Greetings in Christ everyone!
In case anyone was interested in Augustine’s take, he held detrimental bodily deformities, congenital diseases, infant mortality, etc. to be undeniable empirical proofs of original sin in light of our faith in our God, Who is a just and good God:
“I shall say nothing of those who are feeble-minded by nature, who in the words of Scripture are more to be mourned than the dead. The grace of God is indeed able to deliver them from so great an evil through the blood of the Mediator; but how could they have fallen into so great an evil unless by divine decree there was a punishment due a vitiated origin? … What do you mean, then, when you ask: ‘Why would not the children be cleansed in the work itself, so that the hands of the Creator would purify them of the defilements attributed to the parents?’ You do not see this could also be said about the manifest bodily faults with which not a few infants are born; yet, let none ever doubt that the true and good God forms all bodies. Nevertheless, from the hands of so great a Creator proceeds a multitude not only of faulty things, but even such monsters that they are called ‘errors of nature’ by some who, unable to search out the divine power, what God does and why, are ashamed to confess they do not know what they do not know. … And if the just God imposed evils so great I cannot at present recount them, upon infants who contract no sin, He would rather seem unjust” (
, Bk. 6, Ch. 1; Bk. 5, Ch. 15; Bk. 2, Ch. 10Against Julian).
Here are some thoughts from him where he briefly interacts with objections raised on account of the man born blind in John 9. He makes the basic point that Jesus’ words do not amount to using this man as an illustration of a general point concerning all such men:
“[O]ur Lord’s words about the man born blind—that this did not happen because of his own sin or the sin of his parents, but that the works of God were to be made manifest in him—cannot be applied to the innumerable infants born with such great variety of faults in soul and body. For, indeed, there are many who are never healed at all, but die with those same faults, at another age, or even in infancy; and some infants already reborn retain the faults with which they were born, while other evils of the same kind may also be added—God forbid we say this is done without its being deserved” (
, Bk. 3, Ch. 6:13Against Julian).
“(1) Be silent, please! You do not know what you are saying. Some children have been born with their mouths sealed, and doctors opened them. There lived in our area a certain Acatius, a member of a respected family among his people. He said that he was born with his eyelids sealed. Because his eyes, though healthy, could not open with the lids sealed together, the doctor wanted to open them with a knife. His pious mother did not permit this, but opened his eyes by placing on them a plaster made from the eucharist when he was already a boy of almost five or more years. For this reason he reported that he remembered this well. (2) I pass over that man born blind in the gospel whose eyes their maker himself restored, the eyes which he made defective in order to reveal his marvelous works. For in that case the reason why he was born blind was not passed over; it was not on account of his sin or that of his parents, but in order that the works of God might be revealed in him. Ask the doctors, nonetheless, and let them tell you how many they help, when they can, so that bodily defects from birth do not remain or even kill the children. For, as some are born with the mouths sealed, so others are born with blockages in internal passages, and if these defects remain, they do not, of course, permit them to live. After all, when these human being are helped by medical expertise, the works of God are not blamed when they are corrected. For what true worshipper of God does not know that they out to be born in the condition in which they were born? (3) But even this pertains to the woes of the human race in which we live out these evil days filled, under the just judgment of God, with labors, sorrows, fears, and dangers. Heaven forbid that all these evils should be present in that happiness of paradise! And for this reason they have sprung up only from that root of sin. What about minds? If they are left as they are born and not developed by careful teaching by the great labor of teachers and of students, is it not clear what they will remain? But you, go ahead, fill your paradise with human beings born with defective minds and bodies in order that you may to your own misfortune deny original sin with your eyes closed and your mouth impudently open” (
, Bk. 3, 162Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian).
Did everyone get to see our Pope’s homily from yesterday? Seems to fit in well with the present discussion on original sin:
“The same spirit that resurrected Jesus from the dead can transform our hearts from hearts of stone to hearts of flesh. We said as much in the psalm: ‘A pure heart create for me O God …].’ That the same God that exiled our first parents from Eden, sent His own Son to this Earth devastated by sin, without sparing Him, so that we, prodigal children, can return, penitent and redeemed through His mercy, to our true homeland. So be it for all of us, and for all believers, and for all those who humbly recognize their need to be saved. Amen” (
Homily, 2/22/12).
With love in Christ,
Pete
