The Human Condition
Most people, religious or otherwise, would agree that the world and the people in it are not in an ideal state. A look at the news or inside oneself reveals injustice, suffering, and evil intent. For Jews and Christians, this situation is traced back to a primeval rebellion of humanity against God, the Sin of Adam).
Christians believe that human beings were created to live in harmony with God, one another, and the whole of creation. Yet, through humanity’s turning away from God — often referred to as the Fall — this harmony was lost. The result is a world marked by suffering, injustice, and death, where people struggle to live as they were meant to and experience a deep disconnection from the divine source of life.
Imagine if our ancestors had precipitated an environmental catastrophe, such as nuclear war, which made the environment difficult to inhabit and the individuals born into it damaged to one extent or another by radiation. Both the world and the individuals in it need to be saved, rescued , redeemed and the individuals are incapable of saving themselves.
Another analogy is someone having been born into slavery. In order to regain the freedom we were created for, we need to be redeemed, ie. we need to be purchased from the slave owner, or the slave owner needs to be defeated in battle.
This fallen condition is understood not simply as moral failure, but as a wounded state of human nature itself. Christians across traditions affirm that we have inherited a tendency or inclination toward self-centredness and sin — a kind of inner distortion that draws us away from the good we long for. Our freedom, though real, is no longer whole: we are unable, apart from God’s help — what Christians call grace, the freely given power and love of God — to love and obey Him as we should.
All Christian traditions agree that we have inherited a situation from which we need Jesus to rescue us but beliefs about the exact nature, extent and consequences of Adam’s sin are described in different ways.
- Some say that we have inherited Adam’s guilt. ie we are born sinful, others say that we have just inherited a propensity to sin. ie. Each one bears responsibility for our own sins but not for Adam’s.
- Some say that Adam’s sin removed even our freedom to take the imitative to choose to ask for help and we need “prevenient grace” to restore that freedom. Others say that we all can choose to be rescued or not.
- Some say that rescue is only available to those whom God has chosen, others say that anyone can be saved.
The following list summarises the stance taken by major traditions today. Numbers in brackets show an approximate number of adherents as a proportion of the whole Church.
- Catholics (50%)
- We have inherited a wounded nature and an inclination to sin but not Adam’s guilt.
- Our freedom remains, but it is weakened and incapable of achieving communion with God without grace.
- the Fall brought a loss of original holiness and a disordering of human desires (concupiscence), yet the human will is still able to respond to God’s grace and cooperate with it.
- God gives “prevenient grace” to all enabling a truly free (Libertarian) response.
- Orthodox (15%)
- Humanity inherits corruption, mortality, and a tendency toward sin, but not
- it is seen primarily as corruption and mortality—a spiritual illness that distorts our desires and leads us toward sin but does not destroy our freedom.
- We do not inherit Adam’s guilt.
- God’s grace is always active, drawing us toward Him, though Orthodoxy does not usually use the Western category of “prevenient grace.”
- Protestant
- Many Protestant traditions, especially those directly shaped by the Reformation, describe the effects of sin as total depravity or bondage of the will: human beings retain natural freedom in ordinary matters, but are spiritually unable to turn to God without His life-giving initiative.
- Methodist/Wesleyan (7%)
- We have inherited a wounded nature and an inclination to sin but not Adam’s guilt.
- God gives “prevenient grace” to all enabling a truly free (Libertarian) response.
- Reformed Protestants (Lutheran/Calvinist) (4%)
- Humanity has inherited both Adam’s guilt and a corrupted nature.
- Only God’s sovereign grace enables the elect (Not everyone is given this grace) to respond, and this grace is effective.
- Human choice is understood to be real but in a compatibilist sense: we freely will what God enables.