All this is proved by Holy Scripture, but nothing is said about what disruption of the union with God is, what grace is, what spiritual death is. It would be particularly desirable to know what is meant by spiritual death, as distinguished from corporeal death, since above it was said that the soul was immortal. Other consequences of the fall: (2) dimming of the intellect, (3) proclivity toward evil rather than toward good. But what difference there was between Adam before and after the fall in relation to the proclivity toward evil it does not say. Before the fall there was also a greater proclivity toward evil than toward good, if Adam, as we are told in Art. 89, comitted an evil act when everything drew him on to the good. (4) The mutilation of the image of God. Mutilation means:
“If a coin, which has upon itself the image of a king, is spoiled, the gold loses its value and the image is of no service: the same happened with Adam.”
For the body the consequences were: (1) diseases, (2) bodily death. For Adam it was: (1) expulsion from Paradise, (2) the loss of his dominion over the animals, (3) the curse of the serpent, that is, man had to work to earn his sustenance.
We are all used to this story, which we have briefly learned in our childhood, and are all accustomed not to think of it, not to analyze it, and to connect with it an indistinct, poetical representation, and therefore the detailed repetition of this story with the confirmation of its coarse meaning and seeming proofs of its correctness, as expounded in the Theology, involuntarily strikes us as something new and unexpectedly coarse.
The representation of God and of the garden and of the fruits makes us doubt the truth of the whole, and for him who assumes justice there arises involuntarily the simple childish question as to why the omniscient, almighty, and all-good God did everything in such a way
