Ask a Deacon: Original Sin and Human Nature
Q: “How is the doctrine of original sin consistent with the idea that God makes us all good?”
To begin to answer this question, let us look at what we mean by “original sin” and “God makes us all good.” On original sin, the thing is that the Catholic Church’s doctrine or teaching on original sin focuses more on what it isn’t than what it is. What I mean is that original sin is, first of all, not a personal sin. It is not the same kind of sin as a sin that we personally choose. According to the Catechism, original sin is a sin only by analogy. It is not “an act” but “a condition.” It is not “committed,” but rather it is “contracted,” (CCC 404) like a disease if you will.
How can this be so? Well, let’s look at the other point about God making us all good. As Catholics, we believe that Genesis 1-3 relates the truth that humankind was created good from the beginning. We believe that Adam and Eve were blessed not just with pure souls but with “original holiness and justice.” (CCC 404) And we believe that all of humanity descended in some way from them. As a result of their Fall, they then changed their nature in such a way that it was now passed on to every human person who would ever live (save Our Lady of course, but that’s for another time).
How exactly was their nature changed? Well, first we must understand that we believe that grace and nature work together. We do not believe that grace is like an add-on to nature, a purely external imposition on our nature. We believe that grace, which is the life of God provided by Him to us, can transform and uplift nature. Adam and Eve, we teach, have not just perfect natures but natures perfected by special graces when they were created by God. Those graces kept them in perfect and right relationship with God. But by turning their back on God, those graces were excluded from their soul and so their nature by virtue of their choice. Thus was their nature corrupted.
Since then, because we all descend from them, we suffer from the same corrupted nature which includes a darkened intellect, a weak will, and disordered passions. We also suffer from what we call “concupiscence,” “an inclination to evil,” (CCC 405), a tendency towards sin.
However, to your question, it is the Catholic position that, despite this marring of our nature, we can still say that we are made in the image and likeness of God, and by virtue of that fact, we all enjoy a fundamental human dignity. In fact, even if someone were to commit a grave evil, that individual cannot lose this fundamental dignity. Their life is still valuable by virtue of what they are, viz. an image and likeness of the Creator.
So, to answer the question most directly, our doctrine of original sin is completely consistent with the idea that God makes us all good because of what original sin is, or rather isn’t. You see, original sin is a lack of something that is supposed to be there and isn’t. Original sin is not a total undoing of our goodness. It’s like that feeling you get sometimes, the feeling that you’ve forgotten something but you can’t figure out what it is. You check and recheck, and you intellectually “know” that you’ve not forgotten anything, but the feeling just gnaws at you that something that is supposed to be, isn’t. That’s original sin.
I should mention that the Catholic teaching on original sin is different from the Protestant one. I don’t have space to get into how or why, but I like to say that our doctrine of original sin points precisely to the fundamental goodness of our human nature, rather than to an innate depravity. Because we teach that original sin is the lack of a relationship with God that we were made to have. We were created to be in right relationship with him, that’s our deepest desire. So it is that the Sacrament of Baptism restores us to the possibility of having that relationship with God that we were meant to have, even if it doesn’t eliminate concupiscence or the other effects of the Fall. Are we still inclined to evil? Yes, sadly. Our nature still needs to be purified and remade by the radical grace of God. And that’s the adventure of pursuit of sanctity, but perhaps that can be another question and answer for another time.