Sin and the Effects of Sin Paper Example

Introduction

Just as the identity of the human person has several dimensions, so too does the complex wound of sin. Sin is not simply crossing a line or violating a rule. Sin is an offense that deeply wounds human nature itself. It disfigures the identity of the human person. As such, an adequate analysis of sin must consider original sin, the remote roots of temptation, man's choice to sin, the seven steps involved in temptation and sin, the effects of sin, Saint Augustine's thought on sin, the seven deadly sins, and other images of sin.

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John Paul II on Original Sin: Original Shame

The teaching of the Church in general, and the catechesis of John Paul in particular, highlights the profound identity of the human person. How then does one account for pain, suffering, wars, inhumanity-all those ways of refusing the gift that disfigure the identity of the human person? What stands behind all the violence, perfectionism, betrayal, abandonment, trauma, blame, hostility, and perversions that fill history books and therapists' files? John Paul responds:

However disturbing these divisions [of sin and its effects] may seem at first sight, it is only by a careful examination that one can detect their root: it is to be found in a woundin man's inmost self. In the light of faith we call it sin: beginning with original sin, which all of us bear from birth as an inheritance from our first parents, to the sin which each one of us commits when we abuse our own freedom.1

John Paul points out that the term "original sin" does not appear in Sacred Scripture.2But the third chapter of Genesis makes it evident that Adam's sin of disobedience is the original sin that invades the "whole world ... by a kind of universal infection of all humanity."3

Original sin is a wound inherent in man's rejection of the gifts that God has bestowed. "... [S]in in its original reality takes place in man's will-and conscience-first of all as 'disobedience,' that is, as opposition of the will of man to the will of God."4From the moment it is committed, this sin also causes "an inclination to sin. From that moment, the whole history of humanity will be burdened by this state."5

Prior to original sin, man lived in the fullness of sanctifying grace. In the original innocence of this grace, man knew he had come forth as the creation of God. All of his capacities led him to understand he was meant to return to God. Man's choice to sin interrupted the reditus of man to God. After sin, the human person is disoriented in his affection for God. With the fall, the human person's consciousness, self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-determination are clouded and wounded. The human person no longer stands in readiness to trust his identity as a gift. Fear has replaced the gift as man attempts to become his own exitus-reditus. After original sin, man suffers a privation of grace through this primordial sin, the effects of which are evident from generation to generation through its hereditary character.6Man has fallen, and cannot, of himself, come out of the fall. God must "come down," pour himself out in "a new beginning of goodness" in the Incarnation. This new beginning culminates in the kenosis in which the Son of God pours himself out in his death on the cross.

Original sin strikes directly at the seat of man's identity in his capacity to know and love God and neighbor, and thus fulfill himself through a gift of self. It is only in the context of and at the expense of his identity in the grace of original innocence that the woundedness of the human person is experienced on such a perplexing and intense level:

Man was placed on this earth to remain firm in his original state and so to advance toward the final state of union with God in heaven. At the proper time, God would have extended to him the fruit of the tree of life (Rev 2:7) and bestowed upon him that other-heavenly-immortality from which there would have been no falling away. But because he succumbed to temptation, he was obliged to seek by long detours the entrance to the final state that would have been near and easily accessible to him if he had remained in the state of innocence.7

Simply listening to the evening news reveals that the reditusis disturbed. The tragic effects of painful choices have far-reaching ramifications, from personal, to family, to national, to global. Sin continues to interrupt the reditusof man to God. Whence does sin emerge? What causes the wound of sin? The answer is at least twofold: Man is tempted and he then sins. Man chooses to act against the reditusthrough assenting to a temptation to sin. Saint Paul explains: "Through one man sin entered the world and with sin death" (Rom 5:12, 19). Genesis 3 relates the refusal of the gift on the part of man.

The Remote Roots of Temptation

Man is created good and can freely choose to love. He ought to place this love with God. The human hunger for love can only find its full and complete response when it is fulfilled in God. Sin is not natural to man. John Paul explains: "as we see from the biblical account, human being does not have its primary origin in the heart (and in the conscience) of man. It does not arise from his spontaneous initiative."8Man instead places his love in created things rather than the Creator. Evil and sin in the world are the result of man's free choice. But things cannot be the reditusof love. Therefore, man experiences pain. How did the temptation to sin enter man's horizon? Whence does sin arise?

It is in a certain sense the reflection and the consequence of the sin that had already occurred in the world of invisible beings. The tempter, "the ancient serpent," belongs to this world. Previously these beings endowed with knowledge and freedom had been "put to the test" so that they could make their choice commensurate with their purely spiritual nature. In them arose the "doubt" which ... the tempter insinuates in our first parents.9

Sacred Scripture attributes temptation to the devil. Why does the devil tempt man? Saint Paul asserts that the devil's sin was pride: "[man] may become conceited and fall under the same condemnation as the devil" (1 Tim 3:6). The Book of Wisdom states, "God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil death entered the world... " (Wis 2:24). It appears, then, that the sin of Satan is twofold: pride and envy. The order is important. It was through pride that Lucifer was cast out of heaven. It was through his envy that sin entered the world.

Jean Danielou explains the teaching of the Fathers on this point. When the world was created, "great creations had been prepared" by God. The archangels were set over various parts of creation. Lucifer, the bearer of light, was set as guardian of the visible world. He was charged with "administering the substance of material natures." In this governance, Lucifer became envious of the human person. In his perfect knowledge Lucifer foresaw the Incarnation. He realized that the Word would assume not the nature of angels, but of man. Lucifer refused to accept that God would deign to take flesh instead of taking the pure spirit of angelic nature. In his pride, Lucifer opposed the plan of God. Lucifer's decision was permanent because by their very nature, angels "determine themselves through one act outside of time." The evil angels made a choice against God which perdures because of their perfect knowledge. Because humans have only imperfect knowledge, human choices are revocable. John Paul teaches:

They [the evil angels] had contested the truth of existence, which demands the total subordination of the creature to the Creator. This truth was supplanted by an original pride, which led them to make their own spirit the principle and rule of freedom ... They had chosen themselves over God, instead of choosing themselves "in God" ... 14

Lucifer fell in love with his own beauty and could not allow that God would take human nature in the Incarnation. In his pride, Lucifer was cast out from heaven. Satan's sin demonstrates the nature of pride. Pride alienates itself from love because pride cannot admit the love of another without controlling it. By its nature, love cannot be controlled. Instead of relenting to love, pride flees and is cast out. From that low pinnacle of pride, Satan grows envious of man. Envy seeks to destroy the good of the other through sin. The devil would not permit man to have on earth what Satan could not have in heaven.

The Juncture of Man's Choice

To explain the nature of sin and its effects, John Paul turns again to the book of Genesis, in particular to the account of original sin in the third chapter.

We must meditate, and not just once, on this "archaic" description. I do not know if many other passages can be found in Holy Scripture in which the reality of sin is described not only in its original form, but also in its essence, that is, where the reality of sin is presented in such full and deep dimensions, showing how man used against God exactly what in him was God's, that is, what should have served to bring him nearer to God.15

John Paul explains that the "'first sin' ... is described in the book of Genesis so precisely that it shows all the depth of the 'reality of man' contained in it." The account of original sin highlights the profound identity of the human person in the image of God, and the sinister nature of sin, designed to attack precisely this image of God.

The experience of evil in the world is directly related to man's free choice. God created man with a choice. The basic conditions of man's choice arise from his identity within creation. Man is created in between. He is made from the highest, the breath of God, and the lowest, the mud of the earth. Philosophers articulate this with the traditional understanding of creation ex nihilo, or out of nothing. Man is made by God, who is the source and end of all, yet man also bears a relation to nothingness in that he does not ordain or arrange his own creation. Man, as a gift, has the capacity to choose, to accept or reject the gift. When man accepts the gift and lives in the image of God, rationally and relationally, he matures and develops. When man rejects the gift, he turns toward nothingness and mud, and inverts his creation. When man pursues the antilogic such that he tries absurdly to "arrogate divine nature to itself," he sins. Hans Urs von Balthasar explains that sin is predicated upon the creature's choice to "refuse to acknowledge that it owes its freedom to the Creator." Man refuses his contingent relationship to God, and contradiction takes the place of the gift.

Seven Steps of Sin: The Ritual of Temptation

Sin is not just crossing a line into an impure state. Sin is turning away from the gift, and turning toward nothingness based upon the illusion of temptation. The third chapter of Genesis presents the sequence of events that characterize temptation and sin. John Paul explains:

[I]t cannot be denied that one sure element emerges from the detailed account of the sin. It describes a primordial event, that is, a fact, which according to revelation took place at the beginning of human history. For this reason it also presents another certain element, namely, the fundamental and decisive implication of that event for man's relationship with God, and consequently for the interior "situation" of man himself, for reciprocal relations between people, and in general for man's relationship with the world.

The account of original sin from Genesis chronicles a primordial event of the fall of man. It also gives the pattern of every sin to follow. The third chapter of Genesis presents the series of steps found in every temptation and sin. Temptation is never a remote or disinteresting experience. Temptation is based upon a clever illusion that strikes at the heart...