Primordial Sin.

According to Genesis (chapter 3), Adam and Eve, having obeyed the flattery of the serpent-devil, transgressed the will of God, fell morally and sinned. Sin destroyed the blessed and good harmony of the whole life of the transgressors.

        The physical consequences of the fall are diseases, hard labor, and death. These were the natural results of the moral fall, the falling away from communion with God, man's departure from God. Man became subject to the corrupt elements of the world, in which dissolution and death are active.

            Banished from Paradise, the first people came to know hard labor in the struggle with nature, illnesses, suffering, and death. Their spiritual forces began, not to develop, but to fall. Vices and crimes appeared and began to increase. Already the first steps of man outside the state of Paradise were sprinkled with the blood of fratricide. Then came polygamy, wars, corruption, and innumerable crimes.

            Sin, in the Christian view, is not only the transgression of divine law or a state of lawlessness, even though there is no doubt it is that. It is not only what can be called a judicial evil. Not only is sin an offence to divine truth, but it is also treachery against God’s love on the part of man, a transgression by him of loyalty to God, and an arbitrary violation of his sacred union with God. Through sin, mankind, in the depths of his free will, rebelled against his divine Creator, Who presented man with all the blessings, including the most important of all blessings: the image and likeness of God. From such a conception of sin stems the biblical teaching of the extreme criminality of sin and the utmost gravity of its consequences for the “fate of man.”

            The world, created by God, represented a complete harmony of beauty and blessings. The human spirit, violating the law of divine Truth, treacherously breaking away from God’s love and entering a state of struggle against God, undergoes suffering which would have been impossible had divine will been fulfilled. For this will is a blessing for all. Sin breeds evil, and evil breeds suffering. That there should be an absence of suffering as a result of perpetrated sin would be the greatest logical absurdity, the greatest wickedness, the greatest ethical injustice, and itself the greatest moral evil!