Original Sin

What is Original Sin?

The doctrine of Original Sin was developed quite early on in church history. Irenaeus of Lyons wrote about it in the second century, but it was Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 A.D.) who coined the Latin term ‘peccatum originale’, which subsequently found its way into official Catholic doctrine through the councils of Carthage and Orange (in A.D. 411-418 and 529 respectively).

The basic concept of Original Sin is that whereas Adam and Eve were entirely innocent when they were created by God, when they disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they became sinners in the sense that their very nature was transformed from being innocent to being sinful, and as a result of this, all of their offspring since that time have been born in a state of sinfulness, with the inclination to sin being built into them by default.

Here are a few web pages which explain this more fully, which you may find helpful:

• Bible Hub - What is the concept of Original Sin?

• Encyclopaedia Britannica - Original Sin: Definition, Consequences, & Facts

• The B.B.C. - Christianity: Original Sin

• Wikipedia - Original Sin

Why Is Original Sin Controversial?

Although Original Sin is widely held to be sound Biblical doctrine, and is the official position of many Christian denominations, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike, it is not universally acknowledged to be the truth

There are a number of objections to it. For instance:

The nature of sin

If sinfulness is to be passed from generation to generation, then it must be something which is capable of either genetic inheritance or transmission, like an infection. In other words, it must be either something which alters the human genome, or, like a virus, be something alien to human nature but dwelling within it, whether physically or spiritually. Does the Bible offer any evidence to suggest that either of these is true?

Guilt and Culpability

Does God hold anyone to be guilty on account of the sins of their forebears, and does God punish anyone for the misdeeds of their parents? Is there any Biblical evidence to suggest that either of these is true?

Eternal Judgement

We will all be judged by God at the end of time, and our eternal condition will be determined by that final judgement. Are God’s criteria for the sentencing of an individual to be based solely on what that individual has done voluntarily, or will He take into account thoughts, words, and deeds which the individual has thought, spoken, or done involuntarily as the result of the inborn sinfulness over which they have no control?

What Does the Bible Say about Original Sin?

Unfortunately, the term ‘original sin’ is not found anywhere in the Bible, so we must face the fact that the Bible says nothing whatsoever on the subject.

However, the Bible does have a great deal to say about sin, so if we look at that first, in order to get a clear sense of what sin is, and then look at some of, what we might call, the proof texts for Original Sin, we should be in a good position to decide whether or not Original Sin is, indeed, a Biblical doctrine.

So, let’s begin by going back to the beginning and examining (a) what actually happened in the Garden of Eden, and (b) what took place in the aftermath of ‘the fall’.

The Fall of Man

The account of The Fall is narrated in Genesis chapter 3. Before continuing, you might find it useful to read the chapter in full.

Verses 1 to 5 describe the serpent’s seduction of Eve. By questioning God’s instructions, he seeks to undermine Eve’s confidence in God’s trustworthiness. He also appeals to Eve’s God-given desire for knowledge, as well as sowing a seed of pride within her heart by telling her, “you will be like God”.

Verse 6 firstly describes what arose within Eve’s soul, how her perception of the forbidden fruit was transformed so that, all of a sudden, it became desirable for the mouth, for the eye, and for the soul.

Notable in this is that there was nothing whatsoever about this fruit that appealed to her spirit. She had lowered her gaze from the heavens and rested it squarely upon her own body and her own self. She had given way, in the apostle John’s words, to ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’ (1 John 2:16 KJV).

Then verse 6 very briefly relates the commission of the ‘original sin’ – the eating of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, firstly by Eve herself, and secondly by Adam, ‘her husband, who was with her’.

But was the eating of the forbidden fruit the original sin? Surely there were two sins that were committed immediately prior to this:

1. Eve, instead of maintaining her trust in God and refusing to listen to the serpent’s lies, allowed herself to be duped into disregarding God’s prohibition and deciding to eat the forbidden fruit.

2. Adam, who was standing by, watching and listening to the exchange between Eve and the serpent, did nothing. He passively assented to the serpent’s seduction and to Eve’s capitulation, before actively capitulating himself by eating the fruit given to him by his errant wife.

   What he should have done was step in at the very onset, rebuke the serpent with the full authority that he had in God, and banish it from the Garden for all time, then admonish his wife sternly so that she would never again pay attention to any seductive voice, no matter who it came from.

This set of events begs two extremely important questions, both of which demand a reasoned and comprehensive answer:

• FIRSTLY: Why did Eve and Adam sin against God at all?
• SECONDLY: Why did God allow them to be exposed to the circumstances that brought about the risk that they might sin?

Why did Adam and Eve sin?

Clearly the answer to this question has nothing to do with Original Sin, since Original Sin only became a reality as a result of their initial sinful actions – or, in Adam’s case, inactions.

If we cannot blame Original Sin, then where are we to find the answer? After all, everything that God had made was, by His own admission, good. In fact, when He had finished creating, He pronounced that it was all ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31), and this must have included Adam and Eve, who were created in His own image.

So, they were good when created, Original Sin did not exist, and yet they sinned. Why?

In order to understand this we need to take a step back and ask a more basic question, which is, what do we mean by ‘sin’?

In broad terms, we could say that sin is any activity, or inactivity, which lies outside the boundaries of God’s righteousness. To put it more simply, anything that God would NOT be pleased with is sinful.

The apostle John gives us two definitions of sin:

• 1 John 3:4b (ESVuk) Sin is lawlessness
• 1 John 5:17a (ESVuk) All wrongdoing is sin

By lawlessness, John does not mean that there is no law, and so one is unaware of what is right and what is wrong. We can be sure of this, because the apostle Paul tells us:

This means that if the one in authority has not stipulated a prohibition, no-one can be faulted for committing the act that was not prohibited.

However, when the prohibition has been established and someone ignores it or defiantly violates it, the one in authority is justified in meting out an appropriate punishment.

After God had created Adam, but before He created Eve, God gave Adam a law – a very simple law:

There are two parts to this law:

1. Freedom to eat of any tree in the Garden (including the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil);
2. A prohibition with an associated warning: Don’t eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, because it will kill you if you do.

If God had not issued that prohibition, Adam and Eve would never have sinned, because they could not have transgressed a non-existent law.

By wrongdoing I understand John to mean any activity which is not pleasing to God, even though there may be no legal prohibition concerning it.

A good example of this would be gambling. There is nowhere in the Bible, as far as I am aware, where it says, ‘thou shalt not gamble’, or anything of the kind. However, every God-fearing Jew and Christian knows that gambling is wrong.

How do we know that? Simply because we know God, we know how He thinks, and we know what pleases Him. Again, John tells us that:

There are specific laws which God has given us, which are recorded in the scriptures, and there are spiritual principles which are also found in the scriptures, but which require us to read, study, meditate, and pray in order to assimilate them into our hearts. This is a process that takes time, and is an essential element of our relationship with God, as we get to know Him personally over a lifetime of intimacy.

Knowing what He commands and knowing what pleases Him results in two separate but related outcomes:

• We cease from habitual sin (1 John 3:6-9), and
• We receive the answers to our prayers (1 John 3:22).

When Adam and Eve were created, what was their moral state? As regards their condition as created beings, we know that they were ‘very good’ (that is to say, very well made, as David said of himself in Psalm 139:14), but were they ‘very good’ morally?

We can certainly say that they were NOT SINFUL, but are we able to say that they were RIGHTEOUS when they were created?

I would suggest that the most appropriate word that we could use to describe their moral state at their creation is INNOCENCE. Why so?

The tree whose fruit was forbidden was what? It was the Tree of the Knowledge of GOOD and EVIL.

We know that before they had eaten of this tree, they had no awareness of good and evil; not because the serpent said so (Genesis 3:5), but because God Himself said so (Genesis 3:22). So, if they had no awareness of good or evil, they were in a state of innocence, as any new-born babe today would be.

It was only through eating the fruit of this tree, forbidden by the commandment of God, that their innocence would be lost and they would become capable of becoming either SINFUL or RIGHTEOUS.

An important point to note here is this: it is possible to sin my mistake, but it is not possible to be righteous by mistake. Sin is not always deliberate or intentional (Leviticus 4:2,13,22,27), although it often is, but righteousness is always on purpose.

Derek Prince observed that he had never known a mother who had to teach her children how to be naughty. They are naughty by default. But every parent knows that children have to be taught the difference between right and wrong and trained up in the way that they should go (Proverbs 22:6). No child will ever be well-behaved by default.

The reason for this is clearly stated by Paul:

We could say that the primary motivation of every human being is INSTINCT – i.e. that which originates in our bodies in order firstly to keep us alive and secondly to enable us to enjoy life to the full. Anyone who has ever attempted to go against the instincts of their flesh ‘to eat drink and be merry’ will have discovered that it requires a degree of self-discipline and self-denial which does not come easily!

The flesh and the mind, left to their own devices, will always err on the side of selfishness. When hungry, they will go for food; when tired, they will go for rest; when excited, they will go for action; when threatened, they will go for fight or flight, depending on individual temperament.

Righteousness does not rely on instinct. On the contrary, it always asks two simple questions:

• How can I express love for God in this situation? and
• How can I express love for my neighbour in this situation?

By nature, we do not ask these questions. It is only when we have been trained in righteousness that we do so.

Neither Adam nor Eve had been trained in righteousness. They were creatures of the dust (Genesis 3:19), motivated primarily by natural instinct. They followed the desire of flesh and mind, as Paul explained in Ephesians chapter 2. They neither paid attention to the commandment of God nor sought to understand what was pleasing to Him.

That is why they sinned.

Why did God not prevent them from sinning?

To answer this question requires a little more thought than the previous one does, since it would seem that God did little or nothing to protect Adam and Eve from this danger.

Had God wanted to keep the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from them, then why did He plant it slap-bang in the middle of the Garden, right beside the Tree of Life? Surely He could have planted it somewhere out of the way where they would never be able to find it. In fact, why did He even plant it at all?

But, assuming that for some reason He had to plant it where He did, could He not have set some sort of boundary in place to prevent them getting access to it, like a ten foot high hedge of thorns?

And, why did He not ensure that the serpent could never gain access to the Garden?

At the very least, could He not have warned Adam and Eve that the serpent was coming, that he would attempt to deceive them, and that they should rebuke him sharply and not listen to a word that he said?

God did none of these things. All that He did was tell Adam not to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, with the warning that he would die if he did eat of it, knowing full well that Adam probably had not the faintest idea what ‘to die’ meant, given that he had only ever experienced life.

It is interesting to note that God did not give the warning to Eve. He spoke to Adam about this before Eve was created (Genesis 2:16-18), and left it up to Adam to pass on the message, which he obviously did (Genesis 3:2-3), but one wonders how seriously either of them took the warning, since it would seem to have meant nothing to them.

So, what was going on in the mind of God?

We’ve already seen that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good or evil, since they had not yet eaten the forbidden fruit, and therefore had no sense whatsoever of either righteousness or sin. In their state of innocence, these were concepts that were totally alien to them.

Now, let’s skip forward a few thousand years to the time of the apostle Paul and consider a statement that he made to his protégé Titus:

I believe that this statement is key to our understanding of the purposes of God in human lives. God is looking for a people who are, in the words of this translation, EAGER TO DO WHAT IS GOOD, eager to be righteous, ‘zealous of good works’ in the King James Version, not satisfied with anything less than the best, and determined to please God in everything that they do.

This was NOT the state that Adam and Eve were in when they were created. They could have said along with king David that they were ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14 - KJV), but they were not perfect. We know that God was not satisfied with Adam when he was created, because He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Something was missing. Something more needed to be done.

Similarly, for both Adam and Eve there was something still missing, something that still needed to be done. Physically, they were perfect, but spiritually there was a deficiency.

They were innocent. They had never sinned. But they were still NOT RIGHTEOUS.

I have already observed that no-one is righteous by default; you cannot be righteous by mistake; a moral being can only be righteous ON PURPOSE.

Righteousness is always deliberate and intentional, the result of a choice of CONSCIENCE.

Although everyone, including Adam and Eve, is born with a conscience, that conscience must be INFORMED. We have the innate capacity to distinguish between good and evil, but our conscience must be trained to recognise what is good and what is evil (Hebrews 5:14).

Adam and Eve each had a conscience; each had the capacity to tell good from evil; but their consciences were blank, like a white-board with nothing written on it. They did not yet know what was good and what was evil, since they had only ever experienced good.

Only by eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would they begin to develop that knowledge, that understanding, that wisdom.

That is why God exposed them to the forbidden tree and to the conniving, wicked serpent, who is identified to us by the apostle John as being the devil in disguise (Revelation 12:9).

He did this not because He wanted them to fall, or because He wanted them to sin, or because He wanted them to die, but because He wanted them to know what was good and what was evil and, in the end, to become the forebears of a people that are His very own, who are eager to do what is good.

Is there Evidence of Original Sin in Genesis?

If Original Sin came onto the scene whenever Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, we would expect to see evidence of it in their children. The two children about whom we have some details are the first two sons, namely Cain and Abel, whom we meet in Genesis chapter 4. Here are the first few verses:

The first point to note about Cain and Abel is their different attitudes towards the Lord’s offering. Cain brought ‘an offering of the fruit of the ground’. The NIV translates this as ‘some of the fruits of the soil as an offering’, giving the sense that he was not too particular about what he brought, so long as it was something.

Abel, however, brought ‘of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions’, giving the sense that he wanted the best for God.

God was not well pleased with Cain’s offering, but He was pleased with Abel’s. Why so?

I think there were two reasons for this. One was the attitude of the two men. Abel clearly was concerned to offer God the best that he had, whereas Cain appears to have adopted a rather perfunctory attitude towards his offering.

The second reason concerns the content of the offering. While God is happy to receive offerings of fruit, vegetables, or cereals, the offering that pleases Him most is the sweet aroma of burning flesh (e.g. Genesis 8:20-21).

So, God accepted Abel and his offering, but was not pleased with Cain and his offering.

Now, let’s consider what God said to Cain in verse 7, where there are three points that we need to pay attention to:

1. “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” Quite clearly, God is of the view that Cain has a choice – he has the capacity either to do well or not to do well. If he were ‘born in sin’ and a sinner by nature, he would have no such capacity and could make no such choice.

2. “If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.” Where is sin in Cain’s life? Is it within him or outside of him? The picture that is presented to us here is of sin as a beast of prey, perhaps a wild cat, crouching at the doorway awaiting an opportunity to pounce. Cain is not yet a victim of sin, so it seems unlikely that Original Sin is an issue for him.

3. “Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Not only has sin not yet gained the rule over Cain, but God is instructing him that he has the responsibility and, of necessity thereby, the power to gain the victory over sin. This would not be the case if Original Sin were at work within Cain’s soul.

It seems, therefore, to be unlikely in the extreme that Original Sin was a factor in Cain’s life.

What about Abel? What does the Bible say about him?

There are three New Testament passages which testify that Abel was a righteous man:

Now, we can be absolutely certain that Abel was not sinless because (a) he offered to God the sacrificial lambs from his flock as a sin offering, and (b) Paul assures that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), but there is no indication anywhere in the scriptures that Original Sin was an issue in his life, and the consensus of the testimony to him by the Lord Jesus, the apostle John, and the writer to the Hebrews is that he was righteous.

Can Sin or Guilt be Transferred?

For Original Sin to be a reality, it is necessary for one person’s sin to be transferable to another person, since the doctrine states that all of Adam and Eve’s descendants have been born with Adam’s sin in their lives. Is there any Biblical evidence that this can, and does, happen?

Let’s have a look at a few scriptures that deal with this very topic.

First up is the second of the Ten Commandments:

(This is repeated, essentially word for word, in Deuteronomy 5:8-10.)

God is saying that the iniquities of the fathers will be visited on to the children, down to the third and the fourth generations. Does this correspond to the underlying principle of Original Sin?

To some degree it probably does, but there are a couple of very specific boundaries that apply in this case:

• It is time-limited. God specifies that the third or even the fourth generations may be affected, but He says nothing about the subsequent generations, so there is no sense that this will be perpetuated throughout all generations to come.

• It is limited to a specified group of people, namely “those who hate me”. He promises to show steadfast love to those who love Him and keep His commandments. If Original Sin were at work in all people, there would be very few, if any, who could be said to love God and keep His commandments, but God clearly anticipates that there will be, in His own words, THOUSANDS who do.

• What is not specifically stated here but is implied (as we shall see later when we consider what God said to Ezekiel), the second, third, and fourth generations of “those who hate Me” have the iniquity of the fathers visited upon them because they themselves are perpetuating those iniquities. Jesus Himself applies this principle to the ungodly religious leaders of His day in the following passage:

Secondly, there is the case of the High Priest bringing guilt upon the whole community of Israel:

At first sight this would seem to point in the direction of Original Sin, with the one who has overall spiritual authority committing a sin and the entire people-group being held guilty before God.

But when we look at it more closely we can see that this is not quite the same.

• The entire community is, indeed, found to be, as we might say today, guilty by association, but the individual members of the community are not being held personally accountable for the sin.

• A similar situation arose in the days of Joshua’s leadership, when: ‘the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. And the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.’ (Joshua 7:1 ESVuk). One man sinned, but the entire company was held guilty before God, even though the vast majority of them knew nothing about it, and in all probability most of them did not even know who Achan was!

• Unlike Original Sin, where each one of us must individually confess and repent in order to be forgiven and cleansed, in both of the instances cited here, the sin is atoned for by the confession and repentance of the one person who actually committed the sin – the High Priest in Leviticus and Achan in Joshua. Once this has been done, the matter is dealt with, and no-one else even needed to know that it had happened.

If Original Sin was similar to this, and Adam himself had not repented, then once Jesus had been crucified and His blood shed for Adam’s sin, then Original Sin would have been done away with for all time, and Augustine would have had nothing to say about it.

Thirdly, in what God said to Moses in Deuteronomy 24:16 and expanded upon to the prophet Ezekiel, we find that the principle underlying the doctrine of Original Sin runs contrary to the principle of justice that is upheld by God Himself:

In the next few verses we are presented with the stories of three men, a grandfather, a father, and a son.

The grandfather is righteous in the sight of God (verses 5-9: ‘he is righteous; he shall surely live, declares the Lord God’); the father, however, is wicked (verses 10-13: ‘He shall not live. He has done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon himself’); but the son, seeing the evil of his father’s ways, follows the example of his grandfather by walking in righteousness (verses 14-17: ‘[he] obeys my rules, and walks in my statutes; he shall not die for his father's iniquity; he shall surely live’).

The principle is spelled out in detail in the following verses. Here it is in full:

It seems to me that this could not be expressed more clearly than it is in this passage – and we are told that this is the very word of God Himself.

In the justice of God, the person who commits the sin is the person who is held to account, not his children and not his parents; and, likewise, the person who lives righteously is commended for his righteousness, not his children and not his parents. The soul who sins shall die, and the soul who follows righteousness shall live.

Does this same principle apply in the cases of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel?

In the account of Cain and Abel in Genesis chapter 4, is there any indication that God held Adam or Eve responsible for the wickedness of Cain? Is there any suggestion that Cain was evil because of what his parents had done? Similarly, where did Abel’s righteousness arise from? And was his righteousness lessened or overridden in any way by the sin of his parents?

Now, it is certainly true that the world into which Cain and Abel were born was adversely affected by Adam’s sin (Genesis 3:14-22), so in that respect his sin had a bearing upon the lives of his children, and all of his descendants down to the present day. But it is nowhere stated that the actual sin of Adam was passed on to his offspring or that any of them were considered to be culpable because of what their forefather did or did not do.

So, are there any passages of scripture which actually do confirm that Original Sin is a genuine issue?

Proof Texts for Original Sin

There is a Biblical principle which was established by Moses and referenced in the New Testament by both Jesus and Paul. The principle is that a matter may be established only on the evidence of two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 17:6; 19:15; Matthew 18:16; 2 Corinthians 13:1; 1 Timothy 5:19; Hebrews 10:28).

This principle is often applied to Biblical doctrine – that is to say, if there are two or three references to any particular subject, then the matter can be understood as being an established doctrine. Conversely, if two or three scriptural witnesses cannot be found, the doctrine should be considered dubious.

As we have already seen, the term ‘original sin’ does not occur anywhere in the Bible, and so we cannot look up a concordance or do a search on a Bible app to find the references to it.

However, there are certain passages of scripture which are generally accepted as being proof texts for Original Sin, and we will consider the most well-known of these now.

Perhaps the best-known one of all is found in Psalm 51, wherein king David pours out before God his contrition for the set of grave sins that he had committed, as recorded in 2 Samuel chapter 11. In fact, he broke four of the Ten Commandments:

• He coveted his neighbour’s wife (Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his Thirty Mighty Men);
• He committed adultery with her;
• He attempted to bear false witness against his neighbour by making out that the child that had been conceived was really fathered by Uriah;
• When this failed, he had Uriah set up to be killed by the Ammonites in the battle for Rabbah.

The key portion of Psalm 51 is in verses 5 and 6. Here it is in the New International Version:

Well, that seems to be fairly clear. Original Sin, cut and dried!

Or is it?

Let’s look at it in the good old King James Version:

Not quite the same. Whereas the NIV says that David was sinful from the time of his conception, and sinful at the time of his birth, the KJV says that although he was ‘shapen in iniquity’, it was his mother who was in sin when he was being conceived.

The ESV updates the language of the KJV as follows:

What is ‘shapen in iniquity’ in the King James is here rendered ‘brought forth in iniquity’ – that is to say, ‘born’. The Hebrew word literally means ‘to twist or twirl’, and can be used, among many other things, meaning to dance or to be in labour and giving birth. In the context, the latter would apply!

Why is there such a difference between the King James and the New International translations?

The reason lies in the policy that the translators adopt as their guiding principle.

The King James translators, following the policy of William Tyndale, attempted, as far as possible, to produce a word-for-word translation. The weakness of this policy is that from time to time it can produce English that is awkward or difficult to understand.

The New International translators, on the other hand, attempt to produce a translation which not only reads well in English but also conveys the underlying message of the passage rather than a strict translation of the individual words. The weakness of this policy is that the scripture becomes vulnerable to the doctrinal biases of the translators, and we can end up with an interpretation rather than a translation.

This is what has happened in Psalm 51. Clearly, the N.I.V. translators and editors are convinced believers in Original Sin, and have rendered this passage accordingly.

If we are going to understand any passage of scripture, or any piece of writing at all, we must ask a few questions, such as:

• Who was the writer?
• Why were they writing?
• What did they actually say?
• What did they mean?

Another valuable question to ask when dealing with a so-called ‘proof text’ is:

• If you had never heard of this doctrine, would you see it in this passage without looking for it?

So, let’s consider these questions in relation to this psalm.

• Who was the writer?

The writer was king David, a ‘man after God’s own heart’, the ‘sweet psalmist of Israel’; a godly man, a prophet, and a poet; a man who walked with God and knew the voice of God, but was beset by certain weaknesses which caused him, on many occasions, to give way to his passions.

• Why was he writing?

He was writing to express his contrition and repentance for his sins and to seek the Lord’s grace and forgiveness. This is very much a personal psalm. There is no prophetic or didactic aspect to it.

• What did he actually say?

In verse 5, the word-for-word translation of what he actually said was: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me”.

• What did he mean by this?

Let’s take the second clause first, because conception takes place before birth.

He said, “in sin did my mother conceive me”. The meaning of this seems to be fairly clear: that on the occasion of his conception, his mother was in sin.

In the first clause, David says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity”.

A characteristic of Hebrew poetry is parallelism. In this genre, the lines are grouped in pairs where the second line either repeats the first line using different words, or expands upon the first line, or presents a contrast to what has been said in the first line.

I would suggest that these two lines are making essentially the same statement, but in different words. Line 2 concerns his conception, while line 1 concerns either his gestation period (‘shapen’) or his actual birth (‘brought forth’) or perhaps both.

We know nothing about the circumstances surrounding David’s conception or his birth, and we know nothing at all about his mother. We do know that Jesse was his father, and that Jesse had another seven sons who were older than David (1 Samuel 16:1-13). We also know, from that passage and from 1 Samuel 17:28, that there was some reason why Jesse and at least one of David’s brothers (Eliab, the eldest) had a negative attitude towards him.

It has been suggested – and this is pure speculation – that David’s mother was not Jesse’s wife. Perhaps his wife had died and he had taken up with another woman to whom, at the time of David’s conception, he was not married. This would go some way to explaining why Jesse did not initially bring David in to the meeting with Samuel. Was he the subject of family shame?

We don’t know, and we will probably never know. All that we can say is that David seems to be of the view that there was something sinful about how he came into the world.

• If you had never heard of Original Sin, would you see it in this passage without looking for it?

If you already believe in Original Sin, like the N.I.V. translators, you will have no problem in seeing it in this verse. However, I would say that it is highly unlikely that anyone who had no knowledge of that doctrine would be disposed to see the same thing.

What they would see is a man who is broken with contrition as the result of his own sinful actions and attitudes, who is grieved by his own wretchedness, perceiving himself as having come into this world through the agency of sinful parents, and is casting himself fully on the mercy of a gracious God, who would be entirely justified in crushing him like a virus-ridden mosquito.

It is also worth noting that there is nothing in the text of this Psalm to suggest that David considered his own condition to be applicable to anyone other than himself, never mind all of mankind, so I would conclude that this passage does not qualify as a proof text for Original Sin.

In addition, if we compare this psalm to another psalm written by the same king David to the same God concerning the same period in his life, we will further see how verse 5 of Psalm 51 must be read and understood solely within its own immediate context:

I would be surprised if anyone was able to find even a hint of Original Sin in this beautiful eulogy.

A less well-known proof text for Original Sin is to be found in another psalm of David – Psalm 58:

The argument from this verse is that even in the womb and from the moment of birth, the wicked are sinful; and this would definitely seem to be the message that the writer (who was David again) intended to convey.

However, if we scan down to the end of the psalm we will see in verses 10 and 11 that another group of people is referenced. This second group is ‘the righteous’, who are clearly seen as a distinct group rather than a sub-set of the group called ‘the wicked’.

The contrast between the righteous and the wicked is a recurring theme within the psalms.

Clearly, verse 3 applies only to the wicked and not to the righteous, therefore David could not have had Original Sin in view, since Original Sin applies to ALL descendants of Adam, whether righteous or wicked.

For this reason, this passage cannot be seen as a proof text for Original Sin.

We could, of course, look elsewhere for a passage that refers to all people, such as this one:

Through Isaiah, God tells us that we have ALL gone astray by turning, every one, to his own way.

But this is the very root cause of all sin. It was the root cause of Eve’s sin, which had nothing to do with Original Sin. This is what Paul refers to in Ephesians 2:3 when he says that “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind”.

In order to be a sinner, all that you have to do is allow yourself to be led by your natural desires. In order to be righteous, you have to think about the will of God and the well-being of other people, and how your behaviour is going to impact other people’s lives. You then have to make a decision to do what is right and to follow through by doing what is right.

Isaiah 53:6 tells us nothing about Original Sin. It just tells us what we all already know, which is that when you allow yourself to please yourself without being concerned about anybody else, you commit sin.

We find another potential proof text for Original Sin elsewhere in Isaiah’s prophecy. Here it is:

Some interpreters think that ‘your first father’ probably means Jacob, who was also called Israel, and was the father of the twelve patriarchs. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that it means Adam, the first father of all of mankind.

There is no sense in this passage that ‘your mediators transgressed against me’ because of inherited sin from ‘your first father’. In fact, this sounds to me more like a case of the Second Commandment, where the sins of the fathers are being visited upon the children. So I think that we can set this passage aside also.

What we really need is a passage of scripture which is dealing specifically with sin, which is setting forth doctrine, and which clearly makes a causal link between the transgression of Adam and the sinful state of modern man, and all generations in between.

Does such a passage exist anywhere in the Bible?

Indeed it does, within Paul’s master-piece on the subject of sin and salvation – his Epistle to the Romans.

I am quoting the passage in the King James Version rather than the English Standard Version, which I normally use, because most people will be more familiar with the King James, and I want to avoid the insinuation that I am using a version which suits my own purpose rather than sticking to ‘the original’, as some people used to regard the King James, and possibly still do:

What is the purpose of this passage? What is it that Paul is attempting to convey to us?

Very clearly, he is comparing and contrasting two men and the effects of their respective actions upon all of the rest of us.

One man is Adam, through whom sin and death became every-day realities to Adam and Eve themselves and to every one of their descendants.

The other man is Jesus Christ, through whom forgiveness, redemption, righteousness, holiness, and eternal life have been made available to everyone who is willing to come to Him in faith and repentance.

If we are to understand this passage, we must bear in mind that what Paul is doing here is using what Adam did and the result of that to illustrate what Jesus did and the result of that. He is not attempting to help us understand the former, but the latter, so we cannot work backwards from what Jesus did to enable us to understand what Adam did. In fact, Paul would have been confident that his readers would all have understood what Adam did and what the repercussions of his actions were.

So, in order to determine whether this passage is, indeed, a proof text for Original Sin, I would like us to approach it from the perspective of someone who has never heard of Original Sin and see if it becomes necessary to assume Original Sin in order to make sense of Paul’s argument.

To go into this in fine detail would require more discussion than is appropriate for this article, so I will endeavour to strike a balance between being both brief and thorough.

In summary, Adam introduced sin into the world by transgressing God’s prohibition to eat the forbidden fruit. This also unleashed ‘the knowledge of good and evil’ and the curse of God upon the land, so that every human being, from then on, was born into a world that is challenging, painful, disappointing, dangerous, and full of temptations to sin, the result being that every human being became a sinner, and thereby subject to death (N.B. “death came to all men, because all men sinned” and “it is the soul who sins who shall die”, not the offspring of the soul who sins).

This is what Paul means when he says, “by one man’s disobedience, the many were made sinners”.

The world into which Adam and Eve had been introduced was a world of total harmony, peace, pleasure, joy, and love. Pain was unknown, as was disappointment, fear, boredom, rejection, and all of the other negative experiences that beset the world that they subsequently entered into as the result of their sin.

In the new world of The Fall, the curse of God, and the knowledge of good and evil, temptations to sin are bound to come (Matthew 18:7; Luke 17:1), and what child of Adam has the moral strength to continually resist and never give way? The desires of flesh and mind are at work within (Ephesians 2:3), and the world and the devil are at work without (1 John 2:16) to lead us into sin on a daily basis.

Let’s look at another verse that tells us something similar in relation to the evil king Ahaz:

The Hebrew word here rendered ‘he made naked’ can mean to uncover or expose, or to let loose or remove restraint.

Whenever anyone walks with God in humility and obedience, God provides protection, provision, and every kind of blessing; but when someone walks contrary to God, in pride and disobedience, God removes those protections, withdraws the provision, and withholds the blessings.

This was the experience of the people of Judah under the reign of the wicked king Ahaz.

His father, Jotham, “became mighty, because he prepared his ways before the Lord his God” (2 Chronicles 27:6 – KJV), but the sins of Ahaz brought about the reversal of Jotham’s successes.

In similar vein, when Adam and Eve were walking with God in the Garden, everything in the Garden was rosy, but the result of their sin left them naked (Genesis 3:7,10-11) and exposed to all of the tests, trials, and temptations which made it increasingly difficult for them not to behave in a sinful manner.

As we have seen elsewhere in this article, in order to become a sinner, all we have to do is do what comes naturally, but in order to become righteous, we must take deliberate and decisive action.

We follow Adam by default, and by default participate in his sin and his death; we follow Jesus by choice, by faith, and by obedience to His will, and in doing so participate in His righteousness and His life.

In light of the foregoing, I would contend that it is possible to make perfect sense of the ‘Adam’ element of this passage without recourse to Original Sin, or any other additional ideas.

For that reason, I would suggest that even this passage does not qualify as a proof text for Original Sin, and therefore that Original Sin cannot reasonably be upheld from the evidence of the Bible as a legitimate Christian doctrine, as there are not ‘two or three witnesses’ that can only be understood in the light of Original Sin.

Does it Really Matter?

Is it important that we either do believe or don’t believe in Original Sin?

Is anybody going to be ushered into the halls of glory or banished to the outer darkness because of their attitude towards Original Sin?

I would think not.

There are many godly men and women, many great preachers, many seasoned missionaries, and many dedicated servants of Christ who do and many who do not hold to this teaching. I would say, therefore, that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter.

However, there is one issue with Original Sin that I think those who believe in it should seriously consider, and that is: how it affects the reputation of God in relation to justice.

In my understanding of it, Original Sin has the effect of removing from every human being the capacity to be righteous.

The following is a quotation from the Wikipedia article on Original Sin (emphases mine):

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 that all humans inherit. Although earlier Christian authors taught the elements of physical death, moral weakness, and a sin propensity within original sin, Augustine was the first to add the concept of inherited guilt (reatus) from Adam whereby an infant was eternally damned at birth. Augustine held the traditional view that free will was weakened but not destroyed by original sin until he converted in 412 AD to the Stoic view that humanity had no free will except to sin as a result of his anti-Pelagian view of infant baptism.

Firstly, the idea that we are all born damned because of Adam’s sin is in direct contradiction to what God has said to us through Ezekiel, that the soul who sins is the one who shall die, and not either the parent or the child.

It also makes the unsubstantiated assumption that Adam was eternally damned because he never repented of his sin. There is nowhere in scripture, as far as I am aware, where we are told that Adam was unrepentant. I would also contend that judgement belongs to God alone, and no-one, not even Saint Augustine, is in a position to predict what verdict God may or may not pronounce on any individual.

Romans 5:16 does say, “the judgement following one trespass brought condemnation”, but that does not mean that every descendant of Adam and Eve is eternally condemned from birth. We know from the scriptures that this is not the case (e.g. Psalm 73:23-28; Luke 16:19-31).

We have been condemned to live in a fallen world where we daily experience many forms of evil as well as good, and if we do not repent of our sins and commit our lives to Christ we are surely bound for the Lake of Fire.

Secondly, the idea that humanity has no free will except to sin is also in contradiction of the clear teaching of scripture, wherein we are commanded, urged, and pleaded with from start to finish to do what is right, to deny our fleshly lusts, and to obey the will of God, which God would not require of us if He knew that we were constitutionally incapable of it.

As far as I am aware, every Christian parent, including those who believe in Original Sin, sees it as their moral duty before God to teach and train their children in righteousness, and the majority of them succeed in raising sons and daughters who are a credit to themselves and who at some point choose to commit their lives to Christ.

I have never known any parent to say, “What’s the point in trying to teach my children how to be good? They’re bound to be disobedient prodigals until they get fed up with the pig-swill!”

In his Systematic Theology, Charles G. Finney, the outstanding American evangelist of the mid-nineteenth century, poses the question (this is my paraphrase): if I am bound by Original Sin to commit sin, then how much sin am I allowed to commit before I become personally accountable for my actions? And how am I to distinguish between the sins that I am forced to commit and those which I commit by choice?

In all honesty, is there any commandment within the Bible which is beyond the ability of any normal, fit, intelligent person to obey?

Perhaps the two that present us with the greatest challenge are the two greatest commandments, which Jesus brought to our attention, namely that we should love God and love our neighbours. By nature, love is selfless, but by nature, we are selfish, so I would say that every son and daughter of Adam and Eve would require God’s grace in order to be obedient to these requirements.

Thankfully, the Bible has a lot more to say about God’s grace than it does about Original Sin.

There are indeed many who choose not to do what is right, but we also know that there are many individuals in both Old and New Testaments who are commended as being righteous, for instance:

• Abel, as we have already seen;
• Noah, a righteous man, blameless in his time, who walked with God (Genesis 6:9);
• the unnamed righteous men of Psalms 1 and 119;
• Job, who by God’s own testimony was “a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1:1,8,22; 2:3);
• a number of Judah’s kings were said to have done 'what was right in the eyes of the Lord', e.g. Asa (1 Kings 15:11) and his son Jehoshaphat (1 Kings 22:43), and Jotham, who ‘ordered his ways before the Lord’ (2 Chronicles 27:6);
• the parents of John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth, who were righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly (Luke 1:5-6);
• and even the Roman centurion Cornelius (Acts 10:1-4) is commended as being devout and God-fearing, whose prayers and alms God has decided to reward.

There is, of course, no suggestion that any of these righteous men or women had lived a life that was free from sin, but they certainly could not be described as having ‘no free will except to sin’.

If what St. Augustine taught is correct, then we have to face the fact that God is unjust, because (a) He condemns the new-born babe to eternal flames before they have done anything, either good or bad, and (b) He condemns the adult for failing to live up to a moral standard which he is inherently incapable of attaining.

Paul tells us that:

God judges us according to what we have voluntarily done, not according to what has been done to us or through us by a third party without our knowledge or consent.

I am at a loss to understand how it is possible to square the doctrine of Original Sin with the righteousness and justice of God as it is clearly presented in the scriptures.

The two seem to me to be irreconcilably opposed.

If you would like to read what I believe God actually teaches us about the human condition, please see this article.