Angelic Sin - Augustin Original Sin PDF

c Peter King, forthcoming.
ANGELIC SIN
IN
AUGUSTINE AND ANSELM
Augustine and Anselm form a common tradition in medival thought
about angelic sin, a tradition rooted in patristic thought and centred on their
attempts to give a philosophically coherent account of moral choice. Augustine concentrates on the reasons and causes of angelic sin, especially in
reference to free will; Anselm adopts Augustines analysis and extends it to
issues about the rationality of sinful choice. Each takes Lucifers primal sin
to be the paradigm case. Lucifer, undistracted by bodily desires and unencumbered by history, committed the first moral misdeed in an entirely good
universe newly created by an entirely good God. The challenge is to give a
philosophical account that permits us to understand how the best and brightest of all angels nevertheless made a sinful choice in such uniformly positive
circumstances.
1. AUGUSTINE
Augustine holds that all angels have the same nature, one which, like all
natures and indeed like everything created by God, is good in itself.1 Evil
enters the world only through free choice, a point Augustine argues for at
length in his De libero arbitrio and which is reiterated throughout his works.2
Lucifer is the first and foremost among all sinners: primus omnium peccatorum
(ep. ..), the first of the angels to fall (in Ioh. eu. .). The sin of his followers, the so-called bad angels, are marginally less severe because they were
persuaded by Lucifer into their apostasy, even though their choice to follow
All translations are mine. Thanks to Anna Greco for advice and comments. Earlier
versions of the section on Anselm were given at Cornell and at UCLA. Standard
abbreviations for the works of Augustine are given in the Augustinus-Lexikon (see
the Bibliography).
See for instance uer. rel. ., Gn. litt. .., in Ioh. eu. ., ciu. . and
., c. Iul. .. and ...
See any of Augustines early anti-Manichan writings, e. g. c. Fel. ., or later

writings such as ciu. ., corrept. ., c. Iul. imp. ..
1
1. AUG U STINE
Lucifer was completely voluntary.3 Original Sin is an imitation or better:

a recapitulation of diabolic sin (pecc. mer. .. and ..), in which Lucifer exercises his persuasion through the serpent (in Ioh. eu. .); human sin
can thus be understood through the analysis of angelic sin. But not all angels
chose to sin. Some did not follow Lucifer, but chose to remain instead in the
will-to-justice (lib. arb. ...), and these good angels were rewarded, by
Gods grace, with the steadfast will to love God ever after (ciu. .). Some
angels, then, did not sin, and their choice must be understood in tandem with
the choice of those who did. But since the latter were followers of Lucifer, the
philosophical problem reduces to the challenge of understanding Lucifers
primal sin.
Augustine takes on the challenge at length in Gn. litt. ....
and ciu. ., which can be supplemented by other discussions and remarks
scattered throughout his works. He concentrates on three issues: () the precise nature of Lucifers primal sin; () the extent to which reasons and causes
can be given for it; () the knowledge that Lucifer might have had regarding
it. Well take up each in turn.
. PRIDE , ENVY , AND DISOBEDIENCE
The patristic tradition that Augustine inherited did not have a unified
view about the nature of Lucifers primal sin.4 The majority view, including
Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Ambrose, held that Lucifers sin was pride
(superbia) a view that took as its Biblical warrant the verses addressed to
Lucifer: Thou has said in thine heart: I shall ascend into Heaven; I shall
exalt my throne above the stars of God. . . I shall be like unto the Most High
(Is. :).5 The minority view, including Irenaeus, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, and Cyprian, held that Lucifers sin was envy (inuidia), and more specifically envy of humanity for being created in the image of God.6
Common to both views is the identification of Lucifers sin with an occurrent psychological state: taking pride in himself, or being envious of human3
See lib. arb. .... The seats they left vacant in Heaven will eventually be
filled by saved human beings: ench. ..
See Green [], and especially Adkin [], for references to the patristic
tradition.
See Origen, Homily on Ezechiel .; Chrysostom, Homily on Isaiah 6:1 .; Jerome,
ep. . and .., in Is. ..; Ambrose, s. . and .. Other biblical passages
adduced in support were Ez. : (see Jeromes commentary) and Tim. :.
Irenaeus, adv. haer. ..; Tertullian, adv. Marc. .; Cyprian, zel. . An earlier
tradition, attested in the Book of Enoch, held that the sin of the fallen angels was
lust: seeing the daughters of men, that they were fair (Gen. :); Lucifer has no
special role here. See Hilary, in Ps. .; Ambrose, uirg. .. and ap. Dav. ..

1. AUG U STINE
ity. These states involve both affective and cognitive factors: pride and envy
are not simple feelings, the way anger or lust can be, since (as Augustine will
argue) pride and envy involve comparative evaluations. Nor should they be
confused with their corresponding character traits, pridefulness (or simply:
[being] proud) and enviousness, which are dispositions rather than occurrent states which they may make manifest.7 Furthermore, pride and envy
can be motives for action, and thereby must be distinct from the actions they
motivate. In the case of Lucifer, his pride or envy led him to openly rebel
against God, so that his sin was also often said to be disobedience a claim
that preserves a structural parallel with Original Sin. In short, acts of pride
and envy are distinct from their associated character traits on the one hand
and the actions to which they give rise on the other, and they are constituted,
at least in part, by complex emotions that depend on cognitive valuations.
These distinctions lay the groundwork for Augustines attempt to reconcile the divergent views he found in the patristic tradition. His position is
clear: Lucifers primal sin is pride, which is logically prior to, but an immediate cause of, envy. He offers a compact argument for his position in
Gn. litt. ..:8
Some people say that the reason [Lucifer] fell from the heavenly realms
was that he envied man being made in the image of God. But envy follows upon pride; it does not precede it. Envy is not the cause of occurrent
pride, but pride the cause of occurrent envy. And so, since pride is the
love of ones own superiority whereas enviousness is the hatred of someone elses well-being, it is sufficiently obvious which is born of which:
anyone who loves his own superiority will envy either (a) his peers, for
they are equal to him; (b) those below him, lest they be equal to him;9 (c )
7
They need not stem from underlying character traits at all, any more than an
individual courageous act has to reflect a courageous disposition. This especially
holds for Lucifer, who can hardly be held accountable for his character traits at
the instant of his creation.
Nonnulli enim dicunt ipsum ei fuisse casum a supernis sedibus, quod inuiderit
homini facto ad imaginem Dei. Porro autem inuidia sequitur superbiam, non praecedit; non enim causa superbiendi est inuidia, sed causa inuidendi superbia. Cum
igitur superbia sit amor excellentiae propriae, inuidentia uero sit odium felicitatis
alienae, quid unde nascatur satis in promptu est. Amando enim quisque excellentiam suam uel paribus inuidet quod ei coaequentur, uel inferioribus ne sibi coaequentur, uel superioribus quod eis non coaequetur. Superbiendo igitur inuidus,
non inuidendo quisque superbus est. See also c. Faust. . and en. Ps. ..
Here envy isnt quite flexible enough to catch the sense of the Latin inuidia, which
means having an invidious attitude; someone proud will begrudge the possibility
that those below him might become his equals someday.

1. AUG U STINE
those above him, for he is not equal to them. Hence a person is envious
through the occurrence of pride, not proud through the occurrence of
envy.
As Augustine memorably puts it, pride is the mother of envy.10 The comparative evaluation at the heart of pride is a matter of rating oneself more highly
than others, or, more exactly, taking delight in oneself in preference to others. What else is pride but the perverse urge for superiority? asks Augustine
(ciu. .).11 Envy is the by-product of such self-love, since the well-being of
others makes it difficult to sustain the view that one is superior to them; and
this is the source of the negative valuation of others, a form of hatred.12 The
particular case of Lucifer matches this analysis (Gn. litt. ..):13
And so it happened that the spirit of this rational creature [Lucifer], taking
delight in his own power on account of its superiority, swelled up with
pride, through which he fell from the happiness of the spiritual paradise,
and became consumed with enviousness.
Lucifers invidious preference of himself to all others including God is implicit in Augustines description of Lucifers delight in his power as superior.
Yet there is a difficulty. Augustine has identified Lucifers primal sin as
an occurrent psychological state, namely his taking pleasure in a comparative
evaluation of his own superiority vis-a-vis
`
others. But what is morally objectionable in that? Lucifer hasnt done anything wrong indeed, Lucifer hasnt
done anything at all. Nor has he made any choices, and a fortiori no reprehensible choices. His psychological state might lead to choice and to action,
but it has not yet done so, and while it is true that he is in that state voluntarily
it is hard to see why thinking of himself as better than others deserves to be
punished with eternal damnation, or for that matter to merit punishment at
all.
Augustines response to this difficulty is to insist that there is an important
sense in which Lucifers sin (a) must involve an act of will, and (b) is morally
reprehensible in itself.14
10
11
12
13
14
See uirg. ., s. ., and s. ..

Quid est autem superbia nisi peruersae celsitudinis appetitus?
Again, our notion of envy doesnt quite capture the negative valuation at the
heart of inuidia.
Atque ita factum esse ut rationalis creaturae spiritus, sua potestate propter excellentiam delectatus, tumesceret superbia, per quam caderet a beatitudine spiritalis
paradisi, et inuidentia contabesceret.
It is a fundamental part of judeo-christian moral teaching that some occurrent
psychological states are morally blameworthy as such: think of, say, the absolute
condemnation of coveting ones neighbors goods. The strategy behind Augusc Peter King, forthcoming.

1. AUG U STINE
With regard to (a): Augustine notes that pride essentially involves an

evaluation specifically, a comparative evaluation of ones own superiority
relative to others. We might be tempted to analyze such an evaluation as being, in essence, a cognitive judgment, something that is primarily a matter of
the intellect. However, Augustine thinks that an evaluation is at once a cognitive and and affective stance towards something as a good more exactly,
someone sets up a given object as a good for himself or herself by turning
to it, the thought of it being accompanied by a uoluntas for it.15 He sketches
this process as early as lib. arb. ...:16
There are many different goods from which a person selects what he
wants: through seeing and grasping something for his enjoyment, he sets
up the highest good for himself rightly and truly.
To grasp something for enjoyment just is to have a uoluntas towards it. Note
that this need not rise to the level of a conscious choice. It is enough for
having a uoluntas towards something that one turns to it, so to speak, and
enjoys it, though one is able to not do so. The key point to keep in mind
is that this turning is an act of will and, as such, capable of bearing moral
weight, as much as though it were an explicit choice.17
With regard to (b): When Augustine applies the general analysis of having
a uoluntas to the particular case of pride, at one stroke he shows why Lucifers
sin is morally objectionable in itself (lib. arb. ...):18
15
16
17
18
tines response, as outlined here, is to establish that all such psychological states
involve objectionable acts of will.
Or perhaps the thought constitutes the uoluntas; Augustine is not clear. Note that
in ciu. . he notoriously identifies the four basic Stoic passions, which the Stoics
understood as forms of judgment, with distinct types of uoluntates.
Multa sunt bona eaque diuersa, e quibus eligat quisque quod uolet idque uidendo
et tenendo ad fruendum summum sibi bonum recte uereque constituat. The same
point is made earlier, when Augustine is describing how objects are neutral in
themselves (lib. arb. ...): Cum igitur eisdem rebus alius male alius bene
utatur, et is quidem qui male, amore his inhereat atque implicetur scilicet subditus eis rebus quas ei subditas esse oportebat, et ea bona sibi constituens quibus
ordinandis beneque tractandis ipse esse utique deberet bonum. See also ciu. .
for the same point.
Given that one might have turned the will otherwise, it could be argued that the
wills orientation is implicitly a choice, even though it need not be preceded by
deliberation nor be the result of a decision. This is a stronger claim than Augustine
needs, however, and it is compatible with the claims he does make, so we need
not pursue the issue.
Superbia enim auertit a sapientia. . . unde autem haec auersio nisi dum ille cui
bonum est deus, sibi ipse uult esse bonum suum, sicuti sibi est deus? Augustine

1. AUG U STINE
Pride turns away from wisdom. . . How does this turning away come
about, if not that he whose good is God wills to be his own good for
himself, as if his own god?
Pride is having a uoluntas directed towards oneself. In the case at hand, Lucifer turns his will towards himself and thereby away from God. So it is
that prideful self-love is morally objectionable: self-love to the point of contempt for God (ciu. .), as Augustine puts it. Whereas the good angels
turned their wills to God, and so remained with a uoluntas towards justice
(lib. arb. ...; cfr. ...), the bad angels instead took delight in their
own power, as though they were the good for themselves, falling away from
the greater blessed good which is common to all (ciu. .);19 they are made
miserable by this turning away from Him Who is the Highest and turning
to themselves who are not the highest; what other name does this vice have
but pride? (ciu. .).20 Hence the morally objectionable character of pride
stems from apostasy, which is why pride is the first and the worst of all sins
a view Augustine finds support for in Sir. : (RSV:): The
beginning of pride is when one departs from (apostastare) God, and his heart
is drawn away from Him Who made him; for pride is the beginning of all
sin.21
Augustine sums up his position in a concise yet elegant formulation that
links disobedience with pride (uer. rel. .):22
That angel [Lucifer], delighting in himself rather than in God, was unwilling to be subject to Him and swollen with pride: he abandoned the
Highest Essence, and he fell.
All the descriptions are equivalent. Lucifers delight in himself rather than in
God which precisely is his occurrent state of pride is also his act of turning
19
20
21
22
is talking about Original Sin, but his point applies equally well to Lucifers primal
sin.
Alii sua potestate potius delectati, uelut bonum suum sibi ipsi essent, a superiore
communi omnium beatifico bono ad propria defluxerunt. . .
. . . Quod ab illo qui summe est auersi ad se ipsos conuersi sunt qui non summe
sunt; et hoc uitium quid aliud quam superbia nuncupetur?
See also s. B . Augustine argues in Gn. litt. .. that Pauls claim that
avarice is the root of all evil ( Tim. :) is compatible, since avarice should be
understood here broadly, as the effect of ruinous self-love in wanting to make
something ones own (cfr. s. .). See also his discussion of this passage in
lib. arb. ..., wherein Augustine concludes that a wanton will (uoluntas) is the cause of all evils.
Ille autem angelus magis seipsum quam Deum diligendo, subditus ei esse noluit
et intumuit per superbiam, et a summa essentia defecit, et lapsus est.

1. AUG U STINE
away from God (to himself); and, plausibly, it is also his being unwilling to
serve God, since this is what it is for Lucifer to delight in himself rather than
in God. So it is that Augustine can say that Lucifer became the devil through
disobedience and pride (in Ioh. eu. ..). Not keeping God as ones good
is the fountainhead of all the vices (en. Ps. ..).
. REASONS
AND CAUSES
Why did Lucifer turn his will from God? What could explain his pride
in his finite and created being when faced with the infinite and uncreated
majesty of God? What prospect could Lucifer have to set against the eternity
of damnation?
We have already seen that Augustine cannot appeal to character traits
to explain Lucifers primal sin. No appeal to pre-existent motives satisfies
the theological requirement that Lucifer be created good in all respects by a
good God. (Nor does any appeal to features for which Lucifer is not himself
responsible.) Putting motives aside, then, Augustines position can be best
stated by appealing to the distinction between reasons and causes: there are
no causes that determine the will, but there may be reasons to which one
might appeal in understanding the will, though they do not determine its
action either. Some work is required to spell out why Augustine adopts this
position.
In lib. arb. ..., Augustine asks: How did Lucifer come to think
that irreligiousness should be pursued, the thought23 by which he fell from
the heights of Heaven? Lucifer, being a pure spirit, was not affected in
his thoughts by having a body, or even by anything physical. Augustine
describes Lucifers situation really the situation of any angel as follows
(lib. arb. ...):24
In contemplating the highest wisdom which is surely not the mind,
for the highest wisdom is unchangeable the mind (animus) looks upon
23
24
Augustine initially calls this a judgment (consilium), his straightforward rendering

of the Stoic . But he holds no allegiance to Stoic doctrine, for he immediately rephrases his question in a neutral manner: How did whatever it is that
entered his mind come to enter his mind? (lib. arb. ...).
Ut autem in contemplatione summae sapientiae quae utique animus non est,
nam est incommutabilis etiam se ipsum qui est commutabilis animus intueatur
et sibi ipse quodam modo ueniat in mentem, non fit nisi differentia qua non est
quod deus et tamen aliquid est quod possit placere post deum. Melior est autem
cum obliuiscitur sui prae caritate incommutabilis dei uel se ipsum penitus in illius
comparatione contemnit. Si autem tamquam obuius sibi placet sibi ad peruerse
imitandum deum ut potestate sua frui uelit, tanto fit minor quanto se cupit esse
maiorem.

1. AUG U STINE
itself, which is changeable, and in some way enters into its own mind
(mens). This happens only in virtue of the difference by which the mind
is not what God is, and yet it is something that can please, next to God.
However, it is better if it forgets itself before the love of the unchangeable God, or sets itself completely at naught in comparison with Him. If
instead [the mind] gets in its own way, so to speak, and it pleases it to
imitate God perversely so that it wills to enjoy its own power, it becomes
lesser to precisely the extent that it desires itself to be greater.
An angel, then, has two immediate objects before its minds eye: God and its
own mind, which it knows to be different because the former is unchangeable
and the latter changeable. Given this contrast, there are only two choices,
namely to direct the will to God or to direct it to enjoy its own power, in
which case the mind gets in its own way by obstructing the clear view of
God, who is its proper object.
Augustines suggestion that the mind gets in its own way fits well with his
view that perverse self-love, preferring oneself to God, is the essence of pride,
an identification he immediately goes on to make (lib. arb. ...). But
more important for our purposes is to note what Augustine does not say here.
In his description of the angelic situation, Augustine leaves it entirely open
whether the will directs itself to God or to its own power. He is clear that it
should do the former, of course. But it is perfectly able to do the latter. Hence
the mind is not determined by its nature to orient itself towards God, even
whilst having the Beatific Vision. Some angels do not do so, and thereby fall,
with Lucifer in the lead.
There is no irresistible final cause, then, of the wills orientation. (If God
cannot compel love then nothing less can do so.) In view of the wills freedom,
Augustine argues, it has no efficient cause either no efficient cause that
determines it one way rather than another, that is. His interlocutor, Evodius,
has been pressing the question why one angel sinned and another did not,
despite having the same nature (lib. arb. ......). Augustine
offers a tart reply (...):25
The will is the cause of sin, but you are searching for the cause of the will
itself. If I were able to find this cause, are you not also going to ask about
25
Quoniam uoluntas est causa peccati, tu autem causam ipsius uoluntatis inquiris,
si hanc inuenire potuero, nonne causam etiam eius causae quae inuenta fuerit
quaesiturus es? Et quis quaerendi modus, quis finis percontandi ac disserendi,
cum te ultra radicem quaerere nihil oporteat?. . . Sed quae tandem esse poterit
ante uoluntatem causa uoluntatis? Aut enim et ipsa uoluntas est et a radice ista
uoluntatis non receditur, aut non est uoluntas et peccatum nullum habet. See
Harrison [] for a careful discussion of these passages.

1. AUG U STINE
the cause of this cause that has been found? What will limit our investigation? What will be the end of our discussion and examination?. . .
But what, in the end, could be the cause of the will before the will? Either
it is the will itself, in which case there is no getting around this root of the
will, or it is not the will, in which case it has no sin.
Free will is completely self-determining, or, as Augustine puts the point in
lib. arb. ... and ..., what is so much in the power of the will as
the will itself? On pain of infinite regress, there cannot be any prior cause
or ground that determines the will in its free choices. The freedom involved
in free choice must therefore be radical freedom, such that nothing whatever
can determine its choice. In particular, the will is not bound to do whatever
the agent thinks it best to do. For Augustine, the freedom of moral agents
is bound up with their ability to be weak-willed or even perverse, doing the
wrong thing for no reason at all. Such is the radical freedom of the will.
Augustine reiterates his arguments in ciu. ., declaring at the outset
that if we seek an efficient cause of the evil uoluntas of the bad angels, we
shall find none. When he draws his final conclusion, however, he gives in
to the temptations of rhetoric and phrases it in a misleading way: Hence
let no one search for an efficient cause of an evil uoluntas, for its cause is not
efficient but deficient, since it is not an effect but a defect (ciu. .). The
view alludes, sensibly enough, to Augustines ontological view that sin is not
a genuine thing but rather the absence or privation of something, such as
the failure of the will to turn to God. But it is wrong to take his rhetorical
rhyme seriously, to think that alongside efficient causes there are also deficient causes. The deficiencies in question are not prior to, and somehow
causal grounds determining, the (evil) will; they are instead features of the
(evil) will itself, namely its failure to do something in some fashion.26 The
point at issue, though, is whether there are efficient causes that determine the
wills actions. For all the talk of deficiencies, Augustine is clear that there are
no such causes.
Now Augustines denial that there are determining causes of the will does
not entail that the wills actions are inexplicable or somehow not tied to the
agent.27 Augustine clearly allows that there are reasons for action that help us
to understand it, although they do not determine the action.28 In the case of
Lucifers primal sin, for instance, Augustine has been careful to insist that the
26
27
28
MacDonald [] explores the ways in which morally objectionable acts can be

the result of such failures.
See Babcock [], and the criticisms of his position in MacDonald [].
The terminology of reasons here is mine; Augustine has often been misunderstood on these points, I think, because he did not have a regimented vocabulary

1. AUG U STINE
reason Lucifer fell was his pride, that is, taking delight in himself rather than
in God. But Lucifer equally might not have done so; many angels did not.
Reasons can be given, then, in support of an action, but which do not
determine it. Does a reason in support of an action, then, explain that action?
There is a point here beyond mere terminology, and one of Augustines examples will clarify it. In ciu. ., Augustine puts forward the case of two men
alike in mind and body who see a woman with a beautiful body; one is
moved to enjoy her illicitly whereas the other remains constant in his chaste
will. But how is it that they respond differently? They see the same woman,
they are like-minded in all relevant respects, neither is more subject to physical arousal than the other. Augustine concludes: 29
If both of them are tempted equally, and one gives in and consents while
the other remains the same as he was, what else is clear but that one was
willing to give up his chastity and the other one was unwilling to do so?
We can give reasons why each man acts the way he does. Augustine is careful
to spell them out: one man is moved to lust because of the womans beauty,
the other is not because he values his chastity. But and this is Augustines
point the behaviour of each is explicable in terms of reasons, but in the
end all we can say is that this man took this as the reason for his action,
whereas the other man took that as the reason for his action. And that is
simply to say that each chose as he did, without any further explanation being
possible. In Augustines view, then, the radical freedom of the will is a doubleedged sword. It makes moral agency possible, but it also makes moral choice
explicable only up to a point, the point at which a final choice is made.
Why did Lucifer turn his will away from God? There is no cause; he had
his reasons, namely his love of himself, but in the end that is just to say that
he turned his uoluntas to himself rather than God. Primal sin is precisely as
explicable as any other action and precisely as inexplicable, as well.
. FOREKNOWLEDGE
Augustine holds that Lucifer fell in the instant of his creation, at the
beginning of time (Gn. litt. ..). He summarizes his view as follows
(Gn. litt. ..):30
29
30
for discussing the issues. But while my usage is contemporary, the distinction it
draws is solidly grounded in Augustines texts.
Si eadem temptatione ambo temptentur, et unus ei cedat atque consentiat, alter idem qui fuerat perseueret: quid aliud apparet, nisi unum noluisse, alterum
uoluisse a castitate deficere?
Sed factus continuo se a luce ueritatis auertit, superbia tumidus et propriae potestatis delectatione corruptus. Unde beatae atque angelicae uitae dulcidinem non

1. AUG U STINE
Yet as soon as [Lucifer] was made he turned away from the light of truth,
swollen with pride and corrupted by delight in his own power. Accordingly, he did not taste the sweetness of the happy angelic life. Surely he
did not receive it and turn up his nose at it; rather, being unwilling to
receive it, he turned his back on it and lost it.
Lucifer could not have shared in angelic happiness for any length of time, not
even for a moment, because such happiness requires foreknowledge that Lucifer could not have had, namely foreknowledge regarding his fall. Augustine
lays out the criteria for the happiness of an intellectual being in ciu. .:
(a) uninterrupted enjoyment of God; (b) the assurance, free from any doubt
or error, that it will do so forever.31 Lucifer cannot satisfy (b), since he will
not in fact continue in (a). What, then, is Lucifers epistemic status when he
commits primal sin?
This question leads to a dilemma, one never finally resolved by Augustine. He sets it out in Gn. litt. .. as follows.32 Either Lucifer knows
when he is created that he is going to fall, or not. If he knows that he is going
to fall, then, Augustine reasons, he cannot be happy, in light of his knowledge
that his present exalted status will come to an end and be replaced by eternal
damnation. Therefore, Lucifer must not know that he is going to fall. But now
we can legitimately ask: Why not? There are two possibilities. Either none of
the angels knew what their future status would be, or some did and others, including Lucifer, did not. Suppose first that none of the angels knew what their
future status would be. But then, Augustine claims, none of the angels could
actually be happy, since none of them would know that they would not lose
their present status for some other condition, perhaps even damnation. Even
if knowing that you are going to fall is worse than not knowing that you are not going
to fall, either is enough to spoil the prospect of happiness. Hence we have to
turn to the other possibility, namely that some angels (who would turn out to
be the good angels) were assured of their future happiness, while others (who
31
32
gustauit: quam non utique acceptam fastidiuit, sed nolendo accipere deseruit et
amisit.
Quocirca cuiuis iam non difficulter occurrit utroque coniuncto effici beatitudinem
quam recto proposito intellectualis natura desiderat, hoc est, ut et bono incommutabili, quod Deus est, sine ulla molestia perfruatur et in eo se in aeternum esse
mansurum nec ulla dubitatione cunctetur nec ullo errore fallatur. That happiness
must contain its own guarantee is a common theme in Augustine.
Augustine restates the logic of the dilemma in Gn. litt. .., sketching it in
ciu. . and corrept. .. He recounts the problem for Jerome in ep. ..,
declaring that he has no solution (which van Fleteren [] mistakenly reads as
saying that Lucifer does have foreknowledge of his fall).

2. AN S E LM
would turn out to be the bad angels) did not know about their upcoming fall.
But this possibility runs into theological obstacles, since it would mean that
some angels have only second-class status in Heaven among whom would
be Lucifer, supposedly the best of them all; worse yet, there is no scriptural
support for postulating second-class angels (Gn. litt. ..; ep. ..). As
Augustine says in ciu. ., it is hard to believe that some angels could be
ignorant of their future status.
In Gn. litt. .., Augustine floats the idea that the dilemma might
be avoided by supposing that the moment of choice for the angels was the
very instant of their creation, so that there was no time at which the angels
were uncertain of their happiness. But the dilemma can simply be pushed
back to the instant of the creation of angels: were they all ignorant of their
future state when created, or were only some of them ignorant and others
assured? Augustine acknowledges that the dilemma has not been resolved
in Gn. litt. .., where he confesses he does not know what the correct
solution should be. In later discussions he says that the bad angels did not
know of their future fall, but he acknowledges the dilemma (ciu. . and
corrept. .). The best answer that can be given on Augustines behalf, I
think, is to opt for the view that none of the angels knew of their future status
at the instant of their creation, which is the very moment when they could exercise their freedom to turn their wills as they pleased; those who kept their
wills directed to God were rewarded with both eternal happiness and knowledge of their eternal happiness, whereas those who did not were damned.
(Indeed, this is what Augustine usually says in his later works.) Hence at the
moment of their creation and ever after, the good angels are assured of their
happiness, and the bad angels were not as Augustine says, they turned their
back on the gift of eternal happiness and so lost it, never having received it.
2. ANSELM
Anselm adopts Augustines views about angelic sin, extending them in his
remarkable dialogue devoted to the topic: De casu diaboli. He formalizes the
contrast Augustine draws between the conflicting impulses for seeking ones
own good and for doing what is right into his so-called two-wills theory of
motivation: every moral agent, Anselm argues, has two fundamental kinds
of motives, the will-for-justice (uoluntas iustitiae) and the will-for-advantage
(uoluntas commodi), as he calls them (diab. ).33 Put another way, Anselm
33
By the time he came to write his De concordia, Anselm clarified and refined his
theory. In conc. ., he draws a distinction between (a) the nature of an instrument; (b) what the instrument is suited for, its dispositions [aptitudines]; (c ) its

2. AN S E LM
maintains that moral agency requires two distinct sources of motivation: the
motive to do the right thing, seeing oneself as standing under moral norms;
and a different nonmoral motivation that may conflict with the demands of
morality. Only when an agent is capable of being motivated to act in ways
that conflict with moral norms, and yet equally capable of recognizing his
actions as being bound by moral norms, can there be moral agency, a genuine
choice between doing the right thing (because it is right) or doing something
other than the right thing (for its intrinsic appeal). The glory and the tragedy
of rational natures, human and angelic, is that their happiness may diverge
from what they ought to do: that is what makes it possible for them to be
moral agents, to do the right thing because it is right, but also to do the wrong
thing.
Having two distinct sources of motivation is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for an action to be morally praiseworthy or blameworthy.
At least two further conditions have to be met: the agent must not be (a) ignorant, at least not culpably ignorant; (b) irrational. In the former case, the
lack of knowledge serves to excuse the agent, who then deserves instruction
rather than punishment. In the latter case, treatment rather than punishment
is the appropriate response.
Anselm takes up (b) for extended analysis in the remainder of the dialogue. Augustine had side-stepped the issue of Lucifers rationality, and,
although he touched upon Lucifers epistemic status in discussing foreknowledge, he did not explore it. Anselm intends to show that Lucifer was fully
qualified as a moral agent, and therefore could be held responsible for his
primal sin, and justly punished for it. This is Anselms main innovation over
Augustine, and it is quite an original accomplishment, among other things
anticipating contemporary decision theory.
Like any other moral agent, Lucifer is motivated by his will-to-justice
and his will-to-advantage, which are at work in the case of primal sin, which
Anselm treats at length in diab. (with a brief coda in ). To simplify
the exposition, Ill speak as though the choice Lucifer faces is whether to exalt his throne above Gods (as suggested in Is. :). Anselm puts forward
four theses about Lucifers epistemic status:
[L] Lucifer did not know what he would decide when faced with his
actual deployed use. Anselm argues that the faculty of the will, the (psychological)
instrument of choice, is a single unitary item which is clearly the power behind
its occurrent volitions or uses. The two types of motivation canvassed in the De
casu diaboli are here aligned with the unitary psychological faculty of the will as its
affections: permanent dispositions to respond positively to their proper objects,
namely justice (or uprightness) and advantage, which exhaust all motives for action.

2. AN S E LM
choice (namely whether to exalt his throne above Gods).

[L] Lucifer knew that he ought not exalt his throne above Gods.
[L] Lucifer knew that he would deserve punishment for exalting his throne,
or, more exactly, for willing that his throne be exalted above Gods.
[L] Lucifer did not know that he would be punished if he were to will
that his throne be exalted above Gods.
He argues for [L] in , [L] and [L] in , and [L] in . Each deserves
comment.
With regard to [L]: Anselm in fact argues in for a stronger thesis,
namely that Lucifer could not have had any grounds for suspicion (qualibet
suspicione) what he would do when faced with his choice, much less have had
foreknowledge of his choice. Well return to Anselms stronger thesis when
we consider [L]; his case against foreknowledge is straightforward: if Lucifer
were to know what he is going to do, then its not at all clear that he faces
a genuine choice, or even that he is free. Anselm wants to put these sorts of
worries aside so as to concentrate on Lucifers rationality.
With regard to [L]: Anselm argues in that if Lucifer did not know
that the action he was contemplating was morally wrong, and so ought not to
be done, then Lucifer would be ignorant rather than blameworthy. But the
wrongfulness of exalting his throne above Gods could not have escaped his
notice, since Lucifer was so rational that nothing got in the way of the use
of his reason (such as having a physical body: ) and thus he was not
ignorant of what he ought to will or ought not to will.34 Therefore, if Lucifer
was indeed ignorant he was culpably so. But there is no reason to think he
was ignorant at all.
With regard to [L]: Recognizing the wrongfulness of an action, as Anselm observes in , is equivalent to recognizing that performing the action
deserves punishment or, put another way, that moral wrongfulness is analytically tied to deserving punishment. (Whether the punishment should be
inflicted is a separate question.) Taken together, [L][L] seem to make it
impossible that Lucifer, who after supposedly acted on his will-for-advantage,
should opt to exalt his throne above Gods. Hence the case for Lucifers rationality in so doing is found in Anselms analysis and defense of [L].
With regard to [L]: We have already established that Lucifer knew that
he ought not exalt his throne above Gods, and that in doing so he would
merit punishment. Now [L] says that Lucifer does not know that, if he were
34
Denique quoniam ita rationalis erat, ut nulla re prohiberetur uti ratione, non
ignorabat quid deberet aut non deberet uelle. There are interesting questions
about moral knowledge and its extent, but Anselm does not take them to be at
issue in the case of primal sin.

2. AN S E LM
to exalt his throne above Gods, he then would receive the punishment that
by [L] he admittedly deserves. (If he knew that he would be punished for
having sinned, then it would clearly be irrational for him to sin.) It is well
worth considering Anselms argument for [L] in detail.
Anselm begins by pointing that although Lucifer is aware of [L], it does
not follow that he knows what God would in fact do:35
Since [Lucifer] was rational, he was indeed able to grasp that he would
justly be punished if he were to sin. But since many of Gods judgments are deep [Ps. : (RSV:)] and His ways are past finding out
[Rom. :], he was not able to figure out whether God would do what
He could justly do.
Since Gods ways are past finding out (inuestigabiles, literally untrackable
or not able to be followed), Lucifer cannot replicate Gods reasoning for
himself. But why not? After all, Lucifer knows that God is entitled to punish
moral transgressions, and presumably he knows that God is just. Yet Lucifer
knows something else about God, as Anselm goes on to remark:36
But someone might point out that Lucifer could not in any way believe
that God was going to damn His creature on account of that fault, the
creature He had made in His great goodness, above all because there had
not been any example of paying back an injustice with justice. . .
Anselms point here is that Lucifer knows not only that God is just, but also
that God is merciful. (The word mercy doesnt appear here, but that is
clearly what is at stake in the discussion.) Yet given that God is both just and
merciful, which of these attributes will guide his response to a wrongdoing?
If Lucifer is rational, then he must think that the likelihood of God showing him mercy are at least as good as the likelihood of God punishing him for
his transgression. For, as Anselm remarks, Lucifer did not have any evidence
about how God would in fact respond to cases of wrongdoing; there had not
been any example before. Lucifer is therefore facing a choice under uncertainty, and, in the absense of evidence about how to assign probabilities to the
elements of an exhaustive partition of the outcomes, the rational thing to do
or so modern decision theory maintains is to treat the possible outcomes
as equiprobable. Since there are only two outcomes in question here, Lucifer
treats Gods response as a coin toss: % probability of Gods being just, and
35
36
Quia rationalis erat, potuit intelligere quia iuste si peccaret puniretur; sed quoniam iudicia dei abyssus multa et inuestigabiles uiae eius, nequiuit comprehendere an deus faceret quod iuste facere posset.
Sed et si quis dicat quia nullatenus credere potuit deum creaturam suam propter
eius culpam damnaturum, quam tanta sua bonitate fecerat praesertim cum nullum exemplum iustitiae ulciscentis iniustitiam praecessisset. . .

2. AN S E LM
% probability of Gods being merciful. If anything, Anselm goes on to note,

Lucifer might have thought the odds favored his being forgiven, since Lucifer
might have reasoned that God had created exactly the correct number of angels to fill the heavenly choir, and casting out angels as punishment would
leave empty seats behind; he could not reasonably have foreseen that God
would fill the empty seats with saved human beings.37 Nor could Lucifer have
reasoned that God would have to punish wrongdoing at some point so as to
set an example for others; God might equally well have made it known that
He might punish wrongdoing simply by informing the angels (). Anselm
thus concludes that there would be no irrationality (inconuenientia) in Lucifers
reasoning.
But what does irrationality amount to, in the context of reasoning about
what course of action to adopt? Anselm immediately tells us in :38
Let us return to what we had said [in ], namely that Lucifer should not
have had this knowledge [that God would punish him]. For if he were to
have known, then, while willing and possessing his happiness, he would
not of his own accord will that whereby he would be unhappy.
Lucifer would be irrational if he believed that as a result of his voluntary
action he would be less happy than he he is. Anselm takes it as a minimal
constraint on rationality, then, that an agent not do anything he believes is
likely to make him less happy than he might otherwise be. In other words, an
agent has to compare the expected utility of the outcomes39 in order to make
a rational choice; it would be irrational to choose any course of action whose
expected utility is less than the expected utility of an alternative action.40 That
this is the correct way to read the passage is borne out by Anselms second
argument in (the reference to which in is secured by Anselms use of
37
Anselm takes these views about the number of the heavenly host and Gods replacement of fallen angels with saved human beings from Augustine, as noted at
the start of Section above.
38
Redeamus ad hoc quod dixeram, illum scilicet hanc non debuisse habere scientiam. Si enim sciuisset, non posset uolens et habens beatitudinem sponte uelle
unde miser esset.
39
The expected utility i of the i-th outcome is the product of its probability pi and
its utility ui , namely i = pi ui . We are only dealing with subjective probabilities
here, from Lucifers point of view.
40
This formulation entails that an agent must seek to maximize his expected utility,
on pain of irrationality. Anselms way of putting the point is slightly weaker, since
it only holds that it would be irrational to adopt a course of action whose expected
utility is worse than not adopting that course of action (i. e. of standing pat).

2. AN S E LM
the pluperfect), the conclusion of which Anselm states as follows: 41

Now since it is clear by the argument given above that the apostate angel could not have foreknown his downfall by the sort of foreknowledge
which is consequent upon the necessity of the matter, consider yet a further argument that excludes his having any presentiment of his fall not
only by foreknowledge but even by reckoning or by any suspicion.
Lucifer must not only lack foreknowledge of his fall, as Augustine and [L]
declared, he cant know about it through aestimatio or suspicio. Now aestimatio
(reckoning) means an assessment of the value of something, a summing-up
of its worth; the sense of Anselms claim is that Lucifer cannot have calculated
that the expected (negative) utility of the outcome in which God exercises His
justice, namely his punishment, outweighs the expected utility of the outcome
in which God exercises His mercy, no matter by how little (suspicio). Hence
the gamble that Lucifer takes is rational only if it conforms to this criterion.
Anselm says little about the utility of the outcomes, for the simple reason
that he takes it to be obvious: if Hell is the deprivation of the happiness of
Heaven, as Augustine maintained, then the disutility of punishment is the
negative value of the utility of being in Heaven. (If we add to the utility of
being in Heaven the further utility of exalting ones throne above Gods, even
if only briefly, the scales are tipped in the direction of being in Heaven.) Thus
as long as the probability of punishment is no more than the probability of
forgiveness, the utilities of the expected outcomes will balance as well. If
Lucifer has reason to believe that it is more likely that he would be forgiven
rather than punished, by his reasoning from the number of the heavenly host,
then the gamble will look better and better to him.
Should Lucifer accept the gamble? There is one more factor that has to
be taken into account, namely whether it is better to take the gamble or to
stand pat. There is no consensus about when it is rational to accept or decline a gamble, since that depends on attitudes toward risk, and no principle
governing the rationality of risk-taking has met with general agreement: maximin, minimax, or the like. We can say, however, that it would be irrational
to accept a gamble if its expected utility does not outweigh the utility of standing pat. In the case of primal sin, the question is whether the expected utility
of Lucifers exalting his throne above Gods outweighs the assured utility of
standing pat. (This is how Anselm formulated the rationality constraint earlier.) It is plausible to think that the delight of having such an exalted throne
41
Nunc autem quoniam supra posita ratione patet apostatam angelum non potuisse
praescire ruinam suam ea praescientia quam rei sequitur necessitas, accipe adhuc
aliam rationem, quae non solum praescientia sed et aestimatione aut qualibet suspicione suum eum praesensisse casum excludit.

2. AN S E LM
would outweigh, perhaps infinitely outweigh, maintaining ones merely subordinate angelic status. So Anselm assumes in the argument with which he
concludes :42
MASTER: But consider also whether by this very argument Lucifer should
have known what you are asking about [namely that he would be punished for sinning]. For if he had known, either (a) he would have sinned,
or (b) not.
STUDENT: Yes.
MASTER: [With regard to (a)]: If he had sinned having foreseen so great
a punishment, without any need and with nothing forcing him, then so
much the more ought he to be punished.
STUDENT: That is so.
MASTER: Therefore, this foreknowledge did not help him.
STUDENT: Truly, foreknowledge of punishment does not help one who
is going to sin.
MASTER: [With regard to (b)]: Well, if he hadnt sinned, then he hadnt
sinned either (b1) due solely to his good will, or (b)2 ) due to his fear of
punishment.
STUDENT: Exactly so.
MASTER: But he showed by his very deed that he would not have avoided
sinning due solely to the love of justice.
STUDENT: Certainly.
MASTER: But if he avoided it due to fear, he would not be just.
STUDENT: Its clear that in no way should Lucifer have known that his
punishment was going to be visited upon him as a result of his sin.
Does Anselms argument answer the students question about [L]? Anselm
here argues that it does. If Lucifer had known that if he were to sin he would
be punished, it would be irrational for him to sin and he would be all the more
reprehensible for knowing the consequences; that is the gist of (a). More interesting is Anselms argument regarding (b), which is the Lucifers alternative
of standing pat having assessed the rationality of the gamble, he declines to
42
MAGISTER : Sed et hac ratione considera utrum scire quod quaeris debuerit.
Nam si scisset, aut peccasset aut non. -DISCIPULUS: Unum horum esset. -M.:
Si praeuisa tanta poena nulla indigentia et nulla re cogente peccasset, tanto magis
puniendus esset. -D.: Ita est. -M.: Non ergo haec praescientia illi expediebat.
-D.: Vere peccaturo non expediebat praescire poenam. -M.: Quod si non peccasset: aut sola bona non peccasset uoluntate, aut timore poenae. -D.: Nihil aliud
dici potest. -M.: Sed quoniam peccatum non cauisset solo amore iustitiae, ipso
opere monstrauit. -D.: Non est dubium. -M.: Si uero timore cauisset, non esset
iustus. -D.: Palam est nullo modo eum debuisse scire inditam sibi poenam suum
secuturam peccatum.

2. AN S E LM
take it. We know from the actual course of events that Lucifer was not motivated solely by the will-for-justice, and hence, even if he had avoided sinning,
he would not have done so due solely to the will-for-justice. However, standing pat because of fear is not being just; doing the right thing for the wrong
reason is not to do the right thing at all, but to be morally reprehensible
arguably just as much as if one had done the wrong thing anyway. Well return to that point in a moment, but note that the student is entitled to draw
his conclusion, namely that Lucifer ought not to have known (or been able
to calculate) that he would be punished as a result of his sin, only if Lucifer
is acting out of his assessment of the expected utilities of the alternatives, including standing pat. We know that in the actual case Lucifer took the gamble
(and lost), which would be rational only if the assured utility of standing pat
were not to outweigh the expected utility of taking the gamble. If he were not
to have taken the gamble, (b)2 , his reason is not the admirable moral motive
of wanting to do the right thing, but his fear that the gamble is too risky to
take (by whatever standards of risk Lucifer adopts) that the assured utility
of standing pat outweighs the expected utility of accepting the gamble, taking
its riskiness into account. Even in the counterfactual case in which Lucifer
declines the gamble, his behavior would be rational, as we know it must have
been in the actual case.
In the actual case, as Anselm notes, we can read off Lucifers motive from
his actions: primal sin is a case of acting on the will-for-advantage. Lucifer
has already done the wrong thing by treating a moral choice as an exercise in
calculation. Yet Lucifers primal sin is perfectly rational in such terms. This
is the point Anselm wants to drive home. Lucifer is not irrational. Rather, he
is immoral. His rationality is a prerequisite for his immorality, in that we can
legitimately punish him for his actions if they are rational. Mad as his gamble
may seem in retrospect, it was not irrational of Lucifer to accept it. It was,
however, immoral.
Anselm, therefore, has shown how Lucifers primal sin can be rational.
Yet since there are two motivational sources for action, the rationality of an
action need not coincide with its moral acceptability. In the end, Anselm
holds, Augustines view about radical freedom is correct; even the rationality
of a choice does not determine that it will be made ():43
STUDENT: Why did Lucifer will what he ought not?
MASTER: No cause preceded this will, other than that he could so will. . .
43
D.: Cur uoluit quod non debuit? -M.: Nulla causa praecessit hanc uoluntatem,
nisi quia uelle potuit. . . -D.: Cur ergo uoluit? -M.: Non nisi quia uoluit. Nam haec
uoluntas nullam aliam habuit causam qua impelleretur aliquatenus aut attraheretur
sed ipsa sibi efficiens causa fuit, si dici potest, et effectum.

2. AN S E LM
STUDENT:
Then why did he will it?

Merely because he willed it. For this will had no other cause
by which it was pushed or pulled. Rather, it was its own efficient cause,
so to speak, and its own effect.
There is a limit to our ability to explain free choices; the existence of the
will-for-justice alongside the will-for-advantage ensures that we are never determined to act in any particular way, even when it is rational (in the narrow
sense appropriate to calculating advantage) to do so. After all, as Anselm argues in , the good angels are in precisely the same epistemic situation as
Lucifer, and yet they do not sin.
Anselm is clearly at pains to make his account fully compatible with Augustine, cleaning up and extending Augustines views. Together their work
defines a distinct tradition in the treatment of angelic sin, one that would be
extremely influential in the later Middle Ages as Tobias Hoffmanns essay
in this volume will attest.
MASTER:
Peter King University of Toronto

SECONDARY SOURCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MAJOR PRIMARY TEXTS
Augustine. De libero arbitrio, ed. William Green, in Corpus christianorum series

latina . Turnholt: Typographi Brepols editores pontificii :
.
Augustine. De ciuitate Dei, eds. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, in Corpus christianorum series latina . Turnholt: Typographi Brepols editores pontificii
.
Augustine. De Genesin ad litteram, ed. Joseph Zycha, in Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum .. Vienna: Academiae litterarum Caesareae
Vindoboensis .
Anselm. De casu diaboli, ed. F. S. Schmitt, in S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi opera omnia, Vol. , . Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons,
.
Anselm. De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae Dei cum libero
arbitrio, ed. F. S. Schmitt, in S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi opera
omnia, Vol. , . Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, .
SECONDARY SOURCES
Adkin, Neil. Pride or Envy? Some Notes on the Reason the Fathers Give for
the Devils Fall in Augustiniana (): .
Agaesse,
P. and Solignac, A. La chute du diable in Bibliotheque
` Augustinienne
, Paris : .
Babcock, William. Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency in The Journal of
Religious Ethics (): .
Bianchi, Cinzia and Muller,
Christof. Diabolus in Cornelius Mayer (ed.),
Augustinus-Lexicon. Basel: Schwabe AG . Vol. : .

Brown, R. F. The First Evil Will Must Be Incomprehensible: A Critique of
Augustine in Journal of the American Academy of Religion ():
.
Evans, G. R. Why the Fall of Satan? in Recherches de theologie
ancienne et
medi
evale
(): .
Evans, G. R. Augustine on Evil. Cambridge University Press .
Green, William. Initium omnis peccati superbia: Augustine on Pride as the First
Sin in The University of California Publications in Classical Philology
(): .

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Harrison, Simon. Augustines Way Into the Will. Oxford Early Christian Studies.
Oxford University Press .
MacDonald, Scott. Primal Sin in Gareth Matthews (ed.), The Augustinian
Tradition. The University of California Press : .
van Fleteren, Frederick. Devil in Alan D. Fitzgerald (ed.), Augustine Through
the Ages: An Encyclopdia. Grand Rapids MI & Cambridge: Eerdmans
Publishing Company : AA.

c Peter King, forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy.

DAMAGED GOODS
H UMAN N ATURE
AND
O RIGINAL S IN
Christian doctrine traditionally holds that human beings are damaged

goods. Created with the full measure of goodness appropriate to embodied finite rational creatures, human beings have inflicted enough damage on themselves to have altered their ontological status. This happened in the persons
of Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, when they defied Gods explicit
command and did eat of the forbidden fruit; for this transgression they were
cast out of Paradise. Human beings ever since have borne the guilt of this sin
as well as punishment for it, the former relieved, at least in part, by Christs
mission of salvation.1 The change in our status was fundamental, disastrous,
and irreversible (by our unaided powers). We are no longer as we once were
we are not even quite the kind of thing we once were.
This, of course, is the Doctrine of Original Sin. It lies at the heart of
Western Christianity. Fallen human nature, beset by original sin, is the reason
for Christs atonement and redemption of humanity through divine grace,
accomplished by the Incarnation and the Crucifixion; there would be no call
for a rescuer were we not in need of rescue. The Doctrine of Original Sin is
intricately and inextricably fitted into the web of Christian dogma.
Yet I want to set aside theological issues in favour of what seems to me
a more pressing, and baffling, metaphysical difficulty. According to the Doctrine of Original Sin, human nature has been changed as a result of the choices
and actions of human beings. It is not clear that this claim makes sense.
How can something literally change its own nature? What conception of nature is at work, such that human nature is capable of being changed in time?
How does a given choice or action affect human nature? On the face of it,
these claims are nonsense. For the Aristotelian, the nature itself, our glassy
essence, is fixed and makes us the kind of thing we are; were it literally
changed, prelapsarian and postlapsarian humans would belong to different
species. For the Platonist, our degree of participation in a Form may wax or
wane, but the Form itself cannot change, and a fortiori it cannot change as
a result of our actions. The available philosophical accounts of natures treat
them as abstract entities, as incapable of change in time by the actions of in
An earlier version of this paper was presented on March at the University

of Colorado at Boulder. All translations are mine.
The Biblical account, found in Gen. , is given a distinctive Christian twist in
Rom. : and Cor. :.
1
1. A UGUSTINE
dividuals as 2.
It isnt that it would be exceptionally difficult or demanding
for us to change 2; its that it doesnt even make sense to talk about it.
This formidable metaphysical difficulty is at the heart of the Doctrine of
Original Sin, threatening it with incoherence. Medival philosophers were
therefore driven to heights of speculative ingenuity, devising theories that
would allow them to maintain the literal truth of the claim on which the Doctrine of Original Sin rests, namely that human nature changed as a result
of human actions. Such theories, like the doctrine itself, begin with Augustine, who devised not one but two approaches to the difficulty neither of
which he found satisfactory (). There the matter lay until the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, when a different approach was taken by Anselm of Canterbury; some aspects of his solution were philosophically fruitful with regard
to human nature and developed by others, notably Odo of Tournai and an
otherwise anonymous author known as Pseudo-Joscelin (). Ill close with
a brief description of its replacement by the consensus on the Doctrine of
Original Sin under High Scholasticism.
1. A UGUSTINE
Although Augustine was not the sole author of the Doctrine of Original
Sin bits and pieces of it are found in Tertullian, Cyprian, and above all in
his near-contemporaries Ambrose and Ambrosiaster Augustine was undeniably its principal architect.2 Indeed, Augustine coined the term original sin,
and the formulation of the doctrine was so indebted to him that the Greek
East, lacking Augustine in translation as well as in person, does not have the
doctrine of original sin at all. Augustine presents an account of original sin
as early as his De libero arbitrio, developed it further in his commentaries on
Genesis, and brought it to its final formulation in the many works written in
the course of his long battle against Pelagianism.3
The ancient sin (antiquum peccatum), as Augustine memorably calls it
(mor. ..), was undeniably ours alone. Augustine is clear that Adam and
Eve were fully possessed of free will in their prelapsarian condition, capable
of not sinning. That is, Adam and Eve possessed the ability to not forsake the
2
See Beatrice [] for Augustines sources and his use of them. To his analysis
I would add two antecedents likely to have influenced Augustine: the classical
understanding of brij and misma on the one hand, and the neoplatonic view of
descent into the body (enn. .) on the other.
See, for instance, his De nuptiis et concupiscentia, De peccatorum meritis et remissione, De
gratia Christi et de peccato originali, De correptione et gratia, Contra Iulianum, and other
polemical writings; discussions of the Doctrine of Original Sin even spill over into
the De ciuitate Dei and the Enchiridion.

1. A UGUSTINE
good, as well as the grace to persevere in so doing (corrept. .). Furthermore, they were endowed with good wills, subject to neither vice nor sin
(ciu. .). Gods sole command, to not eat the forbidden fruit, was as easy
to observe as it was simple to keep in mind since there was an abundance
of food and no desire contrary to the will (ciu. .). The sole purpose of
the command was to make Adam and Eve aware of their due obedience, the
mother and the guardian of all other virtues in rational creatures. The fruit
was neither harmful nor evil in itself. The point of Gods command is to obey
only because it is commanded (ciu. .). As such, the ancient sin was all
the worse for its disobedience, its heinousness magnified by the unimpeded
freedom of the will in Eden (c. Iul. imp. .). Augustine catalogues the sins
wrapped up in the single act that was the parent of all sin (ench. .):4
Pride was present in it, by which humans took delight in being their own
masters rather than in Gods power; sacrilege, too, since they did not
believe God; murder, since they hurled themselves headlong into death;
spiritual fornication, since the integrity of the human mind was corrupted
by the serpents seduction; theft, since the forbidden food was snatched;
greed, since they wanted more than ought to satisfy them and anything
else that can be uncovered in this single offence by careful analysis!
At its root was pride (superbia), technically the wills choice to turn aside from
the immutable good (ciu. .), which constituted the actual sin eating the
fruit merely completed a transgression already accomplished in the will. The
selfsame pride was at work in Adams blaming Eve, and Eves blaming the
serpent; they tried to evade responsibility for their sin rather than humble
their pride by seeking forgiveness (ciu. .).
The result was catastrophic, although, Augustine admits, it was completely just and appropriate (ciu. .). Human nature itself was changed
(commutata), and not for the better (nupt. et conc. ..):5
Accordingly, our nature was at that time changed for the worse by the
great sin of the first man. Not only was it made sinful, it also begot sinners.
Augustine repeatedly describes human nature as damaged and deformed
Nam et superbia est illic, qua homo in sua potius esse quam in Dei potestate
dilexit; et sacrilegium quia Deo non credidit; et homicidium quoniam se praecipitauit in mortem; et fornicatio spiritalis, quoniam integritas mentis humanae
serpentina suasione corrupta est; et furtum, quia cibus prohibitus usurpatus est; et
auaritia, quia plus quam sufficere illi debuit appetiuit, et si quid aliud in hoc uno
admisso diligenti consideratione inueniri potest.
Unde illo magno primi hominis peccato, natura ibi nostra in deterius commutata,
non solum est facta peccatrix, uerum etiam genuit peccatores.

1. A UGUSTINE
(uitiata et deprauata) after the Fall.6 Since human nature is by definition common to all human beings, the damage it has suffered therefore affects all human beings. Precisely how it does so has yet to be determined. But the
damage takes two forms that should be kept separate.
One effect of Adams choice is that each human being from the moment
of birth catches an ancient death.7 Less poetically, each of us is born in a state
of sin, in virtue of our human nature. It is not merely an inborn propensity or
tendency to sin, though that may be present as well; we are each in an actual
state of sin from the moment of birth. This is a puzzle. The normal way to
be in a state of sin is to commit a sin for which one has not been forgiven. It is
obscure how a person could be in a state of sin without having done anything,
and it is particularly obscure in the case of newborns, who are incapable of
any act of will. Yet such is the doctrine. (Well examine Augustines attempts
to solve this puzzle shortly.) Human nature was made sinful and thus each
human being is tainted with sin, together making up the condemned lump of
the whole human race.8 Therefore, human nature is damaged by a culpable
moral failing, permanently suffused with original guilt in everyone (originali
reatu in omnia permanente confuderat) as Augustine memorably puts the point
(Simpl. ..).
Another effect of Adams choice, distinct from guilt, is the punishment
it calls forth. Augustine identifies three distinct divine penalties inflicted on
human nature: ignorance, death, and lust (concupiscentia).9 The first penalty
is that we have become comparatively ignorant of the principles of right and
wrong. In our prelapsarian condition it was obvious which courses of action
were right and which wrong; in our postlapsarian condition it is not at all
clear, and can be figured out only with difficulty. Broadly speaking this is a
cognitive disorder to which we are now prey. The second penalty is that
human beings are now doomed to die our Dasein is structured by beingtowards-death. Before the Fall, Augustine holds, humans were mortal, i. e.
capable of dying, but were otherwise free from physical disorders; Adam
6
7
8
Augustines term uitiata is etymologically connected with uitium (vice or defect),

and usually has the overtones of moral degradation or corruption.
. . . contagium mortis antiquae prima nativitate contrahere: ep. ..
Totius humani generis massa damnata: ench. .. Augustine repeats the phrase
with minor variations in many places, for instance Simpl. ... The lump alludes to Rom. :, where Paul describes the human race as a lump of clay that
God moulds as He sees fit.
Augustines account of the penalties for original sin is already found in lib. arb.
(where lust is called difficulty), and repeated widely thereafter; see, for instance,
ciu. ..

1. A UGUSTINE
and Eve were unaffected by disease (which was absent from Paradise), did
not age, and were not destined to die. The third penalty affects the human
blend (contemperatio) of body and soul. We are now subject to strong and
unruly desires that direct us elsewhere than at God, desires at best only partly
under our control and often not even that. Augustines generic term for such
desires is lust, which encompasses more than mere sexual appetite, though
it certainly includes it; it is the sense of lust as it appears in blood-lust or
lust for power a strong, if not irresistible, craving or compulsion. Yet while
any gluttonous appetite is an instance of lust, for Augustine sexual appetite
is peculiarly well-suited as an example: its depth, passion, and forcefulness
are undeniable, and the fact of non-voluntary sexual arousal illustrates in ourselves10 the same lack of obedience that Adam and Eve showed to God in
Eden tit for tat, so to speak.11 These three penalties exacted by God have
left human nature ravaged by lust, wracked by disease and death, unsure of
how to live rightly; they collectively make it well-nigh impossible for us to
avoid sinning in this life.
In our present condition, then, we are tainted by original guilt and also
suffer the penalties of sin. Christs mission of salvation has laid the groundwork for cancelling our guilt, by washing away all sins in the spiritual rebirth
that is baptism, but this has not affected the punishment we must endure. The
fall from our pristine condition is far indeed.
There are further unhappy consequences of Adams choice. These consequences are not an instance of damage inflicted upon human nature, strictly
speaking, but instead stem from our changed situation. For example, we no
longer have the ability to avoid sin by our unaided powers, and certainly not
to persevere in such avoidance; God has withdrawn his prelapsarian standing support for our endeavours, support that made it possible for us to avoid
sin, and now His assistance is purely supererogatory, i. e. given only as a matter of grace. This is a change in our extrinsic circumstances, having to do with
the type of divine assistance extended to the human race, not a change in our
intrinsic nature. I shall therefore put it aside for the time being (well return
to it in 3).
Augustines account of original guilt and the penalties of sin, recounted
10
Sexual arousal is not merely a physiological phenomenon, though it may be that

in part. Augustine recognizes the emotional and mental components of arousal as
integral to human sexuality, even though he wants no part of them.
11
In our prelapsarian condition, our sexual organs were completely under our conscious control, and sexual activity free of libido, as Augustine tells us in ciu. .
.

1. A UGUSTINE
above, spell out the content of the Doctrine of Original Sin.12 Its time to
return to the question with which we began. How is it possible for human
nature to be changed by human actions?
As a first step to answering this question, Augustine implicitly endorses
the following simplifying assumption:
(S) Whatever is such as to affect everything in a species must be part of
the specific nature.
Now (S) says roughly that anything that must hold of all humans is thereby
part of human nature. In aristotelian terms, these are propria: not part of
the essence but characteristic of the subject, on a par with, say, the ability to
laugh, present necessarily in all human beings but not part of their essence.13
It makes sense to expand nature beyond the essence, as well, for essences
are metaphysically thin too much is not included in the strict definition
rational animal for it to represent what human beings must be like. The key
notion here is inclusive necessity: human nature includes all properties that
must hold of all humans. This must is the key to the metaphysical puzzle.
On the one hand, if we can identify a property that affects all human beings
and seems to do so with some kind of necessity, we have a good candidate
for a feature that belongs to human nature. On the other hand, the must is
not logical; we can at least entertain the possibility that some property would
come to be necessary (in some sense) for all humans at some point, and so
characterize human nature thereafter and hence it is possible that human
nature could change historically, perhaps even as a result of human choices
and actions. Whether human nature is in fact changed this way depends on
plausibly identifying some property or set of properties that come to affect all
humans at some point, and subsequently, as a result of human choices and
actions. According to (S), then, Augustine needs to show that original guilt
and the penalties of sin must affect all human beings as a result of Adams
(and Eves) choices and actions that is, in consequence of the ancient sin.
If so, he can maintain the literal truth of the Doctrine of Original Sin, that
12
13
Augustines theories of original guilt and of death as a penalty of sin were confirmed at the Council of Carthage (418), at the second Council of Orange (529),
and again in the decree on original sin of the Council of Trent (17 June 1546).
Note that propria are not the same as inseparable accidents, which may also be
present in each member of a species, nor able to be removed once present, but
do not have to be present. The classical example of such an inseparable accident
is the blackness found in ravens. It is not a proprium since it is found in things
other than ravens, and no necessity would be violated in the existence of a nonblack raven. The distinction between propria and inseparable accidents is subtle
but important.

1. A UGUSTINE
human nature has been damaged and deformed.

Matters are relatively straightforward in the case of Adam and Eve. Having transgressed Gods command, each is eo ipso guilty; there is no puzzle
how their choices and actions result in their guilt their actions constitute
their transgression, and hence their guilt, much as one becomes guilty of lying simply by telling a lie. Furthermore, there is no statute of limitations
for Adam and Eve; having sinned, they remain in the state of sin ever after,
unless and until forgiven, which is beyond their power to bring about. Likewise, there is no metaphysical puzzle regarding the penalties exacted from
Adam and Eve by God. Assuming that the penalties are completely just and
appropriate, as Augustine argues (ciu. .), there is a straightforward sense
in which Adam and Eve are responsible for their current condition, for they
brought it on themselves. If the penalty for theft is a year in prison and I am
in fact guilty of theft (however my guilt be determined), then I have brought
my jail term on my own head. True, the penalty is exacted by others. It is
nevertheless correct to say that my present incarceration is the result of my
(thieving) choices and actions. Were the penalty instead to have ones hand
cut off, I would reasonably be said to inflict this damage on myself, even
though someone else would be the causal agent at work; the end result would
be a damaged human being, and I might rightly be said to have inflicted the
damage on myself. So too for Adam and Eve. The only disanalogy is not one
that matters: it is not at all clear how we could become subject to ignorance,
death, and lust as Augustine claims we are. But we dont have to know how
God does it a good thing since it might not be knowable by us all we need
to know is that God can and does do it, by His omnipotence.
Matters are less straightforward in the case of later generations. My
daughter is not guilty of lying simply because I have told a lie; if she is not
guilty, it is unfair to punish her for my guilt; nor will she lack a hand simply
because mine was cut off. Unless original guilt and the penalties of sin affect
all other humans, though, there is no interesting sense in which human nature
was damaged by Original Sin.
Augustine separates the cases of punishment and guilt. For punishment
he offers what we may call a genetic inheritance model, where the penalties of
sin are physiologically transmitted from parents to children. Each penalty
behaves like a strongly dominant heritable trait; it is relatively easy for such a
trait to become uniformly distributed throughout an entire population. Since
human generations begin with Adam and Eve, each carriers of the penalties,
the entire human race through all its succeeding generations will likewise
have these penalties. Nor are they neutral traits, but damages of a recognizable sort. Consider hmophilia, an inherited trait resulting in a damaged

1. A UGUSTINE
human, that is, someone whose blood fails to clot properly. If hmophilia
were to afflict both sexes equally, were strongly dominant, and were sufficiently widespread in the population, it might happen that succeeding generations would consist exclusively of active hmophiliacs.14 It is as though
the penalties of sin were inflicted as genetic damage on Adam and Eve, and
thereby passed along to the rest of humanity. The necessity required for (S)
would then be biological, or broadly speaking physical, necessity; all human
beings after Adam and Eve would exhibit these traits because of the nature
of the trait and the mechanisms of inheritance. Human nature would then
have been damaged by the presence of these heritable deleterious properties,
unavoidable and objectionable as they are.15
Is it plausible to think of the penalties of sin as genetically heritable? Augustine thought so. Take ignorance. We know now that intelligence is a
weakly inherited trait, so it is easy to imagine some artificial manipulation
of intelligence that affects succeeding generations if intelligence were universally lowered it might never get quite so high again. This is not quite the
same as Augustines claim that fallen humans are specially ignorant of right
and wrong, but it is close enough (and Augustine is vague enough) to make it
not unreasonable. It is even easier to make the case for disease and death; we
only have to imagine that Adam and Eve had an additional ingredient in their
physiologies that made their bodies particularly resilient, tough, and regenerative, so that they would never wear out whereas we have lost the ability to
synthesize this extra ingredient, just as hmophiliacs have lost the common
ability to synthesize blood clotting factors due to genetic abnormalities. Now
we are most likely to part company with Augustine over lust. Being prey to
strong and unruly desires is not obviously a heritable trait, and it is hard to
imagine adult humans without sexuality, ambition, or any other drive.16 Yet
Augustine again finds sexual desire especially revealing on this score, since
14
15
16
We at least have the hope of genetic mutation and adaptive pressure, to say nothing
of genetic engineering, to forestall such a future. Augustine had neither, since he
found it reasonable to suppose that only God can undo what only God can do.
We may find it particularly difficult to see how a just God could allow such penalties to assail later descendants that is, we may be led to question the morality
of inflicting genetic damage on offenders. Augustines answer is that God is not
vengeful, since these descendants are not themselves innocent, and hence merit
punishment in their own right. That depends, however, on his case for original
guilt being transmitted, and as we shall see this is by no means obvious (nor did
Augustine himself think so). The question is a matter for the morals of the Doctrine
of Original Sin rather than for its metaphysics, however, so I will shelve it.
Augustine also finds it hard to imagine, as full of turmoil (discordiosum) as we are
now: ciu. .. See also Rist [] Appendix .

1. A UGUSTINE
the genetic inheritance model relies on physiological means of transmission

in the case of human beings sexual intercourse which is inevitably spurred
on and accompanied by raw libido, even in marriage (nupt. et conc. ..).
Something of unbridled passion in the act of sexual intercourse is thereby imparted to the offspring,17 rendering its own desires, when developed, strong
and unruly, thereby passing along the third penalty of sin. Even lust, then,
might arguably be thought at least by Augustine to conform to the genetic inheritance model. Whatever we may think of his reasons for taking the
penalties of sin to be transmissible, there is no question that he thought they
were, and so present in all the descendants of Adam and Eve by a kind of
necessity. He could therefore conclude by (S) that they are features of human
nature: more exactly, that they have become features of human nature, to our
sorrow. Thus human nature has changed in at least these respects.
Guilt, however, is not readily susceptible to this approach. The sins of
the fathers are not those of the sons; moral transgression is neither heritable
nor physiologically transmissible. Adam and Eve may have been sinners, and
their children may yet sin, but the children of Adam and Eve have not eaten of
the forbidden fruit, and so seem innocent of the ancient sin. (Furthermore,
given their innocence, it seems wrong that they inherit the penalties of sin.)
Original guilt must necessarily affect all humans in some other fashion.
Augustine often speaks of original guilt as involving a debt (debitum). At
first glance this looks promising: debts can be inherited, so that the heirs and
assigns of an estate can be responsible for discharging the contractual obligations left outstanding at the death of the principal. Yet this will not do as an
account of original guilt. For debts are charged against an estate, not against
the heirs themselves; it is reasonable to pay off contractual obligations before
disbursing the estate, so that the heirs receive an appropriately diminished estate, but not reasonable to treat the heirs simply as though they had incurred
the debt. They did not. The estate, or perhaps by extension its heirs, may
be liable for the debt, but the heirs are not thereby guilty of anything.18 Re17
18
Augustine holds that prenatal events, and conception most of all, can affect the
child in the womb. He argues for this position extensively in his last works against
Julian. This view clearly shows the traces of folk-belief, of a piece with such wisdom as the idea that the womans looking at a picture of a handsome man during
sexual intercourse will cause her child to be handsome. Even if we grant Augustine
these folk-beliefs, however, his account doesnt generalize to non-sexual lusts.
Kirwan [] makes a similar point. We might also raise questions about the
morality of imposing a debt as punishment that the estate or the heir would never
be able to pay, to say nothing about whether this was understood to be part of the
punishment for violating Gods command.

1. A UGUSTINE
payment of a debt is not punishment but compensation; that is precisely the

point of the distinction between criminal law and civil law.19 Furthermore,
there is no clear sense in which we have an estate passed along from Adam,
against which any such debt could be charged. Hence the legal analogy with
debt cannot serve to explain original guilt. To his credit, Augustine does not
spend much time on it, calling on the analogy mostly for rhetorical purposes.
Augustine instead appeals to the distinction between committing a sin and
being in a sinful state, noted above. Committing a sin is a sufficient condition
for being in a sinful state; forgiveness is a necessary and sufficient condition of
release from a sinful state. (There are complicated questions about how forgiveness is related to punishment.) Furthermore, Augustine insists that free
choice of the will is a necessary condition for committing a sin: There can
be no sin that is not voluntary; the ignorant and the learned alike admit this
truth (uer. rel. .). He also holds that human infants are in a sinful state
in virtue of original guilt prior to any act of will on their part. These last two
claims are consistent if we deny that committing a sin is a necessary condition
for being in a sinful state. This is the tack Augustine takes to explain original
guilt.20 Adam and Eve are in a sinful state as a result of committing the ancient sin in Eden. Without personally committing that sin, their descendants
nevertheless share in their sinful state by having a special relation to Adam
and Eve, namely being identical with them in some sense.21 Just what sense
of identity is at stake was a question Augustine never resolved. He offers two
approaches.
19
20
21
Note however that punitive damages, though not a legal notion, makes civil compensation much more like criminal punishment. (The practise of imposing fines
as criminal punishment also blurs the line.) Yet the main distinction between guilt
and liability is clear, and Augustine recognizes it.
The obvious though morally distasteful analogy for Augustine should be slavery.
Someone who became a slave would normally remain one unless explicitly manumitted by the one to whom he is enslaved; any children of a slave are themselves
slaves, and are born that way there is nothing they need to do to enter the state
of slavery. There might be many ways of becoming a slave, including being sentenced to slavery as a form of punishment. The difficult point of analogy to work
out is why sinful status should be passed along, the way slave status is.
Augustine is helped to this view by his faulty text of Rom. :, which, like the Vulgate, reads per unum hominem in hunc mundum peccatum intravit et per peccatum mors et ita in omnes homines mors pertransiit in quo omnes peccaverunt:
Augustine identifies the in quo as Adam (pecc. mer. ..), and understands the
passage to assert our sinful condition via identity with Adam. Ambrosiaster understood it likewise. But the Greek text reads f , introducing an explanatory
clause, and cannot bear this interpretation.

1. A UGUSTINE
First, Augustine suggests that we are one in Adam as his descendants:

the human race is one by having a single source from which it has sprung.
But this notion of identity-in-descent just renames the problem. While it is
true that Adam is our common ancestor, that does not explain how we are
Adam in any sense relevant to original guilt. To this end Augustine proposes
that we are somehow literally contained in Adam and therefore are identical
with him (pecc. mer. ..):
Everyone sinned in Adam when they still all were that one man in his
nature, due to the power residing in him which made him able to produce
them.
This is more than the point that Adams descendants are descended from
Adam, and even more than the claim that Adam has all of his descendants
in him in potency. Augustine is a realist and a reductionist about modality.
He holds that there must be something metaphysically present in Adam from
which everything that arises from him is already contained his version of
the Stoic spermtikoi lgoi, the theory of rationes seminales expounded at
length in his literal commentary on Genesis. Each human being descended
from Adam (which is to say every human being) is thus contained in Adam in
a metaphysically robust sense, in his nature as Augustine says, so as to be
part of the unfolding program that is a ratio seminalis. All the generations of
the human race are metaphysically present in Adam at once, one in Adam.
Call this the containment theory.22
Yet even if we grant Augustine the containment theory and talk of each
human being as in Adam, we do not yet have the relevant identity needed
to explain original guilt. Adam may commit a sin and thus enter a sinful state
whilst I am in him, but this does not entail that I enter that sinful state as well,
much less that I remain in it when I am born outside of Adam in my proper
generation. Adam may be sinful without a part of him being sinful, just as
the finger of a liar is not thereby a liar. Augustine recognizes the point, but
simply insists that we are identical with Adam in virtue of being contained
in him, which sidesteps the difficulty rather than solving it.23 And without
22
23
The containment theory is close to the genetic inheritance model, in that Adams
descendants have a feature in virtue of being descended from Adam, but is based
on a different kind of explanation. For the genetic inheritance model, a trait is
transmitted from each generation to the next by some physiological means, so
that the possession of the trait is explained in pairwise stages along a chain back to
Adam. For the containment theory, guilt is passed along to Adams descendants
in virtue of their being literally in Adam when he entered a state of sin.
There is a slightly weaker position available to Augustine. He could maintain not
that we are identical with Adam, but that Adams sinful state permeates all his

1. A UGUSTINE
an explanation, there is no reason to think that we share Adams sinful state,

and hence no reason to think that human nature was altered in the Fall. No
wonder he found this approach unsatisfactory.
The second approach is found only in hints and suggestions in Augustines works, from conf. .. onwards, and may be termed the double
life theory.24 Apparently we lead not one but two lives, one common and
the other individual: we exist and share in a common life in Adam, and we
also exist and have a personal life beginning with birth (or strictly speaking
ensoulment); we acquire the second, personal, life without losing the first
common life. When Adam committed his ancient sin we were all alive in
him and not yet with our separate (personal) lives: separatim uiuens (ep. .).
Instead, we were one in him and with him, not having personal lives (propria
uita). Our souls seem to be indistinctly common in the common life, in some
sense pre-existent, but not yet leading their personal lives: qui suas et proprias uitas agerent (ep. ). Their individual personality differentiates souls,
but not at the expense of unity in Adam as soul or life; individual distinctness
is compatible with shared commonness.
This is rather sketchy, and more than a bit spooky. Lets take a leaf from
Augustines book and develop an analogy to make his double-life theory
somewhat less unintelligible. Think of (human) life as a large undifferentiated mass. Periodically a part of this mass will develop a nodule encrusted
with dirt, though after a time the dirt falls off. The nodule is an individual
soul, the dirt its body; the nodule is only formed with the dirt human life
only becomes an individual soul with embodiment though the dirt/body
may drop away and still leave the nodule differentiated from the mass. Each
nodule is still one with the whole mass, and remains part of the mass even
when individualized. Perhaps that is a better model for life and soul than
thinking of human souls as completely separate entities.
The ultimate provenance of the double-life theory may be Platos account
of the World-Soul in the Timaeus, though Augustines source is much more
likely to be some version of Plotinuss account of the hypostasis Soul in rela-
parts, so that any part of Adam is affected by it. Think of being It in the game
of Tag any part of Its body is such that being touched by that part counts as
being tagged by It; the Itness of It is present in all of Its bodily parts. Analogously, Adams sinfulness is such that it affects all his parts, including our inchoate
selves. Aquinass corporate account, described at the end of this article, has some
affinities with this weaker position.
24
I am indebted to Rist [] for this second approach, which he develops

from the pioneering work of Solignac [] and OConnell [].

2. A NSELM , O DO ,
AND
P SEUDO -J OSCELIN
tion to individual souls.25 Talk of Adam would go proxy for Gods creation
of the relevant hypostasis, in this case Human Life, and can also be taken
literally, referring to Adams personal life. In Paradise the whole of Human
Life would be in Adam,26 so that his personal life literally was the common
and universal life. When Adam sinned, then, the whole of Human Life was
suffused with original guilt (Simpl. ..). To the extent that every human
being has a common life, each soul will thenceforth be tainted with original
guilt.27 Augustine was notoriously undecided about the possible pre-existence
of the soul; the double-life theory allows him to eat his cake and have it too
by maintaining the existence of Soul but not of personal souls. It also provides an explanation of how original guilt affects humans after Adams sin, as
required. Thats enough for (S).
The sticking-point on the second approach is the terrible obscurity of the
metaphysics that are supposed to support the double-life theory, especially
the peculiar relation of the one Human Life to the many individual lives. It
is no news that Augustine was influenced by platonism, but he owes us an
explanation of the details if they are taken to support as important a doctrine
as the Doctrine of Original Sin. Again he seems dissatisfied with this approach, never developing it even to the point sketched here. It is suggestive,
but no more; and with the passing of classical antiquity in the Latin West,
Augustines brand of neoplatonic speculation had little future. It was left to
later generations to find an acceptable way of explaining the transmission of
original guilt.
2. A NSELM , O DO ,
AND
P SEUDO -J OSCELIN
Augustines failure to provide an adequate theory underlying the Doctrine of Original Sin cast a long shadow. It was not until the close of the
eleventh century that treatises devoted solely to the question were again written, and then two were produced almost at the same time, ca. 1100: the De
conceptu uirginali et de originali peccato by Anselm of Canterbury, and the De
peccato originali by Odo of Tournai. They both adopt the framework of the
25
26
27
See for instance enn. .., where the issue comes up in discussing the nature of
memory, a topic of great interest to Augustine.
Conveniently putting Eve aside. Augustine thinks that we are entitled to do so on
the grounds that Eves creation from Adams rib shows that her life is a shared part
of his. Anselm holds likewise (conc. uirg. ).
Augustine holds that in general personal sin affects Human Life; why later sins,
or the sins of later generations, do not change human nature is that you can only
break the window once: ciu. ..

2. A NSELM , O DO ,
AND
P SEUDO -J OSCELIN
problem as laid down by Augustine they could hardly do otherwise but

with modifications. Ill focus on Anselm, the better philosopher.
Anselm begins with a metaphysical thesis about the composition of human beings (conc. uirg. ):28
Together in every human being there are (a) the nature, by which he is a
human being like all others; (b) the person, by which he is distinct from
others, for instance when one is called this fellow or that one, or by a
proper name such as Adam or Abel.
Some properties pertain primarily to the (individual) person and others to the
(common) nature; they are personal or nature-al (a. k. a. original) properties. The one may affect the other, Anselm notes: sicut personale transit ad naturam, ita naturale ad personam (conc. uirg. ). Adams human nature required
him, the person, to eat, since his nature was created to need to eat. Yet Adams
choice to eat the forbidden fruit does not stem from his nature; it is instead a
personal choice, although what a person does isnt accomplished without his
nature (quod tamen egit persona non fecit sine natura), to be sure (conc. uirg. ).29
Most sin will be personal, and personal alone; Adams sin has the distinctive
feature of being a natural (original) sin as well his personal sin affects his
nature. Lets see how this works.
Anselm accepts Augustines account of the penalties of sin. However, he
offers a different explanation of original guilt. According to Anselm, Adam
and Eve were created having perfect justice (conc. uirg. ), that is, uprightness
of the will preserved for its own sake (conc. uirg. ). As a feature of human
nature this is something Adam and Eve ought to have. When Adam sinned,
he forfeited his uprightness of will, having done what he ought not; his state of
sin therefore consists in a dual condition: not having perfect justice on the one
hand, and being obliged to have it on the other hand (conc. uirg. ). A sinful
state is thus a kind of deficiency, the absence of a positive feature that ought to
be present. Hence Adam committed a sin (for which blame and punishment
are appropriate) and thereby put himself in a defective state, lacking perfect
justice. Now heres the trick. Since Adam lost his original uprightness of will,
he didnt have it to pass along to his descendants; Augustines worries about
the mechanism for transmission are misguided the point is that Adam didnt
28
29
Licet enim in unoqunque homine simul sint et natura qua est homo, sicut sunt
omnes alii, et persona qua discernitur ab aliis, ut cum dicitur iste uel ille, siue
proprio nomine, ut Adam aut Abel. See also inc. Verb. .
Odo of Tournai uses the same terminology of personal and natural sin, and asserts
that because the person is not without the nature, the sin of the person is also a sin
of the nature (sed quia persona non est sine natura, pecatum personae est etiam naturae):
pecc. or. B.

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have what he ought to have had to pass along, and so his descendants all lack
the same feature (conc. uirg. ):30
To be sure, what made [infants] not have the justice they ought to is not
their personal will, as in the case of Adam, but a deficiency in their nature
(egestas naturalis) which the nature itself got from Adam. For [human]
nature was in Adam and none of it outside him; stripped of the justice it
had, it always lacks it (unless it receives [divine] assistance). Accordingly,
since the nature subsists in persons and persons do not exist without the
nature, the nature makes the persons of infants sinful. Thus in the case of
Adam did a person deprive the nature of the good that is justice, and the
nature rendered deficient makes all the persons whom it procreates from
itself sinners by the same deficiency.
The damage suffered by human nature isnt a positive feature but a deficiency,
a lack, much the way an automobile can be damaged by losing a part. Furthermore, Anselm continues, the defective state in which Adams descendants
find themselves is not a matter of their committing a sin to be in that state, as
was the case with Adam; hence infants who die before capable of committing
sins of their own suffer a milder condemnation than they would otherwise
(conc. uirg. ). However, the deficiency for which they are condemned not
having the uprightness of will they ought to have makes it inevitable that
they will in turn commit sins of their own, of which they will be guilty; hence
guilt is a necessary feature of postlapsarian human nature and affects each
human being personally (conc. uirg. ).
Anselms account of the inner workings of sin pays the price of giving
up something Augustine thought essential to the Doctrine of Original Sin,
namely the claim that each human being is from the moment of birth literally in a sinful state guilt in the strong sense. Anselm has replaced Augustinian original guilt with two factors: (a) a deficiency in human nature,
the lack of something that should be present, due to Adams loss of original
justice; (b) the assured inevitability of personal sin, due to the deficiency in
human nature. Whether (a)(b) are jointly sufficient for original guilt is by no
means clear. Nor is the damage suffered by human nature quite the same.
30
Nempe quod in illis non est iustitia quam debent habere, non hoc fecit illorum
uoluntas personalis, sicut in Adam, sed egestas naturalis, quam ipsa natura accepit
ab Adam. In Adam namque, extra quem de illa nihil erat, est nudata iustitia quam
habebat, et ea semper nisi adinta caret. Hac ratione quondam natura subsistit in
personis et personae non sunt sine natura, facit natura personas infantum peccatrices. Sic spoliauit persona naturam bono iustitiae in Adam, et natura egens facta
omnes personas, quas ipsa de se procreat, eadem egestate peccatrices et iniustas
facit. Odo of Tournai also describes Adams sin as a case of the soul that ought
to have justice freely abandoning it (pecc. or. ).

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For Augustine, human nature is itself in a permanent state of sin, whereas for
Anselm human nature is deficient and doomed to sin. Anselm insists that the
deficiency is a moral failing on the grounds that human nature lacks something it ought to have (debitum). But this runs into the objection noted above
with respect to inherited liability, namely that debt is not guilt and compensation not punishment.
There is a deeper metaphysical problem with Anselms account. Even if
we grant that (a)(b) are a satisfactory explanation of original guilt, a point
I cheerfully abandon to theologians, Anselm cannot simply dismiss the demand for an explanation of its transmission. Grant that Adams personal sin
caused him to lose , so that he did not have to pass along. This explains
Abels lack of only if Abel could get only from Adam. On the other hand,
if Adam and Eve had not sinned, their descendants would also have original
justice, as they themselves did (conc. uirg. ). The upshot is that Anselm takes
the presence or absence of original justice to be a heritable trait.31 Otherwise,
its presence (or its absence as a deficiency) in Adams descendants stands
in need of explanation, which Anselm does not provide. Human nature is
present in every human being, but unless we know more about how it is (or
comes to be) present in every human being, whether damaged or not, we will
not understand why human beings are as they are. And that returns us to
the question with which we began. What is human nature such that it can be
changed as a result of human choices and actions?
Anselms official answer to this question is more or less Augustines answer, explicated by (S): human nature consists in features that affect all human
beings, roughly the essence and the propria. But there are traces of an alternate
answer in Anselm, an answer that tantalizingly hints at a subversive approach
to metaphysics. Look again at Anselms claim that if Adam and Eve had not
sinned their descendants would also have original justice. Yet Adam and Eve
did sin, and their descendants are afflicted with original guilt and the penalties
of sin. What if Eve sinned but Adam did not? Anselm says that only Eve and
not the whole human race would be lost, for God could create from Adam
another woman and they could reproduce sinlessly (conc. uirg. ).32 Put aside
31
32
How could Anselm think that a deficiency is heritable? Perhaps it has to do with
the relative strength of the affections of the will, namely the will-to-happiness and
the will-to-justice; as physical strength might be passed on from father to son, so
too moral fiber.
In the spirit of Anselms reply, we could image Adam and Eve sinlessly having Jack
and Jill, and only then committing the ancient sin: the descendants of Adam and
Eve would be afflicted with original sin, the descendants of Jack and Jill sinless.
That raises the question of interbreeding; Anselms remarks about Gods having

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the doctrinal issue for the moment and focus on Anselms reasoning. What is
true of human nature depends, at least in part, on what is true of the several
individual human beings. To put the point suggestively, human nature seems
to depend on what is true of human beings collectively.
With this thought in mind, consider Anselms description of original sin
(conc. uirg. ):33
Since the whole of human nature was in them and none of it was outside
them, the whole was weakened and corrupted.
Elsewhere, speaking of Adam, Anselm says that by his defeat the whole of
human [nature] (tota humana) was corrupted and leavened, so to speak, with
sin (cur deus homo .). A similar suggestion is found in Odo of Tournai
(pecc. or. C):34
If Adam sinned, man sinned. For if this man sinned, human nature,
which is man, sinned. But at that time the whole of human nature was in
him, and nowhere else was there man as species. Thus when the person
(namely this man) sinned, the nature as a whole (namely man as common) sinned.
The emphasis in Anselm and in Odo is on human nature as a kind of whole,
a whole we identify by enumerating its parts, namely Adam and Eve (none
33
34
to create another woman for Adam were Eve alone to sin suggest that original
guilt is a strongly dominant trait. Aquinas argues that dominance is a feature of
the parents gender, not the trait in itself, so that if Adam were to sin but not Eve
their children would be blighted with original sin, whereas if Eve were to sin but
not Adam their children would be free of it (sum. theol. a.ae..).
Et quia tota humana natura in illis erat et extra ipsos de illa nihil erat, tota infirmata et corrupta est. See also conc. uirg. : humana natura quae sic erat in
Adam tota ut nihil de illa extra illum esset. . .
Et si peccant Adam, peccauit homo; quia si peccauit ipse homo, peccauit humana
natura, quae est homo. Sed humana natura tota tunc erat in ipso, nec usquam
erat alibi specialis homo. Cum ergo peccauit persona, scilicet ipse homo, peccauit tota natura, scilicet communis homo. Odo makes the same point at greater
length earlier (pecc. or. DA): Ecce peccauit utraque persona suggestione serpentis, peccauit, inquam, utraque necdum substantiam suam habentibus
alibi quam in se, quae nondum erat alibi quam ibi. Si uero persona peccauit, sine
sua substantia non peccauit. Est ergo personae substantia peccato uitiata, et inficit
peccatum substantiam, quae nusquam est extra peccatricem personam. Substantia
uero una et eadem est utriusque personae communis ipsis et specialis. In peccatricibus ergo personis est infecta peccato natura specialis, quae non est alibi quam in
ipsis. In anima Adam ergo peccato tota natura humanae animae; quae communis
substantia est, est specialis utriusque. Extra has enim nondum est eam esse. Si
enim fuisset in aliis diuisa, pro ipsis solis non inficeretur tota. Quia si peccassent
istae, forsitan non peccassent aliae, in quibus esset salua humanae animae natura.
Nunc autem ubi poterat anima humana munda esse quae peccatrix erat ubique?

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of it was outside them). The subversive idea hiding in Anselms and Odos
apparently ordinary remarks is the notion that human nature is the collective
whole made up of individual human beings that we look to individuals to
ground claims about the nature. If that is correct, then the nature is in some
appropriate sense posterior to the individual, for the nature depends on what
individuals are collectively like.
To appreciate the radical character of this idea, take another look at (S),
Augustines simplifying assumption: anything that must hold of all humans is
thereby part of human nature. The must in (S) serves to restrict our attention
to propria, to necessary if not essential features of human nature, where the
omnipresence of a feature is a reasonably good guide to its necessity. Yet there
is no reason why the interesting features of a given natural kind are restricted
to strictly necessary properties. It is an important feature about human beings
that most are right-handed, that we usually have ten fingers and ten toes, that
we have reached the Moon, and that we dont live in Antarctica. To take the
point a step further: human nature is in a matter of our typical behaviour,
activities, surroundings, and so on. We discover what human nature is by
looking at human beings collectively, since what we are is a matter of how
we all are. Hence we should replace (S) with a thesis that makes this idea
explicit:
(S*) Whatever is typical of the members of a species is part of the specific
nature.
According to (S*), the specific nature is not a pre-existent abstract entity, but
rather something constructed from the individual members of the species in
question. This is a conception of nature that allows historical change with a
vengeance: any relevant shift sufficiently widespread in the species will be a
shift in the nature. That is because there is no more to the species than the
characteristics of its members.
The conception of specific nature sketched here is not at home in metaphysics. Instead, it is closer to the way in which a biologist, not a metaphysician, speaks of genera and species (which is the only usage of genus and
species left standing today). The beaver, the biologist tells us, is a flourishing
species; the New World beaver ranges from northern Mexico to the Arctic,
living in colonies around streams, rivers, and forest-edged lakes; the beaver
builds dome-shaped island lodges of sticks plastered with mud; the beaver
has a lifespan of seven to twenty years, and so on. The species exists in and
through its current members, which is why it makes sense to talk about a (biological) species becoming extinct. Beavers do not cease to be beavers even
if they are taken out of their typical habitats; a beaver airlifted to the Sahara
desert would still be a beaver, though perhaps it would not survive for long.

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If enough beavers adapt to desert living, though, we might be tempted to say

that beavers live in wetlands and in deserts the nature of the species has
changed, through our intervention (airlifting beavers to the Sahara) and biological adaptation. As with beavers and their habitats, so with all species; the
nature of a species is determined by the collection of its members. Biology is
metaphysics naturalized.
This line of thought is admittedly no more than a tantalizing suggestion
in Anselm and Odo, but it emerges full-blown in the next generation. An
anonymous author known as Pseudo-Joscelin, from a remark in John of Salisbury,35 wrote a treatise De generibus et speciebus in the first decades of the
twelfth century in which he proposes that genera and species are collections of
their members. Pseudo-Joscelin argues that the biological conception of genera and species, as outlined above, is the best account of genera and species
available, and that it does all the work the metaphysician wanted to do with
genera and species at least, all the work reported in Porphyry and Boethius,
the core of metaphysical knowledge at the time. Much of his treatise is given
over to exposition and defence of his view (gen. et spec. ):36
Hence I say that the species is not merely the essence man in Socrates
or in some other individual man, but rather it is the whole collection
produced from them as its material. That is, the species is one thing
a flock, so to speak conjoined from the essence man that Socrates
sustains, along with each of the other [essences] of this nature. This whole
collection, even though it is essentially many, is nevertheless called one
species and one universal and one nature by the authorities, just as the
populace is called one even though it is collected from many persons.
The species is technically the collection of individual specific forms from
each member, according to Pseudo-Joscelin; this provides an intensional way
to distinguish extensionally identical collections, as might happen if only
beavers survived a plague affecting all animals; we could nevertheless distinguish the species beaver from the genus animal by recourse to their distinct
35
36
John of Salisbury, metalog. 2.17.27: There is another philosopher who, along with
Joscelin the Bishop of Soissons, attributes universality to things collected into one
and denies it of singulars.
Speciem igitur dico esse non illam essentiam hominis solum quae est in Socrate
uel quae est in aliquo alio indiuiduorum sed totam illam collectionem ex singulis illis materiis factam, id est unum quasi gregem de essentia hominis Socrates
sustinet, et singulis aliis huius naturae coniunctum. Quae tota collectio, quamuis
essentialiter multa sit, ab auctoritatibus tamen una species unum uniuersale una
natura appellatur, sicut populus (quamuis ex multis personis collectus sit) unus
dicitur.

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individualized forms.
Pseudo-Joscelin was taken to task for his views by Peter Abelard, who
roundly criticizes the idea, but whose criticism consists largely of pointing
out that biological collections do not logically function the way well-behaved
integral wholes should. But Pseudo-Joscelin is willing to accept some of the
counterintuitive consequences of his view, e. g. that the species changes when
its members change, as part of the biological conception of natures (gen. et
spec. ):37
Now pay attention: its true that the humanity that existed a thousand
years ago, or yesterday, is not what exists today. But it is nevertheless the
same as the latter i. e. not of dissimilar creation. For it is not the case that
whatever is the same as another is identical to it. . . Socrates too consists
in many more atoms as a man than as a boy, and yet he is the same.
The members of the species certainly change, so it is not literally identical
over time. Nevertheless, we do identify it as the same species, on the grounds
that its members are not of dissimilar creation: born in the same way of
the same kind of parents, that is, a suggestion reminiscent of the modern
biological conception of a species as a group made up of members that can
reproduce functional offspring. Once the species is recognized to be both the
same and different, and the respects in which each holds true, there is nothing
more to add.
Pseudo-Joscelin is clear that the collection of individual that make up a
species is not arbitrary. He images the case in which there are only ten human
beings, and someone asking whether a subcollection would count as a species
(gen. et spec. ):38
Yet if anyone were to object that therefore what is constituted out of five
members is a species, for it materially inheres in many, reply as follows:
This is irrelevant, for [the subcollection] is not a nature, and only natures
37
38
Attende! Verum est quidem quod illa humanitas quae ante mille annos fuit uel
quae heri, non est illa quae hodie est. Sed tamen est eadem cum illa, id est creationis non dissimilis. Non enim quicquid idem est cum alio idem est illud. . . Socrates
quoque ex pluribus atomis constat uir quam puer, et tamen idem est.
Quod si quis opponat: Ergo constitutum ex quinque essentiis species est, ipsum
enim pluribus inhaeret materialiter, responde modo: Nil ad rem quia non est
natura, hic autem tantum agitur de naturis. Si autem quaeras: Quid appellent
naturam? Audi: Naturam dico quicquid dissimilis creationis est ab omnibus quae
non sunt uel illud uel de illo, siue una essentia sit siue plures, ut Socrates dissimilis
creationis ab omnibus quae non sunt Socrates. Similiter et homo species est dissimilis creationis ab omnibus rebus quae non sunt illa species uel aliqua essentia
illius speciei, quod non conuenit cuilibet collecto ex aliquot essentiis humanitatis.
Nam illud non est dissimilis creationis a reliquis essentiis quae in illa specie sunt.

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are in question here. If you should inquire what a nature is, listen: I call a
nature whatever is of dissimilar creation from all those that are not either
it or belonging to it, whether it be one or several. For example, Socrates
is of dissimilar creation from all those who are not Socrates. Likewise,
the species man is of dissimilar creation from all things that are not that
species or a member of that species. And this is not suitable for any given
subcollection of human beings, since it is not of dissimilar creation from
the others who are in that species.
A nature consists of everything that shares a common origin, and is set apart
by that origin. The collection of members will change over time, and as the
characteristics of the members change so too does the nature they defines,
though the collection does not define a different nature simply in virtue of
having different members.
For Pseudo-Joscelin, as for the modern biologist, the species exists in and
through (all) its (current) members. That is what allows us to make claims
about the species as a whole in virtue of only some of its members, such as
The human race has reached the Moon. The species is in a way wholly
present in any of its members (gen. et spec. ):39
However, I say that humanity does inhere in Socrates not that the whole
is used up in Socrates; rather, only one part of it is informed with Socrateity. This is how I am said to touch a wall. It isnt that each of my parts
is in contact with the wall. Maybe only the tip of my finger does. But by
this contact I am said to touch it.
Socrates is both a member of the collection that makes up humanity, and
a representative of that species, so that truths about Socrates are also truths
about the species to which he belongs (and conversely).
Although couched in the language of metaphysics, Pseudo-Joscelins biological conception of natures subverts traditional metaphysics, since it locates
the objects of study in collections of individuals out in the world, rather than
in essences contemplated from the safe haven of the metaphysicians armchair. Pseudo-Joscelin makes no mention of the Doctrine of Original Sin in
his short treatise, occupied as he is with taking on traditional metaphysics;
but the groundwork for his position was laid by Anselm and Odo, in the suggestive hints they offered while wrestling with the equally knotty problem of
original guilt.
39
Inhaerere autem dico humanitatem Socrati, non quod tota consumatur in Socrate
sed una tantum eius pars Socratitate informatur. Sic enim dicor tangere parietem,
non quod singulae partes mei parieti haereant sed forsitan sola summitas digiti qua
haerente dicor tangere.

E PILOGUE : A QUINAS
AND
AND
H IGH S CHOLASTICISM
Attractive as the biological conception of natures may be, at least to our

modern sensibilities, it didnt catch on. We hear no more about it after the
middle of the twelfth century. Part of the explanation is undoubtedly the
tidal wave of Latin translations of Aristotle; when the dust finally settled on
the codices, the innovative works of the twelfth century had been eclipsed
by the technicalities of Aristotelian philosophy. Yet the philosophers of High
Scholasticism were as committed as ever to the Doctrine of Original Sin, as
well as to the authority of Augustine. Hence they also faced the challenge
of making sense of the idea that human nature was damaged in the course of
time, literally changing for the worse in the Fall, roughly along the lines of the
genetic inheritance model. Rather than follow up on the biological conception of natures, though, they opted to explain the transmission of original guilt
through the traditional metaphysical notion of a single shared human nature.
This traditional notion was expanded not through biological considerations,
but through a corporatist account of humanity combined with an emphasis
on Anselms account of original sin as a kind of deficiency.
Aquinas will serve as an impeccably orthodox illustration. After endorsing Augustines view that the guilt of original sin is transmitted from
Adam to his descendants by way of origin, Aquinas presents at length in
sum. theol. aae.. his new model for understanding how this happens:40
40
Et ideo alia uia procedendum est, dicendo quod omnes homines qui nascuntur ex
Adam, possunt considerari ut unus homo, inquantum conueniunt in natura, quam
a primo parente accipiunt; secundum quod in ciuilibus omnes qui sunt unius communitatis, reputantur quasi unum corpus, et tota communitas quasi unus homo.
Porphyrius etiam dicit quod participatione speciei plures homines sunt unus homo.
Sic igitur multi homines ex Adam deriuati, sunt tanquam multa membra unius
corporis. Actus autem unius membri corporalis, puta manus, non est uoluntarius
uoluntate ipsius manus, sed uoluntate animae, quae primo mouet membra. Unde
homicidium quod manus committit, non imputaretur manui ad peccatum, si consideraretur manus secundum se ut diuisa a corpore, sed imputatur ei inquantum
est aliquid hominis quod mouetur a primo principio motiuo hominis. Sic igitur inordinatio quae est in isto homine, ex Adam generato, non est uoluntaria uoluntate
ipsius sed uoluntate primi parentis, qui mouet motione generationis omnes qui ex
eius origine deriuantur, sicut uoluntas animae mouet omnia membra ad actum.
Unde peccatum quod sic a primo parente in posteros deriuatur, dicitur originale,
sicut peccatum quod ab anima deriuatur ad membra corporis, dicitur actuale. Et
sicut peccatum actuale quod per membrum aliquod committitur, non est peccatum
illius membri nisi inquantum illud membrum est aliquid ipsius hominis, propter
quod uocatur peccatum humanum; ita peccatum originale non est peccatum huius
personae, nisi inquantum haec persona recipit naturam a primo parente; unde et

AND
We should take another route [to explain original sin], holding that all
men born of Adam can be considered as one man, insofar as they agree
in their nature, which they take from the First Parent just as in the
social realm all who belong to one community are held as though one
body, and the whole community as though one man. Porphyry also says
that many men are one man by participation in the species. This is how
many men, descended from Adam, are then as so many members of one
body. Now the action of one member of the body, such as the hand, is
not voluntary by the hands own will, but rather by the souls will which
primarily moves the members. Accordingly, a murder that the hand commits is not imputed to the hand as a sin (if the hand were considered in
itself as divided from the body), but instead is imputed to it inasmuch as
it is something belonging to a man and which is moved by the primary
motive principle of the man. Hence this is the way the disorderliness in
this man, born of Adam, is not voluntary by his will, but by the will of the
First Parent, who moves with the movement of generation all those who
originate from him, just as the souls will moves all the [bodily] members
to action. Accordingly, the sin derived from the First Parent in his descendants in this manner is called original, the way the sin derived from
the soul with respect to the bodily members is called actual. And just as
the actual sin committed by a bodily member is the sin of that member
only inasmuch as that member is something belonging to this man, and
so is called a human sin, so too original sin is a sin of this person only
inasmuch as this person takes his nature from the First Parent, whereby it
is called a sin of the nature.
Aquinas proposes that we stand in a double relation to Adam. On the one
hand, as Adams descendants we are human, deriving our nature from his.
On the other hand, Adam stands to all his descendants, in virtue of the
fact that they are his descendants, as their corporate head whose actions
call responsibility on all equally. The analogy is with the body politic. Our
metaphysically shared human nature qualifies us for membership in the human community, rendering us liable to individual guilt for our collective
misdeed (though the action of Adam as our leader so to speak), way in
which one might hold each and every German of the time guilty of Hitlers
evils. Aquinas sums up his approach pithily: A man may be under a family disgrace from birth, brought about by the misdeed of some ancestor
(sum. theol. a.ae.. ad ).41 The Fall itself consisted in Gods withdrawal
41
uocatur peccatum naturae.

Aliquis qui nascitur patitur ignominiam generis ex culpa alicuius progenitorum

AND
of grace from Adam and Eve. The prelapsarian condition was one in which
human nature was surrounded by Gods grace and thus supernaturally made
immortal,42 wise, and able to act rightly; the postlapsarian condition one in
which justifying grace is absent (sum. theol. aae.. and a.. ad ). Citing Anselm, Aquinas holds that the formal element in original sin is the privation of original justice, which itself is a gift of grace (sum. theol. aae.. ad
). Aquinas agrees with Anselm that such a privation is not strictly speaking
a case of sin, since no individual act of volition need be present for someone
to have original sin. On the corporate analogy, Adam has literally sinned
for each one of us. Aquinas maintains that original sin is therefore called sin
analogically (sent. .. art. ad ).
Aquinass account of original sin, with its synthesis of Augustine and
Anselm, clearly abandons the biological conception of natures. Whether it
is a better theory is a question that can be put aside here. It is enough for
our purposes to note that the tantalizing suggestions found in Anselm and
Odo are passed over in favor of the traditional metaphysical understanding
of natures. Aquinas is merely representative on this score. To the best of
my knowledge, no medival philosopher after the middle of the twelfth century takes the biological conception of nature seriously, until the end of the
Middle Ages. Medival metaphysics can therefore proceed untroubled by
the spectre of biology. It is one of the great lost possibilities in the history of
metaphysics.
Peter King University of Toronto
42
causatam.
So sum. theol. a... Aquinas does not draw Augustines distinction between immortality, mortality, and being destined to die. See also sum. theol. a.. and
aae...

S ECONDARY S OURCES
SECONDARY SOURCES
Beatrice, Pier. Tradux peccati: Alle fonte della dottrina agostiniana del peccato originale. Milano: Vita e pensiero .
Kelley, John N. D. Early Christian Doctrines. London: Adam & Charles Black
(fourth edition).
Kirwan, Christopher. Augustine. The Arguments of the Philosophers. London:
Routledge .
Mann, William. Augustine on Evil and Original Sin in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump,
Cambridge University Press : .
OConnell, Robert. The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustines Later Works. New
York .
Rist, John. Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized. Cambridge University Press
.
` saint Augustin in
Solignac, A. La condition de lhomme pecheur
dapres
Nouvelle revue theologique
(): .
A BBREVIATIONS
c. Iul. imp.
ciu.
conc. uirg.
conf.
corrept.
ench.
ep.
gen. et spec.
gr. et pecc. or.
inc. Verb.
lib. arb.
mor.
nupt. et conc.
pecc. mer.
pecc. or.
sent.
Simpl.
uer. rel.
Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum

De ciuitate Dei
De conceptu uirginali et peccato originali
Confessiones
De correptione et gratia
Enchiridion
Epistolae
De generibus et speciebus
De gratia Christi et de peccato originali
De incarnatione Verbi
De libero arbitrio
De moribus eccesiae catholicae
De nuptiis et concupiscentia
De peccatorum meritis et remissione
De peccato originali
In Sententiis libri quatuor
Ad Simplicianum
De uera religione

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c Peter King, forthcoming.

See any of Augustines early anti-Manichan writings, e. g. c. Fel. ., or later

Lucifer was completely voluntary.3 Original Sin is an imitation or better:

See uirg. ., s. ., and s. ..

With regard to (a): Augustine notes that pride essentially involves an

Augustine initially calls this a judgment (consilium), his straightforward rendering

MacDonald [] explores the ways in which morally objectionable acts can be

choice (namely whether to exalt his throne above Gods).

% probability of Gods being merciful. If anything, Anselm goes on to note,

the pluperfect), the conclusion of which Anselm states as follows: 41

Then why did he will it?

Peter King University of Toronto

c Peter King, forthcoming.

Augustine. De libero arbitrio, ed. William Green, in Corpus christianorum series

Augustinus-Lexicon. Basel: Schwabe AG . Vol. : .

c Peter King, forthcoming.

c Peter King, forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy.

Christian doctrine traditionally holds that human beings are damaged

An earlier version of this paper was presented on March at the University

Augustines term uitiata is etymologically connected with uitium (vice or defect),

Sexual arousal is not merely a physiological phenomenon, though it may be that

human nature has been damaged and deformed.

the genetic inheritance model relies on physiological means of transmission

payment of a debt is not punishment but compensation; that is precisely the

First, Augustine suggests that we are one in Adam as his descendants:

an explanation, there is no reason to think that we share Adams sinful state,

I am indebted to Rist [] for this second approach, which he develops

problem as laid down by Augustine they could hardly do otherwise but

If enough beavers adapt to desert living, though, we might be tempted to say

Attractive as the biological conception of natures may be, at least to our

uocatur peccatum naturae.

Peter King University of Toronto

Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum

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