A great deal of Clausen’s discomfort with Augustine involved the seeming incoherence of the doctrine of original sin. According to Clausen, Augustine’s theory that Adam and Eve’s fall was responsible for the corruption of human nature and for the guilt of their descendants was unintelligible. The notion of a capacity only to choose evil, present at birth, suggested the self-contradiction that sin is on the one hand inherited and innate, but on the other hand is the individual’s own fault (KJN 3, pp. 29-31).
