I don't understand Original Sin

[Jerome100]

Longtime practicing Catholic who is having trouble recently understanding Original Sin.
How am I, or anyone, born with sin if we didn’t have an opportunity to yet choose good or evil? And if I am born with sin, where do I get it from? How is it transmitted to me? If God creates my soul, does he create it with Original Sin? That wouldn’t make sense. If God creates my soul without Original Sin, then when does it enter?

 

[po18guy]

Welcome! I hope to get this right: Original sin is the state in which we were born. It is no act of the conscience, but stems from the act of our first parents. It is not a positive, but a negative, a lack. A missing slice of the pie.

Grace is restored through our baptism, but we inevitably lose it via sin. We suffer from concupiscence because of it - our inclination toward sin.

Do you have a catechism?

 

[Vico]

Longtime practicing Catholic who is having trouble recently understanding Original Sin.
How am I, or anyone, born with sin if we didn’t have an opportunity to yet choose good or evil? And if I am born with sin, where do I get it from? How is it transmitted to me? If God creates my soul, does he create it with Original Sin? That wouldn’t make sense. If God creates my soul without Original Sin, then when does it enter?

God creates a human soul without the gift of sanctifying grace.
A human is conceived without the gift of sanctifying grace, with a fallen human nature (inclined towards sin).

Catechism of the Catholic Church, Original Sin …

404 … 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.

 

[Gorgias]

Longtime practicing Catholic who is having trouble recently understanding Original Sin.
How am I, or anyone, born with sin if we didn’t have an opportunity to yet choose good or evil?

“Original sin” is a condition, not a personal sin properly speaking.

Does @Vico’s citation from the catechism help you resolve your question?

 

[fhansen]

Longtime practicing Catholic who is having trouble recently understanding Original Sin.
How am I, or anyone, born with sin if we didn’t have an opportunity to yet choose good or evil? And if I am born with sin, where do I get it from? How is it transmitted to me? If God creates my soul, does he create it with Original Sin? That wouldn’t make sense. If God creates my soul without Original Sin, then when does it enter?

Other questions that can help answer yours IMO:

Do you observe sin, evil, things not as they “should be”, lack of innocence, falsehood or lack of truthfulness in this world including in yourself at times? Did/do you know God from birth?

The lack of knowledge of God: direct, personal knowledge even if in limited degree, is one evidence of original sin. Shame of self, as well, is an anomaly in creation as is its counterpart, the pride and self-righteousness that we all share in and that causes so much destruction in this world-and that opposes belief in God by its nature.

Something is amiss here on planet earth. Separation from God is the essence of original sin and the font from which all other sin flows. It’s also referred to as the “death of the soul” and the reason we must be “born again”. We must come to know God, if we’re truly willing to begin with:
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” John 17:3

And that knowledge is the object of faith, and then the basis of hope and love. And we’re no worse off in many ways than Adam was before his sin, really. We still have the same option, to obey or not, but now with more experience in life, a life apart from God, than he had in Eden. We’re here to learn, with the help of revelation and grace, what he missed:
“Apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

Our option is still the same, spelled out in the catechism:
1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil , and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

 

[Jerome100]

I appreciate everyone’s replies. Some follow ups…

Do you have a catechism?

Yes.

God creates a human soul without the gift of sanctifying grace.
A human is conceived without the gift of sanctifying grace, with a fallen human nature (inclined towards sin).

But why create souls without the gift of sanctifying grace? Isn’t that kind of like setting us up for failure?

Does @Vico’s citation from the catechism help you resolve your question?

Not really.

 

[po18guy]

A thought: Call Dr. David Anders at his EWTN show “Called to Communion.” He is a theologian and Calvinist convert and deals with this subject on a regular basis.

Called To Communion | EWTN

 

[Gorgias]

Gorgias:

Does @Vico’s citation from the catechism help you resolve your question?

Not really.

Hmm… ok: now that you know that

• “original sin” isn’t really personal sin, but just a condition
• it’s a consequence of the sin of our first human parents
• it’s transmitted by virtue of inheriting human nature

… what additional questions do you have?

But why create souls without the gift of sanctifying grace? Isn’t that kind of like setting us up for failure?

No… it’s setting us up for the possibility of receiving sanctifying grace through baptism!

 

[fhansen]

The first question we need to resolve is whether or not we actually observe evidence of OS in our world and in ourselves. Does the doctrine accurately describe the way things are and explain the existence of sin and moral evil? I say yes, and we witness and experience that evil everyday to one extent or another in our lives.

Then we can ask if it might be of benefit for God to allow us to have that experience, to know the evil that comes by virtue of our being separated from Him, a state of being which, itself, is the chief characteristic of the state known as Original Sin. With that experience combined with knowledge, the revelation given us by our faith and the grace to understand and believe it, we can decide for ourselves if we even truly want the Master around, or if Adam was right in preferring himself to God as the Church teaches that he did by his act of disobedience, of denying God’s authority over him.

From the bigger picture it’s a journey, a journey to perfection as it’s called, a good journey that involves struggle and within which we choose between good and evil and in so doing can ultimately attain to the purpose we were created for.

 

[Aulef]

Since many already answered ‘what’ original sin is, I’ll just point out to an important thought exercise.

If all mankind suffers due to our first parents original sin, it becomes clear how serious and deep this sin was…

Yet, hope remains, for out of original sin came the necessity of the Incarnation and the Sacrifice on the Cross which are the ultimate proofs of God’s love for us.

 

[Vico]

…
But why create souls without the gift of sanctifying grace? Isn’t that kind of like setting us up for failure?
…

Souls are natural not supernatural; supernatural surpasses the mere powers and capacities of human nature. Humans are not due the preternatural or supernatural gifts given by God. Only by free will does a person choose to be a partaker in the divine nature, therefore there is a real challenge presented. Adam and Eve sinned even having been given sanctifying grace and preternatural gifts.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

302 Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created “in a state of journeying” ( in statu viae ) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call “divine providence” the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection:

By his providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, “reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well”. For “all are open and laid bare to his eyes”, even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.

 

[fhansen]

But why create souls without the gift of sanctifying grace? Isn’t that kind of like setting us up for failure?

Consider this: the loss of sanctifying grace, due to loss of communion with God, means that man exists in a state of autonomy from God, left to determine morality for himself such that he is virtually guaranteed to sin in a variety of ways. Holiness, self-mastery is gone for himself and the rest of his fellow earthly inhabitants. This means that he will experience- he will know- sin/evil regularly. And in that world he might develop, for himself, a hunger and thirst for truth and righteousness and justice and love, a hunger and thirst for God. Do we really want God? Or do we want freedom from Him, carrying on the family tradition that Adam initiated? That’s the question posed before all of us.

So the loss of sanctifying grace can have a positive benefit, that of demonstrating what life without God, apart from Whom we can do nothing according to Jesus, is like. Our choice is intrinsically connected to our own justice or righteousness.

 

[Richca]

Longtime practicing Catholic who is having trouble recently understanding Original Sin.
How am I, or anyone, born with sin if we didn’t have an opportunity to yet choose good or evil? And if I am born with sin, where do I get it from? How is it transmitted to me?

Original sin, the fault of Adam, is an inherited sin and it is transmitted to us from Adam, the first man and father of the whole human race, by descent from him. It is transmitted by descent in the same way an actual sin of some individual man is transmitted from his soul and will to some member/s of his body. For example, a murder that the hand commits. The CCC #404 says “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’.” The footnote here points us to St Thomas Aquinas and his work ‘De Malo’. St Thomas says the same thing in his Summa Theologica, Pt. I-II, Q. 81, art. 1. Read what he says here especially in the body of the article following “Therefore we must explain the matter otherwise…”. It is a remarkable insight into the mystery of original sin. Below is a link to Question 81, article 1:
https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/summa/FS/FS081.html#FSQ81OUTP1

In the article and as the CCC references, St Thomas says “Accordingly the multitude of men born of Adam, are as so many members of one body.” As you read the rest of the article, keep in mind the similarities here with the doctrine of Jesus Christ, the new Adam, and the Mystical Body of Christ. Through baptism, we are incorporated into Christ’s Mystical Body and become members of it and thus participate in Christ’s merits, grace, and the sacrifice of his body and blood on the cross for our salvation.

If God creates my soul, does he create it with Original Sin?

No, God is not the cause of sin. Original sin is the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and principally Adam. God creates the soul without the supernatural original gift of holiness and justice and sanctifying grace. Original sin in us is essentially the privation of the original gifts of holiness and justice and sanctifying grace.

That wouldn’t make sense. If God creates my soul without Original Sin, then when does it enter?

It enters at conception when God infuses the soul into the material our parents provide us for our body which material originally comes from our first parents by descent from them. Original sin is transmitted from our first parents and principally from Adam, the first human being, by descent from them. It spreads from the flesh or bodily material which our parents provide for us to the soul.

 

[Jerome100]

Still hard to get. From what you and Aquinas are saying, basically the first man messed things up for all subsequent men. The first man had the ability to in effect change human nature, and did change it by sin. But if that is the case, then why doe sanctifying grace get passed down from one generation to the next? If sin harms human nature, and sanctifying grace restores or elevates it, why is not the restored/elevated human nature inherited from our parents (immediate parents that is, who have been baptized)? Why is sin transmitted through descent but grace is not?

 

[Richca]

If Adam and Eve had not sinned, they would have passed on to their children by physical descent the supernatural gifts of sanctifying grace and the original gift of holiness and justice which included immortality of the body. Adam and Eve lost these gifts by their sin so they pass on to us their descendants a fallen human nature. They cannot pass on to us what they don’t possess and they lost the supernatural gifts of grace. Adam, as the first man and human being, represented in a sense the whole human race that would descend from him.

Christ is the new Adam, the new head of redeemed humanity. We are restored to the life of grace through Jesus Christ for “from his fullness, we have all received, grace upon grace”. We need to be incorporated into Christ, descend from him so to speak, somehow to be restored to the life of grace. This restoration to the life of grace and incorporation into Christ does not come about by physical descent from Christ, for Christ was not married nor did he have any children. We are restored to the life of grace by the spiritual rebirth in baptism and through which we become members of Christ’s mystical body. So, the life of grace is not transmitted to us by our immediate parents if they be in a state of grace because it is not by physical descent from Christ the Head or our parents that the life of grace comes to us. What we receive from our immediate parents by physical or carnal descent is a fallen human nature which is traced back to our first parents from whom we are all descended from.

 

[Gorgias]

Original sin, the fault of Adam, is an inherited sin

“Condition” moreso than “sin”, no?

Original sin in us is essentially the privation of the original gifts of holiness and justice and sanctifying grace.

NB: this isn’t a privation, so much as it is a reflection of our human nature, and a recognition that our first truly human parents had extra gifts that they threw away and now we don’t have, either.

It spreads from the flesh or bodily material which our parents provide for us to the soul.

Hmm… this seems to suggest that original sin is something material. I don’t think it’s correct to say that “human nature” is material – or, as you’ve put it, “from the flesh or bodily material”.

But if that is the case, then why doe sanctifying grace get passed down from one generation to the next?

It doesn’t. We receive sanctifying grace in baptism.

If sin harms human nature, and sanctifying grace restores or elevates it, why is not the restored/elevated human nature inherited from our parents (immediate parents that is, who have been baptized)?

It’s not fully restored, inasmuch as concupiscence remains (and the other preternatural gifts continue to not be present).

Why is sin transmitted through descent but grace is not?

It’s not “sin”, properly speaking, that’s transmitted, but human nature. It’s human nature that’s wounded.

If Adam and Eve had not sinned, they would have passed on to their children by physical descent the supernatural gifts of sanctifying grace and the original gift of holiness and justice which included immortality of the body.

Does the Church teach this? I think it’s more the case that the speculation is that God would have continued extending preternatural gifts to each.

Adam, as the first man and human being, represented in a sense the whole human race that would descend from him.

Be careful, though: the Church explicitly teaches that Adam isn’t a ‘representation’ of humanity, as such.