The “first world problem” of evil

The pervasiveness of suffering, if anything, actually confirms rather than falsifies Christianity.  And bafflement at suffering is more a consequence of modern unbelief than a cause of it.

(Image: Kat J/Unsplash.com)

Suffering, atheists frequently assure us, is not what we would expect if God exists.  You might suppose, then, that where there is greater suffering, there will be fewer believers in God, and where there is less suffering there will be more believers in God.  But that appears to be the reverse of the truth.  As a friend pointed out to me recently, it is a remarkable fact that though life was, for most human beings for most of human history, much, much harder than it is for modern Westerners, they were also far more likely to be religious than modern Westerners are.  It is precisely as modern medicine, technology, and relative social and political stability have made life easier and greatly mitigated suffering that religious belief has declined. 

The atheist is likely to respond that suffering people are more likely to believe in God because they hope that he will rescue them from, or at least reward them for, their suffering.  But that doesn’t sit well with the atheist’s other claim, i.e. that if God exists we should expect him to be willing and able to eliminate suffering.  When human leaders show indifference or incompetence, does that tend to make people more inclined to trust and hope in them?  Quite the opposite.  So, if people of earlier generations assumed, like the atheist does, that a good and omnipotent God would eliminate all suffering, wouldn’t the persistence of suffering have caused them to doubt God, rather than to believe more fervently?

The fact is that earlier generations did not suppose that a good and omnipotent God would eliminate all suffering.  Indeed, the very idea is contrary to Christian doctrine, which teaches that much suffering is precisely what we should expect in human life.  The pervasiveness of suffering, if anything, actually confirms rather than falsifies Christianity.  And bafflement at suffering is more a consequence of modern unbelief than a cause of it.

To understand how this is so, consider the approach to these matters reflected in a book like Fr. Francis J. Remler’s Why Must I Suffer?  A Book of Light and Consolation.  First published almost a century ago, it is not a work of academic theology, but rather of down-to-earth spiritual guidance.  And despite what a modern reader might expect from its subtitle, it is the opposite of sentimental or touchy-feely – so much so that many today would no doubt find it insensitive.  Yet precisely for that reason it offers true light and consolation rather than the mawkish counterfeits of those who prefer to emote rather than to understand.  And it simply reflects what the Catholic faith has always taught about suffering, the forgetting of which misleads many today falsely to suppose that suffering somehow casts doubt on the existence of God.

Original sin

The first and most fundamental point Remler emphasizes is that suffering is the inevitable consequence of original sin.  Now, this is easily misunderstood.  The theologically uninformed often suppose that it means that God takes special action arbitrarily to inflict a punishment on us for something somebody else did – which, of course, sounds unjust or even crazy.  But that is not what it means.

Rather, the idea is this.  We are by nature rational animals, and that nature is, as far as it goes, good.  But it is severely limited.  Because we are flesh and blood, we are subject to all sorts of bodily harms – deprivation of food, water, and oxygen, broken bones, lacerations, infections, diseases, and so on.  Because the exercise of our rationality is dependent on bodily organs, we are also subject to various cognitive and moral disorders.  Limited information, excessive emotion, damage to sense organs, neural malfunction, and the like will lead us into various errors.  Excess or deficiency in our passions will also weaken the will in its capacity to opt for, and keep us attentive to, what the intellect tells us is good.  And so on.  Once these injuries and errors occur they are also bound to snowball and ramify, especially because we are also social animals.  We lead others into error and moral failure, so that societies no less than individuals become disordered in various ways.

For these reasons, human beings in their natural state inevitably depreciate, as it were, the moment they’re “driven off the lot.”  God could not have made us any different without making something that wasn’t us.  Having the limitations we have is simply a consequence of our very nature, part of the package of being a human being.  What God could do, though, would be to supplement our nature.  He could take special action to prevent us from falling into cognitive and moral error and otherwise suffering the damages we are prone to.  And he could also offer us a higher end than our nature by itself suits us for – the beatific vision, an intimate communion with him that vastly outstrips the knowledge of God that the exercise of our natural rational powers makes possible.

Because this special assistance and higher end are supernatural – that is to say, something above and beyond our nature – they are not in any sense owed to us.  We would still have been complete creations without them, albeit immeasurably inferior to what we would be with them.  To offer them to us is a matter of grace rather than justice.  God would have done us no wrong had he not offered them.

He did offer them to us, though, by way of offering them to our first parents, in a manner analogous to how a benefactor might offer to a father some good that would, if accepted, benefit his progeny.  Suppose a rich man decided out of kindness to offer you a valuable piece of real estate, or a million dollars to invest.  This would benefit not only you, but also all those who would come to inherit the land after it is developed, or reap the dividends of the invested money.  The rich benefactor doesn’t owe any of this to you or your descendants, and thus would have done no wrong to you or to them if he never made the offer.  Nor would he be doing any wrong to you or to them if he put conditions on the offer.

Now, suppose that the rich man makes this conditional offer and that you refuse it, or refuse to abide by the conditions.  There is a sense in which you and your descendants have now suffered harm.  For you and they have now lost the opportunity for this benefit, and are in that sense in a worse off condition than you were before the offer was made.  But the rich man himself is in no way at fault for this harm.  Rather, you are at fault, and you and your progeny thus have no one to blame for your condition but you.

This is the sort of state we are in as a result of the failure of our first parents to fulfill the conditions God set on the supernatural gifts he offered them.  It is their fault, not God’s, that we lost those gifts.  For us to suffer the effects of original sin is thus not a matter of God positively inflicting some harm on us, any more than the rich man in my scenario would be positively inflicting some harm on your progeny by refraining from giving you the million dollars.  It is instead a matter of our reaping the inevitable consequences of our first parents’ disobedience – which includes all the suffering our unaided nature is subject to, as well as the additional pain of knowing that it could have been avoided.

To be sure, it is also part of Christian teaching that God has, through Christ, restored the possibility of attaining the beatific vision, and provided the grace needed for repentance.  But that does not entail removing all the effects of original sin.  To do that would be like pretending it never happened, and would blind us to the severe limitations of our nature, to how very grave are the consequences of sin, and to how badly we need grace.  Grace does not smother nature but builds on it, and that entails removing only the worst effects of original sin.  The remainder of those effects are still with us – and thus, we cannot fail to suffer.

Actual sin

Then there is the fact that the sin of our first parents is very far from being the only source of suffering.  As Remler rightly emphasizes, there is also the circumstance that we all have ourselves committed many sins, and must inevitably face their consequences, which snowball and ramify no less than does the sin of our first parents.  If I am a liar, I may come to be distrusted by others, might lose friends as a result, and may encourage others to lie by my example.  If I am a drug abuser, I may come to be addicted, may lose my job as a result, and may lead others to use drugs.  If I am an adulterer, I may end up causing the breakup of my marriage and that of the person with whom I commit adultery, and will thereby harm any children involved.  And so on and on.  As millions upon millions of human beings commit these and many other sins, their effects inevitably multiply throughout the social order, so that the human race as a whole becomes miserable.

To be sure, here too God offers, through grace, the possibility of repentance and redemption.  But it is quite ridiculous to expect him to remove all the effects of actual sin, any more than he removes all the effects of original sin – to suppose, for example, that after I repent of lying, he should immediately restore my reputation by causing everyone to forget what I have done; that after I repent of abusing drugs, he should immediately remove all the craving for the drugs that I have habituated myself into feeling; that after I repent of adultery, he should immediately cause my spouse entirely to forgive and forget my infidelity; and so on.  Were he to do so, we would lose all understanding of the gravity of sin, and of our desperate need for grace.

Moreover, and as Remler discusses at length, we deserve to suffer for our sins.  And this leads us to a further reason why there must be suffering in human life, which is that it serves as a punishment for sin.  True, if we genuinely repent, God will preserve us from the eternal damnation we have merited.  But we are not entirely “off the hook.”  There is temporal punishment that must be paid for every single sin we commit, and our debt gets very high over the course of a lifetime.

But we can pay some of that debt every time we accept some particular bit of suffering that we did not cause ourselves.  Suppose, for example, that I am an adulterer but that my wife does forgive and forget.  I am very fortunate, but I nevertheless certainly deserve the anger and hostility she might have shown me.  Suppose also that I am unjustly accused of embezzling at work, and only after a long and painful investigation is my reputation restored.  Though I didn’t deserve that particular bit of suffering, I did deserve comparable suffering as a result of my adultery.  And if I accept the suffering in a penitential spirit, I can contribute to paying off my debt of temporal punishment.

Moreover, even when I am innocent of wrongdoing, I can emulate Christ by accepting undeserved suffering, in a penitential spirit, for the sake of others.  Suppose I am not an adulterer, but that I have a friend who is and whose marriage has been destroyed as a result.  Suppose he is very sorry for what he has done and is trying, with difficulty, to restore some order to his life.  If I undergo some undeserved suffering myself (as in the scenario involving an unjust accusation of embezzling) I might offer that suffering up to God for the sake of my friend, as Christ offered up his undeserved suffering for us.  By becoming, to that extent, Christ-like, I not only help my friend but contribute to the perfection of my own character.

In these ways, every instance of suffering we undergo, undeserved suffering included, can have a greater good drawn out of it, if only we let it.  That is by no means easy, but the graces to do so are also among those God offers us.

Suffering as punishment

Moreover, it is far preferable that we accept the miseries of this life in a penitential spirit than that we suffer those of the next – which includes those of Purgatory, let alone Hell.  This is another theme developed by Remler.  If you think things are bad now, just wait.  As Remler writes:

[T]he smallest measure of suffering in Purgatory is far more intense than the severest pains on earth.  The saints tell us that the intensity of the pain caused by the fire of Purgatory is the same as that which is caused by the fire of Hell.  The only difference is this: That the souls in Purgatory are consoled by the knowledge that their torment will end sooner or later, whereas the damned in Hell are tortured by despair at the knowledge that their punishment will last forever. (pp. 33-34)

At the same time, “the advantages of present sufferings over future ones are great beyond measure,” for “in this life you can accomplish vastly more in a few hours than you could in Purgatory perhaps in ever so many years,” provided that you accept suffering in a penitential spirit, out of sorrow for sin and love of God, and in union with Christ’s suffering on the Cross (p. 34).

It is impossible to overstate the importance of this connection between suffering and punishment for sin.  And from the Fall of Man to the Passion of the Christ to the Last Judgment, the theme of suffering as punishment absolutely permeates Christianity.  That is precisely why, though people in earlier eras of Western civilization suffered far more than we do, they were also more devout.  It was no mystery to them why God would allow suffering; on the contrary, they saw that suffering is precisely what we should expect and accept as punishment for human sinfulness.

But modern Western society is affluent and egalitarian, and for those reasons it is extremely uncomfortable with the idea of punishment.  For punishment is a matter of inflicting deserved suffering.  Because modern Western society is affluent, it is soft and cannot abide suffering.  And because it is egalitarian, it cannot abide the idea that some of the ways of living that people choose are bad, and thus deserving of suffering.  Thus does Christian teaching become incomprehensible to modern secularized Westerners.  They either reject it altogether, or they massively distort it by praising its notions of mercy and forgiveness while ignoring its complementary teaching about repentance and penance.

And thus is their bafflement at suffering more a consequence than a cause of their apostasy.  It’s not that they don’t understand why God would allow suffering, and for that reason give up Christian teaching.  It’s that they have given up Christian teaching, and for that reason don’t understand why God would allow suffering.  You might say that the “problem of evil” as contemporary atheists understand it is, in that sense, a “first world problem.”  Of course, I don’t mean by that to imply that the suffering to which such atheists appeal when arguing against the existence of God is in any way trivial.  What I mean is that a “first world” mentality – that of the modern affluent, egalitarian, secularized Westerner – deeply informs their understanding of the significance of that suffering.

In fairness, though, it isn’t just atheists who exhibit this mentality.  It has deeply permeated the more liberal and moderate sectors of Christianity.  It is manifest, for example, in those who only ever preach about mercy and forgiveness, but never about the repentance and penance that are the necessary preconditions of mercy and forgiveness, and without which only damnation awaits; who deny or downplay the doctrine of Hell, and would rather reassure us that all or most are saved than warn us that some or even many are lost; who remain silent even about Purgatory, or who treat entry into it only as a relief rather than as something frightful and to be avoided if at all possible; who claim that capital punishment or even life imprisonment are per se contrary to human dignity; and so on.  All of this evinces deep discomfort with the very idea of punishment as deserved suffering.

It thereby plays into the hands of the atheist, who can reasonably ask: “If making even the most wicked suffer for their sins is bad, then why would a good God allow any suffering at all?”  And it does grave damage to souls, ensuring that there will be vastly more suffering rather than less.  For people who are constantly told about God’s mercy and never about the conditions he places on it are less likely to repent, or to do penance when they do repent.  Many will be damned who would have repented had they been warned; and many will suffer agony in Purgatory who would have avoided it had they been urged to adopt a more penitential spirit during this life.  Those who only ever talk of God’s mercy and never about damnation and penance are like a doctor who gently reassures those with lung cancer that many such patients survive, while never warning them to stop smoking nor prescribing chemotherapy or any other treatment.

Yet it isn’t just theological liberals and moderates who have been infected.  As the madness and evil into which the secular world has sunk have permeated ever more deeply into the Church, even some very conservative Catholics have allowed themselves to be tempted to despair and to abandon her – as if Christ and the apostles had never warned of great persecutions, heresies, and apostasies to come, and as if the Church had not always acknowledged that even popes are sometimes capable of error and of causing great harm when not speaking ex cathedra.  Christ promises only that the Church will not be destroyed.  He does not deny that the human element of the Church will also suffer the effects of original and actual sin.

We would not be true sons of Holy Mother Church if we were not deeply pained by what is being done to her.  But is our pain greater than that of the martyrs who have over the centuries suffered unimaginable tortures and death at the hands of pagans, heretics, jihadists, and communists?  Is it greater than Christ’s suffering on the cross?  Has the softness we deplore in modern therapeutic Western society and “candy-ass” brands of Christianity not corrupted our own souls too?  Let us beware lest our zeal be the fair-weather kind of Peter, to whom Christ issued a stern reminder of the costs of true discipleship:

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.  And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord!  This shall never happen to you.”  But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!  You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.”  Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:21-25)

(Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared on the author’s blog in a slightly different form and is reprinted here with his kind permission.)


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About Dr. Edward Feser 46 Articles
Edward Feser is the author of several books on philosophy and morality, including All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory (Ignatius Press, August 2022), and Five Proofs of the Existence of God and is co-author of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment, both also published by Ignatius Press.

18 Comments

  1. I have read quite a few articles online about this topic, which Professor Peter Kreeft, writing at the Catholic Education Resource Center, described as “the most serious problem in the world and the one serious objection to the existence of God”.

    Thank you for telling us what you have learned about this topic, without watering down the treatment for fear of losing readers in mid-article. Somewhere in her vast works (most likely in “Confession” or “The Mystery of Death”), Adrienne von Speyr deploys this memorable expression:

    “those who can assimilate and act upon uncongenial truths”

    We can all hope and pray that the ranks of such people will grow this October.

  2. Jesus made it clear in the Pater Noster that Heaven and Earth are separate places and that the Will of the Father is not present on Earth by default. We must ask for his Will to be done here, “as it is in Heaven.” But if the Father is infinite, His Will is also infinite, and if It were omnipresent here, our free will would be obliterated like an ice cube in a blast furnace, not something God presently wishes: Without free will, we can’t truly love God. So why are we exhorted to pray as in the Pater Noster? How can God’s Will be done here in a limited way in answer to our prayers? Genesis 28:12 has the answer.

    • “How can God’s Will be done here in a limited way”

      The Holy Spirit prompts us to cry out Father! With His beloved Son as His Holy Spirit inspired/gave His Beloved Son the pray which glorifies His Name as we are taught to say in Unity of Purpose.

      Our Father, who art in heaven
      Hallowed be thy name
      thy kingdom (Of Grace) come (via your Holy Spirit, then)
      thy will, (Will) be done,
      on earth as it is in heaven
      Give us this day our daily bread (While with your Mercy we would be fed)
      Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
      Lead not into (The Test) of temptation but deliver us from evil

      kevin your brother
      In Christ

      • For clarity to my Post above: A response to the above post made on another site;
        “Some translations have “deliver us from The Test” or “final Test”…as a reference to the Ultimate Test of our Humanity: unable to bear the Presence of a Holy and Just God. In the Book of Revelations, we see the rescued souls of Humanity hidden under the altar (during the Final Test) asking “how long?”

        I was thinking more on the lines of
        Job1:6-12: Job’s afflictions began from the malice of Satan, by the Lord’s permission, for wise and holy purposes.

        Proverbs 17:3 A crucible is for silver and a furnace for gold, but the LORD tests the heart

        Matt 4:1 ”Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil”

        So, pray not to be put/’led to the Test/of temptation’ as He was, rather, Father protect/keep us ‘awake’ and ‘deliver us from evil”

        Because
        When Jesus returned to the disciples and found them sleeping, He asked Peter “Were you not able to keep watch with Me for one hour?” while teaching him and all of us also to “Watch and pray so that you/we will not enter into temptation “For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

        kevin your brother
        In Christ

  3. Thanks for the excellent article.
    I believe that being made in the likeness of God, Adam and Eve were perfect, and so was the world they lived in. It was paradise. Our first parents must have done their bit as they saw the process of creation continuing. Their good works produced good outcomes. But then they sinned. It was very serious because they knowingly and deliberately defied God. Their wrongdoing also had an outcome. We call this the permissive will of God. God allows it because he endowed man with a FREE WILL. So, just as his good actions have consequences so do his bad ones. Adam’s sin being very serious, the consequences were also very serious. It did not only affect man’s relationship with God, but it also brought death and destruction into the world. And the rot increased with time. Even our genes got affected resulting in illness and disease.
    Suffering is a consequence of wrongdoing. If you bump your head firmly against a brick wall, you will experience pain. This would happen whether the act was done intentionally or accidentally. Or, even if somebody else performed the wrongdoing. Pain is the consequence of the act. And actions of this or other kinds happen all the time all over the world. This is why suffering exists. Then again, death came into the world. So, we suffer loss when loved ones die. And the world was also hurt. Their paradise became a sort of wilderness. See how nature responded when people sinned during Noah’s time? And again, in Sodom? Just because we do not understand the nature of our relationship with the environment, it does not mean that there is none. Events like the loss of paradise by Adam’s sin and the flood during Noah’s time are proof that there is a connection. When Jesus was dying on the cross, there was an earthquake, but when he proclaimed: It is Done – and surrendered his Spirit to the Father, the veil in the Temple split.
    There is one way God could have saved us from suffering. He could have not allowed us to do wrong. But that would mean taking away our free will. So, that is out of the question. Well, he could have made instant death the result of wrongdoing. But would we be alive today?
    God allows suffering simply because he loves us and wants us to appreciate life. He even offers us a beautiful, everlasting life in his heavenly home if we persevere in the company of his Son.

  4. Of actual sins, we read “As millions upon millions of human beings commit these and many other sins, their effects inevitably multiply throughout the social order…”

    Georges Bernanos captures this reality in his “Diary of a Country Priest.” He writes: “…hidden sins poison the air which others breathe, and without such corruption at the source, many a wretched man, tainted unconsciously, would never become a criminal […] We couldn’t go on living if we thought of such things […] No, I don’t think we could. I don’t suppose if God had given us the clear knowledge of how closely we are bound to one another both in good and evil, that we could go on living…”

    Notice, BOTH in good and evil…

  5. God bless you, dear Dr. Edward for heating the nail on the head. Suffering is part and parcel of our human nature. For me, those who desire to make heaven straight away after their earthly pilgrimage tend to suffer more! It can only be best understood by those who believe that there is heaven, purgatory, and hell; but may sound absurd or stupid to atheists as reflected in your phenomenal write-up here. We continue to pray for increase of faith for those of us who believe in our triune God, and for God’s enlightenment to believing in Him for the unbelief. Amen.

  6. Thank you Dr Fesser for reminding us that if we have access to the Holy sacraments we have all that we need to remain faithful and be a witness for Christ and if God wills, even unto death.

  7. Maquis were brutally tortured by Gestapo to elicit secrets needed to destroy French resistance. So successful that French Airborne assigned to destroy the Algerian resistance employed the same tortures learned earlier from the Germans. It worked until resistance resumed years after. Feser refers to the common argument, How could an infinitely good God permit such horror? Was and is the rationale for many an atheist, and famously Jean Paul Sartre’s atheistic existentialism. Rabbi Harold Kushner conservative offered a believer’s stoic rationale couched in Rabbinic wisdom [When Bad Things Happen] typical of the rationalist Christian believer in a benevolent God who is not sufficiently powerful to eliminate physical evil. With that the perception of an unnecessary evil that is inevitable though unnecessary [today to be avoided at all costs], as is Fr Francis Remler’s thesis on Original Sin that at first reading I don’t at all but into. Whether Dr Feser ascribes to Remler’s thought I need to read again and think. But for now it suffices to say that suffering was indeed in large part punishment inflicted because of the fall from grace. Indicated in the thistles and thorns rocks God predicts Man will suffer in sweat to earn his bread. It also, with God’s just permission, gave Satan the suzerainty over Man and his world that saint to be Bishop Fulton Sheen describes as Satan’s malevolent grip. All the ills, disease, and at times mishaps we suffer [recall Christ’s healing of the physically ill describes as being loosed of the devil’s grip]. Feser does as expected identify the truth, “As Remler discusses at length, we deserve to suffer for our sins”. As for now it’s the precise assessment of Original Sin and punishment even if we don’t inherit the mortal sin itself, rather its concupiscent effect. Otherwise Edward Feser’s thesis is sterlingly exact. “It is far preferable that we accept the miseries of this life in a penitential spirit than that we suffer those of the next” gives God’s primary purpose for suffering – in this life. Eternal suffering is assumed by His Holiness what a good God will not permit. Although Hell may well be understood as the consuming fire of God’s inextinguishable love causing fierce suffering for the graceless damned. Feser sums up with the value of civil penalty and our existential need to be reminded of evil and need to repent. I might add many courageous men and women [Odette Churchill outstanding] who suffered willingly for a just cause. What greater just cause is there in willingness to suffer for the salvation of our enemies and torturers? As did Christ.

  8. Thank you, Dr Feser – keep it coming, waning Western Christendom needs a good rally chant and leaders of defiance and fortitude. I watched on TV a story in which a father murdered the mother of his children and then murdered his children for refusing them not getting out of his way fast enough. He then proceeded to eat them in front of the whole community as a warning. But this was not evil, not even a sin because they were bears. If the atheists, (who are fond of saying that there is no difference between humans and animals), are successful in re-imaging a Nietzsche world without God, what are Christians to do? Suffering is nothing compared to eternity, if we are slaughtered like offending bears for the sake of Jesus Christ then let’s do so with complete confidence in righteousness.

  9. Even the most depraved popes have never taught error that I know of. Just because certain specific conditions must be met to guarantee infallibility doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t trust what a true pope (as opposed to an antipope) has to say in the ordinary course of things. Excusing formal heresy under a false charity isn’t excusable.

    St. Paul condemned those who would attempt to teach others something contrary to the faith. It is likely that wars after the Protestant Revolution were motivated in large part as an attempt to preserve the faith amidst the new heresies.

    The fact is that faith is easier to maintain than other virtues. Mortal sin destroys charity, but it doesn’t always erase faith and hope.

  10. A profound analysis and much needed today, especially to help us keep the faith in this secular world. Thank you Dr. Feser.

  11. The immediate consequence of original sin was and is the loss of consciousness of God
    as a loving presence minute to minute in any human. Discovery of that presence is now possible through the intervention in history of God Himself, Who presented Himself as the Person of Christ. There for the asking.

  12. Insightful piece. Thank you, Dr. Feser and CWR.

    It’s odd, but somehow even we Christians need to be constantly reminded: The cross is not upholstered.

  13. The story of the rich man conditionally offering a million dollars which is then refused does not seem to be a complete analogy for original sin, which has never been described in Catholic teaching as a “return” to a “state of nature”.

    In the Summa Theologica, his most developed and last word on the matter, St Thomas says:“[In a state of pure nature man would ] not need the gift of grace added to his natural endowments, in order to love God above all things naturally… but in the state of corrupt nature man needs, even for this, the help of grace to heal his nature.” Aquinas again contrasts a state of pure nature with that of fallen nature: “… in man, the concupiscible power is naturally governed by reason… while, in so far as it trespasses beyond the bounds of reason, it is, for a man, contrary to reason. Such is the concupiscence of original sin”. The concupiscence of original sin is not that of any state of nature.

    The story of the million dollar gift would describe the loss of the preternatural gifts of the state of justice. Because such gifts were, of course, gratuitous, their loss could not be used to argue against divine justice. But the story can’t be used to extrapolate man’s existence in a state of nature after the loss of the state of justice, at least not from an Aquinian perspective.

    St. Thomas Aquinas explains (Ia IIae 109): “We may speak of man in two ways: first, in the state of perfect nature [state of nature]; secondly, in the state of corrupted nature. Now in the state of perfect nature, man, without habitual grace, could avoid sinning either mortally or venially; since to sin is nothing else than to stray from what is according to our nature—and in the state of perfect nature man could avoid this… But in the state of corrupt nature man needs grace to heal his nature in order that he may entirely abstain from sin”.

    According to St. Thomas, man in a notional state of nature did not “depreciate” necessarily and did not need grace to avoid sin, whereas he does now. This has nothing to do with social context.

    The language used above by Leo XIII, St Thomas and thomism after him, and millions of sermons, describing the effects of original sin as a corruption of nature apart from the loss of preternatural gifts, is therefore entirely consistent. Such terminology, that we Catholic are all so familiar with, is conspicuously absent in this article.

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