In The Transmission of Sin: Augustine and the Pre-Augustinian Sources, Pier Franco Beatrice distinguished between what Joseph Turmel originally called hereditary sin and hereditary decline.5 Hereditary sin is the view that all people suffer the consequences of Adam’s sin, primarily physical death, and his descendants are guilty of sin transmitted from him. Hereditary decline is the view that all people suffer the consequences of Adam’s sin, primarily physical death, but this view denies that sin