What is Original Sin? – Part 1

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church original sin is, “Yielding to the tempter (the devil), Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. 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.”  (CCC 404)

Adam and Eve received a commandment from God that they may eat from the fruit of any tree in the Garden of Eden but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  (Gen 2:15-17) And our first parents failed.  Scripture tells us that the fruit Adam and Eve took was “enticing to the eyes”, meaning it promises pleasure which is the nature of every sin.  Sin promises to offer you delight but eventually gives you misery.  It was a multi-pronged temptation from the devil offering both the internal sin of pride (you will be like God) and external sin of wrongful pleasure.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil where Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit, is not to be interpreted literally as the knowledge of distinguishing what is morally good from evil.  Adam and Eve knew quite well what was good from evil because they were created by God with first-rate intelligence.  Rather the tree is symbolic of God’s prerogative or God’s authority over man on what is good and evil for him.  Adam and Eve’s disobedience means they themselves declared what was right and wrong for them minus God’s authority.  It was a sin of independence from God or viewing God as a rival or an obstacle to the pursuit of personal happiness, something which happens to this day every time we commit sin.  When we commit sin, we trust more ourselves in seeking our own happiness rather than trusting God who gives us the real one.

Original sin is a sin that we contracted, like a disease that is transmitted from a mother to her baby, inside the womb.  We did not commit original sin, only our first parents did, but we suffer the consequences of it.  It’s a sin of inheritance.  If your parents are rich, you will inherit their wealth, and if they are poor, you will inherit their poverty.  The consequences of original sin are loss of sanctifying grace (the grace to make us holy), loss of the right to enter heaven, ignorance, sicknesses, other forms of suffering, death, and a strong inclination to evil.  Had Adam and Eve not sinned we would have great knowledge (no need for schools), control of the passions (no strong inclination to evil), exemption from sicknesses and suffering (no need for hospitals), had sanctifying grace (no need for baptism) and we would not die (no need for cemeteries).  We would still end our life here on earth after the allotted years of living in it by God, but we would not die.  We would be assumed or taken up body and soul to heaven much like the Blessed Virgin Mary who was one of the four persons who did not have original sin by birth.  The other three were Adam, Eve and Jesus Christ.  It’s no coincidence that two pairs of a man and woman don’t have original sin by birth.

Jesus Christ is the new Adam and the Blessed Virgin Mary is the new Eve. They are our new parents in the spiritual realm who made up for the fall of our first parents.  If there was no original sin, there will still be people who will commit sin because we would still have our freedom, but they would be very few compared to the entire populace.  (To be continued in the next article)