I'm interested in both Catholic and Orthodox answers to how Adam's sin was passed on.
Catholic doctrines around the blessed Mary, seem to imply genetic transfer of sin. That is you get it from you parents. It appears to me as a non "Cathodox" Christian, that Catholics believe that blessed Mary had to be sinless so as not to pass sin onto Christ?
I have always held to "federal" view of Adam's sin from Rom 5:12. Adam as our human representative, chose sin and that impacted us, as we were represented by him and impacted by his choice. The effects of Adamic sin doesn't come from our parents but from Adam's headship of humanity. However Christ, being the 2nd person of the trinity, was not under Adam's headship, so Adam's sins effect was not transmitted to him.
Is standard Catholic position that sin is passed directly from our parents?
Adam does not pass
sin to his progeny. We don’t say “God made me do sin” through our creation or “heredity made me sin.” Sin is a voluntary immoral act of thought, word, or deed. Thus, the act of sin must be done willingly and with knowledge that the act is evil. Adam knew he sinned, so we know it was a disobedient act, you might say he protested the restrictions of eating fruit. As a result, Adam has guilt and is punished as are his progeny.
His punishment was the corruption of his body and the deprivation of his original justice. Privation of justice elicits disordered desire, hence the original sin The same justice and honor we receive in Baptism. “Justice is uprightness rectitude-of-will kept for its own sake.” [St. Anselm, On Truth, 12]. Continuing Anselm said, “Justice is not rightness of knowledge or rightness of action but is rightness of will.” [St. Anselm, On Truth, 12]. The will is contained in the intellect of man, thus ‘to will’ something is, by the definition, an act. As we are, Adam was free to act either in obedience or in disobedience. Prior to his original act of rebellion, Adam 'abides' in God. This abiding would have been more intense than abiding in Christ when partaking in the Eucharist. [Cf. John 6:57].
This corruption and deprivation are not passed on by heredity of the flesh but rather being a member of humanity.
"An individual can be considered either as an individual or as part of a whole, a member of a society . . . . Considered in the second way an act can be his although he has not done it himself, nor has it been done by his free will but by the rest of the society or by its head, the nation being considered as doing what the prince does. For a society is considered as a single man of whom the individuals are the different members (St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 12). Thus the multitude of men who receive their human nature from Adam is to be considered as a single community or rather as a single body . . . . If the man, whose privation of original justice is due to Adam, is considered as a private person, this privation is not his 'fault', for a fault is essentially voluntary. If, however, we consider him as a member of the family of Adam, as if all men were only one man, then his privation partakes of the nature of sin on account of its voluntary origin, which is the actual sin of Adam" (St. Thomas Aquinas, De Malo, 4, 1).
Hence, when our patriarch enters into war with God and reparations are demanded of all in the nation of man, whether or not a participant, pay the price. Consequently, we are deprived of original justice until we ‘get right’ with God, justification. Once more without justification all acts whether good or evil are avaricious.
So far, from Adam to Jesus Christ the nature of man remains unchanged, being created good. The Marian doctrines are no different, they do not change nature.
The focus of the Marian doctrines is Jesus Christ, not Mary. Christians understand Christ to be a person with the inexplicably union of nature of God and the nature of man, both without mixing mingling or confusion in one essence or hypostasis. So, we whatever is said of Jesus’ divinity can be said of His. Jesus is said to be just like us in every way except sin. [Hebrews 4:14]. Being like us then when God puts on flesh [John 1:14] in conception the same way as man and is begotten, not made, born of woman.
This woman then becomes the equivalent of the ark of Moses, and literally the ark of the New Covenant, Jesus. Immaculate conception pronounces that the woman that played this role in Christ’s life never knew sin, either original or actual sin. Her role becomes crucial in bringing us the One True Unblemished Lamb of God. Otherwise, our faith devolves into mysticism, the God/man becomes a pagan mystic. If one argues that Jesus Christ was a bubble baby, protected from His mother in the womb so as not to contact original sin transmitted by flesh, there is still the hurdle of being born of woman. We can make a phantom of Christ, putting on and taking off ‘flesh’ when ever He changes roles as Divine or human. Without an immaculate Mary one must imagine the Christ Child (who is without sin) nursing the paps of sin.
I'll deal with Federal Headship in another post if I get a chance, but simply put, it is wrong even by materialistic rules of Protestantism.
JoeT
