The Fall Unto Depravity

During this short study of the doctrine of total depravity, we have spoken repeatedly of “the Fall.” This debilitating event in redemptive history is often poorly understood. What was the Fall? And what are the ongoing effects of the Fall for twenty-first century human beings?

The Fall, simply put, was the first sin, the very first violation of a divine command. Adam and Eve were placed in the paradisaical Garden of Eden, where they were given only one prohibition by God: They were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But Satan tempted them to do just that, and they succumbed. When they did so, they became totally depraved; their sin affected their whole beings. As the Westminster Confession of Faith says, “they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body” (VI, 2). Before the fall, Adam and Eve, having minds unclouded by sin, may well have been intellectual geniuses. They were emotionally healthy, having no shame. Their wills were capable of choosing the right course—obedience to God. But when they sinned, they fell into the state known as “original sin.” They became alienated from God, their minds were darkened, guilt overcame them, and they lost the ability to choose anything other than rebellion against God.

But the tragedy of the Fall is much greater than its effects on Adam and Eve. Orthodox Christianity has always taught that Adam’s sin affected all his descendants. “They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity,” the Westminster Confession says (VI, 3). Adam stood as a representative of the entire human race. When he sinned, he fell into a state of rebelliousness that is inherited by all who descend from him. Like him, all people are born alienated from God and unable to live for Him as they ought. Simply put, when Adam sinned, the whole human race became sinful. And because all men and women are sinful, they sin. It is not that all people are born innocent, as Adam and Eve were created, and may choose whether to follow them into rebellion. All are born in a state of natural rebellion and confirm by their actions the sinful nature they inherit from Adam. This is true of every man, woman, and child alive today.