Article: Aquinas on Original Sin

Click here to access Dr. Wood’s recently published article: “From Pure Nature to Wounded Nature: Aquinas on the Effects of Original Sin,” The Thomist 86, no. 2 (2022): 173-217.

Many Thomists (and by extension, many Catholics) tend to assume that fallen humanity is in some sense perfectly intact: in our nature, our capacity for natural virtue, and our ability to form virtuous political communities. This assumption stands at the heart of “liberal Catholicism,” the view that the Church not only can accommodate, but in some sense needs and expects a liberal social and political order in order to preach the Gospel freely and effectively. This article challenges that assumption at its root, by deconstructing the origins of its assumptions about fallen humanity in early modern scholasticism and early 20th century manuscript studies. It then shows on the basis of new historical evidence how St. Thomas Aquinas came to embrace a more traditional, Augustinian view of humanity after the Fall: one which acknowledges the fact that human nature has been wounded by original sin, but also proclaims the hope that the grace of Christ can heal us from sin even as it raises us towards glory.