While I definitely benefited from what you wrote, in my humble opinion, some of it sounds like an echo of the position that we are sin machines. And how can we be cut off from nature – maybe I need to know more about human nature and the [true] nature we are cut off from.
I do not think there is a real distinction between endowed with a proclivity for evil and having an inclination toward evil. Both can be subjected to human intellect and will. God’s grace is freely offered to all, even when it is not accepted in full. For me, personally, it sounds more logical that Adam, through propagation, transmitted his wounded nature to us.
I’m not saying he didn’t transmit his wounded nature to us-I’m just trying to identify the nature of that nature.
And while humans are capable of both good and evil, it’s the propensity for evil that’s out of place in us, or else there’d be no injustice in sinning, no reason for Jesus to make Atonement. Being cut off from nature, internally as well as externally, is reflected in human shame alone, which indicates shame of being the creature rather than the Creator. And Paul, in Rom 7 highlights part of our inner conflict:
**21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! **
It’s also referred to in the Catechism where it tells us that:
**1707 “Man, enticed by the Evil One, abused his freedom at the very beginning of history.” He succumbed to temptation and did what was evil. He still desires the good, but his nature bears the wound of original sin. He is now inclined to evil and subject to error:
Man is divided in himself. As a result, the whole life of men, both individual and social, shows itself to be a struggle, and a dramatic one, between good and evil, between light and darkness.
400 …Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man…
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”. **
More from the Catechism on the correct understanding of man’s sinfulness as well as a bit more on his schizophrenic condition:
**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
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 action299 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**
God is so* necessarily* a part of man’s very being that to be effectively separated from Him constitutes division, disharmony,* death* for man, his justice shattered.
