Pre lapsarian State of Adam
• Inherent Goodness and Incompleteness:
Humanity was created in the image of God, inherently good but not yet perfected, with
the potential for growth toward divine likeness.
• Potential for Perfection:
Human nature was designed to progress, maturing through free will and cooperation with
divine grace.
• Conditional Immortality:
Immortality was not intrinsic but depended on sustained communion with God and
obedience to His will.
• Intermediary Status:
Humanity was created as a "middle nature," bridging the mortal and immortal, the earthly
and heavenly, with the potential to ascend toward God or fall into decay.
• Dependence on Divine Grace:
Human nature required divine grace to overcome its limitations, achieve immortality, and
attain union with God.
• Post-Fall Corruption:
After the Fall, humanity became subject to mortality, corruption, and passions, which
were not part of its original design.
1. St. Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd Century)
Man was not made perfect from the beginning
"It was not possible for things recently created to have been uncreated... for as these things are of
later date, so are they infantile; so are they unaccustomed to, and unexercised in, perfect
discipline... man making progress day by day, and ascending towards the perfect... By this
arrangement... man... will be glorified; and being glorified, should see his Lord. For the
beholding of God is productive of immortality, but immortality renders one near unto God... It
was necessary, at first, that nature should be exhibited; then, after that, that what was mortal
should be conquered and swallowed up by immortality, and the corruptible by incorruptibility..."
(Against Heresies, 4.38)
2. St. Augustine of Hippo (4th–5th Century)
• Conditional Immortality:
" We now discuss the fall of the first man (we may say of the first men), and of the origin and
propagation of human death. For God had not made man like the angels, in such a condition that,
even though they had sinned, they could none the more die. He had so made them, that if they
discharged the obligations of obedience, an angelic immortality and a blessed eternity might
ensue, without the intervention of death; but if they disobeyed, death should be visited on them
with just sentence."
(City of God, 13.1)
3. St. Gregory of Nazianzus (4th Century)
• Potential for Divinization:
"The Creator-Word fashions Man; and taking a body from already existing matter, and placing in
it a Breath taken from Himself... He placed him on the earth... king of all upon earth, but subject
to the King above; earthly and heavenly; temporal and yet immortal... spirit because of the
favour bestowed on him, flesh on account of the height to which he had been raised... a living
creature... deified by its inclination to God... that we should both see and experience the
Splendour of God, which is worthy of Him Who made us, and will dissolve us, and remake us
after a loftier fashion."
(Oration 45, 7)
4. St. Basil the Great (4th Century)
• Potential for Life:
" Nothing is stable in man; here from nothingness he raises himself to perfection; there after
having hasted to put forth his strength to attain his full greatness he suddenly is subject to
gradual deterioration, and is destroyed by diminution."
(Hexaemeron, 6.10)
5. Gregory of Nyssa
o To Grow in his likeness:
" “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” We possess the one by creation; we acquire
the other by free will. …Let him possess by creation what is in the image, but let him also
become according to the likeness. God has given the power for this…But it is proper that one
part is given you, while the other has been left incomplete: this is so that you might complete it
yourself and might be worthy of the reward which comes from God."
(Commentary on Genesis, 1:26)
6. St. Severus of Antioch
• All creation is corruptible and mortal:
" All creation was brought into existence ex nihilo. All ex-nihilo creation is by nature prone
to nihilo, and therefore corruptible and mortal. ."
(Yonatan Moss, Incorruptible Bodies, University of California Press 2016, Chapter 2 “Body
Politics: Rethinking the Body of Christ”)
7. St. Theophilus of Antioch
• Potential for immortality
“And God having placed man in Paradise, as has been said, to till and keep it, commanded
him to eat of all the trees — manifestly of the tree of life also; but only of the tree of
knowledge He commanded him not to taste. And God transferred him from the earth, out of
which he had been produced, into Paradise, giving him means of advancement, in order that,
maturing and becoming perfect, and being even declared a god, he might thus ascend into
heaven in possession of immortality. For man had been made a middle nature, neither wholly
mortal, nor altogether immortal, but capable of either; so also the place, Paradise, was made
in respect of beauty intermediate between earth and heaven. And by the expression, till it, no
other kind of labour is implied than the observance of God's command, lest, disobeying, he
should destroy himself, as indeed he did destroy himself, by sin.”( To Autolycus, Book II ,
Chapter 24)
8. St. Clement of Alexandria
“By which consideration is solved the question propounded to us by the heretics, Whether Adam
was created perfect or imperfect? Well, if imperfect, how could the work of a perfect God—
above all, that work being man—be imperfect? And if perfect, how did he transgress the
commandments? For they shall hear from us that he was not perfect in his creation, but adapted
to the reception of virtue… For God created man for immortality, and made him an image of His
own nature”; according to which nature of Him who knows all, he who is a Gnostic, and
righteous, and holy with prudence, hastes to reach the measure of perfect manhood.” (Stromata:
Book VI, Chapter 12)
Passions after-Fall:
1. St. Gregory of Nyssa (4th Century)
" Passions like anger, pleasure, greed, and fear are not part of the original divine nature of
humanity but instead stem from the animal-like mode of generation humanity inherited. These
passions, while shared with animals, are further developed by human thought, turning them into
vices when they are fueled by irrational desires. However, if reason governs these emotions, they
can be transformed into virtues, like anger becoming courage and fear turning into caution.
(On the Making of Man, 18)
