5     Original Sin

 

Preliminary Considerations

“The sinfulness of that estate (status or condition) whereinto man fell consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of the whole nature: which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it” (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 18).

According to this doctrinal statement, there are three particulars under the general head of sin: (1) the guilt of the first sin, (2) the corruption of nature resulting from the first sin, and (3) actual transgressions or sins of act which result from corruption of nature.

The first part of the sinfulness of man’s estate or condition is the guilt of the first sin. The first sin of Adam, strictly and formally considered, was the transgression of the particular command not to eat of the tree of knowledge. This was a positive statute and not the moral law. It tested obedience more severely than the moral law does because the latter carries its own reason with it, while the former containing no intrinsic morality appealed to no reason except the mere good pleasure of God. To disobey it was to disregard the authority of God and involved disobedience of all law. The guilt of Adam’s first sin is the guilt of transgressing the law of Eden explicitly and the moral law implicitly: “The rule of obedience revealed to Adam, besides a special command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, was the moral law” (Westminster Larger Catechism 92).

Adam’s Sin as Twofold: Internal and External

The first sin of Adam was twofold: (a) internal and (b) external. The internal part of it was the originating and starting of a wrong inclination. The external part of it was the exertion of a wrong volition prompted by the wrong inclination. Adam first inclined to self instead of God as the ultimate end. He became an idolater and “worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). Then, in order to gratify this new inclination, he reached forth his hand and ate of the forbidden fruit:

Our first parents fell into open disobedience, because already they were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil inclination (voluntas) preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil inclination but pride? And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons him to whom it ought to cleave as its end and becomes an end to itself. The wicked desire to please himself secretly existed in Adam, and the open sin was but its consequence. (Augustine, City of God 14.13)

Edwards (Original Sin in Works 2.385) directs attention to the internal part of Adam’s first sin in the following manner. His opponent Taylor had said that “Adam could not sin [externally] without a sinful inclination.” Edwards replies that “this is doubtless true; for although there was no natural sinful inclination in [holy] Adam, yet an inclination to that sin of eating the forbidden fruit was begotten in him by the delusion and error he was led into, and this inclination to eat the forbidden fruit must precede his actual eating.” Edwards considers the rising of this sinful desire and inclination to be the first sin itself. There was not a first sin prior to it of which the sinful inclination was the effect; but the very inclining away from God to the creature was Adam’s fall itself and that of his posterity in him:

I am humbly of the opinion that if any have supposed the children of Adam to come into the world with a double guilt, one the guilt of Adam’s sin, another the guilt arising from their having a corrupt heart, they have not so well conceived of the matter. The guilt a man has upon his soul at his first [individual] existence is one and simple, namely, the guilt of the original apostasy, the guilt of the sin by which the species first rebelled against God. This and the guilt arising from the first corruption or depraved disposition of the heart are not to be looked upon as two things, distinctly imputed and charged upon men in the sight of God. It is true that the guilt that arises from the corruption of the heart as it remains a confirmed principle and appears in its subsequent operations is a distinct and additional guilt; but the guilt arising from the first existing [the start or origination] of a depraved disposition in Adam’s posterity, I apprehend is not distinct from their guilt of Adam’s first sin. For so it was not in Adam himself. The first evil disposition or inclination of the heart of Adam to sin was not properly distinct from his first sin, but was included in it. The external act he committed was no otherwise his, than as his heart was in it, or as that action proceeded from the wicked inclination of his heart. Nor was the guilt he had double, as for two distinct sins: one, the wickedness of his heart and will in that affair; another, the wickedness of the external act caused by his heart. His guilt was all truly from the act of his inward man; exclusive of which the motions of his body were no more than the motions of any lifeless instrument. His sin consisted in wickedness of heart, fully sufficient for and entirely amounting to all that appeared in the act he committed.¹ (Original Sin in Works 2.481) (See supplement 4.5.1.)

The internal part of Adam’s first sin was the principal part of it. It was the real commencement of sin in man. It was the origination from nothing of a sinful disposition in the human will. There was no previous sinful disposition to prompt it or to produce it. When Adam inclined away from God to the creature, he exercised an act of pure self-determination. He began sinning by a real beginning, analogous to that by which matter begins to be from nothing. In endowing Adam with a mutable holiness, God made it possible, but not necessary, for Adam to originate a sinful inclination and thereby expel a holy one. The finite will can fall from holiness to sin if it is not “kept from falling” (Jude 24) by God’s special grace, because it is finite. The finite is the mutable by the very definition.

Since this first inclining of the human will had no sinful antecedent, it is denominated “original” sin. There is no sin before it by which to explain it. Says Lombard (2.22.12):

If it be asked whether inclination (voluntas) preceded that first sin, we answer, in the first place, that inasmuch as that first sin consisted both of inclination (voluntas) and of outward act (actus), inclination preceded outward act, but another evil inclination did not precede the evil inclination itself; and, second, that through the persuasion of Satan and by the arbitrary decision (arbitrio) of Adam that evil inclination was produced by which he deserted righteousness and began iniquity. And this inclination (voluntas) itself was iniquity.

The following dialogue in Anselm’s On the Fall of the Devil 27 is to the same effect:

Disciple: Why did the wicked angel will what he ought not to have willed?

Master: No cause preceded this wrong act, except it were that the angel could so will.

Disciple: Did he then will wickedly because he was able to?

Master: No, because the good angel had the same power, but did not will wrongly. No one wills wrongly merely because he can so will.

Disciple: Why then does he will wrongly?

Master: Only because he will. The wicked will has no other cause but this, why it determines to sin. It is both an efficient and an effect in one. (See supplement 4.5.2.)

The internal part of Adam’s first sin was “voluntary” not “volitionary.” It was will as desire, not will as volition; will as inclining, not will as choosing. The fall was the transition from one form of self-motion to another form of self-motion, and not the beginning of self-motion for the first time. The fall was a self-determining to evil expelling an existing self-determination to good. It was inclining away from one ultimate end to another, not choosing between two ultimate ends to neither of which was there any existing inclination. Adam before he fell was self-determined to God and goodness. Consequently, in the garden of Eden, he had not to choose either good or evil as two contraries to both of which his will was indifferent. By creation, he was positively inclined to good. The question put before him in the probation and temptation was whether he would remain holy as he was or begin a new inclination to evil; not whether, having no inclination at all, he would choose either good or evil. His act of apostasy, if it occurred, was to be an act of new and wrong desire in place of the existing holy desire, of new and wrong self-determination in place of the existing and right self-determination. The fall was a change of inclination, not the exertion of a volition.

The internal part of Adam’s first sin is described in Gen. 3:1–6. According to this narrative, Eve first listened to the crafty query of Satan whether God could have given such a command; then she entered into a discussion with him; then she believed him. All this internal agency of the soul occurred prior to plucking and eating the forbidden fruit. But this listening, discussing, and believing on the part of Eve occurred because she was secretly desiring the forbidden knowledge by which she would “be as the gods” (3:5). Lust for that false knowledge which Satan had promised explains these mental processes. Dalliance with temptation always implies a desire for the tempting object. Had Eve continued to desire and to be content with that true knowledge which she had by creation, she would have abhorred the false knowledge proposed by the tempter, and this abhorrence would have precluded all parleying with him and all trust in him.

A comparison of the manner in which our Lord dealt with the same tempter is instructive. Christ, in the wilderness, entered into no parley and debate with Satan, as Eve did in paradise. He did not dally with temptation, because no desire for what God had forbidden arose within him. The second Adam did not lust, like the first Adam, after the false good presented by the tempter. The first two of Satan’s suggestions he instantaneously rejects, giving reasons therefor in the decisive language of Scripture. And the third and more blasphemous suggestion he thrusts away with the avaunt of abhorrence. There was not the slightest swerving from God, the faintest hankering after prohibited good, in the most secret soul of our Lord. His will from center to circumference, both as inclination and volition, both in desire and act, remained steadfast in holiness. Christ met Satan’s temptation with aversion and loathing. Eve met it with inclination and liking.

The history of the rise of evil desire or lust is given by divine inspiration. Along with the listening, the debating, and the believing on the part of Eve, there was, according to the narrative in Genesis, a yet more important activity that occurred in the soul of Eve prior to the eating of the forbidden fruit: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise” (3:6). Eve looked upon the tree of knowledge not only with innocent, but with sinful desire. She not only had the natural created desire for it as producing nourishing food and as a beautiful object to the eye, but she came to have, besides this, the unnatural and self-originated desire for it as yielding a kind of knowledge which God forbade man to have. She “lusted” after that “knowledge of good and evil” which eating of the fruit would impart. This knowledge was not the true wisdom and spiritual knowledge which Adam and Eve already had by creation and which is the intellectual side of holiness, but it was the false knowledge which “the gods,” that is, Satan and his angels, had acquired by apostasy.² This lusting of Eve for a knowledge that God had prohibited was her apostasy. This was the self-determining and inclining of her will away from God as the chief end and chief good to self and the creature as the chief end. To desire what God has forbidden is to prefer self to God, and this is to sin. This concupiscence was the beginning of sin in her will. It was the same thing, in kind, with the concupiscence which God forbids in the tenth commandment. The command not to covet or lust is a command not to desire anything that God has forbidden. God has forbidden theft. To inwardly desire another man’s property is theft. God has forbidden murder. To be inwardly angry at a fellowman is murder. God has forbidden adultery. To inwardly desire another man’s wife is adultery. In like manner, God had forbidden to Adam satanic knowledge of good and evil. To inwardly desire it was the first sin. Achan’s sin began with inward desire or lust: “When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonian garment and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold, then I coveted them and took them” (Josh. 7:21).

All this internal action of the soul of Eve, then, occurred prior to the outward act of plucking and eating. Says Fisher (Catechism Q. 3), “Were not our first parents guilty of sin before eating the forbidden fruit? Yes: they were guilty in hearkening to the devil and believing him before they actually ate it. Why, then, is their eating of it called their first sin? Because it was the first sin finished (James 1:15).” “The first sin,” says Pictet (Theology 4.2), “commenced when Eve began to doubt whether she had rightly understood the intention of God in forbidding the fruit of the tree. Afterward, when she ought to have consulted God upon this subject, she believed the devil, who said that they should not die; in the next place, she was flattered with the hope held out to her by Satan of knowing all things and being equal to God; and at last, she reached forth her hand to the fruit.” “From the account in Genesis,” says Hodge (Theology 2.128), “it appears that doubt, unbelief, and pride were the principles which led to this fatal act of disobedience. Eve doubted God’s goodness, she disbelieved his threatening, she aspired after forbidden knowledge.”³

The account given in Gen. 3:1–6 favors the supposition that Eve had the colloquy with Satan by herself, as Milton represents it in his poem. The woman alone entered into the discussion with Satan of a subject that ought not to have been discussed at all. “And when,” continues the narrative, “the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant (ta˒ăwâ)⁴ to the eyes and a tree to be desired (neḥmād)⁵ to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat; and gave also unto her husband and he did eat” (Gen. 3:6). St. Paul (1 Tim. 2:14) affirms that “Adam was not deceived [by Satan], but the woman being deceived by him fell into the transgression (en parabasei gegone).”⁶ This implies that Adam did not believe the tempter’s assertion that a good would follow the eating of the forbidden fruit and that death would not be the consequence. According to St. Paul, Adam was seduced by his affection for Eve rather than deceived by the lie of Satan. He fell with his eyes wide open to the fact that if he ate he would die. But in loving his wife more than God, he “worshiped and served the creature instead of the Creator” and like Eve set up a different final end from the true one.

The account in Gen. 3:6 describes (a) the innocent physical desire of man’s unfallen nature for the fruit of the tree of knowledge and (b) the rising of sinful moral desire for it: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant (ta˒ăwâ)⁷ to the eyes.” This denotes merely the correlation between the created qualities of man’s physical constitution and this particular product of God’s creation. It was not wrong, but perfectly innocent, to perceive that the tree was good for food and to desire it as such and to be pleasantly affected by the beauty of it. This divinely established relation between man’s physical nature and that of the tree of knowledge constituted the subjective basis for the temptation. Had the tree been repulsive to the sight and taste, its fruit would not have been employed by Satan as a means of solicitation. Up to this point in the description, the phraseology is the same as that in 2:9 respecting all the trees in the garden: “Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant (neḥmād)⁸ to the sight and good for food.” All the physical products of God, the tree of knowledge included, were agreeable and pleasant objects for the newly created and sinless man. (See supplement 4.5.3.)

But the account in Gen. 3:6 further adds that the tree of knowledge came to be for Eve a tree “to be desired (neḥmād),⁹ to make one wise.” The sinful moral desire here mentioned is different from the innocent physical desire spoken of in the preceding part of the verse. It was a mental hankering after the fruit as imparting to the eater a kind of knowledge which God had forbidden to man. This is something new and different from the innocent craving belonging to man’s sensuous nature. To desire the fruit simply as food and as a beautiful object was innocent. But to desire a knowledge of good and evil such as the “gods” had, which the eating of it would communicate, was rebellious and wicked, because this kind of knowledge had been prohibited. The word neḥmād,¹⁰ descriptive of Eve’s longing after the prohibited knowledge, is the same employed in the tenth commandment (Exod. 20:17), which the Septuagint renders by ouk epithymēseis.¹¹ Eve’s evil desire was also the same in kind with the epithymia¹² of St. Paul, which he declares to be hamartia¹³ (Rom. 7:7). It was also the same in kind with the epithymia¹⁴ mentioned in James 1:14: “Every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed.”

The self-willed origination and rising of this desire for a knowledge that God had forbidden was the fall of Eve. It was a new inclination of her will to self, directly contrary to that inclination to God with which she had been created. As regeneration is denominated a “birth” of the soul because of the totality of the moral change, so apostasy may be called a “birth” of the soul for the same reason. By the fall, the children of God became the children of Satan (John 8:44; Matt. 13:38). Each “birth” alike is an entire revolution in human character: one upward the other downward. As regeneration is the origination by the Holy Spirit of holy desire and inclination, so apostasy was the origination by Adam of sinful desire and inclination. God had not forbidden the existence of the desire for the fruit as “good for food and pleasant to the eye,” and had this continued to be the only desire in Eve in regard to the tree, she would have remained sinless as she was created. But God had forbidden the desire for the fruit as fitted “to make one wise” with the knowledge of good and evil. The instant the desire “to be as gods” arose in Eve’s heart, she sinned. God’s command, in its full form, was “you shall not lust after but abhor the knowledge of good and evil; you shall not choose but refuse it.” The prohibition in the instance of the Eden statute, as in that of the tenth commandment, included both the inward desire and the outward act, both inclination and volition. If a man hates his brother, he violates the sixth commandment, even if he does not actually kill him (Matt. 5:22). So, too, if when Eve had desired the forbidden knowledge, she had been prevented from reaching out the hand and plucking the fruit, she would still have transgressed the Eden statute. Obedience to God required that she abhor and reject the knowledge proffered by Satan. But to lust after it was to prefer and love it. Even, therefore, if she had been forcibly stopped from completing, or as St. James (1:15) phrases it “finishing” the sin of desiring, by the outward act of eating, she would still have been guilty of disobeying God, for the divine command is to choose the good and refuse the evil (Deut. 30:19). The holiness of Immanuel, which is true holiness, is described as “refusing the evil and choosing the good” (Isa. 7:16). But whoever desires the evil that is prohibited “chooses” it and thereby refuses the good that is commanded. Had Eve continued to desire and love the true knowledge which she already had by her creation in the divine image, this desire and love would have been the rejection and abhorrence of the false knowledge offered in the temptation. But when she began to desire and love the false knowledge, this was the rejection and hatred of the true knowledge. And this was apostasy. Neutrality or indifference was impossible in the will of Eve or any will whatever. For her to incline to self was to disincline to God, to desire false knowledge was to dislike true knowledge, to choose the evil was to refuse the good, to love the creature was to hate the Creator. The rising of her evil desire, consequently, was the expulsion of her holy desire; the starting of her new sinful self-determination was the ousting of her existing holy self-determination. She could not have two contrary desires or inclinations simultaneously. Hence the universal command, “You shall not covet”; that is, “You shall not desire anything that God has forbidden”; because this is the same thing as to dislike and hate what God has commanded. (See supplement 4.5.4.)

This evil inclining and desiring is denominated “concupiscence” in the theological nomenclature. In the Augustinian and Calvinistic anthropology, it includes mental as well as sensual desire; in the Pelagian anthropology, it is confined to sensual appetite. Says Calvin (2.1.9):

Man has not only been ensnared by the inferior appetites, but abominable impiety has seized the very citadel of his mind, and pride has penetrated into the inmost recesses of his heart; so that it is weak and foolish to restrict the corruption which has proceeded thence to what are called the sensual appetites. In this the grossest ignorance has been discovered by Peter Lombard, who when investigating the seat of it says it is in the flesh according to the testimony of Paul in Rom. 7:18, not indeed exclusively, but because it principally appears in the flesh; as though Paul designated only a part of the soul and not the whole of our nature which is opposed to supernatural grace. Now Paul removes every doubt by informing us that the corruption resides not in one part only, but that there is nothing pure and uncontaminated by its mortal infection. For, when arguing respecting corrupt nature, he not only condemns the inordinate motions of the appetites, but principally insists on the blindness of the mind and the depravity of the heart (Eph. 4:17–18).

Says Luther on Gal. 5:17: “When Paul says that the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, he admonishes us that we must feel the concupiscence of the flesh, that is to say, not only carnal lust but also pride, wrath, slothfulness, impatience, unbelief, and such like” (see Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15, for definitions from the elder Calvinists).

Concupiscence is different from natural created appetency or desire. Hunger and thirst are not evil concupiscence. They are instinctive, constitutional, and involuntary. Gluttony on the contrary is voluntary, not constitutional. It is not pure instinctive craving for food. There is will in it. It is the inclining and desire of the will for a more intense pleasure from eating food than the natural healthy appetite provides for. Innocent hunger makes use of the appointed food, and when satisfied it rests. If a man simply quiets his hunger with bread convenient for it, he does not have or exhibit concupiscence. But if he craves sensual pleasure from eating and gratifies the craving by tickling the palate, he has and exhibits concupiscence or evil desire.

Concupiscence is not natural and innocent appetite intensified. It is not a difference in degree, but in kind. A starving man is not concupiscent, though his desire for food is intense to the very highest degree. His famine-struck craving for food is not a gluttonous craving for sensual pleasure. It is purely physical. But gluttony is the mental in the physical. Gluttony is the will’s selfish inclination manifested in a bodily appetite. It is the will in the senses.

These remarks apply to thirst and the sexual appetite. As created and constitutional, neither of these is evil concupiscence. But as mixed with will and moral inclination—the form in which they appear in drunkards who “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” and “whoremongers and adulterers whom God will judge”—they are sinful concupiscence.¹⁵ Concupiscence is not confined to the sensuous nature. There is concupiscence or lust of the reason as well as of the sense. Pride and ambition is a lust of the mind: “We had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires (thelēmata)¹⁶ of the flesh and of the mind (tōn dianoiōn)”¹⁷ (Eph. 2:3). According to 2 Cor. 7:1 there is a “filthiness of the flesh and the spirit (pneumatos).”¹⁸

The external part of Adam’s first sin was the act of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. After the sinful inclination had arisen, a sinful volition followed: “When the woman saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat” (Gen. 3:6).

Imputation of Adamic Guilt

This first sin in both of its parts, internal and external, is imputed to Adam and his posterity as sin and guilt because they committed it. The evil desire and the evil act were the desiring and acting of the human nature in the first human pair. The biblical proof of this fundamental and much disputed position is found in the following: “Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12); “through the offense of one (man) many be dead (apethanon)”¹⁹ (5:15); “the judgment was by one (offense) unto condemnation” (5:16); “by one man’s offense (or by one offense) death reigned by one” (5:17); “by the offense of one (Lachmann and Tischendorf have ‘one offense’), judgment came upon all men to condemnation” (5:18); “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners” (5:19); “in Adam (tō adam)²⁰ all die” (1 Cor. 15:22).

The very important discussion of St. Paul in Rom. 5:12–19 teaches (1) that the death which came upon all men as a punishment came because of one sin and only one and (2) that this sin was the one committed by Adam and his posterity as a unity. Three explanations have been given of hēmarton²¹ in this passage: (1) It is active in its meaning and denotes the first sin of Adam and his posterity as a unity: his posterity being one with him by natural union or else by representation or by both together; (2) it is active in its meaning and denotes the first sin of each individual after he is born (in this case, hēmarton²² does not denote Adam’s first sin); and (3) it is passive in its meaning, signifying, either “to be sinful” or “to be reckoned as having sinned” (Shedd on Rom. 5:12–19).

That hēmarton²³ is active in its signification is proved (a) by the fact that eph’ hō pantes hēmarton²⁴ means the same as dia tēs hamartias²⁵ in the preceding context and hamartias²⁶ is active in signification; (b) by the invariable use of the word hēmarton²⁷ elsewhere (Matt. 27:4; Luke 15:18; John 9:2; Acts 25:8; Rom. 2:12; 3:23; 5:14, 16; 6:15; 1 Cor. 7:28; Eph. 4:26; 1 Tim. 5:20; 1 Pet. 2:20); (c) by the invariable signification of the substantive hamartia²⁸ (a verb has the same meaning as its noun); and (d) by the interchange of hamartia²⁹ with paraptōma,³⁰ which is active in meaning (Rom. 5:16–21). (See supplement 4.5.5.)

Turretin (9.9.16) denies that hēmarton³¹ signifies “to be sinful”: “The word hēmarton cannot properly refer to the disposition of sin or to habitual or inhering corruption. Rather, it properly denotes some actual sin, and that past, which can be no other than the very sin of Adam. Indeed, it is one thing to be or to be born a sinner, but another thing actually to sin”³² (so also Witsius, Covenants 1.8.31). Edwards (Original Sin in Works 2.448) denies that hēmarton³³ signifies “to be regarded as sinners”:

There is no instance wherein the verb sin, which is used by the apostle when he says “all have sinned,” is anywhere used in our author’s [Taylor’s] sense, for being brought into a state of suffering, and that not as a punishment for sin or as anything arising from God’s displeasure. St. Paul is far from using such a phrase to signify a being condemned without guilt or any imputation or supposition of guilt. Vastly more, still, is it remote from his language, so to use the verb sin and to say man “sins” or “has sinned,” hereby meaning nothing more nor less than that he by a judicial act is condemned.

Unless, therefore, St. Paul departed from the invariable Scripture use of the word hēmarton³⁴ when he asserts that death as a just punishment, passed upon all men “because all sinned,” he employs the word sinned actively. And if he does depart here from the invariable Scripture meaning of hēmarton,³⁵ he is the only inspired writer that does so; and this is the only instance in his own writings in which he does so—his use of the verb hamartanein³⁶ in scores of other instances being the ordinary use.

But while hēmarton³⁷ in Rom. 5:12 is active in signification, it does not denote the transgressions of each individual subsequent to birth, and when no longer in Adam, but the transgression of Adam and Eve inclusive of their posterity. This is proved by the following considerations: One and but one sin is specified as the ground of the penalty of death. This is asserted five times over in succession in 5:15–19. In 5:12 hēmarton³⁸ unquestionably refers to the same sin that is spoken of in 5:15–19.

In Rom. 5:14 some who die, namely, infants, “did not sin after the similitude of Adam’s first transgression.” That is, they did not repeat the first sin. They must, therefore, have sinned in some other manner because they are a part of the “all” (pantes)³⁹ who sinned and because they experience the death which is the wages of sin. The only other conceivable manner of sinning is that of participation in the first sin itself. But participation in Adam’s first sin is not the repetition of it by the individual.

From these considerations, it is evident that the word sinned in Rom. 5:12 is active in its signification; but the action is specific, not individual—the action of the common nature in Adam prior to any conception and birth and not the action of the individuals one by one after conception and birth.

The passive signification given to hēmarton⁴⁰ is twofold: (a) to be sinful (Calvin) and (b) to be reckoned as having sinned (Chrysostom). The first has never had much currency. The last has been extensively adopted by Semipelagian and Arminian theologians and also by many later Calvinists. The objections to this explanation are the following:

1.      It is contrary to invariable usage. This would be the only instance in the New Testament in which the verb hamartanō⁴¹ would have such a meaning.

2.      Had St. Paul intended to bring in the notion of regarding or treating as sinners, this would require the combination of hamartanein⁴² with einai,⁴³ and he would have used the compound form pantes hēmartēkotes hēsan⁴⁴ as does the Septuagint in Gen. 43:9; 44:32 (hēmartēkōs esomai);⁴⁵ 1 Kings 1:21 (esomai egō kai salōmōn hamartoloi).⁴⁶

3.      The passive signification excludes Adam and Eve from the pantes⁴⁷ who sinned. They, certainly, were not “reckoned” to have sinned.

4.      According to the passive signification, hēmarton⁴⁸ would denote God’s action, not man’s; God’s act of imputing sin, not man’s act of committing it. But it is the sinner’s act, not that of the judge, which is the reason for punishment.

5.      It destroys the logic. All die because all are reckoned to deserve death. This is one reason for death, but not the particular one required here. The argument demands a reason founded upon the act of the criminal, not of the judge. To say that all die because all are condemned to die is to give no sufficient reason for death. For the question immediately arises why they are condemned to die.

6.      It tends to empty thanatos⁴⁹ of its plenary biblical meaning as including hell punishment. A qualified meaning is given to it in order to make it agree with the qualified meaning given to hēmarton.⁵⁰ The withdrawment of grace is said by some later Calvinists to be the only penalty inflicted upon original sin, the positive pains of hell being due only to actual transgression. Historically, this passive signification was forced upon hamartanō⁵¹ by those (Chrysostom and the Greek fathers) who asserted that the first sin was not imputed as culpable. Arminian writers like Whitby and John Taylor follow Chrysostom.

The total guilt of the first sin, thus committed by the entire race in Adam, is imputed to each individual of the race because of the indivisibility of guilt. If two individual men together commit a murder, each is chargeable with the whole guilt of the act. One-half of the guilt of the murder cannot be imputed to one and one-half to the other. Supposing that the one human nature which committed the “one offense” (Rom. 5:17–18) became a family of exactly a million individuals by propagation, it would not follow that each individual would be responsible for only a millionth part of the offense. The whole undivided guilt of the first sin of apostasy from God would be chargeable upon each and every one of the million individuals of the species alike. For though the one common nature that committed the “one offense” is divisible by propagation, the offense itself is not divisible nor is the guilt of it. Consequently, one man is as guilty as another of the whole first sin, of the original act of falling from God. The individual Adam and Eve were no more guilty of this first act and of the whole of it than their descendants are; and their descendants are as guilty as they.

The same principle applies also to the indivisibility of merit. The merit of Christ’s obedience is indivisible, and the whole of it is imputed to every individual believer alike. A million believers do not each obtain by imputation a millionth part of their Redeemer’s merit. One believer is as completely justified by gratuitous imputation as another, because all alike receive by faith the total worthiness and desert of their Lord’s obedience, not a fractional part of it. As the unmerited imputation of Christ’s obedience conveys the total undivided merit of this obedience to each and every believer, so the merited imputation of Adam’s disobedience conveys the total undivided guilt of this disobedience to each and every individual of the posterity.

The first sin of Adam, being a common, not an individual sin, is deservedly and justly imputed to the posterity of Adam upon the same principle upon which all sin is deservedly and justly imputed, namely, that it was committed by those to whom it is imputed. “All men die, because all men sinned,” says St. Paul. Free agency is supposed as the reason for the penalty of death, namely, the free agency of all mankind in Adam. This agency, though differing in the manner, is yet as real as the subsequent free agency of each individual.

The imputation either of Adam’s sin or of Christ’s righteousness must rest upon a union of some kind. It is just to impute the first sin of Adam to his posterity, while it would be unjust to impute it to the fallen angels because Adam and his posterity were a unity when the first sin was committed, but Adam and the fallen angels were not: “It hardly would have been just for the crime of one angel to be imputed to another, or the sin of one man to be accounted to another, on the supposition that they were each created separately just as angels. But there is a unity of nature, on which the covenantal unity was supported”⁵² (Leydecker, “Synopsis,” 164 in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, locus 15). The fact that the fallen angels have committed individual transgressions of their own would not justify imputing a common race-transgression to them. Again, it is just to impute Christ’s righteousness to a believer, but not just to impute it to an unbeliever, because the former has been united to him by faith and the latter has not.

The popular explanation of the imputation of Adam’s sin—that under divine government children inherit the poverty and disease of their vicious parents—is inadequate. Divine government does not punish the children of vicious parents for their inherited poverty and disease. If Adam’s posterity merely inherited moral corruption, but were not punished for it, this explanation would be pertinent. But inherited corruption is visited with divine retribution according to Eph. 2:3. And this requires participation in the origin of it. Men must sin in Adam in order to be justly punished for Adam’s sin. And participation requires union with Adam.

There is a similar fallacy in citing the biblical instances in which innocent individuals suffer for the sins of guilty individuals in proof that Adam’s posterity though innocent of his sin are punishable for it. To suffer in consequence of the sin of another is not the same as to be punished for it. The sufferings that came upon the descendants of Ham because of his individual sin were not retributive, like those which come upon the whole human race because of the one specific sin of Adam or like those which come upon an individual for his own transgressions. Ham’s descendants have suffered for centuries on account of their ancestor’s sin, but have not been under eternal condemnation on account of it. They are exposed to eternal death in common with the rest of mankind because of the sin in Adam and of their own individual sins, but not because of the individual sin of Ham. The same is true of the sin of Korah in relation to his family. In reference to all individual transgressions, Ezek. 18:20 asserts that “the son shall not bear the iniquity of his father”; that is, he shall not be punished for it, though he may suffer for it. Suffering and affliction are sovereign acts of God and may or may not be connected with the individual sin of a secondary ancestor, according to his good pleasure; but punishment is a judicial act that is necessary and necessarily connected with the specific sin of the first ancestor and the individual sins of the person himself. (See supplement 4.5.6.)

The imputation of Adam’s sin rests upon a different kind of union from that upon which the imputation of Christ’s righteousness rests. The former is founded upon natural union: a union of constitutional nature and substance. The possibility of an existence, a probation, and a free fall in Adam has been considered under the head of traducianism. The entire human species as an invisible but substantial nature acts in and with the first human pair. Traducianism is true only in anthropology and with reference to apostasy. It has no application at all to soteriology and redemption. There is no race-unity in redemption. All men were in Adam when he disobeyed; but all men were not in Christ when he obeyed. All men are propagated from Adam and inherit his sin. No man is propagated from Christ or inherits his righteousness. Apostasy starts with the race. Redemption starts with the individual. All men fall. Some men are redeemed. Union in Adam is substantial and physical, in Christ is spiritual and mystical (Westminster Larger Catechism 66); in Adam is natural, in Christ is representative; in Adam is by creation, in Christ is by regeneration; in Adam is with man as a species, in Christ is with man as an individual; in Adam is universal, in Christ is particular and by election (Shedd on Rom. 5:19).

The theory of Schleiermacher, Rothe (Steinmeyer, History of Christ’s Passion, 15), and Nevin as criticized by Hodge supposes that Christ united himself with the entire human nature. This is an error. In the incarnation, the Logos assumed into union with himself only a fractional part of human nature, namely, that flesh and blood which was derived from the virgin. There was no union in the incarnation with the human race as a whole. This would have required the Logos to have united with the human nature as it was in Adam, prior to any division and individualization of it. Furthermore, in regeneration, Christ is united with only a particular individual who has been elected and separated (Gal. 1:15) from all other individuals.

The principal objection to the tenet of the participation of the posterity in the first sin is that the individual has no self-conscious recollection of such an event and that he cannot be held responsible for an act of which he is not self-conscious and cannot remember.

The reply to this is that upon any theory, no individual man is self-conscious of and remembers the first act of sin. Neither Pelagianism nor Semipelagianism, neither Socinianism nor Arminianism, has any advantage in this respect over Augustinianism and Calvinism. Neither does creationism have any advantage over traducianism. Upon any theory that recognizes the fact of sin in man, the first act of sin is not observed by self-consciousness at the time of its occurrence. No man remembers the time when he was innocent and the particular first act by which he became guilty before God.

Guilt is caused by self-determination, not by self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is not action, but vision; and it is action, not the sight of an action that constitutes crime. A man is wrongly inclining all the time to self and the creature, but he is not self-conscious all the time that he is wrongly inclining. If it be said that he might become self-conscious that he is so inclining, this does not prove that such a self-consciousness is necessary in order to responsibility for the wrong inclining. Even if he does not become self-conscious of his wrong inclining (as he may not for days and weeks), this does not destroy the fact that he is so inclining. It is the inclining, not the self-consciousness of inclining, which constitutes the free action of his will; and it is this free action which constitutes the sin and guilt. This is true also of the momentary volition, as well as of the abiding inclination. If a man commits a murder, it is not necessary that at the time when he stabs his victim he should have that clear apprehension of the enormity of the act which he subsequently has in order to be chargeable with murder. Sins of thoughtlessness are as truly sinful as deliberate sins (Lev. 5:17–18; Luke 12:48). Men generally are not self-conscious of the “secret sins” (Ps. 19:12; 90:8) of feeling and desire which they are committing inwardly all the time. The purpose of preaching the law is to produce the self-consciousness of sin. The “darkness” in which, according to St. Paul (Eph. 4:18), men “walk” is the thoughtless unconsciousness in which they live and act. It is a proverb that man sins more the less that God and sin are in his thoughts. The clearness of the self-consciousness is not the measure of the intensity of the self-determination. The two may be in inverse proportion. The will may be vehemently resolute and determined to a particular end, and yet the understanding be very blind to the will’s activity. It is frequently the case that great strength and energy in voluntariness are accompanied with great obtuseness and stupidity in moral perception. The most wicked and devilish men are oftentimes the most apathetic and hardened of men. The will is awake and full of force, but the conscience is asleep. When the sinner is convicted by the truth and Spirit of God, he does not excuse or extenuate his guilt on the ground of his past unconsciousness in sin. Even the heathen, when convinced of the abominations of idolatry and of selfish lust in its varied forms, do not plead “the ignorance that was in them because of the blindness of their hearts” in excuse for having “given themselves over to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Eph. 4:17).

It is on this ground that Samuel Hopkins contends that infants are moral agents:

Many have supposed that none of mankind are capable of sin or moral agency before they can distinguish between right and wrong. But this wants proof which has never yet been produced. And it appears to be contrary to divine revelation. Persons may be moral agents and sin without knowing what the law of God is or of what nature their exercises are and while they have no consciousness. (Works 1.233)

Hamilton (ed. Bowen, 13–14) contends that there are agencies of the soul deeper than self-consciousness. Pascal, in the fourth of his Provincial Letters, shows the consequences of the position of the Jesuit that “nothing is voluntary but what is accompanied with deliberation and clear consciousness of the nature of the act.”⁵³

There was, comparatively, more self-consciousness attending the first sin for the posterity, if it was committed by them in Adam, than can be found upon any other theory. The first sin of every man must have been committed either (a) in Adam, (b) in the womb, or (c) in infancy. We cannot conceive of any relation to or connection with self-consciousness in the last two cases. We can in the first, for the individuals Adam and Eve were self-conscious. So far as they were concerned, the first sin was a very deliberate and intensely willful act. The human species existing in them at that time acted in their act and sinned in their sin, similarly as the hand or eye acts and sins in the murderous or lustful act of the individual soul. The hand or the eye has no separate self-consciousness of its own, parallel with the soul’s self-consciousness. Taken by itself, it has no consciousness at all. But its union and oneness with the self-conscious soul in the personal union of soul and body affords all the self-consciousness that is possible in the case. The hand is coagent with the soul and hence is particeps criminis⁵⁴ and has a common guilt with the soul.

In like manner, the psychico-physical human nature existing in Adam and Eve had no separate self-consciousness parallel with that of Adam and Eve. Unlike the visible hand or eye, it was an invisible substance or nature capable of being transformed into myriads of self-conscious individuals; but while in Adam and not yet distributed and individualized, it had no distinct self-consciousness of its own, any more than the hand or eye in the supposed case. But existing, and acting in and with these self-conscious individuals, it participated in their self-determination and is chargeable with their sin, as the hand, and eye, and whole body is chargeable with the sin of the individual man. As in the instance of the individual unity, everything that constitutes it, body as well as soul, is active and responsible for all that is done by this unity, so in the instance of the specific unity: everything that constitutes it, namely, Adam and the human nature in him, is active and responsible for all that is done by this unity.

Original Sin as a Corruption of Nature

The second part of “the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell” consists in “the want of original righteousness and the corruption of the whole nature.” This part of human sinfulness stands to the first in the relation of effect to cause. Human nature in Adam and Eve inclined from holiness to sin, and as a consequence that nature became destitute of its original righteousness and morally corrupt.

It is easy to see how this negative destitution of righteousness and positive inclination to evil, with all the moral corruption attending it, should be imputed as guilt, provided it be conceded that the first sin is really committed and righteously imputed. If it is just to impute the cause, it is certainly just to impute the effect. But, on the contrary, it is impossible to see why the corruption of nature should be imputed as sin if the first sin is not. It is improper to impute the effect when the cause cannot be imputed.⁵⁵

It is here that the illogical character of the theory of mediate imputation is apparent. This was first advanced by Placaeus in 1640. To relieve, as he supposed, the Calvinistic doctrine of original sin of some of its difficulties, he maintained that the corruption of nature which is inherited from Adam is chargeable upon each individual as sin and guilt, but the act of transgressing the probationary statute given in Eden is not chargeable. This is to be imputed only to Adam and Eve as individuals. A man is guilty and punishable for his evil heart, but not for Adam’s first sin. His own personal corruption is imputable, because it is personal; but the act of another person is not imputable, because it is another’s act. Placaeus would impute Adam’s sin as a state, but not as an act; the “corruption of nature,” but not the “guilt of the first sin” in the Westminster formula.

This theory made a greater difficulty than it relieved. The corruption of nature, according to Placaeus himself, is the effect of Adam’s first sin. Why should the effect be imputed and not the cause? Such a kind of imputation looked unreasonable and, as the Helvetic Consensus Formula says, “imperiled the whole doctrine of original sin.” It would be difficult to retain the imputation of the corruption of nature by this method; and both the first sin and corruption would cease to be imputed.

The Synod of Charenton in 1644 condemned the view of Placaeus and also charged him with denying the imputation of Adam’s sin. He objected to this, saying that he did not deny the imputation of Adam’s sin altogether, but only when stated in a certain manner:

For in these words [in the decree of the synod] either the view expounded was not Placaeus’s or it was badly stated. For he never simply denied the imputation of Adam’s first sin and never wished to deny it. Since he would affirm a certain kind of imputation of the first sin and deny another kind, his view is not represented if he is said to deny—simply and without offering any distinction—the imputation of Adam’s first sin.⁵⁶ (Placaeus, Concerning Imputation 1.3)

The criticism of Turretin (9.9.5) upon this is as follows:

To break the force of the statement of the Synod of Charenton, Placaeus distinguished between immediate or antecedent imputation and between mediate or consequent imputation. The former he calls that imputation [of Adam’s sin] by which the first act of Adam was imputed immediately to all his posterity, Christ only excepted, and antecedently to any inherent corruption. The latter, he calls that imputation [of Adam’s sin] which follows upon seeing in the posterity that hereditary corruption derived to them from Adam and which is brought about by it [hereditary corruption] as the means or medium [of the imputation].

The first “immediate” imputation Placaeus rejects, the second “mediate” imputation he accepts; and upon this ground contends that he does not reject the imputation of Adam’s sin absolutely and without qualification.

But, as Turretin proceeds to say:

This distinction does in fact do away with the imputation of Adam’s [first] sin altogether. For if the sin of Adam is imputed to us only in this mediate manner, according to which we are constituted guilty before God and made liable to penalty, on account of a hereditary corruption which we derive from Adam, there is no real and proper imputation of Adam’s [first] sin, but only of inherent corruption. This the synod intended to prevent and proscribe by distinguishing original sin into two parts, namely, inherent corruption and imputation proper [i.e., the imputation of the first sin itself]—a thing that could not be done, if imputation cannot be except upon the ground of a foregoing corruption of nature. For it is one thing to be exposed to the wrath of God on account of inherent and hereditary corruption and quite another thing to be exposed to this wrath on account of Adam’s first act of sin.

The phrase original sin in Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 18 comprises both the first sin and the corruption of nature: Adam’s sin both as an act and a resulting state of the will. Edwards (Original Sin, introduction) remarks that original sin “is vulgarly understood in that latitude as to include not only the depravity of nature, but the imputation of Adam’s first sin.” The whole truth of the doctrine of original sin includes the imputation of both the first sin and the ensuing corruption. The first sin of Adam and his posterity is immediately imputed to them as sin, antecedently, in the order of nature, to inherent corruption, because it was their voluntary act. And then the resulting inherent corruption is imputed as sin; not, however, as in Placaeus’s theory, through itself as the medium of the imputation, but through the medium of the first sin, because this was the cause of it. Both the cause and the effect, both the first sin and the corruption caused by it, are imputed to Adam and his posterity.

The phrase original sin is sometimes employed to denote only the corruption of nature in distinction from the sins of act that proceed from it. In this use of the term, original sin is equivalent to the scriptural phrases “evil treasure of the heart” (Mark 12:35), “corrupt tree” (12:33), “heart from which proceed evil thoughts” (7:21), “stony heart” (Ezek. 11:19), “carnal mind” (Rom. 8:7), “flesh” (8:4), among others.

It is also equivalent to the theological phrases corrupt nature, sinful inclination, evil disposition, and apostate will. When the term nature is applied to sin, it does not denote nature in the primary but the secondary sense. In the primary sense, nature denotes a substance and one that is created by God. In this sense, Augustine denies that sin is nature and asserts that it is intentio (Shedd, History of Doctrine 2.82; Theological Essays, 220). Howe (Oracles 2.24) remarks that “that evil heart, that nature, not as it is nature but as it is depraved nature, is now transmitted.” When “nature” signifies created substance, it is improper to call sin a nature. Aristotle (Politics 1.2) says: “What every being is in its perfect state, that certainly is the nature of that being, whether it be a man, a horse, or a house.” Sin is imperfection and therefore not “nature” in this sense. But there is a secondary meaning of the word. In this use of it, “nature” denotes “natural inclination” or “innate disposition.” In this sense, sin is a “nature,” and the adjective natural is applicable to the corruption of sin. In the same sense, holiness is called a “nature” in 2 Pet. 1:4. Believers are “partakers of a divine nature” by being regenerated and coming to possess a holy disposition or inclination: “It is true that sin is a nature, but then it is a second nature, a state of degeneration” (Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §107). Calvin (on Eph. 2:3) says: “Since God is the author of nature, how comes it that no blame attaches to God if we are lost by nature? I answer, there is a twofold nature: The one produced by God and the other is corruption of it. We are not born such as Adam was at first created” (see Formula of Concord 1.12; Calvin 2.2.12).

Viewed as natural corruption, original sin may be considered with respect to the understanding. It is blindness: “a light to open blind eyes” (Isa. 42:7); “recovering of sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18); “know not that you are blind” (Rev. 3:17); “the god of this world has blinded their minds” (2 Cor. 4:4). Many texts speak of regeneration as “enlightening” (2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 5:14; 1 Thess. 5:5; Ps. 97:11). And many texts call sin “darkness” (Prov. 4:19; Isa. 60:2; Eph. 5:11; Col. 1:13; 1 John 2:11; 1 Thess. 5:4; Eph. 4:18 [“having the understanding (dianoia)⁵⁷ darkened”]; Rom. 1:28 [“reprobate mind (noun)]”).⁵⁸

Sin blinds and darkens the understanding by destroying the consciousness of divine things. For example, the soul destitute of love to God is no longer conscious of love, of reverence is no longer conscious of reverence, etc. Its knowledge of such affections, therefore, is from hearsay, like that which a blind man has of colors or a deaf man of sound. God, the object of these affections, is of course unknown for the same reason. The spiritual discernment spoken of in 1 Cor. 2:6 is the immediate consciousness of a renewed man. It is experimental knowledge. Sin is described in Scripture as voluntary ignorance: “This they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old” (2 Pet. 3:5). Christ says to the Jews: “If I had not come and spoken unto them they had not had sin”—the sin of “not knowing him that sent me” (John 15:21–22). But the ignorance in this case was a willing ignorance. They desired to be ignorant.

Another effect of original sin upon the understanding as including the conscience is insensibility. It does not render conscience extinct, but it stupefies it: “having cauterized their own conscience” (1 Tim. 4:2). A third effect is pollution: “even their reason (nous)⁵⁹ and conscience (syneidēsis)⁶⁰ are polluted” or stained (memiantai)⁶¹ (Titus 1:15); “they became vain in their reasonings” or speculations (dialogismous)⁶² (Rom. 1:21). The pollution of reason is seen in the foolish speculations of mythology. The myths of polytheism are not pure reason. The pollution of conscience is seen in remorse. The testifying faculty is spotted with guilt. It is no longer a “good conscience” (Heb. 13:18 [kalēn syneidēsin];⁶³ 1 Pet. 3:16, 21; 1 Tim. 1:5, 19; Acts 23:1 [syneidēsin agathēn])⁶⁴ or a “pure conscience” (1 Tim. 3:9: syneidēsis kathara).⁶⁵ It is an “evil conscience” (ponēra syneidēsis):⁶⁶ a conscience needing cleansing by atoning blood “from dead works” (Heb. 9:14). Dead works, being no fulfillment of the law, leave the conscience perturbed and unpacified.

Considered with respect to the will, original sin is (a) enmity (Rom. 8:6; James 4:4 [“the friendship of the world is enmity toward God”]; Deut. 1:26 [“they rebelled against God”]; Job 34:37; Isa. 1:1; 30:9; 45:2; Ezek. 12:2); (b) hatred (Rom. 1:29; Ps. 89:23; 139:21; Exod. 20:5; Prov. 1:25; 5:12; John 7:7; 15:18, 23–24); (c) hardness of heart or insensibility (Exod. 7:14, 22; 2 Kings 17:14; Job 9:4; Isa. 63:17; Dan. 5:20; John 12:20; Acts 19:9; Heb. 3:8, 15; 4:7); (d) aversion (John 5:40 [“you will not (ou thelēte),”⁶⁷ you are disinclined]; Rev. 2:21); (e) obstinacy (Deut. 31:27 [“stiff-necked”]; Exod. 32:9; Ps. 75:5; Isa. 26:10; 43:4; Acts 7:51; Rom. 10:21); (f) bondage (Jer. 13:23; Mark 3:23; John 6:43–44; 8:34; Rom. 5:6; 6:20; 7:9, 14, 18, 23; 8:7–8; 9:16; 2 Pet. 2:14).

Corruption of Nature as Guilt

Original sin, considered as corruption of nature, is sin in the sense of guilt: “They [the Lutherans] condemn the Pelagians and others who deny that the flaw (vitium) of our origin is sin”⁶⁸ (Augsburg Confession 2); “every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God does in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God and made subject to death, temporal and eternal” (Westminster Confession 6.6); “corruption of nature does remain in those that are regenerated, and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself and all the motions thereof are truly and properly sin” (Westminster Confession 6.5). Semipelagian, papal, and Arminian anthropologies differ from the Augustinian and Reformed by denying that corruption of nature is guilt. It is a physical and mental disorder leading to sin, but is not sin itself.⁶⁹

Corruption of nature is guilt because …

1.      The Scriptures do not distinguish between sin proper and improper. Hamartia⁷⁰ as denoting the principle of sin is exchanged with paraptōma⁷¹ denoting the act of sin and vice versa (Rom. 5:13, 15–17, 19, 21).

2.      Hamartia⁷² is the equivalent of epithymia⁷³ and sarx:⁷⁴ “I had not known sin, except the law had said, You shall not lust” (7:7; cf. 8:3, 5).

3.      The remainders of corruption in the regenerate are hated as sin by the regenerate himself (7:15) and by God, who slays them by his Spirit (8:13).

4.      Evil desire is forbidden in the tenth commandment (Exod. 20:17; cf. 1 John 2:16). The tenth commandment, which the Septuagint renders ouk epithymēseis,⁷⁵ prohibits that internal lusting which is the chief characteristic of the corrupt nature. It is also forbidden by Christ in his exposition of the seventh commandment (Matt. 5:28): “Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15).

5.      Corruption of nature is guilt because it is the inclination of the will. It is “voluntary” though not “volitionary.” It is conceded that the inclination to murder is as truly culpable as the act of murder: “The thought (zimmâ)⁷⁶ of foolishness is sin” (Prov. 24:9).

6.      Corruption of nature is guilt, upon the principle that the cause must have the same predicates as its effects. If actual transgressions are truly and properly sin, then the evil heart or inclination which prompts them must be so likewise. If the stream is bitter water, the fountain must be also. If the murderer’s act is guilt, then the murderer’s hate is.

7.      If corruption of nature or sinful disposition is not guilt, then it is an extenuation and excuse for actual transgressions. These latter are less blameworthy, if the character which prompts them and renders their avoidance more difficult is not self-determined and culpable.

8.      If corruption of nature is not culpable, it is impossible to assign a reason why the dying infant needs redemption by atoning blood. Christ came “by water and blood,” that is, with both expiating and sanctifying power (1 John 5:6). But if there be no guilt in natural depravity, Christ comes to the infant “by water only” and not “by blood,” by sanctification and not by justification. Infant redemption implies that the infant has guilt as well as pollution. The infant has a rational soul; this soul has a will; this will is inclined; this inclination, like that of an adult, is centered on the creature instead of the Creator. This is culpable and needs pardon. It is also pollution and needs removal.

9.      God forgives original sin as well as actual transgression when he bestows the “remission of sins.” The “carnal mind” or the enmity of the heart is as great an offense against his excellence and honor as any particular act that issues from it. Indeed, if there be mutual goodwill between two parties, an occasional outward offense is less serious.

Says Thirlwall (Letters, 46):

Suppose two friends really loving one another, but liable now and then to quarrel. They may easily forgive the occasional offense, because their habitual disposition is one of mutual goodwill; but should the case be the reverse—hatred stifled, but occasionally venting itself by unfriendly acts—how little would it matter though they should forget the particular offense, if the enmity should continue at the bottom of the heart.

This illustrates the guilt of sin as a state of the heart toward God, and the need of its forgiveness and removal. (See supplement 4.5.7.)

With the Scriptures, the theologians assert that corruption of nature is sin:

We must not only abstain from evil deeds, but even from the desire to do them. Christ commanded not only to abstain from things forbidden by the law, but even from longing after them. Our Lord forbade concupiscence itself, as well as the act of adultery. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.13)

The command not to lust condemns the beginnings of sin, that is, unruly desires and wishes, no less than overt acts. (Tertullian, Concerning Modesty)

[Augustine defines sin to be] something coveted, said, or done contrary to God’s law.⁷⁷ (Turretin 9.1.3)

[Augustine] sometimes denominates concupiscence infirmity, teaching that it becomes sin in cases where action or consent is added to the conception of the mind; but sometimes he denominates it sin; as when he says, “Paul gives the appellation of sin to this from which all sins proceed, that is, to carnal concupiscence.” (Calvin 3.3.10)

If lust which wars against the soul (1 Pet. 2:11) be already sin (Exod. 20:17; Matt. 5:28), then must the act of sin be regarded as augmenting its degree. (Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §111)

By the precept concerning the tree of knowledge, man was taught that God is Lord of all things and that it is unlawful even to desire, but with his leave. Man’s true happiness is placed in God alone, and nothing is to be desired but with submission to him. (Witsius, Covenants 1.3.21)

The irregular pleasure proceeding from the sensualized mind, inasmuch as it is corrupt, is sin; because it ought to have been subject to reason and moves in an undue manner contrary to reason. (Hales, quoted by Davenant, Justification 2.214)

To root out the pernicious error of self-righteousness, our Lord gives the spiritual intention of the law and declares that the law had regard to the regulation of the heart with all its first motions and actings. For he asserts that the first motions of concupiscence, though not consented to, much less actually accomplished, are directly forbidden in the law. This he does in his exposition of the seventh commandment. He also declares the penalty of the law upon the least sin to be hellfire, in his assertion of causeless anger to be forbidden in the sixth commandment. (Owen, Justification, 17)

Have we felt any evil desire in our heart? we are already guilty of concupiscence and are become at once transgressors of the law; because the Lord forbids us not only to plan and attempt anything that would prove detrimental to another, but even to be stimulated and agitated with concupiscence. The curse of God always rests on the transgression of the law. We have no reason, therefore, to exempt even the most trivial emotions of concupiscence from the sentence of death. (Calvin 2.8.58)

The law says, “Do not lust.” And so, even if you do not give assent to the lust which inflames you, this very impulse of your flesh is sin nevertheless.⁷⁸ (Bullinger)

Original Sin as Voluntary Inclination

The position that original sin is voluntary inclination has been maintained in anthropology from the beginning of speculation upon the subject. Augustine argues as follows with Julian: “Says Julian, ‘If sin is from will, then it is an evil will that produces sin; but if from nature, then an evil nature produces sin.’ I quickly reply that sin is from will. Then he asks ‘whether original sin is also from will.’ I answer, certainly, original sin also, because this was transmitted from the will of the first man” (Concerning Marriages 2.28.2). Turretin defines sin as “an inclination, action, or omission opposing God’s law”⁷⁹ (9.1.3). Ursinus, speaking of corruption of nature in infants, says that “infants want not the faculty of will, and though in act they do not will sin, yet they will it by inclination” (Christian Religion, Original Sin Q. 7). Rivetus asserts that “concupiscence is a voluntary inclination”⁸⁰ (Explication of the Decalogue, v. 15). William of Auxerre, quoted by Davenant (Justification 2.214), asserts that “the movement of wrong desire in man is a voluntary act, and it is sin, even when it moves before the reason has had time to exercise its judgment.” Says Charnock (Holiness of God, 476), “There is no sin but is in some sort voluntary; voluntary in the root or voluntary in the branch; voluntary by an immediate act of the will [volition] or voluntary by a general or natural inclination of the will [self-determination]. That is not a crime, to which a man is violenced without any concurrence of the faculties of the soul to that act.” Says Owen (Vindication of the Gospel, 6): “Original sin, as peccatum originans,⁸¹ was voluntary in Adam; and as it is originatum⁸² in us is in our wills habitually [as a habitus] and not against them, in any actings of it or them. The effects of it, in the coining of sin and in the thoughts of men’s hearts, are all voluntary” (cf. Indwelling Sin 6.12). Says Howe (Oracles 2.24):

We must understand that an evil inclination or a depraved nature is that which does first violate the law of God; and so that it is not infelicity only to be ill inclined, but it is sin: sin in the highest and most eminent sense thereof. It is the habitual frame and bent of the soul which the law of God does in the first place direct. So that the empoisoned nature of man, the malignity of the heart and soul, is that which makes the first and principal breach upon the law of God.

It must be remembered that sin in its entire history is inclination and self-determination. While it is true that the first sin of Adam is the fall of the human race and decides its eternal destiny apart from redemption, yet it must not be supposed that after the first act of Adam, all self-determination ceases. Original sin as corruption of nature in each individual is only the continuation of the first inclining away from God. The self-determination of the human will from God to the creature, as an ultimate end, did not stop short with the act in Eden, but goes right onward in every individual of Adam’s posterity, until regeneration reverses it. As progressive sanctification is the continuation of that holy self-determination of the human will which begins in its regeneration by the Holy Spirit, so the progressive depravation of the natural man is the continuation of that sinful self-determination of the human will which began in Adam’s transgression.

In connection with the doctrine that the corruption of nature is the same as the free inclination of the will, a position of Edwards is sometimes misunderstood and misapplied. Edwards (Will 4.1) asserts that “the virtuousness or viciousness of a disposition consists not in the origin or cause of it, but in the nature of it.” This position cannot be understood without taking into view the error which Edwards was combating. He was opposing the view of Arminian writers Taylor, Whitby, and others that a disposition or inclination cannot be chargeable as guilt unless it has been originated by a volitionary act preceding it. Their doctrine of the will implied that inclination can be produced by volition, and must be in order to responsibility for the inclination. This Edwards denies: “It is agreeable to the natural notions of mankind that moral evil, with its desert of dislike and abhorrence, and all its other ill deservings, consists in a certain deformity in the nature of certain dispositions of the heart and acts of the will and not in the deformity of something else, diverse from the very thing itself which deserves abhorrence, supposed to be the cause of it.” That is to say, the disposition of the heart or inclination of the will is in its own quality and nature an evil disposition and does not get its evil quality from “something else”—namely, a volition that went before it and caused it. If a man is inclined or disposed to sin, this inclination or disposition is itself sin. It is not necessary that he should, previously to the inclining, resolve to incline or choose to incline in order that the inclination should be sinful. The inclining itself is sin and guilt:

Thus, for instance, ingratitude is hateful and worthy of dispraise, according to common sense, not because something as bad or worse than ingratitude was the cause that produced it; but because it is hateful in itself by its own inherent deformity. So the love of virtue is amiable and worthy of praise, not merely because something else went before this love of virtue in our minds which caused it to take place there (for instance our own choice [volition]—we chose to love virtue and by some method or other wrought ourselves into the love of it), but because of the amiableness and condecency of such a disposition and inclination of the heart.

In other words, Edwards here teaches that a man does not choose to incline, but he inclines; he does not choose to love, but he loves. The first thing in the order is not a volition and then after this a disposition or inclination; but the first thing is a disposition or inclination and then a volition.

Now it is only with reference to the relation of a volition to a disposition or inclination that Edwards lays down the position that “the virtuousness or viciousness of a disposition lies not in the origin of it, but in the nature of it.” He does not carry the position any further than this. When the volition is left out of the account and only the disposition or inclination is considered, Edwards teaches that this must have a free origin or else it is not sin. The whole purpose of his celebrated argument to prove that Adam and his posterity were one agent in the origin of sin is to show how the sinful disposition is the working of spontaneity or unforced inclination. When it comes to that act of will by which man inclines to sin, Edwards affirms that man is the self-moved and guilty actor and author of it. In his treatise on the will (4.1), he remarks as follows:

If any shall still object and say: Why is it not necessary that the cause should be considered in order to determine whether anything be worthy of blame or praise? Is it agreeable to reason and common sense that a man is to be praised or blamed for that which he is not the cause or author of and has no hand in? I answer, such phrases as “being the cause,” “being the author,” “having a hand in,” and the like are ambiguous. They are most vulgarly understood for being the designing voluntary [volitionary] cause or cause by antecedent choice: and it is most certain that men are not in this sense the causes or authors of the first act of their wills [i.e., of their inclination or disposition], in any case; as certain as anything is or ever can be; for nothing can be more certain than that a thing is not before it is nor a thing of the same kind before the first thing of that kind; and so no choice before the first choice. As, however, the phrase being the author may be understood, not of being the producer by an antecedent act of will [i.e., a volition], but as a person may be said to be the author of the act of the will itself by his being the immediate agent or the being that is acting or in the exercise of that act; if the phrase being the author is used to signify this, then doubtless common sense requires men’s being the authors of their own acts of will in order to their being esteemed worthy of praise or dispraise on account of them. And common sense teaches that they must be the authors of external actions in the former sense, namely, their being the causes of them by an act of will or choice [volition], in order to their being justly blamed or praised; but it teaches no such thing in respect to the internal acts of will themselves.⁸³

In this last remark, Edwards concedes that a volition precedes an outward act and is the cause of it. The Arminian position in respect to volitionary action is true up to this point. An external act is not sinful or holy unless preceded by a volition. But with reference to that internal action of the will which is denominated its inclination or disposition, he holds that the Arminian position is not true. There is no need of a volition to precede this in order to make it sinful or holy; but it is so in its own nature, because it is the spontaneity of the man, because it is the action of “the immediate agent or the being that is acting or in the exercise of the act.”⁸⁴

When the question “is man the responsible author of his sinful inclination not by an antecedent volition to incline but by a present actual inclining?” is asked, Edwards answers in the affirmative:

As a person may be said to be the author of the act of the will itself, not by an antecedent act of will [i.e., by a foregoing volition], but by his being the immediate agent or the being that is acting or in the exercise of that act; if the phrase being the author is used to signify this, then, doubtless, common sense requires men’s being the authors of their own acts of will in order to their being esteemed worthy of praise or dispraise on account of them.

Edwards’s objection to the doctrine that the will chooses to choose or chooses its choices—namely, that it supposes “a choice before the first choice” and that this is as absurd as that “a thing is before it is” or that there is “a thing of the same kind before the first thing of the same kind”—implies that there is such a thing as a “first choice.” But since he employed the term choice indiscriminately to include all the action of the will, the first choice with him meant an inclination or disposition of the will, not a volition (proper). There is no action of the will that precedes its inclination or disposition. Consequently, this is the primary action, the “first choice” of the will. The other action of the will in volitions (proper) is second choice. This “first choice” of the will in spontaneously inclining Edwards denominates a “leading act,” an “original act,” the “first determining act” (Will 3.4). The word act in this instance means activity or self-motion or self-determination, not in the Arminian sense of self-determination, which is a volition coupled with power to the contrary and is really indetermination not self-determination, but self-determination in the Calvinistic sense of spontaneously inclining or in the sense of “the immediate agent or the being that is acting or in the exercise of the act,” as Edwards phrases it.

Again, that Edwards held the inclination or disposition of the will to be voluntary agency is proved by his position that the inclination or disposition is an object either of command or of prohibition. A man is commanded to have a holy inclination and forbidden to have a sinful one. He is so commanded when he is commanded to love God with all his heart. Love is inclination. He is prohibited from having a sinful inclination when he is prohibited from lust in any form. The tenth commandment prohibits a sinful inclination. But commands and prohibitions are addressed to the will and require or forbid something that is truly voluntary. The following is the phraseology of Edwards upon this point: “The will itself [i.e., the inclination of the will], and not only those actions which are the effects of the will [inclination], is the proper object of precept or command. That is, such or such a state or act of men’s wills is in many cases properly required of them by command; and not merely those alterations in the state of their bodies or minds only that are consequences of volition.” Again he remarks: “The will itself [i.e., the inclination] may be required, and the being of a goodwill is the most proper, direct, and immediate subject of command” (Will 3.4; 4.13).

It is important to notice by reference to the connection in what sense Edwards uses the term choice or volition. Sometimes the term denotes volition in distinction from inclination; sometimes it denotes inclination considered as voluntary agency. Had he appropriated the terms choice and volition to only one form of the will’s activity, he would have been less liable to misapprehension. The charge of fatalism urged by some against Edwards arises from a failure to observe, that while Edwards taught that volitions necessarily agree with the inclination and have no power over it, he also taught that the inclination itself is free not necessitated agency. In the instance of a holy inclination, it was either created or recreated by God. In the instance of a sinful inclination, it was self-originated in the fall of Adam. The inclination of the will is free spontaneity in both instances. In the former, it results from God working in the will to will; in the latter, it is the will in its solitary self-motion.

The dictum of Edwards to which we have referred is misapplied, sometimes, by writers whose view of sin and the will is substantially that of Edwards. They agree that a man is responsible for his sinful volitions, because they issue from his sinful inclination; but when asked why a man is responsible for his sinful inclination, instead of answering that this had a free and self-determined origin in Adam, they take refuge in the dangerous position that the sinfulness of an inclination does not depend upon its origin but upon its nature and that it is of no consequence how it originated: “Malignity is evil, and love is good, whether concreated, innate, acquired, or infused. A malignant being is a sinful being, if endowed with reason, whether he was so made or so born” (Hodge, Theology 2.808). In this statement, holiness and sin are made to hold precisely the same relation to God and the human will, when in fact they hold totally different relations. All four of these adjectives will apply to “love,” but only two of them to “malignity,” namely, “innate” and “acquired.” God creates a holy inclination or disposition whenever he creates a holy will in man or angel; and he recreates a holy inclination whenever he regenerates a sinner. Holiness is good and meritorious, “whether concreated, innate, acquired, or infused.” But then it is meritorious only in a relative sense. Since God is the ultimate author of holiness in both the creation and the regeneration of the will, to him belongs the glory of it. Man is not the originating agent, when holy inclination is the instance. God works in him to will. But the case is wholly different in the instance of an evil disposition or inclination. Man is the sole author, here. The demerit here is absolute, not relative. The doctrine of created holiness is true, but not of created sin; of infused holiness, but not of infused sin. To say that God can “create” and “infuse” a malignant inclination is to contradict the explicit teaching of Scripture, which asserts that God cannot sin and that he hates sin with an infinite hatred. God cannot create and infuse what he hates and punishes. And it shocks alike the moral sentiment of the natural man and the holy reverence of the renewed man. An evil inclination may be “innate” or “acquired.” But it cannot be “created” or “infused.” There may be a created merit, but not a created demerit. God can create and infuse holiness, but not sin.

The testimony of Scripture and of consciousness is to this effect. When David in Ps. 51 is brought to a sense of the wickedness of his heart or sinful disposition, he never dreams of referring this disposition to God as its Creator and Author. He imputes his inborn depravity to himself. He acknowledges that the demerit of it is absolute. It is the creature’s agency and the creature’s only. He describes it as “innate,” but not as “created” or “infused” by God. He derives it from his mother, but not from his maker. But when David rejoiced over his own holy disposition and that of the people to honor God in the erection of a temple, his utterance is very different: “Whom am I, and what is my people that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come of you, and of your own have we given you” (1 Chron. 29:14). (See supplement 4.5.8.)

Because holiness can be created and infused, it does not follow that sin can be, unless it can be shown, first, that the demerit of sin is only a relative demerit, as the merit of holiness is only a relative and gracious merit; and, second, that God’s creative agency can be exerted in the origination of sin in the same manner that it is in the origination of holiness, namely, by direct spiritual efficiency and operation.

When it is said that “malignity is evil,” it is meant of course that it is morally evil, that is, damnable and punishable. The punishableness of it is what constitutes it evil. It is not evil in the sense that poverty or sickness are evils. To say, therefore, that such a form of evil as sin can be understood without looking at the origin of it is self-contradictory. A malignant disposition is morally evil, that is, damnable and punishable, only in case it is guilt. If it is misfortune, it is not moral evil at all. If therefore it is not the product of the human will solely, but the product of God working in the human will, if it is “created” and “infused,” it is certainly neither damnable nor punishable. Auctor mali non ultor mali.⁸⁵ It is no answer to say that a holy disposition is commendable and rewardable, and yet this is created and infused. The merit in this case, we repeat, is gracious and pactional and does not rest upon any absolute and primary obligation in God to reward. God in this case rewards his own grace and his own work in his creature. But the demerit of a sinful disposition is absolute, and its reward necessary, that is, resting upon an absolute and primary obligation in God as just to punish sin. God in this case does not punish his own cooperating agency in a creature’s will or visit with judicial infliction his own work.

Thus it appears that the “nature” of man’s sinful inclination or disposition cannot be determined except by knowing its “origin.” If it originates in one way, it is not sin; if in another, it is sin. Suppose that a judge should say to a jury: “You are not to look at the origin of this act of killing, but only at the nature of it; killing a man is killing a man, whatever may be the source from which the act originated.” The reply would be that it is impossible to determine the nature of the act in this instance without tracing it to its origin. Killing is of the nature of murder, only in case it originates in a murderous inclination and purpose. The nature depends upon the origin. In like manner, it is impossible to decide that a particular human disposition or inclination is of a culpable and damnable nature until it has been decided whether God or man is the author of it. The very epithet original applied to Adam’s first sin implies that its origin is a feature that is vital to the understanding of it, that its nature cannot be determined but by examining its first source. The term original when applied to sin implies that it originates in man. But the very same term when applied to righteousness implies that it originates in God: “In all agency, whether of good or evil, much is wont to be attributed to this: who was first in it? In point of good, the blessed God has no competitor; he is the undoubted first fountain of all good and is therefore acknowledged the supreme good. In point of evil (namely, moral) there is none prior to the devil, who is therefore eminently called the evil or wicked one” (Howe, Living Temple 2.8).

Original sin is to be distinguished from indwelling sin. The latter is the remainder of original sin in the regenerate. Its workings are described in Rom. 7:14–8:27 (Shedd, Commentary in loco). It is not, like original sin, a dominant and increasing principle in the believer, but a subjugated and diminishing one. Indwelling sin is the minuendo movement of sin. “It has a dying fall.” Original sin is the crescendo movement:

Original sin does not remain in the same manner after regeneration as it remained before; for there are two remarkable differences. In the unregenerate, it occupies all the faculties of the soul peaceably and rules in their mind, will, and affections; but in the regenerate, it neither dwells peaceably, because grace from above is infused into them, which daily opposes this disease, and more and more expels it from every faculty of the soul; nor does it rule over them, because grace prevailing and predominating restrains it and sends it as it were under the yoke. The other difference is that in the unregenerate it has the guilt of eternal death annexed to it; but in the regenerate it is absolved from this fruit, for the sake of Christ the mediator. (Davenant, Justification, 15)

Says Luther (Table Talk: Of Sins): “Original sin after regeneration is like a wound that begins to heal; though it be a wound, yet it is in course of healing, though it still runs and is sore. So, original sin remains in Christians until they die, yet itself is mortified and continually dying. Its head is crushed to pieces, so that it cannot condemn us.” Indwelling sin is denominated “the law in (not of) the members” (Rom. 7:23); original sin is denominated “the law of sin and death” (8:2). (See supplement 4.5.9.)

Original Sin and Moral Inability

The bondage of sin is defined in Westminster Larger Catechism 25. It describes the corruption of nature, called original sin in distinction from actual transgression, as that corruption “whereby man is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is spiritually good.” The Westminster Confession describes this corruption as that “whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.” The creeds of the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches are equally explicit upon this point.⁸⁶ For the scriptural proof, see p. 502.

This introduces the subject of the inability to good of the apostate will, respecting which the following particulars are to be noted: (a) the inability relates to spiritual good and (b) the inability is self-caused and voluntary.

In the Westminster statement, the inability and opposition of the will relates to all that is “spiritually good.” Spiritual good is holiness, and holiness is supreme love of God and equal love of man. The creed statement therefore is that apostate man, alone and of himself, is unable to love God with all his soul and his neighbor as himself. He cannot start such an affection as this in his heart. He cannot originate within his will an inclination or disposition that is “spiritually good.” The inability relates to voluntary action in distinction from volitionary, to self-determination to an ultimate end in distinction from the choice of particular means.

The doctrine in question does not imply that fallen man is unable to be moral; but that he is unable to be spiritual, holy, and religious. St. Paul teaches (Rom. 2:14) that some unregenerate pagans practice morality; that they “do by nature the things contained in the law,” that is, some things contained in the law (ta tou nomou),⁸⁷ not all things.⁸⁸ Their obedience is fractional and imperfect. Under the natural stimulus of conscience, they refrain more or less from vice and live more or less virtuously, as compared with others around them. But this morality is not supreme love of God and perfect obedience of his law. St. Paul denies that these virtuous heathen are spiritually good and holy when he affirms that, if tested by the law that requires supreme love of God, “every mouth must be stopped and all the world become guilty before God” (3:19); that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (3:23); and that “there is none righteous, no, not one” (3:10).

Again, this inability and opposition to all that is “spiritually” good does not imply that fallen man is destitute of certain natural and instinctive affections that are attractive and beneficent.⁸⁹ First in the list are family affections. The love of the parent for the child, of the children for the parents, of brothers and sisters for each other, is an amiable sentiment and oftentimes leads to great self-sacrifice. But the self-sacrifice is for the brother or sister, not for God. Family affection may and often does exist without any supreme love of God. It may and often does lead to disobedience of God. The workings of natural affection must be subordinated to the claims of Christ in order to become religious affection or “spiritually good”: “He that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 11:37). When the two come in conflict, the instinctive human affection if allowed sway is positively idolatrous and irreligious.

Second are social affections. Man is instinctively interested in his fellowman and performs many acts of self-sacrifice and generosity toward him. The sailor will share his last crust with his fellow sailor; the fireman will risk his own life for a fellow creature whom he never saw before and will never see again. But both actions may be performed, and often have been, by one who takes the name of God in vain and breaks every other commandment of the Decalogue whenever he is tempted to it. The self-sacrifice in this instance, also, is for man, not for God. The act in this case is one of gallantry or courage, and the common sense of man never denominates it a spiritual and holy act. Men call it “noble” and reward it by some token of admiration: a silver cup or a purse of money. They would not think of so rewarding a spiritual or holy act, like that of the martyr who dies for his faith in Christ or of the missionary who lays his bones among the savages to whom he has preached the gospel.

Third are civil affections. Man is by his constitution a political animal, as Aristotle denominates him. He is interested in the nation and country to which he belongs by reason of his birth. This patriotic feeling, like social and family affections, rises up instinctively and uniformly in every man, the unregenerate as well as regenerate. This, too, like the others, is not spiritual and holy in its nature. The most intense patriotism may be accompanied with atheism and unbelief and immorality. Such patriotism is expressed in the sentiment: “My country—right or wrong.”

Fourth, the esthetic feeling is not spiritual or religious. A love for the beautiful in art has nothing of holy virtue in it: “Who will affirm that a disposition to approve of the harmony of good music or the beauty of a square or equilateral triangle is the same with true holiness or a truly virtuous disposition of mind?” (Edwards, Nature of Virtue). Good taste is not piety and religion. A refined voluptuary is oftentimes a good judge in fine art; and even a coarse sensualist may be. Turner, one of the first painters that England has produced, was an example of the latter. Good taste may be spiritualized and elevated by being associated with and subordinated to a higher affection. But until this is done, it is of the earth earthly. It terminates only on that which is finite and temporal; and anything that terminates solely upon earth and time is unspiritual and unreligious. The same is true of the love of literature and science. Human discipline and culture is not holiness of heart and spirituality of mind.

In all these instances, we have to do with a portion of man’s constitution that is outside of the voluntary nature. We are concerned with instinct, using the term in a wide sense, not with will. In its narrow and common signification, instinct signifies only the impulse of animal nature in brutes. But it may be used to denote all the constitutional impulses of human nature. Man did not lose esthetic impulse and feeling by the apostasy of his will; neither did he lose family, social, or civil affections. When he inclined away from God he did not incline away from art, science, the family-state, society, government, and country. His instinctive and constitutional interest in all these objects continued after the apostasy. His will was revolutionized, but not his instinctive nature. His love of God was gone, but not his love of family, country, beauty. Man continued to take pleasure in finite objects and relations, but lost delight in infinite and eternal objects and relations.

The foundation of all these affections is natural instinct, not will. They are constitutional, not voluntary; physical, not moral. Their source and basis is physical, using the term etymologically and broadly, to denote that which belongs to the physis⁹⁰ or created nature of man. The family affection is founded in blood and lineage. A father does not love and toil for another man’s son. The patriotic affection springs from flesh and birth. An Englishman will not lay down his life for a Frenchman. Aristotle notices this. He founds the state upon the family, and the family he founds upon the sexual relation and affection, which manifests itself “not through voluntary choice, but by that natural impulse which acts both in plants and animals, namely, the desire of leaving behind them others like themselves” (Politics 1.2). The esthetic feeling, also, is founded in the created constitutional nature, but in the mental not the animal side of it. It does not depend, like family and patriotic affection, on affinity in blood and birth.

There is nothing voluntary in the love of a parent for his child, in the love of a citizen for his country, in the love of the artist for beauty. They are not the inclination of the will. This is proved by the fact that the apostasy of the will does not radically change them. If they belonged to the will, they would be converted into their contraries when the will is. When man began to be destitute of love to God, he would begin to be destitute of love for his family and his nation. In becoming an enemy of God and holiness, he would become an enemy of his family, society, culture, and art. In becoming disinclined and averse toward the Creator, he would become disinclined and averse toward these forms of the creature also.

In the Westminster statement, the disability or inability is connected with the disposition and inclination of the will. Man is “indisposed to all spiritual good and inclined to all [spiritual] evil.” It follows from this that the cause and seat of the inability in question is in the action and state of the voluntary faculty. It is moral or willing inability: “For the will is a slave to sin, not unwillingly but willingly. For indeed, the ‘will’ (voluntas) is not called the ‘unwill’ (noluntas)”⁹¹ (Second Helvetic Confession 9).

In denominating it “moral” inability, it is not meant that it arises merely from habit or that it is not “natural” in any sense of the word nature. A man is sometimes said to be morally unable to do a thing, when it is very difficult for him to do it by reason of an acquired habit, but not really impossible. This is not the sense of the word moral when applied to the sinner’s inability to holiness. He is really and in the full sense of the word impotent. And the cause of this impotence is not a habit of doing evil which he has formed in his individual life, but a natural disposition which he has inherited from Adam. The term moral, therefore, when applied to human inability denotes that it is voluntary in distinction from created. Man’s impotence to good does not arise from the agency of God in creation but from the agency of man in apostasy.

Whether, therefore, it can ever be called “natural” inability will depend upon the meaning given to the term nature. (a) If nature means that which is created by God, there is no natural inability to good in fallen man. But if nature means “natural disposition” or “natural inclination,” there is a “natural” inability to good in fallen man. (b) Again, “natural” sometimes means something which is born with man in distinction from that which he acquires after birth, something in man at birth, yet not caused by birth. In this sense, man’s inability to good is “natural.” It is innate inability. The Scriptures sometimes employ the word in this sense: “The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them” (1 Cor. 2:14); “and were by nature (physei;⁹² i.e., by birth) children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3); “conceived in sin and shaped in iniquity” (Ps. 51:5). In this last passage, “conceived” is not synonymous with “created” and must be carefully distinguished from it. So, also, in Rom. 9:11: “The children being not yet born” does not mean “the children being not yet created.” As opposed, therefore, to what is natural in the sense of created by God, man’s inability is moral, not natural; but as opposed to what is moral in the sense of acquired by habit, maninability is natural. When “natural” means “innate,” we assert that inability is “natural.” When “natural” means “created,” we assert that inability is “moral,” that is, voluntary. (See supplement 4.5.10.)

Owing to this ambiguity in the signification of the terms natural and moral, the elder Calvinistic theologians did not use either term exclusively to denote the sinner’s inability to good. Sometimes they employ one and sometimes the other and explain their meaning. The creeds of the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches frequently use the word natural and assert entire inability with great decision and unanimity: “When God converts a sinner, he frees him from his natural bondage under sin” (Westminster Confession 9.4).⁹³ (See supplement 4.5.11.)

The elder Edwards differs from the old Calvinists in two particulars: (1) in refusing to denominate the bondage of the human will “natural inability” and (2) in denying that “moral inability,” by which term exclusively he designates the sinner’s bondage, is “inability proper.” As these positions bring Edwards into contradiction with himself and open the way for a different anthropology from that contained in his writings generally and particularly in his treatise Original Sin, we direct attention to them. His view is contained in the following statements: “Natural inability alone is properly called inability” (Will in Works 2.104); “no inability which is merely moral is properly called by the name inability” (Will in Works 2.103).⁹⁴

In his treatise Will (in Works 2.104), Edwards defines “natural inability” as the want of the requisite mental faculties. Consequently, “natural ability” for him is the possession of the requisite mental faculties viewed apart from their moral state and condition. In so viewing them, he differs from the elder Calvinists, who regarded a mental faculty and its moral condition as inseparable. Edwards conceives of the will abstractly and separate from its inclination and, as so conceived, contends that it is “naturally able” to obey the law of God. The elder Calvinists denied that the will can be so conceived of.

“Natural inability,” says Edwards, “arises from the want of natural capacity or from external hindrance.” A man would be naturally unable to obey the divine law if he were destitute of any of the faculties of the human soul or if he were prevented from obeying the divine law by external force. Now, argues Edwards, inasmuch as man is not destitute of either understanding or will and is not compelled to sin by outward circumstances or by another being, it cannot be said that man is naturally unable to obey the divine law. This is true of the fallen man as well as of the unfallen.

Again, Edwards defines “natural inability” with reference to inclination or disposition. If a man is inclined to do a thing and is prevented, he is naturally unable. “We are said,” he remarks (Will in Works 2.15), “to be naturally unable to do a thing when we cannot do it if we will [i.e., are inclined], because what is most commonly called nature does not allow it or because of some impeding defect or obstacle that is extrinsic to the will, either in the faculty of understanding, constitution of body, or external objects.”

There are two criticisms to be made upon this statement. In the first place, if “the impeding defect or obstacle in the faculty of understanding” should amount to the total absence of reason, it would not be possible for a man to have an inclination to obey. An idiot or an insane person is not a moral agent and is incapable of moral inclination. If, however, Edwards means only a deficiency in intelligence that hinders the man in acting out his inclination—as when a man, though inclined to a right course, does not know what is the best means of accomplishing it—then, in this case, the will or inclination would be taken for the deed, and this would not be an instance of inability.

In the second place, if a man is inclined to obey God, but is prevented in a particular instance from performing the outward service by sickness or by imprisonment—by “constitution of body” or by “external objects”—he is regarded by God, who always looks upon the truth or reality of things, as an obedient servant: “If there be a willing mind (prothymia),⁹⁵ it is accepted according to what a man has and not according to what he has not” (2 Cor. 8:12). The inclination is the obedience; and Edwards supposes the inclination. This case, also, is not an instance of inability to obey the divine law. “The very willing is the doing,” says Edwards himself (Will in Works 2.17).

Edwards’s denial of “natural inability” is equivalent inferentially and indirectly to the assertion of “natural ability.” But he nowhere formally and directly asserts “natural ability” and in one instance directly and explicitly denies and combats it:

It will follow on our author’s principles that redemption is needless and Christ is dead in vain. For God [according to him] has given a sufficient power and ability, in all mankind, to do all their duty and wholly to avoid sin. Yea, this author insists upon it that when men have not sufficient power to do their duty, they have no duty to do. These things fairly imply that men have in their own natural ability sufficient means to avoid sin and to be perfectly free from it, and so from all the bad consequences of it. And if the means are sufficient, then there is no need of more; and therefore there is no need of Christ’s dying, in order to it. (Original Sin in Works 2.464)

The explanation is this. Edwards was combating the doctrine of Whitby and Taylor that apostate man has plenary power to keep the divine law. Consequently, he had no motive to advocate the doctrine of ability in any form. His great object in the controversy was to establish the doctrine of inability. When, however, he is pushed by his opponents with the objection, that if there be no power in fallen man to keep the divine law there is no obligation to keep it, instead of recurring, as the elder Calvinists did, to the fall in Adam and the loss of ability by a free act of will,⁹⁶ Edwards meets the objection by asserting that fallen man is under no “natural inability” to keep the divine law and in this way implies that he has a “natural ability” to keep it. But when his definition of the “natural ability” thus indirectly attributed to fallen man is examined, it proves not to be efficient and real power, but only a quasi ability that is incapable of producing the effect required in the objection, namely, perfect obedience. In this way, he evades the objection of his opponent rather than answers it. “It is easy,” he says (Will in Works 2.17), “for a man to do the thing if he will [is inclined], but the very willing [inclining] is the doing. Therefore, in these things to ascribe a nonperformance to the want of power or ability is not just, because the thing wanting is not a being able, but a being willing. There are faculties of mind and capacity of nature and everything sufficient but a disposition; nothing is wanting but a will [inclination].” But this amounts only to the truism that the sinner is able to obey the law of God if he is inclined to obey it and avoids the point in dispute. For the real question is whether the sinner can originate the “thing that is wanting” in order to obedience, namely, “a being willing” or a disposition to obey. Edwards always and everywhere asserts that he cannot; but for the purpose of meeting the objection that if the sinner is unable to obey he is not obligated to obey, he contends that it is improper to call the inability to “be willing” or inclined an inability, because the mere existence of the faculty of will without the power to change its disposition constitutes ability. “To ascribe a nonperformance,” says Edwards, “in these things, to the want of power is not just; because the thing wanting is not a being able, but a being willing. There are faculties of mind and a capacity of nature and everything sufficient but a disposition.” But the absence of a disposition to obey is fatal. The presence of a disposition to obey is necessary in order to obedience. No man can obey the divine law without being willing or inclined to obey it; and Edwards asserts over and over again that the sinner is unable to incline himself to obedience. A man destitute of an inclination to obey the divine law cannot obey it merely because he has the abstract faculty of will. Volitionary acts can be performed, but since they do not proceed from a right inclination, they are not obedience. The sinner’s so-called natural ability, consisting of everything except a “disposition” to obey, consists of everything necessary to efficient power except efficiency itself. The ability to obey is an ability to incline, because it is the inclination of the will that constitutes true obedience. Consequently, if inclining to good is not within the competence of the sinner, he is unable to obey.

In order, therefore, that a man destitute of an inclination to obey the divine law may be said without any equivocation to be “able” to obey, he must be able to originate such an inclination. The question that settles the question respecting “ability” and precludes all evasion is this: Has fallen man the ability to start and begin that right inclination of will which is the essence of obedience and without which it is impossible to obey the law of God? If so, he has without any ambiguity the “ability” to perfectly obey the divine law. But if not, he is unable to obey it, and this impotence is properly called inability. In answering this question, Edwards is explicit in the negative and stands upon the position of Augustine and Calvin in respect to the bondage and helplessness of the apostate will (see Edwards, Will in Works 2.101; Endless Punishment in Works 1.615–16). (See supplement 4.5.12.)

Pascal (Provincial Letters 2) illustrates this equivocation respecting “natural ability” (a distinction employed by the Jesuits) in the following manner:

A man setting out on a journey is encountered by robbers who wound him and leave him half dead. He sends for aid from three neighboring surgeons. The first on examining his wounds pronounces them mortal and tells him that God alone can restore him. The second tells him that he has strength enough to carry him back to his dwelling and that he will recover by the force of his system. The patient, perplexed between the two, calls upon the third surgeon. This latter after examination sides with the second surgeon and ridicules the opinion of the first. The patient naturally supposes that the third surgeon agrees with the second; and in fact receives in reply to his inquiries an assurance that he has strength sufficient to prosecute his journey. The poor man, however, conscious of his weakness, asks on what his conclusions are founded? “Because,” said he, “you still have your legs, and the legs are the natural organs for walking.” “But,” says the sick man, “have I strength to make use of them; for they seem to me useless, in my state of weakness?” “Certainly not,” replied the doctor; “and in reality you never will walk, unless God shall send you supernatural aid to sustain and lead you.” “What!” cries the patient, “have I not then in myself sufficient strength for walking?” “Very far from it,” replied the surgeon. “Your opinion then is entirely opposed to the second surgeon respecting my state?” “I confess it is,” he replied.

When “ability” is attributed to the human will, it is naturally understood to mean the power to use and control the energetic force of the faculty. Inclining to an ultimate end is the energy of the will, and its most important activity. But if the sinful will is unable to incline to God as the supreme end and good, it is improper to say that it has a “natural ability” to do this because “ability” properly denotes efficient power. The man in Pascal’s illustration who “still had his legs” but had lost the power to use them could not properly be said to be able to walk; and the man who “still has a will” but is unable to incline it to good cannot properly be said to be able to obey. If when Edwards replied to his opponent that “it is easy for a man to do the thing if he will,” he had added that “it is easy for a man to will,” this would have been an unequivocal assertion of ability. But Edwards not only denied that it is easy for the sinner to will rightly, but asserted that it is impossible.

Ability must not be confounded with capability or power with capacity. The sinner is capable of loving God supremely, but not able to love him supremely; and probably this is all that is intended by many who assert “natural ability.” Capacity implies possibility only, as when it is said that man has the capacity for all the diseases to which flesh is heir. But something more than capacity is requisite to warrant the assertion that he is able to have them all. The ability to have all the diseases of the human body would require the germ of them all. A man is not able to have smallpox unless he has the contagion or been inoculated with it. But he is capable of having smallpox without either contagion or inoculation. Adam before the fall had the capacity to sin rather than the ability, the possibility not the propensity. It is, therefore, more strictly proper to say that it was possible for holy Adam to sin than to say that he had the ability to sin. Accurately speaking, the ability to sin is inward sin itself; and the ability to be holy is inward holiness itself. Hence Augustine attributed to the unfallen Adam the posibilitas peccandi⁹⁷ and denied the potestas.⁹⁸ In moral things, the ability implies the inclination and tendency. (See supplement 4.5.13.)

Consequently, in ethics and religion, moral ability is the only kind of power that is properly designated by the term ability. In reference to obedience and disobedience, holiness and sin, if there is not moral or voluntary ability, there is no ability at all. And moral or voluntary ability cannot be separated from inclination. No inclination, no ability. If inclination, then ability. A man who is able to love God supremely is inclined to love him. A man who is able to steal is inclined in his heart to theft. In common parlance we say of a bad man: “He can do anything; he can lie, he can steal.” This is the same as saying: “He is a thief, he is a liar.” If we say that he is capable of lying, we do not say so much as when we say he is able to lie.

“Natural ability” is, properly, only physical force. It is the power of matter, not of mind. A man has the natural ability to lift one hundred pounds. This is the power of matter, of his body. But we can think of this kind of power as not exerted and as never exerted. The man may have this species of ability and yet never lift a hundred pounds weight. In the case of natural ability, we can abstract and separate the faculty from its exercise and use. The faculty, in the instance of natural ability, is the body of the man. We say that there is in this body the ability or power to lift one hundred pounds weight. Whether this ability shall be exerted depends not upon the body but upon the man’s will. But the man’s body and the man’s will are distinct and separate substances and faculties. We can therefore conceive of this natural or physical ability as inactive and doing nothing until a volition employs it. We can conceive of natural power or ability without any effect produced by it.

But in the instance of moral or voluntary power or ability, we cannot thus abstract and separate the faculty from its use and exercise and conceive of it as inert and producing no effect. The faculty in this case is not the body, but the will itself. But the will cannot be inactive and inert, as matter may be. It is inclined and active by its very idea and definition. There is no conceivable separation, therefore, in this instance between the faculty and its use and exercise, as there is in the instance of the body and the volition that uses the body. Moral or voluntary power is necessarily in exercise. A man may be naturally able to lift a hundred pounds and yet not do it. But a man may not be morally able to love God and yet not do it. The ability to an act in this latter case is one with the act itself. Ability to incline is inclination itself. Ability to love is love itself. Ability to hate is hatred itself.

In the instance of natural ability or physical power, the ability is in one subject, and the use or exercise of it in another subject. The natural force is in the bodily limbs, and the moral force that exerts and uses it is in the will. But in the instance of moral ability or voluntary power, there is only one subject, namely, the human will. The will is the faculty, and the inclining of the will is the use and exercise of the faculty. We cannot, therefore, conceive of the will as being inert and inactive until another agent makes it active. Neither can we conceive of the will as inactive until some act of its own makes it active. Edwards was unquestionably correct in denying that the will can be started out of indifference and inaction by its own antecedent volition. But we can conceive of this in the instance of natural or physical power. We can conceive of the body as inert and inactive until another agent than itself, namely, the soul, makes it active by an antecedent volition. In the instance of moral ability, the faculty of will and its use and exercise are inseparable. If there be a will, it is necessarily in action; it is necessarily inclined. We cannot say that it is able to incline, not yet having inclined. It can pass from one inclination to another; but it cannot exist an instant with no inclination at all. Consequently, if the will is able to do a thing, it is doing it. But in the instance of natural ability, the faculty and its exercise are separable. If there be a body, it is not necessarily exerting its physical force. In this case, we can say that it is able to do a thing and yet is not doing it.

It is ambiguous and misleading, therefore, to apply the term natural ability to a moral faculty like the will, as it confessedly would be to apply the term moral ability to a physical faculty like the human body. No one would attribute to the human body a moral ability to swim; and no one should attribute to the human will a natural ability to love or obey, because a natural ability may not be in use and exercise. Andrew Fuller (Memoir, 15 [ed. Bohn]) quotes from Gill the distinction between a thing “being in the power of our hand and in the power of our heart.” Natural ability is the power of the hand; moral ability is the power of the heart. Referring to Descartes’s distinction between the act of the will that terminates on the will itself and the act of the will that terminates on the body, natural ability would designate the latter and moral ability the former. Obedience of the divine command “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” is the product of moral, not of natural ability.

Edwards asserts “moral inability” and defines it to be either the absence of right inclination or the presence of wrong inclination:

A man may be said to be morally unable to do a thing when he is under the influence or prevalence of a contrary inclination or has a want of inclination. Moral inability consists either in want of inclination or the strength of a contrary inclination. It may be said, in one word, that moral inability consists in the opposition or want of inclination. A man is truly morally unable to choose⁹⁹ contrary to a present inclination. A child of great love to his parents may be unable to be willing to kill his father. (Will in Works 2.15–16, 101–2)

This is the inability meant in the Westminster statement that “man is utterly indisposed and disabled to all that is spiritually good.” And this species of inability is real inability. It is not a figure of speech, but an impotence as helpless and insuperable by the subject of it, as natural inability. The substantive inability has its full and strict meaning. The adjective moral does not convert the notion of impotence into that of power, but only denotes the species of impotence. It is true that the “cannot” is a “will not,” but it is equally true that the “will not” is a “cannot.” The sinful will is literally unable to incline to good apart from grace.

Notwithstanding his assertion that moral inability is improperly called inability, Edwards strenuously maintains that moral inability is utter and helpless impotence. This is the self-contradiction in his theory: “By reason of the total depravity and corruption of man’s nature, he is utterly unable, without divine grace, savingly to love God, believe in Christ, or do anything truly good” (Works 2.177). He also asserts the same thing in his doctrine of moral necessity: “Moral necessity may be as absolute as natural necessity—that is, the [moral] effect may be as perfectly connected with its moral cause, as a natural necessary effect is with its natural cause. When I use this distinction of moral and natural necessity, I would not be understood to suppose, that if anything comes to pass by the former kind of necessity, the nature of things is not concerned in it, as well as in the latter” (Will 1.4). Edwards means that the connection between the volition and the inclination is as necessary or as much founded in the nature of things as that between a physical effect and its physical cause. Given a wrong inclination, wrong volitions must follow. If the disposition of the will be vicious, the volitions of the will cannot be virtuous, any more than the fruit can be grapes if the root is that of the thistle.

Now in thus asserting that moral necessity is properly called necessity, Edwards is inconsistent in denying that moral inability is properly called inability. For the sinner’s moral necessity of sinning is the very same thing as his moral inability to obedience. If, therefore, Edwards was willing to say that moral necessity is as real and absolute as natural necessity, he should have been willing to say that moral inability is as real and absolute as natural inability. If the term necessity is properly applicable to moral necessity, the term inability is properly applicable to moral inability. Necessity is a stronger term than inability, and it is singular that while Edwards was not afraid to employ the former in connection with voluntary action, he should have shrunk from the latter. The same general argument that proves that moral necessity, taken in its full unambiguous sense, is consistent with the freedom of the will would prove that moral inability, taken in its full unambiguous sense, is likewise consistent with it. The nature of Edwards’s answer to the Arminian objection that if there is not ability in the sinful will there is no obligation resting upon it explains the inconsistency. Instead of denying, with the Calvinistic creeds generally, the Arminian premise that all inability however brought about is inconsistent with obligation, he concedes it and endeavors to show that there is ability. (See supplement 4.5.14.)

Moral necessity is asserted by Augustine and Calvin. It means that necessity in the moral character of the volitions which arises from a habitus of the will, from a bias or disposition of the voluntary faculty. A holy will has a holy habitus and is thereby under a moral necessity of exerting holy volitions: “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.” Hence St. Paul denominates the spiritual man “a servant (slave) of righteousness” (Rom. 6:18). St. John asserts that “whosoever is born of God cannot sin” (1 John 3:9). A sinful will has a sinful habitus and is thereby under a moral necessity of exerting sinful volitions: “You were servants (slaves) of sin” (Rom. 6:17); “whosoever commits sin is the servant (slave) of sin” (John 8:34). A holy will is unable to disobey; and a sinful will is unable to obey.

Fatalism has been charged upon this doctrine of moral necessity, but erroneously. Were the sinful disposition of the will itself necessitated, the charge would be well founded. Were the sinful inclination the necessary effect of some antecedent act or arrangement of God, as the volition is the necessary effect of the antecedent inclination, man would not be responsible for sin. But it is not. The sinful inclination is the abiding self-determination of the human will. Its origin is due to an act of freedom in Adam; and its continuance is due to the unceasing self-determination of every individual of the posterity. Each individual man prolongs and perpetuates in himself the evil inclination of will that was started in Adam. Sinful inclination began freely in the one sin of the whole race and is continued freely in the millions of individual inclinations in the millions of individuals of the race. Had sinful inclination been created and infused by God, then as the sinful volitions are referred to the inclination as their cause, the sinful inclination must have been referred to God as its cause. The doctrine of moral necessity means only that the volitions must necessarily be like the inclination. It does not mean that the inclination itself is originated and necessitated by God.

A habitus or disposition in the will intensifies and confirms free voluntary action, instead of weakening or destroying it. For a habitus is a vehement and total self-determination. But that which promotes determination by the self of course precludes compulsion by that which is not self. Hence the bondage of the will to sinful inclination does not destroy either the voluntariness or the responsibility of the will. The enslaved will is still a self-determining faculty; the bondage of sin is a responsible and guilty bondage, because proceeding from the ego, not from God. Calvin (2.2.5) maintains this in the following manner:

Bernard subscribing to what is said by Augustine, thus expresses himself: “Among all the animals, man alone is free; and yet by the intervention of sin, he also suffers a species of violence; but from the will, not from nature, so that he is not thereby deprived of his innate liberty.” For what is voluntary is also free. And a little after, Bernard says, “The will being, by I know not what corrupt and surprising means, changed for the worse is itself the author of the necessity to which it is subject; so that neither necessity, being voluntary, can excuse the will, nor the will, being fascinated (illecta), can exclude necessity.” For this necessity is in some measure voluntary. Afterward he says that we are oppressed with a yoke, but no other than that of a voluntary servitude; that therefore our servitude renders us miserable and our will renders us inexcusable; because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin. At length he concludes, “Thus the soul, in a certain strange and evil manner, under this kind of voluntary and free yet pernicious necessity, is both enslaved and free; enslaved by necessity, free by its will [inclination]; and, what is more wonderful and more miserable, it is guilty because free; and enslaved wherein it is guilty; and so therein enslaved wherein it is free.” From these passages, the reader clearly perceives that I am teaching no novel doctrine, but what was long ago advanced by Augustine, with the universal consent of pious men and which for nearly a thousand years after was confined to the cloisters of monks. But Lombard, for want of knowing how to distinguish necessity from coercion, gave rise to a pernicious error.

The moral inability of the sinner, then, is the inability to incline rightly from a wrong state of the will, to convert sinful into holy inclination. He is already sinfully inclined. This sinful inclination is moral spontaneity or self-determination to an ultimate end. From the standpoint and starting point of evil, it is impossible to incline or self-determine to God. The sinner may exert volitions and make resolutions in hope of producing another inclination, but they are failures. A holy inclination cannot be originated by this method. This is moral inability. What are the grounds of it?

The finiteness and limitation of the created will is a ground. Holy inclination, we have seen (see pp. 496–97), must be given in creation. Neither man’s nor angel’s will can be first created without character and from this involuntary state originate holy inclination. The beginning, therefore, of holiness must always proceed from God. It can no more be originated by the creature than the spiritual substance itself of the will can be. But if this is true of man as finite and of angel as finite, it is still more so of man as sinful. When he is already preoccupied by a sinful inclination, it would be still more impossible for him to originate a holy inclination.

The mutability of the finite will is the possibility of falling from holiness to sin, not the possibility of rising from sin to holiness. If the will of man or angel becomes evil, it is evil immutably, apart from regenerating grace. When holy, it can change its inclination by its own energy without the coagency of God. But when sinful, it cannot do this. The finite will is mutably holy, but immutably sinful, so far as its own force is concerned.

The derivative nature of finite holiness is a second ground of moral inability. Holiness is a concreated quality of man like intelligence or rationality. But concreated qualities are incapable of self-origination. We perceive immediately that man cannot be the author of his own intellectuality. He cannot be created without the ideas of space and time, of God and self, in brief, without innate ideas, and then originate them by his own power. He cannot come from the creative hand an idiot without reason and then rationalize himself. Rationality and intelligence are derived characteristics, and therefore they are beyond man’s power to produce. In like manner, holiness is a derived characteristic and therefore cannot be man’s product. The creature cannot do the Creator’s work. It would be absurd to say that matter can be created lacking one of the necessary properties of matter, say, impenetrability, and can then originate for itself the lacking property. But it would be a like absurdity to affirm that man or angel can be created lacking one of the necessary characteristics of moral perfection, namely, holiness, and can then originate it.

This reasoning does not hold good in regard to sin. Man can be created without sin and afterward originate it himself for three reasons:

1.      Because sin is not a derivative quality. Sin starts in the finite will, not in the infinite. If it were derived from God, it would not be damnable and therefore not sin.

2.      Because sin is not an element in moral perfection. Everything that comes from the Creator’s hand must be perfect after its kind. A created moral being must have created moral