Total Depravity: Sin vs Original Sin
In my last post concerning original sin, I compared the effects of Adam’s sin to being like Adam breaking his leg and giving himself a black eye, doing so against the commands of God. Because of that, we are all now born with broken legs and black eyes. It’s not our fault; it’s really nothing that God did; it’s just the way we are because of what Adam and Eve did.
The baseline confusion / addition to the theology of original sin that was developed by the Protestants during the Reformation was changing original sin from a state of no fault into a proper, personal sin. Before the Reformation, it was taught that we just showed up in this world with black eyes and broken legs because of Adam’s sin and the consequent disgrace of mankind. The Protestants during the Reformation, however, said that isn’t quite right. The Protestants said that we are properly responsible for our blackeyes and broken legs. Essentially, it’s like saying that as soon as our little fetal bodies develop arms in the womb, then we start beating away at our eyes and our legs so that by the time we have arrived in the world we have done the damage to ourselves – we each have personally gone against God, we each have sinned.
This is an important development because it says that sin dominates our nature whereas before sin was an inevitability of our nature.
Consider the Westminster Larger Catechism:
Question 25: Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell?
Answer: The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of that righteousness wherein he was created, and the corruption of his nature, whereby he is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite unto all that is spiritually good, and wholly inclined to all evil, and that continually; which is commonly called original sin, and from which do proceed all actual transgressions.
Compare that to the current Catechism of the Catholic Church:
405 Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin – an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence”. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.
The real difference between these two visions of original sin is the role of concupiscience – the inclination towards evil. Prior to the Reformation, concupiscience was not held to be sinful in itself though certainly a product of sin – mankind’s corporate sin, Original Sin, to be precise. Nor was concupiscience’s dominion over the indivual considered total. Rather it was considered inevitable and ever present and the arena of all spiritual warfare. The Reformers then added that concupiscience is not only of sin but is properly a contracted sin in all men. In other words, Protestants believe that each man is guilty of sin because of his inclination towards sin – that wayward desires, regardless of how fleeting they may be and how they are responded to, are proper moral faults in each man. And in all things, in all times, man is always inclined to sin – and thus are sinning.
The simplest illustration I can think of to describe these two competing visions of human nature is through the idea of reconciliation. I’ve read elsewhere that:
The word “Reconciliation” is split up into: “Re / con / cilia / tion” which means literally: “again / together / hair / act of”. The reference to hair is a reference to eye lashes. Reconciliation is the act of bringing your eye lashes back together with the eye lashes of God, that is, to see eye-to-eye with God.
I pulled it from this website, though I’ve heard it elsewhere before.
In the Catholic understanding, mankind has turned its back on God and in doing so lost the eye-to-eye relationship that it needs for proper living though God’s position as far as His commitment and desire for mankind and each individual man has not changed. In the Protestant understanding, God in effect also turns His back on mankind because in each and every man He sees not a lost soul but the sin of Adam.
The sum effect is to produce two different economies of salvation. Both economies agree that God’s grace is in short demand. But one economy says that God’s grace is in abundant supply and the other says that God’s grace is in an as-needed supply. And that’s a topic for a later post.
Well written post. Since your Vatican II post, you haven’t had many comments (probably directly related to your lack of time for .NET). I’m curious to see what (if any) responses there are.
Thanks Jason … I should probably make this a second post, but until I have the time to do it, I want to post it here.
There was one more quote I wanted to make but lost for my post. I have found it again.
Just so that there is no mistaking that the forefather of Reformed theology thought of concupiscence as sin, I’d like to offer the following quote from the third book, third chapter, paragraph 10 of his Institutions:
http://www.reformed.org/books/institutes/books/book3/bk3ch03.html#ten.htm
Seems to me that Calvin misses Augustine’s distinction between corporate sin and individual sin … though I’m not particularly well studied in Calvin, I suspect he misses much of the corporate aspects of Christianity. Certainly, he misses the beauty of the Eucharist which Augustine so movingly describes as THE very real unifying act of Christians.
I think more and more Evangelicalism needs to talk about the Eucharist. If it’s not Jesus, Christendom on the whole needs to have a real theology that completely and wholly explains _why_ and _what it really is and is not_ and how it was that Christians were wrong for 1500 years.
Why should we feel that Adam sinned? Why not say he had transgressed the law. He had two choices. To not eat the apple and stay in the Garden where they were both innocent and could never have children forever without Eve and never have children and we would never be. Or since Eve had already eaten the apple, for Adam to eat the apple and both of them to leave the garden and know good and evil and have children and we are here. Adam didn’t sin he made the better choice. He transgressed a law but obeyed a greater law. Adam is our hero. He made the better choice.