According to the Catholic Catechism, every spiritual soul is directly created by God. At the moment the individual is created by God, does it have original sin? Or is original sin added later?
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2Welcome to C.SE. All your questions are legitimate, and are asked by many people, but for the purposes for this site, you may need to focus on a single concern and phrase it in a way that can be answered objectively by a single authority / theological tradition that you need to specify.– GratefulDiscipleCommented Jan 27, 2022 at 8:03
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1What's for sure is that 1) God does NOT create a soul with original sin; original sin entered through no fault of God because we all share a corrupted human nature (see The Fall); 2) God offers salvation to everyone, He does NOT send one to hell without the person's input; 3) Why not simply keep them "in Heaven"? Christians answer that this current arrangement is worth it (creation is declared "very good"). God's providence will make things right in the end. In other words, we are in the middle of an epic drama where we don't see the ending yet.– GratefulDiscipleCommented Jan 27, 2022 at 8:05
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2Sin is passed on by natural generation, a matter of the human nature received from Adam, the first humanity, passed on by parentage (of two parents). The unique individual, with a soul, is a unique creation.– Nigel JCommented Jan 27, 2022 at 9:04
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1 Answer
You touch on one of the great difficulties that Christians have wrestled with for the entirety of Christian history. I agree with the above comments that your question could benefit from being a little more tightly focused. I will answer the first part about original sin, leaving aside for now the questions about predestination and free will. I have no shame in shying away from those topics or admitting that I'm hesitant/unqualified to deal with them.
From a Reformed perspective (you didn't specify a particular doctrinal tradition so I will answer from the one I know and adhere to), we are under the curse of original sin from the moment of conception. I would point to Psalm 51, where David says that he was "conceived in iniquity", and to Ephesians 2, where Paul refers to us as being "by nature the children of wrath".
When Adam, as the federal head of humanity, sinned, all mankind fell at that moment. (See Romans 5.) Since then, all mankind save Christ has been born in sin, with a corrupted nature inclined toward rebellion against God. This is certainly not an easy thing to grasp, and I do intend to defer on the questions it raises regarding the justice of God because I don't feel I can adequately address matters of such weighty import here. If you are more interested in the Reformed perspective, I might recommend first reading through the book of Romans, in its entirety, at least 2 or 3 times. Subsequently, you might find a Protestant study Bible or commentary on the book of Romans. I could recommend the ESV Study Bible or the Reformation Study Bible, both of which will give you a good but succinct overview of the Reformed teaching on original sin - what it is and why we believe that it makes sense.
For a Roman Catholic perspective, you might check out para. 385-409 of the CCC, and the Confessions of St. Augustine (the latter being a source that Protestants would also readily affirm). However, I'm not Roman Catholic, so another person would be better qualified to inform you on that perspective.
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Is every person created at the same time as Adam? Or is each person created after Adam, in order of their appearance?– StuartCommented Jan 27, 2022 at 15:58
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From a temporal perspective I would say that a person comes into being at the time of conception. Commented Jan 27, 2022 at 20:22