The effects of original sin are passed on to all of Adam and Eve’s descendants. They are transmitted to mankind—to each of us. As head of the human race, what Adam lost he also lost for all men.
By Deacon Frederick Bartels
26 February 2023
In our first reading from today’s Mass in the Book of Genesis (2:7-9; 3:1-7), the serpent in the garden, which symbolizes Satan or the devil, lies to Eve and tempts her to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Previously, God had warned Adam and Eve to never eat from this tree, for if they did, they would die. The tree represents the limits of Adam and Eve’s human freedom established by God. Eve, however, listens to the devil and acts on his temptation. She looks on the fruit as good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for obtaining wisdom (Gen 3:6).
Eve eats the fruit and gives some to Adam, who also eats. In this sinful act, our first parents violate God’s command and eat the forbidden fruit. God, of course, had provided everything they needed. Adam and Eve, however, let their trust in God die in their heart by gravely sinning against him.
Original Sin
What does all of this have to do with us, here and now? Several things. First, the sin committed by Adam and Eve is what the Church calls “original sin.” With this first sin, death entered human history. Adam and Eve became deprived of God’s grace. They lost the glory of God. They were cast out from the garden paradise. And, by listening to the devil, they gave the devil a certain dominion over their lives.
The effects of original sin are passed on to all of Adam and Eve’s descendants. They are transmitted to mankind—to each of us. As head of the human race, what Adam lost he also lost for all men. In other words, we have contracted the bad effects of his sin. This is what Paul is talking about in our second reading (Rom 5:12-19) when he says, “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men” (Rom 5:12).
As I said, we have inherited the bad effects of original sin. You might think of it as inheriting a defect—a defect which has wounded our human nature. However, we’re not simply dealing with one defect but several. What are they? We can’t go into all of them here. Nevertheless, let’s look at some of them.
The Intellect
Due to original sin, our intellect is darkened. We therefore suffer from ignorance. It’s difficult for us to know the truth. Furthermore, it’s easy to fall into self-deception and believe what we want to hear, to accept as true what we desire to believe. Through the sin of pride, we often fabricate our own version of the truth so as to line up our beliefs with sinful desires. In this way, the intellect becomes disfigured.
Let’s look at an example. This is just one of about a billion others. In this example we have married spouses who contracept. Because they desire sex in a morally unacceptable, disordered way, they form their intellects by accepting a false truth. They tell themselves that contraceptives are “good to use.” They convince themselves that they are a modern invention which is helpful in their marriage and that the Church’s moral teaching in this area is antiquated and wrong. These of course are lies. But they become convinced of these lies and refuse to listen to the truth.
The Will
Let’s look at another defect caused by original sin. Due to original sin, our will is weakened. The will is a faculty of our spiritual soul. An upright will desires the good and is repelled by evil. When it is ordered correctly, it desires and chooses the true good. However, due to original sin, we suffer from disorders in the will. Recall that Eve saw the forbidden fruit as something good for food and desirable for obtaining wisdom. This was a wrong desire on her part, which was opposed to the will of God. It was a wrong way of looking at the fruit. It was a bad desire and an evil choice. Now, due to original sin, we suffer from disordered, wrong desires in our will. We often choose something we think is good for us in some way, but which in fact is sinful and harmful.
Let’s look at the example of pornography to illustrate this problem. Due to a disordered will, many people view pornography because their will chooses it as something good and desirable. However, this is a sinful, wrong desire. It’s a disorder. A rightly ordered will, on the other hand, is repelled by the evil of pornography and refuses to choose it as something good.
When people choose to view pornography, with full knowledge that this activity offends God, and they deliberately and freely choose to do so, they violate the sixth commandment and commit mortal sin. At that point, they have destroyed their relationship with God. For the Catholic, the remedy is to confess this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance. Catholics are required to do this to restore their relationship with God. As Tertullian noted, the sacrament of Penance is the plank of salvation after the shipwreck of sin.
The Soul’s Control
At this point, we talked about how original sin darkens our intellect and creates defects in the will. What is another bad effect of original sin? Due to original sin, the soul’s control over the body is shattered. This means that there is a battle going on within us between the flesh and the spirit. This is what Paul is talking about when he says in his Letter to the Galatians: “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh” (Gal 5:17). It is also what Jesus is talking about when he said during his agony in the garden: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt 26:41).
We are prone to temptation and sin because of this struggle between the flesh and the spirit. We often allow the desires of the flesh to guide us, as opposed to maintaining control over the body through the soul. This is why the Christian life is a battle. We will win this war only at great cost. It must not be taken lightly.
Dominion of the Devil
Finally, let’s look at one more effect of original sin. Because Adam and Eve listened to the devil and acted on his temptation, the devil has gained a certain level of dominion in our lives. He now has the power to tempt us, as he tempted Eve in the garden. To be clear, not all temptation is from the devil. Nevertheless, temptation is the ordinary way in which the devil acts on us. Satan tempts us in order to entice us to freely choose our own disordered desires as opposed to God’s will in our lives. He entices us to do things our way rather than God’s way. He urges us to let trust in God die in our heart by freely choosing to sin, which makes us culpable before God for our sin. This is how he leads people to hell through temptation.
The New Adam
In our gospel (Matt 4:1-11), Christ resisted the temptations of the devil. And St. Paul reminds us that Christ is the solution to the situation of fallen man. It is Jesus Christ, as the New Adam and Savior, who restores us and whose grace gives us the power to resist the devil’s temptation and live a life of virtue and holiness. Today, Paul tells us, “For if by the transgression of the one,” that is Adam’s transgression, “the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many” (Rom 5:15).
The bottom line is we must heal our disordered will and bring light into our darkened intellects through the grace of Christ. We must put an end to our vices and sinful habits. We must change vice to virtue. Christ is the key to doing these things, along with our own persistent and diligent efforts. As I said earlier, the Christian life is a battle whose victory is won only at great cost.
Christ freely offered himself on the Roman cross to defeat sin, the devil, and the eternal death of the soul brought on by sin. Nevertheless, the struggle continues in this life here below. God permits this struggle with its various trails and challenges so as to allow us to prove our love for him by choosing his will over and above ours. As Christ said, “If you love me, keep my commands…. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me” (John 14:15, 21).
To help us build virtue, holy mother Church requires us to fast and abstain from eating flesh meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and to abstain from eating meat on all Friday’s during Lent. These disciplines help to build self-mastery, control over the body, and also help us to develop virtues like temperance and fortitude, which are so necessary in the Christian battle.
Last, I want to stress again that Christ and his teaching is the answer. He calls us to a life of holiness and perfection. And he provides us with his grace to achieve these outcomes. Therefore, it is essential to learn the belief of the Church and fully live it. Interiorize it. Receive the sacraments frequently, especially the sacrament of Penance and the Eucharist. Live the Catholic life of worship and virtue in its fullness. Always and everywhere. It’s matter of life and death.
Photo Attribution: Peter Paul Rubens, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Deacon Frederick Bartels is a member of the Catholic clergy who serves the Church in the diocese of Pueblo. He holds an MA in Theology and Educational Ministry, is a member of the theology faculty at Catholic International University, and is a Catholic educator, public speaker, and evangelist who strives to infuse culture with the saving principles of the gospel. For more, visit YouTube, iTunes and Twitter.
(***Opinion piece only***) As a Catholic, I have always been skeptical of the claim that it was Satan or one of his emissaries (disguised as a serpent) who was present in the Garden and tricked Adam & Eve into defying God. There is a strange irony in this interpretation, in that readers and theologians are doing exactly what Adam & Eve did when questioned by God – they are looking for a scapegoat to explain what led to their own downfall.
A sin requires both knowledge and the will to do wrong. We know they had free will. However, they could not have sinned just by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of good & evil because they would have had no concept of right and wrong. Neither a danger warning nor a temptation changes that. For example, a small child often defies his parents after being told, “Don’t do that.” But we certainly don’t call the child a sinner because they don’t know any better……yet. Knowledge is the difference between a sin and a mistake.
So when God asked Adam & Eve a very simple question (“Did you eat from the tree?”), it was only after they were imbued with knowledge of both good and evil. So what did they do in this pivotal moment? Rather than just simply answering “Yes” with no expounding, they acknowledged their action but then turned and pointed the finger at somebody else: Adam -> Eve….Eve -> Serpent. I believe that BLAME was the very first sin committed by the humans, which occurred after they ate the fruit. And as the first sin, this constituted a double betrayal: 1. a betrayal of their own relationship, which went from pure to the worst kind of objectification: sacrifice through blame. 2. a betrayal of God by not taking responsibility and trying to deny to his face the very gift of free will he gave them. Nobody makes anybody do anything, whether you’re aware of the consequences or not. All they had to do was answer God’s question honestly. Who and what the Edenic “serpent” was is actually beside the point because their disastrous defense strategy got all three of them punished. This meant a brand new relationship dynamic between Adam & Eve after their expulsion from the Garden and a lack of access to the Tree of Life. Would God have offered them this antidote for the death they would now suffer if they’d done the right thing in response to their initial mistake? Maybe.
So now comes the issue of salvation. People have puzzled over the question as to how Jesus’ own death was required for humanity’s redemption in response to original sin. But if the above framework is correct, it now makes a little more sense. Jesus (God the Son) entered into his own creation as an active human participant and offered himself directly back to the Father by dying for our sins. Because Adam & Eve sinned through the act of blame (sacrifice), Jesus stepped in as THE sacrifice.
***Important side note: Satan is absolutely real. But evidence for his direct involvement in original sin is weak. Rather he appears to be a post-Fall interloper, although the Bible is unclear about when he and the angels fell. Regardless, if God doled out the ultimate punishment for him with permanent expulsion from heaven, he wouldn’t have required a dual punishment as the alleged serpent in the Garden. Just my take. Yes, he and his minions have a lot of influence over innumerable aspects of our daily lives, but not total control. Only that which we give them.
Jonathan,
Interesting comment, But why do you think that Adam and Eve didn’t have any concept (understanding) of right and wrong prior to their original sin? As you noted, knowledge of the moral nature of an act, along with free choice, is required to commit sin. God commanded Adam not to eat the forbidden fruit. Therefore Adam understood the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to be off limits. And Eve knew the same. Yet they nevertheless freely chose to violate God’s command and eat the fruit. As the Church teaches in the Catechism, they let trust in God die in their hearts.
It’s also important to understand that Genesis chapter 3 uses symbolic and figurative language to narrate real events that occurred at the dawn of human history, The serpent and the tree are symbols, not to be taken in a strictly literal manner. The serpent represents Satan; the tree represents the limits of human freedom.
Adam and Eve passed the blame for their bad actions precisely because they knew they had sinned, not because they were suddenly aware that they had done wrong only after eating the fruit and then chose to sin for the first time by passing the blame. Once they rebelled against God, they lost his glory and the grace of original justice. A whole host of sins thus followed because of their wounded human nature and disordered will, both of which are consequences of their grave sin against God.
Thank you for the feedback, Deacon. :)
There’s a part of me that thinks (speculative, non-scriptural) that because of their ignorance, God knew they would eat from the tree. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put it there. I should have probably stated this earlier – a truly freewill agency necessitates complete knowledge.
We can clearly see a metamorphosis in their very being after eating – rapidly shifting from childhood to adulthood (which is supported in the text, I think, by their recognition of their male/female sexual dimorphism – hence why they covered their unmentionables with fig leaves and then hid). Yet because the Tree represented both good and evil (not just evil), their response that followed was the true test. Eating alone wasn’t enough to constitute sin – it was their choice after the fact not to radically accept the great responsibility that came with this knowledge, even if they did it out of fear. And by not acknowledging their responsibility, they sinned – against each other and, by extension, God himself.
Could Adam & Eve have done anything more depraved than sacrificing one another through blame as though it would pass muster with God? Because that’s really what it was – the penalty of death was the consequence and their response was to throw one another under the bus. Which was a laughably ridiculous ploy. It’s like a drunk driver who killed 5 people standing before a judge and trying to the blame the bartender for refilling his drink so many times.
I would agree Adam & Eve made a mistake by eating, but again maybe not? As I mentioned, a sin requires knowledge and if they lacked knowledge, they could not have sinned leading up to and including their consumption of the fruit. They would not have understood the warning God gave them because it is no substitute for knowledge. You can’t be held fully liable for something you didn’t understand. For example, as an adult, you don’t retroactively blame your then 8-year-old brother for something you did when you were 5 because you were both children at the time and didn’t know any better.
But because God is nothing but love, redemption is still promised to all those who would accept it. And Jesus’ sacrifice makes PERFECT sense in this context – sacrificing himself (taking the blame) even though he was without guilt. And because Christ is anything but allegorical or figurative, I also approach Adam & Eve as a literal occurrence of events…..with the exception of the word “serpent” which is for a whole ‘nother discussion.
I also agree 1000% with your point about the “host of sins” that followed. And without digressing too much, I’ll refer to St. Augustine’s doctrine implicating the inheritance/sexual transference of sin through the male seed. I now see how this can be directly tied to blame. Again, blame was the first act of objectification – the use of another human being for selfish means. The first sexual act was after expulsion from the Garden when Eve was cursed with “desire for her husband” as part of her punishment, which became the default mode of “filling the earth” with all of its fraught melodrama. Sex is objectification because it is a violative act, no matter how tidy and pure we try to make it through strict practices and intentions. I don’t think sex itself was the original sin, but rather the immediate sequela of Adam & Eve’s first sin (blame/sacrifice). And to prove this, we need look no further than the Immaculate Conception and the virgin birth to see that there is something seriously wrong with this picture.