De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

The cause of original sin.— The other consideration of original fault is concerning its cause. The Fathers almost declare it in this way. Since in Adam the whole of human nature consisted in its power: as being the one planting for begetting and propagating our race, he received that original justice (of which we spoke in chapter 2) not only for himself but for his offspring forever. Which whole [justice] he would thence receive by hereditary right together with nature in begetting: if only man remained faithful in the grace and friendship of God. By equal reasoning that precept by which he was forbidden under threat of death to eat of the tree of knowledge was so set before him that the whole of nature was bound in him. Wherefore thus on account of his transgression he was deprived of that justice which he had received, and driven from that most happy state, so that he involved all mortals at once in the same guilt, and thence cast them into the same miseries. Moreover,¹ in order that this explanation of the cause may be made, two other things proposed by us in the preceding chapter are equally worth explaining: namely, what original sin is, and in what way it is transmitted through the series of generations. For this is most difficult to explain even for the most eloquent: concerning which, to confess my ignorance, I have read nothing thus far for which I do not desire more. But the cause of this perplexing ambiguity is that although the nature of fault in actual sin is manifest, yet from it we can scarcely investigate the nature of original [sin]. For sin (as Augustine says Against Faustus, book 22)² is a word or deed or desire against the law of God. Where it is shown that the nature of fault is that deflection of the work, and turning aside from the law of God and the rule of reason: as when Adam, having transgressed the line prescribed to him, ate of the tree of knowledge. Since therefore man, when he is conceived, is not yet possessed of judgment and liberty, nor can he act according to the law and norm, nor deviate from it, it is a very great labour to declare how in him there is the nature of a true fault, which from the sin of Adam was impressed on our nature.

Confession concerning original sin.— But these things concerning this sin are confessed by all catholics. First. That it is not ours as regards the cause, that is, that we committed it by our own will. There were indeed formerly, as Augustine reports in book 1 of the Retractations, those who fell into such madness as to say that little children are baptized for the remission of a sin which was their own in this way, and personal. But, he says, that holy father is not to be despaired of human senses to such a degree as to persuade this to anyone. So evident is it³ that the use of reason or will does not yet shine forth in them. Yet it is by no means to be denied that it is voluntary: as in chapter 14 of book 1 of the Retractations the same [Augustine] wished us to be warned: where, maintaining that there is no sin unless voluntary, he adds. That which is called original sin in little children, when they do not yet use the free decision of the will, is not absurdly called voluntary also, because contracted from the first evil will of man, it has in a certain way become hereditary. And below, chapter 15, against the Pelagians, who deny original sin in little children because they do not yet use the free decision of the will, he says. As if indeed the sin which we say they draw originally from Adam, that is, that they are involved in his guilt and on that account held liable to punishment, could ever have existed anywhere except in the will by which it was committed, when the transgression of the divine precept was made.

The second confession.— The second catholic confession is that it is ours as regards the subject, that is, that it is truly in us. To this sense, that we are truly and (as the natural philosophers say) by formal denomination sinners. For so Paul says, that when we were sinners (and he speaks of original sin) CHRIST died for us. Therefore if you look to the subject, it is properly ours: but if to the cause, it is neither proper to us, nor voluntary in us, but by necessity of nature: according to that saying of Paul, We were by nature children of wrath.

The third is that it is truly sin.— But thirdly, and above all, anyone who does not wish to be considered a Pelagian ought to hold as indubitable that it is truly and properly a sin. For there were not lacking (as the Master of the Sentences reports, book 2, dist. 30) those who believed that there is no true original fault in us, but only the guilt of punishments and calamities to which the human race is liable on account of Adam's sin: and that it is called sin in that sense because it is an effect of sin. Nor are there lacking now, not only from the stock of the Lutherans (for they are torn into different confessions) but also from the number of those who think themselves catholics, who, coming forth as Homers among theologians, continue to maintain either that there is no original sin, or that it is not truly and properly a fault, with whom we are soon to engage. For the present we warn that we are born not only guilty of punishment, but truly in fault, and therefore in guilt of punishment. This the passage just cited says Augustine:⁴ namely, that they are involved in the guilt of Adam's sin, and on that account liable to punishment. And on Psalm 50 more explicitly: Therefore, he says, David says he was conceived in iniquities, because in all iniquity is drawn from Adam, and the bond of death. For no one, he says, is born except drawing punishment and the merit of punishment. But the merit of punishment is sin. Everyone therefore who is born through the concupiscence of the flesh draws sin. Thus he. And in the Hypognosticon, article 2: The sin of Adam killed not only himself but the whole human race: since we have received together both his condemnation and his fault. But what need is there of Augustine as witness, where Paul is so clear and irrefragable a judge?⁵ For through one man, he says, sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so death passed into all men, in whom all have sinned. Behold, not only death and punishments, but fault first passed into us, and therefore punishments. Likewise. Therefore Adam was a figure of CHRIST, because just as we are truly justified by the grace of CHRIST, so by the transgression of Adam we are all unjust, and truly sinners. Whoever therefore rejects this most clear light of truth, of whatever order he may be, let him be judged a heretic. And indeed (to use the words of Augustine cited above) let him not most firmly hold that every man who is conceived through the intercourse of man and woman is born with original sin, subject to ungodliness, subject to death: and on that account is born a child of wrath. Against which race of men the sentence of anathema was pronounced both formerly by the Council of Mileum, and also (as we said in chapter 7) just now by our holy synod, most advisedly on account of these contumacious men.

The fourth consideration.— Hence finally, in the fourth place, we must investigate where the nature of original fault lies hidden: further, that we may understand what it is that is common to us with Adam, which is truly sin in us: and that indeed not by way of act, but without use by way of habit. But in Adam, besides the transient act of sin which does not persist in us, there were two other things thence effected: namely, the privation of justice, and the dissolution of the concupiscence of the flesh, which, with the reins loosed, is borne unbridled into the objects of sense, outside the order of reason. Both of these are commonly congenital in us, his offspring. From this crossroads Augustine and Anselm⁶ seem to have gone in different directions. For the first, in places of his teaching by no means rare, appears to constitute that concupiscence of the flesh as original sin. But the latter, in the book On the Conception of the Virgin, openly says that it is the lack of justice which ought to have been in our nature. The Master of the Sentences, book 2, dist. 30, embraced the opinion of Augustine (as he himself judges). By whose opinion very many have been led. Others follow Anselm. St. Thomas,⁷ 1-2, q. 82, in order to reconcile both opinions, says that concupiscence is the material (as they say) in this sin: but the lack of justice is the formal. So that if one wished to define it, one would say that original sin is concupiscence lacking original justice.⁸ These things, although they prevail by their antiquity and the authority of the doctors, are nevertheless not things about which the Church has defined anything. Nay, the council recently, and most deservedly, defined nothing as to what original sin is, but left it under dispute among the doctors. And therefore it needs explanation.

Concupiscence, a morbid quality.— The Master of the Sentences (as it seems) and certain other followers of his comment that concupiscence is a certain morbid quality, adhering not in the flesh but in the soul. This they call the tinder, the law of the flesh, and the tyrant. They seem to elicit this from the authority of Augustine⁹ in On Marriage and Concupiscence, book 1, chapter 25, where he says that this concupiscence does not remain substantially, but is a certain affection of bad quality, like sickness. And that it is in the soul is clear, since in book 5 Against Julian he says that the soul is corrupted in the flesh as in a corrupted vessel. And in a certain sermon on the words of the Apostle: The vice of concupiscence is what the soul has contracted not from itself but from the flesh. And it is confirmed by reason, since original sin is a fault, but fault is not of the flesh, but is a stain of the soul. These men therefore conclude that the sin of Adam infected his flesh: but the infected flesh defiled that which it begot: and from that flesh, when the soul is infused, the soul is infected with that morbid quality. For it is Aristotle's doctrine in 1 On the Soul that from the motions of the soul the body is often affected, and conversely the mind from the qualities of the body.

The opinion of morbid quality is rejected.— But in truth these men, I know not to whom, can obtrude this opinion of theirs. For although the motions of the mind, as love, for example, or anger, stir up heat or bile in the body, and conversely the alteration of the body moves the mind, yet that the soul of Adam could imprint on the body a quality remaining by way of habit, which should perpetually remain in the flesh begotten from it, is persuasible by no philosophy: and much less that the flesh should impress such a quality on the soul coming to it: since a quality is of a material body, but the soul is spiritual. Then, that the sin peculiar to Adam could engender such a quality in the souls of men, the thing itself shows to be a fabrication, for that eating of the forbidden tree could not by its own nature have such efficacy: otherwise from all similar sins a similar effect would follow. Which is ridiculous. Unless you were so foolish as to imagine that by divine judgment such power was attributed to that sin because in it the whole of nature had sinned: the foundation of which can be no reason or authority on which it rests. But that that quality, even if it were possible, is admitted in vain, and believed to be present, is thus clear. For¹⁰ that we are guilty of the sin of Adam, in which the fault consists, can be explained perfectly without any quality, as will be seen a little later. And that the soul follows the desires of the flesh, it needs no morbid quality: since, being the act of the body, it follows sense by itself through appetite, unless it is contained by reason. Nor anywhere has Augustine insinuated that the concupiscence of the soul is original sin, but only the concupiscence of the flesh: as is most clearly established from all his works. Therefore wherever he said that the evil of concupiscence is not a substance, but an affection of bad quality, he does nothing other than repel the Manichaeans, who said that the evil in us is a substance begotten by the evil God: against whom he says that the evil of concupiscence is not in us from nature, which God made sound: but is accidentally adjacent to us from the fault of the first man. And everywhere, either he or the other saints say that the soul is infected from the flesh as from a vessel, they teach this thoroughly, that the soul does not draw this evil because the same soul migrates from body to body (as the Pythagoreans and Platonists imagined): nor indeed because souls are educed from the potentiality of matter, and so this evil descends from soul to soul, through the fact that the soul of the son comes from the father, as in brute animals: but that although the soul of anyone is created by God alone, it nevertheless does not contract original sin from God, but from the fact that it is infused into flesh sown by Adam. Which is in sum to say that man is conceived in sin because he is conceived as the son of Adam. But what these men add, that the fault is not in the body but in the soul, we willingly and gladly confess. Yet it does not follow from this that it is a quality produced by the flesh, but surely a guilt of nature concreated, as we are about to make plain.

Others, closer to the mind of Augustine¹¹ and to the truth, assert that the concupiscence of the flesh is original sin. They can gather this from Augustine. For he says in the book On the Merits and Remission of Sins, chapter 16, that when Adam sinned, disobedient to God, then his body lost the grace by which it obeyed his soul in every part. Then, he says, that bestial motion arose, shameful to men, at which he blushed in his nakedness. And below. From this disobedience of the flesh, therefore, from this law of sin and death, whoever is born carnally needs to be regenerated spiritually, so that he may not only be brought to the kingdom of God, but also be freed from the condemnation of sin. But I would set this as the basis of my disputation¹² from Augustine On Concupiscence, not only for catholic scholastics, but against the Lutherans: who contend that concupiscence is so much sin that it remains even in the baptized as sin. For Augustine here calls concupiscence sensuality, loosed from original justice. And he seems here to say that this is the sin on account of which we are to be regenerated by baptism. Concerning which, in book 2 of the same work, chapter 4: Concupiscence, he says, as the law of sin, remaining in the members of this body of death, is born with little children, in baptized little children is loosed from guilt, is left for the contest, before the contest it pursues the dead with no condemnation. It entangles unbaptized little children as guilty, and as children of wrath, even if they die as little children, drags them to condemnation. And in book 3 of the Retractations: The guilt of concupiscence is loosed in baptism, but the infirmity remains. Whence perhaps St. Thomas¹³ 1-2, q. 82, elicited that Augustine says that concupiscence is guilt. For I have read this word nowhere in Augustine unless St. Thomas perhaps had another codex. Hence therefore they conclude that that concupiscence of the flesh is original sin. Which in truth, unless it is interpreted in a sound way, I do not know how anyone can bring himself to believe, saving the most grave authority of Augustine. This others before us have prudently considered.

It is argued that concupiscence is not sin.— The first reason which offers itself to me against this opinion is as follows. That which was in Adam before it was in us, if it was not sin in him, surely will not be in us either: this concupiscence of the flesh was not sin in Adam, but an effect and punishment consequent upon sin: for on account of Adam's sin justice was taken away, and concupiscence was unbridled and loosed, not only in his person but in the whole of nature: therefore just as it was not sin in him, so neither is it in us, but an effect and punishment of sin.

The second reason.— Moreover, lest the ambiguity of the name make the disputation vain, original sin (as we have sufficiently established above) truly has the nature of fault, which accordingly, although it is distinguished from actual sin, is true iniquity: since on account of it the Psalmist confesses¹⁴ that we are conceived in iniquities: whence it follows that it is a depravity which is hateful to God: on account of which man, unless regenerated in CHRIST, is driven from the kingdom. But this nature can never agree with that concupiscence of the flesh. For that (as we said in chapter 3) is innate to man from natural principles, which that heavenly gift of justice restrained. And for that reason it is not that depravity, obliquity and iniquity in which the nature of sin consists, which God hates: but it is rather a punishment inflicted by God: who surely despoiled our nature of that justice on account of sin, and left it destitute in its natural state. Wherefore neither Adam nor we are blamed because we are thus concupiscible, but because we committed the fault in Adam, on account of which we lost the bond by which concupiscence was held subject to reason.

The third reason.— In addition. Sin properly is not that thing which remains the same in the justified as it was in the sinner, but concupiscence remains the same: therefore it is not sin, but plainly that guilt which is remitted when we are regenerated.

The fourth reason.— So then, to embrace all things. That force and power of concupiscence outside the order of reason, which is in a child, nay rather which is in an adult without act and consent, is not that on account of which we are disinherited from the heavenly inheritance: but rather by the same sin by which we were made exiles from the kingdom, the rein of concupiscence was also broken, and we fell into death and other calamities: therefore that concupiscence is no more sin than expulsion from the kingdom, or death, or diseases, or other wretched miseries of that kind, which are sins in no other way than that they are effects of Adam's sin. Except that concupiscence is besides the cause of our actual crimes. Those who now think that original sin is the love of earthly things suffer the same repulse.¹⁵ For if they declare this of the act of love, it is not indeed original but actual sin: but if they understand it of the love of the flesh, or of the inclination of the soul by which it is apt to follow sense, they fall into the same place from which we were just now driving the former.

Nor is it the privation of justice.— By almost the same reasons it is refuted that original sin is not the privation of original justice, in the sense which very many conceive, namely the privation of the rectitude of the whole man, which was in that state of integral nature. For that was not sin in Adam, but an effect and punishment of sin, prior by nature to the dissolution of concupiscence. Nor is that the depravity and obliquity of a perverse reason, nor on account of it did God make us exiles from the kingdom, but on account of the antecedent transgression he deprived us of the heavenly kingdom and punished us with the loss of original justice.

Justice due to be present.— And a second argument. For in that almost all doctors affirm that original sin is the privation of justice due to be present, if they understand the debt in such a way that Adam was bound by a singular precept to keep it, or his offspring, certainly it is false, and one whose faith can be established by no authority of the sacred writers, since no commandment is read to have been set for Adam, and no other law prescribed than that he should not eat of the tree of knowledge: from which if he ate, there would follow upon him the punishment both of justice taken away and of death consequently following: therefore in truth, not the loss of justice, but the eating of the tree itself was the fault. For indeed just as we are bound to preserve grace in no other way than by keeping the commandments, and the murderer has no other crime besides murder by which he either loses the grace of God or his life, if he pays the penalty of his head: so neither was Adam bound to have justice in any other way than by not transgressing the precept concerning the tree, or any other precept of natural law. Nor besides the eating of the apple was being stripped of justice a new crime for him: and therefore much less for us, to be born stripped of it. Nay, to speak more fully, even if he were bound by a peculiar precept to keep justice, to desert it would then indeed be a sin for Adam, but not that he afterwards, or we, were deprived of it.

In addition. If original sin were (as they say) the privation of justice due to be present, it would then follow that it is not remitted in baptism: since neither is justice restored there, nor is man released from any debt by which he was previously bound.

Original sin is not enmity with God.— Others, who strive to extricate themselves from these windings, could imagine original sin to be nothing other than enmity with God: but neither should these believe they have planted a fixed mark. For enmity is not sin, but plainly an effect of sin. For by the fact that someone offends God or another, he kindles his enmity. And besides, in infants there is a manifest argument. For either you wish original sin to be the hatred by which the infant hates God, or that by which God hates him. The first is none, since the infant has no use of will. The second is not sin, since it is in God, but is the work of sin: further, that God conceives that hatred when provoked by sin.