Original Sin

ORIGINAL SIN. - Privation of sanctifying grace, or lack of the friendship of God, in every man who is born, caused by Adam, through his sin, for himself and for all his descendants, together with the loss of the other supernatural and preternatural gifts, especially immortality and exemption from concupiscence. This sin is distinguished into originant and originated, according as it is considered in Adam who committed it or in his descendants who inherited it from him, contracting it as their own.

I. SACRED SCRIPTURE

Gen. 2:4b-3:24 narrates the special creation of Adam and Eve, and how God did not limit himself to making them the most perfect beings of the universe, but willed to fill them with special benefits and gifts, wholly superior and not owed to their nature: he placed them in a most beautiful garden (v. PARADISE), so that they might lead there, in filial familiarity with him (ibid. 3:8), a happy, immortal life (ibid. 2:17; 3:19), without any suffering or fear. Innocence, the fruit of friendship with God, was the result of the perfect order that reigned in man, immune from concupiscence. "And they were both naked, yet they felt no shame" (ibid. 2:25; cf. 3:7, 10 ff.). Shame, a reaction and defense against concupiscence, would arise with sin.

God commanded them an act of obedience and reverence. Having given man freedom so that he might cooperate in his own salvation and merit it, he forbade man, on pain of the loss of immortality, to eat of the tree (v.) of the knowledge of good and evil (ibid. 2:17), so called from the effects produced by disobedience; and this "so that man may understand and recognize that he is not the possessor and absolute master, but dependent on God even in the use of the benefits granted to him. Therefore, even if the matter of the prohibition was of very little account, for the purpose intended by God the precept was most grave; as moreover appears from the penalty attached" (A. Bea).

Some Catholic exegetes, abandoning the literal sense, hold that the tree with its fruit is only a didactic, popular representation of the true divine precept violated by the first parents. In that case it would be impossible to specify in what the divine prohibition consisted, since none of the explanations attempted carries proofs capable of raising it above the level of simple possibility. The explanation that it was a sexual sin, which has reappeared here and there through the centuries (from Clement of Alexandria onward), and still recently, under various aspects (Filocristiano, Quale fu il p. di Adamo e di Eva, Carrara 1920: cf. A. Fernandez, in Biblica, 2 [1921], p. 481 ff.; J. Coppens: cf. F. Asensio, in Gregorianum, 31 [1950] passim; and id., El primer pecado en el relato del Génesis, in Estudios Bíblicos, 9 [1950], pp. 174-91), even in the only form reconcilable with the context, that is, prohibition of beginning the use of marriage before a divine command (or before a given term fixed by God: P. Mayrhofer, Der Fall des Menschen, in Theol. und Glaube, 28 [1936], pp. 133-62; cf. J. Miklik, in Biblica, 20 [1939], pp. 387-96), remains a pure possibility. The popular narrative, in its simplicity, is psychologically fine and profound. The temptation, given the gift of integrity, the internal equilibrium, can come only from outside; it cannot be a carnal fault, since concupiscence was lacking before the rebellion; it can only be disobedience. The rebellion of the lower part, with the motions of the concupiscible appetite, is the punishment of the rebellion against God that has taken place.

The devil (under the guise of the serpent) urges man to disobedience, exploiting curiosity and that feeling of reaction that every prohibition arouses in the will (cf. Rom. 7:7-13). Adam and Eve were endowed with a perfect intelligence and with a knowledge given them by God. Theoretically they knew that it was evil to disobey and that they would be punished for it; they lacked the experimental knowledge of evil, which they acquired by committing the sin. "Then the eyes of both were opened and they realized that they were naked" (Gen. 3:7); they feel in their members motions and appetites contrary to reason and seek to hide them. Accustomed to converse familiarly with God, to entrust themselves to him as to a Father, now they tremble and seek they withdrew from his sight (ibid. 3, 8). The punishment is already in effect: man will feel the burden of labor, woman the sufferings of motherhood; while the fear of death will torment them. Far from Paradise, now deprived of the Creator's familiarity, they will begin the sorrowful history of human misfortunes. Adam will transmit to his children, to all humanity, physical life, but without the gifts received from God and lost through sin; indeed with the depraved inclinations that will increase gradually with the accumulation of sins.

Regarding death, the most expressive consequence of original sin, the Old Testament is explicit: «From the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die» (Eccl. 25, 23); «God created man for immortality...; but by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who are of his party experience it. But the souls of the just are in the hands of God...» (Wis. 2, 23 ff.). «The first cause of death was the sin of Adam, brought about by the temptation of the devil (Gen. 3). But the victims of death are properly only the wicked, the partisans of the devil; for the good pass to a blessed immortality" (A. Vaccari). The penalty threatened by God ("you shall surely die"), besides the loss of immortality, the actual separation of the soul from the body and the dissolution of the latter ("you are dust and to dust you shall return"), sanctioned principally, with the descent of the soul into the underworld, the separation from God; this would cease for the just at the Redeemer's descent into hell, while it would be eternal for sinners. The Old Testament therefore affirms the general idea of a change acquired for humanity in its relations with God; man is no longer in a relation of friendship with God; the expulsion from Paradise operates upon the entire human race. There is talk of hereditary penalties: death, sufferings, concupiscence. Verse 7 of the Miserere (Ps. 51) and other passages (ibid. 54, 4; Job 13, 25 ff.; 14, 4) presuppose this state of native corruption, of congenital moral misery; a state of sin, which implies a certain moral solidarity. But the doctrine of hereditary original sin is not expressed explicitly in the Old Testament; in Jewish literature it is entirely ignored.

St. Paul sets it forth (Rom. 5, 12-21), resting upon the sacred text (Genesis, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom) and revealing its exact value. His intent is to demonstrate the universality and efficacy of Christ's salvific work, the sole source of life. He does this by establishing the parallelism between the work of Adam the sinner, who stands at the head and at the beginning of fallen humanity, and the work of Christ, the antitype, who stands at the head and at the beginning of redeemed humanity. Two relations of universal efficacious solidarity are set in opposition; the first and the second Adam are the heads of all men: the first founds the kingdom of sin and death, the second that of Grace and life. "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus death has struck the entire human race, because all have sinned." The apodosis is missing, well supplied by Origen: "so through one man justice entered the world and through justice life." Indeed, until the Law, there was sin in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law (Rom. 5, 13); and yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not made themselves guilty of any transgression similar to that of Adam, who is the image (the type) of Him who was to come..." (v. 14). If the sin of one man had such a sinister efficacy, St. Paul continues (vv. 15-17), how much more, in reality, must the obedience, the salvific work of Christ, act upon all with superabundance! As, therefore, through the offense of one man, condemnation weighed upon all men, so too the justice wrought by one man (procures) for all men the justification that gives life (v. 18). For, as through the disobedience of one man, all the others were constituted sinners, so through the obedience of one man, all will be constituted just (v. 19). Sin is personified: a maleficent power that orients man against God, keeps him a slave and uses the flesh as an instrument (often in Rom. 6-7), made its entrance into the world (= into the consciences of men), through Adam's rebellion; and through sin, death, which is its penalty; death not merely physical, but complete separation from God (Ecclus. 25, 23; Wis. 2, 23 ff.), with all its physical and moral consequences. St. Paul refers to the account of Gen. 3, 1-19; he passes over Eve, because Adam is the head of humanity as opposed to Christ. Death reigns over the entire human race, "because all have sinned." The Greek Fathers, anxious to affirm, against the Manichaeans, the integrity in man of his freedom and his responsibility, wished to explain "all have sinned" (cf. Rom. 3, 23) as referring to personal sins committed in imitation of Adam; but they cannot explain vv. 13-14; and they must reject the literal sense of v. 19. In reality, in vv. 13-14 St. Paul explains the preceding clause. A penalty is not inflicted unless it is prescribed; now death could not be said to be inflicted for personal sins, inasmuch as, from Adam onward, no divine command on the matter is found expressed; the authentic promulgation of the divine Law occurs with Moses. The natural law, written in hearts, was not sufficiently manifest and characterized in its precepts and in the sanctions that accompany them. Moreover, many men had also died who were not guilty of personal sins. Their death, which entailed separation from God, would be a penalty without a corresponding fault; it must therefore be explained by their solidarity with Adam, in the penalty and in the very fault inherited from him. This is what v. 19 clearly expresses. Truly all have sinned in Adam; although in the original text this precise statement is lacking: the Greek ἐφ' ὃ is merely causal (II Cor. 5, 4; Phil. 3, 12), and likewise the in quo of the Latin translation can be explained as "because" (Rom. 8, 3; Phil. 3, 12). St. Paul does not say how this infection took place; he does not develop the idea of a sin committed by humanity in its head, transmitted by generation; he is content to lay down the principle, to affirm the fact. He recalls the universal influence of Adam's fall, in order to establish a fortiori the universal influence of Christ's work of justice; applying the same principle of solidarity: with Christ, source of grace and life; with Adam, source of sin and death. As soon as the needs of the parallelism do not compel him to do so, the Apostle no longer speaks of our participation in Adam's sin; it may well be said, therefore, that original sin here has an episodic role; nor will it be found elsewhere again. In the expression "we were by nature (φύσει), like the others, children of wrath" (Eph. 2, 3), actual sins are in question; φύσει emphasizes the idea of a property inherent in, essential to, man deprived of Grace, without accenting a sin of nature. Redemption eliminates sin, the separation from God; it gives the strength to overcome the concupiscence that remains in the body (Rom. 7); it will triumph definitively over death, with the glorious resurrection of bodies (ibid. 8). Then the order formed by God at the beginning and lost by Adam through his fault, for himself and for all men, will be integrally restored, and in a more perfect manner.

Francesco Spadafora

II. THE TRADITION

The major controversies concerning original sin arose because of its transmission to posterity.

1. Errors

A first crisis broke out in the 4th-5th centuries through the work of Pelagius (v. PELAGIANESIMO), according to whom Adam's sin had harmed only him who had committed it, while to posterity it had brought no other harm than that of a bad example. The present state of man is the same as Adam's state before sin: in the one and in the other, Grace is not absolutely necessary for salvation, but is only useful and consists in helps more external than internal. True internal Grace is freedom, which makes man the arbiter of his own destiny.

In the 16th century a crisis developed in the opposite direction. Luther (v.) had a pessimistic vision of man and of his present life and identified its cause in original sin transmitted by Adam in such a way as to corrupt human nature incurably, with the loss of freedom and the consequent inability to do any good.

2. Catholic doctrine

The Church condemned both errors: rigid Pelagianism in the Council of Carthage (418) under Pope Zosimus, and the mitigated form (Semipelagianism) in the Second Council of Orange (529), approved by Pope Boniface II; Lutheranism in the Council of Trent (sess. V).

The anti-Pelagian councils insisted on the consequences of Adam's sin, and especially the Arausicanum has grave phrases such as this: «totum... in deterius... hominem commutatum». The Council of Trent, on the other hand, defended human free will, notwithstanding original sin, and attributed to it the faculty of resisting Grace or of cooperating with it (sess. VI, c. 4, 5; Denz-U, 814 ff.). No one can fail to notice the difference in tone and climate in the canons of these councils, which the historian transforms into a problem for the theologian. Some critics hostile to the Catholic faith, such as Turnel, Buonaiuti, and rationalists such as A. Harnack, claim to demonstrate on the basis of those canons that the Church was with Augustine against all Pelagianism in the Councils of Carthage and Orange, but in the Council of Trent became Pelagian herself. But between the African councils and the Council of Trent there is no contradiction, because the same thing is not affirmed and denied in the same sense. The doctrine of the ecclesiastical magisterium must be studied in relation to the heresies that prompted its definitions. In the 4th and 5th centuries Pelagius, by denying any solidarity of the human race with its transgressing head and by exalting the forces of nature and of free will, was undermining at its foundation Christianity and its supernatural world with the redeeming Grace of the Savior. To check this presumptuous naturalism it was necessary to emphasize human weakness and the need for Christ and his Grace for sanctification and eternal salvation. The Church did so with the words of St. Augustine, who had engaged his whole life in the struggle against Pelagius. In the 16th century, however, Luther went to the opposite extreme; under the impulse of a false mysticism he denied any value of human nature, reducing man to a state of slavery and incurable disease, refractory even to the redemptive influence of the Cross. And then the Church rose up to defend the substantial integrity of human nature and of its freedom, the foundation of morality and of supernatural merit.

3. The Holy Fathers

As has been mentioned, the Old Testament is generally silent on the sad consequences of Adam's fall, almost until the last Jewish period, which precedes the Christian Revelation; and in the New Testament neither St. Paul's text to the Romans nor other passages demonstrate the intimate nature of the transmitted sin or the manner in which it is propagated or the degree of responsibility that belongs to posterity. St. Paul stays with the fact of the original guilt transmitted on the basis of a solidarity between Adam and his descendants. It was the task of Tradition to specify and develop what is implied in the vigorous and rich Pauline expressions. In surveying the texts of the Fathers of the first centuries concerning original sin, one immediately has the sensation of being faced with a doctrine in fermentation. Starting from the data of Holy Scripture, the Fathers affirm the concrete fact of Adam's fall and its consequences in posterity; then they begin to seek an explanation of the fact, advancing opinions, assimilating extraneous elements along the laborious path. There thus resulted a variety of exposition that at first sight disorients.

In general the Eastern Fathers have an optimistic vision of human nature and show themselves very solicitous for freedom and therefore for the moral responsibility of each individual. This vision has as its coefficients, on the one hand, Hellenism and, on the other, the struggle against Gnosticism and Manichaeism, in which pessimism and moral determinism dominated. Accordingly they were inclined to consider original sin in posterity more as a penalty than as a guilt and did not see clearly the connection between Adam as sinner and the human race.

Of the early Fathers the most important is Irenaeus, who at the end of the 2nd century gathers the tradition of East and West and gives precious samples of it. In his thought Adam's sin is the sin of all of us: «(Deum) in primo quidem Adam offendimus non facientes eius praec toplum; in secundo autem Adam reconciliati sumus oboedientes usque ad mortem facti. Neque enim alteri cuidam eramus debitores, sed illi cuius et praec toplum transgressi fueramus ab initio» (Adv. haer., V, 16, 3). If there were no other documents, this venerable testimony of a martyr bishop, who filled almost the whole of the 2nd century with himself, would suffice to attest the Church's faith in original sin transmitted to the descendants of Adam.

Alongside this substantial doctrine there flourished marginal or detailed opinions, often derived from influences extraneous to Revelation. Thus, for example, in St. Irenaeus himself there is found hinted the theory of the infantility of the first parents, according to which Adam and Eve would have been created as children, ignorant of life. The Alexandrians, against Manichaean determinism, maintained that sin draws its origin from freedom and not from a law of nature; therefore they left somewhat in the shadows the question of the solidarity of men with Adam in sin. Origen, however, reaffirms the concept of a native contamination, which explains the use of Baptism for children (In Levit., 8, 3).

But the Alexandrian school marked a notable progress with the Fathers of the 4th century. St. Athanasius dealt first of all with the state of innocence in which Adam had been created, emphasizing the purity and strength of the νοῦς (in the Platonic manner), which conferred on the first man a great power of contemplating divine things. Adam's sin was a detachment from the sphere of contemplation and a turning back toward matter, whereby human nature fell into its ordinary state, losing the divine image of the «Logos». The sons of Adam find themselves in this condition of decadence and bewilderment, from which they can be liberated by the Word made flesh. Finally St. Athanasius specified that in posterity there are not only the consequences of Adam's sin, but in a certain way the same sin is transmitted: «Nam quemadmodum peccante Adamo, peccatum in omnes homines pertransuit, ita, postquam Dominus factus homo serpentem devicit, vis illa permanebit in omnes homines» (Adv. Arianos orat. quatuor, I, 51). These Alexandrians were echoed by the Cappadocians, particularly St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen, and copiously St. Gregory of Nyssa. All three spoke of a true transmission of the first sin.

If the Alexandrian school, permeated with an intellectualistic Platonizing mysticism, offered some foothold for the doctrine of original sin, despite its ideally optimistic tendency, in the Antiochene school the climate was entirely hostile to that doctrine. For the Antiochenes a collective sin, a contamination of conscience through generation, a participation in the guilt of a third party, was almost inconceivable. These humanists before their time saw man as an individual responsible for his actions and master of his destiny. The tradition of original sin was bound to find in them, if not true opponents, certainly very broad interpreters, to the point of emptying that tradition of its real content.

Not without reason is the greatest heresy against the doctrine of original sin, Pelagianism, placed in intimate connection, both ideologically and historically, with the school of Antioch.

From the most recent critical studies it emerges that the first open denial of the transmission of original sin arose within the Antiochene school; and precisely it is found, before Theodore of Mopsuestia (as was held until now, on the basis of the statement of Marius Mercator), in Diodore of Tarsus, who was the teacher of Theodore and of St. John Chrysostom. In a fragment of Diodore one reads precisely that Adam's sin was one only and that posterity is guilty insofar as it imitates Adam. And in another fragment of his commentary, on the Letter to the Romans, Ἰερᾶς πάντες ἥμερτον (in quo omnes peccaverunt) is referred to personal sins.

Concerning Theodore of Mopsuestia there is discussion. At first he affirmed the passage, from Adam the sinner to posterity, at least of mortality and of an inclination to sin. But afterwards he seems to have denied any transmission of sin, as emerges from certain fragments and from Theodore's close friendship with the Pelagians and especially with Julian of Eclanum. Devreesse, in the recent work Essai sur Théodore de Mopsuette (Rome 1944), excuses him entirely, while Vaccari and Ammann himself acknowledge that Theodore denied the transmission of original sin, though contradicting himself.

His fellow disciple, St. John Chrysostom, is much more cautious and moderate. A passionate interpreter of St. Paul, he acknowledges first of all the consequences of Adam's sin in posterity: mortality, concupiscence, which however does not impair free will, the sorrows and miseries of this life; he acknowledges that everything was lost and defiled by that sin. He does not, however, speak of a guilty solidarity between Adam and his descendants; indeed he interprets the Pauline expression "peccatores constituti sunt multi" not in the sense of truly and properly sinners, but of those condemned to death. Chrysostom, grappling with the Manicheans, is dominated, like other contemporaries especially of the Antiochene milieu, by the principle of personal responsibility for one's acts, and fears that the transmission of original sin might lead into the error of a natural necessity of sinning even without an act of free will. From this rapid survey the exaggeration and falsity of a certain criticism is evident, which takes pleasure in presenting the Eastern Fathers as wholesale deniers of transmitted sin.

The Western tradition presents no notable difficulties. Important above all is African theology, which prepared the native milieu of Augustine. Tertullian, linked with Irenaeus, attests the common faith: "Ita omnis anima eo usque in Adam censetur, donec in Christo recenseatur, tamdiu immunda quamdiu recensetur; peccatrix autem quia immunda" (De anima, ch. 40).

St. Cyprian took up his master's doctrine and purified it of its dross, affirming more clearly than he did the state of guilt in children before Baptism, a guilt "non propria, sed aliena" (Epist. 65, 5).

In the Apologia prophetiae David, St. Ambrose reaffirmed without equivocation the truth of transmitted sin: "Antequam nascimur, maculamur contagio... Et sic nec unius diei infans sine peccato" (I, I, ch. 11). "Omnes in primo homine peccavimus et per naturae successionem, culpae quoque ab uno in omnes transfusa successio est... Adam ergo in singulis nobis est. In illo enim condicio humana deliquit, quia per unum in omnes pertransivit peccatum" (I, II, ch. 12). The mysterious Ambrosiaster, author of a commentary on the Letter to the Romans, spoke of the fall of Adam and its sad consequences for humanity: death, slavery to the devil. What is more interesting, the unknown author, who wrote at Rome under the pontificate of Pope Damasus, affirms in a precise manner the solidarity between Adam and his posterity, relying on the Vulgate translation of "in quo omnes peccaverunt" and making use of an expression that is found again in St. Augustine but with greater fullness and determination; he writes indeed: "Manifestum itaque est in Adam omnes peccasse quasi in massa; ipse enim per peccatum corruptus, quos genuit, omnes nati sunt sub peccato." Some critics find in this passage the source of St. Augustine's doctrine.

St. Augustine (v.) linked his activity and a great part of his life in an incomparable way to the doctrine of original sin, in the struggle against Pelagianism. St. Augustine, like all great souls, felt acutely, indeed lived, the problem of evil and suffering. In the grip of torment he threw himself as a young man into Manichaeism, very widespread at that time in the provinces of the Empire. The exasperated dualism of Manichaeism offered St. Augustine a pessimistic vision of the world, a battlefield between good and evil personified in two adversary divinities, which left no room for the exercise of human freedom. A suffocating atmosphere, from which St. Augustine emerged with the initial help of Neoplatonism, then with the full help of Christianity, which demonstrated to him the metaphysical non-existence of evil, the substantial goodness of the universe as a reflection of the goodness of the one God, and the possibility of a redemption through Christ, to whom every man is called to adhere freely.

St. Augustine, from his first conversion, knew and embraced the doctrine of original sin and that of Grace, but he deepened them in the long battle against Pelagianism. Augustine and Pelagius embody two visions of the world and of life in the light of Christianity. Pelagius, a cold dialectician, a jurist, sees in God the legislator, who awaits man on the threshold of eternity to judge him and sanction him according to the fulfillment of his duty; and he sees in man a being rich in energies, free and personally responsible for his good and bad actions before God, capable of avoiding sin and master of his temporal and eternal destiny.

St. Augustine sees God as lord and master of the life of the universe and of man in particular, a God who does not wait, but precedes and inscribes himself with the powerful influence of Grace even in man's conscience, in order to free him and set him decisively on the path of salvation. Man is not sound; he is a fallen being, who needs redemption: there is in his members a seed of evil, a native defect, which is eliminated only with the help of Grace. Humanity is a mass infected with sin, the kingdom of Satan, which Christ seeks to transform into the kingdom of God, the communion of Saints, through his Church. St. Augustine's is an anthropological realism with a pessimistic background, open however toward the joyful liberation through Grace: the supernatural is effectively affirmed not only as an end, but also as a means, not only as an individual relationship with God, but also as the presence and action of God in an associated religious life. The contrasting visions justify and explain the tragic struggle that convulsed the Western Church, and in part also the Eastern Church, in the first half of the 5th century. Pelagius fell, Augustine won: it was the defeat of naturalism and the victory of supernaturalism, the vital fabric of the Church and of Christianity, on anthropological ground. St. Augustine's thought has been discussed elsewhere (v. AGOSTINO AURELIO, saint, vol. I, col. 544 ff.).

The Church has made its own the main lines of that thought, but St. Augustine's disciples and, worse, the heretics welcomed its cracks and its dross.

4. Scholasticism

In the Middle Ages the fact of original sin in Adam and in his descendants was no longer discussed, but the nature and essential characteristics of the transmitted sin were studied and examined in depth, while at the same time developing and clarifying the doctrine of original justice. All are influenced by St. Augustine, but to different degrees and in different directions. Moreover, it is difficult to find in later theology a problem that St. Augustine had not posed and had not tried to solve.

At the beginning of Scholasticism stands St. Anselm, who deliberately tackled the age-old question. In his thought, death, concupiscence and ignorance are rather the punishment of original sin. The guilt lies formally in that privation of original rectitude, which is voluntary insofar as all men are one single nature with Adam. St. Anselm thus placed the emphasis on the character of guilt, bringing sin back into the moral sphere proper to the will and restricting concupiscence to the physical sphere. Another dialectician, more rationalist than Anselm, was Abelard, who, although harking back to St. Augustine, overturned his entire doctrine, returning to the concept of original sin as a punishment in descendants, and not admitting a true sin that is not actual. St. Bernard and Hugh of St. Victor reacted against Abelard with a return to Augustinian themes, especially that of concupiscence regarded, concretely, as the substance of the transmitted sin. Hugh's idea lived again in his disciple, Peter Lombard, who with his Sententiae dominated all of Scholasticism down to St. Thomas, causing the interesting contribution of St. Anselm to be set aside. The Master of the Sentences did not stop at concupiscence, but spoke of a privation of supernatural gifts and a wounding of the natural faculties, especially of free will (it is the celebrated phrase of Bede: « vulneratus in naturalibus, expoliatus in gratuitis »). The positions of Peter Lombard and of Anselm represent a contrast in the conception of transmitted sin: the physiological sphere of concupiscence, the moral sphere of the will. This contrast was slowly composed by later theologians: William Prepositinus, William of Auxerre and above all Alexander of Hales, with whom the adoption of Aristotelianism began. This Franciscan theologian reconciled St. Anselm with Peter Lombard by suggesting a formula that was taken up by St. Albert the Great, by St. Bonaventure and by St. Thomas: original sin « formally » is the privation of original justice and therefore a deviation of the will, « materially » it is habitual concupiscence, the tinder of sins. And he further specified the voluntariness of the privation of justice in order to preserve the reason of guilt.

St. Thomas now had a basis for constructing his scheme of theology on original sin. To understand the Angelic Doctor's thought concerning Adam's sin, one must first of all grasp his thought concerning original justice. He held that this has as its formal element the « rectitudo voluntatis », whereby the higher faculties of the soul, reason and will, were subject to God; and as its material element the subordination of the sensitive appetite to reason and will (II Sent., d. 32, q. 1). The first element, that is, the subordination of reason and of the will to God, is not found, at least in the present order, without sanctifying Grace, and therefore St. Thomas states categorically (De malo, q. 4, a. 2, ad 17): « Originalis iustitia includit Gratiam gratum facientem ». Elsewhere he says that Grace is « de ratione originalis iustitiae » (ibid., q. 5, a. 1, ad 13), which justifies the interpretation of those Thomists who see in Grace the formal element of original justice, although in the abstract one can distinguish between Grace and the subordination of reason and will to God. For St. Thomas, therefore, original sin objectively considered is the loss of original justice and has as its formal element the aversio of reason and will from God (loss of Grace) and as its material element the rebellion of the lower powers against reason: concupiscentia (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 82, a. 3).

In the light of this concept of original justice as a gratuitous gift, St. Thomas matured the concept of pure nature with the help of Aristotelian philosophy. The metaphysical essence of man is animality and reasonableness; the physical essence is the composite of a soul and a body; this essence, under its twofold aspect, was in Adam before the sin and must remain in its ontological integrity even afterward, otherwise fallen man would no longer be man. Therefore human nature is essentially good, even though it encloses within itself, by reason of its complexity, a contrast between spirit and matter and hence concupiscence, corruptibility and mortality, as well as the perfectibility of the intellect, which passes from ignorance to knowledge. God could have created man and left him in this state of pure nature with its congenital defects. Instead He willed to enrich him with preternatural and supernatural gifts; St. Thomas clarified once and for all the clear distinction between nature and the supernatural (II Sent., d. 30, q. 1; De malo, 2-5, a. 1); indeed he always showed himself solicitous for nature and its conditions and demands. As for original sin in posterity, these are the cornerstones of his doctrine: a) through generation and the consequent unity of nature, men are one single thing, indeed one single man with Adam (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 81, a. 1). b) Original sin is transmitted not only as a penalty but also as a guilt. It is not, however, a personal sin, but a sin of nature that has singular characteristics (ibid.). c) The transmitted sin is not a personal act, but a kind of habit or disordered disposition of nature induced in his descendants by the sinful act of the first man. d) In the light of these principles, voluntariness, indispensable for every true guilt, is also present in the transmitted sin, not however as the positive exercise of the individual will of posterity, but as the causal influence of the sinful act of Adam's will (De malo, q. 4, a. 1; cf. II Sent., d. 30, q. 1, a. 2; and d. 31, q. 1, a. 1). e) Objectively, original sin is the act of disobedience that caused that loss. Formally, original sin consists in the aversio a Deo, that is, in the loss of original justice in its formal element, which is the subordination of the soul to God by the bond of grace; materially, on the other hand, it is the conversio ad bonum commutabile, that is, the loss of the equilibrium of the passions and of the subjection of the flesh. This material element of the transmitted sin is in concrete terms first of all habitual concupiscence, the fomite of sin, and then death and ignorance, which have rather the character of a penalty (De malo, q. 4, a. 2; Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 82, a. 3). Habitual concupiscence as « pronitas vel habilitas ad concupiscendum praeter ordinem rationis » is not intrinsically guilty, but can become so every time the will consents, because the proper seat of true sin is the reason and the will, not the flesh nor the sensibility, except insofar as they become instruments of the will. For St. Thomas, concupiscence remains in the sphere of the physical order and does not touch the moral order except through the influence of the will (De malo, q. 4, a. 2, ad 4; Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 82, a. 3, and q. 73, a. 3, ad 2). f) Taking up again the well-known motto of the Ven. Bede: « expoliatus in gratuitis, vulneratus in naturalibus », St. Thomas addresses the question of the effects of original sin. Sin affects not the sphere of man's being, but the dynamic, psychological sphere of his activity. Man, fallen through original sin, remains essentially man in his natural integrity, but he can no longer succeed in acting as a man because he is wounded. The wounds are four, as many as the powers of the soul capable of the virtuous act, that is, the reason, the will, the irascible appetite and the concupiscible appetite (ibid.). To these four wounds is added the death of the body. g) Since original sin is not a personal sin, it cannot be the cause of a positive penalty inflicted on one who is contaminated by it, but it is the cause only of that penalty which necessarily follows sin as an inversio a Deo. Therefore children who die without Baptism will not undergo any penalty of sense, but they will not be able to enjoy the beatific vision (De malo, q. 5, a. 1-2). Thus the Angelic Doctor eliminated the opinion of St. Augustine. h) Lastly, St. Thomas clarifies and specifies the effects of Baptism, which, being an incorporation into Christ the Redeemer, removes original sin as guilt, rejoining the soul to God by grace; it also removes the eternal penalty due to guilt, but it does not remove in this life the other penalties derived from original sin, such as death and concupiscence and other miseries. St. Thomas explains the celebrated phrase: « concupiscentia per Baptismum transit reatu, manet actu » not in the sense that concupiscence, as an element of original sin, perseveres in the baptized person with its sinful activity, but in the sense that it disappears as guilt and remains as sensuality not subdued by grace and therefore as a fomite of sin (De malo, q. 4, a. 2, ad 10). i) Original sin is transmitted by way of generation, in the sense that Adam generates children by communicating nature deprived of original justice.

Such is the lucid synthesis of St. Thomas, which gathers the flower of tradition, tempers, eliminates, specifies, deepens and clarifies the whole theology of original sin, in such a way as to remove almost any hope of being able to say it better than he did.

The balancing work of St. Thomas did not succeed in extinguishing the Augustinian current, which, strong in the authority of Peter Lombard and in part also of St. Bonaventure (who, despite the influence of Alexander of Hales, had retained certain theses of the bishop of Hippo), was rekindled in the 14th century as a reaction to Thomism. The assertors of the renewed Augustinianism were Henry of Ghent and the Franciscans Matthew of Aquasparta and Peter Auriol. Noteworthy is the attitude of Scotus, who this time substantially adopted the Thomistic positions, adding however the thesis of the Immaculate Conception. More than in the Franciscan school, the Augustinian reaction is found in this period among the Hermits of St. Augustine, who had a valid representative in Gregory of Rimini. Thomism, however, was vindicated and strengthened in the fine defense of the Dominican Natalis Herveus (Nédellec), who prepared the best modern interpretation of the thought of the Angelic Doctor. But the Augustinian current, favored by nominalism, asserts itself almost sovereignly in the mysticism of the late Middle Ages and, gradually tinged with pessimism, degenerated, preparing the Lutheran explosion.

5. The Council of Trent

The Church responded to the errors of Luther with the Council of Trent.

The synthesis of St. Thomas offered in advance a balanced solution, which effectively avoided the two extremes: and the Council of Trent made free use of it, adopting its fundamental principles, rooted and guaranteed in written and oral Revelation. The canons of the Council (sess. V) give this schema: a) The fact of Adam's fall, who lost « sanctitatem et iustitiam, in qua constitutus fuerat ». b) The effects of Adam's sin are transmitted to posterity by way of generation, not of imitation. c) This sin, transmitted by the first father through generation, « inhaeret » to each of his descendants as their own. d) Original sin cannot be removed except by being reborn in Christ through Baptism. e) Baptism radically eliminates original sin, as guilt and as penalty, but leaves concupiscence, which is not intrinsically sin and serves to increase the merit of the Christian who fights against it.

In this schema the formal element of original sin in Adam and in his descendants is underlined, which is the death of the soul, that is, the loss of the supernatural life of Grace that unites man to God: the loss of integrity, designated as death and bodily misery, is a secondary element that follows the first. Sin does not lie in concupiscence or other miseries, which are rather a punishment, but lies principally in the rupture between man and God, determined by Adam and persisting in his descendants, who share in the guilt of the first father. This is an interesting point, which closes many controversies and orients theologians for the future. The Council does not say how the descendants participate in Adam's guilt, but asserts the fact and suggests that this guilt is unique and is transmitted "by propagation, not by imitation." It is therefore a native guilt, founded on the unity of the race, independent of the will of the descendants. The insinuation of a solidarity of an ontological order, such as that maintained by St. Thomas, is sufficiently evident. Against Luther and against the opinions of the Augustinians, concupiscence is excluded from the formal constitution of original sin: it can only be a material element, as the Angelic Doctor had already intuited.

6. Post-Tridentine tendencies

The Council did not give the definition of transmitted original sin, but offered the elements for future theology to formulate it; the vital point is included in the expression "inest unicuique proprium." One might ask whether Adam's sinful act or only the consequent sinful state passes to the descendants. The Council had not settled the question, whereas St. Thomas had decided in favor of the state. In the acts of the Council it is read that the fathers had before their eyes the doctrine of Albert Pighius, who restricted sin to Adam's consciousness and extended it to the descendants by a moral imputation. To this opinion is linked the Dominican Ambrose Catharinus (v. POLITI, LANCELLOTTO), who speaks of Adam as the moral head of the human race and attributes the guilt to the descendants by virtue of a pact that would have intervened between God and the first man, the juridical representative of all his descendants. In this way the solidarity of the children with the father is reduced to the juridical-moral sphere, contrary to the spirit of Trent.

Catharinus's opinion exercised a strong influence on theologians of value such as Salmerón, De Lugo, Suárez, Gonet and Billuart, who spoke of a pact, of a juridical head, of a moral transference of the wills of the descendants into Adam. Yet it would suffice to observe that there is no trace of that pact in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and moreover one does not see how a transference of the wills of descendants who do not yet exist could be maintained. A juridical fiction, then, to which so much ruin of humanity would be tied. In such opinions the idea of Lutheran imputation seems to take shape.

Lutheranism was prolonged in Baianism and Jansenism (v.), which repeat its fundamental motif, albeit attenuating it. Leaving aside the relevant entries, here it must be observed that both Baius and Jansenius erred in their conception of Adam's primitive state, regarding it as a natural state. God could not create man other than as He created him, and therefore everything Adam had from the beginning, including Grace, if it was not a constitutive element (Luther), was certainly an element owed to human nature (cf. propositions of Baius 21, 23, 24, 26). Baius and Jansenius denied, in other words, the possibility of the state of pure nature, which theologians defend in order to safeguard the gratuitousness and supernaturalness of Grace and of original justice. The concept of pure nature goes back to St. Augustine, and its possibility is the necessary presupposition for a sound theology of original sin and of the supernatural order (cf. Pius XII, encyclical Humani generis).

7. Latest deviations

Pope Pius XII, in the encyclical Humani generis (12 Aug. 1950), pointed out some notable deviations, even among Catholics, in the doctrine of original sin. Some imprudent innovators, adhering to the hypothesis of polygenism (v. also MONOGENISM), have attempted to interpret the name of Adam in a collective sense (a moral person equivalent to primitive humanity appearing in several points of the earth). Consequently original sin would not be the action of an individual transmitted to his descendants, but a perverse inclination inherent in man's nature and determined both by man's material and bestial origin and by the condition of individual human souls, which are moved by an initial impulse against God. Evidently such opinions are in full contrast with Sacred Scripture and with the dogma defined by the Church, especially in the Council of Trent. Therefore Pius XII openly rejects them, recalling the Tridentine definition "de peccato originali, quod procedit ex peccato vere commisso ab uno Adamo, quodque, generatione in omnes transfusum, inest unicuique proprium" - See plate LXXIV.

BIBLI: 1. OPERE GENERALI: X. Le Bachelet, Péché originel, in DFC. III, coll. 1735-55; A. Gaudel, Péché originel, in DThC. XII, 1, coll. 275-606. 2. S. SCRITTURA: M.-J. Lagrange, St Paul: Epître aux Romains, Parigi 1916; L. Pirot, Adam et la Bible, in DBs, I, coll. 86-101; F. Prat, La théologie de St Paul, II, 19ᵉ ed., Parigi 1930, p. 250 sgg.; A. Bea, De Pentateuch, Roma 1933; G. Philipps, De narratione lapsus generis humani et mythologia, in Revue ecclésiastique de Liège, 36 (1934-35), pp. 259-63; F. Ceuppens, De historia primaeva, Roma 1934; J. Boyer, Teologia de s. Pablo, Madrid 1946, p. 756 sgg.; J. Bonsirven, L'Évangile de Paul, Parigi 1948, p. 107 sgg.; F. Asensio, De persona Adus et de peccato originali originante secundum Gensim, in Gregorianum, 29 (1948), pp. 145-207; F. Heinisch, Teologia del Vecchio Testamento, trad. it. di A. Pintonello, Roma 1950, pp. 275-78 (bibl. a p. 272). 3. PADRI: A. Casamassa, Il pensiero di s. Agostino nel 396-97, Roma 1919 (critica a Buonaiuti); J. Tixeront, Histoire des dogmes, 3 voll., Parigi 1924 sgg.; passim; A. Slomkowski, L'état primitif de l'homme dans la tradition de l'Église avant St Augustin, Parigi-Strasburgo 1928; N. Merlin, St Augustin et les dogmes du péché originel et de la Grâce, Parigi 1931; Ch. Boyer, Essai sur la doctrine de St Augustin, ivi 1932, capp. 8-9; F. Di Sciascio, Pulgenzio di Rupe e i massimi problemi della Grazia, Roma 1941, pp. 36-60; T. Badurina, Doctrina s. Methodii de Olimpia de peccato originali et de eius effectibus, ivi 1942; J. Lonke, S. Augustinus patronus reformatorum in doctrina de peccato originali?, in Collatismus Brugensis, 44 (1948), pp. 288-292; M. Arattukulam, Doctrina s. Augustini de culmure ignorantiæ, Chochin [Roma] 1950; S. De Simone, Il problema del p. o. e Giuliano di Eclano, Napoli 1950. 4. SCOLASTICI: R.-M. Martin, La question du péché originel dans St Anselme, in Revue de sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 5 (1911), pp. 735-49; A. Teetart, Le péché originel d'après Abillard, in Estudis franciscans, 40 (1928), pp. 23-54; R.-M. Martin, La controverse sur le péché originel au début du XIVᵉ siècle, Lovanio 1930; J. B. Kors, La justice primitive et le péché originel d'après St Thomas, Parigi 1930; F. Francié, De iustitia originali et peccato originali sec. Duns Scotum, Spalato 1941; E. Catazzo, De iustitia et peccato originali iuxta s. Bonaventuram, Vicenza 1942; H. T. Gasser, Matthaei ab Aquasparta de originali peccato doctrina comparata cum doctrina s. Thomae et s. Bonaventurae, S. Paolo del Brasile 1946; L. Scarinci, Giustizia primitiva e p. o. sec. A. Catarino, Roma 1947; J. Belei, De deterioritate naturae humanae post peccatum originale sec. S. Thomam, ivi 1950. 5. TEOLOGI MODERNI: Marianus e Novana, De originaria lapsi hominis conditione, Parigi 1881; M. De Baeta, De ratione ac natura peccati originalis, Lovanio 1899; X. Le Bachelet, Le péché originel dans Adam et ses descendants, Parigi 1909; J. Nusberts, De peccato originali, Malines 1916; J. V. Bainvel, Nature et surnaturel, 5ᵉ ed., Parigi 1920; L. Billot, De personali et originali peccato, 5ᵉ ed., Roma 1924; A. Verrielle, Le surnaturel en nous et le péché originel, Parigi 1932; P. Parente, De creatione universali hominisque elevatione et lapsu, 2ᵉ ed., Roma 1946, pp. 138-68; B. Bartmann, Manuale di teologia dogmatica, trad. it. di N. Bussi, I, Alba 1949, pp. 406-30; M. J. Scheeben, I misteri del cristianesimo, trad. it., Brescia 1949, pp. 183-234; B. Prete, Aspetti recenti del problema sul primo peccato, in Sapienza, 3 (1950), pp. 273-86.

Pietro Parente