Sin Boldly

I was reading this article by Ralph McInerny about the pseudoscience that purports to prove that human behavior is controlled by genetics, and all the while I kept thinking about Protestantism and its historic theological doctrine of "Once Saved, Always Saved." Under this doctrine, of course, man is generally presumed to be a hopeless reprobate (i.e., man is immutably bad). However, as long as a person has faith in God and accepts Jesus Christ as the Messiah, then it doesn't matter how many "involuntary" sinful acts he commits as his reprobate soul is externally covered by God's infinite grace.

By their inherent denial of the existence of free will, as well as the internal efficaciousness of God's grace through the Sacraments, Protestants, especially those of the Fundamentalist stripe, better hope that science never one day universally determines that there is a "gay" gene. Such a determination, from the general Protestant perspective, would effectively render biblical condemnations of homosexual conduct as nothing more than a legalistic and social/cultural hangup that has no importance or relevance to salvation. Sure, two men having sexual intercourse with each other is objectively disgusting and sinful, but if it is genetically in their nature to engage in such conduct, and they profess to be Christians, who are many Protestants to say these men shouldn't be doing what they're doing, or more importantly, that they aren't "saved?"