Sect. 161The Sin of Adam and EveThe Sin of Adam and Eve
I. The tempter, called serpent in the history of the fall (Gen. 3), was not that reptile itself, but the devil speaking through its mouth, although the narrative does not expressly say so. The devil is so often spoken of as the tempter of our first parents, that it might almost be doubted whether the serpent was not an assumed form, rather than the real animal (Wisd. 2:24; John 8:44).
II. The temptation was directed to Eve as the weaker party, and against the law of probation, as the most momentous. The tempter begins with a question of double meaning: Is there such a commandment, and why should it be given? (Gen. 3:1), and goes on denying the punishment threatened by God, and promising likeness to gods as a reward for the evil deed. Almost every word of the devil’s speech is ambiguous, admitting of a true and of a false interpretation, a circumstance entirely in keeping with the character of the tempter. From Gen. 3:6, some superficial minds have inferred that Eve was seduced by the goodness and beauty of the fruit, forgetting that, before the fall, she had perfect control over all the motions of her senses. No more did she believe in the serpent’s words: such blindness was incompatible with the state of original perfection. Fathers and Theologians commonly teach that Eve was misled by pride, according to Ecclus. 10:15: “Pride is the beginning of all sin” (also Tobias 4:14). Movements of pride and vainglory could be excited without a formal belief in the serpent’s words; on the contrary, such belief could only spring from a heart infected with pride. Eve, then, moved by pride, saw “that the tree was good to eat,” and, flattering herself that she would not die, but be made like unto God, “took of the fruit and did eat,” thus committing a formal disobedience to the Divine command.
III. The sin of Adam also had its root in pride, as we may safely infer from the above-quoted texts, and still more from the ironical words of God, Behold, Adam is become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:22). Adam’s connivance with Eve was but an effect of his sympathy with her own pride. The terms of the Divine judgment seem to indicate that Adam believed the suggestions of Eve, and thus sinned through disbelief of God’s word. Yet, if this be admitted, the reason of his disbelief cannot be laid to the utterances of the serpent, but may be attributed to the fact that Eve had not died after eating the forbidden fruit. “Adam was not seduced; but the woman, being seduced, was in the transgression” (1 Tim. 2:14; cf. 2 Cor. 11:3).
IV. Objectively, the sin of our first parents was formal disobedience to God and to the law of probation. The sins of pride, curiosity, sensuality, disbelief, and diffidence were subjective factors, all subordinate to that disobedience in which they terminated, and helping to make it a most grievous sin, notwithstanding the apparent slightness of its subject-matter. Other aggravating circumstances were the great facility of avoiding it, as in Adam there was neither ignorance nor concupiscence; the black ingratitude it implies, and the terrible consequences it was to have upon the whole of mankind.
Albeit, the sin of man, like that of the angels, was a formal aversion from God; it was, nevertheless, not so decisive and obstinate. Immediately after the sin, a salutary sense of shame and fear came over its authors, and God mitigated His sentence of condemnation. The serpent alone was condemned without mercy; Adam and Eve, according to Scripture and tradition, made good use of the time allotted them for penance, and are both saved (cf. Wisd. 10:1 sqq.).
V. The first sin was fraught with peculiar consequences by reason of the singularly privileged state of its authors. The Second Council of Orange, can. I, and the Council of Trent have defined these consequences. “The first man Adam, having transgressed the mandate of God in Paradise, at once lost the sanctity and justice in which he had been constituted; and incurred, through the offence of his prevarication, the anger and indignation of God, and, therefore, the death with which God had previously threatened him, and together with death, captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is of the devil; Adam, through the offence of that prevarication, underwent a complete change for the worse in body and soul” (Council of Trent, sess. v. can. 1). In a word: Adam lost all his absolute and relative supernatural endowments. He became subject to the power of the devil, inasmuch as, having been overcome and despoiled of his strength and of his claim on heaven, he was henceforth at the mercy of his conqueror.
Although the complete deterioration of man was brought about by the loss of supernatural endowments, it must not be conceived as a merely external change, such e.g. as would arise from the loss of a garment. The loss of sanctifying grace and of all the privileges of original integrity affects the inmost powers of the soul, intellect, and will, and the command of the soul over the body, and leaves man in a state of languor and disease. Not only is man disabled for salutary works; his higher aims are taken away from him, and his natural inclination for selfish pleasures is allowed free play.
VI. The corruption consequent upon Adam’s sin had a twofold bearing, viz. upon his person arid upon his nature. His personal deterioration immediately affected only his will; it was caused by the will, and its permanence was more or less dependent upon the disposition of the will. The corruption of his nature, on the contrary, affected all the faculties rooted in the substance of the soul, and the will itself, in as far as the will is part of human nature. Again, the personal corruption attacks the mind (or soul) only in itself, whereas the corruption of nature attacks the mind in its relations to the body, and leaves no part of the whole compound unharmed. It appears, however, most strikingly in the insubordination of the generative appetite, which is the means of its transmission to all mankind.
VII. Holy Scripture applies the significant name “reign of death” to nature corrupted by sin (Rom. 5:14). The supernatural life and glory of “the image of God” being lost through the envy of the devil, human nature remained naked, disfigured, and disabled; the soul was spiritually dead, and the body doomed to death. In that state, the soul, like a corpse, was prone to further corruption, and liable to become every day more unfit for the reception of new life.
VIII. We need not insist upon the penal character of the corruption of nature, which is self-evident; but it is important to fix its guiltiness. Original justice, with all its privileges, was not a gift without a concomitant obligation. Man was not at liberty to accept or to refuse it, or, having accepted it, to cast it off at his own pleasure. It was a gift entrusted to the keeping of man, and man’s perfection in the eyes of God was made dependent upon its possession. Hence, when by his own free will Adam cast off the trust held under such obligation, that is when he despoiled himself of his supernatural glory, he was answerable for, and guilty of, the consequent deterioration of his nature.
A difficulty here presents itself: “Culpability results from a personal act; but the withdrawal of the supernatural gifts was not a personal act of Adam, hence their loss cannot be imputed to him.” As regards the loss of sanctity, the answer has been given already, viz. mortal sin makes the soul unfit for sanctifying grace, so that the author of mortal sin excludes and expels grace from his soul by his own act. As regards the loss of integrity another explanation is required. St. Thomas and his disciples say that sanctity and integrity formed one solidary whole, wherefore Adam, by willingly excluding sanctity, also willingly expelled integrity. The early Franciscan school views this matter in another light: the possession of both sanctity and integrity depended upon the keeping of the Divine mandate; wherefore Adam, by transgressing this, voluntarily forfeited both. These two views do not exclude one another. The Thomistic conception accounts better for the loss of justice as a personal fault of Adam; the other shows better why the fault and guilt of Adam can be inherited by his posterity. See for this and the following sections, St. Thomas, 1 2, qq. 81–83; Stapleton, De Justif., ll. i.–iii.; Bellarmine, De Amiss. Gratiæ, ll. iv.–vi.
I. The tempter, called serpent in the history of the fall (Gen. 3), was not that reptile itself, but the devil speaking through its mouth, although the narrative does not expressly say so. The devil is so often spoken of as the tempter of our first parents, that it might almost be doubted whether the serpent was not an assumed form, rather than the real animal (Wisd. 2:24; John 8:44).
II. The temptation was directed to Eve as the weaker party, and against the law of probation, as the most momentous. The tempter begins with a question of double meaning: Is there such a commandment, and why should it be given? (Gen. 3:1), and goes on denying the punishment threatened by God, and promising likeness to gods as a reward for the evil deed. Almost every word of the devil’s speech is ambiguous, admitting of a true and of a false interpretation, a circumstance entirely in keeping with the character of the tempter. From Gen. 3:6, some superficial minds have inferred that Eve was seduced by the goodness and beauty of the fruit, forgetting that, before the fall, she had perfect control over all the motions of her senses. No more did she believe in the serpent’s words: such blindness was incompatible with the state of original perfection. Fathers and Theologians commonly teach that Eve was misled by pride, according to Ecclus. 10:15: “Pride is the beginning of all sin” (also Tobias 4:14). Movements of pride and vainglory could be excited without a formal belief in the serpent’s words; on the contrary, such belief could only spring from a heart infected with pride. Eve, then, moved by pride, saw “that the tree was good to eat,” and, flattering herself that she would not die, but be made like unto God, “took of the fruit and did eat,” thus committing a formal disobedience to the Divine command.
III. The sin of Adam also had its root in pride, as we may safely infer from the above-quoted texts, and still more from the ironical words of God, Behold, Adam is become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:22). Adam’s connivance with Eve was but an effect of his sympathy with her own pride. The terms of the Divine judgment seem to indicate that Adam believed the suggestions of Eve, and thus sinned through disbelief of God’s word. Yet, if this be admitted, the reason of his disbelief cannot be laid to the utterances of the serpent, but may be attributed to the fact that Eve had not died after eating the forbidden fruit. “Adam was not seduced; but the woman, being seduced, was in the transgression” (1 Tim. 2:14; cf. 2 Cor. 11:3).
IV. Objectively, the sin of our first parents was formal disobedience to God and to the law of probation. The sins of pride, curiosity, sensuality, disbelief, and diffidence were subjective factors, all subordinate to that disobedience in which they terminated, and helping to make it a most grievous sin, notwithstanding the apparent slightness of its subject-matter. Other aggravating circumstances were the great facility of avoiding it, as in Adam there was neither ignorance nor concupiscence; the black ingratitude it implies, and the terrible consequences it was to have upon the whole of mankind.
Albeit, the sin of man, like that of the angels, was a formal aversion from God; it was, nevertheless, not so decisive and obstinate. Immediately after the sin, a salutary sense of shame and fear came over its authors, and God mitigated His sentence of condemnation. The serpent alone was condemned without mercy; Adam and Eve, according to Scripture and tradition, made good use of the time allotted them for penance, and are both saved (cf. Wisd. 10:1 sqq.).
V. The first sin was fraught with peculiar consequences by reason of the singularly privileged state of its authors. The Second Council of Orange, can. I, and the Council of Trent have defined these consequences. “The first man Adam, having transgressed the mandate of God in Paradise, at once lost the sanctity and justice in which he had been constituted; and incurred, through the offence of his prevarication, the anger and indignation of God, and, therefore, the death with which God had previously threatened him, and together with death, captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is of the devil; Adam, through the offence of that prevarication, underwent a complete change for the worse in body and soul” (Council of Trent, sess. v. can. 1). In a word: Adam lost all his absolute and relative supernatural endowments. He became subject to the power of the devil, inasmuch as, having been overcome and despoiled of his strength and of his claim on heaven, he was henceforth at the mercy of his conqueror.
Although the complete deterioration of man was brought about by the loss of supernatural endowments, it must not be conceived as a merely external change, such e.g. as would arise from the loss of a garment. The loss of sanctifying grace and of all the privileges of original integrity affects the inmost powers of the soul, intellect, and will, and the command of the soul over the body, and leaves man in a state of languor and disease. Not only is man disabled for salutary works; his higher aims are taken away from him, and his natural inclination for selfish pleasures is allowed free play.
VI. The corruption consequent upon Adam’s sin had a twofold bearing, viz. upon his person arid upon his nature. His personal deterioration immediately affected only his will; it was caused by the will, and its permanence was more or less dependent upon the disposition of the will. The corruption of his nature, on the contrary, affected all the faculties rooted in the substance of the soul, and the will itself, in as far as the will is part of human nature. Again, the personal corruption attacks the mind (or soul) only in itself, whereas the corruption of nature attacks the mind in its relations to the body, and leaves no part of the whole compound unharmed. It appears, however, most strikingly in the insubordination of the generative appetite, which is the means of its transmission to all mankind.
VII. Holy Scripture applies the significant name “reign of death” to nature corrupted by sin (Rom. 5:14). The supernatural life and glory of “the image of God” being lost through the envy of the devil, human nature remained naked, disfigured, and disabled; the soul was spiritually dead, and the body doomed to death. In that state, the soul, like a corpse, was prone to further corruption, and liable to become every day more unfit for the reception of new life.
VIII. We need not insist upon the penal character of the corruption of nature, which is self-evident; but it is important to fix its guiltiness. Original justice, with all its privileges, was not a gift without a concomitant obligation. Man was not at liberty to accept or to refuse it, or, having accepted it, to cast it off at his own pleasure. It was a gift entrusted to the keeping of man, and man’s perfection in the eyes of God was made dependent upon its possession. Hence, when by his own free will Adam cast off the trust held under such obligation, that is when he despoiled himself of his supernatural glory, he was answerable for, and guilty of, the consequent deterioration of his nature.
A difficulty here presents itself: “Culpability results from a personal act; but the withdrawal of the supernatural gifts was not a personal act of Adam, hence their loss cannot be imputed to him.” As regards the loss of sanctity, the answer has been given already, viz. mortal sin makes the soul unfit for sanctifying grace, so that the author of mortal sin excludes and expels grace from his soul by his own act. As regards the loss of integrity another explanation is required. St. Thomas and his disciples say that sanctity and integrity formed one solidary whole, wherefore Adam, by willingly excluding sanctity, also willingly expelled integrity. The early Franciscan school views this matter in another light: the possession of both sanctity and integrity depended upon the keeping of the Divine mandate; wherefore Adam, by transgressing this, voluntarily forfeited both. These two views do not exclude one another. The Thomistic conception accounts better for the loss of justice as a personal fault of Adam; the other shows better why the fault and guilt of Adam can be inherited by his posterity. See for this and the following sections, St. Thomas, 1 2, qq. 81–83; Stapleton, De Justif., ll. i.–iii.; Bellarmine, De Amiss. Gratiæ, ll. iv.–vi.
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