Edgework

As I have shown in the previous two essays, John E. Toews makes a strong case in this book, The Story of Original Sin, that the doctrine of original sin as taught in many churches is not supported by the biblical text. The logical place to search for its origin, then, is in the writings of the early church fathers.

We begin with the Eastern Church fathers because they spoke and wrote in Greek, the language of the New Testament. Toews notes that it was the middle of the second century before a “post-Paul” reference to Genesis 3 appears in the writings of the Eastern Church fathers. That would seem to indicate that while the church was expanding rapidly during its first century the concept of original sin was not part of its message.

When Justin Martyr references Adam’s role in introducing sin into the world (165 CE), he takes pains to say that all subsequent humans are responsible for their own sins, as was Adam. Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons held the view that Adam and Eve sinned because of their mental and spiritual immaturity, but even so that had been their free choice. Clement and Origen of Alexandria later added the idea that Genesis 3 should be interpreted allegorically in which Adam represents all humans; that is to say that all people sinned, “not so much from nature as from Adam’s example” (57). The Antiochene fathers took a more Hebraic approach to biblical interpretation than the more Hellenistic approach of the Alexandrian fathers. They believed that “…infants were born without sin, and thus did not recognize any doctrine of inherited sinfulness” (60).

In summarizing the view of Eastern Church fathers, Toews states that “…the Greek fathers taught that humanity inherited Adam’s punishment, death, but not Adam’s guilt. Guilt could only be the result of a freely committed personal act” (60). He also notes that “The early Greek Christian theological emphasis on free will and human accountability was a deliberate counter to the various forms of determinism and fatalism of much classical religion and philosophy from the time of Homer through the era of the Roman Empire” (61).

The Latin-speaking church fathers came from Carthage and Hippo in North Africa and Milan and Rome in Italy. They mostly read the New Testament in an early Latin translation from the original Greek, Vetus Latina, which was replaced by a more accurate work by St. Jerome in 382, known as the Latin Vulgate.

Tertullian (155-220 CE) was the first of the Western church fathers to believe in the “traducian origin” of the soul, that is “In procreation a fragment of the father’s soul shapes itself into a new soul bearing all the hereditary qualities of the father” (63). Thus every soul bears the mark of the “original moral fault” (64). This fault was “corruption” rather than “weakness” as the Greek speaking fathers saw it. Cyprian, also of Carthage, followed up on Tertullian’s views by proclaiming that this hereditary sin is “remitted” through infant baptism.

Ambrose of Milan (339-97 CE) was the first to speak of Adam’s sin as a “fall” brought on by his pride; he wanted to be equal with God. Furthermore when Adam fell he came to bear the ugly scar of sexuality, which was the means by which Adam’s sin was passed on to his posterity. That necessitated the virgin birth of Christ so he could be sinless.

Ambrosiaster, a contemporary of Ambrose, wrote a major commentary on the Book of Romans using the early Latin translation of the New Testament, Vetus Latina. He is the first commentator to use its faulty translation of Romans 5:12 on which to build his case for the “original moral fault.” The problem was that this translation renders the Greek phrase “eph ho” as “in whom” rather than “on account of” or “because of” as the corrected Latin Vulgate does. So he was certain that all humanity sinned while “in Adam”.

By the time Augustine came on the scene, Western church fathers had departed from the theology of sin of the Eastern Church, with one exception; they still held to the notion of human free will and responsibility. Augustine was quick to pounce on this awkward combination of ideas his western predecessors had left behind; namely, involuntary inherited sinfulness coupled with free choice. In 395 CE he wrote, “We have all become one lump of clay, that is, a lump of sin…we as sinners deserve nothing other than eternal damnation” (74).  A few years later, in 397 CE he first “…uses the epoc-making phrase, ‘original sin’ for the first time in the history of Christian thought” (74).

To those who argued that children born of baptized parents whose “original sin” had been remitted could not have inherited original sin from them, Augustine said in 418 CE, “The fault in our nature remains in our offspring so deeply impressed as to make it guilty, even when the guilt of the self-same fault has been washed away in the parent by the remission of sins” (82). It is important to remember that Augustine’s ideas flow from a faulty Latin translation of the New Testament which later was corrected.

Thus to sum up, Augustine taught “That ‘original sin’ as “moral and legal liability’ was passed on genetically from Adam to all subsequent human beings because all subsequent human beings were present in Adam’s semen. All human beings subsequent to Adam, except for the few elect to salvation by God’s grace and mercy, were condemned to eternal hell for a sin they committed pre-natally in Adam’s genitals” (85). This teaching became official church dogma at the Council of Orange in 529 CE.

So in our search spanning many centuries, we have finally found the source of the doctrine of original sin which traumatized me as a youngster. What is left now is to figure out what to do with what we have found.