Toward a New Account of the Fall, Informed by Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

This article argues that the doctrine of the Fall into sin is necessary to avoid compromising Scriptural teaching on the universality of sin or the goodness of creation. A new theory of the Fall, indebted to Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, and the author’s monograph Aquinas, Original Sin, and the Challenge of Evolution, is proposed, on which the Fall is comparable to the loss of a gifted inheritance.