Making sense of Original Sin

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Original Sin. I’ve frequently struggled with this belief over many years. If our loving God created us, as human beings, in His likeness, i.e. with an eternal soul and a basic nature to do good, why would He have us born in sin, especially when in order to be a sin, it must be deliberate by the sinner. Does not make sense to me.
 
The best way I can explain this (and I am not a theologian!) is that the original design made us good i.e. Adam and Eve. It was their choice to turn away from good and freely decide to do wrong, which brought evil into a good world.

We know from lived experience that we pay the price for other people’s sins all the time–for instance a person who sinfully drives drunk who crashes into a car full of people and killing them. Or a person who is born into an abusive family and struggles all their lives with doubts about their lovability and self-worth.

God bless
:pray:t2:😇:pray:t2:
 
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Original Sin needs to be distinguished from personal sin, which is what you mention at the end of your post. Original sin is not personal sin. We don’t choose to “commit” Original Sin. Most basically, it can be understood as an increased weakness to sin, caused by the disobedience of our first parents. Because we’re “born into sin”, we’re more likely to commit personal sins.
 
mfduplin said:
Original Sin. I’ve frequently struggled with this belief over many years. If our loving God created us, as human beings, in His likeness, i.e. with an eternal soul and a basic nature to do good, why would He have us born in sin, especially when in order to be a sin, it must be deliberate by the sinner. Does not make sense to me.
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Original sin is only analogical sin not actual sin. The basic human nature is inclined to sin. God elevated Adam and Eve with supernatural and preternatural gifts.
 
It is original sin, not actual sin.
Adam and Eve represented the entire natural order (or at least Earth’s natural creatures) and sinned, plummeting the world into sin and darkness, separation from God.
Hence, when we are born, we are spiritually dead.
But baptism brings us to life. Original sin no longer has anything on you except concupiscience and having to live in this world.

Now we also have Christ, thanks to the “happy sin of Adam”, so that is the Good of it.
 
mfduplin said:
Original Sin. I’ve frequently struggled with this belief over many years. If our loving God created us, as human beings, in His likeness, i.e. with an eternal soul and a basic nature to do good,
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That’s what God did. He created Adam and Eve in what is called, “Original Justice”.
why would He have us born in sin,
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That was the Devil’s doing. He enticed Adam and Eve to commit the Original Sin. When they did that, they disobeyed God and lost the condition of Original Justice in which they were first created.
especially when in order to be a sin, it must be deliberate by the sinner.
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The name “Original Sin” does not describe an actual sin. I believe several people have already mentioned this.

What it does, is to explain that we are descendants of two sinners. Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve were created in the condition of Justice. If they had had children when they were in that condition, we would have been born in Original Justice, also. We would have inherited Original Justice from them and would have been born in paradise.

But Adam and Eve did not have children until after they had committed sin and after they had been kicked out of paradise. Therefore, we could not, any longer, inherit Original Justice. It had been lost. We inherited the condition into which they had fallen, Original Sin. And since they had been kicked out of paradise, we could not inherit paradise, either.
Does not make sense to me.
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I hope that helps.
 
Wisdom 2:24 but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it.

Wisdom 1:12-15 Do not invite death by the error of your life,
or bring on destruction by the works of your hands;
13 because God did not make death,
and he does not delight in the death of the living.
14 For he created all things so that they might exist;
the generative forces of the world are wholesome,
and there is no destructive poison in them,
and the dominion of Hades is not on earth.
15 For righteousness is immortal.

Ecclesiastes 7:29 See, this alone I found, that God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes.
 
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These are the thoughts about Original Sin that were able to make sense of it for me, as it pertains to being caused by one man’s sin. I admit lacking depth on the subject but it did help me believe it’s real.

Adam was created in the image of God. He was the image of God in as much as human nature could be. After he sinned he was no longer able to be that image. The incorrupt image of God was no longer visible on earth. No longer an observable example of human life in God’s image.

After the fall, Adam, having sinned, lost the ability to be an incorrupt image of God. The only thing that he possessed was the memory of what it was like to be, what it looked like so to speak. The image of God was no longer made visible to human life on earth but now something only two people could remember and they were destined to die.

Humans being sinless could only be remembered. A living example was permanently lost. Consequently, all human life would lack the way, the truth and the life that Adam was meant to be and preserve for his children. If any one sinned afterwards, any decendant, their sin would not have the universal effect on human life that Adam’s sin did. It would have remained personal sin.

I know this thinking lacks alot but it helped me to believe one man’s sin could result in all being born into human life that lacks the good God created it to be.
 
The state of Original Sin is not the result of our personal deliberate sin, rather it’s the state of separation from God that occurred when our common forebearer effectively rejected God, as his God, with his personal sin of disobedience. From then on man would experience life at a fallen, lower level, a completely natural one in the sense that man’s will would now reign in his brave new world, for better or worse, without the direct controlling influence of union with God and His love and without the elevated status (immortality, justice, holiness, etc) which is part and parcel of that union as God’s gift.

God deemed it worthwhile that man should spend time in this exile, in this darkness, a lost condition relative to the light that man was made for, a light which results from immediate union with Him. Here we may come to experience and know our poverty, even amongst the various goods of creation, those things that we love here, and come to hunger and thirst for more than this world offers, to hunger and thirst for the righteousness and justice that only God can ensure, to hunger and thirst for Him as we also experience the evils that come from not knowing and walking directly with Him as Adam originally was privileged to do. “Apart from Me you can do nothing”, John 15:5. We’re here to learn the truth of that statement. Otherwise, from a position of privilege we might take our relationship with God for granted as Adam apparently did; we might not value God as we should, we won’t yet truly know and appreciate and love Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. We might not even want to know Him, preferring ourselves instead as the catechism teaches that Adam did. We might still keep looking over the fence, as we already continue to do now, carrying on the family tradition, thinking there might be something better “out there”, apart from God, in those lesser things that are merely His creation in the end.

God wants man to make a choice, the right choice, the choice that Adam failed to make in the beginning. It’s all about the human will, aligning itself with God’s will. Here, on this earth, we’re given the time and opportunity, with the help of revelation/knowledge and grace to work this out, to learn what we need to learn.

From the catechism:
I. FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

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.
 
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mfduplin said:
Original Sin. I’ve frequently struggled with this belief over many years. If our loving God created us, as human beings, in His likeness, i.e. with an eternal soul and a basic nature to do good, why would He have us born in sin, especially when in order to be a sin, it must be deliberate by the sinner. Does not make sense to me.
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In regards to the mystery of the transmission of original sin, I think the same can be said as to how is it that Christ’s merits and act of obedience and righteousness and sacrifice is transmitted to us? For St Paul says “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. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5: 18-19). It was Jesus’ act of obedience and sacrifice, not ours by which we are made righteous. Well, we take part in Jesus’ merits through the sacraments of the Church the first which is baptism which incorporates us into Christ. Through baptism we become members of Christ’s mystical body and by being members of Christ’s mystical body we take part or share in Jesus’ merits.

With this in mind, consider the following. After mentioning that all men are implicated in Adam’s sin and quoting Scripture " “sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” (#402), the CCC asks " How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? (#404). The CCC answers “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.” Footnote 293 points us to the De Malo of St Thomas Aquinas. St Thomas offers the same explanation in his Summa Theologica which I quote below (following post) as in the De Malo.
 
(continued)

St Thomas Aquinas, ST, Part I-II, Q. 81, Art. 1:
Therefore we must explain the matter otherwise by saying that all men born of Adam may be considered as one man, inasmuch as they have one common nature, which they receive from their first parents; even as in civil matters, all who are members of one community are reputed as one body, and the whole community as one man. Indeed Porphyry says (Praedic., De Specie) that “by sharing the same species, many men are one man.” Accordingly the multitude of men born of Adam, are as so many members of one body. Now the action of one member of the body, of the hand for instance, is voluntary not by the will of that hand, but by the will of the soul, the first mover of the members. Wherefore a murder which the hand commits would not be imputed as a sin to the hand, considered by itself as apart from the body, but is imputed to it as something belonging to man and moved by man’s first moving principle. In this way, then, the disorder which is in this man born of Adam, is voluntary, not by his will, but by the will of his first parent, who, by the movement of generation, moves all who originate from him, even as the soul’s will moves all the members to their actions. Hence the sin which is thus transmitted by the first parent to his descendants is called “original,” just as the sin which flows from the soul into the bodily members is called “actual.” And just as the actual sin that is committed by a member of the body, is not the sin of that member, except inasmuch as that member is a part of the man, for which reason it is called a “human sin”; so original sin is not the sin of this person, except inasmuch as this person receives his nature from his first parent, for which reason it is called the “sin of nature,” according to Ephesians 2:3: “We . . . were by nature children of wrath.”

Now, in considering ‘the multitude of men born of Adam, are as so many members of one body’ and what follows (St Thomas above) in the transmission of the sin of Adam to all men, I think the transmission of Christ’s merits to us can be considered along the same lines at least in general if we consider that ‘the multitude of men born of Christ, are as so many members of one body.’ That we are members of Christ’s body is from Scripture, St Paul.
 
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fhansen, regarding original sin, yours is the closet explanation to what I believe. I really don’t believe that we inherit a sinful soul at conception, but rather, we inherit a ‘state of separation’ (as you put it) from God. And Baptism bridges that separation and brings us back to God. Thanks for the explanation.
 
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