On the Virginal Conception, and On Original Sin: Chapter 29
BASIC WRITINGS
demand from a nature what he himself did not give and what is not owed to him; nor does one human being justly accuse another for being born with a fault with which he was born himself, and from which he is cleansed only through someone else. God, by contrast, rightly demands from a nature what he gave that nature, and what is justly owed to him.
But even this judgment by which infants are damned is not, if one thinks it over, very far removed from the judgment of human beings. Suppose a man and his wife who have been promoted to some great dignity and possession, not by their own merit but by grace alone, together commit some serious crime for which there is no excuse, and because of this crime they are justly dispossessed and reduced to servitude.Who would say that the children they have after their condemnation do not deserve to be subjected to servitude as well, but rather should by grace be restored to those good things that their parents justly lost? This is how things stand with our first parents and the children whom they had in that exile from happiness and into misery to which they had been justly condemned on account of their own fault.And so similar judgments should be made about these similar cases, except that the judgment about the latter case should be stricter to the extent that their wrongdoing can be shown to be more indefensible.
Finally, every human being is either saved or damned. Everyone who is saved is admitted into the kingdom of heaven, and everyone who is damned is shut out.Whoever is admitted is made like the angels, in whom there never was and never will be any sin; and that cannot take place as long as there is any stain of sin in him. And so it is impossible for any human being to be saved with any sin, however small. Hence, if what I have called original sin is any sort of sin, it is necessary that every human being born in original sin is damned unless that sin is forgiven.
Chapter 29 In what way their inability to have justice excuses them after baptism
I have said that the inability to have justice does not excuse the injustice of infants. So perhaps someone will ask,"If there is sin—that is, injustice—in an infant before baptism, and it is not excused because of the infant's inability to have justice, as you claim, and if the only sin forgiven in baptism is the sin that was present before baptism, then, given that after baptism the infant is still without justice for as long as it remains an infant, and is not capable of understanding the justice it ought to preserve (assuming that justice is indeed rectitude of will preserved for its own sake), how is the infant not unjust even after it has been baptized? Therefore, if a baptized infant dies in infancy but not immediately after baptism, when it does not yet know how to repent, it departs
ON THE VIRGINAL CONCEPTION, AND ON ORIGINAL SIN
from this life unjust, even as it would have done before baptism, because it does not have the required justice and its inability to have justice does not excuse it; nor is it admitted to the kingdom of God, into which no unjust person is welcomed. The Catholic Church does not accept this. But if an infant is forgiven in baptism for a sin that will be committed later in infancy, why not also for those sins that it will commit in later life?"
My answer is that in baptism the sins that existed before baptism are completely wiped out. For this reason, the original inability to possess justice is not imputed as sin to those who have already been baptized, as it was before.
Therefore, just as before baptism this inability could not excuse the absence of justice because that inability was culpable, so also after baptism that inability completely excuses the absence of justice, since the inability remains but is no longer culpable. This is how it happens that the justice that infants owed before baptism, without anything to excuse them, is not demanded from them as something required once they have been baptized. So as long as it is solely because of that original inability that they do not possess justice, they are not unjust, since there is no absence of required justice in them. For something is not required if it is impossible and not at all culpable. So if they die in this state, they are not damned, because they are not unjust. Instead, through the justice of Christ, who gave himself on their behalf, and through the justice of the faith of their mother the Church, which believes on their behalf, they are saved as though they were just.
I have offered this brief account of original sin so far as my own understanding permits, more by way of exploration than assertion, until God reveals a better account to me in some way. But if anyone has come to a different view,
I will reject no one's opinion if it can be proved true.