Original sin
In Christian theology, original sin is the condition of sinfulness that all humans share, which is inherited from Adam and Eve due to the Fall, involving the loss of original righteousness and the distortion of the Image of God. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3, and in texts such as and .
The specific doctrine of original sin was developed in the 2nd century struggle against Gnosticism by Irenaeus of Lyons, and was shaped significantly by Augustine of Hippo, who was the first author to use the phrase "original sin". Influenced by Augustine, the Councils of Carthage and Orange brought theological speculation about original sin into the official lexicon of the Church.
Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin equated original sin with concupiscence, affirming that it persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom to do good, proposing that original sin involved a loss of free will except to sin. The Jansenist movement, which the Catholic Church declared heretical, also maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will. Instead, the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares that "Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle", and the Council of Trent states that "whereas all men had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam although free will, attenuated as it was in its powers, and bent down, was by no means extinguished in them."
History
Scriptural background and early development
For the Apostle Paul, Adam's act released a power into the world by which sin and death became the natural lot of mankind, a view which is evident in 2 Esdras, 2 Baruch and the Apocalypse of Moses. Paul uses much of the same language observed in 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, such as Adam-death associations. He also emphasizes the individual human responsibility for their sins when he described the predominance of death over all "because all have sinned". Early Christianity had no specific doctrine of original sin prior to the 4th century. The idea developed incrementally in the writings of the Early Church Fathers in the centuries after the New Testament was composed. The late 1st- or early 2nd-century Didaches seemingly exclusive preference for adult baptism offers evidence that its author may have believed that children were born sinless. The authors of the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas, also from the late 1st or early 2nd centuries, assumed that children were born without sin. However Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, from the same period, took universal sin for granted but did not explain its origin from anywhere; and while Clement of Alexandria in the late 2nd century did propose that sin was inherited from Adam, he did not say how.The biblical bases for original sin are generally found in the following passages, the first and last of which explain why the sin is described as "original":
- , the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden;
- , "I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me";
- , "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned..."
Second Temple Judaism
The first writings to discuss the first sin at the hands of Adam and Eve were early Jewish texts in the Second Temple Period, such as the Book of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon. In these writings, there is no notion that sin is inherent to an individual or that it is transmitted upon conception. Instead, Adam is more largely seen as a heroic figure and the first patriarch. Rather, the beginnings of sin were seen in the stories of Cain or the sons of God mentioned in Genesis 6.Despite the lack of a notion of original sin, by the 1st century, a number of texts did discuss the roles of Adam and Eve as the first to have committed sin. While states that "God created man for incorruption but death entered the world by the envy of the devil", states that "Sin began with a woman, and we must all die because of her". The notion of the hereditary transmission of sin from Adam was rejected by both 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch in favor of individual responsibility for sin. Despite describing death as having come to all men through Adam, these texts also held to the notion that it is still the individual that is ultimately responsible for committing his own sin and that it is the individual's sin, rather than the sin of Adam and Eve, that God condemns in a person. Ian McFarland argues that it is the context of this Judaism through which Paul's discussions on the fall of Adam are to be better understood.
Greek Fathers before Augustine
, a 2nd-century Christian apologist and philosopher, was the first Christian author to discuss the story of Adam's fall after Paul. In Justin's writings, there is no conception of original sin and the fault of sin lies at the hands of the individual who committed it. In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin wrote "The Christ has suffered to be crucified for the race of men who, since Adam, were fallen to the power of death and were in the error of the serpent, each man committing evil by his own fault" and "Men were created like God, free from pain and death, provided they obeyed His precepts and were deemed worthy by Him to be called His sons, and yet, like Adam and Eve, brought death upon themselves". Irenaeus was an early father appealed to by Augustine on the doctrine of original sin, although he did not believe that Adam's sin was as severe as later tradition would hold and he was not wholly clear about its consequences. One recurring theme in Irenaeus is his view that Adam, in his transgression, is essentially a child who merely partook of the tree ahead of his time.Origen of Alexandria had a notion similar to, but not the same as original sin, since Genesis was largely allegorical for him. On the other hand, he also believed in the pre-existence of the soul, and theorized that individuals are inherently predisposed to committing sin on account of the transgressions committed in their pre-worldly existence. Origen is the first to quote Romans 5:12–21, but rejected the existence of a sinful state inherited from Adam. To Origen, Adam's sin sets an example that all humanity partakes in, but is not inherently born into. Responding to and rejecting Origen's theories, Methodius of Olympus rejected the pre-existence of the soul and the allegorical interpretation of Genesis, and in the process, was the first to describe the events of Adam's life as the "Fall".
Greek Fathers would come to emphasize the cosmic dimension of the Fall, namely that since Adam, human beings are born into a fallen world, but held fast to belief that man, though fallen, is free. They thus did not teach that human beings are deprived of free will and involved in total depravity, which is one understanding of original sin among the leaders of the Reformation. During this period the doctrines of human depravity and the inherently sinful nature of human flesh were taught by Gnostics, and orthodox Christian writers took great pains to counter them. Thus Christian apologists such as Justin insisted that God's future judgment of humanity implied humanity must have the ability to live righteously.
Latin Fathers before Augustine
, perhaps the first to believe in hereditary transmission of sin, did so on the basis of the theory of traducianism, the theory that each individual's soul was derived from the soul of their two parents, and therefore, because everyone is ultimately a descendant of Adam through sexual reproduction, the souls of humanity are partly derived from Adam's own soul—the only one directly created by God, and as a sinful soul, the derived souls of humanity, too, are sinful. Cyprian, on the other hand, believed that individuals were born already guilty of sin, and he was the first to link his notion of original guilt with infant baptism. Cyprian writes that the infant is "born has not sinned at all, except that carnally born according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the first death from the first nativity." Another text to assert the connection between original sin and infant baptism was the Manichaen Letter to Menoch, although it is of disputed authenticity.Ambrose accepted the idea of hereditary sin, also linking it, like Cyprian, to infant baptism, but as a shift from earlier proponents of a transmitted sin, he argued that Adam's sin was solely his own fault, in his attempt to attain equality with God, rather than the fault of the devil. One contemporary of Ambrose was Ambrosiaster, the first to introduce a translation of Romans 5:12 that substituted the language of all being in death "because all sinned" to "in him all sinned". Augustine's primary formulation of original sin was based on this mistranslation of Romans 5:12. This mistranslation would act as the basis for Augustine's complete development of the doctrine of original sin, and Augustine would quote Ambrosiaster as the source. Some exegetes still justify the doctrine of original sin based on the wider context of Romans 5:12–21.
Hilary of Poitiers did not clearly articulate a concept of original sin, though anticipates the views of Augustine, as he declared that all humanity is implicated in Adam's downfall.