Word(s) for the day – Original sin (myth)

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Original sin, also called ancestral sin,^[1] is the Christian doctrine of humanity’s state of sin resulting from the fall of man,^[2] stemming from Adam’s rebellion inEden. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a “sin nature”, to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective guilt.^[3]

The concept of original sin was first alluded to in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in his controversy with certain dualist Gnostics. Other church fathers such as Augustine also developed the doctrine,^[2] seeing it as based on the New Testament teaching of Paul the Apostle (Romans 5:12–21 and1 Corinthians 15:22) and the Old Testament verse of Psalm 51:5.^{[4][5][6][7][8]} Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose and Ambrosiaster considered that humanity shares in Adam’s sin, transmitted by human generation. Augustine’s formulation of original sin was popular among Protestant reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, who equated original sin with concupiscence, affirming that it persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom.^[2] Within Roman Catholicism, the Jansenist movement, which the Church then declared heretical, also maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will.^[9]

Jewish theologians are divided in regard to the cause of what is called “original sin”. Some teach that it was due to Adam’s yielding to temptation in eating of theforbidden fruit and has been inherited by his descendants; the majority, however, do not hold Adam responsible for the sins of humanity,^[10] teaching that, in Genesis 8:21 and 6:5-8, God recognized that Adam’s sins are his alone. However, Adam is recognized by some as having brought death into the world by his disobedience. Because of his sin, his descendants will live a mortal life, which will end in death of their bodies.^[11] The doctrine of “inherited sin” is not found in most of mainstream Judaism. Although some in Orthodox Judaismplace blame on Adam for overall corruption of the world, and though there were some Jewish teachers in Talmudic times who believed that death was a punishment brought upon humanity on account of Adam’s sin, that is not the dominant view in most of Judaism today. Modern Judaism generally teaches that humans are born sin-free and untainted, and choose to sin later and bring suffering to themselves.^[12][13] The concept of inherited sin is also not found in any real form in Islam.^[14][15] Some interpretations of original sin are rejected by other Christian theologies.

Augustine

 

Augustine of Hippowrote that original sin is transmitted by concupiscence and enfeebles freedom of the will without destroying it.^[2]

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) taught that Adam’s sin^[24] is transmitted by concupiscence, or “hurtful desire”,^[25][26] resulting in humanity becoming a massa damnata (mass of perdition, condemned crowd), with much enfeebled, though not destroyed, freedom of will.^[2] When Adam sinned, human nature was thenceforth transformed. Adam and Eve, via sexual reproduction, recreated human nature. Their descendants now live in sin, in the form of concupiscence, a term Augustine used in a metaphysical, not a psychological sense.^[27] Augustine insisted that concupiscence was not a beingbut a bad quality, the privation of good or a wound.^[28] He admitted that sexual concupiscence (libido) might have been present in the perfect human nature in paradise, and that only later it became disobedient to human will as a result of the first couple’s disobedience to God’s will in the original sin.^[29] In Augustine’s view (termed “Realism”), all of humanity was really present in Adam when he sinned, and therefore all have sinned. Original sin, according to Augustine, consists of the guilt of Adam which all humans inherit. As sinners, humans are utterly depraved in nature, lack the freedom to do good, and cannot respond to the will of God without divine grace. Grace is irresistible, results in conversion, and leads to perseverance.^[30]

Augustine articulated his explanation in reaction to Pelagianism, which insisted that humans have of themselves, without the necessary help of God’s grace, the ability to lead a morally good life, and thus denied both the importance of baptism and the teaching that God is the giver of all that is good. Pelagius claimed that the influence of Adam on other humans was merely that of bad example. Augustine held that the effects of Adam’s sin are transmitted to his descendants not by example but by the very fact of generation from that ancestor. A wounded nature comes to the soul and body of the new person from his/her parents, who experience libido (or concupiscence). Augustine’s view was that human procreation was the way the transmission was being effected. He did not blame, however, the sexual passion itself, but the spiritual concupiscence present in human nature, soul and body, even after baptismal regeneration.^[31] Christian parents transmit their wounded nature to children, because they give them birth, not the “re-birth”.^[32] Augustine used Ciceronian Stoic concept of passions, to interpret St. Paul’s doctrine of universal sin and redemption. In that view, also sexual desire itself as well as other bodily passions were consequence of the original sin, in which pure affections were wounded by vice and became disobedient to human reason and will. As long as they carry a threat to the dominion of reason over the soul they constitute moral evil, but since they do not presuppose consent, one cannot call them sins. Humanity will be liberated from passions, and pure affections will be restored only when all sin has been washed away and ended, that is in the resurrection of the dead.^[33][34]

Augustine believed that the only definitive destinations of souls are heaven and hell. He concluded that unbaptized infants go to hell as a consequence of original sin.^[35][36] The Latin Church Fatherswho followed Augustine adopted his position, which became a point of reference for Latin theologians in the Middle Ages.^[37] In the later medieval period, some theologians continued to hold Augustine’s view, others held that unbaptized infants suffered no pain at all: unaware of being deprived of the beatific vision, they enjoyed a state of natural, not supernatural happiness. Starting around 1300, unbaptized infants were often said to inhabit the “limbo of infants“.^[38] The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1261 declares: “As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,’^[39] allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.” But the theory of Limbo, while it “never entered into the dogmatic definitions of the Magisterium … remains … a possible theological hypothesis”.^[40]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin

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