_2_The Effect of Hereditary Corruption on the Mind and Will of Man

While natural man, after the Fall, still retains a certain amount of intelligence in natural things (Augustana, Art. XVIII), he is utterly incapable of understanding spiritual matters, the things that have to do with the obtaining of God’s grace and salvation. In his natural condition, man regards the Gospel, his only salvation after the Fall (John 3:16-18; Acts 4:12, etc.), as foolishness, and he cannot do otherwise. 1 Cor. 2:14: “They are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them.” And he turns to the Law, which denounces the wrath of God and damnation against him (Gal. 3:10-12), as offering him a way of salvation. Therefore Scripture gives the intelligence of all natural men this rating: “Having the understanding darkened” (Eph. 4:18); “Ye were sometimes darkness” (Eph. 5:8); “The people that walked in darkness” (Is. 9:2); “The darkness shall cover the earth” (Is. 60:2); “Are ye so foolish?” (Gal. 3:3.) Nor can any human schooling or culture remove this lack of intelligence. Scripture tells us very plainly that the , the Gospel of Christ, crucified for the sins of the world, remains hidden even from the aristocrats of mankind. 1 Cor. 2:7-8: “The wisdom of God … which none of the princes of this world knew.” Col. 2:8: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy.”

The will of natural man gets the same rating. According to Scripture the will is not only opposed to the Law of God, but it cannot change its condition; non potest non peccare. Rom. 8:7: “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be.” Even when natural man desires to do things externally good, e. g., feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc., he is not moved by love of God, but he acts, at best, from natural compassion. Such works are praiseworthy in the natural domain or in the civil domain, and they have, as the iustitia civilis in general, their temporal reward;31 but they remain sinful before God because they do not comply with the demands which God’s Law makes on every man. God’s Law is , a spiritual Law (Rom. 7:14). It is not satisfied with works that are performed from any kind of motive, but demands very definitely that love of God be the motive of every act of man. Matt. 22:37: “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.” And natural man will never come to love God. Because of his transgressions he has an evil conscience and can do nothing but flee from God. He lives without hope and without God (as an ) in the world, as Paul convinces all heathen from their own experience (Eph. 2:12). That being the case, how can he love God and do his works for God’s sake? The more God’s Law presses him with its demands, the more it becomes evident that “the carnal mind is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7). Luther’s oft-repeated remark that “he wished there were no God” is no exaggeration.

In short, man’s inner attitude toward God’s Gospel (1 Cor. 1:23) and toward God’s Law (Rom. 8:7) is one of enmity. This is the effect of original sin on the mind and will of man.

How completely the Fall ruined the mind and will of man may be seen from the behavior of Adam and Eve after they had transgressed God’s commandment. As Luther says in his exposition of Gen. 3:10, “Adam is totally changed and has become quite another man” (St. L. 1:213. Opp. ex., Erl. I, 220). The intelligence of Adam suffered an eclipse, and his will is changed into an evil will. Luther’s entire exposition of this point should be read again and again (St. L. 1:199–223). Taking issue with Rome’s teaching according to which the loss of the divine image, merely a donum superadditum, left the natural powers of man essentially unimpaired, Luther says: “Since this doctrine detracts from the magnitude of original sin, it is to be shunned as a deadly poison.”

Luther proceeds to show how the conduct of Adam and Eve after the Fall reveals their folly and wickedness. Their flight from God proves their foolishness: “We can entertain no doubt that the understanding had become corrupt, seeing the device by which Adam and Eve hoped to accomplish their safety. Was it not the very extreme of folly (extrema stultitia): first, to attempt the impossible in trying to flee from Him whom no one can escape or avoid; and, in the next place, to attempt the flight in such a foolish way (stulto modo), thinking the trees would afford them safety, when they must have known that no iron wall, no great mountain could save them? … As it was folly (stulte) for Adam to attempt to flee from God, so he answers Him in the utmost folly (stultissime respondet). So utterly is he bereft by sin of all wisdom and counsel.” The reason Adam gives for fleeing from God is that he heard the voice of God. But that reasoning was utterly foolish. “Had he not heard the voice of the Lord before, when the Lord forbade him to eat of the fruit of the tree? Why did he not then also fear and hide himself? How was it that then he stood with joy and with uplifted countenance, seeing and hearing God? He is no longer the same Adam; he is totally changed (mutatus) and has become quite another man; he now looks about for a lie and a false cause for his defense.” As a further reason for his flight Adam mentions his nakedness. “The poor wretched man never thinks that he had no such fear before and was not ashamed of his nakedness then. For as God had thus created him, why should he be ashamed of that which God had made? He then walked in his nakedness before God and all creatures in Paradise, for he knew that God loved him and he loved God. But now he is ashamed of his nakedness, flees from God, and hides himself.”

Moreover, when God faces Adam with the true and only reason for his flight and shame because of his nakedness, namely, that he had eaten of the tree in spite of God’s commandment: “Thou shalt not eat of it,” Adam more than ever manifests the corruption of heart and will that had set in. He pleads: “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” The state of Adam’s heart, which caused him to make such a defense, Luther describes thus: “When Adam was convinced of the sinfulness of his sin in what he had done, he attempts to defend his act as right (iure) and says: ‘If Thou hadst not given me this woman, I should not have eaten the fruit.’ Thus he lays all blame for his sin on God, and he charges God therewith.” And as to Eve, Luther says: “Now behold the example of Eve, who, being corrupted by sin, is seen to be in no degree better than Adam (nihilo melior est quam Adam). Adam wanted to appear innocent and laid the blame on God, because He had given him a wife. And so also Eve attempts to excuse herself and puts the blame on the serpent, which also was a creature of God. She confesses indeed that she had eaten of the apple, but, says she, the serpent, which Thou hast created and which Thou permittedst to walk about in Paradise, has deceived me. Is that not blaming the Creator and disavowing one’s own guilt?”

Luther drew this description of the corruption wrought by the Fall in human nature, in man’s intellect and will, not from his own notions, but on the basis of God’s own Word (Gen. 3:7-13). It is therefore entirely correct. And this depravity has been transmitted through natural propagation from the first fallen pair to all their descendants, as Christ affirms in John 3:6: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” and all statements of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments tell the same story. The record of every man is set down Gen. 6:5: “Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” We have in Rom. 3:10-18 a comprehensive description of the corrupt state of human nature, as to both intellect and will, made up of statements of the Old Testament: “There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God… . And the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” And Paul here stresses in particular that this description takes in all of mankind and fits both Jews and Gentiles equally.

The Lutheran Church has embodied this description of the hereditary corruption fully and completely in the Second Article of the Augsburg Confession: “Of Original Sin”: “Also they teach that since the fall of Adam, all men begotten in the natural way are born with sin, that is, without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence; and that this disease, or vice of origin, is truly sin, even now condemning and bringing eternal death upon those not born again through Baptism and the Holy Ghost. They condemn the Pelagians and others who deny that original depravity is sin and who, to obscure the glory of Christ’s merit and benefits, argue that man can be justified before God by his own strength and reason.” (Trigl. 431.)