Heidelberg Catechism · Question 9
Explaining Part I: Man's misery
Is God, then, not unjust by requiring in His law what man cannot do?
No, for God so created man that he was able to do it. But man, at the instigation of the devil, in deliberate disobedience robbed himself and all his descendants of these gifts.
Scripture proofs King James Version
- Gen. 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
- Gen. 3:13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
- John 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
- I Tim. 2:13, 14 For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
- Gen. 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
- Rom. 5:12, 18, 19 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: ... Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
Edition & Source Public domain
- Source
- The Heidelberg Catechism
- Translation
- English translation as published by apuritansmind.com; Scripture proofs: King James Version
- Published
- First published 1563
- Copyright
- Public domain.
- License
- Public domain
- Attribution
- Public domain. Text transcribed from apuritansmind.com, which reformed.org's historic-documents index links to. Compared automatically with the PDF at heidelberg-catechism.com, which is the same translation family: 217 of 258 questions and answers matched. Of the 41 that did not, I checked 18 by hand: Q12, Q18, Q27, Q56 and Q61 differ in wording, and the others were page-layout noise in the PDF; the remaining 23 were not checked by hand. Not yet proofread against a printed edition. Part divisions are the standard ones (Q1–2 introduction; Q3–11 misery; Q12–85 deliverance; Q86–129 thankfulness). The question 23 creed text had verse-number markers removed. Scripture proof texts are the King James Version, from the public-domain Project Gutenberg edition, added with tools/add_kjv.py. A few references could not be matched to verses (whole-chapter references such as ‘Genesis 1 throughout’, and typing slips in the source) and are shown without text.
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Cite as The Heidelberg Catechism. First published 1563. https://www.apuritansmind.com/creeds-and-confessions/the-heidelberg-catechism-by-zacharias-ursinus/