I. “In the Image of God”

356      Of all visible creatures only man is “able to know and love his creator.”²¹⁹ He is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,”²²⁰ and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity: (1703, 2258,225, 295)

What made you establish man in so great a dignity? Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself! You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good.²²¹

357      Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead. (1935, 1877)

358      God created everything for man,²²² but man in turn was created to serve and love God and to offer all creation back to him: (299, 901)

What is it that is about to be created, that enjoys such honor? It is man—that great and wonderful living creature, more precious in the eyes of God than all other creatures! For him the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the rest of creation exist. God attached so much importance to his salvation that he did not spare his own Son for the sake of man. Nor does he ever cease to work, trying every possible means, until he has raised man up to himself and made him sit at his right hand.²²³

359      “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.”²²⁴ (1701, 388, 411)

St. Paul tells us that the human race takes its origin from two men: Adam and Christ…. The first man, Adam, he says, became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. The first Adam was made by the last Adam, from whom he also received his soul, to give him life…. The second Adam stamped his image on the first Adam when he created him. That is why he took on himself the role and the name of the first Adam, in order that he might not lose what he had made in his own image. The first Adam, the last Adam: the first had a beginning, the last knows no end. The last Adam is indeed the first; as he himself says: “I am the first and the last.”²²⁵

360      Because of its common origin the human race forms a unity, for “from one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth”:²²⁶ (225, 404, 775, 831, 842)

O wondrous vision, which makes us contemplate the human race in the unity of its origin in God… in the unity of its nature, composed equally in all men of a material body and a spiritual soul; in the unity of its immediate end and its mission in the world; in the unity of its dwelling, the earth, whose benefits all men, by right of nature, may use to sustain and develop life; in the unity of its supernatural end: God himself, to whom all ought to tend; in the unity of the means for attaining this end;… in the unity of the redemption wrought by Christ for all.²²⁷

361      “This law of human solidarity and charity,”²²⁸ without excluding the rich variety of persons, cultures, and peoples, assures us that all men are truly brethren. (1939)

II.         “Body and Soul but Truly One”

362      The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”²²⁹Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God. (1146, 2332)

363      In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person.²³⁰ But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,²³¹ that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man. (1703)

364      The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:²³² (1004, 2289)

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.²³³

365      The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:²³⁴ i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

366      The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God—it is not “produced” by the parents—and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.²³⁵ (1005, 997)

367      Sometimes the soul is distinguished from the spirit: St. Paul for instance prays that God may sanctify his people “wholly,” with “spirit and soul and body” kept sound and blameless at the Lord’s coming.²³⁶ The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul.²³⁷ “Spirit” signifies that from creation man is ordered to a supernatural end and that his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God.²³⁸ (2083)

368      The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one’s being, where the person decides for or against God.²³⁹ (478, 582, 1431, 1764, 2517, 2562, 2843)

III. “Male and Female He Created Them” 2331-2336

Equality and difference willed by God

369      Man and woman have been created, which is to say, willed by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman. “Being man” or “being woman” is a reality which is good and willed by God: man and woman possess an inalienable dignity which comes to them immediately from God their Creator.²⁴⁰ Man and woman are both with one and the same dignity “in the image of God.” In their “being-man” and “being-woman,” they reflect the Creator’s wisdom and goodness.

370      In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective “perfections” of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband.²⁴¹ (42, 239)

“Each for the other” — “A unity in two”

371      God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. The Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.”²⁴² None of the animals can be man’s partner.²⁴³ The woman God “fashions” from the man’s rib and brings to him elicits on the man’s part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”²⁴⁴ Man discovers woman as another “I,” sharing the same humanity. (1605)

372      Man and woman were made “for each other” — not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be “helpmate” to the other, for they are equal as persons (“bone of my bones…”) and complementary as masculine and feminine. In marriage God unites them in such a way that, by forming “one flesh,”²⁴⁵ they can transmit human life: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”²⁴⁶ By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents cooperate in a unique way in the Creator’s work.²⁴⁷ (1652, 2366)

373      In God’s plan man and woman have the vocation of “subduing” the earth²⁴⁸ as stewards of God. This sovereignty is not to be an arbitrary and destructive domination. God calls man and woman, made in the image of the Creator “who loves everything that exists,”²⁴⁹ to share in his providence toward other creatures; hence their responsibility for the world God has entrusted to them. (307, 2415)

IV. Man in Paradise

374      The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ. (54)

375      The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice.”²⁵⁰ This grace of original holiness was “to share in… divine life.”²⁵¹ (1997)

376      By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die.²⁵² The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman,²⁵³ and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called “original justice.” (1008, 1502)

377      The “mastery” over the world that God offered man from the beginning was realized above all within man himself: mastery of self. The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence²⁵⁴ that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason. (2514)

378      The sign of man’s familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden.²⁵⁵ There he lives “to till it and keep it.” Work is not yet a burden,²⁵⁶ but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation. (2415, 2427)

379      This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God’s plan, will be lost by the sin of our first parents.

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IN BRIEF

380      “Father,… you formed man in your own likeness and set him over the whole world to serve you, his creator, and to rule over all creatures” (Roman Missal, EP IV 118).

381      Man is predestined to reproduce the image of God’s Son made man, the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), so that Christ shall be the first-born of a multitude of brothers and sisters (cf. Eph 1:3-6; Rom 8:29).

382      “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity” (GS 14 § 1). The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God.

383      “God did not create man a solitary being. From the beginning, ‘male and female he created them’ (Gen1:27). This partnership of man and woman constitutes the first form of communion between persons” (GS 12 § 4).

384      Revelation makes known to us the state of original holiness and justice of man and woman before sin: from their friendship with God flowed the happiness of their existence in paradise.

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Paragraph 7. The Fall

385      God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil. Where does evil come from? “I sought whence evil comes and there was no solution,” said St. Augustine,²⁵⁷ and his own painful quest would only be resolved by his conversion to the living God. For “the mystery of lawlessness” is clarified only in the light of the “mystery of our religion.”²⁵⁸ The revelation of divine love in Christ manifested at the same time the extent of evil and the superabundance of grace.²⁵⁹ We must therefore approach the question of the origin of evil by fixing the eyes of our faith on him who alone is its conqueror.²⁶⁰ (309, 457, 1848, 539)

I. Where Sin Abounded, Grace Abounded All the More

The reality of sin

386      Sin is present in human history; any attempt to ignore it or to give this dark reality other names would be futile. To try to understand what sin is, one must first recognize the profound relation of man to God, for only in this relationship is the evil of sin unmasked in its true identity as humanity’s rejection of God and opposition to him, even as it continues to weigh heavy on human life and history. (1847)

387      Only the light of divine Revelation clarifies the reality of sin and particularly of the sin committed at mankind’s origins. Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc. Only in the knowledge of God’s plan for man can we grasp that sin is an abuse of the freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving one another. (1848, 1739)

Original Sin—an essential truth of the faith

388      With the progress of Revelation, the reality of sin is also illuminated. Although to some extent the People of God in the Old Testament had tried to understand the pathos of the human condition in the light of the history of the fall narrated in Genesis, they could not grasp this story’s ultimate meaning, which is revealed only in the light of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.²⁶¹ We must know Christ as the source of grace in order to know Adam as the source of sin. The Spirit-Paraclete, sent by the risen Christ, came to “convict the world concerning sin,”²⁶² by revealing him who is its Redeemer. (431, 208, 359, 729)

389      The doctrine of original sin is, so to speak, the “reverse side” of the Good News that Jesus is the Savior of all men, that all need salvation, and that salvation is offered to all through Christ. The Church, which has the mind of Christ,²⁶³ knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ. (422)

How to read the account of the Fall

390      The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.²⁶⁴ Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.²⁶⁵ (289)

II. The Fall of the Angels

391      Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy.²⁶⁶ Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil.”²⁶⁷ The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: “The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.”²⁶⁸ (2538)

392      Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels.²⁶⁹ This “fall” consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter’s words to our first parents: “You will be like God.”²⁷⁰ The devil “has sinned from the beginning”; he is “a liar and the father of lies.”²⁷¹ (1850, 2482)

393      It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels’ sin unforgivable. “There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death.”²⁷² (1033-1037, 1022)

394      Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls “a murderer from the beginning,” who would even try to divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father.²⁷³ “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”²⁷⁴ In its consequences the gravest of these works was the mendacious seduction that led man to disobey God. (538-540, 550, 2846-2849)

395      The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God’s reign. Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries—of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature—to each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that providence should permit diabolical activity, but “we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him.”²⁷⁵ (309, 1673, 412, 2850-2854)

III. Original Sin

Freedom put to the test

396      God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God. The prohibition against eating “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” spells this out: “for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die.”²⁷⁶ The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”²⁷⁷ symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his Creator and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom. (1730, 311, 301)

Man’s first sin

397      Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of.²⁷⁸ All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness. (1707, 2541, 1850, 215)

398      In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to “be like God,” but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God.”²⁷⁹ (2084, 2113)

399      Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness.²⁸⁰ They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image—that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.²⁸¹

400      The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: 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.²⁸² Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man.²⁸³ Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay.”²⁸⁴ Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will “return to the ground,”²⁸⁵ for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.²⁸⁶ (1607, 2514,602, 1008)

401      After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin. There is Cain’s murder of his brother Abel and the universal corruption which follows in the wake of sin. Likewise, sin frequently manifests itself in the history of Israel, especially as infidelity to the God of the Covenant and as transgression of the Law of Moses. And even after Christ’s atonement, sin raises its head in countless ways among Christians.²⁸⁷ Scripture and the Church’s Tradition continually recall the presence and universality of sin in man’s history: (1865, 2259, 1739)

What Revelation makes known to us is confirmed by our own experience. For when man looks into his own heart he finds that he is drawn toward what is wrong and sunk in many evils which cannot come from his good creator. Often refusing to acknowledge God as his source, man has also upset the relationship which should link him to his last end; and at the same time he has broken the right order that should reign within himself as well as between himself and other men and all creatures.²⁸⁸

The consequences of Adam’s sin for humanity

402      All men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as St. Paul affirms: “By one man’s disobedience many [that is, all men] were made sinners”: “sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned….”²⁸⁹ The Apostle contrasts the universality of sin and death with the universality of salvation in Christ. “Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men.”²⁹⁰ (430, 605)

403      Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination toward evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam’s sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the “death of the soul.”²⁹¹ Because of this certainty of faith, the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even tiny infants who have not committed personal sin.²⁹² (2606, 1250)

404      How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man.”²⁹³ By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affectedthe human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.²⁹⁴ It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” — a state and not an act. (360, 50)

405      Although it is proper to each individual,²⁹⁵ original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it; subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death; and inclined to sin—an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence.” 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. (2515, 1264)

406      The Church’s teaching on the transmission of original sin was articulated more precisely in the fifth century, especially under the impulse of St. Augustine’s reflections against Pelagianism, and in the sixteenth century, in opposition to the Protestant Reformation. Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God’s grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam’s fault to bad example. The first Protestant reformers, on the contrary, taught that original sin has radically perverted man and destroyed his freedom; they identified the sin inherited by each man with the tendency to evil (concupiscentia), which would be insurmountable. The Church pronounced on the meaning of the data of Revelation on original sin especially at the second Council of Orange (529)²⁹⁶ and at the Council of Trent (1546).²⁹⁷

A hard battle…

407      The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man’s situation and activity in the world. By our first parents’ sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails “captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil.”²⁹⁸ Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action,²⁹⁹and morals. (2015, 2852, 1888)

408      The consequences of original sin and of all men’s personal sins put the world as a whole in the sinful condition aptly described in St. John’s expression, “the sin of the world.”³⁰⁰ This expression can also refer to the negative influence exerted on people by communal situations and social structures that are the fruit of men’s sins.³⁰¹ (1865)

409      This dramatic situation of “the whole world [which] is in the power of the evil one”³⁰² makes man’s life a battle: (2516)

The whole of man’s history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.³⁰³