As a result of Adam’s sin comes sin, death, and a general desertion of
the good by mankind. All the descendants of Adam are scarred by ‘concupiscence’,
and by what Augustine calls ‘ignorance’ and ‘difficulty’, the sheer inability
to carry out what we known to be right. The human race has been corrupted by
Adam, because all men are in some sense ‘in Adam’. Augustine repeatedly
misquotes St. Paul to the effect that we all sinned in Adam (in quo omnes
peccaverunt), where the Greek text reads εφ ω (Rom. 5:12), but although this text
supports Augustine’s position it does not dictate it.
All men, Augustine argues, are identical with Adam. All men sinned in
Adam on that occasion, he writes, since all were already identical with him in
that nature of his which was endowed with the capacity to generate them. (John
M. Rist, “Augustine on Free Will and Predestination,” in Augustine: A
Collection of Critical Essays, ed. R. A. Markus [Modern Studies in
Philosophy; New York: Anchor Books, 1972], 230)
