Inform Your 'Faith'

Thomas Aquinas:

    Aquinas’ doctrine of original sin is rather complex as he delves more analytically and philosophically into the minutiae of detail pertaining to that respective subject matter. Worthy of note though is that he essentially articulates Augustine’s position; although it is a more meticulous and exhaustive advancement. There are a plethora of references to Augustin interspersed throughout the Summa Theologica that he pointedly employs to underscore his position on original sin. As it was with Augustin so Aquinas resoundingly asserts the role of tradition and orthodoxy as official support for the position he was enunciating regarding original sin for, “According to the Catholic faith we are bound to hold that the first sin of the first man is transmitted to his descendants by way of origin.”

    For Aquinas our primordial parents existed in a state of original righteousness that included a fixed bias of the will towards God or to use Thomistic phraseology "the mind of man was in subjection to God." Mans soul was in puris naturalibus prior to the fall. This status is irrevocably changed as our progenitor directs his will away from God and subsequently human nature incurs penal defects and physical deprivation. It is through Adams initial act of disobedience that the original righteousness and/or original justice is compromised and to be sure vanquished, “because it destroyed the innocence of our original state, and by robbing it of innocence brought disorder upon the whole human nature.”

    This compromised condition or this corruption of original sin is caused, “by the sin alone of our first parent through carnal generation.” The transmission of original sin for Aquinas is more conceptual or incorporeal from a causal standpoint though it is effectively corporeal from a punitive and practical standpoint. That is, “Original sin can no wise be in the flesh as its subject, but only in the soul.” He says elsewhere that the, “soul is the subject of original sin and not the flesh.” while the, “the flesh is subject to the punishment.”

    Inasmuch as Aquinas speaks of a carnal generation his emphasis is not on physical perpetuity as much as it is a “movement of generation”. The soul of man in which original sin is seated is a continuation of the original form found in Adam as he pontificates, “The soul of any individual man was in Adam, in respect of his seminal power, not indeed as in its effective principle.” In other-words humanity was present at the scene of the crime and subject to its effects in a formal sense and subsequently in a physical sense. Adam’s posterity proceed successively from him with the same condition of soul not through a symbiotic connection as much as a diachronic connection. According to this methodology Adam would serve as an antecedent cause or the first of his type that would produce other comparable species or particulars, “Our first parents were made by God not only as particular individuals, but also as principles of the whole human nature to be transmitted by them to their posterity, together with the divine favor preserving them from death, Hence, through their sin the entire human nature, being deprived of that favor in their posterity incurred death”

    Suitably, then for Aquinas all succeeding particulars or individuality's proceed out of the original form. This formulation is very congruous with Augustinian vernacular. All of humanity then is imbrued with what was characteristic of Adam. In accordance with this logical rationale, then, “All men born of Adam may be considered as one man, inasmuch as they receive from their first parents.” There is to be sure an inextricable organic and collective connection.

    By necessary extension then all humanity suffers from a collective fault or corruption as the originally good human nature, out of which proceeds a naturally good inclination, is resigned to a corrupt human nature out of which proceeds the habits of sin. For Aquinas this aforementioned “good” of human nature is threefold. First, “there are the principles of which human nature is constituted, and the properties that flow from them. This aspect of human nature is unaffected. Secondly, “man has from nature an inclination to virtue,” and thirdly, “the gift of original justice,” that was originally bestowed upon man. It is these two aspects of human nature that are now riddled with corruption. Aquinas posits that our inclination towards good is categorically diminished while it is now characterized by, “ an inordinate disposition, arising from the destruction of the harmony which was essential to original justice.” This corrupt condition reverberates throughout the continuation of humankind not through the generative power of the child but, “by the act of the parental generative power” as Aqunias concludes, “original sin is not the sin of this person, except inasmuch as this person receives his nature from his first parent, for which reason it is called the sin of nature.”

 

Credo ut Intelligam