Victor R. Claveau, MJ
“No man is clean of defilement, even if his life should last but one day.”[1] These are the words of Saint Clement, the second successor to Saint Peter.
Job was a just and blameless man, yet he condemned himself, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one.”[2]
Adam and Eve were created in a state of perfect innocence, but unfortunately did remain that way. To test their faithfulness, God forbade them to eat of a specific fruit in the garden.
Satan, in order to destroy their peace and tranquility insinuated that if they ate of this special fruit, they would gain infinite knowledge and power, and make them like God. They ate the fruit and thereby set themselves in full revolt against God, their Creator.
The consequences of this crime were revolutionary. Man’s moral nature was changed, and he became subject to the demands of his sensual passions. You might say that Adam declared war on himself as well as on God. The animal in man declared war on his spiritual and intellectual integrity. He was now governed by two contrary temperaments. He saw within himself two beings opposed to each other. Saint Paul described it best, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.”[3]
Having been perverted by Satan, it became impossible for man to be born without inheriting a corrupt nature; without the grace of God in their souls.
As defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Original sin is the sin by which the first human beings disobeyed the commandment of God, choosing to follow their own will rather than God’s will. As a consequence, they lost the grace of original holiness, and became subject to the law of death; sin became universally present in the world. Besides the personal sin of Adam and Eve, original sin describes the fallen state of human nature which affects every person born into the world, and from which Christ, the “new Adam,” came to redeem us.[4]
Saint Paul, says, “By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.”[5]
The Council of Trent[6] asserted:
- Original Sin consists in the deprivation of grace caused by the free act of sin committed by the head of the race. (Sent. communis.[7])
- Original sin is transmitted by natural generation. (De fide.[8])
- In the state of original sin man is deprived of sanctifying grace and all that this implies, as well as of the preternatural gifts of integrity. (De fide in regard to Sanctifying Grace and the Donum Immortalitatus [bodily immortality].)
- All human beings subject to original sin are subject to the law of death. (De fide.)
Luther, Calvin and their disciples maintained that through Adam’s fall his entire physical and spiritual being became perverted and corrupted in such a manner that his whole nature, disposition, leanings, desires and thoughts were absolutely and totally evil. They believed this sinful nature so thoroughly and completely pervaded his being that his capacity for receiving good impressions and influences was utterly extinguished. The stains of sin were so thoroughly fixed within him that no sorrow or repentance could eradicate them and this corrupt nature was and is passed down to his posterity. They taught that no course of action on the part of any individual could exercise the slightest influence in rescuing him from eternal damnation. All free will, all spiritual powers and all capacity for good, either in thought or deed, were utterly destroyed.
“Man,” wrote Luther, “as he is born of his father and mother, together with his whole nature and essence, is not only a sinner, but sin itself.”
Calvin thought the image of God was utterly erased from the soul of man by the fall and that man has been so banished from the kingdom of God that all in him which bears reference to the blessed life of the Lord is extinct.[9] In his Institutes, Calvin wrote:
“Therefore, after the heavenly image was obliterated in him, he was not the only one to suffer this punishment — that, in place of wisdom, virtue, holiness, truth, and justice, with which adornments he had been clad, there came forth the most filthy plagues, blindness, impotence, impurity, vanity, and injustice — but he also entangled and immersed his offspring in the same miseries.”[10]
Melanchthon and Zwingli maintained that God deliberately and intentionally implanted original sin in Adam, and the Almighty is not only the author of original sin but of all the sins resulting from this superinduced sinful desire.
In 1525, Melanchthon, in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, wrote:
“That God wrought all things, evil as well as good; that He was the author of David’s adultery, and the treason of Judas, as well as of Paul’s conversion … and that it is not in the power of man to abstain from wickedness.”[11]
In 1530, Zwingli, in his work on Providence, asserted “that God is the author, mover, and impeller to sin; that He also makes the sinner; that by the instrumentality of the creature He produces injustice and the like.”[12]
Calvin repeatedly said “that man, at the instigation of God, does what it is unlawful to do; by a mysterious divine inspiration, the heart of man turns to evil; man falls because the providence of God so ordains.[13]
After Calvin’s death, his successor and the leader of the sect, Theodore de Bèze, taught that God not only incites, impels and urges to evil but the Almighty creates a certain number of souls as His instruments, with the intent of working evil through them.
From this Puritan idea of original sin originated the dogma of “total depravity.”
The Catholic Church’s Teaching on Original Sin
It is a source of relief to return to the doctrine of the Catholic Church on original sin, after a review of the impious beliefs just described. While the Catholic Church does not profess to comprehend the rationale of God’s designs and works on earth, or to penetrate and explain all the mysteries connected with the creation of man and his intimate relations with the Creator and the creation, she does present us with a scriptural and a reasonable idea of original sin.
The Church maintains that God is a Being of infinite love, and in placing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he endowed them with every capacity for perfect happiness. He gave them knowledge of good and evil, of right and wrong and perfect freedom and power to act as they chose, to obey or disobey the instructions he had given them. So there might be no misunderstanding, He explained to them his wishes and restrictions regarding the forbidden fruit, and assured them of the penalty that would result from a violation of his command.
Adam therefore perfectly understood his duty, possessed the free will and the power to do it, and was aware of the guilt and the penalty of disobedience. On the one hand, he saw his Creator, who had endowed him with every earthly blessing but subjected him to a slight discipline in prohibiting the forbidden fruit. On the other hand, he saw Satan, listened to his lies, imbibed a spirit of rebellion and deliberately violated the command of God. In this entire transaction, Adam was a perfectly free agent and acted with a complete knowledge of his obligations and duties, including the dangers of a violation of them.
Like so many of his posterity — the Adams who have lived since his day — he saw the straight and narrow road that leads to eternal life, and the broad road that leads to destruction. But he willfully traveled the latter.
At the fifth session of Council of Trent, the following decree concerning original sin was promulgated:
“If anyone does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he transgressed the commandment of God in paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, and through the offense of that prevarication incurred the wrath and indignation of God, and thus death with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam through that offense of prevarication was changed in body and soul for the worse, let him be anathema.”[14]
All mankind inherited this sinful condition, and can only be justified before God though the merits of Jesus Christ, the sole mediator between God and man. But as man is a free agent and possesses all the requisite knowledge and power, he is able to fulfill such conditions as shall ensure his salvation — both the power of God and his own voluntary acts cooperating in the accomplishment of the work.
[1] Kleist, James A., S.J., The Epistles of Saint Clement of Rome and Saint Ignatius of Antioch, (Westminster, MD: The Newman Bookshop, Ancient Christian writers Series, 1946), p. 20.
[2] 14:4.
[3] Romans 7:21-23.
[4] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Glossary.
[5] Romans 5:12.
[6] Council of Trent, June 17, 1546, Decree on Original Sin, section 2.
[7] Common Teaching generally accepted by theologians.
[8] A phrase used in the Roman Catholic Church to qualify certain teachings as being divinely revealed, belief in them therefore being obligatory.
[9] Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, pp. 249-250.
[10] Ibid, Book II, Chaps. 1, 5, p. 246.
[11] E. E. Marcy, Christianity and its Conflicts, (New York: D. Appleton and Company 1867), p. 267.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 21.