We call this weakness of the will concupiscence. The continuing temptations of Satan and the loss of the gifts of original holiness and justice marred the soul of Adam, and as he is the head of the human race all of his descendants were likewise convicted.
The stain of original sin is inherited by all humans at the moment of conception and brings its effects of ignorance, concupiscence, death and suffering. Original sin has separated God from man and weakens the will of man to prefer evil. Job laments, "Who can make him clean that is conceived of unclean seed? The passion, death and resurrection of Jesus was offered once and for all for the sins of mankind, so that man can be saved by the grace of God.
Therefore, as by the offence of one, unto all men to condemnation; so also by the justice of one, unto all men to justification of life" Romans The redemption of Jesus Christ is a gift to the world for the expiation of original sin and personal sins. The redemption is extraordinary in that it has been offered to all men for the forgiveness and of sin.
Yet like all gifts, we must choose to accept it. Thus God will not force his love and grace upon us; we must choose the grace of God and offer our souls to conformity with his will. Christ says, "unless a man be born again by water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" John Baptism, the sacrament of faith, cleanses the soul and sanctifies it with grace of the Holy Spirit. Christ also tells us, "if thou will enter into life, keep the commandments" Matthew By baptism, faith and obedience to God, we can attain the graces of God for remission of sin and purification of the soul.
For a more thorough explanation of Justification by Grace, refer to the article The Catholic Doctrine of Justification by Grace in the Salvation section of this website. Also, a more detailed explanation of grace and its effects can be found in the article, Grace: A Precious Gift of God located in the Theology section. An article on the redemption of humanity through Jesus Christ is also available. Catechism of the Catholic Church.
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Baptism also gives us new life as adopted children of God. By Baptism we become members of the Church, the Body of Christ. The other explanation, expanded below, is that all human beings are descendants of Adam and Eve. Modern Catholic teaching is less clear about the mechanism of transmission and refers to it as a mystery.
St Augustine, who largely devised the theory of original sin, thought that original sin was transmitted from generation to generation through sexual intercourse. Augustine did not say exactly how this happened. He said that it was transmitted by "concupiscence", when people had sex and conceived a child.
Concupiscence is a technical theological word that Augustine used to refer to sexual desire as something bad in the soul that was inseparable from normal human sexual impulses. Sexual desire was bad, he taught, because it could totally overwhelm those caught up in it, depriving them of self-control and rational thought. This disapproving view of passion was quite common among Christians of Augustine's time.
Augustine thought that concupiscence was present in all sexual intercourse. He thought that it was just as bad and uncontrolled in a marriage as it was in non-marital sex, but that an excuse could be made for it within marriage because its purpose was to produce legitimate children. This bad element in sex provides the means by which original sin is transmitted from father to child.
It transmits both humanity's guilt for Adam's crime and the sickness or defect that gives human beings a sinful nature. Now from this concupiscence whatever comes into being by natural birth is bound by original sin The Council or Trent , or Trentine councils were a series of Roman Catholic theological meetings in response to the Reformation.
The Council of Trent gave the official stamp to the idea that original sin was transferred from generation to generation by propagation - which means during the sexual act that led to conception. This formalised the notion of Original Sin as part of Roman Catholic doctrine.
The Council explicitly ruled out the idea that original sin was transferred by "imitation"; in order to block the idea that human beings just copied the bad example set by their parents and others. These closely related ideas teach that original sin is passed on by copying the sinful tendencies of other people. The Council of Trent decreed that this idea was false. Many churches accept that infants can be cleansed of original sin by being baptised soon after birth.
The other elements required are carried out by adults on the baby's behalf during the ceremony. In St Paul's letter to the Galatians, he wrote: "Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery".
This conception of Redemption as freedom from bondage is crucial for Judeo-Christian thought. On the face of it, original sin doesn't answer the question as to how evil got into the world; instead it leaves other questions to be answered. As one writer puts it:. Why is there original sin? Because Adam sinned? Then why did Adam sin? If it was because of the serpent, why did the serpent sin? If the serpent is supposed to have been a fallen angel, why did the angel sin?
And so on. And there is a second, but related, question. If evil did not exist before Adam sinned, how could Adam know that what he was about to do was evil - how was he to know that it was wrong to disobey God? For modern people the idea of being punished for a crime committed by someone else is unethical and unacceptable. The doctrine of original sin blames Eve for tempting Adam into sin and has been responsible for centuries of Christian bias against women.
Augustine's theory of original sin was so intrinsically tied up with his disapproval of human sexual love that for centuries it contaminated all sexual passion with the idea of sin. Some Christian thinkers are unhappy with the idea that human beings start out so bad that they can't become good without God's help.
Science shows that the Biblical creation story is not literally true, and demonstrates that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden are myths and not historical figures. This destroys the idea of original sin as being caused by the misbehaviour of the first man and woman, and the idea of inheriting guilt or punishment for that misbehaviour.
Most modern theologians don't think this a good reason to abandon the doctrine of the fall. They believe that although the story is not historically true, it does contain important truths about the state of humanity. The doctrine of original sin is based on the idea that God created a perfect world, and that humanity damaged it and themselves by disobeying him. Evolution, on the other hand, suggests that life in the world is steadily changing and becoming more diverse.
Scientists do not tend to think of this as a moral good or evil, but in a sense evolution sees life on earth as moving closer to 'perfection' - becoming better adapted to its environment. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense. A more modern idea is to give an ethical spin to the evolutionary idea and suggest that humanity should not be concerned about a past fall from grace, but concentrate on becoming more ethical beings and thus bringing about a better world.
Bishop Richard Holloway has described the idea that unbaptised babies go to hell as "one of the most unsympathetic of the Christian doctrines," and not greatly improved by the teaching that there is a special "limbo" for unbaptised babies on the outskirts of the inferno.
Original sin has been criticised for inspiring excessive feelings of guilt. The 18th-century politician and philosopher Edmund Burke once said: "Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.
Is the feeling of guilt a vital part of our moral lives or can it do more harm than good? One of the biggest problems the Catholic Church faced over the years was the problem of children who died before they were baptised. Before the 13th Century, all unbaptised people, including new born babies who died, would go to Hell, according to the Catholic Church. This was because original sin had not been cleansed by baptism.
This idea however was criticised by Peter Abelard, a French scholastic philosophiser, who said that babies who had no personal sin didn't even deserve punishment. It was Abelard who introduced the idea of 'Limbo'. The word comes from the Latin 'limbus', meaning the edge. This would be a state of existence where unbaptised babies, and those unfortunate enough to have been born before Jesus, would not experience pain but neither would they experience the Beatific Vision of God. The idea of Limbo was defined in by Pope Pius X in his catechism.
Babies dead without baptism go to Limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but neither do they suffer, because, having Original Sin alone, they do not deserve Paradise, but neither do they merit Hell or Purgatory. However, unease remained over reconciling a Loving God with one who sent babies to Limbo and the church still faced much criticism. The Church, which has never claimed to definitely know who will go to Heaven apart from the Saints , or Hell, has said that the issue has long been one of speculation in the Church.
This speculation has led to an oversimplification of the matter, and some people have regarded it as fact when it was never the case.
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