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Ezekiel 18:20-The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
Jimmy (not his real name) was a young minister who had read an online public debate that I had with a Calvinist preacher. In that debate, the subject of “original sin” took center stage. (For this who may not know, “original sin” is the teaching that babies are conceived bearing the sin of Adam. It is believed that this stain of original sin is passed on like an infection to every person so that children are born as wicked little sinners). We arranged to begin meeting together for private Bible studies at a nearby Wendy’s restaurant.
The first discussion went something like this.
Jimmy: How can you not believe in original sin?
Mark: Well, first there is nothing in the Bible that teaches that sin is hereditary. Second, the Bible teaches specifically that sin is personal and that children do not inherit the sins of their parents.
Jimmy: Babies are born as sinners, which is why they are condemned to Hell if they are not of the elect.
Mark: Wait. You believe that there will be babies in Hell?
Jimmy: Yes, and they deserve to be there.
Mark: Ummm….you are teaching that babies deserve to be in Hell? That’s actually pretty awful and completely opposite of what Jesus taught (I then partially quoted Matthew 18:3, 14 and 19:14).
Jimmy: The Catholic Church got the idea of original sin from the Jewish people. They taught it long before the time of Christ. The Old Testament teaches that children are born as sinners.
(End Of Relevant Discussion)
Does the Old Testament teach that children are born with original sin?
Did the Jewish people believe in this doctrine?
Let’s study.
One author carefully examined the Jewish writings of the Second Temple era which were written long before the time of Christ, in order to to determine if the Old Testament and the Jewish people taught the doctrine of original sin. Here is what he discovered regarding the Second Temple documents regarding Jewish investigations on the subject of Adam and Eve’s sin.
“The diversity of the Adam/sin story in Second Temple Judaism is stunning. 1. Adam in the Wisdom Literature is a heroic figure. He is a wise man. Adam is the first patriarch of the Jewish people (Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, Jubilees, Dead Sea Scrolls). He is not the father of sin nor the origin of death. 2. The story of sin in much of this literature begins with Cain (Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon), or with the “marriage” of “the sons of God” and “the daughters of men” in Genesis 6 (1 Enoch, Jubilees, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Dead Sea Scrolls). Or, God is responsible for the creation of an evil spirit in Genesis 1, and this evil spirit is responsible for sin (The Community Rule of the Dead Sea Scrolls). 3. There is a tradition that the animals lost the power of speech due to Adam and Eve’s transgression in the garden (Jubilees, Philo, Josephus). 4. There is a tradition that faults Eve more than Adam for disobeying God in the Garden (Jubilees, Josephus, Life of Adam and Eve). And in one document illicit sexual desire becomes associated with Eve’s transgression (Life of Adam and Eve). 5. One subversive tradition presents Eve as a virtuous and moral model who receives transcendent visions reserved for Judaism’s most holy people (Life of Adam and Eve). 6. The apocalyptic writers attribute death, and the physical pain and chaos of the present evil age to Adam’s transgression in the Garden (4 Ezra, 2 Baruch). But both reject the idea of hereditary sin or what later Christian theology would call “original sin…What we do know for certain is that Second Temple Judaism believed in a relational understanding of sin—it is disobedient action which people freely chose to do—rather than the result of an ontological condition of human nature inherited from previous generations. In other words, the sin of Adam and Eve was interpreted in Second Temple Judaism in Jewish categories of thought—relational or covenantal rather than ontological.” (John Toews, The Story of Original Sin, 36-37 (Kindle Edition): Eugene, OR: PICKWICK Publications)
The Jewish people before the time of Christ did not believe that sin is inherited from one’s parents. Indeed, Toews was surprised to learn that the earliest Christians taught that children are conceived and born as sinless into the world.
“The writings of the early theologians we have tracked so far represent the Greek-speaking eastern churches. All were agreed that sin entered the human race because of the transgression of Adam. Their understandings of Genesis 3 and of Adam’s sin are quite similar and in many respects quite different from what we will find in the Latin-speaking western churches. The most critical point of difference between the East and the West is the absence among the Greek-speaking theologians of the concept of inherited guilt, which is the central point of the Latin doctrine of sin. Without exception among the Greek theologians, the inheritance from Adam’s sin was mortality and corruption only. That is, the Greek fathers taught that humanity inherited Adam’s punishment, death, but not Adam’s sin. Guilt for sin could only be the result of a freely committed personal act. The Greek theologians consistently espoused the sinlessness of infants as late as John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia, contemporaries of Augustine. 56…We are now through nearly 400 years of Christian church history and there is still no ontological understanding of sin. Sin is a result of freely committed acts which are nurtured by “the social heredity” in which people are born and live, and results in broken relationships, personal dysfunction and social chaos, and ultimately death.” (John Toews, The Story of Original Sin, 60-61 (Kindle Edition): Eugene, OR: PICKWICK Publications)
The pagan religions taught that anything material is somehow evil or corrupt, and since children possess a material flesh and blood body, they must also be sinful by nature. This idea began to influence and contaminate the church after the time of the Apostles. Rejection of the Word of God and an espousal with paganism brought about the doctrine of original sin. This all primarily happened through the influence of one man, Augustine.
“This book explores Augustine’s conversion from the traditional Christian view of free choice in salvation (battling Stoic and Gnostic determinism) back to his prior Manichaean view of divine unilateral determinism of eternal destinies (heaven or hell)….We need to explore the novel foundation on which Augustine laid his later Christian theology. This will expose the fact that Augustinian-Calvinism’s impressively logical skyscraper has been built upon an unstable foundation of pagan syncretistic (mixing pagan and Christian ideas) sand. Augustine of Hippo’s early influences from Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Manichaeism ultimately determined his final theology, with his later deterministic interpretations of scripture reverting to his pre-Christian Manichaean interpretations. The key scriptures cited in modern defenses of Reformed theology are the very ones used by the heretical Manichaeans in the fourth and fifth centuries and imported into Christianity by Augustine. Numerous scholars cite these scriptures and cite Augustine as proof for the validity of their Augustinian-Calvinist interpretations. They remain unaware of the pagan Stoic, Neoplatonic, and Manichaean origins of these highly deterministic interpretations of scripture.” (Ken Wilson, The Foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism, 21-22 (Kindle Edition): Regula Fidei Press)
What did Toews finally conclude about all of these things?
“In short, we should be clear that there is no biblical basis for Augustine’s doctrine of “original sin.” There is no basis for it in the Genesis 3 text, or elsewhere in the Old Testament. There is no basis for it in the New Testament, and certainly not in the locus classicus for Augustine, Romans 5:12. Specifically, there is no biblical evidence for a universal human nature which was forever biologically corrupted by Adam’s willful act and for which all subsequent generations are now accountable. That is, there is no biblical evidence for the notion of “seminal identity” which asserts in one form or another that all humanity was present in Adam’s genitals and that an infinitesmal part of Adam’s corrupted soul has been transmitted to each subsequent person through the semen of his or her father through the process of sexual intercourse. The Platonic and Stoic foundations for such speculations about the origin and nature of the soul have been abandoned long ago. There is no biblical basis for such a theology, no theological justification for such a theology, and no scientific evidence for such a theology.…One other historical note is important. The Jewish faith, which takes the Hebrew Scriptures as its sacred and normative text, has no theology of original sin. The bottom line, we should be clear, is that Augustine’s doctrine of original sin is without biblical and historical foundation. The doctrine of “original sin,” as James O’Donnell states, is Augustine’s “most original and nearly single-handed creation.”55 But, as Mark Biddle so succinctly states, “the most fundamental flaw . . .” is that “the doctrine cannot be found in Scripture.”56 It is a mythological creation which the western church has been seduced to believe and teach as dogma.…I grew up believing that I was “born in sin” because of Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden. In the spring of 1958 I was taught the doctrine of original sin based on the traducian theory of sin transmission through sexual intercourse by which my father passed on Adam’s sin to me. I have now traced the story of the emergence of the doctrine of original sin. It is not taught in the Bible. It is the creation of one man, Augustine, with the help of a few prior teachers in the church, in large part, according to Pelikan and Ferguson, to justify the practice of infant baptism as the means of cleansing for original sin. In other words, the doctrine of original sin is not only without biblical foundation, but it is a late development in the patristic church, and is related to a need undergird an ecclesiastical practice of the western church about which there were some questions in the early church.” (John Toews, The Story of Original Sin, 88-89 (Kindle Edition): Eugene, OR: PICKWICK Publications)
What to take from all this?
First, it is good to examine other religious material, doctrine, and teachers. We are to “prove all things” (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and “test the spirits, whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). There can be value found in researching outside of the Bible (which the Bible itself reminds us of in numerous passages-see Acts 17:26-28; 1 Corinthians 15:33; Titus 12-13; 2 Peter 2:17; Jude 9, 12-15, etc.). But we must be careful to separate the wheat from the chaff-the good from the bad-and the Bible is the sifter by which such is determined (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
Second, we must remember here that not all teachers, doctrines, and churches are of God (Matthew 7:21-23; 15:13). Teachings, practices, and churches which are not in harmony with the sacred Word should not be embraced.
Finally, children are born innocent and sinless! Thanks to the work of Jesus, each person can again be made as innocent as children through the new birth. While there is no “infant baptism” in the Word of God, there is baptism for repentant believers!
Mark 16:16-He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.
John 3:5-Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Thanks Lord for Your gift of salvation. Amen.