MAN AND HIS FALL
§ 20. THE PERSONAL SIN OF OUR FIRST PARENTS OR ORIGINATING ORIGINAL SIN
I. The sinful act
Our first parents sinned gravely in Paradise, transgressing the divine precept that God had imposed on them to try them. (of faith, as it is a doctrine of the ordinary and universal magisterium of the Church).
The Council of Trent teaches that Adam lost justice and holiness by transgressing the divine precept; Dz 788. Since the magnitude of the punishment takes as its norm the magnitude of the guilt, from such a serious punishment it is seen that Adam’s sin was also serious or mortal.
The Holy Scripture refers, in Gen 2,17 and 3, 1 ff., the sin of our first parents. Since Adam’s sin constitutes the basis of the dogmas of original sin and the redemption of the human race, the historicity of the biblical account must be admitted in its essential points. According to the response of the Biblical Commission of 1909, it is not licit to question the literal and historical meaning with respect to the facts that we mention below:
to) that a precept was imposed on the first man by God in order to prove his obedience;
b) who transgressed this divine precept at the insinuation of the devil, presented in the form of a serpent;
c) that our first parents were deprived of the primitive state of innocence; Dz 2123.
The most recent books of Holy Scripture confirm this literal and historical sense;Eccli 25, 33: “Sin had its beginning through the woman and for her we all died”;Wis 2, 24: “Due to the envy of the devil, death entered the world”;2 Cor 2, 3: “But I fear that, just as the serpent deceived Eve with his cunning, he will also corrupt your thoughts away from sincere dedication to Christ.”;cf.1 Tim 2:14;Rom 5, 12ff;Ioh 8, 44. The mythological and purely allegorical interpretation (of the Alexandrians) must be discarded.
The sin of our first parents was in its moral nature a sin of disobedience;cf. Rom 5, 19: “Through the disobedience of one, many were made sinners”.The root of such disobedience was pride;Tob 4, 14: “All destruction has its beginning in pride”;Eccli 10, 15: “The beginning of all sin is pride”.The biblical context rules out the hypothesis that sin was of a sexual nature, as Clement Alexandrinus and Saint Ambrose maintained. The gravity of the sin results from the purpose pursued by the divine precept and the circumstances that surrounded it. SAINT AUGUSTINE considers Adam’s sin to be “ineffably great” (“ineffabiliter grande peccatum”: Imperf op.c. Jul. 1 105)
2. The consequences of sin
a) The protoparents lost sanctifying grace through sin and attracted upon themselves the wrath and wrath of God (of faith; Dz 788).
In Holy Scripture we are told about the loss of sanctifying grace by referring to the fact that our first parents were excluded from family contact with God;Gen 3, 10 and 23. God appears as judge and launches the condemning verdict against them;Gen 3, 16 ff.
Divine displeasure ultimately translates into eternal reprobation. Tatian actually taught that Adam lost eternal salvation. SAINT IRENAEUS (Adv.haer.m 23, 8), TERTULLIAN (De poenit. 12) and SAINT HIPPOLYTUS (Philos.8, 16) already came up against such a theory. According to them, it is a universal doctrine of all the fathers, based on a passage from the Book of Wisdom (10, 2:“she [Wisdom] saved him in his fall”), that our first parents did penance, and“by the blood of the Lord” They saw themselves saved from eternal damnation;cf. SAINT AUGUSTINE, Of peccat.mer.et rem II 34, 55.
b) The protoparents were subject to death and the dominion of the devil (of faith; Dz 788).
Death and all the evil related to it have their roots in the loss of the gifts of integrity. According to Gen 3:16 ff., as punishment for sin, God imposed suffering and death on us. The dominion of the devil is indicated in Gen 3, 15, and is expressly taught in Joh 12, 31;14, 30;2 Cor 4, 4;Hebr 2, 14;2 Petr 2, 19.
§ 21. EXISTENCE OF ORIGINAL SIN
I. Opposing heretical doctrines
Original sin was indirectly denied by the Gnostics and manicheans, who attributed man’s moral corruption to an eternal principle of evil: matter;The Origenists also indirectly denied it and priscilianists, which explained man’s inclination towards evil due to a sin that the soul committed before its union with the body.
They directly denied the doctrine of original sin. pelagians, which taught that:
a) Adam’s sin was not transmitted by inheritance to his descendants, but because they imitated his bad example (imitation, non-propagation).
b) Death, suffering and concupiscence are not punishments for sin, but effects of the state of pure nature.
c) The baptism of children is not administered for the remission of sins, but so that they may be received into the community of the Church and reach the “kingdom of heaven” (which is a degree of happiness superior to that of “eternal life”).
The Pelagian heresy was combated mainly by SAINT AUGUSTINE and condemned by the magisterium of the Church in the synods of Mileve (416), Carthage (418), Orange (529) and, more recently, by the council of Trent (1546); Dz 102, 174 ff., 787 ff.
Pelagianism survived in the rationalism from the modern age to the current times (Socinianism, rationalism of the “Enlightenment” era, liberal Protestant theology, modern unbelief).
In the Middle Ages, a synod of Sens (1141) condemned the following proposition of PETER ABELARD: “Quod non contraximus culpam ex Adam, sed poenam tantum”; Dz 376.
The reformers, Bayanists and Jansenists preserved the belief in original sin, but they disfigured its essence and its effects, making it consist of concupiscence and considering it as a complete corruption of human nature;cf. Conf. Aug. , art.2.
2. Church Doctrine
Adam’s sin spread to all his descendants by generation, not by imitation (of faith).
The Church’s doctrine on original sin is contained in the Decretum super sin originali, from the Council of Trent (sess. v, 1546), which sometimes literally follows the definitions of the synods of Carthage and Orange. The Tridentine condemns the doctrine that Adam lost for himself alone, and not also for us, the justice and holiness that he had received from God;and that Adam transmitted to his descendants only death and bodily suffering, but not the guilt of sin. Positively it teaches that sin, which is death of the soul, spread from Adam to all his descendants by generation, not by imitation, and that it is inherent in each individual. Such sin is erased by the redeeming merits of Jesus Christ, which ordinarily apply to both adults and children through the sacrament of baptism. Therefore, even newborn children receive baptism for the remission of sins; Dz 789-791.
3. Proof taken from the sources of revelation
a) Writing Test
The Old Testament only contains hints about original sin;cf.particularly Ps 50, 7: “Behold, I was born in guilt and my mother conceived me in sin.”;Iob 14, 4 (according to the Vulgate): “Who can make pure him who was conceived of an unclean seed?” (M: “Who can make a clean person out of an unclean person?” ). Both places tell us about an innate sinfulness in man, whether understood in the sense of habitual sin or mere inclination to sin, but without causally relating it to Adam’s sin. However, the Old Testament already clearly knew the causal link that exists between the death of all men and the sin of our first parents (the inheritance of death);cf. Eccli 25, 33;Wis 2, 24. The classic proof of Scripture is that of Rom 5, 12-21. In this passage, the Apostle establishes a parallel between the first Adam, who transmitted sin and death to all men, and Christ—second Adam—who spread justice and life to all of them;v 12: “So through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and so death spread to all men, because all had sinned.” (in quo omnes peccaverunt)… v 19:“For as through the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many will be made righteous.”
α) The term sin (It is taken here in its most general sense and is considered personified. Original sin is also encompassed. It is intended to express the guilt of sin, not its consequences. An explicit distinction is made between sin and death, which is considered a consequence of sin. It is very clear that Saint Paul, when speaking of sin, does not refer to concupiscence, because according to v 18 s. we are freed from sin by the redeeming grace of Christ, whereas experience tells us that, despite everything,lust continues in us.
β) The words in quo (v 12 d) were interpreted in the sense relative by Saint Augustine and throughout the Middle Ages, referring to them unum hominem: «For a man…, in which “all sinned.”Since Erasmus of Rotterdam, the interpretation of conjunctional, much better founded linguistically and which was already supported by numerous holy fathers, especially Greeks: “because we have all sinned”, either “because we have all sinned”.See the parallel places of 2 Cor 5, 4;Phil 3, 12;4, 10;Rom 8, 3. Since those who do not have personal sins also die (children who do not have the use of reason), the cause of bodily death cannot be any personal fault, but rather the guilt inherited from Adam. Cf. vv 13 s and 19, where it is expressly said that Adam’s sin is the reason why many were made sinners. The conjunctional interpretation, which today is the one that finds general acceptance, coincides with the idea of the interpretation of SAINT AUGUSTINE: “All have sinned in Adam and for this reason all die”.
ϒ) The words “Many were made sinners” (v 19 a) do not restrict the universality of original sin, since the expression “many” (in contrast to one Adam or one Christ) is parallel to “all”, which is used in vv I2d and 18a.
b) Test of tradition
SAINT AUGUSTINE invokes, against the Pelagian bishop Julian of Eclanum, ecclesiastical tradition: «I am not the one who invented original sin, since the Catholic faith has believed in it since ancient times;but you, who deny it, are undoubtedly a new heretic.” (De nupt. et concup.11 12, 25). SAINT AUGUSTINE, in his writing Contra Iulianum (1. 1 and 11) already presents a true proof of tradition by citing Irenaeus, Cyprian, Reticius of Autun, Olympias, Hilary, Ambrose, Innocent I, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Basil and Jerome as testimonies of Catholic doctrine. Many expressions of the Greek fathers, who seem to insist a lot that sin is a personal fault and seem to completely ignore original sin, are easily understood if we take into account that they were written to combat the dualism of the Gnostics and Manichaeans and against Origenist pre-existenceism. SAINT AUGUSTINE already came out in favor of the doctrine of Chrysostom to preserve it from the twisted interpretations that the Pelagians gave it: «vobis nondum litigantibus securius loquebatur» (Against luí. 1 6, 22).
A positive proof, which admits of no reply, of how convinced the early Church was of the reality of original sin, is the practice of baptizing children “for the remission of sins”;cf. SAN CYPRIANO, Ep. 64, 5.
4. Dogma and reason
Natural reason is not capable of presenting a forceful argument in favor of the existence of original sin, but can only infer it with probability from certain indications: «Peccati originalis in humano genere probabiliter quaedam signa apparent» (ScG iv 52). Such indications are the frightening moral aberrations of humanity and the apostasy of faith in the true God (polytheism, atheism).
§ 22. ESSENCE OF ORIGINAL SIN
I. Erroneous opinions
to) Original sin, contrary to what I thought Peter Abelardo, does not consist of the sentence of eternal punishment, that is, in the condemnatory punishment that the descendants of Adam would have inherited from him, who was the head of the human race (original punishment and not original guilt). According to the doctrine of the Council of Trent, original sin is true and strict sin, that is, guilt;cf. Dz 376, 789, 792. Saint Paul speaks to us about true sin;Rom 5, 12: “…because we have all sinned”;cf. Rom 5, 19.
b) Original sin, against what the reformers, bayanists and jansenists, it does not consist either of the habitual bad concupiscence (that is, in the habitual inclination to sin), which would persist even in the baptized as a true and strict sin, although in the case of these it was no longer imputed to them for the purposes of punishment. The Council of Trent teaches that by the sacrament of baptism everything that is true and strict sin is erased and that concupiscence (which remains after baptism as a moral proof) can only be considered sin in the improper sense; Dz 792.
It is incompatible with the doctrine of Saint Paul (which considers justification as an internal transformation and renewal) that sin remains in man, although it is not imputed to him for the purposes of punishment. He who has been justified is free from the danger of reprobation, because he has the reason for reprobation far from him, which is sin;Rom 8, 1: “There is therefore no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”.
Since human nature is composed of body and spirit, concupiscence would also exist in the state of pure nature as a natural evil, and, therefore, it cannot be considered sinful in itself;because God made everything good; Dz 428.
c) Original sin, against what they taught Alberto Pighio († 1542) and Ambrosio Catarino, OP († 1553), does not consist of a merely extrinsic imputation of Adam’s actual sin (imputation theory). According to the doctrine of the Council of Trent, Adam’s sin is propagated by inheritance to all his descendants and is inherent in each of them as his own sin.: «propagation, non imitation transfusum omnibus, inest unicuique proprium»; Dz 790;cf. Dz 795: «propriam iniustitiam contrahunt».The effect of baptism, according to the doctrine of the same council, is to actually erase the.sin and not only ensuring that a strange guilt is not imputed to us; Dz 792;cf.5, 12 and 19.
2. Positive solution
Original sin consists of the state of deprivation of grace, which, because it has its cause in the actual voluntary sin of Adam, head of the human race, is guilty. (common sense).
to) The Council of Trent calls original sin the death of the soul (mors animae; Dz 789). The death of the soul is the lack of supernatural life, that is, of sanctifying grace. In baptism, original sin is erased through the infusion of sanctifying grace (Dz 792). From this it follows that original sin is a state of deprivation of grace. This is deduced from the parallel that Saint Paul establishes between the sin that comes from Adam and the justice that comes from Christ (Rom 5:19). As the justice that Christ confers on us consists formally in sanctifying grace (Dz 799), the sin inherited from Adam will consist formally in the lack of that sanctifying grace. And the lack of that grace, which by the will of God had to exist in the soul, has the character of guilt, as a separation that is from God.
Since the concept of sin in the formal sense includes being voluntary (ratio voluntarii), that is, the voluntary occurrence thereof, and children before reaching the use of reason cannot perform personal voluntary acts, the note of voluntariness in original sin will therefore have to be explained by the connection it has with the actual voluntary sin of Adam. Adam was the representative of the entire human race. It depended on his free decision whether the supernatural gifts that had been granted to him personally, but to the nature of man as such, would be preserved or lost;gifts that, due to Adam’s voluntary transgression of the divine precept, were lost not only for him, but for the entire human lineage that would form his descendants.
Pius V condemned Bayo’s proposition that affirms that original sin has in itself the character of sin without any relation to the will from which said sin took its origin; Dz 1047;cf. SAINT AUGUSTINE, retract.I 12 (13), 5;S.th. I II 81, 1.
b) According to the doctrine of Saint Thomas, original sin consists formally in the lack of original justice, and materially in disordered concupiscence. Saint Thomas distinguishes in every sin a formal element and another material element, the separation from God (aversion to Deo) and the conversion to the creature (conversion ad creaturam). Since conversion to the creature is manifested above all in bad concupiscence, SAINT THOMAS, together with Saint Augustine, sees in concupiscence, which in itself is a consequence of original sin, the material element of said sin: «peccatum origínale mateliter quidem est concupiscentia, formaliter vero est defectus originalis iustitiae» (S.th. 1 11 82, 3). The aforementioned doctrine of Saint Thomas is found on the one hand under the influence of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, who places the essence of original sin exclusively in the deprivation of primitive justice, and on the other hand under the influence of Saint Augustine, who defines original sin as concupiscence with its guilt (concupiscentia cum suo reatu) and comments that the guilt is eliminated by baptism, while concupiscence remains in us as an evil, not as a sin, to exercise us in the moral struggle (ad agony) (Imperf op.c. Jul. 1 71).
The majority of post-Tridentine theologians do not consider concupiscence as a constitutive element of original sin, but as a consequence of it.
§ 23. SPREAD OF ORIGINAL SIN
Original sin is spread by natural generation (of faith).
The Council of Trent says: «propagation, non imitatione transfusum omnibus»; Dz 790. When a child is baptized, what was incurred by generation is erased by regeneration; Dz 791.
How original sin is peccatum naturae, is propagated in the same way as human nature: by the natural act of generation. Even though such sin in its origin is only one (DZ790), namely: the sin of our first father (Eve’s sin is not the cause of original sin), it is multiplied as many times as a new son of Adam begins to exist through the generation. In each generation, human nature stripped of original grace is transmitted.
The main cause (causa efficiens principalis) of original sin is only Adam’s sin. The instrumental cause (causa efficiens instrumentalis) is the natural act of generation, by which the moral connection of the individual with Adam, head of the human race, is established. The current concupiscence linked to the generative act (sexual pleasure; libido), contrary to what SAINT AUGUSTINE believes (De nuptiis et concup. i 23,25; 24, 27), is neither an efficient cause nor an indispensable condition for the propagation of original sin. It is nothing more than a concomitant phenomenon of the generative act, an act that, considered in itself, is nothing more than an instrumental cause of the propagation of original sin;cf. S.th. I II 82, 4 ad 3.
Objections: From the Catholic doctrine on the transmission of original sin it does not follow, as the pelagians, that God is the cause of sin. The soul that God creates is good considered in the natural aspect. The state of original sin means the lack of a supernatural excellence for which the creature cannot present any title. God, therefore, is not obliged to create the soul with the supernatural adornment of sanctifying grace. Furthermore, it is not God’s fault that the soul that has just been created is denied supernatural gifts;The culprit of this has been the man, who misused his freedom. Nor does it follow from Catholic doctrine that marriage is evil in itself. The conjugal act of procreation is in itself good, because objectively (that is, according to its natural purpose) and subjectively (that is, according to the intention of the procreators) it tends to achieve a good, which is the propagation of the human race, ordered by God.
§ 24. CONSEQUENCES OF ORIGINAL SIN
The scholastic theologians, inspired by Luke 10:30, summarized the consequences of original sin in the following axiom: Man has been, through the sin of Adam, stripped of his supernatural goods and wounded in his natural ones (“spoliatus gratuitis, vulneratus in naturalibus”). Keep in mind that the concept of free ordinarily extends only to absolutely supernatural gifts, and that in the concept of naturalia It includes the gift of integrity with which man’s natural dispositions and forces were endowed before the fall (naturalia integra);cf. SANTO THOMAS, Sent. II, d.29, q.1 a.m.2;S.th. I II 85, I.
1. Loss of supernatural gifts
In the state of original sin, man is deprived of sanctifying grace and all its consequences, as well as the preternatural gifts of integrity. (of faith with regard to sanctifying grace and the gift of immortality; Dz 788 s).
The lack of sanctifying grace, considered as a man’s turning away from God, has the character of guilt;Considered as a departure from God from man, it has the character of punishment. The lack of the gifts of integrity results in man being subjected to lust, suffering and death. Such consequences persist even after the original sin has been erased, but then they are no longer considered as punishment, but as poenalitates, that is, as means to practice virtue and give proof of one’s own morality. He who is in original sin is in servitude and captivity of the devil, whom Jesus called prince of this world (Ioh 12, 31; 14,30)> And Saint Paul calls him god of this world (2 Cor 4, 4);cf. Hebr 2, 14;2 Petr 2, 19.
2. Violation of nature
The wound that original sin opened in nature must not be conceived as a total corruption of human nature, as the reformers and Jansenists think. Man, even if he is in a state of original sin, still has the power to know natural religious truths and perform morally good actions in the natural order. The Vatican Council teaches that man can know with certainty the existence of God with the sole forces of his natural reason; Dz 1785, 1806. The Tridentine Council teaches that free will was not lost or extinguished due to Adam’s sin; Dz 815.
The wound, open in nature, interests the body and to soul.The 11th Council of Orange (529) declared: “totum, ie secundum corpus et animam, in deterius hominem commutatum (esse)” (Dz 174);cf. Dz 181, 199, 793. In addition to sensitivity to suffering (passibilites) and subjection to death (mortalites), the two wounds that affect the body, theologians, following SAINT THOMAS (S.th. i II 85, 3), list four wounds of the soul, respectively opposed to the four cardinal virtues: a) the ignorance, that is, the difficulty in knowing the truth (opposed to prudence);b) the malice, that is, the weakening of our will (opposed to justice);c) thefragility (infirmitas) , that is, cowardice in the face of the difficulties we encounter in tending towards good (opposed to strength);d) the concupiscence in the strict sense, that is, the disordered appetite to satisfy the senses against the norms of reason (opposed to temperance). The wound of the body has its foundation in the loss of the preternatural gifts of impassibility and immortality;the wound of the soul in the loss of the preternatural gift of immunity from concupiscence.
It is the object of controversy whether the open wound in nature consists exclusively of the loss of preternatural gifts or whether human nature has also suffered, accidentally, an intrinsic weakening. Those who decide on the first sentence (Saint Thomas and most of the theologians) affirm that nature has been wounded only relatively, that is, if it is compared with the primitive state of original justice. The defenders of the second sentence conceive the wound of nature in an absolute sense, that is, as an inferior situation with respect to the state of pure nature.
According to the first sentence, man in original sin is with respect to man in the state of pure nature like a person who has been stripped of his clothes (naked) to another person who has never covered himself with them (naked; nudatus ad nudum). According to the second sentence, the relationship that exists between the two is that of a sick person to a healthy person (aegrotus ad samtm).
The first opinion must undoubtedly be preferred, because Adam’s actual sin—a singular action—could not create in his own nature or in that of his descendants any bad habit, nor therefore the consequent weakening of natural forces;cf S.th.1 II 85, I. But it must also be granted that fallen human nature, due to the errors of individuals and collectivities, has experienced a certain further corruption, so that it is currently in a concrete situation inferior to that of the state of pure nature.
§ 25. THE FATE OF CHILDREN WHO DIE IN ORIGINAL SIN
Souls that leave this life in a state of original sin are excluded from the beatific vision of God (of faith).
The second universal council of Lyons (1274) and the council of Florence (1438-45) declared:«Illorum animas, who in actuali mortali sin vel solo originali decedunt, mox in infernum descendéré, poenis tamen disparibus puniendas»; Dz 464,693;cf.493 BC
This dogma is based on the words of the Lord: “If anyone is not reborn of water and the Holy Spirit [through baptism], he will not be able to enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Joh 3, 5).
Those who have not yet reached the use of reason can achieve regeneration in an extra-sacramental way thanks to baptism of blood (remember the slaughter of the holy innocents). In attention to the universal salvific will of God (1 Tim 2,4), many modern theologians, especially contemporary ones, admit other substitutes for baptism for children who die without sacramental baptism, such as the prayers and desire of the parents or the Church (representative baptism of desire; Cajetan) or the achievement of the use of reason at the moment of death, so that the dying child could decide for or against God.(baptism of desire; H. Klee), or that the sufferings and death of the child served as a quasi-sacrament (baptism of pain; H. Schell). These and other substitutes for baptism are certainly possible, but nothing can be proven by the sources of revelation about their effective existence;cf. Dz 712. AAS 50 (1958) 114.
Theologians, when speaking of the pains of hell, make a distinction between damage penalty (which consists of the exclusion of the beatific vision) and the meaning penalty (produced by extrinsic means and which, after the resurrection of the body, will also be experienced by the senses). While SAINT AUGUSTINE and many Latin fathers believe that children who die in original sin also have to endure a penalty of meaning, although very benign (“mitissima omnium poena”; Enchir. 93);The Greek fathers teach (eg SAINT GREGORY NACIANCENU, Or. 40, 23) and the majority of scholastic and modern theologians who suffer nothing more than the penalty of damage. The explanation given by Pope Innocent m speaks in favor of this doctrine: «Poena originalis peccati est carencia visionis Dei (poena damni), actualis vero poena peccati est gehennae perpetuae cruciatus (—poena sensus)»; Dz 410. A state of natural happiness is compatible with the penalty of damage;cf. SAINT THOMAS, Bad, Sent. II d.33 q.2 ad 2.
Theologians usually admit that there is a special place where children who die without baptism go and which they call children’s limbo.Pius VI came out in defense of this doctrine against the Pelagian interpretation of the Jansenists, who falsely wanted to explain it as an intermediate state between damnation and the kingdom of God; Dz 1526.
Source: Extract from Ludwig Ott’s Manual of Dogmatic Theology. p. 180-191
