This is the Art of Catholic. Welcome to the Art of Catholic, I'm Matthew Leonard and I want to ask you a question. Actually, a few questions. What exactly went down in the Garden of Eden? What was the atom actually given? What did he lose? What's the real effect on us? Not only that, how does Adam's original state of affairs affect our view of the new Adam, Jesus Christ, and what he came to do? Because to be honest, there's a fair bit of confusion even in Catholic circles with regard to what actually happened in the Garden and how all of it affects us and our view of salvation. Because you have to realize it's all connected. If you're off in your view of original sin,

you're way off. in the garden and how all of it affects us and our view of salvation. Because you have to realize it's all connected.

If you're off in your view of original sin,

you're way off in your view of salvation.

And not only that, if you understand what Adam and Eve

actually had and lost,

it really helps you in understanding

the struggle of the spiritual life.

Like why do we deal with the things that we deal with now?

So that's what we're diving into today on the art of Catholic. And my guest to explain all of this in such beautiful language that he always does is none other than my buddy Curtis Mitch. He's one of my closest friends. He's a familiar voice on the show. And if you don't know him, Curtis is authored and co-authored several books on scripture and is the main annotator of the natious Catholic study Bible, meaning he spent more than 20 years of his life writing that amazing commentary you read. He's also Bible projects managing editor and associate professor of sacred scripture at the Augustan Institute. Best of all, he's the father of nine, a husband of one, thankfully, and a friend of many, including, as I said, me. So Curtis, welcome back to the art of Catholic. Hey, man, it's good to see you. Thanks for having me back. Now, I'm sorry to tell you this, but when I first thought that it was time to do a show on sin, you were the first person that came to mind. So I hope you're okay with that. Yeah, well, I am something of an expert on sin. Thank you. Now you and I have been having a lot of conversational last few months regarding original sin, the Garden of Eden and the life of grace. And you have been a huge help to me as I'm expanding and sharpening one of the foundational series in the science of St.thood, which the series is called Catholic Mysticism in the Beautiful Life of Grace. So if you're a member of the Science of Sainthood guys, keep an eye out for that because it's coming soon. And if you're not a member, head over to ScienceofSainthood.com, get a free trial. This is step by step spiritual formation for people who are ready to make real progress in the spiritual life. The science of St. Ed is isn't a hodgepodge of this and that every course is laid out in order to walk you through everything you should have been taught about the spiritual life, but probably never were. But given the liturgical time of the year, so we're recording this during Lent, I thought that original sin would be a perfect topic to get into for this show because what we're going to talk about is really the heart of everything. In order to understand who we are and what we do, we have to have an idea of what took place at the beginning of history. Everything flows from that. If we're going to understand the life of grace and where all this is headed, we have to understand how we were made in the beginning, what went wrong, and how it affects us now. Is that a fair summary, Curtis? Absolutely. Yeah. The good news can only be understood as good against the backdrop of this bad news, of something that went fundamentally awry at the dawn of human history. Yeah, because the gospel is addressing itself very specifically to this question. It is the solution to this problem. Now, the first thing we wanna say is, obviously you can't pull this up on YouTube. There's a level of mystery when it comes to what actually took place in the story of Adam and Eve. We don't have a blow-by-blow account of what happened. That said, the church has provided some guideposts. So let's start this off by talking about what Adam and Eve had at creation, you know, what state were they created. And let me just begin by reading a statement from the the catechism just to kind of set us up. And this is paragraph 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. So, let's start there Curtis with original holiness. What is that all about? Yeah, original holiness means that when God created Adam, He begins life in a state of original innocence because He hasn't sinned yet. Okay? But the sinlessness of Adam is not the most important thing. The reality is that God had gifted Adam with the supernatural life of grace in the very beginning when he created him. And this seems to be indicated in the biblical book of Genesis when it says that in Genesis 2, when it says that God created man from the dust of the ground that he blew into his nostrils the breath of life. And then it says God planted a garden in Eden in the East and there he placed the man. So in the kind of the figurative, representational language of the book of Genesis, this endowment, this gift and an ennoblement of Adam is indicated by the fact that God created this special place of communion with him and placed Adam there. That the Garden of Eden kind of represents what we would call as Catholics, the state of grace. It's where communion with God is possible. And our tradition understands that when God created Adam, then he, of course, he's innocent, he hasn't sinned yet. But he's also elevated to a state that is above his nature. Right? He is, his soul is pulsing with the life of God itself. All right? And so he's elevated to a supernatural status, to a supernatural standard, a standing of being and action in the grace of God. It's supernatural because it's above his nature. In fact, that's really important, I think, to understand the whole account of the fall, because when we talk about the fall, we don't mean merely that Adam went from a state of innocence to guilt, from sinlessness to sin. That is certainly true, but it's a fall because Adam falls from the elevated position of being established in the grace of God, the supernatural elevation of his soul to live the life of God within him.

Him. Right? That's the primary gift. That's the premier gift that Adam possessed in the beginning

by the gift of God. And that's the elevation from which he falls when he disobeys God and sins against it. So let's talk about what it is that gave him that elevated statement, really talking about sanctifying grace here. And the catechism calls sanctifying grace, deifying grace. So Adam is sharing in the divine life of God. And as you said, this isn't something that was natural to him. This is something that was added on, so to speak. Explain that just a little bit. Okay, sure. So when Adam is created, he's created with all of his natural equipment. There are things that pertain to his nature as a human being. And so he's given a mind to know God. He's given a will to love God. He's given a body to serve God. This is kind of like the standard issue equipment that he receives as a human being. And so, and with this equipment, then he can live a properly ordered natural life as a man. Okay? But in that natural state, right, he is not living the life of God until God gives him, until God grants something over and above what is naturally due to him as a human being, and that free gift is the gift that we call grace. It is that sanctifying grace, which as you said the Catechism calls deifying grace. It's a participation in the life of God that leads to a transformation into the likeness of God so that Adam can be a true son of his heavenly father by imitating him, loving as he loves, forgiving as he forgives, you know, serving others as the father serves and shows himself generous. And so Adam is then elevated into this state of grace to do things by grace that he couldn't even do by nature. It really is drawing him up into God. Not in the sense, and no creature is, we don't want to think of this as, as Adam being absorbed into God in some way, he's simply being given an elevated participation in God's life. And this is a privilege for him, but it's beyond what he has a right to just according to his nature. It's a gift that is unmerited, but it's a gift that goes beyond any of the natural endowments that Adam received as a human being. So we're going to talk about the fall and we need to do that in a minute. But let's kind of look at Adam and us at the same time. Does being in a state of sanctifying grace, because sanctifying grace is what we receive in the sacraments, right? So we get this back through them, what Adam lost. Does it put an onus on us in any way with regard to Christian living? In other words, does being in a state of grace, not just mean a higher state of union, like what Adam had and what we get to the sacrament, but a higher state of action as well? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. Grace enables us to do things that we're not capable of doing by nature. And the primary thing, the thing that usually comes to mind for me is what Jesus says in the

gospel of John chapter 15 when he's gives us the allegory of the vine and the branches and the branches have to stay connected to the vine. All right? Because Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing. And the meaning of that statement is not that you can't brush your teeth without

Jesus. The point of the statement is that you can't do anything to contribute to your salvation apart from Jesus. Okay, and so we are called to a supernatural end. And so God has to give us the supernatural means for us to reach a supernatural end because our supernatural end exceeds all the powers and endowments that we have by nature. Something from the realm of supernatural is needed for us, right, to empower us, to enable us, to enlighten us, right, towards our final end, so that we can reach the glory in heaven for which we were made as human beings. Yeah, I mean, this is really what the phrase co-operating with grace is actually all about. Yes. It always brings to mind for me, Luke 10 and Mary and Martha with regard to the active, contemplative life and how these things have to go together. You can't have one almost without the other. And I always think it should be reversed. It should be the contemplative, active life instead of the active first because everything's powered by the interior life. It's powered by the interior life of grace that then that enables us to do the things that we were supposed to do like Martha, right? So first like Mary, then like Martha. And it also, you know, it has a big impact on how we view the cross of Jesus Christ as well because we're talking about participating through our actions and what it is that God has done and so if you view the cross as merely Jesus getting us off the hook and he just substitutes for us and you don't really have to do anything but if you have the Catholic view of a representative sacrifice where we're participating along with Jesus Christ in his actions because the sacrament of joy is to him so we can participate. Then there's an onus on us to actually act it out because Jesus expects us, in fact, He wills for us to participate through the act of life. That's right. That's right. So, you know, if Jesus was simply our substitute on the cross, then why does Jesus say you have to take up your own cross? That's right. Why would we even have them to begin with? Because the idea is not substitution. He does something so you don't have to. The bigger idea is participation. He does something to enable you to do something in turn. Because as you imitate the man Jesus Christ, you are imitating the God that is incarnated in Jesus Christ. And you are therefore living the life of a son who images the Father in heaven. You're becoming like God in the way that God intends for you. Yeah, and we had a lot of conversations about this with regard to what we call congruent merit. Touch on that for a second, because we're talking about a form of merit that's powered by divine grace. So we may merit something, but only through the merits of Jesus Christ. What? Explain that a little bit to us. Well, yeah, I guess in layman's term, it's basically this, that only Jesus, because he is, fully divine, the divine Son of God, only Jesus can merit before God in the absolute sense. Okay? Only he can, can, can merit from the equipment of his nature, so to speak, because he's a divine person. His actions, even in his humanity, are powered by his divinity. So to speak, but you and I, we can't merit our salvation in the that we can just, you know, pay our taxes and be good to our neighbors and try to be generally good people and expect that we're just kind of piling up good works that are done on our own natural human power and kind of, you know, hopefully tip the scales in our favor, you know, when the day comes that we meet our maker. No, the reality is that merit is a true Christian thing, but it requires grace. The priority of grace can never be subtracted from this equation, right? Because you have to be in a state of grace in order to merit. So merit is possible, but only if grace comes first. And when grace comes first, we are called to cooperate with this supernatural ability that God is extending to us and giving us as a gift when we cooperate with grace, then we can merit. Because when we merit even in a state of grace, it's us working with God, not us working independently of God or simply for God. He's actually, you know, it's like, you know, when your dad taught you to ride a bike,

he's literally holding the thing up and then and steering it for you and he's just asking you to pedal. But he's really doing all the hard work, all the heavy lifting, right? He just asks you to cooperate. And so it's the two working together, right? that synergy of grace and your own efforts to respond to that grace, right? And to make it fruitful in your life. This is why it's not enough just to be a good person, right? Right. I'm going to be a good person. I'm going to do good things as long as I don't hurt anybody. If you're not in a state of grace, your good works don't merit anything for your salvation. You have to be joined to Christ, the salvation through Him alone. Right? Yeah, that's right. So let's pivot to original justice here. And let me again read from the catechism, because the catechism says that Adam was in original holiness, with so participation in the life of God and justice. So what in the world is original justice? Original justice is the inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation comprised a state called original justice. Yeah, good, Curtis. Yeah, so original justice is basically a way of talking about the rightness of the human person's essential relationships. In the state of justice, Adam is in a right relationship with God. Adam is in a right relationship with Eve, his spouse, right? So there's interpersonal relationship on a horizontal level. There's also his relationship with the creation, with the world in which he lives. There's no animosity or tension. There's a rightness, a harmony and a peace in that relationship. And then there's this other, this fourth component, which is the inner, inner

rightness of his relationship with himself. Okay, at this point, at this stage in the game, humanity does not possess this thing that our tradition calls concupacence, right, where we are dysregulated on the inside, that we're sort of at war with ourselves, right? That we have competing desires. And there's a constant struggle as to which ones are gonna win out in any given situation. If you've ever read Romans chapter seven, right? Paul is a very eloquent sort of articulation of what that experience is like. I wanna do something, but my flesh wants to do something else, and so there's a kind of war on the inside. Adam and Eve did not possess that. They didn't, their flesh was not in rebellion against their spirits, their souls. They were at peace with themselves. So that original justice, the way the catsm Seems to explain it. It's it's the rightness of all of those essential relationships man with God man with woman man with creation and man with himself Yeah, and things went wrong, which is why we don't have Nice relationships all the way around in those situations. Hey guys, we'll be back to the interview in just a moment. Are you or a group you're part of seeking authentic Catholic spiritual teaching that will finally provide understandable, serious formation and direction? Do you want to learn to pray more deeply and make actual spiritual progress? If so, I'd like to introduce you to the science of St.hood. It's an online teaching program that offers step-by-step Catholic spiritual formation for people who are ready to move into a real relationship with God. Featuring a series of beautiful bite-sized video courses, meditations, and scripture laid out in a particular order, you'll finally discover a clear path to holiness. We also offer video studies for parish groups, with workbooks and leader guides, as well as individual courses for personal study. Based on spiritual giants like St. John of the Cross, Theresa of Avala, and many others, the science of St. hood is dynamic, practical spiritual guidance specifically designed to draw you into a closer communion with God. You've never seen anything like this until now. Go to scienceofsainthood.com and experience what tens of thousands of Catholics the world over have already discovered. Scienceofsainthood.com. More than education, this is transformation. So there's more. So we got original holiness, we got original justice. But there is some, the Catechism also says that as long as you remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. So a couple of extra gifts here. You wanna explain those? Yeah, so if the primary gift that Adam has, the crowning gift that Adam has, is this supernatural grace of holiness and justice. There also, our tradition also speaks about some other gifts, and these are one of them that you just read. In scholastic theology, we sometimes refer to these gifts as preter natural gifts, okay? And these are additional gifts that are given to perfect human nature, but aren't actually essential components of that human nature. They're preter natural, which is kind of a strange word, but it basically means that it's between supernatural and natural. It's not, these are not supernatural gifts, which are gifts of grace and participation in the life of God, but they're also not just his natural gifts, right? His basic equipment of intellect, will, body, so forth. Okay, these are things that perfect his nature. Two of them that are mentioned

in the passage you just read are impassibility and immortality, that man in the garden, in the original state of grace and state of innocence that he found himself in, he wouldn't have to suffer or die. So, impossibility is the gift in which Adam, it's not entirely clear that Adam couldn't suffer any discomforts in body whatsoever, but he definitely wouldn't have had to suffer in the way that he was made to suffer after he transgresses the commandment. You'll remember when God sentences the couple after they eat the fruit of the forbidden tree that the woman is told she will have pain and childbirth. There will be the bitterness of spousal domination. There will be a toil some work food. By the sweat of your brow, you shall eat bread. These forms of frustration, which are penitential disciplines, they were placed upon Adam and Eve in the aftermath of the fall. Before the fall, Adam and Eve did not have to suffer these. There would not have been chained, you know, pain and childbirth. He would not have had to work so hard against, you know, the thorns and the fissiles of creation just to provide food for himself because God had provided it for him in abundance. He surrounded in this paradise of delights with all of all of the things that he needed for human life to flourish, right? And it was all there and the suffering wasn't. So that's one of the gifts that Adam had. The other one is that he wouldn't have to die. And this is known as the preternatural gift of immortality. And it seems, you know, see a fewologians that I've read on this, they seem to think that immortality would be basically the continuation of life in an uninterrupted way on earth. Like, we're not talking about the glory of eternal life, we're talking about human life, natural life in the world would have extended indefinitely until such time as God wished to take the first man and woman into heavenly glory, right? But he wouldn't have to experience death because the final penitential discipline that is placed upon the man at the end of his sentencing in Genesis 3 is that dust thou art and unto dust you shall return." And that's really the point of the commandment that God gave him. That was the warning, I should say, that God gave to Adam when he placed him in the garden. He said, you shall not eat of this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall die. So the implication there is that a life of obedience would be an immortal life, a life that continues and endures and does not suffer the disintegration and violent experience of human death when the body and the soul are torn apart. When the composite nature of the human person is rent a sunder, so to speak, in an unnatural way. Because death is not a natural thing. It's actually a penal sanction that God imposed upon human sin. Okay, so let me just summarize to this point. So Adam and Eve original holiness and justice so they're they receive sanctifying grace They're in right relationship with themselves each other in creation They don't have concacence, they don't have this inclination to sin like we do, and they have extra gifts of avoiding, suffering and death. So that's the state of things in the garden. Let's now talk about the fall because it's kind of hard to imagine, like, and understand how in the world with all the amazing gifts that he had that he would fall because Adam had it going on, right? So I think it's so bad. I mean, and what an original sin consists of because this is hard to comprehend. Yeah. Well, the story in the book of Genesis is actually very simple and straightforward, but as the Catechism tells us in multiple places, we're dealing with, when we read the story of the fall, we're dealing on the one hand with history. We're dealing with primeval events. These are real things that really happened. At the same time, the Catechism tells us that Genesis uses figurative language, symbolic language, right? And so it's not quite as simple as simply reading the story and saying that's what you would have seen if you were standing there exactly. So we don't know what all of that means exactly how we square the figurative description with the historical event. But the way in which the narrator describes it is actually very, very kind of interesting and insightful. And I've come back to this passage so many times because it ring so true when it comes to struggling with sin in the Christian life and human life in general, right? So what the story tells us is that the serpent and in Genesis, the author of Genesis does not identify the servant. He presents the servant rather as this seductive voice in the garden. And we learn from later biblical revelation, like in the book of Wisdom, chapter 2, for example, in Jesus' own teaching in John 8, some other place is that this is actually the devil. This is Satan himself. That's the one who's behind this seductive voice of the serpent in the garden. And what the serpent succeeds in doing is convincing the woman, because he approaches the woman, not the man, And even though in verse 6 of the Hebrew text of Genesis 3, we're told that the man was with the woman at this moment, but he actually approaches the woman and engages her in dialogue and convinces her that there are more blessings to be had. In fact, there are things that God possesses that he doesn't want to share with you. And this comes out in Genesis chapter 3, verse 4. The serpent says to the woman, first thing he says is, you will not die. And what is the serpent saying when he says you will not die? He's contradicting the word of God. He's effectively saying that when God said in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die, that God is lying. God is not being truthful with you. Right? And so he contradicts the word of God. Verse 5, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened,

right, and you will be like God, knowing, good, and evil.

Right, and the tradition reads this as kind of like there's an interesting little hint here

that

God wants us to be like Him, but we have to be like God in the way that God determines. God shows us how to be like Him. The devil wants them to, is tempting them with being like God, but in a way that is contrary to God's will, okay? And so it's kind of interesting because this verse five is precisely where St. Thomas Aquinas locates the primary motive for a original sin. Okay? St. Thomas in the summa says that, you know, how do we understand that a person in a state of grace and who doesn't have a rebellion of the flesh against the spirit, who doesn't struggle with concupacins like we do? How could someone in such a blessed situation actually fall from grace? Well, we can't chalk it up to a desire of the flesh precisely because he lacks concupacins. But what you can say, St. Thomas says, is that the couple desires a spiritual good that is above their measure, right? They want something that is unique to God that is not really within their reach and it's not their right and it's not proper for them to even possess it Okay, it's right to be like God in showing love to others It's right to be like God in serving others. It's right to be like God in showing mercy to other people But but God possesses certain prerogatives like omnipotence or his omnipresence and things like that, that we cannot imitate. And they belong properly to God and not properly to us. And because they don't belong properly to us, we are not to covet them because they are, they represent a spiritual good that is above our nature. For St. Thomas, what the serpent is getting Eve to do is to covet the likeness of God, and what is the likeness of God that they're coveting? It's that sovereign authority to determine what is good and evil for oneself. It's the authority of being a law giver and not simply being one who was called to obey the law. That's the thing. God has not given that authority to us to determine what is good and evil for ourselves. That's a unique prerogative that he possesses, but the devil convinces the woman, the serpent convinces the woman that she can have this and should desire this. And that's the primary motive for what takes place in Genesis chapter three. So we're talking about a desire for autonomy. Right. You're talking about it.

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