Concept
Original sin
Overview
In Christian theology, original sin (Latin: peccatum originale) is the condition of sinfulness that all humans share, which they inherit from the Fall of Adam and Eve, involving the loss of original righteousness and the distortion of the Image of God. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3 (the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden), and in texts such as Psalm 51:5 ("I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me") and Romans 5:12–21 ("Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned").
The specific doctrine of original sin was developed in the 2nd century struggle against Gnosticism by Irenaeus of Lyons, and was shaped significantly by Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD), who was the first author to use the phrase "original sin" in his polemics against the Pelagians. Influenced by Augustine, the Councils of Carthage (411–418 AD) and Orange (529 AD) brought theological speculation about original sin into the official lexicon of the Church.
Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin equated original sin with concupiscence (or 'hurtful desire'), affirming that it persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom to do good, proposing that original sin involved a loss of free will except to sin. The Jansenist movement, which the Catholic Church declared heretical, also maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will. Instead, the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares that "Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle", and the Council of Trent states that "whereas all men had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam [...] although free will, attenuated as it was in its powers, and bent down, was by no means extinguished in them."
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Original sin is discussed.
And yet these miserable sophistical reasoners do not touch upon these deep corruptions even in word. But by taking this true view of original sin, it clearly demonstrates, according to the nature of correlative proofs, what original sin really was by its awful contrariety to that original righteousness. Thus it is evident that original sin is the essential and entire loss and deprivation and absence of original…
Martin Luther, Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
For the spirit it is a duty to be free, and to realise itself by its own act. Nature is for man only the starting-point which he has to transform. The theological doctrine of original sin is a profound truth; but modern enlightenment prefers to believe that man is naturally good, and that he acts right so long as he continues true to nature.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
states what it is; names the idea
86. The first difficulty is how the soul could be infected with original sin, which is the root of actual sins, without injustice on God's part in exposing the soul thereto. This difficulty has given rise to three opinions on the origin of the soul itself. The first is that of the _pre-existence of human souls_ in another world or in another life, where they had sinned and on that account had been condemned to this…
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
names the idea; opens on it
For the first consists of two; the second is the complete death, which consists of all. For, as the whole earth consists of many lands, and the Church universal of many churches, so death universal consists of all deaths. The first consists of two, one of the body, and another of the soul. So that the first death is a death of the whole man, since the soul without God and without the body suffers punishment for a…
of Hippo Augustine, The City of God, Volume I
states what it is; author linked in the graph
For, as Augustine says (QQ. Vet. et Nov. Test. qu. 19 [*Work of an anonymous author], among the supposititious works of St. Augustine): "God made man immortal as long as he did not sin; so that he might achieve for himself life or death." For man's body was indissoluble not by reason of any intrinsic vigor of immortality, but by reason of a supernatural force given by God to the soul, whereby it was enabled to…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
states what it is; author linked in the graph
Philosophers who discussed Original sin
- R. H. Tawney
- René Girard
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- John Locke
- Simone Weil
- Augustine of Hippo
- Richard Price
- Thomas Aquinas
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- Peter Singer
- Emil Cioran
- Duns Scotus
- Jonathan Edwards (theologian)
- Hugo Grotius
- Arthur Schopenhauer
- Kenneth Burke
- The Age of Reason
Related ideas
- Beatific vision
- Adam and Eve
- Gnosticism
- Ambrose
- Immaculate Conception
- John Calvin
- John Cassian
- Justin Martyr
- Metaphysics
- Grace in Christianity
- Stoicism
- Angel
- Catechism of the Catholic Church
- Messiah
- Manichaeism
- Methodism
- Augustine of Hippo
- Thomas Aquinas
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Karl Barth
- Psychology
- Lutheranism
- Counter-Reformation
- Pelagianism
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Conservatism.