The Want of Original Righteousness

Original sin, that sinful condition in which all people except Jesus begin their lives, consists first of all in the “guilt of Adam’s first sin” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 18). The sin and guilt of Adam in Eden are imputed to—put on the record of—all his descendants who are conceived through ordinary generation (Rom. 5:12–21). The imputation of Adam’s sin and guilt is not the only aspect of original sin, however. This sinful state includes also “the want of original righteousness” (WSC 18). As Romans 3:10 tells us, “None is righteous, no, not one” (except Christ).

Since the fall and apart from grace, human beings lack the original righteousness that characterized the image of God granted in creation. We lost that uprightness when Adam transgressed the commandment. On this topic, both Reformed Protestants and Roman Catholics agree that in the fall we lost this original righteousness. Yet these groups disagree on the nature of this righteousness and the meaning of its loss, leading to radically different views of human nature after the fall and the way of salvation.

Roman Catholicism conceives of mankind’s original righteousness as a donum superadditum, a “superadded gift” that was appended to human nature. This gift was given to Adam to elevate him to a supernatural order of life so that he could enjoy friendship with God. This original righteousness assisted human reason in keeping our lower passions in check, these passions having a tendency to incline us to excess and sin. Because in Roman Catholicism this original righteousness is an addition, its loss does not affect human nature, at least not to the degree that Scripture says human nature has been affected and changed in the fall. Rome says that we are born wounded, tending toward sin, but that our nature is not depraved. Salvation is the reacquisition of this original righteousness, which is infused into us and maintained in the Roman Catholic sacramental system.

Reformed Protestants, with Scripture, affirm that God gave us original righteousness, but in such a way as to make it natural to us, part of a fully intact human nature. The loss of this original righteousness in the fall, then, means that human nature has been radically altered. Adam’s natural descendants do not have an intact but a wounded human nature; they have a nature thoroughly twisted away from God and incapable of true righteousness apart from grace. Until regeneration, then, we are dead in sin (Eph. 2:1–3).