Imago Dei, Decree, and Desire: Why Rebellion Is Necessary but Not Decreed and Christ Is Both
Abstract
Reformed Calvinistic theology is frequently charged with eliminating genuine human freedom and rendering God the author of evil. This paper argues that these critiques rest on a misunderstanding that infects even the classical Augustinian schema of humanity’s fourfold state. Augustine correctly described the phenomenology of human willing but mislocated the original condition and multiplied states unnecessarily. Because the imago Dei includes rational self-sufficiency, the original human condition was non posse non peccare (not able not to sin), not as corruption but as the structure of finite image-bearing. The Fall is not a transition between states but the inevitable actualization of what finite self-sufficiency always entailed. The corrected schema is therefore threefold: (1) non posse non peccare as the original and fallen condition, (2) posse non peccare as the regenerate condition where grace first provides genuine optionality, and (3) non posse peccare as the glorified condition where finite freedom reaches its telos. On this account, rebellion is logically necessary given finite image-bearing but is not itself decreed. What God decrees is justice and mercy, making Christ the logically necessary fulfillment of creation rather than a contingent remedy. This framework is confirmed anthropologically by Christ’s command to love one’s neighbor “as yourself,” which assumes self-love as the given structure of finite rational agency.
I. Introduction
The relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom constitutes one of the perennial questions of Christian theology. Critics of Reformed Calvinism contend that exhaustive divine decree collapses human agency into fatalistic determinism. If God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, how can creatures bear moral responsibility? Does not such a decree make God culpable for sin?
The Reformed tradition has responded with two principal moves: a compatibilist account of freedom (the view that genuine free will is compatible with determinism, defining freedom as acting according to one’s desires without external coercion) as voluntary, nature-aligned agency, and a distinction between God’s decretive will and His preceptive will. These moves are necessary but insufficient. A deeper problem remains unaddressed: Augustine’s fourfold schema of human states, which has governed Western theological anthropology (the doctrine of human nature) for sixteen centuries, mislocates the original condition and thereby obscures the logical relationship between image-bearing, rebellion, and redemption.
This paper argues that the imago Dei includes rational self-sufficiency, the capacity for autonomous judgment about the good. But self-sufficiency in a finite creature is a contradiction in motion: the creature depends on God ontologically while possessing the cognitive apparatus to act as if it does not. The finite image-bearer cannot not place himself at the center. The original state is therefore non posse non peccare, not as corruption introduced by a contingent fall, but as the structure of finite image-bearing as such.
The corrected schema is threefold rather than fourfold:
Non posse non peccare: the original condition of finite image-bearers
Posse non peccare: the regenerate condition, where grace provides genuine optionality for the first time
Non posse peccare: the glorified condition, where finite freedom is permanently stabilized in God
The Fall is not a transition between states but the actualization of what state one always entailed. Augustine’s posse peccare et posse non peccare was never a real state; it was a misdescription of the pre-Fall condition based on formal capacity rather than material reality. A finite self-sufficient agent was never genuinely “able not to sin” prior to grace.
This reframing has decisive consequences for theodicy and soteriology. Rebellion is logically necessary given the decree to create image-bearers, but rebellion itself is not decreed. What God decrees is justice and mercy, making Christ logically necessary rather than contingent. Grace is not remedial but constitutive of the image’s telos.
II. Methodological Clarification: Terms, Tradition, and the Supralapsarian Reformulation
Before proceeding, several clarifications are necessary regarding terminology, engagement with the tradition, and the relationship of this argument to classical Reformed positions.
Terminological Re-appropriation
This paper employs Augustine’s Latin terminology but re-appropriates it to track structural states relative to Logos-union (participation in the divine Word) rather than to restate Augustine’s original psychological analysis. When Augustine wrote non posse non peccare, he meant it as a description of post-Fall humanity, corrupted by Adam’s contingent choice. When this paper uses non posse non peccare, it means the structural condition of any finite image-bearer existing outside union with the Logos, whether before or after the historical Fall. The terminology is retained because Augustine’s categories remain useful; the application is revised because Augustine’s etiology (causal explanation) was incomplete.
Similarly, posse non peccare in Augustine describes either pre-Fall Adam or the regenerate. In this paper, it describes only the regenerate, because the argument denies that pre-Fall Adam ever possessed this capacity in material (actually realizable) as opposed to merely formal (theoretically possible) terms. Readers familiar with standard Reformed summaries of the fourfold state (such as Thomas Boston’s Human Nature in Its Fourfold State or Ligonier Ministries’ expositions) should note that this paper is consciously revising, not merely restating, that tradition.
The Argumentative Spine
The argument proceeds in four steps:
First, finite self-sufficiency (the rational and volitional autonomy essential to the imago Dei) structurally entails self-reference and self-preference. The finite agent evaluates and chooses from a first-person center that cannot be escaped.
Second, self-preference in relation to God constitutes sin. Therefore, finite image-bearing apart from grace entails non posse non peccare. This is not a corruption introduced by the Fall but the condition of any finite rational agent operating outside Logos-union.
Third, regeneration and glory are degrees of Logos-participation. Regeneration initiates union with Christ, creating posse non peccare (genuine optionality) for the first time. Glory completes that union, producing non posse peccare (the inability to sin that constitutes perfected freedom).
Fourth, this framework reframes decree, theodicy, and Christ. Rebellion is logically necessary (entailed by finite image-bearing) but not decreed. Christ is both logically necessary (required by the Logos-gap plus the decree of justice and mercy) and decreed (the positive object of God’s eternal purpose). Theodicy is resolved by relocating the source of sin from divine decree to creaturely structure.
Clarifying “Necessary” vs. “Certain”
Confessional Reformed writers typically distinguish metaphysical necessity from certainty under God’s decree. They affirm that the Fall was infallibly certain but not necessary in itself, since God was under no compulsion to create or to permit sin. This paper’s use of “logically necessary” requires clarification.
The claim is not that God could not have created any other kind of rational creature, nor that rebellion is absolutely necessary in every possible world. The claim is necessity ex suppositione (necessity given certain premises): once God freely wills to create finite image-bearers who exist outside Logos-union, rebellion follows by logical necessity from that premise. The necessity is conditional, not absolute. God freely chose to create this kind of creature for this kind of purpose (the display of justice and mercy in Christ). Given that free choice, rebellion is entailed. God could have chosen otherwise; but having chosen thus, the consequences follow necessarily.
This is analogous to saying: “Given that God freely chose to create water as H₂O, it is necessary that water freezes at 0°C.” The necessity is real but conditional on a prior free act. Similarly: given that God freely chose to create finite image-bearers outside Logos-union, it is necessary that they rebel. The rebellion is certain not merely because God foreknew or decreed it, but because the structure of the creature entails it.
Relation to Supralapsarianism
This argument constitutes a reformulation of supralapsarianism (the view that, in the logical order of God’s decrees, election and reprobation precede the decrees to create and permit the Fall).
Classical supralapsarianism rightly intuits that Christ and redemption are not afterthoughts but the point of creation. The Fall is not an accident that derailed Plan A; election is logically prior to the consideration of humanity as fallen. However, classical supralapsarianism places reprobation (God’s decision to pass over some sinners and leave them to judgment) as a positive object of decree alongside election, raising the question of whether God wills damnation in the same way He wills salvation.
The present reformulation preserves the supralapsarian intuition while avoiding its difficulty:
What God decrees: image-bearers, justice, mercy, Christ.
What is entailed (not decreed): the Logos-gap produces non posse non peccare, which produces rebellion.
What is applied: justice to the reprobate (who rebel by structural necessity), mercy to the elect (through Christ who is decreed).
On this account, reprobation is not a positive object of decree but the application of decreed justice to those who rebel necessarily given their creaturely constitution. This consciously revises classical language. Where the tradition speaks of a “decree of reprobation” (whether as preterition, passing over, or positive hardening), this proposal speaks of reprobation as the just consequence applied to creatures whose rebellion is structurally inevitable. God decrees justice; reprobation is what justice looks like when applied to those in the Logos-gap. Election is the application of decreed mercy through the decreed Christ. The asymmetry is preserved: God aims at Christ and the display of His glory in justice and mercy; rebellion is the structurally necessary backdrop, not the intended foreground.
This reformulation explains what classical supralapsarianism asserts. Supralapsarianism says the Fall was certain and included in God’s plan; this account explains why it was certain (the Logos-gap) and how it is included (as entailment, not decree). The result is a more precise supralapsarianism: Christ-centered, theodicy-resolving, and anchored in the structure of finite image-bearing.
Contrast with Classical Fourfold State (Boston/WCF)
For readers shaped by Boston, Ligonier, and Westminster Confession formulations, the following summary shows where this proposal revises the standard account:
Pre-Fall state Classical Fourfold / WCF: Posse peccare / posse non peccare as real moral equilibrium; Adam genuinely able to fulfill the law in a robust sense. Present Proposal: Non posse non peccare structurally; formal capacity only, with sin inevitable apart from Logos-union.
Ground of inability Classical Fourfold / WCF: Post-Fall corruption inherited from Adam. Present Proposal: Finite self-sufficiency outside Logos-union (Logos-gap); Fall actualizes structural tendency already present.
Grace’s role Classical Fourfold / WCF: Primarily remedial: restoring lost ability and securing it in glory. Present Proposal: Constitutive: first introducing real posse non peccare by union with Christ; consummating non posse peccare in glory.
Reprobation Classical Fourfold / WCF: A distinct decree (preterition or hardening) alongside election. Present Proposal: Not a separate decree but the just application of decreed justice to structurally inevitable rebellion.
Covenant of works Classical Fourfold / WCF: A genuine pathway to life that Adam could have traversed. Present Proposal: Pedagogical by design; the law-as-tutor function applies from Eden, not only from Sinai.
Standard Reformed expositions (e.g., Ligonier’s claim that pre-Fall man “could resist temptation and obey God’s command” in a robust sense) describe Adam’s capacity in terms appropriate to the regenerate. This paper contends that such descriptions wrongly project post-regenerate posse non peccare back into Eden. Adam had formal capacity (no external compulsion, cognitive recognition of the good) but not material capacity (volitional apparatus ordered toward God rather than self). Only Logos-union provides the latter, and Adam did not have Logos-union.
Relation to Total Inability
The threefold schema coheres with the Reformed doctrine of total inability (sometimes called total depravity or radical corruption), which holds that fallen humanity cannot, apart from grace, do anything spiritually good or contribute to its own salvation. The present account grounds total inability not merely in inherited Adamic corruption but in the structure of finite self-sufficiency itself. The unregenerate cannot turn to God because the Logos-gap means their volitional apparatus is ordered toward self-preference. Total inability is not an arbitrary divine withholding but a structural feature of finite agency apart from Logos-union. Grace does not merely repair damage; it provides what finite nature, even unfallen, could never generate on its own.
III. The Trinitarian Foundation: Justice and Mercy as the Positive Decree
Any adequate account of sovereignty and freedom must begin with the triune life of God rather than abstract divine power. The Father eternally loves and glorifies the Son, desiring that those given to the Son behold His glory (John 17:24). The Son, though in very nature God, willingly humbles Himself, taking the form of a servant and becoming obedient to death (Philippians 2:6–8). The Spirit proceeds to apply the benefits of Christ’s work, glorifying the Son and interceding for believers (John 16:14; Romans 8:26–27). Redemption is Trinitarian (involving all three persons of the Godhead in distinct roles) from beginning to end.
Within this economy, justice expresses God’s holy nature. Sin must be punished; the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Mercy is a free act of sovereign grace extended to the undeserving. The cross stands as the historical center where justice receives full satisfaction in Christ as substitute and mercy flows to the elect (those chosen by God for salvation).
The critical point: justice and mercy are what God positively decrees. These are not reactive measures but the eternal purpose of the triune God. The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8) not as contingency but as fulfillment. God’s decree concerns the display of His glory through justice satisfied and mercy extended in Christ. Rebellion is not the object of decree but the necessary precondition, given the kind of creature God determined to make.
IV. Imago Dei and the Structure of Finite Self-Sufficiency
Human beings are created in the imago Dei (image of God) with rational, relational, and volitional capacities that reflect, in finite and analogical fashion, God’s own personal agency (Genesis 1:26–27). The imago Dei grounds human accountability: humans think, love, and choose in ways that mirror God’s rational and moral life.
Central to this image is self-sufficiency in the epistemic (knowledge-related) and volitional (will-related) sense. The image-bearer is not a passive recipient of divine direction but an active evaluator, capable of reasoning about the good and choosing accordingly. Without this capacity, the creature would not be a genuine moral agent capable of love, obedience, or relationship.
However, self-sufficiency in a finite creature creates an unavoidable structural tension. The finite image-bearer possesses the cognitive apparatus to evaluate, judge, and choose from a first-person perspective. The self is necessarily the epistemic and volitional center from which all reasoning and choosing proceed. The creature cannot think or act except from this center.
This is not a flaw. It is what finite rational agency means. But it entails a consequence: the finite image-bearer cannot not place himself at the center. The cognitive apparatus that makes him an image-bearer operates from that center. Self-reference is not an accident of the Fall; it is a feature of finite rationality as such.
Self-reference, moreover, is inherently self-preferential. The finite agent evaluates from his own perspective and naturally privileges his own good. He cannot see from another’s vantage point without deliberate effort, and even then only partially. The structure of finite image-bearing is thus ordered toward self-preference by its very nature.
V. The Threefold State: A Correction of Augustine
Augustine’s classic schema describes four states:
Before the Fall: posse peccare et posse non peccare (able to sin and able not to sin)
After the Fall: non posse non peccare (not able not to sin)
In regeneration: posse non peccare (able not to sin)
In glory: non posse peccare (not able to sin)
Augustine correctly described the phenomenology of the latter three states. The fallen human is unable not to sin. The regenerate possesses genuine capacity for righteousness. The glorified will be unable to sin. These descriptions are accurate.
What Augustine missed is the etiology of state two and the reality of state one. He attributed non posse non peccare to corruption introduced by a contingent choice in Eden. But if the imago Dei includes self-sufficient rational agency, then non posse non peccare is the original condition. It is the structure of finite image-bearing, not the result of a fall from some prior stable state.
Augustine’s posse peccare et posse non peccare was never a materially real state. It describes a formal capacity: the pre-Fall human was not externally compelled to sin and possessed the cognitive equipment to recognize the good. In that formal sense, he was “able not to sin.” But materially, the self-referential structure of finite agency meant that sin was inevitable, not merely possible. The “ability not to sin” was never actualizable because the very apparatus required to exercise it was ordered toward self-preference.
The corrected schema is therefore threefold:
State One: Non posse non peccare
This is the original condition of finite image-bearers. It characterizes humanity both before and after the Fall. What differs is not the structure of the will but its historical manifestation. Before the Fall, the inability not to sin was latent. After the Fall, it was actualized. The Fall is not a transition between states but the inevitable expression of what finite self-sufficiency always was.
State Two: Posse non peccare
This is the regenerate condition. Here, for the first time, the human will possesses genuine optionality. The Spirit breaks the exclusivity of self-reference without abolishing the self. The regenerate person still operates from a first-person perspective, but now has the capacity to include others within the circle of concern. The ability not to sin is not a restoration of some pre-Fall capacity; it is a new creation, something finite image-bearing could never produce on its own.
The regenerate can still sin, but this is not a separate capacity (posse peccare) standing alongside the ability not to sin. It is the residual pull of the original structure not yet fully overcome. The regenerate person experiences genuine conflict (Romans 7:14–25; Galatians 5:17) precisely because two principles are at work: the old structure of self-preference and the new capacity for genuine other-regard.
State Three: Non posse peccare
This is the glorified condition. The trajectory initiated in regeneration reaches completion. The self is not abolished but so saturated with the love of God that self-love, God-love, and neighbor-love are unified. The inability to sin is not a loss of freedom but its perfection: the will is most free when it loves the good so completely that turning from it becomes unthinkable.
Engaging the Tradition on Original Righteousness
This correction requires engagement with the Reformed tradition’s teaching on original righteousness (iustitia originalis). The Westminster Confession states that God created man “after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with the law of God written in his heart, and power to fulfill it” (WCF 4.2). Calvin speaks of Adam possessing “rectitude” and the ability to choose good. Does the present account deny this?
It does not deny that Adam possessed the formal endowments the tradition describes. Adam had knowledge of God, moral awareness, and the cognitive capacity to recognize the good. In that sense, he was “righteous” and “upright.” What the present account denies is that these endowments constituted a stable equilibrium from which Adam could have perpetually refrained from sin without grace.
The tradition itself acknowledges that Adam’s original righteousness was mutable (changeable) and required confirmation through obedience to become immutable (unchangeable). But the tradition does not explain why, if Adam had genuine power to fulfill the law, he invariably failed. The present account provides that explanation: the structure of finite self-sufficiency, even with formal righteousness, is ordered toward self-preference. Adam’s original righteousness was real but insufficient. It was righteousness without Logos-union, uprightness without the relational plenitude that alone could stabilize it.
The distinction is between grace as assistance and grace as union. If original righteousness required only divine assistance to be maintained, then Adam’s failure is puzzling: why did assistance fail? If original righteousness required Logos-union to be stable, then Adam’s failure is explicable: he lacked what only the incarnation and the Spirit’s indwelling could provide. The present account holds that grace-as-union, not merely grace-as-assistance, is what finite image-bearing requires. Eden had the latter in some measure; only Christ provides the former.
VI. “As Yourself”: The Anthropological Confirmation
Christ’s summary of the law confirms this anthropological analysis. When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus responds: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37–39, WEB).
The formulation is precise. Christ does not command self-love. He assumes it. The command to love one’s neighbor takes self-love as the given, the default orientation requiring no instruction. “As yourself” is the baseline against which neighbor-love is measured.
This assumption reveals the structure under discussion. The finite image-bearer necessarily loves himself because the self is the center from which all evaluation and volition proceed. This is not a post-Fall corruption. It is the structure of finite rational agency.
What the command further reveals is that self-love in the finite image-bearer is exclusive by default. The natural orientation is not merely self-referential but self-preferential. The finite agent privileges his own good because his cognitive and volitional apparatus operates from the first-person perspective. He cannot see from another’s vantage point without deliberate effort.
Christ’s command does not attempt to abolish self-love, which would be incoherent for a finite agent. It attempts to extend self-love, to include the neighbor within the circle of privileged concern. But this extension is precisely what the unregenerate cannot accomplish. The command exposes the condition: the finite self-sufficient agent is bound to self-preference. He is non posse non peccare not because of historical corruption but because of what he structurally is.
Only the regenerate can begin to obey this command. Only the glorified will obey it perfectly.
VII. The Fall as Actualization, Not Transition
On the traditional account, the Fall is a transition from state one (able to sin and able not to sin) to state two (not able not to sin). Adam possessed genuine optionality, chose wrongly, and thereby corrupted human nature such that his descendants lack the optionality he enjoyed.
On the corrected account, the Fall is not a transition between states. It is the actualization of what state one always entailed. The pre-Fall and post-Fall conditions are identical in structure; they differ only in historical manifestation.
Before the Fall, Adam existed as a finite image-bearer with self-sufficient rational agency. The structure of that agency was self-referential and self-preferential. Sin was not merely possible but inevitable. The “choice” in Eden was not a fall from stable innocence into instability; it was the expression of what finite self-sufficiency already was.
This does not make the Fall insignificant. The actualization of sin brought real consequences: guilt, death, and the propagation of the same structure to all Adam’s descendants. But the consequences flow from the actualization of an inherent inevitability, not from a contingent deviation that might have gone otherwise.
The theological question shifts accordingly. The traditional question is: “Why did Adam fall when he could have stood?” The corrected question is: “What does it mean that finite image-bearing necessarily issues in self-preference, and what has God done about it?”
VIII. What God Decrees: Justice, Mercy, and the Necessity of Christ
If rebellion is the logically necessary consequence of creating finite image-bearers, then rebellion is not itself decreed. God decrees to create image-bearers, knowing that rebellion follows by logical necessity. But rebellion is not the object of the decree; it is the necessary concomitant of the object.
What God positively decrees is justice and mercy. These are not reactions to an unexpected development but the eternal purpose for which image-bearers were created. God’s glory is displayed through the demonstration of His justice (the righteous punishment of sin) and His mercy (the gracious salvation of sinners). Both require sin as their occasion, but the decree is for the display of these attributes, not for sin as such.
Christ is therefore logically necessary, not contingently so. Given the decree to create image-bearers (which entails rebellion) and the decree to display justice and mercy (which requires satisfaction and pardon), the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son follow by necessity. The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world is not a contingency plan. He is what creation was always for.
The theodicy question is reframed. The critic asks: “If God decrees all things, does He not decree sin, and is He not therefore culpable?” The answer: God decrees to create image-bearers and decrees justice and mercy as His response to what image-bearing entails. Rebellion is not decreed but logically necessitated by the kind of creature God chose to make. God is no more culpable for rebellion than a mathematician is culpable for theorems that follow from axioms. The mathematician chooses the axioms for the sake of the theorems, not for the sake of every intermediate step.
IX. The Asymmetry: Rebellion Necessary but Not Decreed, Christ Necessary and Decreed
The foregoing analysis yields a crucial asymmetry that must be stated explicitly. Both rebellion and Christ are logically necessary. But their necessity differs in source and in relationship to the divine will.
Rebellion is logically necessary because it is entailed by finite image-bearing. The structure of finite self-sufficiency issues inevitably in self-preference. Given the decree to create image-bearers, rebellion follows by logical necessity. But rebellion is not itself decreed. It is not the object of God’s will but the unavoidable concomitant of what He did will. God did not say, “Let there be rebellion.” He said, “Let us make man in our image,” and rebellion followed from what that making involved.
Christ is logically necessary because, given finite image-bearing (which entails rebellion) and the decree to display justice and mercy (which requires both punishment and pardon), the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son follow necessarily. But Christ is also decreed. He is the positive object of God’s eternal purpose, not merely a logical consequence. The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world because the slaying of the Lamb is what creation was for.
The asymmetry may be summarized:
Rebellion is necessary but not decreed. Its necessity derives from the structure of the creature, not from the intention of the Creator. God is not its author; He is the author of the kind of creature from which it necessarily proceeds.
Christ is necessary and decreed. His necessity derives both from the structure of the creature (which requires redemption) and from the intention of the Creator (who purposed to display justice and mercy). God is His author in the fullest sense: Christ is what God aimed at.
This asymmetry resolves the theodicy problem without diminishing sovereignty. God remains sovereign over all things because the creature whose structure entails rebellion is itself decreed. But God is not culpable for rebellion because rebellion is not the object of His decree. He willed the creature; He willed justice and mercy; He willed Christ. Rebellion is the necessary middle term, but the middle term is not what the syllogism is about. The syllogism is about the conclusion: the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world is not Plan B. He is not even Plan A in the sense of a response to a foreseen problem. He is the point. Creation exists for the display of divine glory in redemption. Finite image-bearing, with its entailed rebellion, is the necessary precondition for that display. But the precondition is backdrop; Christ is foreground. The decree aims at Him.
X. Decretive and Preceptive Will Revisited
The classical distinction between God’s decretive will (His sovereign purpose determining what will occur) and preceptive will (His moral commands revealing what ought to occur) remains essential but requires restatement.
God’s preceptive will consists of the commands, prohibitions, and moral standards revealed in Scripture. These express God’s moral character and what He delights in as good. God genuinely commands all people to love Him with all their heart and their neighbor as themselves. He genuinely delights in obedience and abhors sin.
God’s decretive will is His eternal, efficacious (effectual, accomplishing its purpose) purpose. The content of that purpose is not “whatsoever comes to pass” in an undifferentiated sense. It is more precisely specified: God decrees to create image-bearers, and He decrees justice and mercy as the means of His self-glorification. Rebellion is not decreed alongside these; it is entailed by the first and presupposed by the second.
This clarification preserves the genuine tension in texts like Ezekiel 18:23 (”Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked? ... and not rather that he should return from his way, and live?” WEB) and 1 Timothy 2:4 (God “desires all people to be saved and come to full knowledge of the truth,” WEB). God’s preceptive will genuinely desires repentance and life. This is not facade. But the decree is for the display of both justice and mercy, which requires that not all repent. The reprobate (those passed over by God’s electing grace) are not decreed to rebel; they rebel necessarily as finite image-bearers, and God’s justice is displayed in their condemnation while His mercy is displayed in the salvation of the elect.
XI. Grace as Constitutive, Not Remedial
If non posse non peccare is the original condition of finite image-bearers rather than the consequence of a contingent fall, then grace is not merely remedial but constitutive of the image’s telos.
The traditional narrative presents grace as the remedy for a problem that might not have occurred. Adam could have obeyed; he chose otherwise; grace repairs the damage. The goal of redemption is restoration to the pre-Fall state, with glorification securing that state against future failure.
The corrected account presents grace differently. The pre-Fall state was never the telos. It was the necessary starting point from which image-bearers were always meant to be raised. Eden was not the goal from which we fell but the beginning from which we were destined to ascend. The telos of image-bearing was never autonomous stability; it was always union with Christ, participation in the divine life that alone can stabilize finite freedom.
Regeneration is therefore the Spirit’s work of creating what finite image-bearing could never produce: genuine optionality, the real capacity to love God and neighbor. This is not restoration but new creation. The regenerate person possesses something Adam never had: the ability, grounded in grace, to actually obey the command.
Glory completes what regeneration initiates. The self remains, but integrated into the divine life such that self-love and God-love and neighbor-love are unified. This is the telos that finite image-bearing, left to itself, could never reach. It is what creation was for.
Clarifying the Nature-Grace Distinction
The claim that grace is “constitutive, not merely remedial” may raise concerns about collapsing nature into grace or denying the integrity of creation. This concern deserves direct address.
The present account does not deny the nature-grace distinction at the level of ontology (being). Nature remains nature; grace remains grace. The creature is not divine, and grace does not erase creatureliness. What the account affirms is that nature is ordered to grace at the level of teleology (purpose). Finite image-bearing has an end it cannot reach by its own resources. The telos of human nature is participation in the divine life, but unaided nature cannot achieve that telos. Grace is not a foreign addition to nature but the fulfillment of what nature was made for.
This is the position sometimes called the “supernatural existential” in Catholic theology or the “grace perfects nature” principle in the broader tradition. Nature is genuinely nature, with its own integrity and operations. But nature’s final end exceeds its natural capacity. The creature needs grace not because nature is defective but because nature’s destiny is union with God, and union with God cannot be produced by creaturely effort alone.
On this account, Adam in Eden was genuinely natural humanity. He was not defective; he was finite. His nature was ordered to a supernatural end (glory, Logos-union) that he could not attain by natural powers. The Fall did not introduce this limitation; it actualized the consequences of trying to live as if finite self-sufficiency were sufficient. Grace does not repair a broken nature so much as it elevates nature to the destiny for which it was always intended but which it could never reach alone.
XII. The Threefold State and Covenant Theology
The corrected schema of human states maps directly onto the structure of covenant theology, clarifying the relationship among the covenant of works, the covenant of grace, and the eternal covenant of redemption.
The Covenant of Works and State One
The covenant of works, established with Adam in Eden and recapitulated with Israel at Sinai, addressed creatures in state one (non posse non peccare). The law came to those who could not keep it. This was not a design flaw; it was the design.
The covenant of works functions precisely as Paul describes the law’s function: it reveals sin, increases transgression, and drives the creature toward the promise. “Through the law comes the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20, WEB). “The law came in that the trespass might abound” (Romans 5:20, WEB). The law is a “tutor to bring us to Christ” (Galatians 3:24, WEB).
On the traditional account, these texts describe what happened after the Fall: the law came to fallen creatures and exposed their inability. On the corrected account, the exposure runs deeper. The law came to creatures whose structure was non posse non peccare from the beginning. The Fall actualized what was already latent. Sinai recapitulated Eden. Israel under the old covenant recapitulated Adam under probation. The outcome was the same because the structure was the same.
The covenant of works was therefore never a genuine path to life for finite image-bearers. “By the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight” (Romans 3:20, WEB). This is not because the law is defective but because finite self-sufficient agency is ordered toward self-preference. The covenant of works exposes this ordering. It is the necessary first movement of the divine plan: law to a creature who cannot keep it, so that the creature’s need is made manifest.
The Covenant of Grace and State Two
The covenant of grace, inaugurated in the protoevangelium (the “first gospel,” God’s promise in Genesis 3:15 that the woman’s seed would crush the serpent’s head), unfolded through Abraham, and fulfilled in Christ, addresses creatures whom the Spirit brings into state two (posse non peccare). The new covenant does not merely repeat the command; it provides the capacity to obey.
“Behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke... But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Yahweh: I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it” (Jeremiah 31:31–33, WEB).
The difference between the old and new covenants is not the moral content. The law remains the same. The difference is in the recipients. The old covenant addressed the unregenerate structure; the new covenant creates the regenerate capacity. The old covenant came to those in state one and exposed their inability. The new covenant comes with the Spirit’s work of regeneration, bringing recipients into state two where genuine obedience becomes possible for the first time.
This is why the new covenant is “not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers.” It is not a reissuance of commands to creatures who cannot keep them. It is the provision of new hearts to creatures who can now begin to keep them. The covenant of grace does not merely offer terms; it creates the condition for meeting them.
The Eternal Covenant and State Three
The eternal covenant, sometimes called the covenant of redemption (pactum salutis, Latin for “covenant of salvation”), is the intra-Trinitarian agreement among Father, Son, and Spirit before creation, in which the Son undertook to redeem the elect and the Father undertook to give them to Him. This covenant aimed from eternity at state three (non posse peccare): the glorified condition in which finite freedom is permanently stabilized in God.
The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8) because the eternal covenant purposed His slaying before creation existed. The Father chose a people in Christ “before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without defect before him in love” (Ephesians 1:4, WEB). The end was fixed before the beginning began.
Glory is not the securing of a prior stable state but the arrival at the telos that finite image-bearing could never reach on its own. The eternal covenant did not aim at Eden; it aimed beyond Eden. The tree of life in Revelation 22 exceeds the tree of life in Genesis 2 because the consummation exceeds the commencement. What God always intended was not autonomous creaturely stability but union with Christ, participation in the divine life, the creature forever fixed in the love of God.
The Unity of the Covenants
The three covenants are not three separate plans but three stages of one plan. The covenant of works is not Plan A that failed, replaced by Plan B. It is the necessary first movement: law to a creature who cannot keep it, to reveal what that creature is, to prepare for what that creature needs. The covenant of grace is the second movement: grace to a creature being transformed, to provide what the old covenant could not. The eternal covenant is the resolution toward which both movements tend: the creature finally and permanently what God always intended.
The schema may be summarized:
The covenant of works addresses state one and exposes the condition. The covenant of grace addresses state two and creates the capacity. The eternal covenant consummates state three and achieves the telos.
Christ stands at the center of all three. He is the substance the old covenant foreshadowed, the mediator on whom the new covenant rests, and the Lamb whose slaying the eternal covenant purposed before the world began. In Him the covenants cohere. Apart from Him they are fragments; in Him they are one plan, one purpose, one glory.
XIII. The Logos: Structural Principle and Redemptive Center
The foregoing argument coheres in the Logos (Greek for “Word,” referring to the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity). The threefold state, the covenant structure, the asymmetry between rebellion and Christ: all track to the Word through whom all things were made.
The Logos as Structural Principle
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:1–3, WEB).
All things were made through the Logos. The Logos is not an afterthought, not a response to a problem, not a contingent remedy. He is the principle through which creation exists. The structure of creation is Logos-shaped from the beginning.
This means the imago Dei is the finite creature’s participation in the Logos. Rationality, self-awareness, volitional capacity: these are reflections of the Logos in creaturely form. The image-bearer images the Word. Human reason is derivative reason, human selfhood is derivative selfhood, human agency is derivative agency. The creature who thinks and chooses does so because he is made through the Logos who eternally thinks and chooses.
The Logos-Gap in Finite Image-Bearing
But the reflection is finite, and here the structural tension arises. The Logos is self-sufficient without self-preference because the Logos is God, eternally in relation to Father and Spirit, never a self in isolation. The inner life of the Trinity is constituted by self-giving: the Father eternally gives to the Son, the Son eternally gives to the Father, the Spirit is the bond of that mutual giving. In God, self-expression is self-giving. There is no gap between having and giving because the divine persons possess themselves precisely in giving themselves.
The finite image-bearer has the structure of the Logos (rationality, self-awareness, agency) without the relational plenitude that keeps the Logos from self-preference. The finite self is a center, but a center without the eternal relations that make self-giving constitutive of selfhood. In the creature, self-expression defaults to self-preference because the creature lacks the relational infinity that makes giving and having coincide.
This is the Logos-gap: the finite image-bearer possesses Logos-derived capacities operating outside Logos-union. The creature has the form of the Word without participation in the life of the Word. And this gap is precisely why non posse non peccare is the original condition. The structure entails the outcome. Finite rationality and agency, absent union with their source, inevitably curve inward.
The Incarnation as Logos-Entry
The incarnation (the eternal Son taking on human nature) is the Logos entering the finite condition to bridge the gap He alone can bridge. “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14, WEB). The Logos takes on finite image-bearing and, for the first time, finite humanity is united to its source.
In Christ, the Logos-gap is overcome. Finite human nature is joined to the divine Word such that the self-preferential structure is counteracted from within. Christ’s humanity is not non posse non peccare because His humanity never exists apart from the Logos. The hypostatic union (the union of divine and human natures in the one person of Christ) means that from the first moment of the incarnation, finite human nature subsists in the person of the Word. The gap that defines fallen (and pre-fallen) humanity does not define Christ’s humanity, because His humanity is enhypostatic (existing in and through another person, namely the Logos) in the Logos.
This is why Christ is not merely an example but a savior. He does not merely show finite image-bearers how to overcome self-preference by effort. He provides the union that alone makes the overcoming possible. Salvation is not imitation but participation: the creature joined to Christ shares in the Logos-life that Christ’s humanity has from the moment of conception.
Regeneration as Logos-Participation
The Spirit’s work in regeneration (the new birth, spiritual renewal) is to unite the finite image-bearer to Christ, to bring the creature into the Logos-life. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20, WEB). The regenerate person begins to participate in the Logos who is the source and goal of all creaturely rationality and agency.
This is why posse non peccare becomes possible in regeneration. The capacity for genuine other-regard arises not from moral effort but from ontological (relating to being) union. The self is no longer operating in isolation, no longer a center without relational plenitude. The regenerate self exists in Christ, participates in the Word, begins to share in the life where self-giving and self-expression coincide.
The regenerate person still sins because the participation is partial and progressive. The old structure of finite self-preference remains as a residue, warring against the new principle of Logos-participation. But the war is real, the outcome is certain, and the capacity to not sin is genuine because the source of that capacity is not the creature’s own resources but the indwelling Christ.
Glory as Logos-Integration
Non posse peccare in glory is the completion of Logos-integration. The finite self is so fully incorporated into the Logos-life that self-preference becomes impossible. Not because the self is abolished, but because the self now exists entirely within the relational plenitude of the triune God.
The glorified saint participates fully in the divine life where giving and having are one. Self-love, God-love, and neighbor-love coincide because the finite self has been taken up into the infinite relations of Father, Son, and Spirit. The creature remains creature; the distinction between Creator and creation is not erased. But the creature now lives and moves and has its being in conscious, unmediated, permanent union with the Logos through whom it was made.
This is the telos (end, purpose, goal) that finite image-bearing, left to itself, could never reach. The Logos-gap could only be bridged by the Logos. The structure that entailed self-preference could only be overcome by union with the One whose life is self-giving. Glory is not the restoration of Eden but the arrival at what Eden was always pointed toward: the creature fully integrated into the life of the Word.
The Schema and the Logos
The threefold state may now be restated in terms of Logos-relation:
Non posse non peccare is finite image-bearing with Logos-derived structure but without Logos-union. The creature has the form of the Word without participation in the life of the Word. Self-preference is structurally inevitable.
Posse non peccare is regeneration, where Logos-participation is initiated. The creature is united to Christ by the Spirit and begins to share in the life where self-giving is possible. The old structure remains but is being overcome.
Non posse peccare is glory, where Logos-integration is completed. The creature exists entirely within the Logos-life, and self-preference is no longer possible because the self is constituted by participation in divine self-giving.
The whole system tracks to the Logos because the Logos is what creation is through and what redemption is into. The Word who was in the beginning is the Word who became flesh is the Word in whom the saints will dwell forever. Christ is not a solution imported from outside the system. He is the principle the system was always about.
XIV. Christ’s Inherent Non Posse Peccare
The Logos framework yields a decisive Christological conclusion: Christ’s humanity is non posse peccare not by attainment but by constitution. This is not a peripheral claim but the soteriological center of the entire schema.
The Hypostatic Union and the Absence of the Logos-Gap
Christ’s human nature never exists apart from the Logos. There is no moment when Christ’s humanity subsists in itself as a finite self-sufficient agent operating outside Logos-union. From conception, the human nature is enhypostatic in the Word. The Logos-gap, which defines all other finite image-bearing, never opens in Christ because His humanity is always already in the Logos.
The Council of Chalcedon (451) confessed that Christ is one person in two natures, “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” The human nature is not mixed with the divine (which would destroy its creatureliness) nor separated from it (which would leave the Logos-gap intact). The human nature subsists in the person of the Word, united to the divine nature in one hypostasis.
This means Christ’s humanity has what no other finite humanity has: existence within the relational plenitude that constitutes the divine life. The finite self-sufficiency that, in other humans, defaults to self-preference operates in Christ within Logos-union. The structural condition that produces non posse non peccare in Adam’s race does not produce it in Christ because the condition itself is overcome by the mode of the humanity’s existence.
Christ Does Not Progress Through the Threefold States
The threefold schema describes humanity’s relation to Christ. It does not describe Christ’s own journey. Christ is not non posse non peccare becoming posse non peccare becoming non posse peccare. He is non posse peccare from the womb.
The temptations Christ experienced were real. The human nature felt the pressure of hunger, the pull of self-preservation, the weight of suffering. “For we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15, WEB). The temptations engaged His human faculties genuinely.
But the outcome was never in doubt. The person who experienced those temptations is the Word, who cannot defect from Himself. The human will of Christ, operating within Logos-union, could not choose self-preference over self-giving because the human will subsisted in the One whose eternal life is self-giving. Temptation without the possibility of sinning is not a sham; it is the demonstration that Logos-union has conquered what Logos-gap could not resist.
Christ as Firstborn of the New Humanity
Christ is not Adam done right. He is not a second attempt at the same experiment, this time successful. He is the new humanity, the eschatological man, the firstborn among many brothers (Romans 8:29).
Adam was finite image-bearing in the Logos-gap condition. His humanity, however “upright” in formal endowment, existed outside Logos-union. The trajectory from that condition to self-preference to actualized sin was structurally inevitable.
Christ is finite image-bearing in Logos-union. His humanity exists in a fundamentally different mode. The “second Adam” language in Paul (Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 45–49) indicates federal headship and covenantal parallel, but it does not indicate ontological repetition. Adam and Christ are heads of two humanities, but the two humanities are not variations on a single theme. Adam heads the old humanity, defined by the Logos-gap. Christ heads the new humanity, defined by Logos-union.
The parallel is structural, not material. Adam’s disobedience brought death to those in him; Christ’s obedience brings life to those in Him. But Adam’s disobedience was inevitable given what he was; Christ’s obedience was inevitable given what He is. The parallel lies in federal headship and covenantal imputation, not in the nature of the act or the condition of the agent.
The Incarnation as the Proleptic Presence of Glory
Non posse peccare is the glorified state toward which the regenerate move. Christ’s humanity possesses it from the beginning because His humanity is united to the Logos from the beginning. In Christ, glory has entered history. The eschaton is present in His person before it is distributed to His people.
This is the significance of the transfiguration: the glory that will be revealed was already there, hidden under the form of a servant. This is the significance of the resurrection: not the attainment of something new but the manifestation of what the incarnate humanity always was, now freed from the conditions of humiliation. This is the significance of the ascension: glorified humanity seated at the right hand of God, the firstfruits of what the saints will become.
Regeneration and glorification are not parallel tracks to what Christ achieved. They are participation in what Christ already is. The regenerate do not climb to glory alongside Christ; they are raised into the glory Christ possesses from the beginning of His human existence.
Why Christ Alone Can Save
If Christ’s humanity were non posse non peccare (the Adamic condition), He would need saving Himself. A finite self-sufficient agent in the Logos-gap condition cannot save others from that condition; he shares it. Such a Christ would be a fellow sinner, not a savior.
If Christ’s humanity were posse non peccare (the regenerate condition), He would be a pilgrim on the same journey, further along perhaps, but not the source of the journey’s possibility. Such a Christ could be an example but not a redeemer. He would show the way without providing it.
Only because Christ’s humanity is non posse peccare can He be the source of salvation rather than a recipient of it. He does not need what He gives. He possesses in Himself, by virtue of the hypostatic union, the Logos-union that regeneration initiates and glory completes. The saints become what He is; He does not become what they are.
Union with Christ as Participation in His Non Posse Peccare
The regenerate are united to a Christ who is already non posse peccare. They do not participate in a Christ who is struggling, progressing, or becoming. They participate in the One who is already glorified humanity, already the eschatological man, already what they will be.
The posse non peccare that the regenerate experience is not an independent capacity generated within them. It is a derivative share in Christ’s non posse peccare. They can not-sin because they are in the One who cannot sin. The power is His, communicated to them through union. “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, WEB). The branch does not generate its own life; it receives life from the vine.
Glory, for the regenerate, is the completion of what union already is in principle. The partial, contested, progressive participation of regeneration gives way to the full, uncontested, permanent participation of glory. What changes is not the source (Christ remains the source) but the degree of participation. Posse non peccare becomes non posse peccare as union with Christ reaches its consummation.
The Logic of the Incarnation
The entire Christological structure follows from the nature of the problem and the identity of the solution:
The problem is structural in finite image-bearing. The Logos-gap produces non posse non peccare. No finite agent operating outside Logos-union can escape the trajectory toward self-preference.
The solution must enter finite image-bearing to address it from within. Therefore man. A decree from outside, a command from heaven, cannot close the gap. The Word must become flesh because flesh is where the problem is.
The solution must provide Logos-union, which only the Logos can provide. Therefore God. A mere human, however exalted, would be another instance of the Logos-gap, not the answer to it.
The solution must unite humanity to divinity without destroying either. Therefore hypostatic union. The humanity must remain humanity (or there is no creature to save), and the divinity must remain divinity (or there is no Creator to save). One person, two natures, unconfused and undivided.
The solution must be non posse peccare from the beginning to be the source of salvation rather than a recipient. Therefore the humanity of Christ is inherently, constitutionally, eternally non posse peccare by virtue of its existence in the Logos.
Christ must be what He is because the problem is what it is. The incarnation is not arbitrary divine choice imposed on a system that could have worked otherwise. It is the logically necessary shape of redemption given the structure of finite image-bearing and the nature of the Logos-gap.
Christ’s State as Both Necessary and Decreed
The asymmetry articulated earlier between rebellion and Christ now resolves into its full Christological form. Rebellion is necessary but not decreed. Christ is necessary and decreed. But more precisely: Christ’s non posse peccare is itself both necessary and decreed.
It is necessary because, given the hypostatic union, Christ’s humanity must be non posse peccare. A humanity subsisting in the Logos cannot exist in the Logos-gap. The mode of existence determines the state. If the Word becomes flesh, that flesh is non posse peccare by logical necessity. There is no possible world in which the Logos assumes humanity and that humanity is non posse non peccare or posse non peccare. The union entails the state.
It is decreed because the hypostatic union itself is decreed. The incarnation is not a logical necessity independent of God’s will. God freely purposed, before the foundation of the world, to unite humanity to the Logos in the person of the Son. The union is the content of the decree. Christ’s non posse peccare is decreed because the union that produces it is decreed.
The full picture may now be stated:
Rebellion is necessary but not decreed. Its necessity derives from the structure of finite image-bearing (the Logos-gap). It is not the object of divine intention but the unavoidable concomitant of what God did intend.
Christ is necessary and decreed. His necessity derives from the Logos-gap (which requires bridging) plus the decree of justice and mercy (which requires satisfaction and pardon). He is the object of divine intention.
Christ’s non posse peccare is necessary and decreed. Its necessity derives from the hypostatic union: given the union, the state follows. And the union is itself the divine intention. God did not decree a Christ who might or might not be non posse peccare; He decreed the union that constitutes non posse peccare.
This closes the loop of the argument. The asymmetry between rebellion and Christ is not merely that one is decreed and the other is not. It is that rebellion is structurally entailed with no divine aim behind it, while Christ’s non posse peccare is structurally entailed by a union that is itself the divine aim. The necessity of rebellion is a byproduct. The necessity of Christ’s state is the point.
The decree aims at Christ. Christ’s state is what the decree produces. The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world is not a contingent feature of the plan but its center. And the Lamb’s inherent non posse peccare is not an accident of the incarnation but its purpose: the creation of a humanity that, united to the Logos, can be the source of salvation for all who are united to Him.
XV. Objections and Responses
The thesis advanced here will meet resistance from multiple directions. This section addresses the most significant theological, philosophical, and exegetical objections.
Theological Objections
Objection 1: This makes God the author of sin by another route. If He knowingly created beings who would necessarily rebel, He is still responsible.
Response: The objection conflates authorship with causation and causation with entailment. To author sin would be to will sin as an end or to directly cause sin as an efficient cause. The present account does neither. God wills image-bearers; the structure of finite image-bearing entails self-preference; self-preference in relation to God is sin. God authors the creature, not the sin. The sin follows from what the creature is, not from what God does to the creature or commands the creature to do.
An analogy: a mathematician who adopts certain axioms knows that certain theorems will follow. She does not thereby “author” those theorems in the sense of willing each one independently. She authors the axioms; the theorems are entailed. If some of those theorems are unlovely, she is not culpable for their unloveliness in the same way she would be if she had set out to produce them directly. She set out to produce a system with certain properties; the unlovely theorems are concomitants.
The traditional position faces a sharper form of this problem. If God decreed rebellion (as the strong reading of “whatsoever comes to pass” implies), then rebellion is the direct object of divine will, and the authorship charge has more purchase. The present account relocates rebellion from decreed to entailed, which is precisely the move that relieves the authorship problem.
Objection 2: This denies the historical Fall. If pre-Fall and post-Fall are structurally identical, what work does Genesis 3 do?
Response: The account does not deny the historical Fall; it reinterprets its significance. Genesis 3 narrates the actualization of what finite image-bearing entailed. The actualization is real, historical, and consequential. What changes at the Fall is not the structure of the will but its historical manifestation and its covenantal standing.
Before Genesis 3, Adam existed under the covenant of works with the command not to eat. After Genesis 3, he exists under the curse, expelled from the garden, subject to death. The covenantal transition is real. The guilt is real. The consequences are real. What the corrected account denies is that the transition involved a change in the basic orientation of the will from a stable equilibrium to an unstable bondage. The will was never in stable equilibrium; it was always ordered toward self-preference. Genesis 3 is when that ordering expressed itself in overt disobedience and brought down the covenantal consequences.
The narrative does important work: it specifies the command, the temptation, the act, and the curse. It establishes the covenantal framework within which redemption will occur. It introduces the protoevangelium (Genesis 3:15). None of this is diminished by recognizing that the act narrated was inevitable given what Adam was.
Objection 3: This contradicts the Confessions. Westminster, Belgic, and Dort all affirm Adam was created “upright” with genuine ability to obey.
Response: The Confessions describe Adam as created in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with the law written on his heart. The present account does not deny this. Adam possessed the cognitive equipment to recognize the good. He knew what God commanded. In that sense, he was “upright” and had the “ability” to obey: no external constraint prevented him, and no cognitive defect blinded him.
What the Confessions do not adjudicate is whether this formal ability was materially actualizable given the structure of finite agency. The Confessions speak phenomenologically: Adam could obey in the sense that obedience was within the range of actions his faculties could perform. The present account adds an ontological claim: the structure of finite self-sufficiency meant that the will’s orientation was toward self-preference, making the non-actualization of sin impossible over any sufficient duration.
Confessional fidelity does not require that every metaphysical question be foreclosed by the confessional text. The Confessions establish that Adam was not created fallen, that he was genuinely responsible, and that his sin brought guilt and corruption on his posterity. All of this the present account affirms. The question of whether posse non peccare was materially actualizable or only formally describable is a question the Confessions do not directly address, leaving room for refinement.
Semper reformanda means the Confessions are the baseline, not the terminus. If the logic of finite image-bearing requires adjustment to the traditional schema, confessional fidelity demands we follow the argument rather than insist on formulations the Confessions did not intend to render permanently fixed.
Objection 4: This collapses into supralapsarianism or even makes supralapsarianism look modest.
Response: Supralapsarianism holds that, in the logical order of the divine decrees, election and reprobation precede the decrees to create and to permit the Fall. The present account is not about the order of decrees but about the relationship between decree and entailment.
On the present account, God decrees to create image-bearers and decrees justice and mercy. The Fall is not decreed but entailed by the first decree. Election and reprobation are the application of the second decree (justice and mercy) to those who, as finite image-bearers, necessarily exist in the state of rebellion. Whether one orders the decrees supralapsarianly or infralapsarianly, the basic structure remains: rebellion is entailed, not decreed; redemption is decreed and applied.
If anything, the present account is more modest than classic supralapsarianism, because it does not place reprobation in the decree at all. The reprobate are not decreed to rebel; they rebel necessarily as finite image-bearers. God’s justice is displayed in their condemnation, but their condemnation is the application of the decree of justice to creatures who exist in rebellion by structural necessity. The decree aims at the display of justice and mercy, not at the population of hell.
Objection 5: If Adam never had genuine optionality, how was he a valid federal head? The covenant of works becomes a sham.
Response: Federal headship requires that the representative’s act be imputable to those he represents, not that the act be contingent. Adam’s act is imputable to his posterity because he stood in covenantal relation to God on their behalf. The covenant of works was a real covenant with a real command, real probation, and real consequences. Adam really transgressed, and his transgression really brought guilt and death to his posterity.
The objection assumes that a covenant requires libertarian freedom to be genuine. But this is precisely what compatibilism denies. A covenant is genuine if the parties are real, the terms are real, and the consequences follow from the terms. Adam was a real party. The command was a real term. The curse was a real consequence. None of this requires that Adam could have done otherwise in a libertarian sense.
Consider: on the traditional account, the elect in glory will be unable to sin (non posse peccare), yet they remain in covenant with God, and their obedience is genuine obedience. If inability to sin does not vitiate covenant at the end, inability not to sin does not vitiate covenant at the beginning. What matters is that the agent acts voluntarily according to his nature, and that the covenantal terms specify consequences for such action. Both conditions are met.
Philosophical Objections
Objection 6: Self-reference does not entail self-preference. A finite agent can recognize his own perspective as one among many.
Response: The objection conflates cognitive recognition with volitional orientation. A finite agent can indeed recognize, cognitively, that his perspective is one among many. But recognition is not the same as practical subordination. The question is not whether the agent can think the thought “others have perspectives too,” but whether the agent’s volitional orientation naturally privileges his own good over theirs.
The structure of finite agency is such that all evaluation proceeds from the first-person perspective. The agent does not have unmediated access to another’s good; he must infer it, imagine it, or be told it. His own good, by contrast, is present to him immediately. This asymmetry of access generates an asymmetry of concern. Even when the agent knows that others matter, his knowledge is abstract where his self-concern is concrete.
Christ’s command to love the neighbor “as yourself” confirms this analysis. If self-preference were not the default, the command would be oddly framed. Why not simply “love your neighbor”? The “as yourself” clause presupposes that self-love is the baseline, the standard by which neighbor-love is measured. The command does not create self-love; it attempts to extend it. But extension is precisely what the unregenerate cannot accomplish, because the structure of finite agency resists it.
Objection 7: This is fatalism dressed in theological language. Logical necessity is still necessity.
Response: The objection correctly notes that logical necessity is necessity. The question is whether necessity is incompatible with freedom and responsibility. Compatibilism answers no.
Fatalism holds that outcomes are fixed regardless of what agents do. The present account holds that outcomes are fixed through what agents do. Adam’s rebellion was inevitable, but it was inevitable because of what Adam was and how Adam chose, not despite his choosing. The necessity runs through agency, not around it.
Consider: it is logically necessary that 2 + 2 = 4. This necessity does not make arithmetic oppressive or render mathematicians unfree when they affirm it. Logical necessity is simply the structure of how things are. If it is logically necessary that finite self-sufficient agents prefer themselves, this is the structure of finite agency. Agents who so prefer act voluntarily, according to their nature, without external compulsion. Compatibilism holds that this is sufficient for freedom and responsibility.
The alternative is to hold that freedom requires contingency, that an agent is free only if his act could have been otherwise in exactly the same circumstances. But this libertarian requirement is philosophically problematic (it makes free acts arbitrary, uncaused, and unintelligible) and theologically unnecessary (Scripture attributes responsibility on the basis of voluntary action, not metaphysical contingency).
Objection 8: The asymmetry between rebellion (necessary, not decreed) and Christ (necessary and decreed) is a distinction without a difference.
Response: The distinction is real and has significant theological consequences.
To be decreed is to be the object of God’s will, the end at which He aims. To be entailed is to follow necessarily from something decreed without itself being aimed at. A carpenter who builds a table decrees the table; he does not decree the sawdust, though sawdust is entailed by the process. The sawdust is a necessary concomitant, not an intended product.
Rebellion is sawdust. Christ is the table. God’s will aims at the display of His glory in justice and mercy through Christ. Rebellion is the necessary concomitant of creating the kind of creature on whom justice and mercy can be displayed. It is not what God is after; it is what comes with what God is after.
This distinction matters for theodicy. If rebellion is decreed alongside Christ, then God is equally the author of both, and the question “Why did God decree sin?” has no satisfying answer. If rebellion is entailed rather than decreed, the question shifts: “Why did God create beings whose structure entails rebellion?” And the answer is: because such beings are the necessary occasion for the display of justice and mercy, which is what God was after. The unlovely concomitant is justified by the glorious end.
The distinction also matters for worship. If God decreed rebellion as an end, praise is complicated by the sense that God wanted sin for its own sake. If God decreed image-bearers and Christ, and rebellion is the necessary middle term, praise is directed at the wisdom of God who brought glory out of what creaturely finitude entailed. The difference between aiming at something and permitting it as a necessary concomitant is not semantic; it shapes the heart’s posture toward God.
Exegetical Objections
Objection 9: Genesis 1-2 describes the pre-Fall state as “very good.” How can non posse non peccare be “very good”?
Response: “Very good” is a declaration of fitness for purpose, not a declaration of eschatological completeness. God declares the creation “very good” because it is exactly what He intended it to be at that stage of the divine plan. The creation is “very good” as a beginning, not as an end.
Consider: the pre-Fall state lacked the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the consummation. If “very good” meant “incapable of improvement” or “complete,” then redemptive history would be a departure from perfection rather than a fulfillment of it. But the whole tenor of Scripture is that history moves toward a goal, and that the goal exceeds the beginning. The tree of life in Revelation 22 exceeds the tree of life in Genesis 2.
On the present account, the pre-Fall creation is “very good” because it is the appropriate starting point for the display of God’s glory in justice and mercy. Finite image-bearers who necessarily tend toward self-preference are exactly what God needed for the plan He intended to execute. The “very good” is teleological: good for the purpose, good as the beginning of the story, good as the occasion for the Christ who was always the point.
Objection 10: Romans 5:12-21 treats the Fall as a genuine transition, not mere actualization.
Response: Romans 5 does treat the Fall as a transition, but the question is: a transition in what respect? The text specifies: “through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12, WEB).
The transition Paul describes is the entrance of sin into the world and the consequent reign of death. This is fully compatible with the present account. Before Genesis 3, sin had not yet entered the world in the sense of overt transgression of the command. After Genesis 3, sin entered through Adam’s act, and death followed. The transition is from latent self-preference (not yet expressed in transgression) to actualized self-preference (expressed in transgression and bringing death).
Paul’s contrast between Adam and Christ is a contrast between two acts with two sets of consequences: Adam’s trespass bringing condemnation and death, Christ’s obedience bringing justification and life. The contrast does not require that Adam’s pre-Fall state was one of stable equilibrium from which he fell. It requires only that Adam’s act had the consequences Paul specifies, and that Christ’s act reverses them. The present account affirms both.
Moreover, Paul’s argument in Romans 5 coheres well with the present thesis. The universality of sin (”death passed to all men, because all sinned”) is more naturally explained if sin is structurally inevitable for finite image-bearers than if it is a contingent inheritance from a contingent fall. Why does every human being sin? On the traditional account, because of inherited corruption from Adam. On the present account, because of inherited corruption from Adam and because finite self-sufficiency entails self-preference in every instance. The two explanations are complementary, not competing. Romans 5 emphasizes the Adamic inheritance; the present account explains why that inheritance is universal and inescapable.
XVI. Conclusion: Semper Reformanda
The Reformation bequeathed to the church not only a body of doctrine but a principle: ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei, the reformed church always being reformed according to the word of God. This principle applies not only to medieval accretions but to the Reformed tradition itself. Fidelity to the Reformation requires willingness to extend its logic where the Reformers themselves stopped short.
The synthesis offered here is novel and not novel.
It is not novel in its components. Every piece is attested in the tradition. Compatibilist freedom derives from Augustine and Edwards. The decretive/preceptive distinction comes from Turretin, the Westminster divines, and their contemporary expositors. The Logos as structural principle of creation is Johannine and patristic. Christ’s impeccability represents the mainstream of Reformed and Catholic Christology. The threefold state (in some form) is Augustinian. Grace as constitutive of humanity’s telos has roots in Irenaeus, development in Eastern theosis theology, and presence in Reformed eschatology. Covenant theology is the architecture of the Reformed tradition itself.
It is novel in its synthesis. The argument relocates non posse non peccare from post-Fall consequence to original condition, grounding this relocation in the structure of finite image-bearing rather than historical corruption. It collapses Augustine’s fourfold schema to threefold, eliminating posse peccare et posse non peccare as a materially real state. It distinguishes rebellion as logically necessary but not decreed from Christ as both logically necessary and decreed, and it identifies this asymmetry as the resolution to theodicy. It ties the threefold state directly to Logos-relation: gap, participation, integration. It makes Christ’s inherent non posse peccare the soteriological center, the content of the decree, the point of the incarnation, and the substance of what union communicates. It integrates covenant theology into the schema such that the covenants are stages of one Christocentric plan rather than sequential experiments.
Why has this synthesis not been made before? The tradition has been protective of Adam’s pre-Fall integrity. Posse non peccare in Eden safeguards against making God the author of sin. The correction demonstrates that this safeguard is unnecessary: relocating the necessity of sin from decree to structure relieves the authorship problem without requiring a stable pre-Fall equilibrium that never existed. Additionally, the tradition has treated impeccability and the threefold state as separate theological loci. Christology and anthropology have occupied adjacent chapters rather than integrated arguments. The synthesis emerges from pressing a question the tradition has not sufficiently pressed: what is Christ’s own location in the schema of human states?
Novel syntheses are either breakthroughs or errors. The test is whether the synthesis is ad hoc, invented to solve a problem, or organic, following from premises the tradition already holds. The present argument claims to be organic. The premises are traditional; the connections are new. But this judgment belongs not to the author alone but to the church’s evaluation.
Semper reformanda cuts both ways. It invites development; it also warns against innovation that masquerades as development. This paper is offered as a proposal, not a pronouncement. The argument stands or falls on its coherence with Scripture, its fidelity to the tradition’s deepest commitments, and its capacity to illuminate what the tradition has left obscure.
Augustine gave us the categories. The Reformers sharpened the soteriology. Edwards worked out the psychology of the will. But the tradition retained posse peccare et posse non peccare as the original human state because the alternative seemed to make God the author of sin. The correction offered here demonstrates that the alternative does no such thing. It relocates the source of rebellion from decree to structure, from divine intention to creaturely constitution. God remains sovereign; rebellion remains inevitable; Christ remains necessary. But the inevitability is logical, not volitional on God’s part. He willed the creature; the creature’s structure did the rest.
This is reformation of the Reformation. Not rejection, but extension. The solas stand. Justification by faith alone stands. The sovereignty of grace stands. What changes is the anthropology underlying the hamartiology, and with it the precision of the theodicy. The tradition was right that we needed a category for “unable not to sin.” It was wrong about when that category first applies. It applies from the beginning.
Reformed Calvinistic theology, properly corrected, does not negate free will but identifies its structure and trajectory. The imago Dei includes rational self-sufficiency, which in a finite creature entails self-centering. The original human condition was non posse non peccare, not as corruption but as structure. Rebellion is logically necessary given finite image-bearing, but rebellion is not decreed. What God decrees is justice and mercy, making Christ the logically necessary fulfillment of creation. And Christ’s own non posse peccare is both necessary and decreed: necessary because the hypostatic union entails it, decreed because the hypostatic union is the content of God’s eternal purpose.
Augustine’s fourfold schema collapses to three states: the original condition of finite self-preference (non posse non peccare), the regenerate condition of genuine optionality (posse non peccare), and the glorified condition of perfected freedom (non posse peccare). The Fall is not a transition between states but the actualization of what finite image-bearing always entailed. Grace is not remedial but constitutive; it creates the capacity for obedience that finite agency could never generate. The covenants are not sequential experiments but stages of one plan aimed from eternity at Christ. And Christ Himself is the fixed point: non posse peccare from the womb, the firstborn of the new humanity, the Logos in whom finite freedom finds its home.
Christ’s command to love the neighbor “as yourself” confirms this anthropological analysis. Self-love is assumed because self-reference is the structure of finite rational agency. The command exposes the need for grace: only the regenerate can extend concern beyond the self, and only the glorified will do so perfectly.
The vision that emerges is worship of the triune God whose justice and mercy meet at the cross. The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world is the logic of creation made manifest. In Him, finite freedom finds what it could never achieve alone: stable, eternal, joyful union with the God whose image it bears. The confession is not the terminus but the baseline. Semper reformanda.
References
Augustine of Hippo. Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love.
Boston, Thomas. Human Nature in Its Fourfold State. Edinburgh, 1720.
Edwards, Jonathan. Freedom of the Will. Boston, 1754.
Piper, John. “Are There Two Wills in God?” In Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace, edited by Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware, 107–131. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000.
Storms, Sam. “Are There Two Wills in God?” Sam Storms, https://www.samstorms.org/all-articles/post/are-there-two-wills-in-god.
Turretin, Francis. Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Edited by James T. Dennison Jr. Translated by George Musgrave Giger. 3 vols. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997.
“The Fourfold State of Man.” The Genevan Foundation, https://thegenevanfoundation.com/the-fourfold-state-of-man-theological-definitions-and-analysis/.
“Free Will and Man’s Four-Fold State.” Monergism, https://www.monergism.com/free-will-and-mans-four-fold-state.
“Human Nature in Its Fourfold State.” Monergism, https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/four-fold.html.
“The Loss and Restoration of Liberty.” Ligonier Ministries, https://learn.ligonier.org/devotionals/loss-and-restoration-liberty.