Human Beings as the Cause of Sin

The first sin of the first man is transmitted to his descendants by way of origin, and therefore is called original sin.In a sense, all men are one; they are one in nature; they are one in origin. In Adam’s sin, human nature sinned; that naturesinned in which all men are one. As a murder committed by the hand would not be the hand’s fault, yet would be imputed to the hand as part of the murderer’s person, so Adam’s sin appears inhis descendants as members of the human nature that sinned. Adam’s sin is imputed to his descendants as the murder is imputed to the “guilty hand” of the murderer.

As the original justice of Adam was to be transmitted to his descendants, so was the disordering of that justice to be transmitted. Original sin is transmitted, but no other actual sin of the first parent, or of any parent, is transmitted to descendants.

The original sin is transmitted to all men except to Christ, who is God-made-man, and to those whom God, through Christ,exempts from the common human heritage of sin. {-The Immaculate Mother of God was never infected with original sin. This doctrine of the faith had not been defined in the day of St. Thomas Aquinas; it was defined in 1854.-}

If God were to make a man miraculously from human flesh, but not by the normal process of generation, that man would not contract the original sin. For original sin is “the sin of nature,” and is transmitted only by way of nature, that is, by generation.

If Eve alone had sinned, her sin would not have been transmitted to descendants. For in the order of nature the active principle of propagation is the male principle. Hence, it is Adam’s sin, not Eve’s, that is transmitted.