Original righteousness

Original righteousness is a concept variously appraised in Roman Catholic and Reformed theology relating to the Edenic state of sinlessness. According to this doctrine, Adam and Eve were created without sin (a point that all Christian churches agree upon), and this original righteousness meant that a number of conditions that are now "natural" did not apply. Humans were, in such a state, united with their essence, and therefore their forms were, as their spirits, untainted. The Adamic man was immortal, experienced no excess of desire (in either lust or gluttony or greed), and had neither obesity nor starvation. Where Roman Catholicism believes the original moral state of humanity to have been the result of a donum superadditum, humanity having been created in a morally-neutral state with an extra grace that was rescinded at the fall, Reformed theology holds to original righteousness as facultative and an inherent personal quality of goodness obtained at creation, a donum concreatum. However, even within scholastic and Roman Catholic theology, the precise relationship between a donum superadditum and original righteousness is debated.

The concept of original righteousness shows up throughout discussions of the lost Eden in Western literature. The twentieth-century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins's poetry consistently addresses the implications of "natural" and "nature" falling with man's sin. The fall of man is, in this theological scheme, a fall of nature as well (for nature, too, was perfect and essential only in the Garden of Eden), and man's own sin causes it to contain evil. Additionally, the loss of original righteousness is important to both concepts of what the essence of man is (e.g.