Creation Cursed. WAS: why I am not a Hindoo

[David Morris]

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11312a.htm

"III. ORIGINAL SIN IN SCRIPTURE

The classical text is Rom., v, 12 sqq. In the preceding part the apostle 
treats of justification by Jesus Christ, and to put in evidence the fact of 
His being the one Saviour, he contrasts with this Divine Head of mankind the 
human head who caused its ruin. [...]

1.  The sin of Adam has injured the human race at least in the sense that it 
has introduced death- "Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world 
and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men". [..]

2.  Adam by his fault transmitted to us not only death but also sin- " for 
as by the disobedience of one man many [i.e., all men] were made sinners" 
(Rom., v, 19). How then could the Pelagians, and at a later period Zwingli, 
say that St. Paul speaks only of the transmission of physical death? If 
according to them we must read death where the Apostle wrote sin, we should 
also read that the disobedience of Adam has made us mortal where the Apostle 
writes that it has made us sinners. But the word sinner has never meant 
mortal, nor has sin ever meant death. Also in verse 12, which corresponds to 
verse 19, we see that by one man two things have been brought on all men, 
sin and death, the one being the consequence of the other and therefore not 
identical with it.

3.  Since Adam transmits death to his children by way of generation when he 
begets them mortal, it is by generation also that he transmits to them sin, 
for the Apostle presents these two effects as produced at the same time and 
by the same causality.

"There can be no sin that is not voluntary, the learned and the ignorant 
admit this evident truth", writes St. Augustine (De vera relig., xiv, 27). 
Original sin is not an act but, as already explained, a state, a permanent 
privation, and this can be voluntary indirectly- just as a drunken man is 
deprived of his reason and incapable of using his liberty, yet it is by his 
free fault that he is in this state and hence his drunkenness, his privation 
of reason is voluntary and can be imputed to him. But how can original sin 
be even indirectly voluntary for a child that has never used its personal 
free will? Certain Protestants hold that a child on coming to the use of 
reason will consent to its original sin; but in reality no one ever thought 
of giving this consent. Besides, even before the use of reason, sin is 
already in the soul, according to the data of Tradition regarding the 
baptism of children and the sin contracted by generation."


>From: Doug Millison <DMillison at ftmg.net>
>Untrue and misleading. Mainstream Christianity posits a beneficient God who 
>created the universe out of love.
>
>"David Morris "
>  All except maybe the most mystic forms of Xianity believe this world is 
>conflicted at its core and being directly ruled by an evil force with only 
>itermitent help from a God who lost possesion at the fall.
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