On the Virginal Conception, and On Original Sin: Chapter 3
ON THE VIRGINAL CONCEPTION, AND ON ORIGINAL SIN
weighs down the soul"2—especially when, as in infancy and in the mother's womb,the body is so weak that one cannot even understand justice—it appears to be necessary that in infants human nature is born with the debt of making recompense for the first sin, which it had the power to avoid always, and with the debt of having original justice, which it had the power to preserve always.
Nor does its powerlessness in those infants excuse human nature for not paying back in them what it owes, since it brought that powerlessness upon itself by abandoning justice in its first parents, in whom the whole of human nature existed; and it is always indebted to have the power that it received for the sake of always preserving justice. This condition can be regarded as original sin in infants.
Let us also add the sins of the more immediate ancestors, which are repaid "unto the third and fourth generation."3 For one might wonder whether all these are to be reckoned as original sin or not.Yet because I do not wish to be seen as trivializing original sin by raising this question, I will stipulate that original sin is such that no one could show it to be any more serious.
Chapter 3 That sin exists only in a rational will But whether original sin is this whole thing4 or something less, I think it cannot in any way be said to exist in an infant before the infant has a rational soul, just as there was no justice in Adam before he was made a rational human being. For even if Adam and Eve had produced offspring without having sinned in the meantime, justice would not and could not have been in their seed before it was formed into a living human being.So if the seed of a human being is not capable of acquiring justice before it becomes a human being, it also cannot acquire original sin before it is a human being.
Indeed, there is no doubt that original sin is an instance of injustice.After all, given that every sin is an instance of injustice and original sin is sin, original sin is clearly an instance of injustice. If someone were to say that not every sin is an instance of injustice, he would be saying that it is possible for there to be some sin in a person and yet, at the same time, for there to be no injustice in that person—and that seems unintelligible. Now if someone were to say instead that original sin should not be called sin in an unqualified sense, but only
2 Wisdom 9:15.
3 Cf. Exodus 20:5 ff.
4 By 'this whole thing' (hoc totum) Anselm appears to mean the combination of the effects of the sin of Adam and Eve with the effects of the sins of our more immediate ancestors.