Greg Allison, PhD: "Historical Theology:" Ch. 16--Sin in the Middle Ages...

In the middle ages, Anselm and Aquinas are largely featured. Anselm, living in feudal times, interpreted sin as the serf not giving the lord his honor and due, or, theologically, the sinner not honoring God as God. Anselm’s solution was the satisfaction of God’s honor through the death of the God-man as Jesus. Aquinas treated sin at great length, retaining much of Augustine’s view—corporate solidarity with Adam, transmission of sin to all Adam’s posterity, original sin, the habit of sin, and mortal/venial sins.  For the Reformation period, Dr. Allison focuses on Luther and Calvin with a few brief brushes on Socinianism (the Racovian Catechism), Arminianism and Wesleyanism. He draws attention to Calvin’s view of total depravity and total inability, although Luther held these too, e.g. Bondage of the Will.  The Council of Trent affirmed some of these matters, but firmly affirmed the role of human will in salvation, denying total depravity and total inability. The dead man in the casket has one arm working for himself outside the casket, as it were. Hence, Calvin and Luther were anathematized, as did the Greek subsequently. Throw in Cranmer too. “Anathema! Anathema sit!” cried the 255 Tridentine subscribers!

Anselm. “Tto sin is nothing other than not to give God what is owed to him. What is the debt which we owe to God? … This is righteousness or uprightness of the will …  This is the sole honor, the complete honor, which we owe to God and which God demands from us …. Someone who does not render to God this honor due to him is taking away from God what is his, and dishonoring God and this is what it is to sin.” Why God Became Man. 1.11, in Anselm, 283. 

Aquinas. “Through origin from the first man, sin entered into the world. According to the Catholic faith, we are bound to hold that the first sin of the first man is transmitted to his descendants, by way of origin .…. All men born of Adam may be considered as one man, since they have on common nature, which they received from they receive from their first parents … Accordingly, the multitude of men born of Adam are as so many members of one body.” Summa Theologica, 1st part. of pt. 2, q.81, art. 1. 

Aquinas. “…the sin which is transmitted by the first parent to his descendants is called original …. [Original] sin is not the sin of the person, except in so far as this person receives his nature from his first parent.” Ibid. 1st part of pt. 2, q.82, art.1 and 5. 

Chapter 16—Sin in the Reformation and Post-Reformation

Luther on the will as a horse. “If God rides it, it wills and goes where God will …. If Satan rides, it will and goes where Satan wills. Nor may it choose to which rider it will run, or which it will seek; but the riders themselves fight to decide who shall have it.”  Bondage of the Will, 273-78. 

Luther on original sin and corruption. “… the source and beginning of all the other wins … From all this it is now clear and plain that original sin is nothing but the utter maliciousness and the inclination to evil that all human beings feel in themselves.” WLS, 1297. 

Luther on Matthew 7.17: “ … we are not sinners because we commit sin—now this one, now that one—but we commit these acts because we are sinners before we do so; that is, bad tree and bad seed produce bad fruit, and from an evil root nothing but an evil tree can grow.” Lectures on Genesis, 38-44, LW, 7.281.

Calvin, like Luther and Augustine, talks about puffery, pride, and infidelity to God’s Word: “After the heavenly image [the image of God] was obliterated in him [Adam], he was not the only one to suffer this punishment. In place of wisdom, virtue, holiness, truth and justice—with which gifts he had been clothed—there came forth the most filthy plagues, blindness, impotence, impurity, vanity, and injustice. But he [Adam] also entangled and immersed his offspring in the same miseries. This is the inherited corruption, which the church fathers termed ‘original sin,’ meaning by the word ‘sin’ the depravation of a nature previously good and pure.” Institutes, 2.1.5, LCC, 1:246. 

Calvin on transmitted depravity. “The Lord entrusted to Adam those gifts that 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 ….  Adam had received for us no less than for himself those gifts which he lost, and 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. The beginning of corruption in Adam was such that is was conveyed in a perpetual stream from the ancestors into their descendants.” Institutes, 2.1.7, LCC, 1:249-50.

Calvin on vitiated and total depravity. “First, we are so vitiated and perverted in every part of our nature that by this great corruption we stand justly condemned and convicted before God, to whom nothing is acceptable but righteousness, innocence and purity. And this is not liability for another’s transgression …. Since we through his sin have become entangled in the cure, he is said to have made us guilty.” Institutes, 2.1.8, LCC, 1:251.

Calvin on original fountainhead of actual sins: “This perversity never ceases in us, but continually bears new fruits—the works of the flesh …. For our nature is not only destitute and empty of good, but so fertile and fruitful of every evil that it cannot be idle.” Institutes, 2.1.7, LCC, 1:251.

Calvin on total depravity (again): “All parts of the soul were possessed by sin after Adam deserted the fountain of righteousness. For not only did a lower appetite seduce him, but unspeakable impiety occupied the very citadel of his mind, and pride penetrated to the depths of his heart …. The whole man is overwhelmed—as by a deluge—from head to foot, so that no part is immune from sin and all that proceeds from him is to be imputed to sin.” Institutes, 2.1.7, LCC, 1:251-52.

Calvin on total inability, including the will. “Because of the bondage of sin by which the will is held bound, it cannot move toward good, much less apply itself to it; for a movement of this sort is the beginning of conversion to God, which in Scripture is ascribed entirely to God’s grace … Nonetheless, the will remains, with the most eager inclination disposed and hastening to sin.” Institutes, 2.3.5, LCC, 1:294.

Calvin on the function of the will, freely choosing according to its nature and master. “For man, when he gave himself over to this necessity, was not deprived of will, but of soundness of will … Man, as he was corrupted by the fall, sinned willingly, not unwillingly or by compulsion; by the most eager inclination of his heart, not by forced compulsion; by the most eager inclination of his heart, not by forced compulsion; by the prompting of his own lust, not by compulsion from the outsaid. Yet so depraved is his nature that he can be moved or impelled only to evil. If this is true, then it is clearly expressed that man is surely subject to the necessity of sinning.” Institutes, LCC, 1: 294-296.

Arminius affirmed humanity’s solidarity with Adam in sin, guilt, depravity, and inability, but posited prevenient grace that eliminated all these problems for all until an age of accountability. To wit, that original sin condemned no one: “…because God has taken the whole human race into the grace of reconciliation and has entered into a covenant of grace with Adam and with the whole of his posterity in him. In this he promises the remission of all sins to as many as stand firmly and do not deal treacherously in that covenant. Since infants have not broken this covenant, they do not seem to be liable to that condemnation.” Apology against Thirty-one Defamatory Articles, arts. 13-14, 13.1, in James Arminius, Works, 1:318.