Can we do any good? Our nature was corrupted in the fall (Q. 7). The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) now asks how deep that goes, and answers with a single “unless.”
Q. 8. But are we so far depraved that we are wholly unapt to any good, and prone to all evil?
A. Yes; unless we are born again by the Spirit of God.
Genesis says “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” But didn’t Socrates and Aristides do excellent things? Zacharias Ursinus answers that real good is “the power of rendering such obedience as is acceptable to God. This the unregenerate have not.” He then traces the human will through four states: before the fall it “was free to choose good and evil”; fallen, it acts freely but is “inclined only to that which is evil”; born again, it “does both the good and the evil in part”; and in glory it “will be free to choose only the good.” Which leaves the next question: is God unfair to ask what we cannot do?
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So How Did It Go Wrong?
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Is God Unfair to Ask the Impossible?
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SOURCES
Heidelberg Catechism, tr. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. III:
Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, tr. G. W. Williard (1888), Q. 8:
Lord’s Day 3:
SCRIPTURE (KJV)
Genesis 8:21 · John 3:6 · Genesis 6:5 · Job 14:4 · Job 15:14, 16 · Isaiah 53:6 · John 3:3, 5 · 1 Corinthians 12:3 · 2 Corinthians 3:5 (proofs of the 1563 edition)
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