Augustine did not invent the idea that Adam's fall damaged humanity, but his formulation of original sin — inherited guilt transmitted through sexual generation — was genuinely new. In treatises written against the Pelagians (412–419 AD), Augustine argued that Adam's voluntary transgression corrupted human nature itself, so that all descendants inherit both guilt and disordered concupiscence, requiring baptism even for infants. Luther, reading this tradition in the sixteenth century, credited Augustine as the first to systematically distinguish original from actual sin, calling the former an inborn covetousness that is the root and cause of all actual transgression. Peter Lombard and Hugh of St. Victor extended Augustine's categories into scholastic theology, while Calvin and Pascal drew on them in their own accounts of human depravity.
"Now the nature has God for its author; it is from its corruption that original sin is derived... their malice was inbred, and that their cogitation would never be changed; for their seed was accursed from the beginning" — Augustine grounds inherited sin in the corruption of human seed, tracing inbred malice to Adam's fall rather than to personal choice.
"None of the Fathers of the Church made mention of original sin until Augustine came, who made a difference between original and actual sin; namely, that original sin is to covet, lust, and desire, which is the root and cause of actual sin" — Luther's retrospective assessment of Augustine's novelty, read as a clarification rather than an invention.
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