Freedom put to the test
396 God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A
spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission
to God. The prohibition against eating "of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil" spells this out: "for in the day that you eat of it, you
shall die."[276] The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"[277]
symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature,
must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his
Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that
govern the use of freedom.
Man's first sin
397 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.[278] All subsequent sin would be disobedience
toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.
398 In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned
him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of
his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Created in a
state of holiness, man was destined to be fully "divinized" by God in
glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to "be like God", but "without God,
before God, and not in accordance with God".[279]
399 Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience.
Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness.[280] They
become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image -
that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.[281]
400 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.[282]
Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and
hostile to man.[283] Because of man, creation is now subject "to its bondage
to decay".[284] Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this
disobedience will come true: man will "return to the ground",[285] for out
of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.[286]
401 After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin There is
Cain's murder of his brother Abel and the universal corruption which
follows in the wake of sin. Likewise, sin frequently manifests itself in
the history of Israel, especially as infidelity to the God of the Covenant
and as transgression of the Law of Moses. And even after Christ's
atonement, sin raises its head in countless ways among Christians.[287]
Scripture and the Church's Tradition continually recall the presence and
universality of sin in man's history:
What Revelation makes known to us is confirmed by our own experience. For
when man looks into his own heart he finds that he is drawn towards what
is wrong and sunk in many evils which cannot come from his good creator.
Often refusing to acknowledge God as his source, man has also upset the
relationship which should link him to his last end, and at the same time
he has broken the right order that should reign within himself as well as
between himself and other men and all creatures.[288]
The consequences of Adam's sin for humanity
402 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."[289] 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."[290]
403 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".[291] Because of this
certainty of faith, the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even
tiny infants who have not committed personal sin.[292]
404 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".[293] 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.[294] 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.
405 Although it is proper to each individual,[295] 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.
406 The Church's teaching on the transmission of original sin was
articulated more precisely in the fifth century, especially under the
impulse of St. Augustine's reflections against Pelagianism, and in the
sixteenth century, in opposition to the Protestant Reformation. Pelagius
held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the
necessary help of God's grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced
the influence of Adam's fault to bad example. The first Protestant
reformers, on the contrary, taught that original sin has radically
perverted man and destroyed his freedom; they identified the sin inherited
by each man with the tendency to evil (concupiscentia), which would be
insurmountable. The Church pronounced on the meaning of the data of
Revelation on original sin especially at the second Council of Orange
(529)[296] and at the Council of Trent (1546).[297]
A hard battle. . .
407 The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of
redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man's situation and
activity in the world. By our first parents' sin, the devil has acquired a
certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin
entails "captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of
death, that is, the devil".[298] Ignorance of the fact that man has a
wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas
of education, politics, social action[299] and morals.
408 The consequences of original sin and of all men's personal sins put
the world as a whole in the sinful condition aptly described in St. John's
expression, "the sin of the world".[300] This expression can also refer to
the negative influence exerted on people by communal situations and social
structures that are the fruit of men's sins.[301]
409 This dramatic situation of "the whole world [which] is in the power of
the evil one"[302] makes man's life a battle:
The whole of man's history has been the story of dour combat with the
powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of
history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the
battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great
cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving
his own inner integrity.[303]
Signposts
is a Painsley Small World