CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
Why He Was Unable To Have Personal Injustice Moreover, it is superfluous to dispute about personal injustice in this case because it does not apply to Him, since there -was never any human nature in Him without there also being divine nature in Him, and since bodily cor ruption did not burden His soul against His will nor hinder His soul in any way. His soul, as God, always existed as one person (in fact, man as a whole and the Word of God existed together as one person). Hence, in accordance with His person as God, He always had perfect justice, wisdom, and power from Himself--even though His human nature received all that it had from His divine nature.
I do not deny that there may be a better reason for explaining how God took from the sinful mass a man who had no sin, as if taking something un leavened from something leavened. And if there is a better argument than the one I have given here and in the Cur Deus Homo, then if it is shown to me I will gladly accept it. And I will not persist in my arguments if they can be shown to be false (though I doubt that they can be).
CHAPTER XXII
The Magnitude of Original Sin Now, original sin can be neither something more nor something less than
I have said, because as scon as an infant becomes rational, the human nature in that infant does not have the justice which it received and which it should always possess, nor does any inability ever excuse it for not having justice.
Nevertheless, I do not think that original sin is as grave as I suggested earlier in this treatise. Because I wanted to show that original sin did not pertain to the man who was conceived from the Virgin, I stipulated that it was
so grave that nothing more could be added to it; and, as X said, I did this so as not to seem to minimize its gravity with respect to the topic at hand. But I shall now speak briefly about what I judge to be its real gravity.
I do not think that the sin of Adam is passed down in infants in such a way that they ought to be punished for it, i.e., as if each of them individually committed a personal sin just as Adam did. And I think this even though it has happened, on account of Adam's sin, that no one can be born without sin, which is followed by condemnation. For when the Apostle says that 'death reigned from Adam unto Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the like ness of Adam's transgression' (Rom. 5:1*0.> he seems clearly to signify that neither the transgression of Adam, nor anything else equally great, is imputed to his descendants personally--even though the Apostle declares elsewhere in his writings that all the sons of Adam (with the exception of the Son of the Virgin) are 'sinners' and 'children of wrath.' (Rom. 5Eph. 2:3) For when he says, 'even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of Adam's transgression,' we can understand this to mean 'even over those who did not sin as much as Adam sinned when he transgressed.' And when the Apostle says, 'The law entered in so that the offence might abound,' he means one of two things:
Either (l) before the law entered in, the sin in those 'who did not sin accord ing to the likeness of Adam's transgression' was less than Adam's sin, or (2) after the law entered in, sin abounded in men more than it did in Adam. But when I think about it, I do not see how the latter alternative could be true.
For in the Cur Deus Homo you have already read my views concerning the weigh tiness of Adam's sin and its satisfaction. Nevertheless, unless there is a satisfaction for the sin through which human nature precipitated itself into evil, no one can be restored to that state for which man was created and for
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