Human Nature- Mortal Or Immortal?

[Nihil Obstat]

Is it correct to say that human nature is mortal but is made immortal through the Incarnation, or is it more correct to say that human nature is immortal, but became mortal [knew death] due to the Fall?

[qfnol31]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1353694218' post='2515291']
Is it correct to say that human nature is mortal but is made immortal through the Incarnation, or is it more correct to say that human nature is immortal, but became mortal [knew death] due to the Fall?
[/quote]
If God created us in the beginning with mortality and planned only to raise us to immortality through the Incarnation, then we must ask whether or not the Incarnation would have in fact happened had we not sinned. Many theologians have asked this same question, especially during the medieval period, without any real consensus. If God created us with no plan for our immortality (either in the beginning or through the Incarnation), then there is really no purpose for our existence, since the main purpose of our existence from the very beginning was to be united to God, love Him, and contemplate Him.

Therefore, it is more correct to say that human nature from the very beginning was meant to be immortal, but we came to know death through original sin, as stated in the Bible. Even if you are asking about bodily death, or the separation of body from soul, we must say that such an event is unnatural and came about only through sin.

St. Athanasius explains this really well when he says,
[quote name='St. Athanasius in [i]On the Incarnation[/i]'](5) This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, though they were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from the natural law, provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is to say, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, as also Wisdom says: God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world." When this happened, men began to die, and corruption ran riot among them and held sway over them to an even more than natural degree, because it was the penalty of which God had forewarned them for transgressing the commandment. Indeed, they had in their sinning surpassed all limits; for, having invented wickedness in the beginning and so involved themselves in death and corruption, they had gone on gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any one kind of evil, but continually, as with insatiable appetite, devising new kinds of sins.[/quote]

We were always meant to be immortal but came to know death through our sin and turn away from God.