Do we really inherit original sin from Adam and Eve?
There has been lots of debate about how to understand the Book of Genesis in light
of the findings of contemporary science. We’ve examined that debate, and especially
questions about whether Adam and Eve really existed, in recent videos. In this video,
we’ll take a wider look at what is at stake in this for a key Christian doctrine – original sin.
And it turns out that the stakes are very high indeed!
As we’ll see, there is a compelling reason why the Catholic Church holds that the whole human
race traces its ancestry back to an original human being or an original couple – and it isn’t based
on a simplistic reading of what the Book of Genesis says about Adam and Eve in the garden.
To be sure, chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Genesis are important, but even more important
is what we find elsewhere in the New Testament, and especially in the writings of St. Paul. He
presents the saving work of Jesus as only making sense when we understand it in relation to the
sin we have inherited from Adam. For example, we read in 1 Corinthians 15 (vv. 21-22): “For
as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die,
so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” In fact, the doctrine of original sin is
presupposed in a great deal of Scripture, because it concerns how sin and therefore death entered
the world, and thus why we need Christ as a redeemer. “The doctrine of original sin is,
so to speak, the 'reverse side' of the Good News that Jesus is the Savior of all men, that all
need salvation and that salvation is offered to all through Christ. The Church, which has
the mind of Christ, knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without
undermining the mystery of Christ.” (CCC 389) As we discussed in our last video, our first
parents were created in what St. Thomas Aquinas calls a state of original justice:
in their first moment of existence, God endowed them with the grace of his friendship and love.
Because of that original grace, they possessed a special perfection and integrity, which made
them immune from sickness and death. But, as we read in Genesis chapter 3,
something went gravely wrong when, tempted by the deceiving serpent, they disobeyed God.
By their own power, they tried to become like him. The text of Genesis is very profound on this
point: they reached out and took the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Instead of living
in harmony with God, taking their place in his plan – instead of listening to his voice about
what is right and wrong, they tried to become their own masters, they tried to possess the
power to determine what is good and what is evil. Aquinas gives an insightful explanation of what
came next: because our first parents rebelled against God, they were deprived of his grace,
and began to experience within themselves another kind of rebellion.
Their minds, made to know the truth and above all to know God, became darkened. They found it hard
to lift their minds to higher things, and above all, to the things of God. They also began to
experience the rebellion of concupiscence within themselves: their lower appetites and desires
began to clamor for things they knew were bad for them. Their bodies, too, became disordered,
suffering illness and pain. Even worse, they became slaves to sin and subject to death.
Our parents after the Fall were stuck. Because the grace of divine life is from above, they couldn’t
get it back by their own power. Once they had ingested the poison of sin, they were wounded
and damaged, and they couldn’t heal themselves. The effects of this sin spread beyond Adam:
it also affected his children. This is because children receive from their parents the same
nature that the parents possess. The children of ducks inherit duck nature. Our first parents were
human, and we receive human nature from them. But that human nature, which was originally
elevated to a supernatural harmony with God by grace, now, after sin,
existed in a state of having fallen from grace. And so that human nature existing as fallen,
as deprived of communion with God because of a previous sin, that nature is what the children
of Adam and Eve receive when we are conceived. This explains why we see so much sin and disorder
in the world around us. We can observe it in young children – they don’t have to be taught to
be jealous, or angry, or selfish. Those kinds of things pop up seemingly all on their own. Indeed,
we all experience interior disorder, an inclination towards sin. And it takes
moral training, discipline, and practice in virtue in order to resist these things.
There is another key reason why it is important to say that we inherit original sin from our
first parents, and it has to do with the problem of evil. If a baby is born already afflicted by
a spiritual slavery to sin, even though she has never committed a personal sin, then either that
disorder is in her as the result of a previous sin by someone else, OR it is a feature of principles
of the nature itself. But if it is a feature of the nature's own principles, then this spiritual
slavery would be affirmatively caused by God – he would have created a defective creature enslaved
to evil that cannot reach its natural good. But this second alternative is impossible.
While God does PERMIT his free creatures to sin, he is never the SOURCE or the CAUSE sin. Every
moral evil in the world must be the result of some creature’s sin. And it is incompatible with God’s
goodness to create a creature that can't reach its natural end. So if we find a slavery to sin
in a new human child, that spiritual disorder must have come from some defection by a free
creature. There is no other way to account for it. For this reason, the Catholic Church solemnly
taught at the Council of Trent that original sin is passed down to us through human generation.
We contract it from our parents, who got it from their parents, and so on, all the
way back to the first or “original” human sin. This original sin is therefore not a personal
sin of the child, but it is a DEFECT affecting the human nature that that child inherits.
It’s a bit like how we inherit illness and disease from our parents. Or to use another rather unhappy
example: A pregnant mother who is addicted to heroin may damage her child in the womb. Her
baby hasn’t done anything wrong, but she will be born already wounded by the vices of her mother.
In a similar way, we all receive a nature that was wounded by our first parents because of their sin.
This is why the human race needed a redeemer and a savior from above.
The good news, of course, is that God had mercy on us, and DID send us a savior – his own Son. The
eternal Son became a true member of our family when he assumed a human nature in the womb of
the Blessed Virgin Mary. And we are all members of one family, descended from one set of first
parents. So the Son truly became our brother. This is key for understanding the doctrine of
Christian salvation. God did not stand afar off and decree our forgiveness: he entered into our
fallen world and took a true human nature from Adam’s stock, in order to redeem us IN
that nature, by what Jesus did and suffered. Through Christ and in Christ’s human nature,
God raised our nature up to something even greater than our first parents received in the garden.
This is precisely what we read in the Letter to the Hebrews (Heb 2:11-13 RSV-CE): “He who
sanctifies [that is, Jesus], and those who are sanctified, have all one origin
[namely, Adam]. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren . . . , Since therefore
the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook OF THE SAME NATURE,
that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil,
and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage. . . . Therefore
he [Jesus] had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful
and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people.”
Here, we have arrived at a deep revelation of the truth about our human condition,
but an even more profound revelation of the promise offered to us in Christ. We all share
a lineage tracing itself back to an original couple, and we inherit original sin from
them – but we have a savior, Jesus Christ, who, while remaining God, became our brother as man,
so that we could be healed of sin and become, in truth, sons and daughters of God.
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