IV. ORIGINAL SIN IN TRADITION
On account of a superficial resemblance between the doctrine of original sin and and the Manichaean theory of our nature being evil, the
Pelagians accused the Catholics and St. Augustine of Manichaeism. For the accusation and its answer see "Contra duas epist. Pelag.", I, II, 4; V, 10; III, IX, 25; IV, III. In our own times this charge has been reiterated by several critics and historians of dogma who have been influenced by the fact that before his conversion St. Augustine was a Manichaean. They do not identify Manichaeism with the doctrine of original sin, but they say that St. Augustine, with the remains of his former Manichaean prejudices, created the doctrine of original sin unknown before his time. It is not true that the doctrine of original sin does not appear in the works of the pre-Augustinian Fathers.
On the contrary, their testimony is found in special works on the subject. Nor can it be said, as Harnack maintains, that St. Augustine himself acknowledges the absence of this doctrine in the writings of the Fathers.
St. Augustine invokes the testimony of eleven Fathers, Greek as well as Latin (Contra Jul., II, x, 33).
Baseless also is the assertion that before St. Augustine this doctrine was unknown to the Jews and to the Christians; as we have already shown,
it was taught by St. Paul. It
is found in the fourth Book of Esdras, a work written by a Jew in the first century after Christ and widely read by the
Christians. This book represents
Adam as the author of the fall of the human race (vii, 48), as having transmitted to all his posterity the permanent infirmity, the malignity, the bad seed of sin (iii, 21, 22; iv, 30).
Protestants themselves admit the doctrine of original sin in this book and others of the same period (see Sanday, "The International Critical Commentary: Romans", 134, 137; Hastings, "A Dictionary of the Bible", I, 841). It is therefore
impossible to make
St. Augustine, who is of a much later date, the
inventor of original sin.
That this doctrine existed in
Christian tradition before St. Augustine's time
is shown by the practice of the Church in the baptism of children. The
Pelagians held that baptism was given to children, not to remit their sin, but to make them better, to give them supernatural life, to make them
adoptive sons of God, and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven (see St. Augustine, "De peccat. meritis", I, xviii).
The Catholics answered by citing the Nicene Creed, "Confiteor unum baptisma in remissiomen peccatorum".
They reproached the Pelagians with introducing two baptisms, one for adults to remit sins, the other for children with no such purpose. Catholics argued, too, from the ceremonies of baptism, which suppose the child to be under the power of evil, i.e.,
exorcisms, abjuration of
Satan made by the sponsor in the name of the child [Aug., loc. cit., xxxiv, 63; Denz., n. 140 (96)].
V. ORIGINAL SIN IN FACE OF THE OBJECTIONS FROM REASON
We do not pretend to prove the existence of original sin by arguments from reason only.
St. Thomas makes use of a philosophical proof which proves the existence rather of some kind of decadence than of sin, and he considers his proof as probable only,
satis probabiliter probari potest (Contra Gent., IV, lii). Many
Protestants and
Jansenists and some Catholics hold the doctrine of original sin to be necessary in philosophy, and the only means of solving the problem of the existence of evil. This is exaggerated and impossible to prove. It suffices to show that human reason has no serious objection against this doctrine which is founded on Revelation. The objections of Rationalists usually spring from a false concept of our dogma.
They attack either the transmission of a sin or the idea of an injury inflicted on his race by the first man, of a decadence of the human race. Here we shall answer only the second category of objections, the others will be considered under a later head (VII).
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