StCsDavid:
Adam and Eve had a relationship with God in original innocence before the fall. In this pre-fall state, would God’s grace be necessary as they were already living in full communion with their creator?
Adam and Eve possessed the gift of sanctifying grace when they were living in Original Justice. God predestined that Adam and Eve and their progeny were to receive an increase in sanctifying grace through the Tree of Life. This increase of sanctifying grace would have brought about a state of full divinization for mankind through the beholding of the beatific vision.
In Original Justice Adam and Eve had communion with God, but not the full communion of the beatific vision.**Catechism of the Catholic Church
374** The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ.
398 Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory.
Theosis, also called
divinization or
deification, is the process of becoming more like God and more united with God. This “becoming more like God” is to be understood as becoming more like Jesus Christ (who is God), not as the wish for power and knowledge that motivated Adam and Eve to sin. Theosis is the goal of the Christian life. It means becoming all that people were originally created to be. It is not something to wait for passively, but something to be taken by force, by hard work done in one’s soul.
WikipediaAdam and Eve did not see what they were destined for because they used their free will to be disobedient to God.
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 descendents 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.
Pocket Catholic Dictionary - John A. Hardon, S.J.
