Original Sin and Justice

DEFENSE

This misunderstands what original sin is. God doesn’t punish us because of what Adam did.

Genesis 1 and 2 depict God creating mankind in a state that was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). “As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called ‘original justice’” (CCC 376). But man turned away from union with God through sin, which Genesis depicts as the act of eating the forbidden fruit (CCC 390).

If Adam and Eve had remained in original justice, their descendants would have been born in it as well. However, having lost this through sin, their descendants are born deprived of original holiness and justice. Thus we are said to be born in original sin.

However, we are not personally guilty of Adam’s sin, and God does not hold us accountable for it. “Original sin is called ‘sin’ only in an analogical sense: It is a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’—a state and not an act” (CCC 404). “Original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice” (CCC 405).

Although it is not a personal fault, original sin has consequences for human nature, which is “wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin—an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence” (CCC 405).

The situation is like that of a rich man who gambles away his fortune and is unable to pass it on to his children. The gambler was personally at fault, but his children experience the deprivation and poverty that his actions brought about. In the same way, God gave our first parents an abundance of spiritual riches that they lost through their own folly. The fault was theirs, but we are born in spiritual poverty and out of divine intimacy.