All persons are implicated in Adam’s sin, as Saint Paul affirms: “By one man’s disobedience all were made sinners”: “sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned…” (Rom. 5:12-21). The Apostle contrasts the universality of sin and death with the universality of salvation in Christ. “Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men”.
Following Saint Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination toward evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam’s sin. He has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all afflicted, a sin which is the death of the soul. Because of this certainty of faith, the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even tiny infants who have not committed personal sin.
How did the sin of Adam become the sin of his descendents?
The whole human race is descended from Adam. By this unity of the human race all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as we are all implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery. We do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam committed a personal sin, but this sin affected all his decendents. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin contracted but not committed, a state of sin and not an act of sin.
To help us understand this, someone passed along this allegory. Supposing your father was a rich man. One day he went to the races, bet all his money and lost everything. There would be no money left for his wife or children. In the same way Adam lost our divine inheritance. Jesus came and ransomed us from that state of loss In Him we are now the adopted children of God. We are heirs to a great new inheritance.
Sin is a deprivation of God’s life
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. But human nature has not been totally corrupted; it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin. It has an inclination to sin that is called concupiscence. Baptism, by imparting the life of grace, takes away original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences of original sin for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.
By our first parent’s sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals. This dramatic situation of “the whole world which is in the power of the evil one” (1John 5:19) makes man’s life a battle.
God did not abandon man to the power of death
After his fall, man was not abandoned by God. On the contrary, God called him and in a mysterious way heralded the coming victory over evil (Gen. 3:9, 15). This passage is called the Proto-Gospel (The First Gospel) the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer. It announces a battle between the serpent and the woman, and of the final victory of a descendant of hers.
The Christian tradition sees in this passage an announcement of the New Adam (Jesus) who, because He “became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Rom. 5:19-20) made amends superabundantly for the disobedience of Adam. Furthermore, many Fathers and Doctors of the Church have seen the woman announced in the first Gospel as Mary the Mother of Christ, and the new Eve. Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ’s victory over sin. She was preserved from all stain of original sin and, by a special grace of God, committed no sin of any kind during her whole life on earth.
