Featured I was born this way...

I am not sure what you are saying, but it is clear God does not impute sin until a person knows between good and evil (Deu 1:39).

I also believe that is what Paul is teaching in Romans 7:9;

Rom 7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.
11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.

Paul had just said that he would not have known sin but for the law. He would not have known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

This explains verse 9, Paul is speaking of when he came to know and understand the law. When he understood the law he was convicted as a sinner and spiritually died. Until he knew the law he was spiritually alive.

Paul had believed the law led to life, if you follow the law you would live, but he discovered it led to death, because no man can perfectly keep the law. So sin took advantage of the law and used it to kill him.

So again, it is the knowledge of good and evil that makes man accountable.

 

I'd explain like this with the verse you used:

Let's break it down:

"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us,"

END OF STORY! You are a sinner! Wanted to be a judge of good and evil. Too late you aren't God, period. = Baptist :laugh: The point is we fall in sin on the first point.

"to know good and evil:"

So what, its already to late. You aren't the judge, God doesn't second guess your judgment. Catholics seem to think they fail on the second point.

 

What??? You need to read that again, God said man has become as one of US! He is speaking of himself! God is saying man has become as God!

God is not evil. Knowing good and evil is not sinful, or else God would be sinful.

So, you are making a HUGE mistake in your interpretation here.

Knowing good and evil is what makes a man accountable, it is what convicts him, he has no excuse for sin.

So, you got that seriously wrong.

 

Exactly. Man desired to be as God. Man is not God. Man was made in God's image but by nature wasn't satisfied with that miraculous nature God gave him. Man is a sinner - you know what sinner means, correct, not hitting the target perfectly. Man will NEVER hit the target (judge between good and evil) perfectly. Why? He is NOT God. Man is therefore condemned already because of wanting to be as God, man has gained this nature of wanting to be as God, man is already condemned by that nature, NOT THE ACT of judgment or IOWs the quality of that judgment.

Wanting to be the judge of good and evil is sinful, that is the point. You don't know this perfectly, because there is Only One that is perfectly Good.

Wrong. You would have to assume that man could make a perfect decision and then God would hold him accountable for it not being good enough. There are none that are good, period.

You are being held accountable for wanting wanting to be as God. Thinking you can try is a serious mistake, because it ain't going to happen.

The moment you say I'll be judge of whether or not this is good you are trying to be as God. Too late. Thus, all men with the nature to judge good and evil, which we all have are condemned already.

The good news is that all men STILL have the ability to repent and take of next tree of life also...

 

I completely disagree with you, knowing good and evil does not make man sinful.

Yes, it convicts him of sin, but knowing the law is not what makes him sinful, committing sin is what makes him sinful.

Paul explains this in Romans 7. He says if the law convicts him as a sinner, is the law evil? NO.

Rom 7:12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.

Knowing the law is not evil, knowing the law is GOOD! The law is Holy! God gave man the law.

So, I absolutely disagree with your view. Knowing good from evil is not sinful, it is good, but it makes a man accountable and responsible. This is why Adam, Eve, and all men spiritually die, when we KNOWINGLY sin.

 

You continue to miss the point. Back up one step, who knows good perfectly? God. Man wanted to know this but can two be a judge of it? No. We wanted to be as God, we need to repent of wanting to be as God. We already have the nature to want to be as God. Why? Adam acquired that that nature for us. If it helps I believe we would of done the same thing, actually I sorta believe God is telling us we all did do the same thing.

Wanting to be as God convicts of sin BEFORE we make the judgment.

No the law is not evil. God is the law, He is judge. God created man perfectly good but made became evil when he tries to be judge of good and evil AS IF he were God. The judgment we make is secondary in the fall of man. By the law merely existing we sin, not by the act, by the presence of the law. God is the law, not us.

There you have it. God, the only Good Judge of good and evil gave man the law. Man does not make his own law, man is not God.

I know I sin every move I make. I am never perfect in my judgment. God gave us the ability to reason, NOT the ability judge that reasoning for ourselves to to be good! HE is the ONLY GOOD.

The only way to be perfect in my judgment is to accept God as my Lord over that judgment, the law giver. We'd best know that we sin every time we think we have done good on our own. One more time, there is only Only One that is Good. WE are not God. That is the point. Man, all men wanted to be as God, that is their nature from the beginning. God knew man would want this, but He has given ALL men a second chance - take that nature of sense, intellect and reason that He gave us and put aside this "want to be as God" and take of the tree of life. .Take that nature we all have and choose to live in Christ and be perfect with God as our Lord over us - including our judgment.

 

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: Rev 12:9

And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. Rev 20:2,3

How relative is it that this one was in the garden where God placed the man he had created?

Why did the woman taken from the man and the man she had been taken from, sin?

According to scripture have all except one to be born of woman sinned?

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

Was the determination for the coming of the Christ, in the flesh, made before or after the woman and man sinned?

Why?

 

How could the desire of the flesh be free will, God clearly gave them free will in the situation, they could either obey or disobey. free will and God put allowed them to come into the situtation and introduced them to free will.

 

This is precisely what I affirm:
I believe, like Winman that babies are born innocent. I adhere to something akin to what is called "Original Sin"....but rather we distinguish that from this imputation of what I (and some others) call "Original Guilt".

Babies are not born guilty of anything. They aren't "sinners". But they inherit a nature and environment and flesh (which is weakness and susceptible to insurmountable temptation) which will inevitably result in transgression of the Law.

The Bible is EVERYWHERE telling men how they have "GONE ASTRAY", they have "TURNED EVERYONE" to his own way.

"For all HAVE SINNED and fallen short..."

James maps out how our OWN SINS ultimately kill us:
James 1:3 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
Jam 1:14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
Jam 1:15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

This warning is toothless if Original Guilt is true, because Spiritual Death is merely some fait-accompli for which we can simply thank Adam. James could not rightly say that "...But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed...... when it is finished, bringeth forth death". Except to say that due to Adam's transgression you are born dead in sin anyway, so this particular series of events is an explanation of a scenario which never ACTUALLY plays out in the real World at all. Because (given Original Guilt) all of mankind already "died" once and only once under Adam, so your own sins never actually cause your Spiritual demise.
What ever an assumption of Original Guilt is, no man is really going to hell for any of their own sins per se except (perhaps) for their unbelief.

But I think the assumption of GUILT is super-imposed onto "Original Sin" such that one imagines one cannot exist without the other.

It is telling that the Old Testament is essentially devoid of any teaching of Original Guilt. It is a construct of 3rd and 4th Century Catholicism. No rabbi or Orthodox Jew imagines for one second that the Old Testament teaches anything akin to the notion of "Original Guilt" idea that infants are somehow guilty of anything.

And Winman is also correct in that:
The assumption of Original Guilt has brought about (and still does) all manner of crazy errors which we heap onto the Scriptures in order to patch up the holes it creates:
From Infant Baptism....
to these deranged ideas that there is some special class of "elect infants" that God gives a special dispensation to such that they are saved by grace utterly devoid of faith.
Or that God simply gives a "special" grace to all infants not provided for adults. (again completely without having any faith).
Or even that all infants by necessity go to Hell because of their inherited guilt etc...

These are all imagined constructs nowhere suggested in Scripture which we feel forced to develop to patch up the problems an assumption of Original Guilt creates.

Men are inherently weak and susceptible to temptation and also placed into a fallen and decrepit environment such that all of us inevitably choose our own path and it is to sin........But THAT is why we are guilty. It isn't some mystical "guilty-gene" that males only pass to their progeny, or any other medieval superstition.

Baptists have come far in throwing off the superstitions of Catholicism....some have (thankfully) thrown that last vestige of insanity off as well, and I believe more Baptists are doing so every day. We need to complete the break from Romanism and ditch that particular Augustinian error.

 

These are compelling arguements...particularly for one who has lost a child and heard everything from.....your child is in hell, you put him there for being a sinner and not a covenant believer blab blab. All that ever accomplished was heartbrake and emnity.

Id like to hear from the other side their position.

 

This is an excellent post and describes my view almost perfectly.

We are born into a sinful world.

Job 14:4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.

Job 15:14 What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?

Ever see a baby be born, they are covered in their mother's blood. This is how Job describes man. Man comes into a filthy, sinful world, he cannot help but be polluted by it, just as a baby cannot be born without being covered in his mother's blood.

Everybody quotes Psa 58:3 to prove men are born sinners;

Psa 58:3 The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

Everyone quotes this verse to prove we are born sinners, but it actually refutes that idea and shows we LEARN to sin from our parents. All children speak the language of their parents. You don't have a Spanish speaking child born to English speaking parents. A person must know language to lie, and a child learns language from it's parents.

So, we come into a filthy sinful world surrounded by thousands of temptations and sinful examples. We also are weak in that we are born flesh with many desires and lusts that tug and pull at us to obey all the sin we see and feel around us.

It is no wonder that all men sin, what was a wonder is that Jesus could live 33 years in this world as a man and NEVER sin. That is a wonder.

 

See I don't see man as any good out of the shoot....thank God that Christ died to atone for our sins prior to my kids death so that he was provided that gift of eternal life...its just that simple. Now the hounds of hell Hyper Calvinists pronouncements of hell bound simply served as a catalistto seeking truth...only Winman, you are so far afield that I cant trust you. So even with people whoattempt to give you an ear, you fail to gain consensus.

 

Don't listen to me then, listen to Inspector Javert. He understands perfectly. He is simply saying what I have always been saying, he just does a much better job of it.

 

Compelling pitch but doesn't hold up....just feels cheap. Had it had a sound theological base then many theological types would have embraced it but thasnt happened has it..but I don't embrace tons of stuff Calvinists do. I'm closesta to a Primitive Baptist minus some of the dogma they carry....which most of them are jetticing. I remain there until I see better...frankly I have not.

 

The entirety of the Orthodox Churches embrace it. That is minimally 1/2 of all Christianity throughout all history. We have a myopic Western viewpoint that the Western Church spoke for all Christian Theology world-without-end for all of history. This is not so.

If you were a Christian in the Byzantine Empire, Russia, Poland, Greece...anywhere East of the Cacaucus Mountains than Original Guilt ala R.C.C. would be a novel concept to you with no "Theological Types" adhering to it.

 

While the Orthodox Church does accord Augustine of Hippo the title “saint” and recognizes the vast number of theological works he produced, Augustine was not as well known in the Christian East. His works were not translated into Greek until the 14th century; as such, he had little or no influence on mainstream Orthodox thought until 17th century Ukraine and 18th century Russia, primarily through the influence of western clergy and the establishment of theological schools which relied on Latin models with respect to curricula, text books, etc.

With regard to original sin, the difference between Orthodox Christianity and the West may be outlined as follows:

In the Orthodox Faith, the term “original sin” refers to the “first” sin of Adam and Eve. As a result of this sin, humanity bears the “consequences” of sin, the chief of which is death. Here the word “original” may be seen as synonymous with “first.” Hence, the “original sin” refers to the “first sin” in much the same way as “original chair” refers to the “first chair.”

In the West, humanity likewise bears the “consequences” of the “original sin” of Adam and Eve. However, the West also understands that humanity is likewise “guilty” of the sin of Adam and Eve. The term “Original Sin” here refers to the condition into which humanity is born, a condition in which guilt as well as consequence is involved.

In the Orthodox Christian understanding, while humanity does bear the consequences of the original, or first, sin, humanity does not bear the personal guilt associated with this sin. Adam and Eve are guilty of their willful action; we bear the consequences, chief of which is death.

One might look at all of this in a completely different light. Imagine, if you will, that one of your close relatives was a mass murderer. He committed many serious crimes for which he was found guilty—and perhaps even admitted his guilt publicly. You, as his or her son or brother or cousin, may very well bear the consequences of his action—people may shy away from you or say, “Watch out for him—he comes from a family of mass murderers.” Your name may be tainted, or you may face some other forms of discrimination as a consequence of your relative’s sin. You, however, are not personally guilty of his or her sin.

There are some within Orthodoxy who approach a westernized view of sin, primarily after the 17th and 18th centuries due to a variety of westernizing influences particularly in Ukraine and Russia after the time of Peter Mohyla. These influences have from time to time colored explanations of the Orthodox Faith which are in many respects lacking.

http://oca.org/questions/teaching/st.-augustine-original-sin

 

http://pemptousia.com/2011/11/original-sin-orthodox-doctrine-or-heresy/

 

So am I. You obviously don't understand the Scripture quoted.

On the surface that may appear to be true, but the reality is, when we are emotionally or physically distressed, distracted, or caused to be at reduced capacity because of those afflictions, we will be more likely to act irrationally -- sinfully, if you will -- than when we are well rested, well fed and happy. That goes for the unsaved as well as the saved. Yes, sin is part of human nature. But there is a moral factor to all behavior that even the unsaved can cling to, though they are more likely to give in to temptation than the Christian.

You don't know what you're talking about, Amy. The mentally ill, when found "not guilty" by reason of insanity, nonetheless are committed to confinement for treatment, and most psychotic patients will never be released because it is nearly impossible to get them to a point whereby they can be expected to be normal. By the way, you chose the wrong affliction to use as an example. Schizophrenics are rarely violent, and on the occasions when they are violent, it is self-defense. Please don't try to be an expert in an area in which you are not.

Wrong, because ...

... he didn't say anything to the contrary of those statements. Your opinion that children are responsible is simply hogwash, and no amount of point-making such as the above is going to change that.

 

Paul wrote

And yet here on BB we have many who suggest that there is indeed.
Paul said

here on BB this answer is constantly questioned and doubted.
Paul wrote;

on BB this series of questions is replied to often times with doubt and unbelief .in God's wisdom and goodness.

On BB many seem to want to help God out...they suggest how God could have did things according to the "thoughts" they have....even when the texts of scripture are clear.

If we keep asking the same questions over and over will the texts of scripture change?

No ....the scripture will not change at all. So then we go back and look to re write history...maybe find a word or a sentence that we can imply a
'new" idea....