_4_The Subject of Hereditary Corruption

Subiectum quod of the hereditary depravity are all men, all natural descendants of Adam. We have, sufficiently treated this point above. The one exception is Christ. He is exempt from original sin because He assumed the human nature not by natural generation, but through the operation of the Holy Ghost. Matt. 1:20: “That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” Conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto. Natus ex Maria virgine. Therefore, according to His human nature, Christ is called “that holy thing which shall be born of thee” (Luke 1:35).34

The Virgin Mary does not form an exception. Not Scripture, but the decretal of Pius IX, 1854, took her, in the interest of Mariolatry, out of the category of sinners and ascribed to her an immaculate conception.35

In defining the subject of original sin it is also of great importance to determine exactly where in man the hereditary corruption has its true seat (subiectum quo peccati originalis, subiectum proprium, ). The dogmaticians answer: The soul is the primary, the body the secondary, seat of original corruption, since the body is the organ of the soul. Baier: “Subiectum quo primarium of original sin is the soul with its faculties, namely, the intellect, the will, and the sensuous appetite; secondarily, however, and as a consequent, also the members of the body must be mentioned” (Baier-Walther, II, 295). Elucidating this point, the dogmaticians say: As the body before the Fall partook in the original righteousness as the organ of the righteous soul, serving the soul in performing the works of righteousness and holiness, so now, after the Fall, it participates in the unrighteousness, since it is the organ of the totally depraved soul and as such is placed with all its members into the service of sin. Scripture teaches this truth expressly. It speaks of “eyes full of adultery” (2 Pet. 2:14) and lists, so to say, the members of the body in their evil activity, Rom. 3:13-18: “Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways.” And when the Apostle adds (vv. 17-18): “And the ways of peace have they not known, there is no fear of God before their eyes,” he is tracing the wickedness performed by the member of the body back to its primary seat, the soul, to the highest faculties of the soul, to the intellect and will. When Papists and others, including some modern theologians, make the lower powers (“Sinnlichkeit” appetitus sensitivus) the true seat of sin, they are not in harmony with Scripture. The Formula of Concord expresses the Scriptural truth when it says “that we all by disposition and nature inherit from Adam such a heart, feeling, and thought as are, according to their highest powers and light of reason, naturally inclined and disposed directly contrary to God and His chief commandments, yea, that they are enmity against God, especially as regards divine and spiritual things” (Trigl. 863, 11).