Talk:Original sin

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Are children born with original sin from Adam?

 Augustine was some 350 years after Paul. He struggled with Greek and knew little or no Hebrew. Rom 5:18 So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. Rom 5:18 Augustine often cited the first part of this, but it surely cannot mean that condemnation spread automatically to all men. If we did accept this then the parallel Paul deliberately makes would imply that all men automatically received justification as well. You cannot take one and not the other. The condemnation and justification must be conditional on men’s reaction rather than something automatic.  Augustine’s other proof text for original sin was Psalm 51:5. Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me. The psalm is the bitter cry of a man crushed with guilt and anguish. Does 51:4 mean David had not wronged Uriah and Bathsheba but only God? Should we use it to build up, say, a doctrine that we cannot sin against man but only against God? We should be no less willing to defend an Augustinian doctrine of original sin. David said nothing about inheriting any guilt, nothing about sinning “in Adam”. Rom 9:11 says that before birth Jacob and Esau “had done nothing good or bad”. Ezekiel 18:20 flatly denies that guilt can be inherited (and if we sinned “in Adam” then why not in our father and grandfather too?). Ezekiel 18:4 “The soul who sins will die”  Augustine taught repeatedly that in baptism a baby was forgiven the guilt of Adam’s sin. A baptized baby would (he said) go to heaven if it died, but an unbaptized one to hell. Augustine based an important idea on infant baptismal regeneration. He said it gives an irrefutable example of regeneration being independent of anything on the person’s own will. Yet Augustine claimed to be the restorer of the simple Pauline justification by faith. God’s Strategy 1973 Augustine wrote to Jerome in A.D. 415, infants being baptized have no faith of their own.  Augustine accepted in general that a person could have genuine regeneration, genuine piety, and even genuine faith, but without membership in the Catholic Church, it could avail them nothing and they would go to hell. On this basis, of course, Augustine would have condemned two of his greatest followers, Calvin and Luther, for his arguments.  Augustine taught that when Adam sinned, all his descendents sinned in him and so shared in the guilt of the act. The main support that Augustine found for this was in the Latin version of Romans 5:12, which reads: “By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all men, for in him all men sinned.” Augustine repeatedly referred to this verse and thought it plain and unambiguous. The problem is that the Latin translation renders the Greek phrase eph’ ho as “in him”, which is an impossible rendering. Sanday and Headlam, one of the great modern textual authorities on Romans, wrote: “Though this expression ( eph’ ho ) has been much fought over, there can now be little doubt that the true rendering is “because.” ”Thus “death spread to all men, because all sinned”.

 Romans 6:23 “For the wages is sin is death” A person dies spiritually when they sin.  Rom 7:9 And I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died;  Gen 8:21 “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth”  We were born spiritually alive. Ecc 12:7 and the dust returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it.  Ps 22:10 I was cast upon thee from the womb; Thou art my God since my mother bare me.  Some say that we sin because we are sinners i.e. have a sinful nature inherited from Adam. They why did Adam sin?  If we did not receive a sinful nature from our parents when we were born, when did we receive this sinful nature? Isaiah 7:16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken.  To Adam: In the day you eat of it you will die. His spirit died not his body on that day. At that point he needs to be born again as a new creation.  Matt 18:2 And he called to him a little child, and set him in the midst of them, 3 and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Matt 19:13 Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should lay his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But Jesus said, Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven.

• Deut 1:39 Moreover your little ones, that ye said should be a prey, and your children, that this day have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it.

• If we have original sin, we cannot help but sin as it is our nature. So where is accountability. If we cannot help but sin and God condemns us to hell is not just. There was an original sin. It was Adam’s and that brought sin into the world and certainly put us at a disadvantage. It does seem go to against God’s character to punish us for someone else’s sin. We are free to choose to sin or not to sin. If sin is inherited from parent to child, then Jesus inherited that sin. If Jesus was the exception, he could not have been fully human like the rest of us. There his work on the cross would not be completely effective. If an exception was made for Jesus to be born sinless from a mother who inherited sin, why could not others be born sinless? Adam paid for his sin in that he died. Nowhere in the bible is sin not related to ones own works. Judgment is always related to what I / we have done – not to what has been imputed from another. If baptism is necessary to wash away original sin, then pagans would always be lost. There are several holy pagans, non Jews Abimelech, Job, and Melchizedek.

Dear Mr. Kjorsvikbugen, thank you for moving the material here for discussion. I have not absorbed all you have written above, but it appears you reject the doctrine of original sin insofar as it teaches both inhertied guilt and a resulting depraved (sin) nature. If so, this is viewed as an "opposing view" by Theopedia and should be presented as such with an appropriately clear introduction. Then we can see about reworking and formatting for inclusion in some form or fashion. Regards, Gomarus 14:44, 13 April 2006 (EDT)