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Quod Ubique The Common Confession of the Universal Church

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Humanity and Sin

The Common Confession

We confess that God created humanity in His own image and likeness — male and female He created them — crowned with dignity, endowed with reason and will, appointed as stewards of the visible creation, and made for communion with their Creator. We are not self-existent: we are creatures, contingent upon the sustaining will of God, and apart from Him we are nothing. This creaturely dignity is real but derived, a gift and not a possession.

We confess further that humanity has fallen. In Adam’s transgression — and in the universal sinfulness of every person who has followed — the human race stands in moral disorder, alienated from God, unable to restore itself to its original integrity by its own power. Sin is universal: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” No branch of the Church has ever taught that human beings, as they are born into this world after the Fall, are able to achieve righteousness before God apart from divine grace. The need for redemption is not partial or optional; it is total and absolute, extending to every member of the human race save the Lord Jesus Christ alone [∗ and, as Rome and parts of the East confess, the Blessed Virgin Mary by singular grace].

This is not a peripheral doctrine but the dark ground against which the Gospel shines. Without the confession of humanity’s creation in the imago Dei, the Incarnation has no rationale; without the confession of universal sin, the Cross has no necessity.

Scriptural Warrant

Humanity created in the image of God:

  • “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth’” (Genesis 1:26)
  • “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27)
  • “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God” (Genesis 5:1)
  • “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13–14)
  • “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:4–5)

Creaturely contingency:

  • “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)
  • “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16–17)
  • “Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3)
  • “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth… he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24–25)

The universality of sin:

  • “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)
  • “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12)
  • “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10–12, citing Psalm 14:1–3)
  • “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5)
  • “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5)
  • “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
  • “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8)

The universal need for divine redemption:

  • “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23)
  • “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked… But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:1–5)
  • “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:22–24)
  • “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22)

Creedal and Conciliar Anchor

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381)

We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

The creed’s eschatological hope presupposes the anthropological realities: we die because we have fallen; we await resurrection because God has redeemed us. The resurrection of the dead is unintelligible without the doctrines of creation, fall, and redemption.

…who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.

The pro nobis — “for us and for our salvation” — is itself a confession about the human condition: we need saving. The Incarnation is a rescue mission.

The Council of Carthage (418) / Council of Orange (529)

The Council of Carthage, responding to the Pelagian crisis, affirmed: “If anyone says that Adam, the first man, was created mortal, so that whether he sinned or not he would have died in body… let him be anathema” (Canon 1). Death is a consequence of sin, not of nature. The council further condemned the view that the grace of God is given merely to enable what free will could accomplish on its own (Canon 3–5).

The Second Council of Orange (529), received in the West with broad authority, declared: “If anyone maintains that the whole man, that is both body and soul, was not ‘changed for the worse’ through the offense of Adam’s sin… he contradicts Scripture” (Canon 1). It further affirmed that fallen humanity cannot, without the prevenient grace of God, begin to turn toward God: “If anyone says that the grace of God can be conferred as a result of human prayer, but that it is not grace itself which makes us pray to God, he contradicts the prophet Isaiah or the Apostle who says the same thing, ‘I was found by those who did not seek me’” (Canon 3). While Orange is a Western council, its core teaching — that the Fall has damaged the whole person and that grace must precede human response — is not contested by the East.

The Athanasian Creed (Quicunque Vult, c. 5th–6th century)

Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead.

The creed’s narrative of Christ’s saving work presupposes the fallen condition of humanity — He suffered for our salvation, because we could not save ourselves.

Patristic Witness

Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130–202)

Irenaeus provided the Church’s foundational theology of the imago Dei and the Fall. In Against Heresies (3.23.1–5, c. 180), he taught that Adam was created in God’s image as an immature being destined to grow into the divine likeness — and that the Fall was a catastrophic deviation from this trajectory, not merely a moral lapse but a bondage to death and corruption. Humanity’s need for recapitulation (anakephalaiōsis) in Christ — a second Adam who would retrace and heal the whole human journey — follows directly from the universality of the Fall. “For it was necessary that He who was to destroy sin and redeem man under the power of death should Himself be made that very same thing which he was, that is, man” (Against Heresies 3.18.7).

Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373)

In On the Incarnation (De Incarnatione, c. 318), Athanasius set forth the logic of creation and fall with lapidary clarity: “God had not merely created us out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on us, by the grace of the Word, a life in correspondence with God… But men, having despised and rejected the contemplation of God… devised and contrived evil for themselves… and received the condemnation of death with which they had been threatened” (§4–5). For Athanasius, the Fall was a slide back toward the non-being from which we were created — only the Word who created us could re-create us.

John Chrysostom (c. 347–407)

Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis (c. 386–388) expounded the creation of humanity in God’s image as the foundation of human dignity and moral responsibility. On Genesis 1:26 he wrote: “The expression ‘Let us make’ indicates the deliberation, the honor, and the dignity of the one being created” (Homilies on Genesis 8.3). On the universality of sin after the Fall, he was equally emphatic: “Sin entered and overthrew all” (Homilies on Romans 10, on Romans 5:12, c. 391). Chrysostom held together creaturely dignity and fallen misery without collapsing either into the other.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430)

Augustine’s theology of original sin, developed against Pelagius, became definitive for the West. In The City of God (13.14, 14.1–4, c. 413–426), he argued that Adam’s sin was transmitted to all his descendants — not merely as bad example but as a damaged nature, a massa damnata from which only grace can rescue. “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and thus it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned” (De Peccato Originali 2.34, 418). While the East does not use Augustine’s precise categories, the substance — that humanity is universally fallen and universally in need of grace — is shared.

John of Damascus (c. 675–749)

In Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (De Fide Orthodoxa 2.12), John synthesized the Eastern consensus on the imago Dei: “Man was created with free will, endowed with the image of God by virtue of his rationality and self-determination… He was adorned with every virtue and enriched with every good.” On the Fall (2.30): “Through the transgression, man exchanged the good for the evil… and became subject to corruption and death.” John’s formulation — freely created in goodness, freely fallen into corruption, universally in need of divine healing — represents the common Eastern teaching.

Cross-Tradition Attestation

Roman Catholic

  • CCC §355: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. Man occupies a unique place in creation: he is ‘in the image of God.’”
  • CCC §356: “Of all visible creatures only man is ‘able to know and love his creator.’”
  • CCC §396–401: The Fall — original sin as a real event with universal consequences: “Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination toward evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam’s sin” (§403).
  • CCC §402: “All men are implicated in Adam’s sin. St. Paul affirms: ‘By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners.’”
  • CCC §405: “Original sin… is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it.”
  • Dei Verbum (Vatican II) §2–4: God’s self-revelation presupposes humanity’s need and capacity to receive it.

Eastern Orthodox

  • The Divine Liturgy of St. Basil: “Thou didst fashion man, and didst set him in the paradise of delight… and when he had fallen through the disobedience of the adversary, Thou didst not abandon him, O Good One, nor forget the work of Thy hands.”
  • The Confession of Dositheus (1672), Decree 6: “We believe that the first man created by God fell in Paradise, when he disregarded the divine commandment… and that thence hereditary sin flowed to his posterity.”
  • The Orthodox understanding of the Fall emphasizes ancestral sin — the inheritance of mortality and corruption from Adam — rather than the imputation of Adam’s personal guilt. This is a difference of accent (see below), but the core confession that all humanity is fallen, mortal, and in need of divine redemption is shared.
  • Gregory of Nyssa (On the Making of Man, 16.10–11, c. 379): affirms the imago Dei as rational, free, and royal, and its distortion through sin.

Lutheran

  • Augsburg Confession, Art. II: “Since the fall of Adam, all men who are naturally born are conceived and born in sin; that is, they all, from their mother’s womb, are full of evil concupiscence and inclinations, and can have by nature no true fear of God, no true faith in God.”
  • Augsburg Confession, Art. XVIII: “Of Free Will they teach that man’s will has some liberty for the attainment of civil righteousness… but it has no power, without the Holy Spirit, to work the righteousness of God.”
  • Small Catechism, Explanation of the First Article: “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.”
  • Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration I: “Original sin is not a slight corruption of human nature, but… it is so deep a corruption of human nature that nothing healthy or uncorrupt remains in man’s body or soul.”

Reformed

  • Westminster Confession of Faith 4.2: “After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after his own image.”
  • WCF 6.1–2: “Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptation of Satan, sinned… By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.”
  • WCF 6.3: “They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity.”
  • Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 6–8: “Did God then create man so wicked and perverse? By no means; but God created man good… But by the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise, our nature became so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin.”
  • Belgic Confession, Art. 14–15: Humanity created good and in God’s image; fallen into “ignorance, frightful darkness, and horrible wickedness.”
  • Canons of Dort, III/IV.1: “Man was originally formed after the image of God… but, revolting from God by the instigation of the devil and by his own free will, he forfeited these excellent gifts.”

Anglican

  • Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. IX: “Original sin… is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil.”
  • Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. X: “The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith; and calling upon God.”
  • BCP Baptismal Service: The baptism of infants presupposes the doctrine that all are born in need of the cleansing and regeneration that only God can provide.
  • BCP General Confession (Morning and Evening Prayer): “We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws.” — the universality of sin confessed corporately in daily worship.
  • Thomas Cranmer, Homily of the Misery of Mankind (1547): “Of ourselves we be crab-trees, that can bring forth no apples… we be of ourselves of such earth as can bring forth but weeds, nettles, brambles, briers, cockle, and darnel.”

Where the Accent Differs

The nature of original sin (Layer 3): The Western traditions (Roman Catholic, Protestant) speak of original sin as inherited guilt and/or corruption transmitted from Adam to all his descendants. The Reformed tradition emphasizes total depravity — not that humanity is as wicked as possible, but that every faculty (mind, will, affections) is affected by sin and unable to incline toward God without grace. Rome speaks of original sin as the loss of original justice and sanctifying grace, with concupiscence remaining but not constituting sin in itself after baptism (CCC §405, Council of Trent, Session V). The East speaks of ancestral sin — humanity inherits mortality and a tendency toward sin from Adam, but not Adam’s personal guilt. These are genuine differences in theological grammar; the underlying confession that humanity is fallen, morally disordered, and unable to save itself is shared by all. This belongs to Layer 3.

How the image of God is affected by the Fall (Layer 3): The Reformed tradition (following Calvin) teaches that the image of God in humanity is grievously marred but not wholly destroyed. Rome distinguishes between the natural image (reason, will — retained) and the supernatural gift of original justice (lost). The East, drawing on the Irenaean distinction between image (eikōn) and likeness (homoiōsis), teaches that the image is retained but the likeness — the dynamic growth toward God — has been disrupted and must be restored through theosis. These distinctions matter but do not affect the Layer 1 confession that humanity bears the imago Dei and has fallen from its original integrity. This belongs to Layer 3.

The immaculate conception of Mary (Layer 4): Rome dogmatically teaches (1854) that the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin by a singular grace. The East honors Mary as Panagia (All-Holy) but has not dogmatized this specific formulation, and some Eastern theologians reject it. Protestantism generally denies it. This belongs to Layer 4.

The transmission of sin — traducian vs. creationist (Layer 3): How the soul (and thus original sin) is transmitted — whether by propagation from parents (traducianism, favored by some Western Fathers) or by direct divine creation of each soul (creationism, the dominant view in both East and West) — is an anthropological question with implications for the doctrine of original sin. It has never been dogmatically settled in any branch and belongs to Layer 3.

For Further Study

  • Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (De Incarnatione), c. 318 — the logic of creation, fall, and redemption stated with unsurpassed clarity
  • Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, Books 3–5, c. 180 — the recapitulation theology that grounds anthropology in Christology
  • Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, Books 12–14, c. 413–426 — the Western Church’s most influential account of creation, fall, and original sin
  • Council of Orange (529), Canons and Conclusion — the conciliar settlement of the Pelagian controversy in the West
  • Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 1944, chs. 6–7 — the Eastern theology of image, likeness, and the Fall