Here are some short speculative notes on the transmission of sin I’ve had written out for a while. I am mainly influenced here by Thomas’s comments in the Summa and this article https://www.jstor.org/stable/41974584 on Scotus. You will also want to read my “Departures from the Reformed Tradition” post as there, following Thomas Aquinas, I explain why sin is transmitted in the first place.
Original sin is a defect of human nature and human nature is a composite of body and soul, matter and form. Therefore human matter must never be left out of consideration in questions about the transmission of sin, as it is an instrumental cause in human generation.
The reason that a sinner begets a sinner devoid of original righteousness is actually quite simple. Once the quality of original righteousness is lost, the parent, as the instrumental cause, cannot pass it on to their child, as one cannot pass on what one does not possess (as Thomas explains in De Malo. Note that it does not matter that Thomas saw original righteousness as a preternatural gift of grace; the same principle applies even if original righteousness is natural). Thus people are born with the want/privation of original righteousness, and a vicious habit of concupiscence follows from this privation.
Cf. Turretin: "Nothing prevents original sin from being a privation and at the same time a positive quality. Privation is not bare and simple (or of pure negation), but highly active and efficacious and of wicked disposition (which does not take away the subject itself, but by depriving it of the due rectitude, badly disposes and corrupts it; nor extinguishes the internal principles of action, but depraves them-as disease in the body and rottenness in an apple)."
Although many among the Reformed do not want to admit this, it must be said that this inherent original sin would be propagated even if there never was a federal imputation of Adam's sin since inherent original sin is formally propagated by the law of nature and not formally by positive law per above. Of course, any among the Reformed who denied a federal imputation of Adam's sin (Vermigli, Chamier) de facto acknowledged this, I suppose with the exception of Calvin who while denying such an imputation even still seems to trace the transmission of sin not to the law of nature, but to a positive decree of God, which seems to be in line with his usual voluntarism.
It is not semen per se but human matter (DNA) which is the principle that transmits sin. This is necessary to say because of current medical knowledge (i.e. we can now create embryos without semen).
If a sinful woman were to spontaneously generate, the offspring would be sinful. The reason is per above due to corrupted human matter being the material cause in generation. This is also why were a man now miraculously created from dirt, he would be sinless, since there would be no corrupted material cause, as Thomas affirms.
Per the Book of Causes, Theses 1 and 19, the effect must be like the cause. When God creates man directly and without corrupted material, His justice demands that He create such a man with original righteousness and therefore sinless (I will not, however, too strongly insist on the absolute necessity of this against an objector. It is sufficient to say that this is necessary in God's ordained power). However, this is not the case with fallen man who acts as a corrupt instrumental cause and therefore God follows the order of nature and creates their offspring without original righteousness. This nevertheless does not make God the author of sin because here He only witholds something (albeit something morally necessary) but does not positively infuse sin. In case this seems to be a hard saying, here is Turretin:
Now although souls are created by God destitute of original righteousness, God cannot on that account be considered the author of sin. It is one thing to infuse impurity; another not to give the purity of which man has rendered himself unworthy in Adam. Nor is God bound to create pure souls; yea, he can most justly deprive them of such a gift as a punishment of the sin of Adam. This privation (although on the part of man culpable because it is a privation of due rectitude) still is not so with respect to God (because it is an act of vindicatory justice by which he avenges the first sin).
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Nor ought it to be considered unworthy of the divine goodness that the soul should be placed in a corrupt body. From the beginning, he sanctioned (by a certain and immovable law) that he would place a soul in every organized human body. This law ought not to have been abolished on account of the sin of man.
And here is Van Mastricht:
[Obj.] That in this way God seems to be made the author of sin, insofar as he is the author not only of generation, but also of the privation of original righteousness. For he is (a) certainly the author of generation, and of the thing generated, as such, as it is physically good, but not as it is morally evil. He is (b) certainly the cause of privation, insofar as is the just penalty for the covenant breaking that was committed; not, however, of the sin itself which follows from the just privation.
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[Obj.] That in this reasoning God would become the author of sin, if namely it were something besides a privation or absence of original righteousness; for although he be the author of a corrupt habit, yet he is not the author of the corruption and lawlessness itself, which is added to the habit by the creature through original unrighteousness.
On the question of what would happen if one parent possessing original righteousness were to procreate with another parent possessing original sin, it seems to me that there are two possible answers here. The first answer is: (1) Although the woman is active in generation, because the father is more active it seems we should say that the father always wins out in deciding offspring’s condition (with regard to original sin, righteousness). Thus, a man in original righteousness, though he were to procreate with a sinful woman, the offspring would be righteous. The other answer is: (2) The offspring would lack original righteousness regardless because any taint in nature is sufficient to produce taint. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. [Cf. Gerhard: “If the opposite were true, surely sin would have been propagated into their children. For though the mother may not be the active principle of generation, nevertheless she supplies the material which, on the basis of the hypothesis, was stained and contaminated by sin and which Eve would have communicated to the fetus. Thus from an unclean seed an unclean fetus would have been conceived and born.”]. Position 2 seems more likely to me.
Per position 1 above, it would be precisely because God was more active than Mary in the conception of Christ (refer back to Scotus’s comments about the Holy Spirit acting as the principal causal force) that Christ was born sinless. Either way, we affirm with Van Mastricht that "the Holy Spirit...made the female seed fruitful and either overturned or purged its intemperateness, from which moral corruption of the soul could have arisen" (4:135).
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