CatholicTheology.info

Choose a topic from Part 2A:

• Man's Last End
• Human Acts
• The Passions
• Habits in General
• Virtues
• Vices and Sins
  • 71. Vice and Sin
  • 72. The Distinction of Sin
  • 73. The Standing of Sins Toward One Another
  • 74. The Subject of Sin
  • 75. The Cause of Sin
  • 76. Ignorance as a Cause of Sin
  • 77. The Sensitive Appetites as the Cause of Sin
  • 78. Malice as the Cause of Sin
  • 79. External Causes of Sin
  • 80. The Devil as the Cause of Sin
  • 81. Human Beings as the Cause of Sin
  • 82. The Essence of Original Sin
  • 83. The Subject of Original Sin
  • 84. One Sin as the Cause of Another
  • 85. The Effects of Sin
  • 86. The Stain of Sin
  • 87. The Debt of Punishment for Sin
  • 88. Venial and Mortal Sin
  • 89. Venial Sin
• Law
• Grace

81. Human Beings as the Cause of Sin

1. The first sin of the first man is transmitted to hisdescendants by way of origin, and therefore is called original sin.In a sense, all men are one; they are one in nature; they are onein origin. In Adam's sin, human nature sinned; that naturesinned in which all men are one. As a murder committed by the handwould not be the hand's fault, yet would be imputed to the handas part of the murderer's person, so Adam's sin appears inhis descendants as members of the human nature thatsinned. Adam's sin is imputed to his descendants as the murderis imputed to the "guilty hand" of the murderer.

2. As the original justice of Adam was to be transmittedto his descendants, so was the disordering of that justice to betransmitted. Original sin is transmitted, but no other actual sinof the first parent, or of any parent, is transmitted todescendants.

3. The original sin is transmitted to all men except toChrist, who is God-made-man, and to those whom God, through Christ,exempts from the common human heritage of sin. {-TheImmaculate Mother of God was never infected with original sin. Thisdoctrine of the faith had not been defined in the day of St. ThomasAquinas; it was defined in 1854.-}

4. If God were to make a man miraculously from humanflesh, but not by the normal process of generation, that man wouldnot contract the original sin. For original sin is "the sin ofnature," and is transmitted only by way of nature, that is, bygeneration.

5. If Eve alone had sinned, her sin would not have beentransmitted to descendants. For in the order of nature the activeprinciple of propagation is the male principle. Hence, it isAdam's sin, not Eve's, that is transmitted.

"If you wish to learn and appreciate something worth while, then love to be unknown and considered as nothing. Truly to know and despise self is the best and most perfect counsel."
Thomas á Kempis

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"Whom do you seek, friend, if you seek not God? Seek him, find him, cleave to him; bind your will to his with bands of steel and you will live always at peace in this life and in the next."
St Alphonsus de Liguori

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"God commands not impossibilities, but by commanding he suggests to you to do what you can, to ask for what is beyond your strength; and he helps you, that you may be able."
St Augustine

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