As best I can ascertain, Original Sin is about two things. The first is about the truthfulness of Adam and Eve’s first sin as recorded in Genesis 3. There is broad agreement among Christians about the Genesis account of Adam and Eve’s sin. This is usually not disputed. However, the second issue is about the affects of that original sin in the Garden of Eden. On this issue there is disagreement. Yet, this disagreement is mostly centered on how much damage Original Sin has caused to mankind. Very few groups deny that Adam’s sin has had no affect on mankind.

Three Categories of Consequences

There are three ways to categorize the different approaches to the consequences of Original Sin (Source: Philosophy of Religion . info). One way is known as Inherited Guilt, the second is Inherited Corruption and the third is Individual Fall.

Inherited Guilt

According to the Inherited Guilt approach, humanity has a corporate responsibility for the first sin of Adam and Eve. In this approach, each of us is guilty of Adam and Eve’s sin, just as if each of us had committed it.

Even within this approach there are subdivisions. Some hold to the notion of a corporate identity, in that all humans and Adam are one and the same. This means that as a consequence of Adam’s sin we all bear the guilt for his sin. A second subdivision is the concept of participation meaning that all humans were in some sense included in the Fall so that we fell along with Adam and Eve. A third subdivision is the notion of representation. The idea here is that although humans were not directly involved in Adam’s sin, Adam was our representative in Eden and so in sinning acted for all of us. This is known as the “Federal” view of the fall.

These three subdivisions are very similar and each of them stress that all humans inherit the consequences of the Fall because we are in some significant way united with Adam.

The Inherited Guilt approach is dominate in Western Christianity with its different forms being held by both Catholics and Protestants. The primary Scriptural references are Genesis 3 and Romans 5, though many other Scriptures are used to under-gird this approach.

The biggest issue of contention is regarding the affects of the Fall on man’s moral will. Those who take a strong view (e.g. early Lutherans and modern strong Calvinists) believe that man is Totally Depraved and cannot will any good whatsoever. Others have a weaker view of moral affects of the Fall and believe that man, though totally dependent upon God for salvation, has some moral free agency left intact.

Inherited Corruption

The second approach to Original Sin sees it as a matter of inherited corruption. According to this approach, we are not sinful because we are guilty of the first sin of Adam, but rather we are corrupted as a consequence or affect of his sin.

Some who hold this view of Original Sin see the corruption as the type that has affected mankind through a physical heredity and, therefore, Adam passed on his corrupted nature to us. Others describe the transmission of Adam’s sinfulness in terms of a social heredity where the moral and physical environment of human society has been corrupted and degraded.

The Inherited Corruption approach is dominate in the Eastern Orthodox traditions—primarily stressing social heredity. Orthodox Christians use the same Scriptural texts for their view but deny the transmission of inherited guilt. They also believe that man has moral free agency intact but it has been weakened by the environmental affects of sin. Man is still totally dependent upon God to save him from sin.

Individual Falls

A third group has pursued an altogether different line of thinking. Some within Christianity have viewed the Genesis 3 account as a model for human behavior. Here Original Sin serves as more of a proto-type for what all humans tend to do. We all want to run our own selfish lives and rebel against God. In this way, Genesis 3 serves as more of an allegory of the human condition. Consequently, each individual participates in their own fall away from God and His law.

This group holds that man still has moral free agency but it is weakened by sin and ignorance.

Next Post

In the next post we will look at some of the specific history of the doctrine of Original Sin in Western Christianity and compare and contrast three approaches.

There is probably not another subject (other than hell) that gets more bad press than Original Sin. If you want to get secularists upset or even angry, just mention that humans have a tendency to sin stretching back to Adam and Eve. Wow, get ready to duck. Perhaps this reaction is why Original Sin has fallen on hard times within the church. I don’t think you would classify Original Sin as a Top Ten Seeker-Sermon and often all one gets is embarrassed looks when the subject comes up in Bible studies. However, it still has its strong adherents. Some still believe that it is a pivotal doctrine by which one can understand salvation, the Virgin Birth and Christ’s atoning sacrifice. In fact, I recently read an Islamic article that explained the whole plan of salvation to Muslims by connecting it to Original Sin. Do they know something many Christians don’t?

What do you think? Do you believe in Original Sin? It is generally understood as the sin that Adam committed and the consequences of Adam's sin which all mankind has inherited as a consequence of our descent from Adam. If you believe in it, why and how does this inherited sin work? Don’t be fearful of being “wrong”, uninformed or less than brilliant. Your opinion is welcome. Share your thoughts.

I could not sleep very long tonight so I got up, had some of my favorite cold cereal and explored Blogstream. Wow, all I can say is there are a lot of depressed people writing some very “interesting” things on their blogs. I could only take so much of it. Even when I was very far away from the Lord I had a low tolerance for whining and complaining. It seems to me that most of the personal web logs are opportunities for people who have some facility with language and who are overcome by melancholy to “express” themselves. Then it seems like others of like mind and spirit travel-blog congratulating one another on their misery. Like I said, I could only take so much of it. I had to come back here to TFD and write something uplifting.

Did you know that God does miracles? He does. Maybe you have experienced one of God’s miracles—I have. But, have you ever wondered about the different levels of miracles? If not, maybe now you will.

Level 1 (Top Category)

The highest rank among miracles is held by those events in which something is done by God which nature could never do. Examples of this would be if the sun were to reverse its course. The resurrection of Jesus and of the believers is a Level 1 miracle.

Level 2

The second level of miracles is held by those events in which God does something which nature can do, but not in its normal order. It is normal for humans to see but not to see after going blind or to walk after being paralyzed by a de-habilitating accident. God at times does such miraculous works.

Level 3

The third level of miracles occurs when God does what usually is done by the working of nature, but without the normal operation of the principles of nature. An example of this is when a person is cured by divine intervention from an illness which could be cured naturally or if rain were to be sent by God independently of the normal course of nature. Another example is when God protects one of your loved one’s when they are doing foolish things (e.g. teenagers!).

Ah, I feel so much better. I feel uplifted and encouraged because I know that God loves me and can intervene supernaturally in my life. I don’t have to be mired in my misery, frustration and misfortune. I personally would rather pray and expect God to make a difference in my life than to pour out my whining heart in a blog-post. Need a miracle? I recommend prayer.

In a previous post I looked at how God can cause us to do His will without violating our free will, now I would like to explore a different aspect of this topic and that is how God does things.

The first we need to realize that God is involved. The Deists believed that the universe was like a big clock and God was the clock maker. God had made the clock, wound it up and let it go. They believed that there was a God but He was a distant and remote God who operated the universe by His natural laws. Now there is a certain truth to this view of God. God has created the universe and established certain physical and moral laws by which things run. However, God is also intimately involved in the planning, ordering and fulfillment of events in the universe. The deeper question to consider is how does He do this? More specifically, do all things happen by necessity meaning that they could not happen otherwise or is there also room for contingent events that are not determined by necessity? The answer, I believe, is that there are both necessary and contingent events. Yet, the follow-up question would be, if God is in charge and intimately involved in the planning, ordering and fulfillment of events, how can there be contingency? Well, I am not brazen enough to say that I can fully answer this question, but I can point us toward an answer.

Scripture

Scripture indicates that there are contingent events, meaning that humans have free will. In fact, I would make the case that the Bible would be morally meaningless if God had not granted mankind free will. Additionally, God could not hold man accountable for his sins if everything that man did was by necessity. That would be like punishing or rewarding a robot for doing what it was programmed to do. On the other hand the Bible indicates that “The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases” Proverbs 21:1. Therefore, in the Bible you have both man’s free will (contingency) and God’s necessity standing side-by-side.

A Possible Answer

When considering this conundrum we should first remind ourselves that by God’s will He actually does things. The God of the Bible is not the Deist God. God decides on a course of action and decrees that it should happen. However, God’s will also extends to the way which is right and fitting for a thing to be done. This means that God does things through the nature of the things that He is affecting. For instance, He causes stones to move through the forces of gravity, inertia and seismic activity. Another way of saying this is that God moves necessary events by necessity and contingent events contingently. In the case of man, God moves humans without violating our free will. Now check out this quote:

“And therefore it would be more repugnant to the Divine motion, for the (human) will to be moved of necessity, which is not fitting to its nature; then for it to be moved freely which is becoming of its nature.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa I-II, Q. 11, Art. 4.

Did you catch that? Aquinas actually said that it would be “repugnant” for God to move the human will by necessity. If Aquinas is correct--and I think he is--then God not only gave us free will, He respects our freedom. Now, I don’t understand exactly how God does everything—after all He is God—but I do love the fact that it is repugnant to God to violate the human will. Do I hear an “amen?”

You can go to your local Christian bookstore and get all kinds of literature on prayer. Sometimes you can get so much stuff that you can confuse yourself and instead of learning things that enhance your prayer life, you end up discouraged and disillusioned about prayer. So, I would like to propose the Big Five keys to effective prayer from the medieval church. Why not? Everybody else publishes books on prayer; why not let the “old guys” have a shot at it? Check it out, what do ya gotta’ lose?

1. Confidence

The Bible teaches us that we can go “boldly to the throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16). Now that Jesus is on the throne in heaven and He is our Advocate and wise intercessor, we can have every confidence that God hears and answers our prayers. We don’t need to grovel and mire ourselves down in false humility.

2. Rectitude

Rectitude in prayer means that it should be fitting. A Christian theologian named Damascene said that “to pray is to ask fitting things of God.” One of the reasons we don’t get our prayers answered is that we often ask for things that are not good for us (James 4:3). This is why it is very wise to pray along the lines of the Lord’s Prayer. I am not saying that you have to say it repetitively. Rather, the Lord’s Prayer was given as a model or guide for proper prayer. Why not use the Master’s model prayer for your heavenly requests? Augustine said, “If we would pray rightly and fittingly, we should say nothing else but what is contained in this prayer of our Lord.” That’s good advice.

3. Order

God is a good of order. We can see this in creation and in God’s Word. Therefore, we should show proper order in our prayer life. How? Well, we should first of all ask for those things that will enhance and benefit our spiritual lives rather than our temporal lives. Of course, we can and should ask for those things that are temporal (e.g. jobs, food, clothing, healing, etc.). However, we show proper order in our prayers when we make our spiritual lives the top priority. We should also remember to pray for God to bless and increase the spiritual lives of others.

4. Devotion

Our prayers should be fervent and full of devotion to God. Now get this-- sometimes our fervency and devotion wanes when our prayers are too long. Jesus warned us against praying at unnecessary length, Matthew 6:7 (NIV) “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” Consequently, brevity of prayer with fervency is much more effective. Augustine put it this way, “Beware of praying with many words: it is fervent attention that secures a hearing.”

5. Humility

Our prayers, of course, should be humble (Ps 102:17). Don’t forget the story that Jesus told of the publican and the Pharisee in Luke 18:10-14. Christian humility is the attitude that does not presume that we can do things just in our own strength, but trusts God to help us in all things.

There you go, how about that, see the old guys knew a thing or two about prayer.