Anselm of Canterbury outlines his theology of Original Sin.

Date
2016
Type
Book
Source
Anselm of Canterbury
Non-LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Translation
Reference

Anselm of Canterbury, The Virgin Conception and Original Sin (De Conceptu Virginali et de Originali Peccato) 1-2, in Anselm of Canterbury: Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises (trans. Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson; N.P.: Ex Fontibus Co., 2016), 429-31

Scribe/Publisher
Ex Fontibus Co.
People
Anselm of Canterbury
Audience
Reading Public
PDF
Transcription

CHAPTER ONE

What original and personal justice, and original and personal injustice, are.

To see, then, how it was possible for God to assume from the sinful mass of the human race a sinless human nature, we must first inquire about original sin, because only this doctrine gives rise to the problem at hand. For if we see how Christ could not be subject to original sin, then it will be clear how the assumption or conception of this man was free from all sin.

Indeed, there is no doubt that the word “original” is derived from the word “origin.” Hence, if original sin is present only in man, it seems to take its name either (1) from reference to the origin of human nature (i.e., from the beginning of human nature)—original in that this sin is contracted at human nature’s origin—or else (2) from reference to the origin (i.e., to the beginning) of each person, because this sin is contracted at each person’s origin. But this sin is seen not to stem from the beginning of human nature, since human nature’s origin was just, for our first parents were created just and altogether sinless. Therefore, original sin seems to take the name “original” from reference to the origin of each human person. Yet, if anyone says that original sin is called original because of the fact that individuals acquire it from those from whom they received the origin of their nature, I will not object—provided he does not deny that original sin is contracted at the time of the origin of each person.

In each man are present together a nature, by which he is human, as are other men, and a person, by which he is distinguished from other men, as when he is called “this man” or “that man” or is called by his proper name (e.g., “Adam” or “Abel”). The sin of each man is in both his nature and his person; for example, the sin of Adam was in his humanity (i.e., in his nature) and in the one who was called Adam (i.e., in the person). Nevertheless, there is a sin which each man contracts together with his nature at the time of his origin, and there is a sin which he does not contract with his nature but which he commits after he is already a person distinct from other persons. Now, the sin which is contracted at the time of his origin is called original. (It can also be called natural—not because it comes from the essence of his nature but because it is received together with his nature because of the nature’s corruption.) But the sin which each man commits after he is a person can be called personal, because it is committed through the fault of the person.

By similar reasoning justice can be called both original and personal. For indeed, Adam and Eve were just originally—i.e., at the time of their beginning, as soon as they existed as human beings and without any intervening time. By justice can be called personal when someone unjust receives the justice which he did not have at the time of his origin.

CHAPTER TWO

How human nature was corrupted.

Therefore, if Adam and Eve had kept their original justice, those who were to be born of them would originally have been just, even as were Adam and Ee. But because Adam and Eve sinned personally—sinned even though originally they were strong and uncorrupted and had the ability always easily to keep justice—their whole being became weakened and corrupted. Indeed, the body [became weakened and corrupted] because as a result of the bodily corruption and the carnal appetites, as well as on account of its need for the goods which it had lost, it became infected with carnal desires. And because ethe whole of human nature was in Adam and Eve, none of it being outside of them, human nature as a whole was weakened and corrupted.

Therefore, along with the corruption which human nature incurred as a result of sin, there remained in human nature both an obligation to have the perfect and pure justice it had received and an obligation to make satisfaction for having deserted justice. Accordingly, even as human nature if it had not sinned would have been propagated in the same condition as it was created by God [viz., without corruption], so, having sinned, it is propagated in the condition it brought upon itself through sinning. Consequently, since human nature is unable by itself either to make satisfaction for its sin or to recover its deserted justice, and since “the body which is corrupted burdens the soul” (especially when the body is rather weak—e.g., in infancy or in the mother’s womb), so that the soul cannot even understand justice, we see it to be necessary that in infants human nature is born with (1) the obligation to make satisfaction for the first sin, which it was able always to avoid, and with (2) the obligation to possess original justice, which it was able always to keep. Nor in the case of infants does human nature’s inability excuse it for its failure in them to discharge its obligations. For human nature brought this inability upon itself by deserting justice in our first parents, in whom it was present as a whole; and it is always under obligation to have the ability that it received for the sake of always keeping justice. Original sin in infants can be seen to be this [condition of obligation and inability]. Let me also add there to the sins of one’s recent ancestors—sins that are reckoned “onto the third and the fourth generation.” For although it is possible to question whether or not all of these sins are to be understood as included in the notion of original sin, nevertheless so as not to seem to the minimizing the seriousness of original sin for the same of the topic I am investigating. I shall stipulate that original sin is so grave that no one can show it to be more so.

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