I'm in an apologetics group at my school and when I was there I had a friend who I would sometimes debate on original sin. These debates and my lack of proficiency in such debates was one of the big things pushed me to making the google docs I link to on my resources page, where I compile scriptural and some patristic arguments against certain issues I have with Protestants and Non-Protestants. With all that said, I recently learned something from reading St. John Chrysostom's commentary on Romans (ch. 5 specifically) and I thought it'd be nice to share my scriptural defenses for original sin.
To begin, I want to acknowledge why this is still important. Those who deny this historic doctrine (and yes, it is historic) come from many different perspectives. We see Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism on all sides, be it extreme free will Protestants, Romophobic Eastern Orthodox, or the theological liberal who thinks it just sounds mean. Even though it was pretty much settled 1600 years ago, the debate is still, for some reason, a live one.
I also would like to quickly define what I refer to when talking about the doctrine of Original Sin. I must admit, I have read very little of St. Augustine and only one of his anti-Pelagian treatises (the one on Predestination, I wasn't a fan to be honest). Instead I will follow the language of Chrysostom, who I have actually read. In summary, I believe that Original Sin is a kind of congenital disease of our nature which makes us unable to be holy and inherently unfit for the kingdom of God. This disease also shows itself in an inherent desire for sin, which is itself a sin against the 9th-10th Commandments.
Now that the exposition is out of the way, let's get into the scriptural arguments. The first and probably one of the clearest is Romans 5:12-19, often used as the sedes doctrinae. The passage clearly proclaims the fact that Adam's sin brought condemnation on all mankind, not just himself, simple as that. However, some will take verse 12, which in English says "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Many make a huge deal of the last three words of the verse because they think it to say that Adam's guilt isn't literally ours but that we share it because we commit the same kinds of sins. However, this idea isn't shared in the Greek. A literal translation of the phrase is rather "for that all sinned." There is a beautiful chiastic symmetry for the passage: Sin/World-Death/World-Death/Man-Sin/Man. In other words, it's a quick slogan about sin and death coming into the world in the first half and then the application from the world to mankind in the second half. If the last is a reference only to our "sins," not to Adam and Eve's disobedience, then the symmetry makes no sense. What's more, it makes no sense to say that Adam's sin leads to our death in any sense if this part is taken in an absolute sense that the ESV takes it. How could we die in Adam if it is only through our own sins that we die? I have heard some say that he makes us more predisposed to sin, sometimes with the language of a "sin nature." Besides the risk of the Flacian heresy in the language, it also is a distinction without a difference. This predisposition to sin is itself sinful. That is to say, the condition of sinfulness that we are born with is also an offense against God's holiness. In that way, we can understand the passage as a making of Adam's sin our own because we too carry the corruption that bears wicked fruit.
Another relevant place in St. Paul's epistles is 1 Corintians 15: 'For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive...The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.' (21-22, 47-49) This chapter is about the resurrection of the dead and makes an important point about what our bodies will be like. To do so, Paul compares the our origin from Christ to our origin from Adam. The argument he's making comes from Genesis 5:3, which talks about Adam's descendants: 'When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.' This is a blink-or-you'll-miss-it point, but if you notice, Seth is not said to be made in God's image but Adam's. In other words, the image of God in Adam was marred but not destroyed. Some theologians have made a distinction between the image and likeness of God and said that we retain the image in the fall but lose the likeness of God (or vice versa). While this is a completely arbitrary linguistic distinction, the point does stand that our nature is injured, and this is shown in both Genesis 6:5 and 8:21, where the Lord describes mankind as "the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth," both before and after the great flood. This Genesis-era corruption (or Original Sin, if I may be so bold) is what Paul is referring to in the passage. By virtue of our father Adam, we are dust, that is, dead, and this man is the one who brought death to all of us. In the same way, Christ as the new and greater Adam, the prophesied seed, is able to purified our bodies and make them Spiritual, that is, remake them by the Holy Ghost in water and the Spirit, just as He made the world, and uses His own flesh and blood as the archetype, just as Adam's body is our archetype. This is what St. Luke picks up on when he ends Christ's genealogy with "the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God" (3:38). He sees, in Christ, the restoration of the image of God bestowed to all humanity anew.
Another aspect of this corruption is in Ephesians 2:1-3: 'And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.' This is an analysis of the spiritual-political dimension to the fall. When we see the fall, after they ate the fruit and felt shame, they covered themselves in the fig leaf garments and were hiding with the serpent. The Lord, in His curse to the dragon, He tells the demon that He will "put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring" (3:15). This curse has numerous facets to it. First and most clearly, we see the fact that Christ and the serpent are enemies, obviously. Also included in the woman is the Church, who is also the body of Christ, so we see that we, as the church, are also enemies of this serpent, but this is only in the Light of Christ. Before we were "children of wrath," with citizenship in the "domain of darkness," but in our new birth, we are born from heaven with a new claim, having been "transferred...to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Col 1:13-14)
The first Old Testament prooftext is one of the most popular in all of holy writ regarding Original Sin, is Psalm 51:5, in which David says, "'Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.' This passage sounds pretty straight forward but is, with Romans 5, one of the more hotly contested passages. This is because of the context for the Psalm, which is that David wrote it as a penitential psalm after his sin with Bathsheba. From this, some argue that the passage is really in reference to the child who died because of David's sin, since he would have been conceived in the sin of adultery (2 Sam 12:14). While I don't think this point is incorrect, it gathers a very small picture, which is revealed by the context of the book itself. Psalms is not simply a book of poems, but it's a hymnal. That is to say, this was not just a private poem but was used in the worship of Israel as a whole. What use could there possibly be for talking about his sin and his child's death for a people centuries later? Rather, in this passage we see David poetically connecting himself with his son, comparing the sin of his father Adam with his guilt passing onto his son in the judgement from God.
The one passage that I have seen many use against the doctrine is Ezekiel 18. Admittedly, this is a somewhat strong passage, but in context, it means nothing of what they say to mean. This passage is the Lord's defense of His own justice in the face of men. The main criticism comes in form of a kind of anti-proverb which is "The father has eaten sour grapes, and and the children's teeth are set on edge." What it means is that a father does wrong and often the children end up suffering for it. However, if you notice what the proverb is referring to, it is used "concerning the land of Israel" (v. 2). In other words, this is not about the soul, original sin, our birth from Adam, or anything like that, even when the prophets clearly addressed it. Rather, this is addressed to the young Jews in Babylon who were complaining to God that they were stuck in bondage because of the sins of their fathers when they didn't do those things. God's response is, put simply, "You wanna talk about justice? I punish the the apostate and reward the repentant, while you see things that are evil and call them good, so don't you talk to me about justice!" This has nothing to do with the people souls or their standing before God, except for the fact that He forgives the repentant and punishes the hardened. In other words, the text is completely unrelated to the topic at hand.
With that said, I think it is safe to say that the doctrine of original sin is a basic doctrine that the apostles clearly taught. I almost made a second post on the doctrine in the fathers before Augustine, since it is often claimed that he invented the doctrine out of whole cloth and because he had an overly scrupulous conscience, but this is simply not held up by the witness of the fathers. If you look up "Original Sin in the Church Fathers," you'll be able to find a plethora of quotations on the subject. Personally, I would commend Irenaeus as the strongest early witness to it, but some have brought up quotations even from texts as early as the Shepherd of Hermas, so I think it is safe to say that the argument is rather flimsy to say the least.
Comments