Adam and Eve had it made. They lived in harmony with each other and God in an earthly paradise — the Garden of Eden. In this garden work was not a burden but a joy (cf. 378). They knew nothing of suffering or death (376). They lived in perfect communion with one another and with God (372).
(Editor's Note: This is the third in a seven-part series designed to break open the beauties of the Catechism in hopes that more Catholics will begin exploring its riches for themselves. There is a veritable wealth of information in the Catechism, which is itself but a small reflection of the riches of the Deposit of Faith. So, if you’ve not been properly introduced, meet the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the most beautiful fruit to date of the Second Vatican Council. May the two of you enjoy a long and lasting relationship!)
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Next Friday: “Jesus the Christ”
Mark Dittman is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the National Catholic Register, Lay Witness, and Catholic Dossier. He can be reached at [email protected].
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Part One: The Profession of Faith
Section Two: The Profession of the Christian Faith
Chapter One, Article 1: I Believe in God the Father, paragraphs 6-7 (355-421)
They also enjoyed another tremendous gift, consistent with the others: mastery of self (377). Free from the inclination toward sin, they were the perfect people. The Catechism calls their situation “original holiness and justice” (cf. 375-376). Contrast this with humanity’s present state of affairs. What happened?
Put simply, sin happened. The Catechism suggests that the serpent, tree, and apple story is symbolic of man’s dependence on God and the moral law (cf. 390; 396), and the disaster that results when man rejects this reality. Adam and Eve disobey God and in this tragic act define sin for all time: “disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (397).
The consequences of their actions, for them and for us today, are enormous.
Adam and Eve lose their original holiness and they begin to fear God, whose image is now distorted to them (399). The harmony of original justice, with all its implications, is gone. “The control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination” (400). The created world, with its dangers and decay, becomes strange and hostile. And, most terribly, “death makes its entrance into human history” (400).
Adam and Eve, in a single act of disobedience, unleashed a terrible consequence upon you and me. Original holiness is supplanted by original sin. Man in his natural state is no longer wholly good. There exists now a defect that must be somehow washed away for man to reclaim what was once his by birthright. The world is awash in sin. Its presence and effect can be traced through the centuries, up to the present day (401; cf. 386).
The Catechism narrates this turn of events in order to explain man’s fallen nature and need for redemption. In doing so it contrasts the role of Revelation to that of unaided reason in explaining the reality of sin. Reason alone would have us explain sin “as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure” (387). With Revelation we can understand sin in the context of our relationship with God, as an abuse of man’s freedom.
Interestingly, and rather boldly, the Catechism asserts that even the Israelites, God’s chosen people, fell short of fully understanding the meaning of the Fall of Adam and Eve. “We must know Christ as the source of grace in order to know Adam as the source of sin,” (388) we are told. Adam and Christ are the two sides of the coin of human history. The revelation of original sin is as vital to the Christian message as that of Christ’s saving power (cf. 389; 411). After all, an unfallen man does not need a savior.
The Catechism explains how, through the unity of the human race, Adam’s sin is transmitted to all men. In an important clarification, it is noted that original sin is “a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’ – a state and not an act” (404). Acting upon the command of its founder, Christ, the Church offers baptism to all, even infants who have committed no sins, in remission for this inherited state of original sin (403). “Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back toward God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle” (405).
In addition to the good news that man can be redeemed from his original (and even personal) sin by the “New Adam” (411) of Christ, this selection of the Catechism ends with the assertion that with Christ we have something greater than what was lost in the Garden (cf. 412, 420). The Catechism offers Christ as the preeminent example of the fact that God can bring great good out of evil (412), even an evil as great as a primal rejection of God.
