§388With the progress of Revelation, the reality of sin is also illuminated. Although to some extent the People of God in the Old Testament had tried to understand the pathos of the human condition in the light of the history of the fall narrated in Genesis, they could not grasp this story's ultimate meaning, which is revealed only in the light of the death and Resurrection of Jesu…

§400The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination.282 Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man.283 Becau…

§402All men are implicated in Adam's sin, as St. Paul affirms: "By one man's disobedience many (that is, all men) were made sinners": "sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned."289 The Apostle contrasts the universality of sin and death with the universality of salvation in Christ. "Then as one man's trespa…

1. Sweet is the present life, and full of much pleasure, yet not to all, but to those who are riveted to it. Since, if any one look to heaven and see the beauteous things there, he will soon despise this life, and make no account of it. Just as the beauty of an object is admired while none more beautiful is seen, but when a better appears, the former is despised. If then we wou…

Source. Translated by J. Walker, J. Sheppard and H. Browne, and revised by George B. Stevens. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 11. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210210.htm>. Contact information. The editor of New Adven…

Chapter 11.—Of the Fall of the First Man, in Whom Nature Was Created Good, and Can Be Restored Only by Its Author. But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant that man also would fall, we ought to consider this holy city in connection with what God foresaw and ordained, and not according to our own ideas, which do not embrace God’s ordination. For man, by…

Chapter 27.—Of the Male, Who Was to Lose His Soul If He Was Not Circumcised on the Eighth Day, Because He Had Broken God’s Covenant. When it is said, “The male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people, because he hath broken my covenant,”922922 Gen. xvii. 14. some may be troubled how that ought to be understood, since it ca…

§37When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam repr…

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…

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Calvin shows the blessed fruits of justification: peace with God, access by faith into grace, and rejoicing in hope of glory. God commends his love in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The parallel between Adam and Christ is fundamental: as by one man sin entered the world and death by sin, so by one …

Should the Son of God have assumed in human nature defects of body? Did he assume the obligation of being subject to these defects? Did He contract these defects? Did he assume all these defects? Article 1. Whether the Son of God in human nature ought to have assumed defects of body? Objection 1. It would seem that the Son of God ought not to have assumed human nature with defe…

Was there sin in Christ? Was there the "fomes" of sin in Him? Was there ignorance? Was His soul passible? Was there sensible pain in Him? Was there sorrow? Was there fear? Was there wonder? Was there anger? Was He at once wayfarer and comprehensor? Article 1. Whether there was sin in Christ? Objection 1. It would seem that there was sin in Christ. For it is written (Psalm 21:2)…

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…

If anyone asserts that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone and not his posterity; and that the holiness and justice received of God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only transfused death and pains of the body into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the …

The holy Synod declares first that, for the correct and sound understanding of the doctrine of Justification, it is necessary that each one recognize and confess that, whereas all men had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam, having become unclean, and, as the apostle says, by nature children of wrath, they were so far the servants of sin and under the power of the…

You must be convinced not only of your actual sins but of your original sin. We are conceived and born in sin. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. We are by nature children of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins. Until a man is truly sensible of his original depravity, he can never come to a true knowledge of himself.

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.

Q. But doesn't God do us an injustice by requiring in his law what we are unable to do? A. No, God created human beings with the ability to keep the law. They, however, tempted by the devil, in reckless disobedience, robbed themselves and all their descendants of these gifts.

Q. Why must the mediator be truly human and truly righteous? A. God's justice demands that human nature, which has sinned, must pay for its sin; but a sinner could never pay for others.

The Synod rejects the errors of those who teach that all people have been received into the state of reconciliation and into the grace of the covenant, so that no one on account of original sin is liable to condemnation, or is to be condemned, but that all are free from the guilt of this sin. For this opinion conflicts with Scripture, which teaches that we are by nature childre…

Human beings brought forth children of the same nature as themselves after the fall. That is to say, being corrupt they brought forth corrupt children. The corruption spread, by God's just judgment, from Adam to all his descendants — except for Christ alone — not by way of imitation (as the Pelagians of old asserted) but by way of the propagation of a perverted nature.

The Synod rejects the errors of those who teach that, properly speaking, it cannot be said that original sin in itself is enough to condemn the whole human race or to warrant temporal and eternal punishments. For they contradict the apostle when he says: "Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death passed on to all because all sinned" (Ro…

We believe that by the disobedience of Adam original sin has been spread through the whole human race. It is a corruption of the whole human nature—an inherited depravity which even infects small infants in their mother's womb, and the root which produces in humanity every sort of sin. It is therefore so vile and enormous in God's sight that it is enough to condemn the human ra…

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…

Since our Lord Jesus Christ was without sin (for He committed no sin, He Who took away the sin of the world, nor was there any deceit found in His mouth ) He was not subject to death, since death came into the world through sin. Romans 5:12 He dies, therefore, because He took on Himself death on our behalf, and He makes Himself an offering to the Father for our sakes. For we ha…

We believe in one God, true, almighty, and infinite, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; the Father unbegotten; the Son begotten of the Father before the ages, and consubstantial with Him; and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father, and consubstantial with the Father and the Son. These three Persons in one essence we call the All-Holy Trinity, by all creation to be ev…

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…

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…

Original sin is such a deep corruption of nature that no reason can understand it; it must be believed on the authority of Scripture. All that is born of flesh is flesh and is by nature a child of wrath. Neither works, law, nor human merit can remedy this condition — only the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Melanchthon affirms that original sin is a genuine depravity of human nature, not merely the absence of original righteousness but also a deep inclination toward evil — concupiscence that is truly sin, not merely a neutral condition. Humanity since the Fall lacks the fear of God, lacks trust in God, and is inclined to evil continually. This corruption is inherited from Adam and…

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.