Hot answers tagged original-sin
23
Sexual intercourse was not a sin at all (for Adam and Eve in the context of their marriage). In fact, God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply:
"And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing ...
14
The Bible is very clear that Jesus did not begin to exist in the womb of Mary. As the Second Person of the Trinity, He exists outside of the physical universe of time, space, and matter and with the Father and Spirit created the physical world.
He is holy, was holy, and will always be holy... and sinless and righteous and pure and blameless.
When Mary ...
13
The sin wasn't in eating the fruit, but in what it represented. It's interesting to examine the exact text of the commandment:
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou ...
13
Most traditions agree that the original sin was disobedience to God. God specifically told them not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, and they did it anyway.
Sin is described in the Bible as transgression of the law of God (1 John 3:4) and rebellion against God (Deuteronomy 9:7; Joshua 1:18).
Eating of the fruit, in direct contradiction ...
13
I would say that baptism is still highly "necessary", since Jesus Himself, in his final directions to His disciples, told them to:
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
(emphasis added).
If Jesus told His disciples, and by extension us, to "baptize", I think it's ...
12
Per the Nicene Creed, He was begotten not made. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, but born of the Virgin Mary.
The idea is that since he was born of woman but not man, as God's son, he did not inherit sin. Catholic doctrine goes further, adding the idea of an immaculate conception - for Mary - that Jesus might be born sinless. ( I know, I always thought that ...
12
The idea that "Jesus was plan B" doesn't make sense from a theological or a logical standpoint. If God is Omnisicient, then He knew what would happen before He created everything. He knew Adam and Eve would choose to disobey when tempted.
To claim that Jesus was "Plan B" would indicate that God is not Omniscient, or that God failed. Both go against ...
10
I didn't get to vote or have any say in my forebears leaving their homelands and emigrating to the United States (or, The New World, as it was then known in Europe); nor did I have any say in whether or not to participate in their bloodline. Yet they represented me when they did it.
If we take the Bible to be God's word, and we believe that God cannot lie, ...
10
Since I had to find relevant Bible verses for another purpose, I'll answer my own question with them. I still expect someone to write a more full answer. This interpretation/selection of passages is close to the Lutheran view.
David does seem to state that we're born sinners:
Psalm 51:5 (ESV)
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did ...
9
There is an assumption in this question that is actually the very problem that the question addresses.
This question assumes that in the exact same situation you would act differently than Adam and Eve would. However, why would you? Would a loving God not have placed the people in the garden that gave humanity the best chance at continuing at sinless ...
9
I took away from reading Theology of the Body for Beginners, which is a entry-level explanation of Pope John Paul's Theology of the Body talks aimed primarily at married couples or those interested in Catholic teaching on sexuality, that Adam and Eve could have had some great sex in the garden of Eden. I may have been misreading it or reading between the ...
9
All of Humanity is (Individually) Made in God's Image
Genesis does not seem to leave the matter open to much interpretation.
Genesis 1:26-27 NASB Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every ...
8
Martin Luther and John Calvin followed the tradition of St. Augustine in abhorring any theoretical belief in a state of sinlessness, whether for a moment, day, year, or whatever.
They seem to have regarded sinless perfection as the vain imagination of human pride and a result of our sinfulness. For example, commenting on Psalms 106:6, Calvin said:
How ...
8
Paul does say that "the whole creation" (including animals, presumably) suffers because of the fall:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to ...
7
Adam was charged with a responsibility1 and he had an obligation to fulfill (which included protecting his wife). Yet he did nothing. The account of the fall in the garden includes the detail that he was at Eve's side2 the whole time and failed to fulfill that responsibility. He broke a covenant3.
Did Eve sin? Sure. Was Adam ultimately responsible? Yes.
...
7
Genesis 3:6 (NIV) reveals that Adam was with Eve when she took the fruit.
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and
pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took
some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her,
and he ate it.
Adam had the opportunity and authority to stop ...
7
Q. Biblical Basis for Biblical literalists:
A. None.
Catholics believe that Mary is a type prefigured in the Old Testament of the Ark of the Covenant. The basis for this belief is rooted in scripture as firmly as Mary is rooted in scripture. God created His mother, and in so doing He created His mother as a fit dwelling place, like the Holy of Holies. ...
7
Paul outlines this a bit in Romans 5 in constrasting the role of Adam as representative vs. Christ as representative (emphasis mine).
Romans 5:12-21
12Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and
death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
13for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, ...
7
I think that the best answer here is that the Scriptures are not entirely clear on how original sin is transmitted. One thing that we do know (or believe the scriptures to teach) is:
The sin nature is passed on to us from our fathers and not our mothers
Sin entered the world through Adam - Romans 5:12 - not Eve who sinned first.
More directly taught in ...
7
There's certainly no doctrine that says it's possible. The very idea would be in direct opposition to the concept of Original Sin, which states that we're all born sinners because we inherited our sinful nature.
If the doctrine of original sin is true (and since it's the starting point of your question, let's assume, for the sake of this answer, that it ...
7
The Catholic answer, as best I can.
Firstly, if your question means to ask, can the current lineage of humanity transition into a state of complete grace, free from the burden of original sin or the fallen nature of the world, the answer is a simple no. The doctrine of original sin precludes it: it's a fallen world. And God has already revealed a different ...
6
Genesis 1 never calls humans or human bodies "perfect", it does near the end of the chapter call all of creation "very good." We also have no indication from scripture about increasing amounts of genetic imperfections as humanity survived though the ages, so that might infer that we are trying to read into the scripture something it never set out for or was ...
6
I hope this is a useful refinement. There is a non trivial distinction between being "born sinners" and "born into sin". "Born sinners" appears to condemn the innocent. I think the biblical principle that we are "born into sin" is subtly but profoundly different. Being born into sin is a bit like being born into a family, a sex, a country or a race. There's ...
6
There's not much consensus on this. As with all answers on this site dealing with the subject of Creationism, there's a wide array of opinion on the subject.
Reading the text, in and of itself, without any external verses, interpretation, or debate over scientific validity of the claim certainly makes it appear as if Adam and Eve weren't created to be ...
6
One can hold that there is indeed Original Sin without assuming the nature of man changed. One might say instead, that the image of God was marred in man, like a coin covered in dross and scored with cuts. But the image remained. The nature - how man was made - did not differ, but his mode - as the Fathers say (I'm leaning heavily on Maximus the Confessor ...
6
The basis is that we were in a perpetual state of grace and "did something" that opposed God's commands, which took us out of that state of grace.
The rest is just footnotes.
Edit: In response to David's question in comments, I'm going to flesh this out a bit.
For Catholics, we subscribe to the notion that much of the early Old Testament is not a literal ...
5
The story of Adam and Eve is not about God punishing us for the sin of one man. God punishes us for our own sins, which we have all committed:
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23 NIV)
If anything, the story of Adam and Eve is there not to explain why are punished, but to explain why each person individually chooses to ...
5
Basically anyone that is born, is born of the world, so the act of being conceived brings brings the stain of original sin upon each and every person.
There is an interesting article (pdf) that goes through some of the thoughts of the early church fathers that relate to this subject. This is one of the more relevant portions of the article:
What had ...
5
I Timothy 2:13-15 clarifies that Eve was deceived (the serpent deceived her into thinking she could draw closer to God by gaining knowledge, etc), but Adam knew full well what he was doing was wrong.
I Timothy 2:13-15 For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was
not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
See also II ...
5
Catholics (i.e., Western or Latin -- I belong to this group) believe that original sin entails actually inheriting the burden of Adam's Sin, which is mortal sin keeping us from entering heaven without a method of acquiring sanctifying grace, such as baptism. Original sin also threw all of nature into discord, and is the source of man's concupiscence. The ...
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