The short answer
The four fallen natures are the inherited tendencies the Divine Principle says humanity took on through the Fall — failing to take God’s standpoint, leaving one’s position, reversing dominion, and multiplying the wrong. They are not four separate sins stacked on top of each other but four angles on a single disordered heart: the character left behind when the first human beings broke relationship with God. Each one describes a recurring way that broken heart still bends human behaviour — in how we see others, where we try to stand, how we treat rightful order, and how our wrongs spread.
Most Christian teaching describes the Fall as an event (eating the forbidden fruit) and its result as a condition (original sin). The Divine Principle adds a third layer: the specific shape of the sinful inclination we inherit. Naming that shape matters, because it is the part we actually meet every day — in resentment, ambition, abuse of power, and the way one person’s sin draws in the next. This article walks through each of the four, shows how the story of Cain and Abel displays all four at once, and explains how restoration reverses them one by one. For the event behind them, see what the real sin in the garden was.
Where the fallen natures come from
The Divine Principle traces the four fallen natures to the pattern of the Fall itself, where the first disorder entered through the archangel’s relationship with the first human beings. In that account, the natures are not arbitrary vices but the precise distortions the Fall introduced: a loss of God’s point of view, a grasping for a position that was not one’s own, an inversion of rightful order, and the reproduction of that whole pattern down the line. Because these distortions became woven into human nature, they pass to every person as inclinations rather than as a single remembered deed.
One Unification commentary describes the archangel’s fall as giving rise to characteristics of the fallen nature such as “failing to take God’s standpoint” and “leaving one’s proper position” (tplegacy.net). That is the engine behind everything that follows. If you want the fuller picture of how the Fall reshaped human life — body and spirit together — see how the Fall affected the human body and where evil came from.
The first: failing to take God’s standpoint
The first fallen nature is the inability to see as God sees — to view others from God’s love rather than from envy, comparison or self-interest. In the original account, the archangel saw Adam receiving a love he envied, and instead of rejoicing in it from God’s position, he resented it from his own. That reflex — measuring another person’s blessing as a threat to ourselves — is the first crack through which the rest of the disorder flows. It is the quiet refusal to stand where God stands and feel what God feels toward the person in front of us.
This nature is everywhere in ordinary life. It is the sibling who cannot be glad at the other’s success, the colleague who reads a promotion as a personal loss, the heart that sours when God seems nearer to someone else. The Bible’s word for it is envy, and Scripture treats it as deadly serious: “a tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot” (Proverbs 14:30). To take God’s standpoint is to rejoice with those who rejoice — to want for others what God wants for them — and that single shift begins to drain the first nature of its power.
The second: leaving one’s position
The second fallen nature is abandoning one’s proper position — reaching for a place, role or relationship that is not rightfully ours. The archangel was created as a servant, but he coveted the position of a son and the love meant for human beings. To leave your position is to be dissatisfied with the place God has given and to grasp at another, whether through pride, ambition or illicit desire. It is the inner move that the New Testament describes in the angels “who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling” (Jude 1:6).
Keeping one’s position does not mean passivity or low horizons; it means receiving growth and blessing in God’s way and order rather than seizing it out of turn. Much human conflict is really a clash of people each refusing their given place — the subordinate undermining the leader, the parent competing with the child, the creature trying to occupy the seat of the Creator. The remedy is not ambition crushed but desire rightly ordered: trusting that what God gives in its proper time is better than what we grasp before it. This is closely tied to why God created us at all — for a relationship of order and love, not rivalry.
The third: reversing dominion
The third fallen nature is the reversal of dominion — the God-given order of authority turned upside down, so that what should lead is led and what should follow takes control. In the Fall, the archangel, who should have served human beings, instead drew them into his own disorder; the beings meant to have dominion came under the dominion of a servant. Once that inversion entered, it became a template: the lower ruling the higher, appetite ruling conscience, the created thing dictating to the one who should govern it.
We feel this reversal inside ourselves whenever the body overrules the spirit, or impulse overrules judgement — the very struggle Paul names when he finds another law “waging war against the law of my mind” (Romans 7:23). We see it between people whenever the strong dominate the weak they were meant to protect, or the trusted exploit those who depend on them. Restoring right dominion means putting things back in their proper order: conscience over appetite, love over force, service flowing from the greater to the lesser. For how this inner ordering is meant to work, see the relationship between mind and body.
The fourth: multiplying the wrong
The fourth fallen nature is the multiplication of sin — the tendency of wrong to reproduce itself, spreading from one person to the next instead of stopping where it started. In the account of the Fall, the disorder did not stay contained; it was transmitted, drawing in others and propagating down the generations. This is the nature that turns a private sin into a shared one. Where good, received, tends to overflow into blessing for others, fallen nature passes its corruption along the same channels — by imitation, by pressure, by the simple fact that hurt people hurt people.
Scripture shows the mechanism plainly: “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Sin is contagious because we are relational beings; what one person carries, those nearby tend to catch. The sobering side of this nature is how little effort it takes — wrong multiplies almost on its own. The hopeful side is that the same relational wiring runs in reverse: goodness, once genuinely received, multiplies just as readily. Restoration aims to flip the channel so that what flows down the line is blessing rather than injury. This is part of why, in the Divine Principle, lineage is central to salvation — the line itself carries either the multiplying wrong or the restored good.
How Cain and Abel reveal them
The story of Cain and Abel displays all four fallen natures in a single episode, which is why the Divine Principle reads it so closely. When God had regard for Abel’s offering and not for Cain’s, Cain “was very angry, and his face fell” (Genesis 4:5). In that moment the first nature appears: Cain cannot take God’s standpoint and rejoice in his brother’s acceptance; he reads it as his own loss. The second follows — rather than keeping the elder brother’s role of loving and leading the younger toward God, he abandons that position entirely.
Then the third and fourth complete the pattern. Cain, who should have exercised a loving seniority, instead reverses it into domination and strikes his brother down — dominion inverted into violence. And the wrong multiplies: envy becomes resentment, resentment becomes murder, and the first family is marked by bloodshed that echoes on. God’s warning just before the act — “sin is crouching at the door… but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7) — is precisely a call to reverse the natures before they run their course. For the deeper meaning of the offerings themselves, see why God accepted Abel’s offering but not Cain’s.
How restoration reverses them
Restoration reverses the fallen natures by deliberately doing the opposite of each one — taking God’s standpoint instead of envy, keeping one’s position instead of grasping, restoring right order instead of inverting it, and multiplying good instead of wrong. In the Divine Principle this is the inner logic of the conditions by which the pattern of the Fall is unwound. Because the natures were acquired through a particular sequence of wrong relationship, they are cleared by walking that sequence in reverse — loving where we were tempted to resent, serving where we were tempted to dominate.
Practically, this is the daily work of the Christian life described in new-covenant language: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). To rejoice in another’s blessing undoes the first nature; to accept one’s place undoes the second; to serve rather than lord it over undoes the third; to let goodness multiply undoes the fourth. None of this is earned perfection — it is the shape of a heart being restored. For how this restoring work fits God’s larger design, see restoration through indemnity and the different kinds of sin the natures grow from.
Frequently asked questions
What are the four fallen natures?
The four fallen natures are the inherited tendencies the Divine Principle says humanity took on through the Fall: (1) failing to take God’s standpoint — seeing from envy or self-interest rather than from God’s love; (2) leaving one’s proper position — reaching for a place that is not ours, as the archangel coveted Eve; (3) reversing dominion — the order of authority turned upside down, so that what should lead is led; and (4) multiplying the wrong — sin reproducing itself and spreading from one person to the next. They are not four separate sins but four angles on the single disordered heart left by the Fall.
Where do the four fallen natures come from?
They are traced to the pattern of the Fall itself. In the Divine Principle’s reading, the first disorder entered through the archangel’s relationship with the first human beings, and the natures describe the exact distortions that event introduced — a loss of God’s viewpoint, a grasping for the wrong position, an inversion of rightful order, and the reproduction of the whole pattern. Because these became woven into human nature, they pass down as inclinations in every person rather than as a one-time event.
How are the four fallen natures different from original sin?
Original sin is the inherited root — the broken condition passed down from the first ancestors. The four fallen natures are the shape of the character that root produces: the recurring ways the inherited disorder expresses itself in how we see, where we stand, how we relate to authority, and how our wrong spreads. One names the inheritance; the other names the behaviour it tends to produce.
How do Cain and Abel show the fallen natures?
The story of Cain and Abel displays all four in a single episode. Cain fails to take God’s standpoint (resenting God’s regard for Abel rather than rejoicing in it), leaves his position (refusing the elder’s role of loving the younger), reverses dominion (the one meant to lead strikes down the one he should have cherished), and multiplies the wrong (envy becomes murder). It is the clearest biblical snapshot of the inherited pattern in action.
How are the fallen natures reversed?
Restoration reverses each nature by doing its opposite: taking God’s standpoint of love instead of envy, keeping one’s proper position instead of grasping, restoring right order instead of inverting it, and multiplying good instead of wrong. In the Divine Principle this is the inner meaning of loving where we were tempted to resent — the condition that unwinds the pattern the Fall wound up.