Think Wink.

This is part four of an eight-part series on Calvin’s position on OS as found in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. This series focuses on ICR II.i.4 through II.i.11. In the previous posts we saw that Calvin defined Adam’s Fall as his unfaithfulness to God’s Word. Then we saw that the ensuing corruption of Adam’s own character that was in the image of God was decreed to encompass all of corruption. This corruption of Adam in all of his posterity is what Calvin defined OS. This corruption is not an imitation of Adam’s sin, but rather a corruption of the very nature of man. In this post we will take up the issue of how this corruption or sin is transmitted from one generation to following generation in ICR II.i.7.

Calvin opens the statement, “No anxious discussion is needed to understand this question, which troubled the fathers not a little–whether the son’s soul proceeds by derivation from the father’s soul–because the contagion chiefly lies in it.” The reader will see that Calvin uses here in this discussion the term tradux but will not commit to traducianism, where Adam’s soul is regarded as bearing an element transmitted from the divine essence and as the source of all human souls; rather C. Hodge argues that Calvin holds to a view closer to creationism in which all souls are new creations of God (Systematic Theology II.iii, p 64).

But to begin his argument Calvin says this, “With this we ought to be content: that the Lord entrusted to Adam those gifts which he willed to be conferred upon human nature. Hence Adam, when he lost the gifts received, lost them not only for himself but for us all.” We can see that to Adam, the giftedness of humanity’s nature was given. All of the gifts that come as being made in the image of God were given to Adam on behalf of all humanity. When Adam fell into sin and lost the gifts for himself, he lost them for all of mankind so that no one can receive those gifts. The wisdom etc. that Calvin referred to in II.i.5 became the plagues and etc. referred to in that same passage.

Thus Calvin continues, “Who should worry about the derivation of the soul when he hears that Adam had received for us no less than for himself those gifts which he lost, and that they had not been given to one man but had been assigned to the whole human race? There is nothing absurd, then, in supposing that, when Adam was despoiled, human nature was left naked and destitute, or that when he was infected with sin, contagion crept into human nature. Hence, rotten branches came forth from a rotten root, which transmitted their rottenness to the other twigs sprouting from them. For thus were the children corrupted in the parent, so that they brought disease upon their children’s children. That is, the beginning of corruption in Adam was such that it conveyed in a perpetual stream from ancestors into the descendants.” Once Adam became a rotten root, only a rotten trunk could grow from him, and so on and so forth. Adam’s corruption prevented his posterity from reclaiming that goodness he had for they came from that same contagion.

But some people would think that Calvin teaches that this makes it genetic. One must be careful here for Calvin says here, “For the contagion does not take its origin from the substance of the flesh or soul, but because it had been so ordained by God that the first man should at one and the same time have and lose both for himself and his descendant, the gifts that God had bestowed upon him.” It is not found in the flesh or soul–hence Calvin is not fully committing to traducianism here–but in the ordination of God that all of his posterity lose the gifts that Adam lost in his sin (cf. Romans 8:20-22).

Calvin returns to his interaction with Pelagius, “But it is easy to refute the quibble of the Pelagians, who hold it unlikely that children should derive corruption from godly parents, inasmuch as the offspring ought rather to be sanctified by their parents purity [cf. 1 Cor. 7:14]. For they descend not from their parents’ spiritual regeneration but from their carnal generation. Hence, as Augustine says, whether a man is a guilty unbeliever or an innocent believer, he begets hem from a corrupted nature [“Regeneratus non regenerat filios carnis, sed generat.” On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin I.xl. 45]. Now, it is a special blessing of God’s people that they partake in some degree of their parents’ holiness. This does not gainsay the fact that the universal curse of the human race preceded. For guilty is of nature, but sanctification, of supernatural grace.” Calvin thus argues that because of God’s decree, the children do not partake in the supernatural regenerated nature of the parent(s) but rather in their unregenerate nature. Thus a child can be born to two godly Christian parents and still be found corrupted by the contagion of OS.

Calvin and Original Sin: Part 7

Calvin and Original Sin: Part 2

Calvin and Original Sin: Part 6