Introduction:

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that baptism could have eliminated not only sin but also the primitive effects of sin, such as suffering, sickness, moral struggle and death, “because the gift of Christ is more powerful than the sin of Adam.” So why doesn’t baptism restore us to something like Eden? He holds to Aristotle’s insight that, just as we do not crown the strongest athlete, but the athlete who trains and wins, so we do not identify happiness simply with having virtue, but with realizing and living virtue.