Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Luther, Calvin and their disciples maintained that through Adam’s fall his entire physical and spiritual being became perverted and corrupted in such a manner that his whole nature, disposition, leanings, desires and thoughts were absolutely and completely evil. They believed this sinful nature so thoroughly and completely pervaded his being that his capacity for receiving good impressions and influences was utterly extinguished. The stains of sin were so thoroughly fixed within him that no sorrow or repentance could eradicate them and this corrupt nature is passed down to his posterity. They taught that no course of action on the part of any individual could exercise the slightest influence in rescuing him from eternal damnation. All free will, all spiritual powers and all capacity for good, either in thought or in deed, were utterly destroyed.
“Man,” wrote Luther, “as he is born of his father and mother, together with his whole nature and essence, is not only a sinner, but sin itself.”[1]
Calvin thought the image of God was utterly erased from the soul of man by the fall and that man has been so banished from the kingdom of God that all in him which bears reference to the blessed life of the Lord is extinct.[2] In his Institutes, Calvin wrote:
“Therefore, after the heavenly image was obliterated in him, he was not the only one to suffer this punishment — that, in place of wisdom, virtue, holiness, truth, and justice, with which adornments he had been clad, there came forth the most filthy plagues, blindness, impotence, impurity, vanity, and injustice — but he also entangled and immersed his offspring in the same miseries.”[3]
Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) and Ulrich Zwingli maintained that God deliberately and intentionally implanted original sin in Adam, and the Almighty is not only the author of original sin but of all the sins resulting from this super induced sinful desire.
In 1525, Melanchthon, in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, wrote:
“That God wrought all things, evil as well as good; that He was the author of David’s adultery, and the treason of Judas, as well as of Paul’s conversion … and that it is not in the power of man to abstain from wickedness.”[4]
In 1530, Zwingli, in his work on Providence, asserted “that God is the author, mover, and impeller to sin; that He also makes the sinner; that by the instrumentality of the creature He produces injustice and the like.”[5]
Calvin repeatedly said “that man, at the instigation of God, does what it is unlawful to do; by a mysterious divine inspiration, the heart of man turns to evil; man falls because the providence of God so ordains.[6]
After Calvin’s death, his successor and the leader of the sect, Theodore de Bèze, taught that God not only incites, impels and urges to evil but the Almighty creates a certain number of souls as His instruments, with the intent of working evil through them.
From this Puritan idea of original sin originated the dogma of “total depravity.”
The Catholic Church’s Teaching
It is a source of relief to return to the doctrine of the Catholic Church on original sin, after a review of the impious beliefs just described. While the Catholic Church does not profess to understand the rationale of God’s designs and works on earth, or to penetrate and explain all the mysteries connected with the creation of man and his intimate relations with the Creator and the creation, She does present us with a scriptural and a reasonable idea of original sin.
The Church maintains that God is a Being of infinite love, and in placing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he endowed them with every capacity for perfect happiness. He gave them knowledge of good and evil, of right and wrong and perfect freedom and power to act as they chose, to obey or disobey the instructions he had given them. So, there might be no misunderstanding, He explained to them his wishes and restrictions regarding the forbidden fruit, and assured them of the penalty that would result from a violation of his command.
Adam therefore perfectly understood his duty, possessed the free will and the power to do it, and was aware of the guilt and the penalty of disobedience. On the one hand, he saw his Creator, who had endowed him with every earthly blessing but subjected him to a slight discipline in prohibiting the forbidden fruit. On the other hand, he saw Satan, listened to his lies, imbibed a spirit of rebellion, and deliberately violated the command of God. In this entire transaction, Adam was a perfectly free agent and acted with a complete knowledge of his obligations and duties, including the dangers of a violation of them.
Like so many of his posterity — the Adams who have lived since his day — he saw the straight and narrow road that leads to eternal life, and the broad road that leads to destruction. But he willfully traveled the latter.
At the fifth session of Council of Trent, the following decree concerning original sin was promulgated:
“If anyone does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he transgressed the commandment of God in paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, and through the offense of that prevarication incurred the wrath and indignation of God, and thus death with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam through that offense of prevarication was changed in body and soul for the worse, let him be anathema.”[7]
All mankind inherited this sinful condition, and can only be justified before God though the merits of Jesus Christ, the sole mediator between God and man. But as man is a free agent and possesses all the requisite knowledge and power, he is able to fulfill such conditions as shall ensure his salvation — both the power of God and his own voluntary acts cooperating in the accomplishment of the work.
[1] John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: A Selection of His Writings, (New York: Random House), 1958, p. 203.
[2] Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, Book II, pp. 249-250.
[3] Ibid, Vol. 1, Chaps. 1, 5. 246.
[4] Marcy, E. E., Christianity and its Conflicts. (New York: D. Appleton and Company). 1867, p. 267.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] H. J. Schroeder, Trans. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. (St. Louis, Missouri. Herder, 1941), p. 21.