin, what are the spiritual consequences for him/her?

If such a child cannot be said to have committed one or the other, or either, kind of sin, of what would the adult individual repent if he/she later called the "non-sin" to mind (setting aside the difficulty of recalling clearly in later years either the action, or the failure to act, and its context)?

If a person contemplates the thoughtless acts of early childhood, should it not be for the purpose of thanking God for having grown in wisdom, age and grace to the point where such acts will not be repeated, and if repeated culpably, will be the object of sincere repentance and absolution? Is not Christian maturity a call to "put away the things of a child"?

I know an Orthodox Christian Priest who made his first confession at 3.5 years old. His grandmother took him to the priest and said that he knew that he had sinned. The priest questioned the toddler and agreed that the child had reached the age of reaso, heard his confession, and then gave him absolution.

In 2000, I witnessed a four-year-old girl make her first confession. Her mother seemed very pleased and said that she was a good girl now.

I was not always of the "age of reason," when I was two years old, but I do remember some very lucid moments when I knew what was right and chose the wrong. And I remember being spanked too and becoming very angry at my parents. Oh, those terrible twos.

However, I daresay that many adults do not always act the age of reason either. In fact, some regularly become inebriated so that they will not think clearly or feel so guilty .

p.s. My priest said that he has heard many confessions and that people do tell him sins from infancy, especially when in the terrible twos.

p.p.s. Come to think of it, I was two or slightly over the age of two.

Tim, you have jogged a lot of memories.

I remember seeing this little boy who was under the age of three and quite in his terrible twos.

When he approached the Orthodox Priest at communion time, he screamed and would not open his mouth to receive Holy Communion. His godmother was insistent that he receive communion and tried to coax him, but the toddler continued to resist. Finally the Priest wisely said, "Do not force the child. He will come to Communion when he is ready."

Afterwards the Priest told us that some children know that they should not receive Holy Communion. Then he told us that when the parents come to confession, he asks the parents to bring the child along too and he will say some edifying words to the child and give him absolution too. If the priest determines that the child is of the age of reason, he will encourage the child to make his first confession, even if he admits only one sin.

I don't think that's the Orthodox Church per se, but just a more rigorous strain of it.

There have been rigorists like that in the Catholic Church too - remember that St. Augustine (among others) thought unbaptized babies would burn in Hell.

The theory of "Limbo", which is sometimes ridiculed today, was actually a rather humane attempt to counter this idea that God would allow babies to be physically punished for eternity.

That's an overstatement of Augustine.

He wrote of the absolute need for baptism, but in the margin (the "limbus"), he left a note to the effect of, "what about unbaptized infants?"

Discussion of the limbus note led to the notion of Limbo.

hawk

From what I have read in Orthodox books, we are to confess any sins of which we are aware, even if that sin was committed when we were only two.

Don't Eastern Catholics believe the same?

Oh, and I have known others who were aware of things before the so-called "age of reason." My own dad clearly remembered incidents when he was two year old too. Oh, the things that some kids can remember. Will not repeat what he told me. However, adults should be more careful around children. Children do see more than they can describe at that age.

My difficulty with the idea of confessing "sins" committed as a two-year-old is that it assumes (a) that the two-year-old was capable of true sin (which I seriously doubt) and (b) that the adult can accurately and honestly recall that "sin" and evaluate it through the eyes of the two-year-old rather than adult eyes. As I wrote before, if there is a place for revisiting childish misdeeds it would seem to be for the purpose of looking at one's present conduct to determine whether such simple childishness has been supplanted by genuine fault, and expressing gratitude for the grace that has enabled one to grow away from childish selfishness.

Some children and adults can recall early events. I think that the age of reason is a misnomer, but that it is not a magical age where bingo you start understanding right from wrong. Instead, it is a gradual process whereby the toddler begins to understand right from wrong and also starts believing in God. This process, I believe, continues even in adulthood. It is called Theosis.

Perhaps. But this is the Internet, after all. And I used Augustine simply as an example.

Do you disagree that there are (or at least, have been) theologians in the Catholic Church, as well as in the Orthodox, who held these viewpoints?

I am reluctant to belabor this point, but I cannot see how the ability to recall acts of childhood or infancy (even assuming that the recollection is accurate, which I seriously doubt from the standpoint of developmental psychology) can justify imposing the guilt of sin for those acts. I suppose I might understand the motives of a confessor who encouraged such recollections in order to assist a penitent in growing spiritually, but I cannot understand a moral theology that encourages an adult Christian to see sin in the thoughtless acts of an infant barely past the stage of "mewing and puking in his/her mother's arms."

Dear Tim,

I am not going to mention the priest's name because that would not be right. This priest was a gifted confessor and many of us were greatly saddened when he was transferred.

However, he and his wife bore several children. He mentioned that children at the early age of two (his children also) are quite capable of sinning and knowing right from wrong. He spoke from experience as he counseled many parents and children. In addition, he prayed every day with his wife and children. As a result, his children were well behaved for the most part.

Again, this so-called age of reason is arbitrary and is not consistent even at the magical age of seven. However, as the child grows older, he/she can becomes more aware of God and morality. Nevertheless, the age of reason is not automatically attained, especially if the parents do not instruct the child in the ways of the Lord.

Therefore, some adults still do not seem to know the difference between right and wrong, for example, pathological liars and psychopaths. In fact, according to psychologists, our prisons are filled with these types of people.

Tim,

I think the problem here is that you are judging from a Western view of sin, which sees it primarily as the guilt of transgression. While not denying that aspect of sin, Eastern theologians are more likely to view sin as primarily a sickness of the soul. From this perspective, the goal in recalling such past acts is not so much to "find guilt" as to heal a wound, no matter how small.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

I would be interested in reading the words of the Eastern theologians who take this view. This seems not to be a matter of the perspective of theologians (Eastern or Western) but of sensible and compassionate pastoral practice. Even if sin is viewed as a sickness, I have difficulty with a spiritual physician's encouraging an adult to view the illnesses of infancy as if they were the same as the diseases of adulthood. As I wrote earlier, "When I was a child ... ."

Tim,

Deacon Richard is right. The Orthodox view sinners as those in need of a Spiritual Physician -- Christ our God. You might enjoy reading Metropolitan Hierotheos' The Illness and Cure of the Soul in the Orthodox Tradition.