7. The word natura in Latin being actually derived from nascor, "1 am born."
38 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees back the very harm he has done. The Pelagians can certainly square this state ment with their own doctrine, and say that that is precisely why the sins ofothers have never done babies any harm, because, as I said, "Sins do no harm to any nature except its own." What they fail to observe is that the reason original sin is contracted by babies, who of course pertain to human nature, is that in the first human beings it was human nature that sinned, and thus it is true that no sins did human nature any harm except its own.5 lt was indeed through one man, in whom all sinned, that sin entered the world;6 1 did not say, after all, that sins do no harm to any human being, but to any nature except its own.
Again, there is what l said a little later on in the same place: "There is no natural evil"; they could look for a similar escape route here, except for the fact that this refers to nature such as it was originally established without any flaw; that, after all, is what is really and properly said to be the nature of man. But we use the word in a transferred sense to call "nature" what a person is actually born with;7 and it is that manner of talking the apostle was using when he said: Forwe too were once by nature children of wrath, like the rest also (Eph 2:3).
This work begins with the words: "lfthe Manichees were to choose the sort of people they meant to deceive."
5. This is a crucial, a basic point about Augustine's doctrine of original sin, one stressed also by Aquinas, and an essential element in the Catholic doctrine: that original sin is not a personal sin, not an offense committed against God by any individual, not even by Adam and Eve, but is a "sin of nature." The expression "original sin," for which Augustine does bear much responsibility, is an unfortunate one, because "sin" does properly mean an act (or omission) committed by some person or persons; and human nature, not being an individual person or group of persons cannot commit any actual sin, or indeed perform any act—though it is true he says here, very carelessly, "1n the first human beings it was human nature that sinned." But as human nature was at that point concentrated, so to say , in the first couple, it may be said to have sinned through being vitiated by that first sin actually committed by our first parents. So it suffers from an ingrained flaw or vice, and that is what is transmitted to children through their parents, from Adam and Eve on, together with the nature of which it is the flaw or vice. For Augustine this flaw or vice is concupiscentia, the lust inherent in the genital act; for Aquinas and a better, more developed theology, it is the lack of the grace of original justice, with which Adam and Eve were created, and which they forfeited by their actual sin. 6. See Rom 5:12. 7. The word natura in Latin being actually derived from nascor, "1 am born."