amental depravity in human nature, which is the more profound situation. If such depravity is fundamental to human nature and if flesh is the nature of being human, then it is hard not to conclude that depravity is the distinction of the existential condition of flesh.
It is at this point that the doctrine of original sin, linked with the Fall by Adam and Eve, becomes relevant. Augustine's famously "seminal" view of sinful human nature was that God created man "upright" but that Adam's "bad use of free will" meant that "the seminal nature was there from which we were to be propagated; and this being vitiated by sin, and bound by the chain of death . . . man could not be born of man in any other state" (Augustine 13:14). Original sin, which is intangible, nevertheless had tangibly real, physical origin, with the father of mankind spoiling it for fleshly posterity, since "Adam had already sinned when his first son was conceived" (Thiessen 168).
Another view of original sin, known as the federal or representative view, is similar to the seminal view but is distinguishable from it. It is associated with Protestantism just as Augustine's views are associated with Catholicism. The federal interpretation is that Adam as the first man was the representative of all hu
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