Original sin  

We are persons who have the ability to freely choose our actions – and, sadly, there are times when we have chosen to hurt others for whatever reasons seemed good to us at those times.  When we act in such a way, we abuse our freedom, and this is part of what we mean by sin.  But original sin seems to teach us that all people are in a state of sin from the very beginning of their lives, even before they have the ability to make these kind of free choices.  Yet how can a human being, so newly arrived into the world and innocent of all wrongdoing, be held under judgment?  How can people be blamed for something that is beyond their control, for which they, as individuals, bear no responsibility?

One of the problems that we have in coming to terms with original sin is often created by the way in which we categorize things.  The relationship between freedom and nature is often construed as contrary rather than complementary, such that one is free only insofar as one’s person is not limited by nature.  For example, you might find yourself limited in all sorts of ways that affect what you are and are not able to do.  You might think of yourself as free only insofar as you are not constrained by these limits.  This limited nature is not something you are morally responsible for – it’s just the way your nature is.  It is only our free choices that have a moral quality to them.  That is what makes original sin so difficult to grasp.  If it is something that is passed on to us in human nature, apart from our free choice, how can we fall under moral judgment on account of it? 

Freedom and nature, however, are very closely related, and mutually contribute to one another.  What one does in one’s freedom can radically impact one’s nature - and finding one’s freedom means being free to choose in accordance with one’s nature.  Our choices affect our nature and their effects are felt both in ourselves and in those who come after us.

The sin of Adam and Eve was a free choice that radically impacted human nature, in both soul and body, and this change was propagated to, and amplified in, their descendants.  Although their rejection of God was for them a personal sin, original sin is a sin in their descendents only by analogy; “it is a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’ – a state and not an act” (CCC 404).  Although we are not responsible for original sin as individuals, we are still its victims and suffer its consequences, one of which is a fallen nature that resists God by not fully trusting in his goodness.

One thing that makes original sin so hard for us to comprehend is the fact that its transmission “is a mystery that we cannot fully understand” (CCC 404).  Original sin is transmitted historically with human nature “by propagation, not by imitation” (CCC 419).  Although much of our personal sin is the result of our choosing to imitate sinful actions or models (“the negative influence exerted on people by communal situations and social structures that are the fruit of mens’ sins” [CCC 408]), what original sin teaches is that we are, in our very nature, predisposed (though not caused) to imitate these models. 

In the beginning, we were created in the image and likeness of God; we imitated God in our nature, and had a limitless desire for God in our hearts.  This desire was fulfilled in a trusting and loving relationship with God.  At the fall, human beings rejected this relationship with God, but they still remained in God’s image, and retained a desire that could only be fulfilled by God.  The severed relationship with God left human beings with a nature inclined to sin, that is, to try to fulfill the desire for God in other ways.  Sin is “failure in genuine love for God and neighbour caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods” (CCC 1849).  Original sin has inclined human nature toward such attachments.       

The doctrine of original sin is vital for understanding Christ’s salvation.  It is, “so to speak, the ‘reverse side’ of the Good News that Jesus is the Saviour of all…that all need salvation and that salvation is offered to all through Christ” (CCC 389).  In his redemption, Jesus not only offered forgiveness for our personal sins, but also accomplished the restoration of the state of our nature.  In our struggle against evil we can’t change human nature.  But Jesus can, and did.  He assumed our nature wounded by sin, healed it in his passion, and restored it in his resurrection.  He gives it back to us in baptism, in which we find the promise of our own resurrection to life.