Is There No Innate Good In Man?

Sin has robbed man of his original righteousness, but not of his humanity

My astute reader asked two further questions in response to my Q&A of July 23.

I do not find a satisfactory response to the babe being born with original sin. Is there no innate good in man? Not even a little nestled within a body of sin? None?
I think your confusion here is that you are making good the opposite of sin. The opposite of good is evil. The opposite of sin is righteousness. The opposite of guilt is innocence.

Is there no innate good in man? Genesis 1:31 says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” So what’s gone wrong?

Sin has robbed man of his original righteousness and innocence, but not of his humanity.

Man, even fallen man born in original sin, is capable of much. He is still man. He did not devolve into being an ape. He can conceive of, and write, the Iliad. He can paint the Sistine Chapel. He can put a man on the moon. He can also commit murder and adultery.

It would be better to say that there is no innocence in man, not even a little nestled within a body of guilt. Man is born guilty through and through.

This deprives him of any standing before God.

If it were a court case, the judge would dismiss man’s case out of hand — not on the merits (though man would not win on the merits) — but because he has no standing. Man, because of original sin, can bring nothing before the bar of God’s justice. He needs an advocate (1 John 2:1; 1 Tim. 2:5).

Man’s lack of standing, his guilt, his unrighteousness renders even the “good” that he does incomplete. Man, in his original goodness, was capable of perfection. Man, born into sin, cannot be perfected.

This means that all his goods will betray him. His loves will abandon him, or, if they are faithful in this lifetime, they will leave him for the grave. His paintings will fade. His epics will be forgotten. This is the “body of death” that St. Paul finds so offensive (Rom. 7:24).

Hard to take to heart the universality of the “sins of the father” concept. Is the converse equally true? The virtues of the father...?
Yes, actually. You are not far from the kingdom here (Mark 12:34).

All died for one, yet One died for all.

The guilt for the sins of the fathers is justly imputed to the sons (because God is just) but the righteousness of the Son of God is imputed to all who believe.

Perhaps unwittingly, in your question you have stated the gospel in the clearest possible terms.

St. Paul writes in Romans 5:15:

“But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!”

I hope this helps to answer your additional questions.