The WESTMINSTER LARGER Catechism
Q 21.
Did man continue in that estate wherein God at first created him?A. Our first parents being left to the freedom of their own will, through the temptation of Satan, transgressed the commandment of God in eating the forbidden fruit; and thereby fell from the estate of innocency wherein they were created.1
Proofs
1
Gen 3:6–8, 13; Eccl 7:29; 2 Cor 11:3.Reformed theologians, following Augustine, customarily speak of man in fourfold States. Before the Fall, man was in a state of being able to sin (posse peccare); after the Fall he was unable not to sin (non posse non peccare); when he is regenerated by the Holy Spirit he become able not to sin (posses non peccare); and finally when he is glorified at death, he becomes unable to sin (non posse peccare).
The answer to our catechism question is referring our first parents’ fall from the first state (the state wherein they were created), into the state of sin. Earlier, in WLC 17, we say that man was endowed with original righteousness, though he was subject to change.
The fact that he is subject to change is obvious from the fact that he fell. On the other hand, man’s original righteousness is taught in the Scriptures in Ephesians 4:24 as well as Ecclesiastes 7:29—"Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions" (Ecc 7:29).
Now, having original sin means that fallen man will always be inclined towards sin, so likewise, having original righteousness meant that man would by nature pursue after righteousness.
How then could man have been tempted by Satan to fall, when his heart was always inclined to righteousness? Well, this question will have to remain unanswered, though most Reformed theologians would insist that it was unbelief (that affects the heart), that caused Adam and Eve to fall under the temptation of Satan.
In any case, we must remember that Adam and Eve were not only under obligation not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were under the Covenant of Works with an obligation to keep the entire Moral Law. Although
the sin of Adam and Eve by which they fell from the estate of innocency may be rightly denominated as the sin of eating the forbidden fruit, in actual fact, it is a complex aggregate of many sins rather than a simple breaking of one commandment.
Turretin expresses this fact well:
It is certain that we must not regard that fall as any particular sin, such as theft or adultery, but as a general apostasy and defection from God. It was a violation not only of the special positive law about not eating the forbidden fruit, but of the whole moral law included in it, and thus also of the obedience which man owed to God, his Creator (especially by reason of the covenant entered into with him). Thus here is, as it were, a complicated disease and a total aggregate of various acts, both internal and external, impinging against both tables of the laws. For as by unbelief and contempt of the divine word, ingratitude, pride and profanation of the divine name, he transgressed the first table, so he transgressed the second by want of affection (astorgia) towards his children, by homicide (precipitating himself and his children into death), by intemperance and gluttony, theft and appropriation of another’s property (without his consent), unlawful love and deprave concupiscence (IET, T9, Q6.2).
It is for this reason that it is not entirely a fruitful exercise to debate on which was the first sin: Was it when Eve took the fruit? Or was it when she allowed herself to be beguiled by the serpent and so misrepresented God’s word (Gen 3:2-3). Or was it Adam who first sinned by not taking the leadership and responding to the serpent when he was with Eve all along (Gen 3:6).
For the fact that the sin of eating the forbidden fruit was the central marker is the reason why the Scripture insists that Eve fell first (1 Tim 2:14; 2
Cor 11:3). But for the fact that Adam was the Covenant head of all mankind descending from him by natural generation, we see the Scripture and all theologians speaking about the consequence of Adam’s transgression rather than Eve’s transgression (1Cor 15:22).By our first parents’ fall into sin, they lost their innocency (concerning sin) and their original righteousness. By Adam’s fall, all mankind descending from him by natural generation are imputed with original and will face death.