#948 Further on Original Righteousness

Dr. craig’s response

Thank you, Alan, for your very measured comments on my proposal! As you note, I think that the systematic theologian is free to propose models which are not explicitly taught by Scripture so long as they are consistent with Scripture. That goes as well for models of the doctrine of original guilt featuring the federal headship of Adam. I have actually defended the coherence of that doctrine, though I do not believe it myself because I do not find any reason to adopt this extra-biblical doctrine.

The first part of your question concerns the status of Adam and Eve prior to the fall, what is traditionally called the state of integrity or original righteousness. Certainly prior to the fall Adam and Eve were good, but that hardly makes them paragons of virtue. There is no basis in the text for attributing great moral virtue de novo to Adam and Eve rather than a childlike innocence, with the capacity of moral improvement through the exercise of their God-given moral faculties in making moral choices (cf. Hebrews 5.8-9).  Sadly, it was precisely their failure to rightly choose morally that resulted in their downfall.

Even if there is no hereditary sin as a result of the fall, we need not think that post-fall our only challenge is that “we inherit a world where temptation abounds and Satan is active.” According to the traditional Roman Catholic view of original sin, Adam and Eve in their state of innocence enjoyed a gift of God’s grace (donum superadditum) over and above what they had simply by human nature that enabled them to live sinless lives. In defying God, they forfeited this gift of God’s grace and so found themselves incapable of mastery of their natural desires. In their post-fall condition their nature was thus deprived but not depraved, as the Protestant Reformers would have it.

This now deprived nature inevitably issues in sin on the part of those who grow to normal moral awareness. Man’s deprived condition is not sinful as such but is nonetheless the tinder of sin (fomes peccati). The universality and pervasiveness of human sin can be plausibly explained, not on the basis of a corrupted nature, but on the dual basis that (i) we are each born with an out-of-control animal nature that of biological necessity is oriented toward survival and therefore inclines us to self-interest and that (ii) the human community in which we are born and raised is profoundly evil. The ordinary human nature that we inherit from our parents thus does not involve any hereditary sin; but we have lost the added gift of grace that Adam and Eve once had. Without the grace of God that Adam and Eve enjoyed in their state of innocence, we cannot resist sin.

Such a doctrine of original sin strikes me as very plausible, not only scientifically but theologically. It seems altogether appropriate to say that Adam and Eve would have needed God’s superadded grace to live wholly sinless lives. This seems especially so if we think of that supernatural gift as the indwelling Holy Spirit. If the sinless Christ required the Holy Spirit to carry out his calling, how much more our human parents! Even the great Reformed theologian Francis Turretin, who thought that in the state of integrity Adam and Eve had original righteousness and holiness, cannot avoid saying that God provided Adam with “help without which (auxilium sine qua non)” he could not avoid sin.[1] Although God withheld from Adam the help given the saints in glory which makes it impossible for them to sin, “the former help was never absent from Adam, not even in the very moment in which he sinned.”[2]

It's important to keep in mind that the proposed account is offered as an account of the transmission of sin, not as an account of the origin of sin. The claim is not that Adam sinned because of the weakness of his bodily nature. My proposal does not attribute the origin of sin to human nature as God created it, in contradiction to the doctrine of creation, which implies that man’s nature is good. But once deprived of God’s gracious assistance, man can no longer fully control his instinctual drives, issuing in attitudes and actions of self-centeredness and sin. Man’s created nature is good, as are the natures of every other animal, but he needs God’s grace to govern sinlessly that nature.

So I affirm, as you do, that Adam and Eve were created with “a nature inclined toward good,” and with “a capacity to choose obedience or disobedience.” Their fall was not due to “any innate weakness” in their nature, but simply to their free decision to disobey a divine command. Whether you think that Satan was “the catalyst for their fall” will depend on whether you identify the serpent in the story with Satan, an identification not made in the story itself.

Finally, concerning the salvation of persons who die in infancy, I agree with you that such persons “are not in need of atonement” in the narrow sense of expiation or moral cleansing because they have not done anything contrary to God’s will and therefore are not sinful. Jesus’ attitude toward little children does “align with this view.” Nevertheless, if we take “atonement” in the broad, etymological sense of at-one-ment with God, even infants may still need the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to them in order to be fit for heaven. So in that sense they could still be the beneficiaries of Christ’s substitutionary atonement.