Original Sin:
What sin did Adam and Eve commit?
Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Their sin was that of disobedience.
However, some early radical Christians claimed that the sin of Adam and Eve was sexual - the forbidden fruit of the tree conveyed carnal (related to the pleasures of the flesh) knowledge.
This view was opposed by St. Clement of Alexandria (150-215), a leading Christian theologian of the time. For him, conscious participation in procreation is cooperating with God in the work of creation. According to him, Adam's sin was not sexual indulgence, but disobedience. The real theme of the story of Adam and Eve is moral freedom and moral responsibility for the decisions we make.
Augustine had a different take on the myth of Adam and Eve. His conversion from a sex-addict to an ascetic led him to a jaundiced view of sex, resulting in his developing the theory of original sin. For him, the original sin of Adam and Eve was disobedience, but with dire consequences. Because of this sin, human nature was corrupted by concupiscence (strong sexual desire). The sin of Adam and Eve is inherited by all human beings. Everyone is born sinful! We are born with a built-in urge to do bad things and disobey God.
Original Sin is a condition, not something we do. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they 'fell' from perfection and brought evil into a perfect world. It is transmitted by concupiscence through the act of sexual intercourse. Concupiscence weakens the will without destroying it. Thus, children are born in sin. Only procreation justified the act of sexual intercourse even within marriage, but pleasure should in no way be part of the process. Augustin was the first to add the concept of inherited guilt (reatus) from Adam whereby, an infant was eternally damned at birth. A child who dies before being baptized is condemned to the everlasting fires of hell!
The obvious difficulty in Augustine's account was how the transmission of sin occurred. This was to remain a subject of controversy for centuries to come. Augustine kept his answer simple: semen was the culprit. Original sin was physically transmitted via sexual intercourse to every human being. Only Jesus ‘alone of those who are born of a woman is holy…by reason of His immaculate birth’, whereby the Holy Spirit ‘infused immaculate seed into Mary’s unviolated womb’.
Before the Fall, Augustine believed that sex was a passionless affair. The sexual members, like the other parts of the body, enacted the work of procreation by a deliberate act of will, "like a handshake", without any lascivious heat. After the Fall, by contrast, the sex organ cannot be controlled by mere will, subject instead to both unwanted impotence and involuntary erections.
What sin did Adam and Eve commit?
Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Their sin was that of disobedience.
However, some early radical Christians claimed that the sin of Adam and Eve was sexual - the forbidden fruit of the tree conveyed carnal (related to the pleasures of the flesh) knowledge.
This view was opposed by St. Clement of Alexandria (150-215), a leading Christian theologian of the time. For him, conscious participation in procreation is cooperating with God in the work of creation. According to him, Adam's sin was not sexual indulgence, but disobedience. The real theme of the story of Adam and Eve is moral freedom and moral responsibility for the decisions we make.
Augustine had a different take on the myth of Adam and Eve. His conversion from a sex-addict to an ascetic led him to a jaundiced view of sex, resulting in his developing the theory of original sin. For him, the original sin of Adam and Eve was disobedience, but with dire consequences. Because of this sin, human nature was corrupted by concupiscence (strong sexual desire). The sin of Adam and Eve is inherited by all human beings. Everyone is born sinful! We are born with a built-in urge to do bad things and disobey God.
Original Sin is a condition, not something we do. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they 'fell' from perfection and brought evil into a perfect world. It is transmitted by concupiscence through the act of sexual intercourse. Concupiscence weakens the will without destroying it. Thus, children are born in sin. Only procreation justified the act of sexual intercourse even within marriage, but pleasure should in no way be part of the process. Augustin was the first to add the concept of inherited guilt (reatus) from Adam whereby, an infant was eternally damned at birth. A child who dies before being baptized is condemned to the everlasting fires of hell!
The obvious difficulty in Augustine's account was how the transmission of sin occurred. This was to remain a subject of controversy for centuries to come. Augustine kept his answer simple: semen was the culprit. Original sin was physically transmitted via sexual intercourse to every human being. Only Jesus ‘alone of those who are born of a woman is holy…by reason of His immaculate birth’, whereby the Holy Spirit ‘infused immaculate seed into Mary’s unviolated womb’.
Before the Fall, Augustine believed that sex was a passionless affair. The sexual members, like the other parts of the body, enacted the work of procreation by a deliberate act of will, "like a handshake", without any lascivious heat. After the Fall, by contrast, the sex organ cannot be controlled by mere will, subject instead to both unwanted impotence and involuntary erections.
One reason for the acceptance of Augustine's theory by the Church was that it provided an explanation for human suffering. Because our first parents sinned, we humans need to suffer. The doctrine of original sin makes it easier for a better understanding of evil in this world and as to why an infinitely good and benevolent God would allow suffering and evil in this world.
One vehement critic of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin was Pelagius (c. AD 360 – 418) a theologian of British origin who advocated free will and asceticism. After Pelagius' death, a young Italian bishop, Julian of Eclanum, continued to argue against Augustine's views.
"Pelagius believed that the soul of man by creation is neither holy nor sinful. Adam was morally indifferent or neutral. In this state of moral equilibrium, Adam was no more disposed to good than to evil. Because he was a creature, Adam's body was mortal. It was Adam's destiny to die physically whether or not he ever sinned. Physical death, therefore, is not a penalty for sin passed on to Adam's posterity but is rather an inevitable corollary to man's essential character as created.
Adam's fall was occasioned by the exercise of free will. Adam's sin in no way affected his posterity except insofar as it set a bad example for them.
Consequently, all men come into being in the exact condition as was Adam before the fall. Each soul is created immediately by God and thus cannot come into the world contaminated or corrupted by the sin of Adam. The doctrine of transmitted sin or original sin, says Pelagius, is blasphemous.
'A sin propagated by procreation is totally contrary to the Catholic faith. Sin is not born with man but is committed afterward by man. It is not the fault of nature, but of free will.' Thus, according to Pelagius, an infant is not born in sin nor does it possess any innate moral characteristics. We are “socialized” to sin or “conditioned” to sin because of continual exposure to a family and society that are themselves sinful for the same reasons.
Sin is never a matter of nature. There is no such thing as a sin nature. Sin is only sin when it can be avoided. Thus, sin is not a fault of nature but of choice'."
Part - 3 will look at how and why original sin was accepted by the Church as a doctrine and its consequences in the daily lives of Christians.
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