One doctrinal position separating the fractured body of Christ on earth is the issue of original sin. Non-Catholics, such as the late evangelical Bible scholar Dr. Michael Heiser and many Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters, argue that Adam’s and Eve’s sin in the Garden transmitted to all people death alone. Nothing else was passed on. Catholics, on the other hand, say that Adam also passed on a corrupted human nature—that our hearts are stony and selfish instead of overflowing with supernatural love and life (sanctifying grace). Let’s look at Scripture and Tradition to see the evidence for the Catholic point of view.
First, original sin can be seen in Genesis 3, where God walks in the Garden of Eden with the first humans in the same environment as the tree of life (v. 8). God’s moving presence indicates his close, positive relationship with humanity. The tree of life could indicate not only immortality, but the supernatural life of God within Adam. When Adam and Eve disobey God, they (and humanity) are cast out of his presence in the Garden. An angel blocks humanity’s entrance back into communion with God (Gen. 3:24). The tree of life is left with God alone. All of humanity grows outside the Garden, and since communion with the walking God is not described outside the Garden, Adam and every other person passes on a human nature devoid of communion with God and immortality. Humans’ location alone suggests this.
Second, original sin can be gleaned from Genesis 2:17’s description of death. This text says that Adam will “die” if he disobeys God’s command not to consume the forbidden fruit. Yet when Adam disobeyed God, he did not die in the sense that we usually understand death. He was cast out of the Garden of Eden and had a couple of children (Gen. 4:1-2). So the question naturally presents itself: what died? God’s life within him. The perfect, otherworldly love that he had radiating out from his being was snuffed out. Adam did in fact die, but spiritually. His communion with God, walking around in the Garden with him, ended. Since humans can pass on to the next generation only what they themselves possess, so every person afterward received a lifeless and selfish heart.
This idea of spiritual death from Gen. 2:17 pairs well with the writings of the earliest Christians. For instance, the Shepherd of Hermas (first century) says, “Before a man bears the name of the Son of God, he is dead” (3:9:16). Spiritual death or a wounded human nature is a real thing. Pseudo-Constantius says, “All men sinned [quoting Rom. 5:12]. . . . The apostle is here referring to the death of the soul, which is the death Adam suffered when he transgressed” (137). This seems to be a clear interpretation of Gen. 2:17 as a reference to spiritual death. St. Irenaeus of Lyons claims that the “life” dwelling within Adam was lost due to disobedience—that man was “created by God that he might live” but lost that “life” through the “serpent” who “corrupted” him (Against Heresies 3.23.1). This corruption could be taken as original sin: that loss of God’s life that took place at the expulsion of Adam from the Garden. This “corrupted” Adam, for he was no longer possessing God’s interior life of love within him.
In his Catechesis on Original Sin, Pope St. John Paul II says that God’s life was eliminated from Adam and the rest of humanity at the Fall. He says, “Sanctifying grace has ceased to constitute that supernatural enrichment of that nature which the first parents” possessed (V, 5). God’s life is gone, which implies that man is today born in a “state of sinfulness” (II, 2). The pope references the Council of Trent’s “Decree Concerning Original Sin,” which said that Adam experienced a “death of the soul,” which he “transmitted to the whole human race” (Session 5.2). Notice the strong similarity to Genesis 2:17.
Later in the text, the pope quotes Romans 5:18-19 as an indication of original sin. This text points out an inseparable link between Adam’s sin and the state of every human person. St. Paul says that Adam’s sin led to all men being made sinners and being labelled as condemned. Adam’s “divorced” location from God’s Garden of Eden, as with every human being, implies this. An inherited human nature that is corrupted and selfish can be called these things.
Now, lest this seem unfair, the Catechism clarifies that “original sin is called ‘sin’ only in an analogical sense: it is a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’—a state and not an act” (404). Although Christians did not commit Adam’s sin in the Garden, the early Christian writers bring out the radical connection between Adam and all of humanity.
These writers say striking things. St. Ambrose (c. A.D. 376) says, “In Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of paradise, in Adam I died” (136). Tertullian (207-212) speaks of humans being either “in Adam” or “in Christ” (Against Marcion 5:10). These words emphasize the mysterious collective reality to human beings. There seem to be two groups: the “body” of Adam and the “body” of Christ.
It was not only these early Christian writers who held to the idea of original sin. Ludwig Ott notes that St. Augustine, in Contra Julianum, quotes Irenaeus, Cyprian, Reticius of Autun, Olympius, Hilary, Ambrose, Innocent I, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Basil, and Jerome as teaching original sin (109). They all would recognize the inherent link between Adam and his descendants.
The God of love and the tree of life remain in the Garden, but people are born on the peripheries. Outside the Garden of Eden, no human can properly be considered to be filled with God’s life at conception. Adam lost that gift, and his progeny receive what he had—a human nature without friendship with God. More could be said about what the bad fruits of original sin lost (e.g., concupiscence), and more arguments could be brought forth (e.g., Ps. 51:5), but this should help with discussions between Catholics and non-Catholics.