Chapter 2 argues that Thomas’s mature view of the formal cause of original justice created an unresolved problem for his doctrine of original sin. Though his early writings sharply distinguished the rectitude of the human will in the state of original justice from supernatural sanctifying grace, by the mid-1260s (e.g., STh I, q. 95, a. 1) he implied that the formal cause of original justice is sanctifying grace. The problem is that Thomas also held (1) that Adam should have been the principal cause of original justice in his posterity and (2) that no creature can be the principal cause of sanctifying grace. Thomas’s mature view implies that the disposition to original justice never could have been sexually transmitted. This implies that his account of original sin as a whole needed to be modified. Adam’s failure to transmit the disposition to original justice rendered the lack of original justice sinful in his posterity: if Adam couldn’t have done this in the first place, how could his descendants have original sin?

Chapter 8 responds to potential objections. Against the objection that my proposal is a recrudescence of “two-tier Thomism,” I argue that it is deeply congruous with Henri de Lubac’s view that nature innately desires grace. The second objection is that my view implies that a state of pure nature is impossible. I argue that it is in fact compatible with a wide variety of views of divine providence. Further objections are raised that focus on the nature of sanctifying grace, the ecumenical potential of a Thomist perspective, and Pelagianism. My proposal, I suggest, is compatible with a wide variety of views of justification, and it is not “Pelagian” in any meaningful sense.

Chapter 3 argues that Thomas radically reconfigures the relation between original sin and human nature. Whereas Augustine had argued that nature is “corrupted” by the Fall, Thomas draws on Denys the Areopagite to argue that strictly speaking, human nature survives the Fall. For Thomas, there are two senses of the word “nature.” In the strict sense, “nature” refers to the principia naturae and the propria that follow therefrom. The secondary sense of “nature” refers to what is good for nature – including communion with God. Thomas regularly uses Augustinian language concerning the corruption of nature by sin (e.g., STh I–II, q. 109), but when he explains this usage he indicates that it is improper (e.g., De malo q. 5, a. 2). Nature is “corrupted” only insofar as human beings have lost the good of nature, original justice. The principles and properties of human nature – including the orientation to God – remain. This is why Thomas argues that children who die unbaptized will know and love God in limbo.

Chapter 7 proposes a new Thomist view of original sin. The core of Thomas’s proposal – that original sin has more to do with the lack of a right relation to the Triune God than the inheritance of personal guilt or corruption – is defensible today. His mature teaching stressing the necessity of supernatural grace for original justice, however, implies that he should have denied that original sin has a necessary connection to Adam’s failure to sexually transmit justice. I propose a “new Thomist view,” on which original sin is the lack of sanctifying grace. Grace is the Father’s gift of the Holy Spirit that orients the person to Jesus Christ. Every infant is born with human nature but called to exist in Christ. I construct this account in dialogue with biblical scholarship and respond to the challenges posed by evolution. I sketch two possible views of the Fall compatible with the new Thomist view of original sin.

Chapter 6 unpacks salient hypotheses in contemporary evolutionary theory that challenge traditional views of the Fall and original sin. The first challenge comes from the gradual nature of evolutionary change. On the modern synthesis of Mendel’s account of particulate inheritance with Darwin’s account of natural selection, evolutionary change happens gradually. It is hard to see how a single volition could have corrupted human nature. (This seems to be true even on the “extended evolutionary synthesis.”) The second challenge, or rather set of challenges, stems from the legacy of our evolutionary history. It appears that at least some human beings were disposed to sinful forms of behavior (e.g., aggressive violence), and yet at the same time we have evolved dispositions to altruistic cooperation. This causes problem for the traditional Augustinian account of both pre- and postlapsarian human nature: human desires seem not to have been perfectly ordered before the Fall, and after the Fall it seems that we aren’t entirely selfish. The third challenge stems from the widely supported hypothesis that the human population never dipped below 6,000 individuals. Either some people were created in sin or far more people were created without sin than traditionally assumed.

Many people today believe that the doctrine of original sin is pernicious, antibiblical, irrational, and opposed to the deliverances of the scientific community. A significant number of Christians share at least some of these concerns or objections, while at the same time believing that the doctrine is part of their faith. In constructive and critical dialogue with the most important accounts of original sin in the history of theology, this book has sought to respond to these concerns (focusing on those raised by evolution). Here I review the major arguments of the book and suggest a few directions for future research.

What gave rise to this superstition? Who taught Tess that children who die unbaptized are damned? Surely no reasonable religion would teach that children are condemned simply because they weren’t sprinkled with water. If we had put this objection to Tess or her priest, however, a response would have been ready to hand: “in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.”2 The Church teaches that every child deserves damnation. Innocent in the eyes of the world, Sorrow was guilty in the eyes of God: he had contracted “original sin” in his mother’s womb.

The word “honors” is given in the plural (honoribus), because St. Thomas is not speaking of fame or celebrity in general – that is discussed in the next Article. Here he is speaking of the particular distinctions we confer upon persons whom we consider deserving. Offices, for example, are honors; so are prizes, awards, and other authoritative recognition; so is being raised to a higher rank. To be sure, mere celebrity may lead to being granted honors, but the two things are formally distinct. It is one thing to be deservedly or undeservedly famous; it is another thing for the famous person to receive official recognition of excellence. Here we are speaking of the latter.

Wealth is the first candidate for happiness to be considered, probably because so many nominate it. It is easy to see why people would fix their hopes on material possessions, for the desire for riches is allied with other strong motives. One is fear, the anxiety that I will not have enough. Another is status, because although the rich are resented and envied, they are also admired. Still another is the love of power, which we consider later. And then there is sheer sensuality: It is not for nothing that the Latin term luxuria can refer not only to luxury in the English sense, but also to self-indulgence or lust. I imagine that I will be happy if only I get what I want – everything I want.

Does everyone want to be happy? Think of a person who says, “I want something, but I don’t know what I want.” In one sense he knows what this “something” is: It is what he wants. In another sense he does not know what it is: He does not know what specific thing will satisfy his desire. The strategy of this Article depends on a similar distinction.

When St. Thomas asks whether human beings pursue ultimate purposes, most first-time readers suppose that he means whether there is a single ultimate purpose, the same for everyone, to which everything everyone does is in some way directed. Not yet. At present he is asking only whether ultimate meaning or purpose is in some way at stake in each human life – whether in this sense human life is meaningful. He is not asking whether each person has only one ultimate purpose. That question does not come up until Article 5. Even supposing that there is only one, he is not asking whether each person always acts with it in view; that question does not come up until Article 6. Even supposing that each person does always act with it in view, he is not asking whether every person pursues the same ultimate purpose; that question does not come up until Article 7.

The respondeo or “I answer that” in this Article is the longest in the Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose. No doubt this is mostly because the problem itself is complex, but perhaps St. Thomas also wants to make sure that we get the point. If we could reach our final destination, but not stay there, what hope would there be in human life?

In either of two ways, one might deny that it is characteristically human to act for an end or aim. The more moderate way to deny the proposition is to suggest that man does not always act for an end. This is the approach taken in Objections 2 and 3. The more radical way is to suggest that man never acts for an end, but only seems to. This is the approach taken in Objection 1.

The idea that one must be just to be happy is not only Christian; in Western philosophy, it goes all the way back to the arguments of Socrates in the dialogue Gorgias. The other characters in the dialogue think happiness results from getting one’s way. If that were true, then happiness would not require rectitude of will. However, Socrates argues that persons with warped wills cannot be happy; that doing injustice is even more to be dreaded than suffering it; and that the best thing that can happen to an unjust person is for his will to be straightened out by punishment. Even though Socrates out-argues his opponents so thoroughly that they run out of things to say in their defense, they never accept his view – showing, perhaps, that the problem lies not just in their intellects, but in their own disordered wills.