A. The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.

The Westminster divines found themselves in an argument against two extremes. The whole Reformed tradition did; as Turretin notes:

“There are two extremes to be equally avoided about the nature of original sin: (1) in excess, of those who think original sin is placed in the corruption of the very substance of the soul; (2) in defect, of those who wish it to consist in, the mere want and privation of righteousness.”1 

In other words, Roman Catholics wanted to argue that original sin consisted merely in the loss of that original righteousness which was superadded after the creation of Adam. They did not pursue the connection between that righteousness which was required of man to be who he was, which therefore affected all of the other dimensions of man once lost. Some in the Reformation pushed back to the other extreme, like one Flacius Illyricus, who argued that original sin eradicated the essential nature, so that all distinction between the essential image of God and the corrupted nature, we eradicated with it.   

Original Sin Involves the Imputation of Adam’s Guilt

When Turretin affirms the imputation of Adam’s guilt, his formulation raises the question of the debate between Creationism and Traducianism: “Whether the actual disobedience of Adam is imputed by an immediate and antecedent imputation to all his posterity springing from him by natural generation. We affirm.”2 Hodge reiterates the good sense that this doctrine makes, in language similar to what we have already seen in Turretin, 

“No fact in history is plainer than that children bear the iniquities of their fathers. They suffer for their sins. There must be a reason for this; and a reason founded in the very constitution of our nature. But there was something peculiar in the case of Adam. Over and beyond this natural relation which exists between a man and his posterity, there was a special divine constitution by which he was appointed the head and representative of his whole race.”3

So, to reiterate, this relationship is both natural and federal.

Let us deal with objections. First, an exegetical one, from the use of Ezekiel 18:20. 

Turretin’s three replies are sufficient, so I will paraphrase him. The sins talked about in Ezekiel 18 are distinct from the case of Adam’s sin and ours in three ways: “(1) of adult sons who depart from the inquity of parents and do not imitate them … (2) Of personal and particular sins, not of common and general … (3) … of a business particular to the Jews on whom God bestowed this by a special concession.”4

And besides, the principle of representative guilt has other scriptural support. Attached to one of the important expressions of the divine character, he says that he is, “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Ex. 34:7). This is not too long after the revealing of the Second Commandment, to which it is added, “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me” (Ex. 20:5). This does not go away: “but you repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them” (Jer. 32:18), or in the specific case of David, “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife” (2 Sam. 12:10).

Secondly, a historical one, namely, that not even all of the Reformed even held to this. This is greatly exaggerated. Hodge distinguishes between immediate and mediate imputation,5 so that while the majority of the Reformed and even majority of Latin Christendom held to the immediate imputation of Adam’s guilt, many would allow that there was a connection between Adam’s first sin and that for which every sinner is charged. But the connection is mediate: “All that is really imputed to them is their own inherent, hereditary depravity.”6

Calvin affirms that Adam’s sin affected the whole of his race against ancient Pelagianism. He upholds the language of original sin; and that “Adam was not merely a progenitor, but, as it were, a root,”7 anticipating the language of WCF VI.3. Although the languge of this first chapter of Institutes, Book II, seems as though it remained in later editions only as something slipped through the cracks of his developing doctrine. The language is not sharply covenantal, representative, and forensic. And he goes as far to say that,

“This is not liability for another’s fault. For when it is said, that the sin of Adam has made us obnoxious to the justice of God, he meaning is not, that we, who are in ourselves innocent and blameless, are bearing his guilt, but that since by his transgression we are all placed under the curse, he is said to have brought us under obligation … Hence, even infants bringing their condemnation with them from their mother’s womb, suffer not for another’s, but for their own defect.”8

There hardly seems another way to read Calvin at first glance, but that he did not hold to imputed guilt. Having said that, Turretin argued that Calvin did in fact hold to it, giving reason for his emphasis and showing other sources. The reason that the magisterial Reformer was not more explicit was his particular adversaries (Phigius and Catharinus), and then Turretin points to the Confession of Faith for Geneva authored by Calvin, and a number of his Commentaries, as the places to see his fuller expression.9

Third, a logical objection must be considered. Let us quote directly the leading theologian of the Remonstrants, after the death of Arminius, one Simon Episcopius, who said, “the sin of Adam is imputed by God to his posterity not as if he really thinks them guilty of the same sin and fault with Adam, but inasmuch as he willed them to be born liable to the same evil to which Adam by sin had made himself liable.”10 Now this is a way to repackage Pelagius’ original utter denial of both imputed guilt and inherited corruption. Episcopius repackaged it by having his reader fixate on what amounts to a false dilemma. And the false dilemma is this: “Either God would be confused as to the sense in which Adam’s posterity is guilty, or else that posterity can only be guilty given that sin that they would be exposed to.”

Fourth, there is a practical or even sentimental objection: “It is not fair!” Hodge gives a helpful reply to those who, for this cause, attempt to replace God’s justice as the cause with a general law: “The difficulty on that assumption instead of being lessened, is only increased. On either theory the nature and the degree of suffering are the same. The innocence of the sufferers is the same. The only difference relates to the question, Why they suffer for offences of which they are not personally guilty?”11

Variations of views of imputation have been held. There were what was called the Propogationist, Identitist, Realist theories. What Hodge calls the Realist view actually conflates Adam’s actual-original sin with our actual-original sin. In other words, “their act was truly and properly our act, being the act of our reason and will, as it was their act. It was imputed to us therefore not as his, but as our own. We literally sinned in Adam.”12

This was developed in response to the Propogationist view that chalked up guilt in each sinner to that nature inherited, or propagated. Edwards sought to answer that second view with a view Hodge took to be novel, namely one of Identity, but would have probably been called a Voluntarist view in older debates about Realism. In other words, when God ordains to include all of Adam’s progeny in his sin, is it that “human intellect” and “human mind” is an essence in which all mankind participates (Realism) or is each individual case so linked merely by the arbitrary will of God (Voluntarism); or in other words, are they created each identities of Adam in this sense (Identitism)? 

Now Shedd objected to this whole line of criticism by Hodge, saying, “this rising of evil desire [Edwards] says was the first sin, which was inseparable from its consequence, namely, corruption of nature. Had Edwards asserted that only the corruption as the effect, but not the rising of evil desire itself as the cause of the effect, is imputed, he would have been liable to the charge of holding mediate imputation.”13

Shedd followed Edwards in emphasizing the twofold nature of original sin as being internal and external—internal, first, as that first inclination to sin; external, second, as the exercise of “pure” [autonomous] self-determination. Shedd also cites Anselm and Peter Lombard as having already taught the same two aspects to one original sin.14

Original Sin is the Loss of Original Righteousness

The loss of original righteousness is, in one sense, the negative way of stating the imputation of original guilt. But the original righteousness of man was not only a status but a moral attribute of his person. So we can see that the reason that the Remonstrants and Socinians denied the loss of original righteousness was that this was a component of a sound will, which was necessary in order to maintain that free will was still sufficient to seek after God. But the Psalmist twice says, “there is no soundness in my flesh” (Ps. 38:3, cf. 7), or in the first chapter of Isaiah, “From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it” (1:6). 

Turretin distinguishes between the “image of God,” when considered essentially, versus the sense in which the image was lost. He does so in this way:

“By the divine image, we do not understand generally whatever gifts upright man received from God (spoken of in Gen. 1:26, 27) or specially certain remains of it existing in the mind and heart of man after the fall (in which we understand Gen. 9:6 and Jas. 3:9). Rather we understand it strictly of the principal part of that image which consisted of holiness and wisdom (usually termed original righteousness).”15

You will recall that from Question 14, the phrase “want of conformity” meant not being or doing what God requires. To fail to be that which God designed us to be is sin. Since “sin is lawlessness” (1 Jn. 3:4), and the law bids us to be, therefore it follows that the want of original righteousness is the character of man is in fact sin. 

Original Sin is the Corruption of Man’s Nature

Let us remember the distinction between essence and accidens. This is a difficult distinction that requires the utmost in concentration and logical precision. It has been summarized in the most concise expression that the image of God has been effaced but not erased.

So, for example, the mind is darkened yet still a mind. It makes rational inferences and knows its world; but what it knows and infers is steeped in prejudice against God and ambushed by a million errors—“wicked thoughts [that] lodge within you” (Jer. 4:14). The will is twisted and in atrophy, yet still a will. It makes choices, and that according to what the Self takes to be most real and satisfying. But is searching out its satisfaction in “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13).

So we must distinguish between the essence of mind and will, versus the corruption of mind and will. The reality of rust implies the presence of the metal. So the orthodox have always distinguished between sin and substance. To conflate the two is to fall into the error of the Manicheans—where good and evil are two equal and opposite substance.

Turretin offers four reasons why the sinful nature must be distinguished from the essence of man: 

“(1) Every substance was created by God and in this sense good (Gen. 1:31; 1 Tim. 4:4). (2) Scripture makes a distinction between nature and the sin adhering to it when it calls the latter ‘that which easily besets us (euperistaton), ‘present with us’ (parakeimenon), dwelling in us and a garment to be put off. (3) Thus it would follow that Christ in assuming our nature assumed also sin and corruption itself; and that man after his sanctification and resurrection is different from what he was before. (4) Sin cannot be predicated of man in the question What is it? (because it would either be a genus or a species); but only in the question What is its quality?”16

Shedd traces back to Plato and Aristotle, the distinction between the substance of a man and what is called habitus (or, previously, hexus), which is “a habitual disposition of the faculty of the mind.” Sin itself is “neither a thing nor a being. Yet it is not ‘nothing’ in every sense of the term nothing … Inasmuch as sin is a habitus inhering in the will and infecting the understanding, it is not a strict nonentity. To commit a sin is not to do nothing.”17

Another distinction here is between the moral and legal effects of that original sin. If we do not clearly distinguish between man’s legal standing with God and his moral constitution, then we are likely to be surprised when redemption comes, with its distinction between Christ’s legal work and the Spirit’s moral work. So the Confession says,

“This corruption of nature, during this life, doth 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” (VI.5).

In other words, a believer is fully forgiven and wholly righteous before God in Christ, and yet the sinful nature clings as that which is corrupt in itself. Paul says, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Rom. 7:18).

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1. Turretin, Institutes, I.9.11.1.

2. Turretin, Institutes, I.9.9.

3. Hodge, Systematic Theology, II:197.

4. Turretin, Institutes, I.9.9.27.

5. The latter was held by professors of the Saumur school, Amyraut, Cappel, and La Place [it was believed by Hodge that Edwards did as well] (Systematic Theology, II:205, 207).

6. Hodge, Systematic Theology, II:193.

7. Calvin, Institutes, II.1.6.

8. Calvin, Institutes, II.1.8.

9. Turretin, Institutes, I.9.9.41.

10. Episcopius, Operum Theologicorum, I:151. (Turretin, Inst. I.9.9.3)

11. Hodge, Systematic Theology, II:200.

12. Hodge, Systematic Theology, II:193.

13. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 551 (footnote no. 1).

14. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 552

15. Turretin, Institutes, I.9.8.3.

16. Turretin, Institutes, I.9.11.3.

17. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 545.