§397Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of.278 All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.

§399Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness.280 They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.281

§2541The economy of law and grace turns men's hearts away from avarice and envy. It initiates them into desire for the Sovereign Good; it instructs them in the desires of the Holy Spirit who satisfies man's heart. The God of the promises always warned man against seduction by what from the beginning has seemed "good for food . . . a delight to the eyes . . . to be desired to make on…

Chapter 17.—Of the Nakedness of Our First Parents, Which They Saw After Their Base and Shameful Sin. Justly is shame very specially connected with this lust; justly, too, these members themselves, being moved and restrained not at our will, but by a certain independent autocracy, so to speak, are called “shameful.” Their condition was different before sin. For as it is written,…

Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. They being the root of mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin …

It is taught among us that since the fall of Adam, all human beings who are born in the natural way are conceived and born in sin. This means that from birth they are full of evil lust and inclination and cannot by nature possess true fear of God and true faith in God. This innate disease and original sin is truly sin and condemns to the eternal wrath of God all who are not in …

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit.

Now the serpent was more subtle. Moses does not speak of the serpent as it was in itself, but as the instrument of Satan. The fall of man was not a light or trivial transgression but a dreadful abomination. By one man sin entered into the world: Adam, being the head and root of the human race, corrupted and ruined all his posterity. Yet in the very curse God gives the first gle…

If anyone does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offense of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and together with deat…

Q. Then where does this corrupt human nature come from? A. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise. This fall has so poisoned our nature that we are born sinners — corrupt from conception on.

Human beings were originally created in the image of God and were furnished in mind with a true and salutary knowledge of their Creator and of all things spiritual, in will and heart with righteousness, and in all emotions with purity; indeed, the whole human being was holy. But rebelling against God at the devil's instigation and by their own free will, they deprived themselve…

We believe that God created human beings from the dust of the earth and made and formed them in his image and likeness—good, just, and holy; able by their will to conform in all things to the will of God. But when they were in honor they did not understand it and did not recognize their excellence. But they subjected themselves willingly to sin and consequently to death and the…

Man was from the beginning created by God after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, good and upright. But when at the instigation of the serpent and by his own fault he abandoned goodness and righteousness, man became subject to sin, death and various calamities. And what he became by the fall, that is, subject to sin, death and various calamities, such are al…

We believe all things, both visible and invisible, to be governed by the Providence of God; though God is not the author of evil. But evil cometh to pass by reason of the malice of men or of demons, that is, when rational creatures, having received free-will from God, voluntarily turn aside from good. For it is the doctrine of the Church that God, who is the creator of all thin…

We believe the first man created by God to have fallen in Paradise, when he disregarded the commandment of God and yielded to the deceitful counsel of the serpent. And hence hereditary sin flowed to his posterity; so that none is born after the flesh who beareth not this burden, and who experienceth not the fruits thereof in this present world. But by "burden" and "fruits of si…

Josephus retells the Genesis narrative: creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the genealogy from Adam to Noah, the flood, the tower of Babel, and the lives of Abraham and Isaac. He follows the biblical account closely but adds rationalizing explanations and draws on extra-biblical traditions.

Man was created good and upright; for God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." However, man by voluntary transgression fell and thereby incurred not only physical death but also spiritual death, which is separation from God.

The Formula affirms that original sin is not merely an absence of righteousness but a deep, corrupt condition of human nature inherited from Adam, rendering man spiritually dead and inclined toward all evil. It denies that original sin is a trifling defect or that human nature retains its powers intact after the Fall. Against both Pelagian minimizing and Flacianism (which equat…

We believe that man was created in holiness, under the law of his Maker; but by voluntary transgression fell from that holy and happy state; in consequence of which all mankind are now sinners, not by constraint but choice; being by nature utterly void of that holiness required by the law of God, positively inclined to evil, and therefore under just condemnation to eternal ruin…

The first man enjoyed a life of virtue and communion with God, but through pleasure and desire — represented by the serpent — he fell from his original state. The fall is not merely historical but an allegory of how every soul descends from contemplation of the divine into enslavement to the passions. Philo reads the expulsion from Eden as the loss of the philosophic life.

The serpent is pleasure (hedone), the most dangerous enemy of the rational soul. The serpent attacks through the senses — represented by Eve — to corrupt the mind — represented by Adam. Philo argues that pleasure does not approach the mind directly but works through sense-perception, which is why the serpent speaks first to the woman. The fall is the universal human story of re…