How can we know that there is such a thing as original sin and how can we know what it is? Not by the resources of natural human reason alone, but by those of divine revelation and supernatural faith. The Church teaches that there is a sin we contract but did not commit, which is the ‘death of the soul’. Theologians have explained original sin in various ways, including as the ‘loss of original justice’. The Church rejects a complete identification of original sin with concupiscence, which is rather a cause and effect of sin. St Thomas’s account of original sin combines concupiscence as a secondary element of it with the loss of original justice as its primary element.
11 November 2024
What Is It and How Do We Know?
With Fr Simon Francis Gaine, OP, DPhil (Oxon), Fellow & Lector, Fundamental and Dogmatic Theology, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, Director & Pinckaers Chair in Theological Anthropology and Ethics, Faculty of Theology, Angelicum, Rome.
How can we know that there is such a thing as original sin and how can we know what it is? Not by the resources of natural human reason alone, but by those of divine revelation and supernatural faith. The Church teaches that there is a sin we contract but did not commit, which is the ‘death of the soul’. Theologians have explained original sin in various ways, including as the ‘loss of original justice’. The Church rejects a complete identification of original sin with concupiscence, which is rather a cause and effect of sin. St Thomas’s account of original sin combines concupiscence as a secondary element of it with the loss of original justice as its primary element.
How can we know that there is such a thing as original sin and how can we know what it is? Not by the resources of natural human reason alone, but by those of divine revelation and supernatural faith. The Church teaches that there is a sin we contract but did not commit, which is the ‘death of the soul’. Theologians have explained original sin in various ways, including as the ‘loss of original justice’. The Church rejects a complete identification of original sin with concupiscence, which is rather a cause and effect of sin. St Thomas’s account of original sin combines concupiscence as a secondary element of it with the loss of original justice as its primary element.
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