original sin essay

What Is Original Sin? Meaning and Consequences of Ancestral Sin

The concept of original sin has existed in the church since its very origins. But do we have a proper sin definition that aligns with the Bible? This article will explore the definition of original sin, the consequences of ancestral sin, and how it affects us today.

What Does Original Sin Mean in Christianity?

Original sin, also described as ancestral sin, is a Christian view of the nature of sin in which humanity has existed since the fall of man . Original sin arose from Adam and Eve's transgression in Eden, the sin of disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Original sin can be explained as “that sin and its effects that we all possess in God’s eyes as a direct result of Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden.”

As transcribed in the video above, Shai Linne discusses whether we are guilty of the original sin of Adam:

This is what I would say to someone who says the idea of original sin being guilty in Adam, that's unfair. Like what's up with that? There's a couple of ways I would answer that. One way would be that we all understand the idea of having a representative stand in our place, right? It's the whole reason why we have U.S. embassies. Nobody would say, "Wait a minute. I'm not over in that foreign country. It's not fair for this guy to represent me." You know what I mean? Or take it to the realm of sports. If you're on a football team and one guy commits a penalty, the whole team is going back 10 yards. You know what I'm saying? The dude who didn't commit the foul doesn't say, "Wait a second, that's unfair." Nah, you're on the same team. You know what I'm saying?

So it's the same thing with Adam. God determined that we would all be on Adam's team, and once Adam committed the foul, then we get penalized for it. But then you have the good news, which is the flip side of that, which is that we're on Christ team. Those who trust in Christ receive his ... The points that he scored, we were on the bench. We didn't even get into the game. Christ scores the points, and then we win as a team. Nobody ever says, "Wait a second. It's not fair that Jesus Christ died in my place. What's up with that?" No, no one ever says that.

When we start talking about fairness, we're talking about what's just and what's right. And God is just, and he'll absolutely do what's right in every case.

Where Does the Bible Talk about Original Sin?

Scripture says that we are born sinners and that we are, by nature, sinners.

Psalm 51:5 says that we all come into the world as sinners: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.”

Ephesians 2:2 declares that all people who are not in Christ are “sons of disobedience.”

Ephesians 2:3 also establishes this, stating that we are all “by nature children of wrath.” If we are all “by nature children of wrath,” it can only be because we are all by nature sinners — for God does not direct His wrath towards those who are not guilty. God did not create the human race sinful, but upright. But we fell into sin and became sinful due to the sin of Adam.

There are also verses which state that we are all sinful from the time that we are born.

Proverbs 22:15 says “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.”

Genesis 8:21 declares, “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Jonathan Edwards , in his classic work The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended , remarks on this verse: “The word translated youth, signifies the whole of the former part of the age of man, which commences from the beginning of life. The word in its origin has reference to the birth or beginning of existence... so that the word here translated youth comprehends not only what we in English most commonly call the time of youth, but also childhood and infancy.”

Sinfulness is frequently addressed in Scripture as something pertaining to the human race as a whole. This signifies original sin is a quality of mankind. Thus, it must be inferred that we are all born sinners since we are all human and original sin is considered as a part of humanity.

"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." - Ephesians 2:1-3

What Is Original Sin and Actual Sin?

From birth, we have original sin imputed upon us. Because of the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin, we are born with original sin and a sinful nature. Actual sin, on the other hand, happens when we actively sin from our time of birth. We could also draw a further distinction between sins of omission and commission here , but we'll link an article that discusses those two concepts in depth.

In essence, we are born with a sinful nature because of Adam. From our infancy, we have a tendency to choose selfishness and our own interests over the interests of others. The Original sin of Adam has caused every human to be born with original sin, except for Jesus, who was born of a virgin. Although we may say, "That's not fair. If I was in Adam's shoes I wouldn't have sinned." But I think we can analyze our own actions in life and understand we probably would've messed up in a similar way to what he did.

What Are the Consequences of Original Sin?

According to Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral , one of the first consequences was that they became embarrassed that they were naked and they covered themselves with fig leaves. They were no longer focused on God but were now self-centered in their bodies. Their soul was no longer in communion with God, their bodily appetites took charge, and they became ashamed because of their lack of clothing. They began the passionate earthly life that we all now participate in.

Mankind still had the image of God, but it was now “tarnished” or “dimmed.” Their bodies became subject to sickness, corruption, and death. The Garden with the tree of life was no longer accessible for them. This is the status we inherit from Adam and Eve. This is what we call “ancestral sin.” We do not obtain the blame for the bad choice that Adam made, but we inherit the consequence of his sinfulness, the change in nature he underwent. Since we are all descendants of Adam and Eve we all acquire their sinful nature that resulted from the fall.

stgeorgegreenville.org | What is the consequence of the original sin?

desiringgod.org | What Is the Biblical Evidence for Original Sin?

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The Origin of Sin

Other essays.

The question of the origin of Sin asks what was the cause of Adam’s sin, by which the human race fell from righteousness to condemnation and contemplates the relationship of sin’s coming into the world with the will of the good and holy Creator who is sovereign over all.

The Bible’s teaching of sin starts in the garden, where Adam violated God’s prohibition from eating from the forbidden tree. There, we discover that prior to man’s fall, sin existed in the form of the tempting serpent Satan. Yet as God created all things good, including the fallen angels, we inevitably must come to grips with God’s sovereignty, omniscience, and omnipotence with respect to the origin of sin. Balanced Bible teaching will show that God is not the author of sin, since in his holiness God is without any sin or evil of his own. Careful biblical reflection teaches that God willed sin in such a way that he remains morally perfect: God is never the primary but only the secondary cause in human sin. The attempt to make rational sense of sin will always run aground on the inherent irrationality of sin. Yet, at the cross of Jesus Christ, where God willed that his Son would be handed over to death by the hands of guilty sinners, we discover the best answer to questions about the origin of sin in the sovereign grace of God that glorifies him in the redemption of sinners.

What Caused Human Sin?

The question of the origin of sin holds importance because of what it tells us about both man and God. According to modern theories, man’s sin originates in his evolutionary origins. History is said to involve an ascent from savage beginnings, so that sin simply is seen as native to mankind’s nature. The effect of an evolutionary view of man is to normalize what the Bible calls sin as a simple necessity of our existence.

This modern approach to the origin of sin conflicts radically with the Bible in denying an original righteousness to Adam. Genesis 1:27 states that “God created man in his own image,” and this image implies personal holiness, righteousness, and thus freedom from the necessity of sin. Donald Macleod writes: “According to the Bible, man, as made by God, was upright. He was made in God’s image. He was absolutely sinless.” 1 Man became a sinner, however, when Adam succumbed to temptation in the garden. In this important sense, man sinned when Adam willed to sin in his heart. Having been forbidden by God to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17–18), Adam ate the fruit and fell into sin (Gen 3:6). Sin therefore did not originate in the human nature as God made it but resulted when Adam was tempted by the evil serpent through his wife. Once Adam had sinned, the entire human race fell with him, losing the original righteousness of creation in God’s image (Gen 6:4), sharing Adam’s guilt (Rom 5:12, 18), and becoming corrupted with sin so that henceforth each individual human originates as a sinner (Ps 51:5).

Although we can trace the entry of human sin to Adam’s temptation and fall, we observe that Adam’s fall was preceded by the fall of the evil angels, chief of whom is Satan, who masqueraded in the garden as the serpent. For when Adam sinned, there was already a sinful angel present in the garden. The Bible does not clearly define the manner or time when the fall of the angels took place. But Jesus says that Satan “was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44; see 1Jn 3:8), which most likely refers to the beginning of the creation account. Paul warns church leaders against becoming puffed up “with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1Tim 3:16), suggesting that Satan’s originating sin was a pride which resented the creation of man in God’s image. It stands to reason that Satan tempted Adam and Eve to be “like God” (Gen. 3:5) because this same discontented rebellion occasioned his own fall.

Sin and God’s Will

This biblical data brings us to the question of God’s relationship to the origin of sin. Herman Bavinck comments: “On the basis of Scripture, it is certain that sin did not first start on earth but in heaven, at the feet of God’s throne, in his immediate presence.” 2 Does this mean that sin has its origin in God, or in God’s will?

Given the divine attributes of omniscience and omnipotence , it is inconceivable that sin as either an act or a power could have originated apart from God’s will. Some thinkers have sought to exempt God from the implications of this reality. For instance, Immanuel Kant argued that God willed sin because it was necessary to the possibility of good in the world. Just as birds can only fly because of the contrary resistance of wind, so also the pressure of sin is necessary for human moral perfection. 3 Others have argued that sin was necessary to God’s creation in order for man to exercise free will. A problem with these views is that sin is thus made normative to the human condition and may even be thought of as a kind of good. Such a view contrasts with the Bible’s insistence that sin is always “evil in the eyes of the Lord” (2Chron 29:6).

The Bible uniformly teaches God’s sovereignty over all things (Matt 10:9; Ps 33:11), which would include the origin of sin, yet Scripture explicitly denies that God is himself the source of evil. James 1:13 states that God is not the author of sin: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’” for “God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” 1 John 1:5 insists, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all,” so sin does not originate in God’s nature or being. Neither was anything made by God evil in any way, as Genesis 1:31 declares: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Job 34:10 states: “far be it from God that he should do wickedness, and from the Almighty that he should do wrong.” Moreover, the Bible explicitly states God’s hatred for sin (Ps 5:4; Luke 16:15).

Do these verses show that God merely permitted sin, without willing it? The answer must be “no,” if by permission we exclude God’s positive will. Fred G. Zaspel writes: “God’s relation to the sinful acts is not purely passive: his involvement is not that of mere allowance.” 4 We may rightly say that God willed to permit sin, yet in so doing his providential government over sin is affirmed. Theologians approach this situation by asserting that God’s role in the origin of sin involves not primary but secondary causation. It was the will of Satan that sinned in leading the rebellion of angels, just as it was the will of Adam that sinned in taking the forbidden fruit. These were ultimately according to God’s decreed will, yet Satan and man remain responsible for their sin. Zaspel explains: “all that happens, good or evil, stems from God’s positive ordering of it; but the moral quality of the deed itself is rooted in the moral character of the person who does it.” 5 At the same time, we must note a difference between God’s will of good and of evil, the former involving a positive enabling and the latter a positive permitting; Bavinck writes: “Light cannot of itself produce darkness; the darkness only arises when the light is withdrawn.” 6

While we must deny any goodness in sin itself, it remains true that God has ordained sin—indeed, God sinlessly uses sin—for the praise of his glory. Since “from him and through him and to him are all things,” then God willed sin ultimately for the display of the perfection of his attributes, so that “to him [would] be glory forever” (Rom 11:36). We may therefore go so far as to say that although sin is evil, it is good that there was sin, or else God would not have willed it.

The clearest Scripture teaching affirming both God’s will for sin and man’s responsibility of sin formed a part of Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. Convicting the people of Jerusalem for their sin against the Savior, Peter declared: “This Jesus . . . you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). The sin was committed by the people who cried for Jesus’s crucifixion, by Pontius Pilate in his miscarriage of justice, by the Roman soldiers who nailed Christ to the cross, and by the priests and other religious leaders who mocked God’s Son in his torment. Yet, Peter also ascribes full sovereignty over all these wicked events to God. He inserts into that verse that Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). God not only knew that his Son would be tortured, mocked, and slain, but it was according to his “definite” and eternal “plan” for history that these events took place.

The “Enigma” of Sin’s Origin

In answering questions as to the origin of sin, while we can affirm many important truths, we nonetheless stand before what Herman Bavinck called “the greatest enigma of life and the heaviest cross for the intellect to bear.” 7 When considered as an explanation for the world as we know it, sin makes perfect sense: indeed, without a doctrine of the fall of mankind, the history of the world is incomprehensible. Yet, considering the biblical data about sin itself, when we ask how beings created as wholly good by God—such as the angel Satan and the man Adam—could will to sin, all answers escape us. Attempts to rationalize the origin of sin run aground against the essential irrationality of the creature rebelling against the Creator. This irrationality afflicts not merely the originating sins of ancient history but also every sin that we commit today. When the Christian bitterly asks, “Why did I sin?” there are descriptions—because of temptation, because of remaining indwelling sin, etc.—but there are no true explanations for the origin of any sin.

It is for this reason that Christians may be grateful that the question of “Why?” when it comes to sin, having no true answer on the human side of the equation, finds satisfaction in the grace of God’s sovereign will. Romans 11:32 states: “For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.” Only in the light of the glory of God’s grace does sin begin to make sense. God has chosen to save his people as sinners through the blood of his Son as a display of sovereign mercy. Christians thus realize that because we were converted from sin that was washed through atoning blood, God is glorified in his Son. Far from minimizing the significance of our ongoing sins, Christians also realize that God is glorified now in the power that his grace provides enabling us not to sin. The enigma of sin’s origin, then, enables believers in Christ to perceive in glorious clarity God’s amazing love and mercy in his Son, “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph 1:6).

A Short Essay on Original Sin

By augustus toplady (1740-1778).

This following text was extracted from The Complete Works of Augustus Toplady (1794; re-released in America by Sprinkle Publications in 1987) pages 409-416. The electronic edition of this text was scanned and edited by Shane Rosenthal for Reformation Ink . It is in the public domain and may be freely copied and distributed. In this edition, Latin quotes have been retained and Greek characters transliterated. By one man's disobedience, many were made sinners (Rom. 5:19). Self-knowledge is a science to which most persons pretend; but, like the philosopher's stone it is a secret which none are masters of in its full extent. The mystic writers suppose that before the fall, man's body was transparent, analogous to a system of animated chrystal. Be this as it may, we are sure that, was the mind now to inhabit a pellucid body, so pellucid as to make manifest all the thoughts and all the evil workings of the holiest heart on earth, the sight would shock and frighten and astonish even_ the most profligate sinner on this side hell. Every man would be an insupportable burden to himself, and a stalking horror to the rest of his species. For which reasons among others, Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings but himself That hideous sight, a naked human heart. The most enlightened believer in the, world knows not the utmost of his natural depravation, nor is able to fathom that inward abyss of iniquity which is perpetually throwing up mire and dirt; and which, like a spring of poison at the bottom of a well, infects and discolours the whole mass Let the light of Scripture and of grace give us ever such humbling views of ourselves, and lead us ever so far into the chambers of imagery within, there still are more and greater abominations beyond: and, somewhat like the ages of eternity, the farther we advance the more there is to come. The heart of man, says God by the prophet, is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it? -- In me, said the apostle, that is, in my flesh, abstracted from supernatural grace, dwelleth no good thing.--And, says a greater than both, From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man (Mark vii). Is it possible that any who calls himself a Christian can, after considering the above declaration of Christ, dare to term the human mind a sheet of white paper? No - it is naturally a sheet of paper blotted and blurred throughout. So blotted and defiled all over, that nothing but the inestimable blood of God, and the invincible Spirit of grace, can make it clean and white. Neither the temptations of Satan by which we are exercised, nor the bad examples of others which we are so prone to imitate, are the causes of this spiritual and moral leprosy. They are but the occasions of stirring up and of calling forth the latent corruptions within. If (as David speaks) our inward parts were not very wickedness,, if we were not shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, if enmity to God and holiness was not moulded into our very frame and texture; temptation and bad example would bid fair to excite out abhorrence, instead of engaging our compliance, conciliating our imitation, and operating with such general success. The truth is, we all have an inherent bias to bad, which readily falls in with the instigations that present themselves from without. Similis similent sibi quaerit . Inward and exterior evil catch at each other by a sort of sympathy, resulting from a sameness of affection, nature and relationship. It is the degenerate tinder in the heart which takes fire from the sparks of temptation. Hold a match to snow, and no inflammation will ensue. But apply the match to gunpowder, and the whole train is in a blaze. How must such a heart appear if exposed to the intuitive view of an observing angel! And, above all, how black must it appear in the eyes of immense and uncreated purity, of the God who is glorious in holiness, and compared with whom the very heavens are not clean! Judge of the infinite malignity of sin by the price which was paid to redeem us from it, and by the power which is exerted in converting us from the dominion of it. For the former, no less than the incarnation and death of God's own Soil could avail. For the latter, no less agency than that of God's own Spirit can suffice. The hints already premised give us (as far as they go) the true moral picture of a fallen soul: and such would all the descendants of Adam appear in their own eyes, and feel themselves to be, did they, by the light of the Holy Spirit, see themselves in the pure unflattering glass of God's most perfect law. This likewise is the view in which the Church of England represents the state of man by nature. "Man, of his own nature, is fleshly and carnal, corrupt and naught, sinful and disobedient to God! without any spark of goodness in him, without any virtuous or godly motion, only given to evil thoughts and wicked deeds. As for the marks of the Spirit, the fruits of faith, charitable and godly motions, if lie have any at all in him, they proceed only of the Holy Ghost, who is Le only worker of our sanctification, and maketh us new men in Christ Jesus." Strong as this painting is, it is no caricature. Not a single feature of our natural corruption is exaggerated or over-charged. You who read, and I who write; yea, every individual of mankind that now lives or shall hereafter be born; may with the Church of old plead guilty to the whole indictment, saying, We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. I have read of an English painter who after only once meeting any stranger in the streets, could go home and paint that person's picture to the life. Let us suppose that one whose likeness has been taken in this manner should happen to see unexpectedly his own picture. It would startle him. The exact similitude of -shape, air, features, and complexion would convince him that the representation was designed for himself though, his own name be not affixed to it, and he is conscious that he never sat for the piece. In the Scriptures of truth we have a striking delineation of human depravity through original sin. Though we have not sat to the inspired painters, the likeness suits us all. When the Spirit of God holds up the mirror and shews us to ourselves, we see, we feel, we deplore, our apostacy from, and our inability to recover the image of, his rectitude. Experience proves the horrid likeness true; and we need no arguments to convince us that in and of ourselves we are spiritually wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind and naked. But how came man into a state so different from that in which Adam was created? Few enquiries are so important; and no subject has given occasion to more various and extensive disquisition. Multitudes of conjectures have been advanced, and volumes upon volumes have been written concerning the origin of human ill. That moral evil, in almost every possible branch of it; and that natural evil, as the consequence of moral; do actualy abound all over the world, are truths too evident to be denied. That the matter of fact is so will not admit of a moment's dispute. But concerning the primary cause and inlet of these evils, men are not so unanimously agreed. Some of the more considerable and judicious philosophers of heathen antiquity, particularly the oriental ones (from whom the opinion was learned and adopted by Plato), supposed that the spirits which occupy and animate human bodies were a sort of fallen angels who, having been originally spirits of very superior rank, were, for misbehaviour in a nobler state of pre-existence, deposed from their thrones, degraded into human souls, and shut up in mortal bodies. Of course those philosophers considered this earth as a place of banishment, and bodies as a kind of moving dungeon, where souls wander about like prisoners at large, obnoxious to a vast variety of pains and inconveniences; by way Of penance for past misdemeanors, and as a means of gradual purification, prelusive to their eventual restitution to the happiness from which they had fallen. Conformably to this view of things, Plato chose to derive soma the Greek word for body; from sayma which signifies a tomb or sepulchre: on supposition that the body is that to a soul which a grave is to the body; and that souls emerge from the body by death as a bird flies from a broken cage, or as a captive escapes from a place of painful and dishonourable confinement. Not a few of the eastern sages pursued the idea of the pre-existence of souls to such a length as to suppose that the immaterial principles, which undoubtedly actuate the bodies of animalculae, of insects, and of brutes, are no other than fallen spirits, reduced to a class of extreme degradation: that, in proportion to the crimes committed in their unembodied state, they were thrust into material vehicles of greater or of less dignity: and that, passing through a sucsessive series of transmigrations from a meaner body to a nobler, they rise, by continual progression, from animalculae to insects, from insects to birds or beasts, and from these to men; till at last they recover the full grandeur and felicity of their primitive condition. All these supposed changes and removals from a humbler body to a higher were considered, by the philosophers who adopted this hypothesis, as so many stages both of punishment and of purgation; by which, as by steps rising. one above another, the imprisoned spirit grew more and more refined, its powers widened into greater expansion, and itself approached nearer to its original and its final perfection. I must own that this was a train of conjectures extremely ingenious, and not a little plausible, when viewed as formed by persons who had not the light of the Bible to see by. And I believe that, for my own part, 1 should have fallen in with this system, as the least improbable, and the least embarrassed, of any other, had not the gracious providence of God assigned my birth and residence in a country where the Scriptures of inspiration kindly hold the lamp to benighted reason. St. Paul, within the compass of two or three lines, comprises more than all the numberless uninspired volumes which have been written on the subject. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin: and so [ hootoas in this way, or by this chain of mediums] death ( di-ale-then) went through upon all men; inasmuch as all have sinned. Rom. v. 12. It is evident, hence, that previously to the first offence of that one man, who was the father of the human race, he was sinless, and, of course, happy and deathless. --Let us for a moment carry back our meditations to the garden of Eden, and endeavour to take a view of Adam. prior to his fall. The sacred oracles acquaint us that the first man was created spiritually and morally upright; nay, that lie was made after the image of God; and was (in some respects, and with due allowance for the necessary imperfection inseparable from a creature) the living transcript of him that formed Him. This phrase, the image of God, is to be understood chiefly in a spiritual, and entirely in a figurative, sense. It does not refer to the beauty and to the erect stature of the body but to the holy and sublime qualifications of the soul. The grand outlines therefore of that divine resemblance, in which Adam was constructed, were holiness, knowledge, dominion, happiness, and immortality. But man, being thus made in honour, abode not as he was made. For reasons best known to that unerring Providence which ordains and directs every event, it was the Divine pleasure to permit an apostate spirit (whose creation and fall were prior to the formation of man) to present the poisonous cup of temptation: whereof our first parents tasted, and, in tasting, fell. Whether any of the dismal effects which instantly ensued were partly owing to some physical quality in the fruit itself; or whether all the effects which followed were simply annexed to that act of disobedienceby the immediate will and power of God; were an enquiry more curious perhaps than important. So also is another question: which relates to the particular kind of fruit borne by the forbidden tree. Whether it was a pomegranate or a cluster of grapes; an apple or a citron, Scripture has not revealed, nor are we concerned to know. This only we are sure of, from Scripture, reason, observation, and our own experience; that mankind, from that day forward, universally lost the perfection of God's image, that theia fusis , and homoiosis toe theo , or divine nature, and likeness to God, as Plato calls it: and sunk in to, what the same philosopher styles, to atheon , a state ungodlike, and undivine. Our purity vanished. Our knowledge suffered an almost total eclipse. Our dominion was abridged into very narrow bounds: for no sooner did man revolt from his obedience to God than a vast part of the animal creation revolted from its obedience to man. Our happiness was exchanged for a complication of infirmities and miseries. And our immortality was cut short by onehalf: a moiety of us (i.e. the body) being sentenced to return for a time to the dust whence it sprang. The immortality of the soul seems to be the only feature of the divine likeness which the fall has left entire. Hence, even from Adam's transgression, proceeds that ataxia or disorder and irregularity, both of being and events, diffused through the whole world. Hence it is that the earth brings forth weeds and poisonous vegetables That the seasons are variable. That the air is raught with diseases. And that the very food we eat administers to our future dissolution, even at the time of its contributing to our present sustenance. Hence, also, proceed the pains and the eventual death of inferior animals. All sublunary nature partakes of that curse which was inflicted for the sin of man. Whether these ranks of innocent beings, which are involved in the consequences of human guilt shall, at the times of the restitution of all things (a) be restored to a life of happiness and immortality, (which they seem, to have enjoyed in paradise before the fall, and of which they became deprived by a transgression not their own); rests with the wisdom and goodness of that God whose mercy is over all his works. It is my own private opinion (and as such only I advance it), that Scripture seems, in more places than one, to warrant the supposition. Particularly, Rom. viii. 19-21, which I would thus render and thus punctuate: The earnestly wishful expectancy of the creation, i.e. of the brute creation; that implicit thirst after happiness, wrought and kneaded into the very being of every creature endued with sensitive life; virtually waits with vehement desire, for that appointed, glorious manifestation of the sons of God which is to take place in the millenniary state: for the creation, the lower animal creation, was subjected to (b) uneasiness, not willing it, or through any voluntary transgression comwitted by themselves; but by reason or on account of (c) him who subjected them to pain and death, in hope, and with a view, that this very creation shall likewise be emancipated from the bondage of corruption into the glorious, liberty of the children of God. What a field of pleasing and exalted speculation does this open to the benevolent and philosophic mind! But I return to what more immediately concerns ourselves. When Adam fell, he fell not only as a private individual, but also as a public person: just as the second Adam, Jesus Christ the righteous, did afterward, in the fulness of time, obey and die, as the covenant Surety and representative of all his elect people. The first Adam acted in our names, and stood in our stead, and represented our persons in the covenant of works. And, since his posterity would have partaken of all the benefits resulting from his continuance in the state of integrity; I see not the injustice of their bearing a part in the calamities consequent on his apostacy. We cannot but observe in the common and daily course of things, that children very frequently inherit the diseases, the defects, the poverty and the losses of their parents. And if this be not unjust in the dispensations of Providence (for if it was unjust, God would certainly order matter, otherwise); why should it be deemed inequitable that moral as well as natural evil, that the cause as well as the effects, should be transmitted, by a sad but uninterrupted succession, from father to son? Many of the truths revealed in Scripture require some intenseness of thought, some labour of investigation to apprehend them clearly, and to understand them rightly. But the natural depravation of mankind is a fact which we have proofs of every hour, and which stares us in the face, let us look which way we will. Indeed we need not look around us for demonstration that our whole species has lost the image of God. If the Holy Spirit have at all enlightened us into a view of our real state, we need but look within ourselves for abundant proof that our nature must have been morally poisoned in its source; that our first parent sinned; and that we, with the rest of his sons, are sharers in his fall. So that, as good bishop Beveridge observes (in his commentary on the ninth of our Church Article), "Though there be no such words as original sin to be found in Scripture, yet we have all too sad experience that there is such a thing as original sin to be found in our hearts." Heathens themselves have felt and acknowledged that they were depraved beings; and depraved, not by imitation only, but by nature; or (as the Church of England well expresses it) by "birth-sin." --Hence that celebrated saying, so usual among the Greek philosophers, sumfuton anthropois to hamartanein , i.e. moral evil is implanted in men from the first moment of their existence. Plato goes still farther in his treatise " De Legibus: " and directly affirms that man, if not well and carefully cultivated, is zowon agriotaton hoasa fuei gay , the wildest and most savage of all animals. Aristotle asserts the same truth, and almost in the same words with Plato. The very poets asserted the doctrine of human corruption. So Propertius: Unicitique dedit vitiam natura creato ; i.e. "Nature has infused vice into every created being." And Horace observes, "that youth is cerens in vitium flecti; " or, "admits the impressions of evil, with all the ease and readiness of yielding wax." --And why? Let the same poet inform us. Nemo titiis sine nascitur: "The seeds of vice are innate in every man." Whence proceed errors in judgment and immoralities in practice? Evil tempers, evil desires, and evil words? Why is the real gospel preached by so few ministers, and opposed by so many people? Wherefore is it that the virtues have so generally took their flight? that ------Fugere pudor, verumque, fidesque; In quorum subiere locum fraudesque, dolique, Insidiaque, et vis, et amor sceleratus habendi? Original sin answers all these questions in a moment. Adam's offence was the peccatum peccans (as I think St. Austin nervously calls it), the sin that still goes on sinning in all mankind: or, to use the just and emphatic words of Calvin (Institut. 1. iv. c. 15.) Haec perversitas nunquam in nobis cessat, sed novos assidue fructus parit ; non secue atque incensa fornax flammam et scintillas perpetuo efflat, aut scaturigo aquam sine fine egerit: "The corruption of our nature is always operative, and constantly teeming with unholy fruits: like a heated furnace which is perpetually blazing out; or like an inexhaustible spring of water, which is for ever bubbling up and sending forth its rills." So terrible a calamity as the universal infection of our whole species is and must have been the consequence of some grand and primary transgression. Such a capital punishment would never have been inflicted on the human race, by the God of infinite Justice, but for some adequate preceding offence. It is undeniably certain that we who are now living are in actual possession of an evil nature; which nature we brought with us into the world; it is not of our own acquiring, but was Cast and mingled with our very frame; Grew with our growth, and strengthened with our strength." We were, therefore, in a state of severe moral punishment as soon as we began to be. And yet it was impossible for us to have sinned, in our own persons, antecedently to our actual existence. This reflection leads up our enquiry to that doctrine which alone can solve the (otherwise insuperable) difficulty now started, viz. to that doctrine which 'asserts the imputation of Adam's disobedience to all his offspring. And which is, I. founded on Scripture evidence; and II. adopted by the Church of England; and III. not contrary to human reason. I will just touch on these three particulars. 1. God's word expressly declares that By the disobedience of one man many were constituted sinners; Rom. v. 19. They are in the divine estimation considered as guilty of Adam's own personal breach of the prohibitory command. Now the judgment of God is always according to truth. Ile would not deem us guilty unless we were so. And guilty of our first parent's offence we cannot be, but in a way of imputation. By the offence of one [ di enos paraptowmatos , by one transgression], judgment came upon all men, unto condemnation; Rom. v. 18. which could not be unless that one transgression was placed to our account. By one man, sin entered into the world and death by sin: and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Rom. v. 12. Yea, death reigned, and still continues to reign, even over them that bad not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression: v. 14. Infants are here designed by the apostle: who have not sinned actually and in their own persons as Adam did, and yet are liable to temporal death. Wherefore, then, do they die? Is not death - the wages of sin? Most certainly. And seeing it is incontestibly clear that not any individual among the numberless millions who have died in infancy was capable of committing actual sin; it follows that they sinned representatively and implicitly in Adam. Else they would not be entitled to that death which is the wages of sin, and to those diseases by which their death is occasioned, and to that pain which most of them experience in dying. A majority of the human race are supposed to die under the age of seven years. A phenomenon, which we should never see, under the administration of a just and gracious God, if the young persons so dying had not been virtually comprehended in the person of Adam when he fell, and if the guilt of his fall was not imputed to them. Nothing but the imputation of that can ever be able to account for the death of infants, any more than for the vitiosity, the manifold sufferings, the imperfections, and the death of men. II. This is the doctrine of the Church of England. "We were cast into miserable captivity by breaking of God's commandment in our first parent Adam." (Second Homily on the Misery of Man.) "Original sin is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man." (Article IX.) The corruption, or defilement, is our's by inherency: we ourselves are the seat of it. But original sin can be our fault only by imputation, and in no other possible way. "Dearly beloved, ye have prayed that our Lord Jesus Christ would vouchsafe to release [this child] of his sins." (Baptismal office). In the estimation, therefore, of our Church, every infant is not only chargeable with sin in the singular number; but with sins in the plural. To wit, with intrinsic defilement as the subject of an unholy nature and with the imputed guilt of the first man's apostacy from God. III. There is nothing contrary in all this to human reason, and to the usual practice of men. There is not a single nobleman, or person of property, who does not act, or who has not acted, as the covenant-head of his posterity; supposing him to have any. Even a lease of lives signed by a legal freeholder; and sometimes the total alienation of an estate for ever, are binding on (perhaps the unborn) heirs and successors of the person who grants the lease, or signs away the property. A person of quality commits high treason. For this, he not only forfeits his own life, but also his blood (i.e. his family) is tainted in law, and all his titles and possessions are forfeited from his descendants. His children and their children to the end of the chapter lose their peerage and lose their lands, though the father only was (we will suppose) in fault. Thus the honours and estates of all the heirs in England are suspended on the single loyalty of each present possessor respectively! Where, then, is the unreasonableness of the imputation of Adam's crime? Why might not the welfare and the rectitude of all his posterity be suspended on the single thread of his integrity? And what becomes of the empty cavils that are let off against those portions of holy writ which assure us that in Adam all die? But wherein did Adam's primary sin consist? Of what nature was that offence, which "Brought death into the world, and all our woe?" The scholastic writers, whose distinctions are frequently much too subtle, and sometimes quite insignificant, seem to have hit the mark of this enquiry with singular skill and exactness. They very properly distinguish original sin, into what they call peccatum originans, and peccatum originatum. By peccatum originans they mean the ipsissimum , or the very act itself, of Adam's offence in tasting the forbidden fruit. By peccatum originatum they mean that act considered as transmitted to us. Which transmission includes its imputation to us, in point of guilt; and that internal hereditary pollution which has vitiated every facility of man from that moment to this. With regard to the latter, a very slight acquaintance with ourselves must convince us that we have it. And as for the former [viz. the article of imputation], it could not have taken place, if Adam had not sustained our persons, and stood or fallen as our legal representative. Consider original sin as resident in us, and it is very justly defined by our Church to be that corrupt bias, "whereby man is very far gone [ quam longissime distet, is removed to the greatest distance possible] from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil; so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit." (Art, IX). Upon which definition the life of every man is, more or less, a practical comment. But, Honos erit huic quoque pomo . Many, and of the utmost importance, are the consequences deducible from this great Scripture doctrine. I shall briefly point out a few. 1. We learn hence that which the antient heathens in vain attempted to discover; viz. the door by which natural evil (as sickness, afflictions, sorrow, pain, death) entered into the world: namely the sin of Adam. Though the reasons why God permitted Adam to sin are as deeply in the dark as ever; what we do know of God entitles him surely to this small tribute at our hands, viz. that we repose our faith, with an absolute, an implicit, and an unlimited acquiescence, on his unerring wisdom and will: safely confident that what such a Being ordains and permits, is and must be right; however incapable we may find ourselves, at present, to discern and comprehend the full propriety of his moral government. 2. Hence, too, we learn the infinite freeness, and the unspeakable preciousness, of his electing love. Why were any chosen, when all might justly have been passed by? Because he was resolved, for his own name's sake, to make known the riches of his glory, t. e. of his glorious grace, on the vessels of mercy, whom he therefore prepared unto glory. 3. Let this, O believer, humble you under the mighty hand of God: and convince you, with deeper impression than if ten thousand angels were to preach it from heaven, that election is not of works, but of him that calleth. Not your merit, but his unmerited mercy, mercy irrespective of either your good works or your bad ones, induced him to write your name in the Lamb's book of fife. 4. So totally are we fallen by nature, that we cannot contribute any thing towards our recovery. Hence it was God's own arm which brought salvation. It is he that makes us his people, and the sheep of his pasture; not we ourselves. The Church says truly, when she declares that "We are by nature the children of God's wrath: but we are not able to make ourselves the children and inheritors of God's glory. We are sheep that run astray, but we cannot of our own power come again to the sheep-fold. --We have neither faith, charity, hope, patience, nor any thing else that good is, but of God. These virtues be the fruits of the Holy Ghost, and not the fruits of man.-We cannot think a good thought of ourselves: much less can we say well, or do well of ourselves," (Hom. on the misery of man). We are, in short, what the Scripture affirms us to be, naturally dead in trespasses and sins: and no dead man can make himself to differ from another. Conversion is a new birth, a resurrection, a new creation. What infant ever begat himself? What inanimate carcase ever quickened and raised itself? What creature ever created itself? Boast not then of your freewill: for it is like what the prophet saith of Nineveh, empty, and void, and waste. They that feel not this, resemble delirious persons in a high fever: who imagine that nothing ails them, while in fact they are at the very gates of death. Nay, mankind in their native state are more than at the gates of death. The traveller, in the parable, who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, is said to have been left half-dead: but the degenerate sons of Adam are, spiritually speaking, stark-dead to God. An unrenewed man has not one spiritual sense left: no hearing of the promises; no sight of his own misery, nor of God's holiness, nor of the perfect purity of the law, nor of Christ as an absolute Saviour, nor of the blessed Spirit as the revealer of Christ in the heart; no taste of the Father's everlasting love, nor of communion with him through the ministration of the Holy Ghost; no feeling of grace in a way of conviction, comfort, and sanctification; no hungerings and thirstings after spiritual enjoyments and sweet assurances; no motive tendencies, no outgoings of soul after the blood, righteousness, and intercession of Jesus Christ. If we experience these, they are indications of spiritual life: and we may take those reviving words to ourselves, Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven. 5. Beg the Lord to shew you the depth of your fall. Free grace, finished salvation, imputed righteousness, atoning blood, unchangeable mercy, and the whole chain of evangelical blessings, will then be infinitely precious to your heart. 6. Prize the covenant of redemption, which is a better covenant and founded upon better promises than that which Adam broke. The covenant of works said "Do, and live: sin, and die." The covenant of grace says, "I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." The covenant of works insisted on a perfection of personal obedience: the covenant of grace provided and accepts the perfect atonement and righteousness of Christ as ours. This shews both the folly and wickedness of depending on our own works for salvation. Which soul-destroying delusion is founded on ignorance that the covenant of works was broken and annulled the very moment Adam fell. I mean annulled, as to any possibility of salvation by it: else it is still in full force as the ministration of condemnation and death to every soul that finally clings to it for pardon and eternal life. Man, unfallen, might have been saved by works. But there is no deliverance for fallen man, except by the free grace of the Father, and the imputed righteousness of a sacrificed Redeemer. -Therefore, 7. Let the sense of our original depravation, of our continued vileness, and the impossibility of our being saved in a legal way, induce us to prize the blood, obedience, and intercession of Jesus, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. This is the inference drawn by the apostle himself from the doctrine I have been asserting. Therefore, says he, as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men [even upon all the elect themselves] unto condemnation; so, by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men [upon all the elect, believing world] 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. Rom. v. 18, 19. --And elsewhere St. Paul reasons in the same manner: All [i.e. all God's elect, no less than others] have sinned and come short of the glory of God. What is the consequence? It is immediately added, being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. Rom. iii. 23, 24. 8. Hence likewise appear the necessity and value of effectual calling. Why does our Lord say, that except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God? Because we are totally sinful and corrupt by nature: as unfit for, and as incapable of, enjoying the glories of the celestial world, as a beetle is of being elevated to the dignity and office of a first minister of state. 9. Since such is the natural condition of man with regard to spiritual things; take heed that you do not look upon election, justification, redemption, and regeneration, as mere technical terms, belonging to divinity as a system, or science. They are infinitely more. These and such- like terms are expressive of the greatest and most important realities: without the experience of which, we are condemned, ruined, lost. 10. The doctrine of original sin is the basis of the millennium. The earth, which is disordered and put out of course through the offence of man, will be restored to its primitive beauty, purity, and regularity, when Jesus shall descend to reign in person with his saints. 2 Pet. iii. 13. 11. Original sin accounts for the remaining imperfections, too visible in them that are born of God. The brightest saints below ever had, and ever will have, their darksides. Abraham, Noah, Job, David, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, Paul, Peter, John, were sanctified but in part. On earth, God's converted people are each a compound of light and shades. In glory we shall be all light, without any mixture of shade whatever. 12. Since the earth and its inhabiters are degenerated from their original state, let not believers be afraid to die. "Death has no pang, but what frail life imparts; Nor life true joy, but what kind death improves." By quitting its mortal cage, the heaven-born soul is delivered from all its sins and cares and pains; and kindles into perfection of holiness and majesty and joy. At the appointed time the body too will partake of complete redemption; and be delivered, totally and eternally delivered into the glorious liberty and dignity of the children of God. --Accomplish, Lord, the number of thine elect, and hasten thy kingdom!

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What Is the Biblical Evidence for Original Sin?

Matt perman, here's what's often missing when we speak of the final judgment as being according to works, why sound doctrine leads to effective action for good, christians are to be proactive in doing good, the problem with "give in order to get", why i pray for the economy, objections to making it free.

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There are several lines of biblical evidence for the historic Christian doctrine that we are all born into the world with sinful natures, due to the sin of Adam.

Scripture says that we are born sinners and that we are by nature sinners Psalm 51:5 states that we all come into the world as sinners: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” Ephesians 2:2 says that all people who are not in Christ are “sons of disobedience.” Ephesians 2:3 also establishes this, saying that we are all “ by nature children of wrath.” If we are all “by nature children of wrath,” it can only be because we are all by nature sinners — for God does not direct His wrath towards those who are not guilty. God did not create the human race sinful, but upright. But we fell into sin and became sinful due to the sin of Adam.

Scripture speaks of humans as unrighteous from infancy There are also verses which declare that we are all unrighteous from the time that we are born. Proverbs 22:15 says “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.” Genesis 8:21 declares, “. . . the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Jonathan Edwards, in his classic work The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended , remarks that on this verse: “The word translated youth, signifies the whole of the former part of the age of man, which commences from the beginning of life. The word in its derivation, has reference to the birth or beginning of existence . . . so that the word here translated youth, comprehends not only what we in English most commonly call the time of youth, but also childhood and infancy.”

Humanity is often described in general terms as unrighteous Unrighteousness is often spoken of in Scripture as something belonging to the human race as a whole. This implies that it is the property of our species. In other words, sinfulness is considered a property of human nature after the fall. Thus, it must be concluded that we are all born sinners, since we are all born human and sin is regarded as a property of humanity. In this vein, consider Ephesians 2:1–3:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

Paul is here reminding Christians of what they were like before their conversion to Christ (“you were dead in your trespasses . . . in which you formerly walked”). Thus, all people, until and unless they are converted, are sinners. Paul goes on to make it absolutely clear that all Christians came from this state (“. . . we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh”) and that all non-Christians are still in this state (“. . . and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”) Thus, Scripture regards all people before they are saved by Christ as sinners and thus deserving of punishment from God. Which is to say that from the inception of our existence, we are sinful.

In Psalm 14:2–3 we read: “The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” Here again we see unrighteousness as a property of the human race: “they have all turned aside . . . there is no one who does good.”

Job 15:14 similarly declares that sinfulness is a property of humanity: “What is man, that he should be pure, or he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?” Verses 15–16 then speak of the human race as a whole in shocking terms expressing our general corruption: “Behold, He puts no trust in His holy ones, And the heavens are not pure in His sight; How much less one who is detestable and corrupt, Man, who drinks iniquity like water!”

Jeremiah 17:9 says that “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” This seems to assume original sin — wickedness is a property of the human heart. Ecclesiastes 9:3 declares a similar truth: “. . . the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts through their lives.” Again, the human heart is sinful, and therefore all humans are sinful.

These texts indicate, then, that human nature is corrupt. Therefore, even infants are corrupt because they are human. And if infants are corrupt, then this is the same as saying that we are born corrupt — which means we are born with original sin. One may, however, object that these texts speak nothing of infants, only those who are old enough to make moral decisions. All of those people are sinful, but this doesn’t mean that infants are.

This is an ingenious objection, but it does not succeed. First, the texts do not seem to restrict themselves to people who are old enough to make intelligent decisions. They seem to speak of human nature as a whole, a classification under which infants certainly fall. Second, as Jonathan Edwards pointed out, “. . . this would not alter the case. . . . For if all mankind, as soon as ever they are capable of reflecting, and knowing their own moral state, find themselves wicked, this proves that they are wicked by nature.”

In other words, even if these verses were only speaking of people old enough to mentally understand sin, they would still be teaching original sin. For on that view, these verses would be saying that all people, as soon as they know good from evil, find themselves sinners. But if all people, as soon as they are capable of moral decisions, find themselves sinners, this proves that they are that way by nature.

Third, Edwards also says, “why should man be so continually spoken of as evil, carnal, perverse, deceitful, and desperately wicked, if all men are by nature as perfectly innocent, and free from any propensity to evil, as Adam was the first moment of his creation?” (Edwards, The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin , 188).

Infants die, therefore they are not innocent Death — both physical and spiritual — is a result of sin (Romans 5:12; 6:23). Thus, death only comes upon those who have sinned. Since infants die, they therefore must be sinners. It could be objected that Christ was sinless, and yet He died. But He willingly gave up His life, and He did it to conquer the curse of death that we were under. In fact, God imputed to Christ our sins on the cross, and Christ died in punishment of those sins.

If humanity is not born in sin, wouldn’t we expect there to be some people who have “beaten the odds” and never sinned? If we are born innocent and good, why aren’t there at least some people who have continued in this state and remained sinless? The fact that everybody sins needs some explanation. The best explanation is that we are sinners by nature. Someone might argue that the reason all people sin is because society is sinful, and thus society renders it impossible for anybody to keep themselves entirely pure. But that only pushes the question back one step. How did society get sinful in the first place? If people are born morally good, then how did it come about that they congregated into socities that influence all people to sin?

Further Resources

Jonathan Edwards, The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended in The Works of Jonathan Edwards Volume I , pp. 143–233.

Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology , chapter 24, “Sin.”

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Understanding Original Sin

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Genesis chapter 3 is a very important part of the Bible for Christians, for it describes the ‘fall’ of man and on this chapter the universal doctrine of ‘original sin’ is based. This doctrine is important because it underlies and explains the universal need for divine redemption by the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. According to this doctrine everyone is born with ‘original sin’ and therefore everyone needs to be redeemed by the sacrificial and atoning death of Christ. But what exactly is ‘original sin’ and in what does redemption, or liberation, from ‘original sin’ consist? Taking the account in Genesis 3 as a starting point, the purpose of this essay is to try to give an answer to these questions, in terms we can understand today. This edition contains, in an Appendix, my correspondence with a Catholic Theologian on the doctrinal issues raised by this paper.

Benno van den Toren

In this article we explore the interface between new theories of human evolution and a cultural understanding of original sin. According to recent theories developed in evolutionary biology, the human being is essentially a "cultured" being with the ability to live in different environments. This is a crucial difference between humans and other species, including other primates. Humans are thus necessarily dependent on socialization by their community. As a result, both the creative insights and shortcomings of human individuals are instilled in their descendants. This article explores whether, and if so how, this can contribute to our understanding of the propagation of sin through the human population. In doing so it becomes clear that while new scientific views concerning the development of the human species do raise problems for Christian theology, they also allow for new creative explorations that may deepen our understanding of classic doctrines.

Angus Brook

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Sin: against Whom or against What

Original Sin

Original Sin . I. Meaning; II. Principal Adversaries; III. Original Sin in Scripture ; IV. Original Sin in Tradition; V. Original Sin in face of the Objections of Human Reason ; VI. Nature of Original Sin; VII. How Voluntary .

MEANING., Original sin may be taken to mean: (I) the sin that Adam committed; (2) a consequence of this first sin, the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin or descent from Adam . From the earliest times the latter sense of the word was more common, as may be seen by St. Augustine’s statement: “the deliberate sin of the First man is the cause of original sin” (De nupt. et concup., II, xxvi, 43). It is the hereditary stain that is dealt with here. As to the sin of Adam we have not to examine the circumstances in which it was committed nor to make the exegesis of the third chapter of Genesis .

ORIGINAL SIN IN SCRIPTURE., The classical text is Rom., v, 12 sqq. In the preceding part the Apostle treats of justification by Jesus Christ , and to put in evidence the fact of His being the one Savior, he contrasts with this Divine Head of mankind the human head who caused its ruin. The question of original sin, therefore, comes in only incidentally. St. Paul supposes the idea that the faithful have of it from his oral instructions, and he speaks of it to make them understand the work of Redemption . This explains the brevity of the development and the obscurity of some verses. We shall now show what, in the text, is opposed to the three Pelagian positions:

The sin of Adam has injured the human race at least in the sense that it has introduced death—”Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men”. Here there is question of physical death. First, the literal meaning of the word ought to be presumed unless there be some reason to the contrary. Second, there is an allusion in this verse to a passage in the Book of Wisdom in which, as may be seen from the context, there is question of physical death, Wis., ii, 24: “But by the envy of the devil death came into the world”. Cf. Gen., ii, 17; iii, 3, 19; and another parallel passage in St. Paul himself, I Cor., xv, 21: “For by a man came death and by a man the resurrection of the dead”. Here there can be question only of physical death, since it is opposed to corporal resurrection, which is the subject of the whole chapter.

Adam by his fault transmitted to us not only death but also sin “for as by the disobedience of one man many [i.e., all men] were made sinners” (Rom., v, 19). How then could the Pelagians, and at a later period Zwingli, say that St. Paul speaks only of the transmission of physical death? If according to them we must read death where the Apostle wrote sin, we should also read that the disobedience of Adam has made us mortal where the Apostle writes that it has made us sinners. But the word sinner has never meant mortal, nor has sin ever meant death. Also in verse 12, which corresponds to verse 19, we see that by one man two things have been brought on all men, sin and death, the one being the consequence of the other and therefore not identical with it.

Since Adam transmits death to his children by way of generation when he begets them mortal, it is by generation also that he transmits to them sin, for the Apostle presents these two effects as produced at the same time and by the same causality. The explanation of the Pelagians differs from that of St. Paul. According to them the child who receives mortality at his birth receives sin from Adam only at a later period when he knows the sin of the first man and is inclined to imitate it. The causality of Adam as regards mortality would, therefore, be completely different from his causality as regards sin. Moreover, this supposed influence of the bad example of Adam is almost chimerical; even the faithful when they sin do not sin on account of Adam ‘s bad example, a fortiori infidels who are completely ignorant of the history of the first man. And yet all men are, by the influence of Adam , sinners and condemned (Rom., v, 18, 19). The influence of Adam cannot, therefore, be the influence of his bad example which we imitate (Augustine, “Contra Julian.”, VI, xxiv, 75).

On this account, several recent Protestants have thus modified the Pelagian explanation: “Even without being aware of it all men imitate Adam inasmuch as they merit death as the punishment of their own sins just as Adam merited it as the punishment for his sin.” This is going farther and farther from the text of St. Paul. Adam would be no more than the term of a comparison, he would no longer have any influence or causality as regards original sin or death. Moreover, the Apostle did not affirm that all men, in imitation of Adam , are mortal on account of their actual sins; since children who die before coming to the use of reason have never committed such sins; but he expressly affirms the contrary in the fourteenth verse: “But death reigned”, not only over those who imitated Adam , but “even over them also who have not sinned after the similitude of the transgression of Adam .” Adam ‘s sin, therefore, is the sole cause of death for the entire human race. Moreover, we can discern no natural connection between any sin and death. In order that a determined sin entail death there is need of a positive law, but before the Law of Moses there was no positive law of God appointing death as a punishment except the law given to Adam (Gen., ii, 17). It is, therefore, his disobedience only that could have merited and brought it into the world (Rom., v, 13, 14). These Protestant writers lay much stress on the last words of the twelfth verse. We know that several of the Latin Fathers understood the words, “in whom all have sinned”, to mean, all have sinned in Adam . This interpretation would be an extra proof of the thesis of original sin, but it is not necessary. Modern exegesis, as well as the Greek Fathers, prefers to translate “and so death passed upon all men because all have sinned”. We accept this second translation which shows us death as an effect of sin. But of what sin? “The personal sins of each one”, answer our adversaries, “this is the natural sense of the words `all have sinned.’ “It would be the natural sense if the context was not absolutely opposed to it. The words “all have sinned” of the twelfth verse, which are obscure on account of their brevity, are thus developed in the nineteenth verse: “for as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners”. There is no question here of personal sins, differing in species and number, committed by each one during his life, but of one first sin which was enough to transmit equally to all men a state of sin and the title of sinners. Similarly in the twelfth verse the words “All have sinned” must mean, “all have participated in the sin of Adam “, “all have contracted its stain”. This interpretation too removes the seeming contradiction between the twelfth verse, “all have sinned”, and the fourteenth, “who have not sinned”, for in the former there is question of original sin, in the latter of personal sin. Those who say that in both cases there is question of personal sin are unable to reconcile these two verses.

IV. ORIGINAL SIN IN TRADITION., On account of a superficial resemblance between the doctrine of original sin and the Manichaean theory of our nature being evil, the Pelagians accused the Catholics and St. Augustine of Manichaeism . For the accusation and its answer see “Contra duas epist. Pelag.”, I, II, 4; V, 10; III, IX, 25; IV, III. In our own times this charge has been reiterated by several critics and historians of dogma who have been influenced by the fact that before his conversion St. Augustine was a Manichan. They do not identify Manichaeism with the doctrine of original sin, but they say that St. Augustine, with the remains of his former Manichaean prejudices, created the doctrine of original sin unknown before his time. It is not true that the doctrine of original sin does not appear in the works of the pre-Augustinian Fathers. On the contrary, their testimony is found in special works on the subject. Nor can it be said, as Harnack maintains, that St. Augustine himself acknowledges the absence of this doctrine in the writings of the Fathers. St. Augustine invokes the testimony of eleven Fathers, Greek as well as Latin (Contra Jul., II, x, 33). Baseless also is the assertion that before St. Augustine this doctrine was unknown to the Jews and to the Christians; as we have already shown, it was taught by St. Paul. It is found in the fourth Book of Esdras a work written by a Jew in the first century after Christ and widely read by the Christians. This book represents Adam as the author of the fall of the human race (vii, 48), as having transmitted to all his posterity the permanent infirmity, the malignity, the bad seed of sin (iii, 21, 22; iv, 30). Protestants themselves admit the doctrine of original sin in this book and others of the same period (see Sanday, “The International Critical Commentary: Romans”, 134, 137; Hastings, “A Dictionary of the Bible “, I, 841). It is therefore impossible to make St. Augustine, who is of a much later date, the inventor of original sin.

That this doctrine existed in Christian tradition before St. Augustine’s time is shown by the practice of the Church in the baptism of children. The Pelagians held that baptism was given to children, not to remit their sin, but to make them better, to give them super-natural life, to make them adoptive sons of God , and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven (see St. Augustine, “De peccat. meritis”, I, xviii). The Catholics answered by citing the Nicene Creed , “ Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum”. They reproached the Pelagians with introducing two baptisms, one for adults to remit sins, the other for children with no such purpose. Catholics argued, too, from the ceremonies of baptism, which suppose the child to be under the power of evil, i.e., exorcisms, abjuration of Satan made by the sponsor in the name of the child [August, loc. cit., xxxiv, 63; Denz., n. 140 (96)].

V. ORIGINAL SIN IN FACE OF THE OBJECTIONS OF REASON. We do not pretend to prove the existence of original sin by arguments from reason only. St. Thomas makes use of a philosophical proof which proves the existence rather of some kind of decadence than of sin, and he considers his proof as probable only, satis probabiliter probari potest (Contra Gent., IV, lii). Many Protestants and Jansenists and some Catholics hold the doctrine of original sin to be necessary in philosophy, and the only means of solving the problem of the existence of evil. This is exaggerated and impossible to prove. It suffices to show that human reason has no serious objection against this doctrine which is founded on Revelation . The objections of Rationalists usually spring from a false concept of our dogma. They attack either the transmission of a sin or the idea of an injury inflicted on his race by the first man, of a decadence of the human race. Here we shall answer only the second category of objections, the others will be considered under a later head (VII).

The law of progress is opposed to the hypothesis of a decadence. Yes, if the progress was necessarily continuous, but history proves the contrary. The line representing progress has its ups and downs, there are periods of decadence and of retrogression, and such was the period, Revelation tells us, that followed the first sin. The human race, however, began to rise again little by little, for neither intelligence nor free will had been destroyed by original sin and, consequently, there still remained the possibility of material progress, whilst in the spiritual order God did not abandon man, to whom He had promised redemption. This theory of decadence has no connection with our Revelation . The Bible , on the contrary, shows us even spiritual progress in the people it treats of; the vocation of Abraham , the law of Moses , the mission of the Prophets, the coming of the Messias , a revelation which becomes clearer and clearer, ending in the Gospel, its diffusion amongst all nations, its fruits of holiness, and the progress of the Church .

It is unjust, says another objection, that from the sin of one man should result the decadence of the whole human race. This would have weight if we took this decadence in the same sense that Luther took it, i.e. human reason incapable of understanding even moral truths, free will destroyed, the very substance of man changed into evil. But according to Catholic theology man has not lost his natural faculties: by the sin of Adam he has been deprived only of the Divine gifts to which his nature had no strict right, the complete mastery of his passions, exemption from death, sanctifying grace, the vision of God in the next life. The Creator, whose gifts were not due to the human race, had the right to bestow them on such conditions as He wished and to make their conservation depend on the fidelity of the head of the family. A prince can confer a hereditary dignity on condition that the recipient remains loyal, and that, in case of his rebelling, this dignity shall be taken from him and, in consequence, from his descendants. It is not, however, intelligible that the prince, on account of a fault committed by a father, should order the hands and feet of all the descendants of the guilty man to be cut off immediately after their birth. This comparison represents the doctrine of Luther which we in no way defend. The doctrine of the Church supposes no sensible or afflictive punishment in the next world for children who die with nothing but original sin on their souls, but only the privation of the sight of God [Denz., n. 1526 (1389)].

VI. NATURE OF’ ORIGINAL SIN., This is a difficult point and many systems have been invented to explain it: it will suffice to give the theological explanation now commonly received. Original sin is the privation of sanctifying grace in consequence of the sin of Adam . This solution, which is that of St. Thomas, goes back to St. Anselm and even to the traditions of the early Church , as we see by the declaration of the Second Council of Orange (A.D. 529): one man has transmitted to the whole human race not only the death of the body, which is the punishment of sin, but even sin itself, which is the death of the soul [Denz., n. 175 (145)]. As death is the privation of the principle of life, the death of the soul is the privation of sanctifying grace which according to all theologians is the principle of supernatural life. Therefore, if original sin is “the death of the soul”, it is the privation of sanctifying grace.

The Council of Trent , although it did not make this solution obligatory by a definition, regarded it with favor and authorized its use (cf. Pallavicini, “Istoria del Concilio di Trento”, vii-ix). Original sin is described not only as the death of the soul (Sess. V, can. ii), but as a “privation of justice that each child contracts at its conception” (Sess. VI, cap. iii). But the council calls “justice” what we call sanctifying grace (Sess. VI), and as each child should have had personally his own justice so now after the fall he suffers his own privation of justice. We may add an argument based on the principle of St. Augustine already cited, “the deliberate sin of the first man is the cause of original sin”. This principle is developed by St. Anselm: “the sin of Adam was one thing but the sin of children at their birth is quite another, the former was the cause, the latter is the effect” (De conceptu virginals, xxvi). In a child original sin is distinct from the fault of Adam , it is one of its effects. But which of these effects is it? We shall examine the several effects of Adam ‘s fault and reject those which cannot be original sin:

Death and Suffering. These are purely physical evils and cannot be called sin. Moreover St. Paul, and after him the councils, regarded death and original sin as two distinct things transmitted by Adam .

Concupiscence . This rebellion of the lower appetite transmitted to us by Adam is an occasion of sin and in that sense comes nearer to moral evil. However, the occasion of a fault is not necessarily a fault, and whilst original sin is effaced by baptism concupiscence still remains in the person baptized; therefore original sin and concupiscence cannot be one and the same thing, as was held by the early Protestants (see Council of Trent , Sess. V, can. v).

The absence of sanctifying grace in the newborn child is also an effect of the first sin, for Adam , having received holiness and justice from God , lost it not only for himself but also for us (loc. cit., can. ii). If he has lost it for us we were to have received it from him at our birth with the other prerogatives of our race. Therefore the absence of sanctifying grace in a child is a real privation, it is the want of something that should have been in him according to the Divine plan. If this favor is not merely something physical but is something in the moral order, if it is holiness, its privation may be called a sin. But sanctifying grace is holiness and is so called by the Council of Trent , because holiness consists in union with God , and grace unites us intimately with God . Moral goodness consists in this that our action is according to the moral law, but grace is a deification, as the Fathers say, a perfect conformity with God who is the first rule of all morality. (See Grace .) Sanctifying grace therefore enters into the moral order, not as an act that passes but as a permanent tendency which exists even when the subject who possesses it does not act; it is a turning towards God , conversio ad Deum. Consequently the privation of this grace, even without any other act, would be a stain, a moral deformity, a turning away from God , aversio a Deo, and this character is not found in any other effect of the fault of Adam . This privation, therefore, is the hereditary stain.

VII. How VOLUNTARY. There can be no sin that is not voluntary, the learned and the ignorant admit this evident truth”, writes St. Augustine (De vera relig., xiv, 27). The Church has condemned the opposite solution given by Baius [prop. xlvi, xlvii, in Denz., n. 1046 (926)]. Original sin is not an act but, as already explained, a state, a permanent privation, and this can be voluntary indirectly just as a drunken man is deprived of his reason and incapable of using his liberty, yet it is by his free fault that he is in this state and hence his drunkenness, his privation of reason is voluntary and can be imputed to him. But how can original sin be even indirectly voluntary for a child that has never used its personal free will? Certain Protestants hold that the child on coming to the use of reason will consent to its original sin; but in reality no one ever thought of giving this consent. Besides, even before the use of reason, sin is already in the soul, according to the data of Tradition regarding the baptism of children and the sin contracted by generation. Some theosophists and spiritists admit the preexistence of souls that have sinned in a former life which they now forget; but apart from the absurdity of this metempsychosis, it contradicts the doctrine of original sin, it substitutes a number of particular sins for the one sin of a common father transmitting sin and death to all (cf. Rom., v, 12 sqq.). The whole Christian religion, says St. Augustine, may be summed up in the intervention of two men, the one to ruin us, the other to save us (De pecc. orig., xxiv). The right solution is to be sought in the free will of Adam in his sin, and this free will was ours: “we were all in Adam “, says St. Ambrose, cited by St. Augustine (Opus imperf., IV, civ). St. Basil attributes to us the act of the first man: “Because we did not fast (when Adam ate the forbid-den fruit) we have been turned out of the garden of Paradise” (Horn. i de jejun., iv). Earlier still is the testimony of St. Irenaeus; “In the person of the first Adam we offend God , disobeying His precept” (Haeres., V, xvi, 3).

St. Thomas thus explains this moral unity of our will with the will of Adam . “An individual can be considered either as an individual or as part of a whole, a member of a society. Considered in the second way an act can be his although he has not done it himself, nor has it been done by his free will but by the rest of the society or by its head, the nation being considered as doing what the prince does. For a society is considered as a single man of whom the individuals are the different members (St. Paul, I Cor., xii). Thus the multitude of men who receive their human nature from Adam is to be considered as a single community or rather as a single body. If the man, whose privation of original justice is due to Adam , is considered as a private person, this privation is not his `fault’, for a fault is essentially voluntary. If, however, we consider him as a member of the family of Adam , as if all men were only one man, then his privation partakes of the nature of sin on account of its voluntary origin, which is the actual sin of Adam ” (De Maio, iv, 1). It is this law of solidarity, admitted by common sentiment, which attributes to children a part of the shame resulting from the father’s crime. It is not a personal crime, objected the Pelagians. “No”, answered St. Augustine, “but it is paternal crime” (Op. imperf., I, cxlviii). Being a distinct person I am not strictly responsible for the crime of another, the act is not mine. Yet, as a member of the human family, I am supposed to have acted with its head who represented it with regard to the conservation or the loss of grace. I am, therefore, responsible for my privation of grace, taking responsibility in the largest sense of the word. This, however, is enough to make the state of privation of grace in a certain degree voluntary, and, therefore, “without absurdity it may be said to be voluntary” (St. Augustine, “Retract.”, I, xiii).

Thus the principal difficulties of nonbelievers against the transmission of sin are answered. “Free will is essentially incommunicable.” Physically, yes; morally, no; the will of the father being considered as that of his children. “It is unjust to make us responsible for an act committed before our birth.” Strictly responsible, yes; responsible in a wide sense of the word, no; the crime of a father brands his yet unborn children with shame, and entails upon them a share of his own responsibility. “Your dogma makes us strictly responsible for the fault of Adam .” That is a misconception of our doctrine. Our dogma does not attribute to the children of Adam any properly so-called responsibility for the act of their father, nor do we say that original sin is voluntary in the strict sense of the word. It is true that, considered as “a moral deformity”, “a separation from God “, as “the death of the soul”, original sin is a real sin which deprives the soul of sanctifying grace. It has the same claim to be a sin as has habitual sin, which is the state in which an adult is placed by a grave and personal fault, the “stain” which St. Thomas defines as “the privation of grace” (I-II, Q. cix. a. 7; III, Q. lxxxvii, a. 2, ad 3um), and it is from this point of view that baptism, putting an end to the privation of grace, “takes away all that is really and properly sin”, for concupiscence which remains “is not really and properly sin”, although its transmission was equally voluntary ( Council of Trent , Sess. V, can. v.). Considered precisely as voluntary, original sin is only the shadow of sin properly so-called. According to St. Thomas (In II Sent., dist. xxv, Q. i, a. 2, ad 2um), it is not called “sin” in the same sense, but only in an analogous sense.

Several theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, neglecting the importance of the privation of grace in the explanation of original sin, and explaining it only by the participation we are supposed to have in the act of Adam , exaggerate this participation. They exaggerate the idea of voluntary in original sin, thinking that it is the only way to explain how it is a sin properly so called. Their opinion, differing from that of St. Thomas, gave rise to uncalled-for and insoluble difficulties. At present it is altogether abandoned.

What is original sin?

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original sin , in Christian doctrine , the condition or state of sin into which each human being is born; also, the origin (i.e., the cause, or source) of this state. Traditionally, the origin has been ascribed to the sin of the first man, Adam , who disobeyed God in eating the forbidden fruit (of knowledge of good and evil) and, in consequence, transmitted his sin and guilt by heredity to his descendants.

The doctrine has its basis in the Bible . Although the human condition (suffering, death, and a universal tendency toward sin) is accounted for by the story of the Fall of Adam in the early chapters of the book of Genesis , the Hebrew Scriptures say nothing about the transmission of hereditary sin to the entire human race. In the Gospels also there are no more than allusions to the notion of the Fall of Man and universal sin. The main scriptural affirmation of the doctrine is found in the writings of St. Paul and particularly in Romans 5:12–19, a difficult passage in which Paul establishes a parallelism between Adam and Christ , stating that whereas sin and death entered the world through Adam, grace and eternal life have come in greater abundance through Christ.

Holy week. Easter. Valladolid. Procession of Nazarenos carry a cross during the Semana Santa (Holy week before Easter) in Valladolid, Spain. Good Friday

The doctrine has long been the prerequisite for the Christian understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ Crucifixion and atonement and was especially promulgated by St. Augustine in the West. Despite its importance for understanding Jesus’ sacrifice, and as a motivation behind the practice of infant baptism in some churches, the doctrine of original sin has been minimized since the European Enlightenment . Indeed, the idea that salvation is necessary because of the universal stain of original sin is no longer accepted by a number of Christian sects and interpretations, especially among those Christians who consider the story of Adam and Eve to be less a fact and more a metaphor of the relation of God and humanity.

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's theological trouble

The jesuit scientist questioned whether humans are descended from adam. it got him exiled..

At the end of his stirring sermon at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Bishop Michael Curry brought up the name of theologian and geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Curry brilliantly captured the power of Teilhard’s synthesis of science and theology by citing Teilhard’s comments on fire and love. Curry noted that Teilhard had called fire one of the greatest discoveries in human history and had said that “if humanity ever captures the energy of love, it will be the second time in history that we have discovered fire.” With the help of a French Jesuit theologian, Curry set the love of two people for one another at the center of the material and spiritual forces that unify the world.

Few theologians have joined the disciplines of science and theology as creatively as Teilhard. He acquired his fascination with geology early on, growing up in the volcanic Auvergne region of France. His father, an amateur naturalist, encouraged him to collect fossils and other natural objects. Meanwhile, his mother instilled in him a deep Catholic piety. He joined the Jesuits at 17, a fitting step for a young man who wished to combine his spiritual and scientific commitments.

During his formation as Jesuit, he studied philosophy on the island of Jersey, taught at the Jesuit school in Cairo, and studied theology at Hastings on the south coast of England. In all these places, he found time to study and excavate fossils, developing his knowledge of paleontology in sites as diverse as the English chalk cliffs and the vast Egyptian desert.

In 1912, he became a paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. During World War I he served as a stretcher bearer and began to write about how he synthesized his scientific work with his philosophical and theological convictions.

During the 1920s, Teilhard wrote an essay on how the doctrine of original sin could be reconciled with the theory of evolution. The essay, meant for private circulation, was passed on to church authorities in Rome, who saw in the essay an alarming deviation from orthodoxy.

In his paper, Teilhard argued that traditional teachings about the fall of Adam and Eve into sin were difficult to reconcile with science for two reasons. First, fossils suggested that the human species emerged out of several different evolutionary branches, not from a single pair of ancestors. Second, an earthly paradise from which death, suffering, and evil were absent was scientifically inconceivable, given that the tendency toward physical disintegration is a condition of existence.

However, Teilhard also aimed to show that the doctrine of original sin could be understood as the condition for the original act of creation. Evolution suggests that humans exist in a process of becoming, rather than being made perfect from the start. Adam and Eve are therefore best understood as images of sin, not as our biological ancestors. Paradise is a state of salvation open to all who live in unity with Jesus. Teilhard thought that attributing all sin to a single historical act that might, in fact, not have occurred was grossly immature. And to defend a version of the doctrine of original sin that ignored the evidence of reason and experience diminished its deepest meaning.

Teilhard tried to placate his critics, assuring Jesuit leaders in Rome that his essay was merely a provisional attempt to reconcile doctrine and science and promising to do everything possible to bring his views into conformity with official dogma. But the superior general wasn’t satisfied. If Teilhard continued to defend any part of his position, he was told, he would be expelled from the Jesuit order. Teilhard responded that he felt compelled, under church direction, to try to reconcile doctrine and science.

A few weeks later, he was ordered to relinquish his teaching position in Paris and move to China—although not straightaway, for fear that attention be drawn to the affair. He was also required to affirm six propositions on original sin, evolution, and the relationship between faith and reason.

The first three propositions were taken from the Council of Trent’s 1546 decree on original sin. They stated that Adam, on contravening God’s command in paradise, immediately lost his original holiness and justice; that this sin damaged his descendants, who also lost holiness and justice; and that sin is a feature of every person and is transmitted by biological reproduction. Teilhard had minimal difficulty subscribing to these, because the universality and materiality of sin was not a problem for him. And these propositions could be understood in the light of Adam being an image of sinful humanity.

The final two propositions came from the First Vatican Council’s canons on faith and reason of 1870. The fifth one presented faith as superior to reason and played down the possibility of any disagreement between them. The sixth proposition stated that it was impossible that dogma may be reinterpreted in light of advancing knowledge. Teilhard also reported having no difficulty accepting these. He also affirmed the fundamental congruence between faith and reason, and he believed that he was not reinterpreting dogma but merely drawing out its full meaning for the present day. He thus broadly accepted five of the six propositions.

It was the fourth proposition that caused Teilhard great difficulty. It read: “The whole human race takes its origin from one first parent, Adam.” In a letter to his mentor, Teilhard wrote: “I am able to subscribe to it in faith only with the implicit or explicit reserve that I regard the proposition as subject to revisions (and, what is more, essential revisions) of the kind to which belief in the eight days of creation, the flood, etc., has been subjected; and I do not see how anyone could forbid me this position.”

He decided to subscribe to the six propositions but make his reservations explicit. This seemed the most honest approach. He wrote that he didn’t accept any statement that went beyond formally defined church teaching and that he regarded all human knowledge as subject to Christ’s superior revelation. He could not accept a proposition about human biological origins that wasn’t based on scientific evidence. In any case, because the subject of the fourth proposition was a scientific rather than theological topic, it couldn’t strictly be assented to in faith.

The exact nature of Teilhard’s subscription to the fourth proposition is unclear. Moreover, the fact that the fourth proposition was the only one of the six composed for the occasion left open the question of its validity. If that proposition was not part of existing church teaching, on what authority could the church require that it be affirmed? It seemed that Teilhard was being made to submit to a statement that the church had never formulated.

Although Teilhard signed the six propositions, it was clear that he remained deeply committed to reconciling doctrine and evolution and that if he remained in France his ideas were bound to circulate. The Jesuit authorities therefore determined that he should continue his paleontological work in China.

In Tientsin, China, he settled into the life of a paleontologist, working with a fellow Jesuit. But he hoped to rebuild his profile in the church and return to Paris. However, early in 1927 the Jesuit curia in Rome told him that, excepting short visits, he wouldn’t be allowed to return. He spent most of the next 20 years in China. Teilhard’s exile deprived both the church and wider society of close contact with his powerful vision for reconciling modern science and religion. During the years leading up to World War II, such a vision was desperately needed.

In 1950 the papal encyclical Humani generis was published, designed to critique aspects of modern thought and to tidy up some unfinished business dating back to the early 1920s. The document’s approach to reconciling dogma with science was awkward. It stressed the hypothetical character of all scientific findings and, in words echoing the fourth proposition, maintained that Catholics cannot accept that “after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all.”

It is correct, of course, that scientific knowledge consists of findings established by hypothesis and experimentation and that findings sometimes need to be rethought as further experiments provide new and more reliable data. However, doctrinal knowledge also needs to be left open to adjustment, as new understandings emerge from biblical, historical, and theological sources.

For example, as more medieval theological texts are translated, we see ever more clearly that mainstream Christian theologians have long read the Bible according to several complementary senses. The literal sense is just one of these. Alongside it stands the allegorical sense, in which people and events are viewed as bearing a significance that extends beyond the immediate and explicit. From this perspective, Adam and Eve are important because of what they teach us about the nature of sin, which is, in turn, important for what it shows us about our relationship with God. It’s the allegorical sense, developed through the imaginative reading of scripture, that is so often key for doctrine. This doesn’t mean that the literal sense may be ignored. On the contrary, allegory is rooted in literal images and narratives, in all their rich detail. But these images and narratives don’t need to be defended as literal history.

By exiling and silencing Teilhard, the church lost an opportunity to advance the much-needed reconciliation of religion with science. When his writings were finally published in the late 1950s and 1960s, the mood of wider society had swung away from traditional theology and toward new forms of spirituality. Teilhard was often wrongly perceived as advocating a secular spirituality. In fact, as the saga of the six propositions shows, his own aim was to help make the church credible in the modern world.

The paper that got Teilhard into trouble, “Note on Some Possible Historical Representations of Original Sin,” forms one of the chapters of his book Christianity and Evolution . This whole book is highly informative for anyone wishing to understand how God may be at work in the biological and spiritual development of the world. Those who are more interested in traditional spirituality might turn to Teilhard’s The Divine Milieu , which unfolds the Christian life in terms of action, passion, and vision. For the mystically inclined, there is The Heart of Matter , which includes meditations on the Eucharist and on spirit and matter, as well as three wedding addresses. Many of Teilhard’s books are collections of short essays, which may be read in digestible portions. Although he doesn’t provide simple answers, his writing is profound and inspiring.

A version of this article appears in the print edition under the title “Descended from Adam?”

David Grumett

David Grumett is senior lecturer in theology and ethics at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Teilhard de Chardin: Theology, Humanity and Cosmos .

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Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin: Theological, Biblical, and Scientific Perspectives

Reviewed by Steven D. Mason, Old Testament Studies, LeTourneau University

There may be no more important component to the future credibility of Christian higher education than the ability of scholars and educators to offer an authentic account of modern science alongside a true commitment to scripture and traditional Christian theology. While the enterprise we call “the integration of faith and learning” is really not new to Christian university life, even if it is relatively new as a sub-discipline in and of itself, it does seem that in recent years Christians, and particularly Evangelicals, have been wrestling like never before with questions raised by mainstream natural science. The query regarding human origins stands front and center and has become in some circles a dividing line between the stable and the sliding with respect to Christian faithfulness. And so, it is quite a good thing for Christian scholars like those represented in Hans Madueme and Michael Reeves’s Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin to sit around the table to tender the best of theological, biblical, and scientific perspectives on the historicity of Adam and humanity as a whole. We will need voices like the fifteen in this edited volume to continue to speak clearly, honestly, and passionately about this subject as the Church and its universities and seminaries help broker the discussion moving forward.

Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin presents fifteen essays organized into four major sections entitled “Adam in the Bible and Science,” “Original Sin in History,” “Original Sin in Theology,” and “Adam and the Fall in Dispute.” Part One offers essays on Adam in the Old Testament (John Collins) and New Testament (Robert Yarbrough) and an essay on Adam and modern science (written under the pseudonym of William Stone). Part Two traces the doctrine of original sin historically, looking at patristic (Peter Sanlon), Lutheran (Robert Kolb), Reformed (Donald Macleod), Wesleyan (Thomas McCall), and modern (Carl Trueman) theology. Part Three addresses original sin from the perspectives of biblical theology (James Hamilton), systematic theology (Michael Reeves and Hans Madueme), science (Hans Madueme), and pastoral theology (Daniel Doriani). Part Four presents some selected topics of interest, with essays on Romans 5:12–19 (Tom Schreiner), the fall and Genesis 3 (Noel Weeks), and theodicy (William Edgar). The editors conclude with a brief postscript.

In the introduction to the book Madueme and Reeves offer a winsome overview of the recent controversy about the historical Adam, providing the reader insight into the degree of discord within evangelicalism on the issue. The editors acknowledge that complexities are at play within recent evangelical discussion; it is too nondescript simply to affirm Adam’s supernatural creation or subsequent fall without pressing an individual scholar on his or her version of the details. Accordingly, the details matter, since “Adam and the fall do not float free in Scripture like rootless, atomistic, independent ideas. They are central nodes that hold together and are completely enmeshed in a much broader, organic, theological matrix” (ix). The volume has an unashamed apologetics telos to it, and it is a resource essentially for those within the church. It aims to “rescue Adam from his rapidly diminishing theological, cultural, and scientific plausibility” (xii). As the introduction proceeds, it becomes evident that for these authors quite a bit is at stake in compromising a traditional doctrine of original sin and a literal, historical account of Adam, implying that these sorts of touch-points of Christian theology and the gospel (or their trajectories) are worth dying for (xii). While setting the stage in this way is indeed inspiring, it also creates a high expectation with regard to the payoff of the book as a whole.

The volume is certainly successful in offering a range of angles into the discussion with the central intention of articulating a conservative defense of the historical Adam and original sin. Each essay had gifts to offer, and I suspect that almost any reader would learn something valuable from each contributor. Yet the volume does leave more to be desired. For one, the framing of the discussion assumes the audience will be Protestant Evangelicals, which may be so, but it also assumes that evangelical conservatism would not want broader exposure to ideas (168, nt. 1). At various junctures, the authors appear more concerned with responding to particular detractors of traditional formulations of Adam, the fall, and sin (for example, Peter Enns, Christopher Southgate, and Bill Dembski), and could have been less polemical in the process of reaffirming conventional evangelical viewpoints. And while no single book can cover all areas, the science discussion is thin. For many, generating thoughtful responses to the scientific community is the heart of the issue. Stone’s chapter on reconciling paleoanthropology with a historical Adam was helpful, but, as he admits, there is quite a bit of discussion left to be covered regarding genetics and common ancestry which are at the forefront of the science debate.

As is the challenge for any edited work with multiple essays, the individual pieces did not speak much to one another. If there is one main thread in the volume, it is how the biblical authors, within their own ideas, narrative movement, and language, and their classic interpreters in the Church, conceive and assume the reality of both a real Adam and Eve and original sin. And yet, for some inquirers, both conservative and otherwise, that may still feel like only one side of the discussion. For example, in his work on Adam and Eve in the Old Testament, Collins essentially proposes four conclusions:

The author intended to relay “straight” history, with a minimum of figurative language.
The author was talking about what he thought were actual events, using rhetorical and literary techniques to shape the readers’ attitudes toward those events.
The author intended to recount an imaginary history, using recognizable literary conventions to convey “timeless truths” about God and man.
The author told a story without caring whether the events were real or imagined; his main goal was to convey various theological and moral truths. (31)

This is a fair (and helpful) summary of views on authorial intent and understanding, but the tougher question is how one squares any of the four with the propositions of scientists. In other words, the deeper issue is negotiating what God intends for us to do with the world of the Bible and the world of good science—if one sees them as divergent. The real challenges occur on the level of implications. Again, it is one thing to argue that Augustine did not invent the doctrine of original sin or that Wesley believed Adam and Eve were real people in line with the Westminster Confession, but it is another to work out why I should care about Augustine’s or Wesley’s position at all.

At other points, several of the authors defended the necessity of maintaining the traditional doctrine of original sin, but it left me wondering if the main impetus of holding on to a traditional view is only to stay theologically safe or to maintain a clear theodicy. For example:

Traditionally, belief in a historical sin and fall of Adam has been an essential part of Christian theodicy. That is, because Adam and Eve committed the first sin at a particular point in time . … God did not create an inherently fallen world. He is not the author of evil. … If we remove a historical Adam and fall from the theological picture, then sin became a side effect of evolution, a part of the natural ontology of created human beings. … The creator God is rendered ultimately responsible for sin. … But if there was no historical Adam and no historical entry point of evil into the world, then [the sovereignty and goodness of God] are things we cannot affirm, and our very Christian confidence must be shaken to its foundations. (Madueme and Reeves, 210-211)

It is indeed helpful to remind the reader that taking an alternative position to a historical Adam means that one is not only going against the grain of classical Christian thought, but may also be tinkering with important propositions about God. But does the loss of a historical Adam absolutely compromise God’s sovereignty and goodness and purity? Is that the only possible conclusion? Does sin as a “side-effect” of evolution absolutely make God the author of evil? Is evolution the only other side to a historical Adam? Are there other ways of imagining historical entry points of sin into the world besides a literal Adam and Eve that could still maintain traditional accounts of theodicy? How do other thoughtful and evangelical believers hold the tensions together? More of what William Edgar begins to offer in this way would have been welcome. The assertions through several of the essays, however, seem at the very least in need of elaboration to avoid oversimplifying the controversies and their ramifications, which can actually debilitate one’s confidence in addressing them in the long run.

In the end, I think the value of this work outweighs its shortcomings. The solid exegetical and theological work presented amidst its pages will lend a good amount of support and meaningful discussion points for defending a longstanding Christian perspective on Adam, the fall, and original sin. There is a center of gravity that this volume offers on the subject, as one can certainly trust the contributing scholars to stay within the bounds of conservative evangelical thought. But if someone were hoping for a presentation of weighty arguments that might challenge traditional modes of thinking, then they will have to find supplements to this volume. I would recommend taking this work along for help on the journey.

Cite this article

Steven D. Mason

Original Sin - Free Essay Examples and Topic Ideas

Original sin refers to the Christian doctrine of the inherent sinful nature of humanity, inherited from the first humans, Adam and Eve, who disobeyed God’s command by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. The idea of original sin teaches that every human being is born with a sinful disposition, and their only hope for redemption and salvation is through faith and belief in Jesus Christ. The concept of original sin has been debated and interpreted differently among various theologians and denominations throughout history.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Scarlet Letter — The Original Sin in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Original Sin in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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an essay for Anglicans Online

Original Sin The Right Reverend Pierre W. Whalon 26 January 2003

After some very angry people crashed several airliners full of people into buildings full of people, there began to appear reports in the media that students on college campuses were beginning to think that the concept of Evil might actually be referring to Something Real, as opposed to being merely a construct of this or that social ideology. After all, no other word seemed to describe that act. The easy relativism through which these young people conceived of the moral order suddenly evaporated.

Whether in fact 9/11 spelled the end of shallow thinking on campuses is debatable. But it did get people thinking about Good and Evil again. Once we start back down that well-traveled road, Christians soon encounter our doctrine of Original Sin.

This teaching is one that has fallen on hard times in our era. In the tradition of the West, inspired mainly by Augustine, original sin is the genetic inheritance of the human race from our first parents, Adam and Eve. Although we are not guilty of it personally, we are guilty of it collectively. As a result of this inheritance, we cannot live without sinning and we must die physically. Baptism is the ordinary remedy for original sin, giving us new life in Christ and power to resist sin, though not canceling either our physical death or our propensity to sin.

Since most people do not believe that A & E were historical figures (talking serpents?), the explanatory power of this doctrine has lessened. Furthermore, Augustine believed that original sin was transmitted in the vitium , sperm, following the science of his day (not disproven until the seventeenth century) that the whole of a person’s genetic inheritance lay in the father’s “seed,” the mother providing only the “fertile soil” in which it quickened into a human being. This led to among other things, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, teaching that by a miracle, Mary did not inherit original sin so as not to transmit it to her son.

All this sounds outlandish to our ears. Sex transmits sin? We must die for a sin we did not commit? And so the doctrine of original sin sounds bizarre as well.

This is really too bad. For without the symbol of original sin, we are unable to consider in any depth the continuing ubiquity of evil in our world, our church, our very hearts. We do not need 9/11 to remind us of this. Other recent events should be clear indications for anyone who has not somnambulated through life: the dreadful genocide of Rwanda, committed with the complicity of the churches and the governments of several nations, including France and the United States; the intractable spiral of violence between Israel and Palestine; the massacres of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia by so-called Christians; the collapse of Enron and with it, the losses of thousands of employees’ pensions and millions of people’s stock portfolios; the destruction of the Challenger , due to the willful blindness of its managers... pick a place on the globe, pick any era in history, the evidence of the existence of human evil is overwhelming.

Which means that we must confront this in ourselves. It is of course much more pleasant to excuse ourselves and everyone else by espousing the shallow relativism of today that says that what is good to me may not be good to you and I should not impose my values on you nor you impose yours on me. If that bit of silliness collapsed with the Twin Towers, some good will have come out of the tragedy.

The Outline of the Faith sums up the matter baldly: “From the beginning, human beings have misused their freedom and made wrong choices.” (BCP 845) This is the essence of the notion of original sin. Whether or not A & E were historical people is irrelevant. In fact, freeing their story from the safe anchorage of literal history allows its full power to be felt. As they were free, so we experience ourselves as free, for indeed we are. As they freely chose to disobey God in full knowledge of the consequences, so have we. As they experienced not the capricious judgment of an offended deity but the natural consequence of their act, so too have we tasted the bitter fruit of our actions, personally and collectively.

Furthermore, what they did could not be undone. The fact of human freedom—some might say the surd of freedom—is real. So is the fact that this freedom is limited. One absolute reality that every person must face is that our freedom is circumscribed by the consequences of evil and good choices of the past. As they cannot be undone, we must make our decisions not in the full joy and power of freedom, but in the dreary awareness of our inherited finitude. Inherited not genetically but inherited nevertheless, by the fact that we are human, born of woman and man, ourselves giving birth to a new generation further saddled with the consequences of our own choices.

There have been other versions of the doctrine of original sin. Karl Rahner among others has pointed out that Augustine’s understanding of it is not the Church’s doctrine. The Eastern Orthodox have been highly critical of it (and Augustine in general), pointing out that we cannot be guilty of a sin we did not commit. They contest the translation of Romans 5:12 that we inherit death through sin (the famous “ef ho” controversy). And they do not implicitly connect original sin with sex. Other authors have even spoken of the felix culpa , the good stroke of fortune that the first sin was, for it brought about our redemption.

Whatever fine points of Scripture or tradition we might discuss, original sin is a teaching we cannot duck. We have misused our freedom. I , Pierre Welté Whalon, have done so and probably will again. We have suffered the consequences of doing so. And we are aware that decisions made before we were born have restricted much of the manoeuvring room we feel we should have, and that we continue to suffer the consequences of earlier evil decisions. The only logical place to locate the beginning of the consequences of evil decisions is at the beginning of the human race. We should not let the paleoanthropologists’ constantly shifting hypotheses about human origins to distract us from this central affirmation.

Thus there is sin—it is real. It began “at the beginning.” And we are powerless against its real infringement upon our freedom. This teaching does satisfy the criteria of what all Christians believe, for it has been affirmed everywhere, at all times, by all Christians, in one form or another.

By itself this doctrine is very gloomy. But it does affirm that we are free, that our decisions matter, and that we should not be surprised by the continuing appearance of evil in our world, our nation, our family, our very hearts. This is the wisdom of the Serpent—the Tempter—that Jesus enjoined us to develop.

The German psychiatrist-theologian Eugen Drewermann postulates that the essence of original sin (and by extension all other sin) is to act out of fear of God and our creatureliness rather than confidence in God. Because of the fear of being less than what we feel we are or are entitled to be, or simply from fear of being nothing, we try to become more, to transcend the limit of physical finitude or the laws of God and nature.

Another, more metaphysical explanation might be that creatures, as participants in Being, have a certain nostalgia for Non-being, as it were, a yearning to be free of the weight of Being. Such musings remind us in any event that the existence of Evil is wrapped in the mystery of God and our existence and so cannot ever be fully grasped.

The doctrine of original sin leads to the ground of its eternal remedy: our confidence in God. The experience of freedom, however clouded by the realisation of our limits, is itself our first experience of grace. God’s free, gracious act of bringing us into being precedes our freedom to respond. Thus God is not limited by our freedom except insofar as God chooses to be. Thus God’s answer to the dilemma at the beginning of the human race goes back beyond our beginning: “In the Beginning was the Word...through whom all things came into being...”

“...and the Word was made flesh.”

Jesus is the fruit of the promise made to the first couple, that the wisdom of the Serpent, learned at such a huge cost, is not the last word on the human race. For the innocence of the Dove—the gift of the Spirit—is available despite our sin as a free and gracious gift from God, accessible by placing our confidence in God and God’s final and abiding Word to us, Jesus Christ. Christ is the ground of our confidence. His resurrection inaugurated a new world, a new creation, out of the old. The intractable rule of the inheritance of evil is broken forever. The power and scope of our freedom is being restored. Indeed, only in the light of the Easter morning can we struggle out of our darkness. Only through the freedom wrought on the Cross can we choose freely once again: Yes in confidence, or No in fear.

Evil continues to be a choice of the redeemed. Thus the Crusaders, seeking to avenge the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, entered the city of Jesus only to slaughter in his Name every man, woman, and child in it. The Christian English burned the Tower of York and all the Jews in it. Orthodox soldiers systematically killed thousands of Muslims in Srebonica. Rwandan bishops and other leaders encouraged the slaughter of the Tutsi. And on and on...

We should not be surprised. Shocked, revolted, seeking to exact exemplary punishment upon those who nail Christ to his cross all over again—yes. But surprised, no. We all know about sin.

And we know about freedom. And God. And Christ. And the Spirit. And we know the way that leads not back to Eden, but forward to the everlasting joy of Paradise.

Pierre Welté Whalon is Bishop-in-charge of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe.

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America’s Original Sin

Slavery and the legacy of white supremacy, by annette gordon-reed.

The documents most closely associated with the creation of the United States— the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution —present a problem with which Americans have been contending from the country’s beginning: how to reconcile the values espoused in those texts with the United States’ original sin of slavery, the flaw that marred the country’s creation, warped its prospects, and eventually plunged it into civil war. The Declaration of Independence had a specific purpose: to cut the ties between the American colonies and Great Britain and establish a new country that would take its place among the nations of the world. But thanks to the vaulting language of its famous preamble, the document instantly came to mean more than that. Its confident statement that “all men are created equal,” with “unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” put notions of freedom and equality at the heart of the American experiment. Yet it was written by a slave owner, Thomas Jefferson , and released into 13 colonies that all, to one degree or another, allowed slavery.

The Constitution, which united the colonies turned states, was no less tainted. It came into existence only after a heated argument over—and fateful compromise on—the institution of slavery. Members of the revolutionary generation often cast that institution as a necessary evil that would eventually die of its own accord, and they made their peace with it to hold together the new nation. The document they fought over and signed in 1787, revered almost as a sacred text by many Americans, directly protected slavery. It gave slave owners the right to capture fugitive slaves who crossed state lines, counted each enslaved person as three-fifths of a free person for the purpose of apportioning members of the House of Representatives, and prohibited the abolition of the slave trade before 1808.

As citizens of a young country, Americans have a close enough connection to the founding generation that they look to the founders as objects of praise. There might well have been no United States without George Washington, behind whom 13 fractious colonies united. Jefferson’s language in the Declaration of Independence has been taken up by every marginalized group seeking an equal place in American society. It has influenced people searching for freedom in other parts of the world, as well.

American slavery was tied inexorably to white dominance.

Yet the founders are increasingly objects of condemnation, too. Both Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. They, along with James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson, the other three slave-owning presidents of the early republic, shaped the first decades of the United States. Any desire to celebrate the country’s beginning quickly runs into the tragic aspects of that moment. Those who wish to revel without reservation in good feelings about their country feel threatened by those who note the tragedies and oppression that lay at the heart of this period. Those descended from people who were cast as inferior beings, whose labor and lives were taken for the enrichment of others, and those with empathy for the enslaved feel insulted by unreflective celebration. Learning how to strike the right balance has proved one of the most difficult problems for American society.

WHY SLAVERY’S LEGACY ENDURES

The issue, however, goes far beyond the ways Americans think and talk about their history. The most significant fact about American slavery, one it did not share with other prominent ancient slave systems, was its basis in race. Slavery in the United States created a defined, recognizable group of people and placed them outside society. And unlike the indentured servitude of European immigrants to North America, slavery was an inherited condition.

As a result, American slavery was tied inexorably to white dominance. Even people of African descent who were freed for one reason or another suffered under the weight of the white supremacy that racially based slavery entrenched in American society. In the few places where free blacks had some form of state citizenship, their rights were circumscribed in ways that emphasized their inferior status—to them and to all observers. State laws in both the so-called Free States and the slave states served as blueprints for a system of white supremacy. Just as blackness was associated with inferiority and a lack of freedom—in some jurisdictions, black skin created the legal presumption of an enslaved status—whiteness was associated with superiority and freedom.

The historian Edmund Morgan explained what this meant for the development of American attitudes about slavery, freedom, and race—indeed, for American culture overall. Morgan argued that racially based slavery, rather than being a contradiction in a country that prided itself on freedom, made the freedom of white people possible. The system that put black people at the bottom of the social heap tamped down class divisions among whites. Without a large group of people who would always rank below the level of even the poorest, most disaffected white person, white unity could not have persisted. Grappling with the legacy of slavery, therefore, requires grappling with the white supremacy that preceded the founding of the United States and persisted after the end of legalized slavery.

Racially based slavery, rather than being a contradiction in a country that prided itself on freedom, made the freedom of white people possible.

Consider, by contrast, what might have happened had there been Irish chattel slavery in North America. The Irish suffered pervasive discrimination and were subjected to crude and cruel stereotypes about their alleged inferiority, but they were never kept as slaves. Had they been enslaved and then freed, there is every reason to believe that they would have had an easier time assimilating into American culture than have African Americans. Their enslavement would be a major historical fact, but it would likely not have created a legacy so firmly tying the past to the present as did African chattel slavery. Indeed, the descendants of white indentured servants blended into society and today suffer no stigma because of their ancestors’ social condition.

That is because the ability to append enslaved status to a set of generally identifiable physical characteristics—skin color, hair, facial features—made it easy to tell who was eligible for slavery and to maintain a system of social control over the enslaved. It also made it easy to continue organized oppression after the 13th Amendment ended legal slavery in 1865. There was no incentive for whites to change their attitudes about race even when slavery no longer existed. Whiteness still amounted to a value, unmoored from economic or social status. Blackness still had to be devalued to ensure white superiority. This calculus operated in Northern states as well as Southern ones.

CONFEDERATE IDEOLOGY

The framers of the Confederate States of America understood this well. Race played a specific and pivotal role in their conception of the society they wished to create. If members of the revolutionary generation presented themselves as opponents of a doomed system and, in Jefferson’s case, cast baleful views of race as mere “suspicions,” their Confederate grandchildren voiced their full-throated support for slavery as a perpetual institution, based on their openly expressed belief in black inferiority. The founding documents of the Confederacy, under which the purported citizens of that entity lived, just as Americans live under the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, announced that African slavery would form the “cornerstone” of the country they would create after winning the Civil War. In 1861, a few weeks before the war began, Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, put things plainly :

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast had anticipated this as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. . . . The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. . . . Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.

Despite the clarity of Stephens’ words, millions of Americans today are unaware of—or perhaps unwilling to learn about—the aims of those who rallied to the Confederate cause. That ignorance has led many to fall prey to the romantic notion of “the rebels,” ignoring that these rebels had a cause. Modern Americans may fret about the hypocrisy and weakness of the founding generation, but there was no such hesitancy among the leading Confederates on matters of slavery and race. That they were not successful on the battlefield does not mean that their philosophy should be ignored in favor of abstract notions of “duty,” “honor,” and “nobility”; Americans should not engage in the debate that the former Confederates chose after the war ended and slavery, finally, acquired a bad name.

It has taken until well into the twenty-first century for many Americans to begin to reject the idea of erecting statues of men who fought to construct an explicitly white supremacist society. For too long, the United States has postponed a reckoning with the corrosive ideas about race that have destroyed the lives and wasted the talents of millions of people who could have contributed to their country. To confront the legacy of slavery without openly challenging the racial attitudes that created and shaped the institution is to leave the most important variable out of the equation. And yet discussions of race, particularly of one’s own racial attitudes, are among the hardest conversations Americans are called on to have.

For too long, the United States has postponed a reckoning with corrosive ideas about race.

This issue of the Confederacy’s legacy was made tragically prominent in 2015, when the white supremacist Dylann Roof shot 12 black parishioners in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine of them. History had given the worshipers in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church every reason to be suspicious of the young man who appeared at their doorstep that day, yet they invited him in to their prayer meeting. Although they had, Roof said, been “nice” to him, they had to die because they (as representatives of the black race) were, in his words, raping “our women” and “taking over our country.” Their openness and faith were set against the images, later revealed, of Roof posing with what has come to be known as the Confederate flag and other white supremacist iconography. The core meaning of the Confederacy was made heartbreakingly vivid. From that moment on, inaction on the question of the display of the Confederate flag was, for many, no longer an option. Bree Newsome, the activist who, ten days after the shooting, scaled the flagpole in front of the South Carolina State House and removed the Confederate flag that flew there, represented the new spirit: displaying symbols of white supremacy in public spaces was no longer tolerable.

And those symbols went far beyond flags. Monuments to people who, in one way or another, promoted the idea of white supremacy are scattered across the country. Statues of Confederate officials and generals dot parks and public buildings. Yet proposals to take them down have drawn sharp opposition. Few who resist the removal of the statues openly praise the aims of the Confederacy, whatever their private thoughts on the matter. Instead, they raise the specter of a slippery slope: today, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee; tomorrow, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Yet dealing with such slopes is part of everyday life. The problem with the Confederacy is not just that its leaders owned slaves. The problem is that they tried to destroy the Union and did so in adherence to an explicit doctrine of slavery and white supremacy. By contrast, the founding generation, for all its faults, left behind them principles and documents that have allowed American society to expand in directions opposite to the values of the South’s slave society and the Confederacy.

It is not surprising that colleges and universities, ideally the site of inquiry and intellectual contest, have grappled most prominently with this new national discussion. Many of the most prestigious American universities have benefited from the institution of slavery or have buildings named after people who promoted white supremacy. Brown, Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale have, by starting conversations on campus, carrying out programs of historical self-study, and setting up commissions, contributed to greater public understanding of the past and of how the country might move ahead. Their work serves as a template for the ways in which other institutions should engage with these issues in a serious fashion.

RECONSTRUCTION DELAYED

For all the criticism that has been leveled at him for the insufficient radicalism of his racial politics, Abraham Lincoln understood that the central question for the United States after the Civil War was whether blacks could be fully incorporated into American society. Attempting to go forward after the carnage, he returned to first principles. In the Gettysburg Address, he used the words of the Declaration of Independence as an argument for the emancipation of blacks and their inclusion in the country’s “new birth of freedom.” What Lincoln meant by this, how far he was prepared to take matters, will remain unknown. What is clear is that Reconstruction, the brief period of hope among four million emancipated African Americans, when black men were given the right to vote, when the freedmen married, sought education, and became elected officials in the South, was seen as a nightmare by many white Southerners. Most of them had not owned slaves. But slavery was only part of the wider picture. They continued to rely on the racial hierarchy that had obtained since the early 1600s, when the first Africans arrived in North America’s British colonies. Rather than bring free blacks into society, with the hope of moving the entire region forward, they chose to move backward, to a situation as close to slavery as legally possible. Northern whites, tired of “the Negro problem,” abandoned Reconstruction and left black people to the mercy of those who had before the war seen them as property and after it as lost possessions.

The historian David Blight has described how the post–Civil War desire for reconciliation between white Northerners and white Southerners left African Americans behind, in ways that continue to shape American society. The South had no monopoly on adherents to the doctrine of white supremacy. Despite all that had happened, the racial hierarchy took precedence over the ambitious plan to bring black Americans into full citizenship expressed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. In a reversal of the maxim that history is written by the victors, the losing side in the Civil War got to tell the story of their slave society in ways favorable to them, through books, movies, and other popular entertainment. American culture accepted the story that apologists for the Confederacy told about Southern whites and Southern blacks.

That did not begin to change until the second half of the twentieth century. It took the development of modern scholarship on slavery and Reconstruction and a civil rights movement composed of blacks, whites, and other groups from across the country to begin moving the needle on the question of white supremacy’s role in American society.

Since then, black Americans have made many social and economic gains, but there is still far to go. De jure segregation is dead, but de facto segregation is firmly in place in much of the country. The United States twice elected a black president and had a black first family, but the next presidential election expressed, in part, a backlash. African Americans are present in all walks of life, up and down the economic scale. But overall, black wealth is a mere fraction of white wealth. Police brutality and racialized law enforcement tactics have shown that the Fourth Amendment does not apply with equal force to black Americans. And the killing of armed black men in open-carry states by police has called into question black rights under the Second Amendment. To understand these problems, look not only to slavery itself but also to its most lasting legacy: the maintenance of white supremacy. Americans must come to grips with both if they are to make their country live up to its founding creed.

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ANNETTE GORDON-REED is Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School and Professor of History at Harvard University.
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Movies, tv & music • authentic indie film criticism • forming the future • est. 2014 • rt-approved 🍅, the sensual delights of michael cristofer’s ‘original sin’.

Angelina Jolie has carefully curated her image as an activist and international humanitarian, and the minimal acting roles she’s taken in the past decade reflect her dedication to preserving that wholesome, almost beatific image. That’s not to say that every movie Jolie appears in is a serious drama with a political message, but her onscreen roles tend to be in safe mainstream productions like the Maleficent movies or Marvel’s upcoming Eternals while she channels her social consciousness into her work behind the camera.

The Angelina Jolie of 2021 would never star in a movie like 2001’s Original Sin , and that’s a loss for audiences, even if very few people initially went to see the movie that opened 20 years ago this week. Written and directed by playwright Michael Cristofer, Original Sin is a campy, lurid melodrama, with Jolie fully embracing the role of a sultry sexpot. It’s also quite possibly Jolie’s best role , or at least her most entertaining. There’s more seductive danger to the con artist known alternately as Julia Russell and Bonnie Castle than there is in Maleficent across two feature films.

Cristofer, who also directed Jolie in her breakout role in 1998’s Gia , knows exactly what kind of asset he has in his star, and the first actual shot of Original Sin is a close-up on Jolie’s lips as her character launches into a story of seduction, murder and deception. The film is based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1947 novel Waltz into Darkness , and it has the feel of a 1940s noir, with Jolie as the dangerous femme fatale who’s guarding a literal trunk full of secrets . (François Truffaut previously adapted the book in 1969 as Mississippi Mermaid , starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve.) Cristofer moves the setting from the novel’s 1880s New Orleans to Cuba in the same time period, where wealthy coffee merchant Luis Vargas (Antonio Banderas) has sent away for a bride from the United States.

Luis has a picture and a packet of letters from Julia Russell, but when she arrives on a ship from Delaware, she neither looks nor behaves like the humble, homely woman Luis expected. She claims to have sent a false picture so that he would judge her only on her character and not on her looks. Luis buys this story in part because he has claimed in his letters to be a clerk, rather than a rich businessman, for the same reason of avoiding judgment. “We are both not to be trusted,” Julia says playfully, and the naughtiness of Jolie’s raised eyebrow is all the foreshadowing needed to indicate how true that statement will be .

For the first 30 minutes of Original Sin , though, Julia and Luis luxuriate in marital bliss. Per the terms of their arrangement, they’re married on the same day that Julia arrives, and Luis treats his new bride as the fragile flower she made herself out to be in her letters. “I’m shy of these things,” she tells him on their wedding night , but the way she says it sounds like a come-on rather than a demurral. They spend that first night in separate beds, but Julia brings Luis coffee in bed the next morning (she says her prudish sister calls it “a sinful pleasure”), and when he later gives her a tour of the coffee fields, it’s not long before they’re making out behind a tree.

Original Sin is an unabashedly horny movie, and Cristofer isn’t shy about showing off either of his gorgeous stars. He cross-cuts that outdoor make-out with an explicit and intensely erotic sex scene between Julia and Luis, and even though they both have ulterior motives, their primal passion is undeniable. The mournful tone of Julia’s narration in the framing story sets up tragedy to come, and it’s clear from the moment she arrives that Julia has devious plans for Luis. The scene in which Luis gives Julia full access to his bank accounts might as well have red lights and sirens flashing.

So, it’s no surprise when a private investigator named Walter Downs (Thomas Jane, in a gloriously ornate mustache) turns up looking for Julia Russell, or when the entire ruse comes crashing down, and Luis arrives home to find Julia — and all his money — gone without a trace. But what makes Original Sin such a delight is that Julia bilking him out of every penny he ever earned somehow only makes Luis more attracted to her, and she finds him just as irresistible. It’s a kinky relationship closer to the central dynamic of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread than to a typical noir storyline. “You’ll be the death of me,” Luis tells Julia when he finds her backstage at a playhouse, possibly conspiring with the actors. “I hope so,” she responds, and that exchange drives both of them into a sexual frenzy.

Cristofer captures the sweltering environment of 19th-century Cuba, and you can practically feel the sweat dripping off of the characters . The visual style recalls William Wyler’s 1940 Malaysia-set noir masterpiece The Letter , starring Bette Davis as a plantation manager’s wife accused of murder, who gradually reveals the truth behind her actions. Of course, Wyler couldn’t show the kind of steamy sex scenes that Cristofer relies on, and Original Sin just as strongly recalls a movie from just a few years earlier, John McNaughton’s Florida-set thriller Wild Things .

Like Wild Things , Original Sin keeps its plot twists coming throughout its entire running time, each one more overheated than the last . Both movies titillate with queer sexuality, and here Walter is clearly meant to be bisexual, telling Luis, “For real intercourse, I prefer the company of men.” Later, he taunts Luis by mimicking Julia’s seductive responses, even giving Luis an open-mouth kiss, a daring move for a mainstream movie in 2001, and one that Cristofer gets away with in part because it’s portrayed as an act of cruelty rather than sensuality. “If I kiss you now, will I taste her on you?” Walter asks, the men using each other as proxies for the absent Julia.

Original Sin was a commercial and critical failure on its initial release, grossing less than its reported $42 million budget at the box office , and holding a 12 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert, a noted connoisseur of horny cinema, was one of the only contemporary critics to give the movie a positive review . “Jolie continues to stalk through pictures entirely on her own terms,” Ebert said. “Her presence is like a dare-ya for a man . There’s dialogue in this movie so overwrought, it’s almost literally unspeakable, and she survives it by biting it off contemptuously and spitting it out.”

Ebert wouldn’t have known it at the time, but Jolie never again gave a performance so daring, never again delivered dialogue with that sneering sensuality. Cristofer didn’t direct another movie for nearly 20 years. Perhaps they were both chastened by the negative response to Original Sin , steering away from such blatantly erotic material (although Cristofer did get a chance to release an unrated cut of the movie, with two extra minutes added to the sex scenes). Twenty years on, some of Original Sin now feels quaint, while other moments (particularly the variety of positions in Julia and Luis’ initial sex scene) are still bracing. It sits ready for a reappraisal in the current discourse about sex onscreen, with Jolie’s lips poised to entice viewers into Julia’s story anew.

Josh Bell ( @signalbleed ) is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He’s the former film editor of Las Vegas Weekly and has written about movies and pop culture for Syfy Wire, Polygon, CBR, Film Racket, Observer and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.

Categories: 2000s , 2020s , 2021 Film Essays , Drama , Featured , Mystery , Romance

Tagged as: Drama , Josh Bell , Michael Cristofer , Mystery , Original Sin , Romance

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Original Sin
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Original sin
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