On the Virginal Conception, and On Original Sin: Chapter 24
ON THE VIRGINAL CONCEPTION, AND ON ORIGINAL SIN
personal will, as was the case with Adam, but the natural deficiency that the nature itself has received from Adam. For there was nothing of human nature that was outside Adam; in him human nature was stripped of the justice that it had possessed, and it always lacks justice unless it receives help. It is for this reason—because the nature subsists in persons and persons do not exist without the nature—that the nature makes the persons of infants sinful. In this way, a person deprived the nature of the good of justice that it had possessed in Adam, and the nature, having become deficient, makes all the persons whom it procreates from itself to be sinful and unjust in virtue of that same deficiency. In this way the personal sin of Adam is transmitted to all those who are propagated naturally from him, and in them it is original or natural sin.
But clearly there is a great distance between Adam's sin and theirs, since he sinned by his own will, whereas they sin by the natural necessity that Adam's own and personal will earned for them.Yet although no one will doubt that unequal sins are not punished equally,the condemnation for original sin is like that for personal sin in this respect: no one is admitted into the kingdom of God, for which human beings were made, except through the death of Christ, for only the death of Christ pays back what is owed on account of Adam's sin.
Nevertheless, not everyone earns equal torment in hell. For after the day of judgment every angel and every human being will be either in the kingdom of God or in hell. So in this way it is true both that the sin of infants is less than Adam's sin, and yet that no one is saved apart from that universal recompense by which sin both great and small is forgiven. Now why there is no recompense apart from that death, and how through that death there is salvation for human beings, I have investigated and explained in the aforementioned book, so far as God granted it to me.
Chapter 24 That the sins of ancestors after Adam are not counted in the original sin of their descendants Now I do not hold that the sins of one's more immediate ancestors belong to original sin. Certainly if Adam had not had the power to pass along his own justice to those whom he was going to generate,there is no way he could have transmitted his own injustice to them. So, given that no one after Adam has had the power to preserve his own justice for his children, I see no reason why the sins of more immediate ancestors should be imputed to the souls of their descendants. Furthermore, no one doubts that infants do not preserve rectitude of will for the sake of rectitude itself. In this respect, therefore, they are all equally unjust, since they have none of the justice that every human being ought to have. This absence of justice passes to all of them from Adam, in whom human nature deprived itself of this justice. For even if in Adam some
BASIC WRITINGS
justice remained in human nature, so that it was able to preserve an upright will in some matters, it was at any rate deprived of the gift by which it could conserve justice for itself for the benefit of its posterity; thus it cannot reproduce itself in any of them with any justice at all. Indeed, human nature could not take away from itself in infants anything more than all justice and the happiness that is not given to anyone who lacks any of the justice that is owed.
And it does not seem possible that the injustice of one's more immediate ancestors can increase this absence of justice, than which no greater deprivation can pass to infants from Adam's sin. For where there is no justice, no justice can be taken away. But where justice cannot be taken away, no injustice can be added. Therefore, unjust parents cannot add any injustice to their infants beyond the absence of justice I have already described. On the other hand, where there is no justice, nothing prevents justice from being added. Therefore, if unjust parents are said to add some injustice to their infants, it seems more probable and more possible that just parents can give some justice to their infants. If that happens, the children of the just possess some justice. But if that is the case, they suffer less severe condemnation than the children of the unjust if they die unbaptized; or if they are saved, they are among the elect because of some antecedent merit of their own. But the Apostle Paul denies this in the passage where he uses the example of Jacob and Esau to prove that no one is saved except by grace that precedes any merits.44 And so since just parents do not bestow justice on their children before baptism, neither do unjust parents add injustice to their children.
But someone might say, "Unjust parents do not add any injustice to their children, from whom they cannot take away any justice. But they do make more serious the original injustice that their children possess from Adam.
Therefore, the just also make original injustice less severe in their children.
Hence, given that the children of the just are less unjust than the children of the unjust, they deserve less condemnation." If someone has the nerve to say this and can show that it is true, let him say it. I am not so daring, since I see the children of both the just and the unjust being chosen for the grace of baptism and being rejected from it.And if someone does say this, he will not be able to prove it. In fact, someone is more just than another just person only if by his will he either pursues or avoids more strongly what he ought to; similarly,someone is more unjust than another unjust person only if he either loves or spurns more strongly what he ought not. Therefore, if it cannot be shown that as soon as infants have souls,one wills more or less strongly what he ought or ought not than does some other, no one can prove that one infant is born more or less just than any other. Therefore, it does not seem that the just by 44 Romans 10:9–13.