FOURTH ARTICLE: THE CONSEQUENCES OF ORIGINAL SIN[1615]

1. By original sin man was despoiled of the gratuitous gifts. This doctrine is of faith. Man lost sanctifying grace and the annexed gifts. This privation of grace as the habitual aversion from God and as voluntary by the will of the head of the human race has the nature of guilt, but when it is inflicted by God it is a penalty.

Man lost also the four preternatural gifts that belong to integrity: immunity from death, from pain, from concupiscence, and from ignorance. He was reduced to the servitude of the devil and sin, from which he cannot be freed except by grace.

2. Man was wounded in his natural endowments, although he preserved his nature and the nature of his faculties. The Second Council of Orange[1616] and the Council of Trent[1617] say that "in body and soul man was changed for the worse"; and the Council of Trent adds that his "free will was weakened and deformed in its exercise."[1618]

St. Thomas and theologians in general enumerate four wounds of the soul: "Inasmuch as reason was deprived of its order to truth we have the wound of ignorance; inasmuch as the will was deprived of the order to good we have the wound of malice; inasmuch as the irascible appetite was deprived of its order to the difficult we have the wound of weakness; inasmuch as concupiscence was deprived of the order to the delectable moderated by reason we have the wound of concupiscence."[1619]

Doubt. Whether man is weaker to accomplish moral good of the natural order in the state of unredeemed fallen nature than he would have been in the state of pure nature. In other words, does the wounding of nature consist only in the loss of the gratuitous gifts, or does it include the weakening of the natural powers?

There are three principal opinions.

1. Some theologians hold that the powers of fallen man have been intrinsically reduced by his positive habit of being inclined to changeable goods. Such is the opinion of Henry of Ghent, Gabriel Biel, and certain ancient writers. The Jansenists held an exaggerated form of this opinion.

2. Others hold that man's powers for moral good have in no way been diminished. This view is held by Suarez, Bellarmine, and by the theologians of the Society of Jesus, among them, Mazzella, Palmieri, and Pesch.

3. Others teach that the natural powers of fallen man have been weakened, not intrinsically,—but extrinsically, because of the placing of an obstacle. This is the opinion of Thomists in general: Alvarez, Lemos, John of St. Thomas, Contenson, the Salmanticenses, Goudin, Billuart, Gonet in his Clypeus, in which he amended what he had taught earlier in his Manual, St. Alphonsus, and Tanquerey.

This last opinion seems to be more in accord with the doctrine of St. Thomas; the first opinion sins by excess, and the second by defect. St. Thomas proposes the question, whether sin diminishes the good of nature. He replies by explaining the words of Venerable Bede, "Man was despoiled of the gratuitous gifts and wounded in his natural powers." "The good of nature," St. Thomas says, "is threefold. First, the principles of nature, by which are constituted the nature itself and the properties caused by these principles, such as the powers of the soul. Secondly, because man has from nature an inclination to virtue, as we said above,[1620] the inclination to virtue is itself a certain good of nature. Thirdly, the gift of original justice, which was given to the whole human race in the first man, can be called a good of nature."

"The first good of nature is not lost nor is it diminished by sin. The third good of nature is completely lost by the sin of our first parent. But the second good of nature, the natural inclination to virtue, is diminished by sin."[1621] Following this, St. Thomas treats of the four wounds "inflicted on all human nature by the sin of the first man."

What is the extrinsic impediment which diminishes the powers of the soul? Many Thomists reply as follows: The faculties of the soul and its properties, like the essence of the soul itself, do not admit of reduction or increase, because they are entirely spiritual and therefore incorruptible and unalterable. They cannot therefore suffer intrinsic diminution. But in the state of fallen nature man is born habitually and directly averse to God his supernatural end, and indirectly averse to God his ultimate natural end, since every sin that is directly opposed to the supernatural law is indirectly opposed to the natural law, commanding us to obey God in everything. When Adam sinned, he turned all his posterity away from God the author of nature.

In the state of pure nature this aversion would not have existed because there had been no sin and man would have been born capable of positive conversion to God and of aversion to God. Hence in the state of pure nature man would have been more capable of turning to God than the man who is born with an aversion to God. This aversion is a wounding of the will, which, as St. Thomas says, "is deprived of the order to good."[1622] Thus we see how man's free will is "weakened in its powers and inclined (to evil)," in the words of the Council of Trent. From this follows the wound of ignorance, particularly in the practical intellect, because everyone arrives at a practical judgment according to his inclination. If this inclination is not right, the intellect is inclined to error. Similarly the wounds of weakness and concupiscence follow in the sensitive appetite, because the higher faculties are not strong enough to direct the sensitive appetite as they should. Hence fallen man is compared to man in the state of pure nature not only as a stripped man to a naked man but as a wounded man to a healthy man.[1623]