1517–1559

The Reformers on Original Sin and Total Depravity: Luther and Calvin

Already in the Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517) Luther wrote that a human being, like a bad tree, can only will evil, and that virtue without grace is sin. To be a sinner, for Luther, means to have one's whole nature permeated by sin; "flesh" in Paul is the whole person craving self-justification; the will retains only an absolutely passive capacity to be turned toward God by His Word. Calvin in the Institutes defined original sin as "a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul"; nature in itself is good, but the supernatural gifts were lost and reason and will corrupted. According to Berkhof, the Reformers, against the Catholic understanding of original sin as the absence of original justice, taught hereditary corruption and guilt, but allowed for civil righteousness.