THE FALL OF MAN 145 



message serves to complete the biblical data by which 

 the catholic doctrine can be illustrated and confirmed. 

 He clearly teaches that Adam's sin is the cause of our 

 sinfulness, although sin is not imputed to us until 

 we ourselves transgress the divine law; and that mor- 

 tality is an inheritance from Adam, and an effect of 

 his sin. He uses the word sin to describe the effect of 

 Adam's sin upon us, but this use of the word is plainly 

 secondary, for if he had meant that we inherit sin in 

 the literal sense of that term, he would not have denied 

 its imputation to men prior to their knowledge of the 

 law and their disobedience.^ If his language in the 

 Epistle to the Ephesians, describing the unregenerate 

 as "by nature children of wrath," is to be understood 

 as referring to the effect of Adam's sin upon his pos- 

 terity, it affords another instance of the same symboli- 

 cal use of language.^ 



the value of his own treatment of St. Paul's teaching. Sources, 

 ch. xi. 



^ Sanday and Headlam, in their commentary on this Epistle, 

 p. 147, say, "He uses the only kind of language available to his own 

 intelligence and that of his contemporaries. But if the language 

 which he uses is from that point of view abundantly justified, then 

 the application which St. Paul makes of it is equally justified. He, 

 too, expresses truth through symbols, and in the days when men can 

 dispense with symbols his teaching may be obsolete, but not before." 

 This applies to his implied dependence upon the Eden narrative, the 

 value of which does not depend upon its all-round historical validity. 



2 Ephes. ii. 3. It has been taken to mean no more than that men 

 are by nature unable wholly to avoid sin. Other interpretations 

 are also advanced. See Tennant, Sources, p. 271; Origin of Sin, 

 pp. 227, 228; and T. K. Abbott and J. A. Robinson, in loc. The 

 teaching of i Cor. xv. 45-50 should not be overlooked. 

 II 



