Think Wink.

This is the final post in the series on OS in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. In the previous section, Calvin attributes our destruction to ourselves and that it cannot be attributed to God. He did not make mankind sinful, mankind fell into sin by their own choice. Now we turn to our final section, ICR II.i.11.

Calvin continues from the previous section, “Therefore we declare that man is corrupted through natural vitiation, but a vitiation that did not flow from nature. We deny that it has flowed from nature in order to indicate that it is an adventitious quality which come upon man rather that a substantial property which has been implanted from the beginning. Yet we call it ‘natural’ in order that no man may think that anyone obtains it through bad conduct, sin it holds all men fast by hereditary right. Our usage of the term is not without authority. The apostle states: ‘We are all by nature children of wrath.’ [Eph. 2:3] How could God, who is pleased by the least of his works, have been hostile to the noblest of all his creatures? But he is hostile toward the corruption of his work rather than the work itself.” God did not create man with the corruption but rather it overtook man’s nature became natural to it, became part of the nature by corrupting it. So it is not natural as in God made it this way, but it is natural in that no one obtains it by their sinful actions. Thus God is not angry at his creation, but rather its corruption. God does not hate man, but rather the corruption in man.

Calvin continues and concludes, “Therefore it is right to declare that man, because of his vitiated nature, is naturally abominable to God, it is also proper to say that man is naturally depraved and faulty. Hence Augustine, in view of man’s corrupted nature, is not afraid to call ‘natural’ those sins which necessarily reign in our flesh wherever God’s grace is absent. Thus vanishes the foolish trifling of the Manichees, who, when they imagined wickedness of substance in man, dared fashion another creator for him in order that they might not seem to assign the cause and beginning of evil to the righteous God.” Thus because man’s nature is vitiated/corrupted/contaminated by sin, man is naturally abominable to God. It is also, because of man’s depraved and faulty nature, said that man is naturally depraved and faulty. Thus there need not be another creator who created sin, as the Manicheans supposed, but that man corrupted himself.

This concludes my brief exploration of OS. There is much more that I could say here in light of this vast topic. However, I do not want to take too much more time away from school to study this. May be after Christmas, but before school starts up again, I might come to this. I don’t know. I have learned a lot about how to articulate the Reformed position on OS from Calvin’s view point. OS is not Adam’s sin or guilt imputed to us by genetics. But rather it is Adam’s corruption passed onto his posterity by the decree of God. In Adam, we have lost the gifts that God bestowed upon us, we have corrupted the image that we are made in. But in Christ, we regain all of those gifts. The image is restored. By Adam’s disobedience, the curse passed upon us all, by Christ’s obedience, the curse is removed. Through Adam, our natures were corrupted and depraved and thus we are naturally corrupt and depraved. But This was not God’s work that caused us to fall. Rather it was our own work of unbelief and pride that led to our corruption. This corruption is not just loosing our original righteousness, it also being so corrupt that all we do is sin.

I hope that this has helped those who oppose OS understand the Reformed position better. I also hope that those who hold the Reformed position have a better understanding of the Reformed doctrine of Original Sin as Calvin articulated it in his 1559 edition of ICR.

Calvin and Original Sin: Part 7

Calvin and Original Sin: Part 2

Calvin and Original Sin: Part 6