What Went Wrong with Mankind, and Why Do We Need Salvation?
Short Answer
Christianity begins with a claim that explains both the greatness and the misery of the human condition: man was created good, but mankind is now fallen.
God did not create man sinful, alienated from Him, subject to disordered passions and destined for death. Our first parents were created in friendship with God and elevated by grace to a supernatural destiny—the eternal vision and possession of God. But Adam freely disobeyed God. By that first sin he lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, and this loss affected not only himself but the human race descending from him.
The Catholic Church calls the resulting condition original sin. It is not the claim that every child personally performed Adam's act. Rather, Adam's sin resulted in the loss of the supernatural inheritance that he was to transmit to his descendants. The Council of Trent defined that Adam transmitted to his posterity not merely suffering and bodily death, but also sin, “which is the death of the soul”; this original sin is communicated “by propagation, not by imitation.” Human nature itself was not destroyed: reason, free will and the capacity for natural good remain. But mankind is deprived of sanctifying grace and wounded by ignorance, weakness, disordered desire and an inclination toward sin.
That is why we need salvation, not merely better education, improved social conditions or stronger resolutions. No purely natural human effort can restore the supernatural life with God that has been lost, erase sin, or give us a right to eternal life. God therefore acted to save us. The Son of God became man as the new Adam, offered Himself for our sins, reconciled mankind to God and merited the grace by which sinners can truly be cleansed, sanctified, adopted as children of God and brought to eternal life.
As St Paul contrasts Adam with Christ:
“by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just” (Romans 5:19).
Why This Question Matters
Unless we understand what went wrong with mankind, much of Christianity makes little sense.
Why did the Son of God become man?
Why the Cross?
Why baptism?
Why grace?
Why does Christianity speak continually of redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, conversion and salvation?
If human beings are already in their proper relationship with God and require only moral encouragement, the central events of Christianity appear excessive or even incomprehensible.
The Catholic answer is neither that man is naturally evil nor that man is basically spiritually healthy and can perfect himself by effort.
Human nature remains the good creation of God, but it is fallen.
There is still truth, beauty, natural virtue, genuine human love and free choice in fallen man. Yet something essential to man's supernatural destiny has been lost, and his natural powers themselves have been wounded.
This distinction prevents two opposite errors.
One error treats fallen human nature as though it were totally destroyed, leaving man without genuine freedom or ability to perform any naturally good action. Catholic doctrine does not teach this. The Council of Trent expressly taught that free will, although weakened and inclined toward evil, was “by no means extinguished.”
The opposite error supposes that man needs only to become more enlightened, moral, compassionate or disciplined. Christianity teaches something much deeper: the fundamental problem is sin and separation from supernatural friendship with God. What has been lost cannot simply be manufactured from below. It must be restored by grace from above.
The whole Christian Gospel therefore rests upon three connected truths:
Creation: God made man good and for Himself.
Fall: man sinned and lost the supernatural life for which he was destined.
Redemption: God Himself came to man's rescue in Jesus Christ.
Without the Fall, the meaning of redemption is obscured. Without redemption, mankind remains unable to attain the supernatural end for which God created it.
What the Catholic Church Teaches
Sacred Scripture
The biblical account begins not with an evil creation, but with a good one. Genesis presents man as deliberately created by God and placed under a divine command. The catastrophe of Genesis 3 comes through man's own disobedience.
The serpent tempts Eve to distrust God's word and promises that disobedience will bring a kind of independence:
“you shall be as Gods” (Genesis 3:5).
Adam and Eve eat what God had forbidden. The immediate consequences are shame, disorder, fear and alienation; subsequently come toil, suffering, death and expulsion from Eden. Yet even within God's sentence upon the serpent appears the first promise of victory: the woman's seed will crush the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15), traditionally called the Protoevangelium, or first announcement of the Gospel.
St Paul gives the inspired interpretation of Adam's act:
“Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men...”
— Romans 5:12
He then deliberately places Adam and Christ in parallel:
“For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just.”
— Romans 5:19
Adam therefore appears as the head of fallen humanity, while Christ is the new Adam from whom comes justification and life. St Paul's argument is not merely that Adam provided a bad example which later people copied. His contrast is between two representative acts with consequences extending beyond the individual actor: Adam's disobedience and Christ's obedience.
Nor does Scripture present salvation as one religious option among many equivalent methods of self-improvement. St Peter declares concerning Jesus Christ:
“Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.”
— Acts 4:12
The Council of Trent on Original Sin
The Catholic Church gave one of her most precise definitions of original sin at the Council of Trent, Session V, Decree Concerning Original Sin, 17 June 1546.
The Council taught that Adam, by transgressing God's command:
lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted;
incurred death and the captivity of the devil;
was changed for the worse in both body and soul;
injured not merely himself but his descendants;
transmitted not only bodily death and suffering but sin itself;
and transmitted that sin “by propagation, not by imitation.”
Most importantly, Trent defined that the sin of Adam is “one in origin” and is present in his descendants in such a manner that each needs the saving remedy of Jesus Christ.
This is defined Catholic doctrine, not merely one medieval theory concerning Genesis.
Trent also guards against misunderstanding what happens after baptism. Baptism truly removes the guilt of original sin; the baptized person is not merely treated as innocent while remaining inwardly condemned. Nevertheless, concupiscence—the disordered tendency toward sinful gratification—remains. Trent explains that it remains for struggle and does not itself constitute sin in a baptized person unless the will consents to evil.
The Council of Trent on Man's Need for Grace
At its following session, Trent addressed the justification of the sinner.
Session VI, Decree on Justification, 13 January 1547, teaches that through Adam all men lost their original innocence and became incapable of liberating themselves from the fallen condition by either the natural law or the Mosaic Law. Human free will remained, but it was weakened.
God therefore sent His Son, Jesus Christ, as Redeemer.
Trent makes a vital distinction: Christ died for all, but not all automatically receive the saving benefit of His death. The merits of Christ's Passion must be communicated to the individual person. For those who receive justification, this means being transferred from the state inherited from the first Adam into the state of grace and adoption through Jesus Christ, the second Adam.
Justification itself is not simply God pretending that a sinful man is righteous. Trent defines it as including both:
“the remission of sins” and
“the sanctification and renewal of the inward man.”
Grace therefore does something real within the soul. God not only forgives; He heals, sanctifies and elevates. Faith, hope and charity are infused, and the justified person becomes truly pleasing to God through the grace of Christ.
The Roman Catechism
The Roman Catechism, issued after the Council of Trent under Pope St Pius V, explains the same doctrine pastorally.
In its treatment of the Incarnation, it first directs attention to Adam's fall. Adam lost the sanctity and righteousness in which he had been created, and the consequences descended to his posterity. It then explains that neither men nor angels could raise the human race back to the supernatural dignity from which it had fallen. The remedy required divine intervention: the Son of God became man to reconcile us to God through His Blood.
Thus the Incarnation is not an isolated miracle. It is God's answer to the catastrophe of sin.
Historical and Theological Evidence
Man Was Created Good—and Elevated by Grace
Catholic theology distinguishes between what belongs to human nature itself and what God freely bestowed upon man above nature.
By nature, man possesses a rational soul, intellect and free will. These belong to what a human being is.
But God also created our first parents in a state of holiness and justice, destined ultimately for the supernatural possession of God in the Beatific Vision. Sanctifying grace was not something human nature could demand as a right. It was God's gratuitous gift.
Pope Pius XII summarized this traditional doctrine in Mystici Corporis Christi (29 June 1943). He explained that the first father of mankind was constituted in such an exalted state that he was intended to transmit to his descendants, together with natural human life, the supernatural life of divine grace. After Adam's fall, humanity lost this participation and required restoration through the new Adam, Christ.
This distinction also answers an important question: if grace is supernatural, why was its loss so catastrophic?
Because God really had elevated mankind to that supernatural destiny. Once man is called to eternal communion with God, the loss of grace is not comparable to losing some optional ornament. It is the loss of the supernatural life necessary for that destiny.
The Fall Was a Real Sin, Not Merely a Myth About Human Immaturity
Catholic doctrine does not treat Adam merely as a poetic symbol for the general fact that everybody eventually makes mistakes.
Pope Pius XII taught in Humani Generis (12 August 1950) that original sin proceeds from a sin “actually committed by an individual Adam” and is transmitted through generation to his descendants. He consequently rejected the form of polygenism which could not be reconciled with that doctrine.
At the same time, Catholic teaching does not require us to read the opening chapters of Genesis as though they were written in the form of a twenty-first-century scientific report. In the same encyclical, Pius XII noted that Genesis 1–11 does not conform to modern historical writing but nevertheless “pertain[s] to history in a true sense”, communicating foundational truths in simple and sometimes metaphorical language.
The precise literary form of every detail may therefore require careful exegesis. What cannot be reduced to mere symbolism is the doctrinal core established by revelation and the Magisterium: God created man; mankind has a real first parentage connected with Adam; there was a real primeval transgression; and original sin derives from that transgression.
What Original Sin Is—and What It Is Not
Original sin must be distinguished from personal sin.
When an adult deliberately commits theft, adultery or blasphemy, the person performs his own sinful act. A newborn child has performed no such act. Catholic doctrine does not accuse the infant of personally reaching back through history and choosing Adam's disobedience.
Yet Trent equally forbids reducing original sin to mere environmental disadvantage. It is truly sin transmitted by propagation and present in each descendant of Adam as his own inherited condition.
St Thomas Aquinas supplies the classic theological explanation in the Summa Theologiae, I-II, q.81. Humanity descending from Adam can be considered as sharing one human nature derived from its first principle. Adam's personal act disordered not only himself but that human nature insofar as he was its first parent. What descendants receive is therefore not Adam's personal act, but a human nature deprived of the original justice with which God had endowed it. St Thomas consequently speaks of original sin as a “sin of nature.”
The Church has defined the reality, transmission and effects of original sin. The further scholastic analysis of its precise formal nature belongs to theological explanation. The traditional Thomistic account identifies the privation of original justice as fundamental, with the resulting disorder of man's powers following from it.
Human Nature Is Wounded, Not Destroyed
The Fall did not transform man into a different species or make every human act sinful.
St Thomas explains in Summa Theologiae, I-II, q.85, a.1 that sin did not destroy the natural principles constituting human nature. What was entirely lost was the gift of original justice; man's natural inclination toward virtue was diminished and disordered.
In q.85, a.3, he famously describes four wounds of fallen human nature:
ignorance, affecting reason;
malice, affecting the will;
weakness, affecting the irascible appetite or power by which we confront difficulty;
and concupiscence, the disorder of desire.
Anyone honestly examining human experience can recognise the phenomena being described. We can know something is wrong and still choose it. We can genuinely desire virtue and then surrender under difficulty. We can reason well in one matter while allowing passion or self-interest to distort judgment in another.
Catholicism therefore rejects both naïve optimism and despair about human nature. Man remains rational and responsible. But he is no longer integrated as he ought to be.
Why Mankind Cannot Save Itself
A common modern assumption is that sufficiently good conduct should earn heaven. But eternal life—the immediate supernatural vision and possession of God—is not something created nature can demand as wages.
St Thomas explains in Summa Theologiae, I-II, q.114, a.2 that even man considered in a state of intact nature could not merit eternal life without God's supernatural grace, because eternal life exceeds the proportion of created nature. Fallen man faces the additional obstacle of sin and therefore requires both healing and elevation by grace.
This means salvation is not merely a matter of balancing a moral account:
“I have done more good things than bad things.”
Nor can philosophy, political reform, technology, education or psychological improvement restore sanctifying grace. These things may accomplish real natural goods. They simply operate on a different level.
Man's deepest need is not merely information. It is reconciliation with God and supernatural regeneration.
That is why grace must come first. Trent teaches that even an adult's movement toward justification begins through God's prevenient grace—grace that comes before and awakens the sinner. The sinner genuinely cooperates; Catholicism does not deny free will. But he cannot manufacture the first saving grace as a reward for an independent natural achievement.
Christ Is the New Adam
The answer to Adam is Jesus Christ. St Paul deliberately constructs the parallel in Romans 5:
Adam brings sin, condemnation and death.
Christ brings grace, justification and life.
This does not mean that Christ merely supplied a better moral example. He objectively accomplished redemption.
Pius XII writes in Mystici Corporis Christi that through the Cross Christ both satisfied divine justice and merited for mankind an abundant treasury of grace. Humanity, deprived through Adam of divine adoption, can through the Incarnate Word receive again the power to become children of God.
Here it is useful to distinguish two related concepts.
Redemption refers especially to Christ's saving work—the price paid, victory won and reconciliation merited through His Incarnation, obedience, Passion and death.
Salvation refers more broadly to our deliverance from sin and attainment of eternal life through the fruits of that Redemption being communicated to us and persevered in until death.
Christ has objectively accomplished the Redemption. It does not follow that every individual is automatically saved regardless of faith, grace, conversion or perseverance.
Did Jesus Absolutely Have to Die?
The statement “Jesus had to die for our sins” requires theological precision. God was not trapped by a law above Himself which forced Him to save mankind in exactly this way.
St Thomas asks this explicitly in Summa Theologiae, III, q.46, aa.1–3. He teaches that Christ's Passion was not absolutely necessary in the sense that God lacked every other possible means of rescuing mankind. God could have chosen another mode of redemption. But given God's actual saving plan and the prophecies and ordinances He established, the Passion became necessary by supposition; moreover, it was supremely fitting.
The Cross manifests the gravity of sin, the justice and mercy of God, and above all the extraordinary extent of divine love. It provides the perfect act of obedient satisfaction where Adam had rebelled.
St Thomas likewise explains in Summa Theologiae, III, q.1, aa.2–3 that the Incarnation was not absolutely necessary to God's power—as though the omnipotent God could not forgive otherwise—but was the supremely fitting remedy actually chosen for the restoration of fallen mankind. Scripture consistently presents sin as the reason for the saving Incarnation.
Thus Catholic doctrine does not portray the Father as helplessly demanding violence before He can become loving. Redemption originates in God's love: it is God who provides the remedy.
Christ Died for All, but Salvation Is Not Automatic
Another distinction is essential.
The Redemption is sufficient for all mankind.
But its saving fruits must be applied to individual souls.
Trent states that although Christ died for all, not everyone receives the benefit of His death; His Passion must be communicated to the person.
Pius XII expresses the same principle in Mediator Dei (20 November 1947). Christ's sacrifice on Calvary accomplished man's redemption objectively, but God has willed that individual souls should come into living contact with that sacrifice so that its merits may be applied to them. The sacraments occupy a central place in this communication of grace.
This explains why Christianity does not stop with the statement, “Jesus died for everyone.”
The next question must be: How is the saving life Christ won communicated to me?
That leads directly to faith, baptism, justification, the Church, the sacraments, repentance, perseverance and the Christian life.
What Salvation Actually Restores
Salvation is sometimes reduced to “going to heaven when you die.” That is true as far as it goes, but Catholic doctrine is richer.
Through Christ, the sinner can receive:
forgiveness of sin;
restoration of sanctifying grace;
supernatural faith, hope and charity;
adoption as a child of God;
union with Christ;
the capacity to perform supernaturally meritorious works through grace;
eventual resurrection of the body;
and, if he perseveres in God's friendship, eternal possession of God in the Beatific Vision.
Justification therefore begins a restored supernatural life rather than merely changing an entry in a heavenly ledger.
The tragedy of Adam was the loss of divine friendship.
The achievement of Christ is its restoration—and something even greater, because mankind is now united to God through the Incarnate Son.
The Main Objection
“Why Should I Be Punished for Something Adam Did?”
This is one of the strongest and most understandable objections to the doctrine of original sin. We normally regard it as unjust to punish one person for another person's crime. I did not stand beside the tree in Eden. I did not personally choose Adam's act. How, then, can it be just for me to be born affected by his sin?
If original sin meant that God simply pretends every newborn personally committed Adam's individual action, the objection would be powerful. But that is not Catholic doctrine.
Response
Adam's personal act of disobedience and the original sin inherited by his descendants must be distinguished.
Adam possessed sanctifying grace and original justice not merely as isolated private advantages but as gifts connected with the condition in which human nature was established at its beginning. God intended the first parent to transmit human life together with this supernatural inheritance. Through his sin, Adam lost what he no longer possessed to transmit.
St Thomas illustrates this through the unity of human nature deriving from a common origin. His descendants do not repeat Adam's external act; rather, they receive human nature without the original rectitude it should have possessed according to God's initial gift. This is why original sin can be truly inherited without being a personally chosen act by each infant.
Furthermore, sanctifying grace was never something human nature could claim from God as a debt. It is supernatural gift. God wrongs no creature by not owing it a participation in His own divine life.
But the Christian answer goes still further. God did not abandon fallen humanity.
Immediately after the Fall Scripture begins pointing toward restoration. Ultimately God Himself assumes human nature. The Son of God enters the race of Adam without contracting Adam's sin and becomes the head of a new humanity.
The parallel is therefore not:
Adam harms us, and God leaves us harmed.
It is:
Through Adam comes a fallen inheritance; through Christ God offers a new supernatural inheritance immeasurably surpassing anything fallen man could claim for himself.
St Paul therefore says not merely that Christ cancels Adam's damage, but that grace “hath abounded more” where sin abounded (Romans 5:20).
What We Can and Cannot Conclude
Established Catholic Doctrine
It is defined Catholic doctrine that Adam truly sinned and thereby lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted.
It is defined doctrine that Adam's sin affected his posterity, transmitting not merely death and suffering but original sin itself.
It is defined doctrine that original sin is transmitted by propagation, not merely by imitation.
It is defined doctrine that baptism truly remits original sin.
It is defined doctrine that concupiscence remains after baptism but is not itself properly sin in the baptized unless the will consents to sinful acts.
It is defined doctrine that fallen man's free will has been weakened but not extinguished.
It is defined doctrine that justification comes through the grace merited by Jesus Christ and involves real interior sanctification and renewal, not merely an external declaration.
Authoritative Papal Teaching
Pius XII taught that original sin proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and is transmitted through generation. He also taught that Genesis 1–11 pertains to history “in a true sense,” while recognising that its literary manner differs from modern historical writing and includes simple and metaphorical expression.
Common Traditional Theological Teaching
St Thomas's explanation that original sin fundamentally involves the loss or privation of original justice is a classic and highly authoritative theological explanation of the defined doctrine.
Likewise, the description of fallen man's principal wounds as ignorance, malice, weakness and concupiscence belongs to the traditional scholastic explanation of the consequences of the Fall.
These explanations should not be confused with separately defined conciliar canons, even though they give a coherent account of what the Church has defined.
A Necessary Theological Distinction
It is not Catholic doctrine that God was absolutely compelled to redeem mankind through the Incarnation and crucifixion as though no other course were within His power.
St Thomas teaches that another mode of redemption was possible to divine omnipotence. The Incarnation and Passion are the supremely fitting means actually willed by God and, once that divine plan was established, necessary according to that plan.
What the Doctrine Does Not Mean
Original sin does not mean that every newborn has personally committed Adam's individual act.
It does not mean that human nature is intrinsically evil.
It does not mean that fallen man has ceased to possess reason and free will.
It does not mean that every natural action performed by a non-Christian is morally evil.
It does not mean that every illness, disaster or personal suffering can be identified as God's punishment for some particular personal sin.
And it does not permit us to read another person's internal culpability directly from his external circumstances. God alone perfectly knows the individual conscience.
What Is Not Necessary to Establish the Doctrine
The Catholic doctrine of the Fall and original sin does not depend upon speculative modern theories, alleged conspiracies or disputed historical reconstructions.
Nor must every scientific question concerning early human biological history be settled before the theological doctrine can be understood.
What must be preserved are the truths actually taught by revelation and the Church: God's creation of man, the original elevation of our first parents, a real primeval transgression associated with Adam, the transmission of original sin to the human race, and mankind's need for redemption in Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
What went wrong with mankind? Man turned away from God.
Our first parent received from God not only natural human life but a supernatural state of holiness and justice. Through disobedience Adam lost that state, and the human race descending from him inherited a nature deprived of original justice and wounded in its powers.
This explains the strange combination we see within ourselves. Man remains capable of truth, love, courage, creativity and genuine natural goodness because human nature remains God's good creation. Yet the same human being experiences ignorance, selfishness, weakness, uncontrolled desire, sin, suffering and death because that good nature is fallen.
The problem therefore runs deeper than bad institutions or inadequate education. We cannot educate ourselves back into sanctifying grace. We cannot philosophise ourselves into divine adoption. We cannot perform enough natural good works to place God in our debt for the Beatific Vision.
We need to be saved.
The heart of Christianity is that God did not leave us in that condition. The eternal Son entered the fallen race of Adam without sin, became the new Adam, obeyed where Adam disobeyed, offered Himself upon the Cross and merited the grace by which sinners may be forgiven, sanctified and restored to friendship with God.
The Christian message is therefore not principally:
“Try harder and become a better person.”
It is:
You were created for God. Mankind has fallen from that supernatural friendship. You cannot restore it by your own natural power. God has acted to save you in Jesus Christ.
That raises the next great questions:
Why did the Son of God have to become man?
Why did Christ die?
How does His Redemption reach us today?
Those questions take us to the very centre of the Christian Gospel.
Primary Sources
Sacred Scripture, Douay-Rheims Bible
Genesis 3. The Fall, its consequences and the first promise of victory over the serpent. Genesis 3
Romans 5:8–21. Adam and Christ; sin and death through Adam, justification and life through Christ. Romans 5
Acts 4:12. Salvation through Jesus Christ. Acts 4
Council of Trent, Session V, Decree Concerning Original Sin, 17 June 1546, canons 1–5. Defines the Fall, transmission of original sin, its propagation rather than mere imitation, and its remission through baptism.
Council of Trent, Session V — online English text
Waterworth, The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent, 1848 scan
Council of Trent, Session VI, Decree on Justification, 13 January 1547, especially chapters I–VIII and XV. On man's fallen condition, prevenient grace, Christ's redemption and the nature of justification.
Council of Trent, Session VI — English text
Catechism of the Council of Trent / Roman Catechism, Part I, Article II, treatment of the Fall and the necessity of the Incarnation for man's restoration. English translation by Rev. J. Donovan, 1829.
Roman Catechism — Article II
Catechism of the Council of Trent — Internet Archive scan
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q.81, aa.1–3, “The Cause of Sin, on the Part of Man.” On the transmission of original sin.
Summa Theologiae I-II, Question 81
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q.85, especially aa.1 and 3. On the loss of original justice and the wounds of fallen nature.
Summa Theologiae I-II, Question 85
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q.114, a.2. On man's inability to merit eternal life without grace.
Summa Theologiae I-II, Question 114, Article 2
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q.1, aa.2–3. On the fittingness and necessity of the Incarnation as a remedy for sin.
Summa Theologiae III, Question 1
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q.46, aa.1–3. On the necessity and fittingness of Christ's Passion.
Summa Theologiae III, Question 46
Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, 29 June 1943, especially §12. On Adam's supernatural state, the hereditary fall and Christ as the new Adam.
Mystici Corporis Christi — Vatican text
Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, 20 November 1947, especially §§1, 77–78. On mankind's fall, Christ's sacrifice and the application of the fruits of Redemption to individual souls.
Mediator Dei — Vatican text
Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, 12 August 1950, especially §§26, 37–38. On original sin, Adam, polygenism and the historical character of Genesis 1–11.
Humani Generis — Vatican text
Further Reading
Catechism of St Pius X, sections on Creation, Adam and Eve, Original Sin and the Redemption. A concise pre–Vatican II catechetical presentation particularly useful for readers encountering these doctrines for the first time.
Catechism of St Pius X — English text
Baltimore Catechism No. 2, Lessons 5–6, on the creation and Fall of man and original sin. A straightforward traditional catechetical explanation.
Baltimore Catechism No. 2
Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, translated by Patrick Lynch, B. Herder Book Co., St Louis, 1954 English edition. See especially the sections concerning man's original state, original sin, the consequences of the Fall, grace and Christ's work of redemption. This is a theological manual rather than an act of the Magisterium; its theological notes are useful precisely because Ott distinguishes defined dogma from other levels of Catholic teaching. A reliable unrestricted online edition has not been verified here, so no URL is supplied.
Related Questions
Does God Exist?
Can We Know What God Is Like?
What Is the Purpose of Human Life?
What Is Original Sin, and How Is It Transmitted?
Why Did Jesus Christ Have to Become Man?
Why Did Jesus Christ Have to Suffer and Die?
How Does Baptism Apply the Redemption of Christ to Us?