§397Man, 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.

§399Scripture 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

§400The 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 Becau…

Chapter 17.—Of the Nakedness of Our First Parents, Which They Saw After Their Base and Shameful Sin. Justly is shame very specially connected with this lust; justly, too, these members themselves, being moved and restrained not at our will, but by a certain independent autocracy, so to speak, are called “shameful.” Their condition was different before sin. For as it is written,…

The Meaning of Original Human Experiences The analysis of the first chapters of Genesis forces us, in a way, to reconstruct the elements that constitute man's original experience. In this sense, the character of the Yahwist text makes it a special source. Speaking of original human experiences, we have in mind not so much their distance in time, as rather their basic significa…

The Fullness of Interpersonal Communication What is shame and how can we explain its absence in the state of original innocence, in the depth of the mystery of the creation of man as male and female? From contemporary analyses of shame - and in particular of sexual modesty - we can deduce the complexity of this fundamental experience, in which man expresses himself as a person…

Now the serpent was more subtle. Moses does not speak of the serpent as it was in itself, but as the instrument of Satan. The fall of man was not a light or trivial transgression but a dreadful abomination. By one man sin entered into the world: Adam, being the head and root of the human race, corrupted and ruined all his posterity. Yet in the very curse God gives the first gle…

Human beings were originally created in the image of God and were furnished in mind with a true and salutary knowledge of their Creator and of all things spiritual, in will and heart with righteousness, and in all emotions with purity; indeed, the whole human being was holy. But rebelling against God at the devil's instigation and by their own free will, they deprived themselve…

The Formula affirms that original sin is not merely an absence of righteousness but a deep, corrupt condition of human nature inherited from Adam, rendering man spiritually dead and inclined toward all evil. It denies that original sin is a trifling defect or that human nature retains its powers intact after the Fall. Against both Pelagian minimizing and Flacianism (which equat…