1. They were made good, but mutable.
2. They were deceived into thinking they were choosing good.
Turretin Institutes, 9th topic, 7th question
How could a holy man fall, and what was the true cause of his fall?
I. Two questions are involved here: the first concerns the possibility of the fall; the other concerns its true cause. Each is difficult to explain, and in the explaining of each, there are a variety of sins.
The first question concerns the possibility of the fall.
II. As to the first, the difficulty is not great in assigning the origin of all the sins which have sprung from the fall of Adam. Since men are corrupt, nothing is easier to conceive than why they sin daily. A depraved concupiscence can put forth no other than depraved and inordinate motions. But in innocent man, while no error had place in his mind, nor did any disorder (ataxia) in his will (in whom was original righteousness) hinder a fall (and incompatible [asystatos] with it), it is most difficult to imagine in what way at length man in a state of integrity could fall.
It cannot be explained by the opinion of Pelagians concerning the inclination to sin.
III. In order to free themselves from this difficulty, the ancient and more modern Pelagians, papists, Socinians and Remonstrants attribute to innocent man (as created by God) a headlong inclination to vice, from which arose the first sin (although not so vehement and inordinate as it is now). But this opinion is manifestly injurious to God and can easily be shown to be false. (1) If an inclination to sin was in man by nature, God must be considered its author; thus the sin will be cast upon God himself (as was proved before, Topic V, Question 11, Section 9). (2) The inclination to love and worship God (such as Adam possessed by original righteousness) is incompatible (asystatos) with an inclination to sin. (3) All things were very good in man before the fall, since he was made in the image of God. Yet the inclination to sin cannot be good because it is repugnant to the law. Hence it is evident that the mutability which was in Adam without any stain is not to be confounded with such an inclination to sin (which could not but be defective).
But by his mutability.
IV. Another method of removing the difficulty must therefore be sought. No other more suitable can be granted than by returning to the mutability and liberty of the first man, as one who was created indeed just and holy, but mutably. Thus he could indeed stand if he wished, but could also if he wished become evil. This the event itself sufficiently proves (if nothing else could teach it).
V. Although that mutability indicates the possibility of the fall and is the cause sine qua non (or the antecedent of the fall), still it cannot be considered its cause proper and of itself. This is so not only because it was a condition created together with innocent man by God (which was also in the elect angels before their confirmation without any defect), but also because it is indeed the negation of some good. It is not the privation of a good due to the creature, but undeserved and so did not take away any perfection required in a state of nature. So we must accurately distinguish here between the mutability itself (which is a condition suitable to the creature) and the act of that mutability (by which man inclined to a change). The former denotes a power which could be inclined to evil, but was not yet inclined; the latter, however, designates the actual inclination to evil itself (condemned by the law of God) and the fountain of all sin.
The free will of man the true cause of sin.
VI. The proximate and proper cause of sin therefore is to be sought nowhere else than in the free will of man (who suffered himself to be deceived by the Devil and, Satan persuading though not compelling, freely departed from God). So neither as whole properly did he fall, nor as corrupt; but as imbued with a false idea, he corrupted himself and (the habitual knowledge implanted by God being neglected) received the error suggested by Satan. Nor ought it to seem strange that man (created capable of falling and mutable) changed and fell, no more than that a beginning of motion takes place in one perfectly at rest. For where there is a power to change, the transition from power to act is easy.
VII. Although man fell, still he had the ability to stand if he wished. Otherwise God would have placed him in an impossible condition. Hence a twofold help or assistance is commonly distinguished: help without which (auxilium sine qua non) or the power of not sinning (by which he had strength sufficient to stand if he wished); and the help by which (auxilium quo) or efficacious grace (which gave not only the ability if he wished, but to will what he could). The former was after the manner of a habit and faculty in man; the latter, however, after the manner of an action or efficacious motion to good. The former was necessary to his ability to persevere, but the latter to his actual perseverance. The former help was never absent from Adam, not even in the very moment in which he sinned; but the latter, God withheld from him freely as he was not bound to give it. Notwithstanding, neither can man be excused (because he sinned voluntarily and was impelled by no force) nor God be accused (because as a most free dispenser of his own goods, he was bound to the bestowal of that grace by no law, as will hereafter be more fully shown).
VIII. Therefore man alone was the cause of his evil. He willingly sinned and freely and of his own accord without any compulsion or external force transgressed the command of God, though he was furnished with such strength and helps that he might easily have avoided sin, if he had wished. This spontaneity, neither providence removes (which brings on the infallibility of the event, but does not change the condition of nature), nor the temptation of Satan (which, however vigorously plied, could have effected nothing had it not been willingly admitted by man himself; and which he could with ease have resisted, if he had wished).
Satan, the external cause of sin.
IX. Besides that internal moving cause, there was also another external assisting cause. This again is twofold: the one, principal; the other, instrumental. The principal cause is Satan who, envying the glory of God and the happiness of man, instigated the first creatures to apostasy. The instrumental cause is the serpent, used by him for this work. In it, he wished to attack man not by force, but by cunning. In proportion to his cunning, the serpent was the more suitable for this service and more pleasing to Satan from similarity (although the special reason is to be sought in the providence of God who so directed the affair that Satan should select such an animal in whom a perpetual monument would exist of Satan’s insidious craftiness, and the supreme hatred directed against the human race, and of the curse into which he fell by that temptation and of the victory to be gained at one time over Satan by the seed of the woman; this could not have been done with an animal necessary to human use). Hence Augustine says, “He chose as a vehicle of expression a slippery animal and moving with tortuous windings suitable to his work” (CG 14.11 [FC 14:377; PL 41.419]).
X. That Satan was the author of the temptation, Scripture does not allow us to doubt. It calls him that “old serpent,” “the dragon” (Rev. 12:9; 20:2); “a murderer, and a liar from the beginning” (Jn. 8:44); “the tempter” by way of eminence (kat’ exochēn) (1 Thess. 3:5; 2 Cor. 11:3), who holds the empire of death (Heb. 2:14), to destroy whose works Christ came (1 Jn. 3:8). Although Moses (writing a history and adhering to visible and sensible things) thought it sufficient to relate what the woman tempted saw and heard (and so brings forward not the tempting Satan, but only the serpent in whom he lay concealed), yet it can sufficiently be gathered from the history of the temptation. Since speech was not in the serpent by nature (much less skill to argue), it necessarily ought to have proceeded from some intelligent creature (which could then have been no other than Satan). Besides, an effect morally evil (such as the temptation and seduction of the first creatures) ought to have had a cause morally evil (which is not to be sought out of Satan). Finally, the punishment inflicted on the tempter, so bears upon the external serpent that far more truly and fully it agrees with the Devil who was trodden under foot by Christ (Heb. 2:14; Col. 2:15; Rom. 16:20).
XI. Now that the Devil was not only present here, but concealed and speaking under the serpent, many things prove: the simple and unadorned relation of Moses (which is not rashly to be turned into an allegory); the description of the serpent as the most cunning of all the beasts of the field; and finally, the punishment inflicted upon it as the instrument of seduction, no less than upon Satan (just as the judge condemns the forger together with his pen; the cutthroat with his weapon; and the horn pushing ox God wished to be slain together with his master, if through his negligence he killed anyone, Ex. 21:29). Hence it is evident that their opinion is not to be entertained who (following Cyril and Eugubinus) hold that the serpent here was not real, but that Satan deceived our first parents under the flesh of that animal; or those who (following Cajetan) admit here not even the external form of the serpent, but hold that the whole thing was carried through by Satan alone, the name “serpent” being here applied to him. The whole history of the temptation exclaims against it. To no purpose is thrown in the mention of the serpent and of all the things done and said by him to arrest the sight and hearing of our first parents, if Satan alone, by an internal temptation, had executed this.
XII. Nor did this altogether escape the Gentiles themselves. They seem not obscurely to refer to this. See what is related by Pherecydes of Syros concerning Ophion, whom he calls the leader of the demons (whom Jupiter hurled from heaven); and what is said by others concerning the serpent Python killed by Apollo; and concerning him to whom the Cumaean Sibyl in Virgil (Eclogue 4.4–6 [Loeb, 1:28–29]) threatens destruction (the virgin returning and the illustrious offspring of god; the great increase of Jove bringing back the Saturnian kingdom); also what is related concerning the dragon, the watchful guardian of the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides (Aeneid 4. 484 [Loeb, 1:428–29]). Nor for any other reason did Satan seem to have had so much zeal for the introduction of religious worship to serpents by the Egyptians and others, unless he had successfully employed the serpent in the seduction of man. Hence the ancient Ophites, of whom Augustine (De Haeresibus 17 [PL 42.28]) and Epiphanius (The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis 37 [trans. F. Williams, 1987], 1:241–48) speak, held the serpent in the highest veneration because he had opened the eyes of our first parents and introduced them to wisdom.
XIII. However because neither man nor Satan could have done anything without the providence of God, it remains to be seen how it was most holily occupied still without any causality of sin. Neither can an event of such moment, almost revolutionizing the whole world, be said to have happened—he being either an ignorant or an unwilling or only an idle spectator (a thing, too, tending to wrest from God the government of the universe). In different ways, however, the fall can come under the providence of God: either as to prescience because he infallibly foreknew it; or as to decree because he immutably decreed its futurition; or as to actual permission in time because he permitted it to take place most freely and directed it most wisely. But in whatever way occupied, he always exerted himself most holily about it. On this account, not even the slightest taint of sin can be ascribed to him, neither because he foreknew (because prescience is not the cause of things, nor do things take place because they are foreknown; rather they are foreknown because they are to be); nor because he decreed (because he decreed indeed to permit, but not to effect); nor because he permitted the temptation (because he neither breathed into Satan the will to tempt, nor impelled him to it). He only permitted physically by not hindering (as bound by no law to furnish it), not morally by approval and consent.
XIV. I confess that with permission here is involved the negation of the efficacious grace and help by which man might actually stand. If such help had been given, Adam would not have fallen. But neither can he be said to have come into fellowship with sin because he took away from him no internal grace given before, nor impelled nor forced him to admit or consent to the temptation. Rather he only did not give the new grace of confirmation or the efficacy by which the grace in him might be actuated (which he was neither bound to give, nor in his most wise counsel did he will to give) in order to test the obedience of the creature. If without such help, Adam could not avoid falling, it does not follow that he was free from culpability. That necessity did not destroy his liberty, nor hinder him from sinning freely and with the greatest spontaneity, for he was being impelled to it by no necessity or compulsion of nature.
XV. Some are wont to express this negation of grace by desertion; not privative (as if internal and habitual grace already given were taken away), but negative (by which that not yet given is suspended). But since desertion seems properly to suppose some antecedent culpability of the one deserted, it is better to use the word negation or “not-giving,” so that God may be said not to have given to man actual grace efficaciously determining Adam to stand (from which negation sin would indeed follow necessarily by a necessity of consequence and hypothetical on the part of God, but still freely on the part of man who was conscious that he was impelled to sin by his will alone through no internal necessity).
XVI. It is not to be denied that here we truly meet the depth (bathos) of the wisdom of God—rather to be wondered at than to be pried into, far surpassing the reach of reason (viz., how God willed to deny that grace to man yet undeserving, without which he foresaw he could not avoid that fall). Hence there are those who (in order that God may not seem to have deserted man, before man deserted him) maintain that God was ready to bestow upon Adam the grace of confirmation, if man had wished to betake himself to it and use it; but since he neglected to apply for the help at hand (and whose use God had permitted at his will), it should not seem strange that God withheld it. The difficulty occurring here cannot be disposed of in this way. That neglected use of divine help or application to God for it was a sin or it was not. If it was not sin, the help of God ought not on that account to have been suspended. If it was sin, there is granted some sin before the first. Again, since for every act man needs God’s grace, the question returns concerning the use of that help—whether for its exercise the efficacious grace of God was given by God or not. For if it was given, man could not help using it. If, however, it was denied, the negation already preceded the neglect of man. It is better therefore to acquiesce here in the sole most free good pleasure of God, either giving or withholding his own grace at pleasure without injury to anyone. On this account, it is safer because he had not only already from eternity determined not to give his grace (even before man could neglect or reject it), but also because unless such a denial of grace is posited antecedently to the neglect of man, the certainty of the futurition of his fall could not be saved. Consider also the truth of the divine prescience. If it had been put within the power of man to use that grace or not (since man was indifferent in his own nature), he could not be determined certainly to such an event except by some superior cause. Moreover the causality of sin cannot be charged upon God; no more than from his eternal decree or temporal permission (upon which sin necessarily and infallibly follows) can it be ascribed to him.
XVII. Hence it is evident that he can well be said to have been able not to sin and yet not to be able not to sin. The former with respect to the habitual and internal grace of Adam and the powers bestowed upon him by creation (which were such that he had the power to obey the law given to him provided only he had wished to make a good use of them); the latter by reason of the decree and the suspension of actual external grace (or of the divine concurrence without which no action could be performed by him). It was therefore possible for Adam not to sin in the divided sense and with regard to himself, but it was impossible in the compound sense, when viewed in relation to God’s decree and the permission of sin and the denial of grace. This the celebrated Twisse well explains: “We say that Adam had sufficient grace to enable him to obey the law given to him; we deny that he had efficacious grace which would cause him actually to obey the law. That he had the power to obey the law and that it could not happen that the law should be obeyed, are not contradictory; just as the soldiers were not deficient in the power to break the bones of the Savior, yet the decree of God in opposition being posited, they could not be broken. By parity of reasoning, although Adam had the power to obey the law of God, yet God’s decree to deny efficacious grace being posited, it could not happen that he should obey the law. God did not remove the grace which he had granted (to wit, sufficient), he only did not bestow grace effectual to the avoiding of sin. God, however, not giving efficacious grace, it was necessary that Adam should sin” (Guilielmi Twissi … ad Jacobi Arminii Collationem cum Francisco Junio [1649], p. 68).
XVIII. If anything further still meets us in this dispensation of God (which cannot easily be seen through by us), let us remember that the ways of God are not our ways and that we must here be wise with sobriety, lest searching into his majesty, we be overpowered by his glory. Let it be sufficient to hold together these two things: that this most dreadful fall did not happen without the providence of God (but to its causality, it contributed nothing); and that man alone, moved by the temptation of Satan, was its true and proper cause.
