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verified only with the exercise of the active reproductive
powers…. They alone contract original sin who descend
from Adam through the exercise of these powers derived
from him by way of origin.”
11
Because of his personal sin (
peccatum originale origi-
nans
), Adam lost the state of original justice that he would
have been able to pass along with human nature to his
posterity.The state of original sin in his posterity (
peccatum
originale originatum
) is nothing other than the privation
or absence of original justice and the resulting disorder in
the powers that is called concupiscence.
Formally, then, original sin is the absence of sanctifying
grace in the substance of the soul. It does not involve what
is proper to actual sin: there is no conscious turning away
from God and toward the creaturely instead of him. That
positive orientation to God that is at the root of original
justice is absent, and with it an effective moral direction is
also lacking. “As a result [of the loss of original justice,] all
the powers of the soul are in a sense lacking an order proper
to them, their natural order to virtue.”
12
Man’s moral powers
are thus in need of healing grace to overcome ignorance,
malice, weakness and concupiscence.
With the loss of original justice, sanctifying grace
comes to us, not by way of the human nature inherited from
Adam, but by redemption through the new Adam, Jesus
Christ. Original sin is not an inclination to evil, but a lack
of facility in choosing the good. Its character is essentially
privative, not positive.
We are not born bad
. Without the
grace of original justice that once directed them, man’s
natural powers are no longer aimed at the ultimate Good.
Their restoration now involves a struggle against sin and
11 ST 1a2ae. 81, 4
12 ST 1a2ae. 85, 3