The Inherited Guilt of Original Sin

The purpose of this post is to offer a comparative analysis between the Roman Catholic Church and John Wesley as it pertains to the meaning of inherited guilt. Our goal is to understand the precise meaning of the phrase: The inherited guilt of Adam.

It is clear that neither the Roman Catholic Church nor Wesley maintained that we are held culpable for the sin of another person. In the third part of his The Doctrine of Original Sin, according to Scripture, Reason, and Experience, Wesley states that “...God assures us children 'shall not die for the iniquity of their fathers.' No, not eternally. I believe none ever did, or ever will, die eternally, merely for the sin of our first father.”[1] In his Predestination Calmly Considered Wesley asks if one would be condemned for original sin, meaning “the sin which Adam committed in paradise”, to which he responds, “...that any will be damned for this alone, I allow not...”[2] In his sermon God's Love to Fallen Man, Wesley responds to the idea that men are sent to Hell because of the sin of Adam: “Seeing, on this supposition, all those millions of unhappy spirits would be plunged into hell by Adam’s sin, without any possible advantage from it. But, blessed be God, this is not the case.”[3] Likewise, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “...original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants.”[4] Pope Pius IX made this very clear in his Quanto conficiamur moerore: "God...by no means allows anyone to be punished with eternal punishments who does not have the guilt of voluntary fault.”

Nevertheless both the Roman Catholic Church and Wesley maintain that we inherit guilt from Adam's sin.  In his The Doctrine of Original Sin Wesley states that “...God does not look upon infants as innocent, but as involved in the guilt of Adam's sin otherwise death, the punishment denounced against that sin, could not be inflicted upon them.”[5][6] Likewise, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “All men are implicated[7] in Adam's sin...” “...he [Adam] has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the 'death of the soul'.”[8] Similarly the The Decree on Original Sin from the Council of Trent states: “If anyone asserts that the transgression of Adam... having been defiled by the sin of disobedience has transfused only death 'and the punishments of the body into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul,' let him be anathema...” “If anyone denies that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt[9] of original sin is remitted...let him be anathema.”[10]

In his The Doctrine of Original Sin Wesley attempts to explain this guilt in a bit more detail quoting from the extract The Ruin and Recovery of Human Nature by Rev. Mr. Samuel Hebden:

God imputes Adam’s first sin to all mankind. I do not mean that the actual commission of it was imputed to any beside himself; (it was impossible it should;) nor is the guilt of it imputed to any of his descendants, in the full latitude of it, or in regard to its attendant circumstances. It constitutes none of them equally guilty with him. Yet both that sin itself, and a degree of guilt on account of it, are imputed to all his posterity; the sin itself is imputed to them, as included in their head. And on this account, they are reputed guilty, are ‘children of wrath,’ liable to the threatened punishment.[11]

It is clear that a distinction is being made between culpa, as it relates to personal culpability, and reatus[12] which refers to a liability to suffer for sin, such as was the case in the quotation from Trent above where reatum is translated as guilt. This latter meaning can best be understood when a person squanders an inheritance and as a result neither he nor his descendants are privileged to enjoy it. Likewise, as members of the human race through propagation, we are implicated in this sin because Adam was our head, a representative of humanity. In other words, on our behalf, he squandered the privilege of original holiness and as a result we do not enjoy this privilege.

In his The Doctrine of Original Sin Wesley explains: “So we do in fact suffer for Adam's sin, and that too by the sentence inflicted on our first parents. We suffer death in consequence of their transgression. Therefore we are, in some sense, guilty of their sin. I would ask, What is guilt, but an obligation to suffer punishment for sin? Now since we suffer the same penal evil which God threatened to, and inflicted on, Adam for his sin... Therefore we are all in some way guilty of Adam's sin.”[13]

This was not merely a personal belief held by John Wesley, this language of 'original guilt' was retained from the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion in the Twenty-Five Articles of Methodism. In the second article of both confessions it states that Christ's sacrifice was “not only for original guilt, but also for the actual sins of men”.[14]

St. Thomas extricates the problem with the law of solidarity:

An individual can be considered either as an individual or as part of a whole, a member of a society . . . Considered in the second way an act can be his although he has not done it himself, nor has it been done by his free will but by the rest of the society or by its head, the nation being considered as doing what the prince does. For a society is considered as a single man of whom the individuals are the different members (St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 12). Thus the multitude of men who receive their human nature from Adam is to be considered as a single community or rather as a single body . . . . If the man, whose privation of original justice is due to Adam, is considered as a private person, this privation is not his 'fault', for a fault is essentially voluntary. If, however, we consider him as a member of the family of Adam, as if all men were only one man, then his privation partakes of the nature of sin on account of its voluntary origin, which is the actual sin of Adam" (De Malo, iv, 1).[15]

There are four ways in which Wesley diverges from the Thomistic position which is normally held within the Catholic Church in relation to original sin: 1) the nature of our fallen condition, 2) baptism as it relates to the cleansing of inherited guilt, 3) the origin of the soul, and 4) the nature of concupiscence. Each of these will be addressed in subsequent blog posts.

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[1]    Jackson, Wesley's Works, 9:315

[2]    Jackson, Wesley's Works, 10:223

[3]    Jackson, Wesley's Works, 6:240

[4]    Catechism of the Catholic Church, 405

[5]    In fact, if the language of guilt was not used at all, it would not be unjust for God to withhold a privilege which he originally gave to humanity purely from his gratuitous nature. We only need to consider the doctrinal expressions of the Eastern Catholic Churches, which omits the language of guilt altogether.

[6]    Jackson, Wesley's Works, 9:316

[7]    Although the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not use the term 'guilt' the idea is still retained.

[8]    Catechism of the Catholic Church, 402-3

[9]    The original Latin of the Council reads “reatum originalis peccati remitti.” which is often translated into English as “the guilt of original sin is remitted,”.

[10]    Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma. Trent: Decree of Original Sin, 246

[11]  Jackson, Wesley's Works, 9:409

[12]    Ott explicitly uses reatus in this regard: “The doctrine of St. Thomas... explains that the state of guilt (reatus) is removed by Baptism, while the concupiscence persists for a moral test (ad agonem) but not as a sin.” Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 111.

[13]    Jackson, Wesley's Works 9:242-43, The Doctrine of Original Sin, part 2, sec. 1.5

[14]    Leith, Creeds of the Churches, 354.

[15]    Source found in the Catholic Encyclopedia on Original Sin