Copyright © 2006 By Doug Lawrence. All Rights Reserved.
Catechism Of The Catholic Church Reprinted With Permission.
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God’s Truth From The Catechism Of The Catholic Church – cont.
How to read the account of the fall
390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a
deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.
264
Revelation gives us the certainty of
faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first
parents.
265
II. THE FALL OF THE ANGELS
391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God,
which makes them fall into death out of envy.
266
Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this
being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil".
267
The Church teaches that Satan was at first a
good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by
God, but they became evil by their own doing."
268
392 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels.
269
This "fall" consists in the free choice of these
created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that
rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: "You will be like God."
270
The devil "has sinned
from the beginning"; he is "a liar and the father of lies".
271
393 It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that
makes the angels' sin unforgivable. "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as
there is no repentance for men after death."
272
394 Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls "a murderer from the
beginning", who would even try to divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father.
273
"The
reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil."
274
In its consequences the
gravest of these works was the mendacious seduction that led man to disobey God.
395 The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact
that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God's reign. Although
Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his
action may cause grave injuries - of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature- to
each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence which with strength and
gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that providence should permit
diabolical activity, but "we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him."
275
III. ORIGINAL SIN
Freedom put to the test
396 God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature, man
can live this friendship only in free submission to God. The prohibition against eating "of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil" spells this out: "for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die."
276
The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"
277
symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that
man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his
Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom.
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