Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—Romans 5:12
- just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men
How does Adam’s one sin and death spread to all men?
JLB
For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. Romans 5:19
- For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners
How does Adams disobedience make us sinners?
JLB
From the Catechism of The Catholic Church
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
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 affected the 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.
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 towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.
