Original Sin - Why do we inherit the consequences w/o Adam's personal sin?

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Hi,

Original Sin - Why do we inherit the consequences without having been part of Adam’s personal original sin?

I am trying to better understand how to explain that we inherited the consequences of original sin, but not the personal sin itself. My Muslim friend is arguing:
Oh please, the WHOLE HUMAN RACE is put through THOUSANDS OF YEARS of suffering just cause Adam ate a forbidden fruit??? THIS IS TYRANNY OF GOD OF THE HIGHEST ORDER ! ! !
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I shared the following with him, but would like some help better understanding to explain it to him. I also don’t really understand the blue highlight below. Thank you and God Bless you! Brian
ORIGINAL SIN - Either the sin committed by Adam as the head of the human race, or the sin he passed onto his posterity with which every human being, with the certain exception of Christ and his Mother, is conceived and born. The sin of Adam is called originating original sin (originale originans); that of his descendants is originated original sin (originale originatum). Adam’s sin was personal and grave, and it affected human nature. It was personal because he freely committed it; it was grave because God imposed a serious obligation; and it affected the whole human race by depriving his progeny of the supernatural life and preternatural gifts they would have possessed on entering the world had Adam not sinned. Original sin in his descendants is personal only in the sense that the children of Adam are each personally affected, but not personal as though they had voluntarily chosen to commit the sin; it is grave in the sense that it debars a person from the beatific vision, but not grave in condemning one to hell; and it is natural only in that all human nature, except for divine intervention, has it and can have it removed only by supernatural means. - catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=35322
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A book they had me read in RCIA used this analogy (paraphrased from memory). Imagine your great-grandfather owned the entire State of California, but lost it in a bet. It’s not your fault that you did not inherit what he lost, but neither do you have any right to it.
 
Consider the gospel in the Latin Rite observed today of which the glory of Christ is presented to our power of memory of those things that are sacred. There was a man with a withered hand. Jesus commanded under his consent to stretch out his member and it was healed in the presence of the Pharisees.

Now, the cause of original sin is a lot like that withered hand, it grabbed the fruit and from its original health it became unhealthy, but still alive under the old law. Jesus came to fulfill that order of grace, by restoring the hand that picked the apple to a new hope of the memory of the paradise the Trinity originally intended.

Henceforth, those that embrace this gospel are living with a memory of paradise, and the memory of the proclamation and the frequent reading of the truth of the gospel that saves and continues to save them - the world with it sickness of original sin means very little, the world’s health is there but it is withered, even so the living old law has passed away. Henceforth, with the gift of knowledge we value to endeavor to delight in solely on the eternal life, the perfection of the ‘hand’ that is healthy now (healthy enough to hope in the truth of God’s love for us), but once picked the fruit of Adam. It stretches forth in good works, enlighten by the purificating action of our Church’s faith. We restore health to those in this sick world, those who want a perfect hope, to buoy themselves out from the consequences of Adam and Eve.
 
GodHeals
While the explanation by Fr Hardon, S.J., is correct the way of expression is difficult for a neophyte.

As a Muslim has such an erroneous concept of God and no idea that Christ is divine and the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, he can have no idea of the truths of Creation and the Fall as expressed in the Sacred Scriptures.

The God of Islam is a construct of Mohammed and whose absolute autonomy could not be restricted by consistent natural physical laws. Apparent natural laws were nothing more than mere habits, so to speak, of Allah, and might be discontinued at any time. [Fr Stanley L Jaki, *Myopia about Islam, with an eye on Chesterbelloc, The *Chesterton Review *28, (Winter 2002): 500]. The reality of the understanding of the natural moral law is unknown.

Until he can see Christ as God through his miracles and His Resurrection he cannot understand virtually anything else.
 
GodHeals said:
Hi,

Original Sin - Why do we inherit the consequences without having been part of Adam’s personal original sin?

I am trying to better understand how to explain that we inherited the consequences of original sin, but not the personal sin itself. My Muslim friend is arguing:

I shared the following with him, but would like some help better understanding to explain it to him. I also don’t really understand the blue highlight below. Thank you and God Bless you! Brian
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Because that is the nature of sin. Sin we commit affects.others. If a man has a gambling.addiction and gambles away his.earmings his family suffers. A woman who is.addicted to crack gives.birth to a baby who is.addicted.to crack.
The poor baby did not commit.the sin yet he suffers for it
 
He may also not understand the nature of what was lost (esp if he doesn’t understand the word preternatural). Those gifts were *above and beyond the nature of man. *It would be as if someone transplanted something into a horse which allowed him to speak and have rational conversations–the horse would have a gift beyond his nature.
 
GodHeals said:
Hi,

Original Sin - Why do we inherit the consequences without having been part of Adam’s personal original sin?

I am trying to better understand how to explain that we inherited the consequences of original sin, but not the personal sin itself. My Muslim friend is arguing:

I shared the following with him, but would like some help better understanding to explain it to him. I also don’t really understand the blue highlight below. Thank you and God Bless you! Brian
Click to expand...
The answer lies in just what, exactly, paradise was.

It was a gift. Adam and Eve were created out of the sheer grace of God, and all that they were, owned, and enjoyed was from His generosity.

It was a gift. Sanctifying Grace. In disobeying and betraying God, Adam and Eve threw away this gift, preferring the pride of “knowledge” over obedience to their Creator. They, having relinquished the gift, were cast out of the Garden. Their children did not inherit the garden why? Because their parents had thrown it away.

Think of it this way. If a king were to give a man a kingdom, with thousands of subjects, many riches, and great, plentiful resources, the man would be beholden to the king for his gifts. If that man were to commit some crime, and openly betray the king, the king would naturally take away all that he had given him, and then, would he give it to the man’s children? Of course not? That gift had been given, and thrown away, and there is no reason why the king would give the same gift to the children of the man that rejected it.

So it is with us. Our first parents refused the gift of God, and we suffer the consequences.
 
dshix said:
The answer lies in just what, exactly, paradise was.

It was a gift. Adam and Eve were created out of the sheer grace of God, and all that they were, owned, and enjoyed was from His generosity.

It was a gift. Sanctifying Grace. In disobeying and betraying God, Adam and Eve threw away this gift, preferring the pride of “knowledge” over obedience to their Creator. They, having relinquished the gift, were cast out of the Garden. Their children did not inherit the garden why? Because their parents had thrown it away.

Think of it this way. If a king were to give a man a kingdom, with thousands of subjects, many riches, and great, plentiful resources, the man would be beholden to the king for his gifts. If that man were to commit some crime, and openly betray the king, the king would naturally take away all that he had given him, and then, would he give it to the man’s children? Of course not? That gift had been given, and thrown away, and there is no reason why the king would give the same gift to the children of the man that rejected it.

So it is with us. Our first parents refused the gift of God, and we suffer the consequences.
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And yet the King sent His only Son to make a path for us to re-gain “the kingdom”…
 
dshix said:
The answer lies in just what, exactly, paradise was.

It was a gift. Adam and Eve were created out of the sheer grace of God, and all that they were, owned, and enjoyed was from His generosity.

It was a gift. Sanctifying Grace. In disobeying and betraying God, Adam and Eve threw away this gift, preferring the pride of “knowledge” over obedience to their Creator. They, having relinquished the gift, were cast out of the Garden. Their children did not inherit the garden why? Because their parents had thrown it away.

Think of it this way. If a king were to give a man a kingdom, with thousands of subjects, many riches, and great, plentiful resources, the man would be beholden to the king for his gifts. If that man were to commit some crime, and openly betray the king, the king would naturally take away all that he had given him, and then, would he give it to the man’s children? Of course not? That gift had been given, and thrown away, and there is no reason why the king would give the same gift to the children of the man that rejected it.

So it is with us. Our first parents refused the gift of God, and we suffer the consequences.
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That’s right. Adam and Eve did not enjoy living in sanctifying grace as a right, but as a gift. When they sinned they fell from the order of grace to the natural order. There children and us by extension are born into the natural order, that is, without the gift. Baptism restores us to the order of grace by filling us with sanctifying grace.
 
Aelred_Minor said:
A book they had me read in RCIA used this analogy (paraphrased from memory). Imagine your great-grandfather owned the entire State of California, but lost it in a bet. It’s not your fault that you did not inherit what he lost, but neither do you have any right to it.
Click to expand...
Interesting… So to have the preternatural gifts and be in a relationship with God is a privilege, not right?
 
GodHeals said:
Hi,

Original Sin - Why do we inherit the consequences without having been part of Adam’s personal original sin?

I am trying to better understand how to explain that we inherited the consequences of original sin, but not the personal sin itself. My Muslim friend is arguing:

I shared the following with him, but would like some help better understanding to explain it to him. I also don’t really understand the blue highlight below. Thank you and God Bless you! Brian
Click to expand...
So your friend denies that the WHOLE HUMAN RACE has undergone THOUSANDS OF YEARS of suffering-or what??? What’s worse, a God who caused that suffering for no apparent reason, or a God who had something better in mind to begin with but allowed humanity’s fall into the world we know now-through the wrong choice resulting from the abuse of free will of the ancestors of us all?

And if we take an honest look at sin in our world-and in ourselves, as well-should we think that this ugliness should be normal for man-the way God would’ve originally created us to be? Or is there something missing, broken, etc, in man, something that the doctrine of Original Sin explains?
 
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