The Council of Trent formulated the Church’s faith concerning original sin in a solemn text.
In the previous catechesis we considered the conciliar teaching concerning the personal sin of the first parents. We shall now reflect on what the Council says about the consequences that sin has had for humanity. The text of the Tridentine decree makes a first statement on this matter.
The sin of Adam has passed to all his descendants, that is, to all human beings insofar as they come from the first parents and are their heirs in human nature, already deprived of friendship with God.
The Tridentine Decree states this explicitly: Adam’s sin brought harm not only to him, but also to all his descendants. Original holiness and justice, the fruit of sanctifying grace, Adam lost not only for himself, but also “for us” (“nobis etiam”). Therefore he transmitted to the whole human race not only bodily death and other penalties (consequences of sin), but also sin itself as the death of the soul (“peccatum, quod mors est animae”).
Here the Council of Trent appeals to an observation of Saint Paul in the Letter to the Romans, to which the Synod of Carthage had already referred, while also receiving a teaching already widespread in the Church.
In the current translation of the Pauline text one reads: “As sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom 5:12). In the original Greek text one reads: “ef w pantez hmaton”, an expression which in the old Latin Vulgate was translated: “in quo omnes peccaverunt” — “in whom (in him alone) all sinned”; however, from the beginning the Greeks clearly understood what the Vulgate translates as “in quo” as meaning “because of” or “inasmuch as”, a meaning now commonly accepted in modern translations. Nevertheless, this diversity of interpretations of the expression “ef w” does not change the fundamental truth contained in Saint Paul’s text, namely, that Adam’s sin (the sin of the first parents) has had consequences for all human beings. Moreover, in the same chapter of the Letter to the Romans the Apostle writes: “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners” (Rom 5:19). And in the preceding verse: “one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all” (5:18). Thus Saint Paul links the sinful condition of all humanity with the fault of Adam.
The statements of Saint Paul that we have just cited, and to which the Magisterium of the Church has referred, therefore shed light on our faith regarding the consequences that Adam’s sin has for all human beings. This teaching will always guide Catholic exegetes and theologians in evaluating, with the wisdom of faith, the explanations that science offers about the origins of humanity.
Particularly valid and thought-provoking are the words that Pope Paul VI addressed to a symposium of theologians and scientists: “It is evident that you will find irreconcilable with genuine Catholic doctrine the explanations that some modern authors give of original sin, who, starting from the unproven supposition of polygenism, deny, more or less clearly, that the sin from which such a quantity of evils has flowed to humanity was above all the disobedience of Adam — the first man, a figure of the one to come — committed at the beginning of history” (1966).
The Tridentine Decree contains another statement: Adam’s sin passes to all his descendants because of their origin from him, and not only by bad example. The Decree states: “This sin of Adam, which is one by origin and transmitted by propagation, not merely by imitation, is in each person as his own”.
Thus original sin is transmitted by natural generation. This conviction of the Church is also indicated in the practice of baptizing newborn infants, to which the conciliar Decree refers. Newborn infants, incapable of committing personal sin, nevertheless receive, according to the age-old Tradition of the Church, baptism shortly after birth for the remission of sins. The Decree says: “They are truly baptized for the remission of sins, so that in regeneration they may be cleansed of the sin contracted by generation”.
In this context it becomes clear that original sin in no descendant of Adam has the character of personal guilt. It is the deprivation of sanctifying grace in a nature which, through the fault of the first parents, has been turned away from its supernatural end. It is a “sin of nature”, attributable only analogically to the “sin of the person”. In the state of original justice, before sin, sanctifying grace was like the supernatural “endowment” of human nature. In the inner “logic” of sin, which is the rejection of the will of God, the giver of this gift, the loss of it is included. Sanctifying grace ceased to constitute the supernatural enrichment of that nature which the first parents transmitted to all their descendants in the state in which it was found when they began the human generations. For this reason man is conceived and born without sanctifying grace. Precisely this “initial state” of man, linked to his origin, constitutes the essence of original sin as an inheritance (Peccatum originale originatum, as it is commonly called).
We cannot conclude this catechesis without affirming what we said at the beginning of this cycle: namely, that we must consider original sin in constant reference to the mystery of the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who “for us men and for our salvation became man”. This article of the Creed concerning the saving purpose of the Incarnation refers principally and fundamentally to original sin.
The Decree of the Council of Trent also refers throughout to this purpose, and thus it takes its place within the teaching of the whole Tradition, which has its starting point in Sacred Scripture and, first of all, in the so-called “protoevangelium”, that is, in the promise of a future conqueror of satan and liberator of man, already glimpsed in the book of Genesis (3:15) and then in so many other texts, up to the fullest expression given to us by Saint Paul in the Letter to the Romans. Indeed, according to the Apostle, Adam is “a type of the one who was to come” (Rom 5:14). “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift (conferred) by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many” (Rom 5:15).
“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:19). Therefore, as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all” (Rom 5:18).
The Council of Trent refers in particular to the Pauline text of Romans 5:12 as the hinge of its teaching, seeing affirmed in it the universality of sin, but also the universality of redemption. The Council also refers to the practice of baptizing newborn infants, and does so because of the strong reference of original sin — as a universal inheritance received from the first parents together with nature — to the truth of the redemption wrought in Jesus Christ.
Source: Encuentra.com
