Original Sin II

This continues my series on Original Sin. In the previous post we looked at some of the biblical data on Original Sin. In this post, I want to look at some statements from Catholics to help us better understand what Original Sin is. I've heard some different statements of Original Sin and if one wants to object to it, it would be beneficial to understand what it is one is objecting to. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads, "The doctrine of original sin is, so to speak, the 'reverse side' of the Good News that Jesus is the Savior of all men, that all need salvation and that salvation is offered to all through Christ. The Church, which has the mind of Christ, knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ....Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.... Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness.... The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man. Because of man, creation is now subject 'to its bondage to decay'. Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will 'return to the ground', for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history (emphasis in the original)....All men are implicated in Adam's sin, as St. Paul affirms: 'By one man's disobedience many (that is, all men) were made sinners': 'sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.' The Apostle contrasts the universality of sin and death with the universality of salvation in Christ. 'Then as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men.' Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam's sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the 'death of the soul'. Because of this certainty of faith, the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even tiny infants who have not committed personal sin. How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam 'as one body of one man'. By this 'unity of the human race' all men are implicated in Adam's sin, as all are implicated in Christ's justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called 'sin' only in an analogical sense: it is a sin 'contracted' and not 'committed' - a state and not an act. Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence'. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle."

The Council of Orange (529 AD) declares, "If anyone says that through the offence of Adam's sin the whole person, body and soul, was not changed for the worse, but believes that only the body was subjected to corruption while the freedom of the soul remained unharmed, such one is misled by the error of Pelagius and goes against scripture which says: 'the soul that sins shall die' and: 'do you not know that if you yield yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves you are slaves of the one whom you obey?' And again: 'whatever overcomes one, to that one is enslaved.' If anyone maintains that the fall harmed Adam alone and not his descendants, or declares that only bodily death which is the punishment of sin, but not sin itself which is the death of the soul was passed on to the whole human race by one man, he ascribes injustice to God and contradicts the words of the apostle: 'Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all as all sinned in him.'"

Innocent III's letter to Humbert, Archbishop of Arles (1201) writes, "We say that two kinds of sin must be distinguished, original and actual: original which is contracted without consent and actual which is committed with consent. Thus, original sin, which is contracted without consent is remitted without consent by the power of the sacrament [of baptism]; but actual sin, which it's committed with consent, is by no means remitted without consent....Further, the punishment of original sin is the loss of the beatific vision, but the punishment of actual sin is the torture of eternal hell."

The Council of Trent is clear, "If anyone denies that infants newly born from their mother's womb are to be baptized, even when born from baptized parents; or says that, though they are baptized for the remission of sins, yet they do not contract from Adam any trace of Original Sin which must be expiated by the bath of regeneration that less to eternal life, so that in their case the formula of baptism 'for the forgiveness of sins' would no longer be true but would be false, anathema sit. For, what the apostle says: 'Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all as all sinned in him' should not be understood in another sense than that in which the Catholic Church spread over the world had understood it at all times. For, because of this rule of faith, in accordance with apostolic tradition, even children who of themselves cannot have yet committed any sin are truly baptized for the remission of sins, so that by regeneration they may be cleansed from what they contracted through generation. For, 'unless one is born of water and the Sprit, one cannot enter the kingdom of God." 

Pius V (1567) condemned the following statement of Michael de Bay, "The integrity at the beginning of creation was not a gratuitous exaltation of human nature but it's natural condition."

I think this is sufficient as an interpretive guide. In the next post, we'll analyze these statements and declarations.