Humble Disciple
Active Member
Eastern Orthodox Christians and Jews have always maintained that, while we inherited the inclination toward sin from Adam, we did not inherit the guilt of Adam's sin, which would go against the plain meaning of scripture.
Ezekiel 18:20
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
While death and sin entered the world through Adam's sin, Adam was not created as naturally immortal. If Adam had never sinned, he would still have needed to continue eating from the tree of life to live forever.
Augustine's doctrine on original sin may have had more to do with his prior Manichaeism than with what scripture and the previous church fathers actually taught.
While we indeed need God's grace to avoid sin and receive the forgiveness of sin, that doesn't mean we inherited the guilt of Adam's sin.
The Anabaptists, who were the forerunners of the Baptist movement, taught that we inherited the inclination toward sin from Adam, but not Adam's guilt:
Neither has Judaism ever taught the Augustinian doctrine:
Eastern Orthodox Christians have never taught the Augustian doctrine of original sin, and many Eastern Orthodox Christians don't regard Augustine as a saint because of it. They instead refer to him as "Blessed Augustine," but not Saint Augustine.
It's kind of strange when Baptists, who reject the Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, insist upon the Catholic doctrine of original sin on which it hinges.
Ezekiel 18:20
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
While death and sin entered the world through Adam's sin, Adam was not created as naturally immortal. If Adam had never sinned, he would still have needed to continue eating from the tree of life to live forever.
Augustine's doctrine on original sin may have had more to do with his prior Manichaeism than with what scripture and the previous church fathers actually taught.
While we indeed need God's grace to avoid sin and receive the forgiveness of sin, that doesn't mean we inherited the guilt of Adam's sin.
The Anabaptists, who were the forerunners of the Baptist movement, taught that we inherited the inclination toward sin from Adam, but not Adam's guilt:
Anabaptists stubbornly held to Ezekiel 18:4 which explicitly states that “…it is only the person who sins who shall die.” Robert Friedman states that “The Ezekiel reference…freed the movement from the fatalistic character of inherited sin which was so characteristic of the Catholic Church and Protestant orthodoxy” (100). Anabaptists held that “…the sin of Adam and Eve introduced into the world a powerful tendency or inclination to sin which resulted in universal sinfulness, but it was a sinfulness by choice rather than by nature…The consequence of the sin in Eden was moral, not ontological, that is, inherited in human nature” (100).
Original Sin – Leaving it Behind (lV)
Neither has Judaism ever taught the Augustinian doctrine:
In Judaism, yetzer hara (Hebrew: יֵצֶר הַרַע yēṣer haraʿ) is the congenital inclination to do evil, by violating the will of God. The term is drawn from the phrase "the imagination of the heart of man [is] evil" (יֵצֶר לֵב הָאָדָם רַע, yetzer lev-ha-adam ra), which occurs twice at the beginning of the Torah. Genesis 6:5 and 8:21. The Hebrew word "yetzer" having appeared twice in Genesis occurs again at the end of Torah: "I knew their devisings that they do".[1] Thus from beginning to end the heart's "yetzer" is continually bent on evil, a profoundly pessimistic view of the human being. However, the Torah which began with blessing [2] anticipates future blessing [3] which will come as a result of God circumcising the heart in the latter days.[4]
In traditional Judaism, the yetzer hara is not a demonic force, but rather man's misuse of things the physical body needs to survive. Thus, the need for food becomes gluttony due to the yetzer hara. The need for procreation becomes sexual abuse, and so on.
The underlying principle in Jewish thought states that each person — Jew and gentile alike — is born with both a good and an evil inclination. Possessing an evil inclination is considered neither bad nor abnormal. The problem, however, arises when one makes a willful choice to "cross over the line," and seeks to gratify his evil inclination, based on the prototypical models of right and wrong in the Hebrew Bible.[7] This notion is succinctly worded in the Babylonian Talmud: "Everything is determined by heaven, except one's fear of heaven,"[8] meaning, everything in a person's life is predetermined by God—except that person's choice to be either righteous or wicked, which is left to their free will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yetzer_hara
In Jewish tradition, the Tree of Knowledge and the eating of its fruit represents the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before that time, the two were separate, and evil had only a nebulous existence in potential. While free choice did exist before eating the fruit, evil existed as an entity separate from the human psyche, and it was not in human nature to desire it. Eating and internalizing the forbidden fruit changed this, and thus was born the yetzer hara, the evil inclination.[8][9]
Tree of the knowledge of good and evil - Wikipedia
Eastern Orthodox Christians have never taught the Augustian doctrine of original sin, and many Eastern Orthodox Christians don't regard Augustine as a saint because of it. They instead refer to him as "Blessed Augustine," but not Saint Augustine.
The Eastern Church never subscribed to Augustine of Hippo's notions of original sin and hereditary guilt. The Church does not interpret "original sin" as having anything to do with transmitted guilt but with transmitted mortality. Because Adam sinned, all humanity shares not in his guilt but in the same punishment.[72]
The Eastern Churches accept the teachings of John Cassian, as do Catholic Churches eastern and western,[40] in rejecting the doctrine of total depravity, by teaching that human nature is "fallen", that is, depraved, but not totally. Augustine Casiday states that Cassian "baldly asserts that God's grace, not human free will, is responsible for 'everything which pertains to salvation' – even faith".[41] Cassian points out that people still have moral freedom and one has the option to choose to follow God.
Original sin - Wikipedia
It's kind of strange when Baptists, who reject the Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, insist upon the Catholic doctrine of original sin on which it hinges.
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