|
III. ORIGINAL SIN
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." The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" 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. 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. Constituted 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".
399 Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of
this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original
holiness. They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted
image — that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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." 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."
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". Because of this
certainty of faith, the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even tiny
infants who have not committed personal sin.
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". 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.
405 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.
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) and at the Council of Trent (1546).
|
No comments:
Post a Comment