# Christians - What EXACTLY is 'Original Sin'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 27, 2002, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312 "2002-03-27T03:30:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![happyheathen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5e925/32.png) [@happyheathen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/happyheathen)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/1 "2002-03-27T03:30:56Z")
OK, I’ve tried to slip this Q into a couple of threads, but they all went south (sidebar: origin of expression ‘go south’?) I was raised to be middle-to-right wing Protestant, but have been exposed to various flavors (including Coptic - top that!) anyway, how/when did humans acquire ‘original sin’? do un-baptised babies go to hell? (Alright, that’s a cheap shot - ignore it) [sub]‘At least I’m enjoying the ride’ - J. Garcia[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/2 "2002-03-27T03:36:19Z")
Original Sin-when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, after being tricked into doing so by a snake-the Devil. God then punished them by casting them out and making them mortal, and so we all have original sin on our souls. Unborn babies do not go to Hell. Originally, the Catholic Church stated that they go to a place called Limbo, which is like Heaven in every respect, except one does not see God. However, I don’t think it’s very widely taught nowadays. Of course, the question is, do we take the Adam and Eve story lterally, or as an allegory? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/3 "2002-03-27T03:41:27Z")
IANAC. Like yourself I was raised with it; and, like yourself, didn’t pick up on it from the context in which I was raised. But perhaps unlike yourself, I attended junior high school in Georgia, aka the Deep South, and was witnessed to by fundamentalists. As I understand it, Original Sin is Eve chomping the apple and getting Adam to go likewise. Actually not an apple but the “fruit of the knowledge of good and evil”. The fundies apparently believe this act tainted the species in God’s eyes. As to **why** it is that, in order for God to forgive us collectively for this ancient act, God required God to sacrifice Himself to appease Himself, uh… ::holds head in hands:: but that’s the gist of it as I understand it. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/4 "2002-03-27T03:50:43Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by AHunter3 \* > \*\* > As I understand it, Original Sin is Eve chomping the apple and getting Adam to go likewise. Actually not an apple but the “fruit of the knowledge of good and evil”. The fundies apparently believe this act tainted the species in God’s eyes. > > \*\* Actually, isn’t there more to it that this? The book _Man And His Gods_ by Homer Smith spends quite a bit of words on this. The question was how does this original sin get transferred to the newborn? St. Augustine finally came up with an answer. The sin gets carried forward because babies are the result of [gasp] **sexual intercourse** [/gasp] ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/5 "2002-03-27T04:03:43Z")
I thought it had to do with everyone being mortal? Truly, wasn’t the Garden of Eden an allegory for paradise? And such, if they hadn’t eaten the fruit, they would have stayed there for all eternity? ---
**Author:** ![happyheathen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5e925/32.png) [@happyheathen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/happyheathen)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/6 "2002-03-27T06:41:06Z")
We’ve hit on the 2 major themes: 1. Adam/Eve… apple… ‘knowledge’ - some consider this knowledge to be right/wrong (general) others consider it ‘knowledge of Sin’ (read: sex) 2. Having been born of the union of man and woman (that sex stuff again, but because of ACTIONS, not just Knowledge) 3. (not yet mentioned): just because (for the truly intellectually lazy) I had thought the ‘Birth via sex’ was a fundie Protestant thing, mangled from the Catholic dogma of Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth - should have suspected Augustine, I guess. any other explanations? Did the RCC ever teach Augustine’s dogma EXCLUSIVELY? If so, when did it stop - was there enough time for the theory to ‘jump’ to Calvin, or had the church dropped it before the 16[sup]TH[/sup] C.? ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/7 "2002-03-27T08:02:37Z")
As far as I know, Augustine did’t come up with the answer, he came up with the question. Orginal sin was his idea. Before that the idea was people were sinful, and therefore needed Christ, but it was their own sins they needed forgiveness for. Gus is the one who decided we still had the apple thing tainting us from the very beginning. Evidence for Original Sin: erections. That we are INHERENTLY sinful shows up in the fact that we (those of us who get erections) have lost concious control over part of our body. Back in the Garden of Eden Adam’s penis did what he told it to, and sex was just like shaking hands (He also theorized that Jesus avoided Original Sin not only by not being concieved though (ick) intercourse, but by avoid sex organs all together and being born through Mary’s navel.) Oh and Guin, I think the Pope denyed the doctrine of Limbo not to long ago. I haven’t been able to find a cite for it, but that’s what I heard, and I wrote a short story about all the poor babies and pagans getting evicted. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/8 "2002-03-27T11:32:28Z")
I’ve heard it said (by Christians) that original sin is no longer an issue as it has been atoned for by the death of Jesus on the cross (the virgin birth having meant that _he_ did not have original sin) for everyone (regardless of whether they believe it or not). That being the case, it would only be personal sin that is a problem and thus the individual needs to repent. Furthermore, babies would not have had the chance to commit any personal sin and would therefore have no problems. This of course raises the important question about babies that died BC, for which I’m sure some sort of mystical retrospective viewpoint-of-eternity explanation could be hastily constructed. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/9 "2002-03-27T12:41:10Z")
Forgive the extended quote, but it may cast some light on Catholic thinking on the matter of original sin. > [@](#): > > _From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, para 396 et seq_ > \*\*God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God . . . The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom . . . > > Man . . . let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command . . . All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness . . . > > Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness. They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives . . . The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man. Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay” . . . Death makes its entrance into human history . . . > > How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? . . . The transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act. > > Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". 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 . . . > > The Church’s teaching on the transmission of original sin was articulated more precisely in the fifth century, especially under the impulse of St. Augustine’s reflections against Pelagianism, and in the sixteenth century, in opposition to the Protestant Reformation. Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God’s grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam’s fault to bad example. The first Protestant reformers, on the contrary, taught that original sin has radically perverted man and destroyed his freedom; they identified the sin inherited by each man with the tendency to evil (concupiscentia), which would be insurmountable . . . > > The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man’s situation and activity in the world. By our first parents’ sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free . . . Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals. > > The consequences of original sin and of all men’s personal sins put the world as a whole in the sinful condition aptly described in St. John’s expression, “the sin of the world”. This expression can also refer to the negative influence exerted on people by communal situations and social structures that are the fruit of men’s sins. > > This dramatic situation of “the whole world [which] is in the power of the evil one” makes man’s life a battle: The whole of man’s history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity. > \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/10 "2002-03-27T12:48:10Z")
“Original Sin” is the unavoidable downside of free will. God wants us to turn to Him freely and of our own volition; for this to be meaningful, there has to be some other direction we might choose to turn. And. It. Has. NOTHING. To. Do. With. Sex. I don’t care what various puritanical dingbat theologians have said. Sex is no more sinful than any other human activity. It can draw you away from God, or towards Him. If you are engaged in a vigorous three-way with Cindy Crawford and Dame Edna Everage, and your thoughts are along the lines of “Praise God Who made them!”, that’s sex drawing you towards God, and, spiritually speaking, it’s a good thing. The keyword with sex (and with many other things) is _continence_, not _abstinence_. It’s _supposed_ to be a part of your life (or God wouldn’t have made you with sex organs) but it’s not supposed to dominate it. Like, for example, food is a good thing, but gluttony is a sin. Right? (Previews, catches **UDS** ’s post… if this makes me a Pelagian heretic, well, I’ve been called worse…) ---
**Author:** ![justinh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9fc29f/32.png) [@justinh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justinh)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/11 "2002-03-27T13:57:17Z")
Its really a basic definition: Humans are basicly animals and animals don’t go to heaven. You have to escape the animal part. Its a constant fight to lift yourself out of the animal kingdom toward the kingdom of God. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/12 "2002-03-27T18:45:36Z")
From the Articles of Religion (c. 1560, Church of England): \*\*IX Of Original or Birth-sin. \*\* Original Sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born in this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in the Greek, [symbol]frwnema sarkos[/symbol] which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe, yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin. _fixed coding - **DrMatrix** _ ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/13 "2002-03-27T18:46:49Z")
Would a moderator kindly fix my attempt at invoking the symbol font and, if necessary, the appropriate letters (F=phi, W=omega, done from possibly erroneous memory)? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![bobkitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobkitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobkitty)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2002, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/14 "2002-03-27T21:07:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by happyheathen \* > **I had thought the ‘Birth via sex’ was a fundie Protestant thing, mangled from the Catholic dogma of Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth - should have suspected Augustine, I guess.** Ah, but don’t forget that the Immaculate Conception is actually **Mary’s** conception, not Jesus’. Mary was born without Original Sin. They even have a Holy Day to celebrate it… December 8th, IIRC. And since we have no theories of Mary being born out of her mother’s navel, then we can’t as such assume that the birth-via-sex thing is accurate. ::searching for memories of catechism:: I was taught that Adam and Eve got the ball rolling on original sin by defying God and eating the fruit. They sealed their fate by not only hiding themselves afterward, but by lying about what they’d done. They, in effect, let Satan (yes, I know, I know) get a foothold here on earth; if they’d ignored him, Satan wouldn’t be able to tempt us. Anyway, their punishment was not only expulsion, but also gender-specific: Adam got the priviledge of toiling all his life for his subsistence, and Eve got menstruation and painful childbirth. We’re born with original sin because not only are we the result of those acts (the defying and the lying and the Satan-allowing), but we are born with the knowledge of right and wrong (gained from the fruit), thus free will, thus with the potential for influence by Satan. This is why the Catholics baptise babies with the godparents standing in for them, rejecting Satan on the baby’s behalf and paving the way for the subsequent sacraments. **Betenoir** … Vatican II cut Limbo out of the picture. Same time they stopped doing Mass in Latin (dammit). There has been some back-tracking since then (nothing official, mind you, but back-tracking nonetheless) that although unbaptized babies are automatically sent to Purgatory, it’s a very nice section of Purgatory. Vatican II _tried_ to get rid of Purgatory, but I can only imagine what the public outcry would have been on that (do you have any idea how much time Catholics spend praying for the poor souls in Purgatory??)… apparently the Pope did as well, and Purgatory stands. -BK ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2002, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/15 "2002-03-28T01:26:22Z")
When I was little, I always pictured Purgatory as a sort of car wash, where your soul would lie on a gurney, and all these people would come over with sponges and wash away your sins. “Oh, lied to mom about who broke the vase!” Scrub scrub here! Heh. ---
**Author:** ![happyheathen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5e925/32.png) [@happyheathen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/happyheathen)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2002, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/16 "2002-03-28T02:50:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Guinastasia \* > \*\*When I was little, I always pictured Purgatory as a sort of car wash, where your soul would lie on a gurney, and all these people would come over with sponges and wash away your sins. > > “Oh, lied to mom about who broke the vase!” Scrub scrub here! > > Heh. \*\* How about: Wore shiny black shoes to school? (does anybody recognize this one?) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2002, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/17 "2002-03-28T03:50:02Z")
_stifles laughter lest she wake up her family_ Shit, I do! Mind you, I never heard it when I was in school, but one of my professors back in community college said the nuns always forbade the girls to wear patin leather shoes. _guffaw_ ---
**Author:** ![Joe\_Cool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecb155/32.png) [@Joe\_Cool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Cool)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2002, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/18 "2002-03-28T04:28:13Z")
I don’t see the concept of “original sin” as an actual sin transmitted from generation to generation that needs to be atoned for. The original sin was adam and eve’s fall through disobedience, yes. At that time, their nature was fundamentally changed - from sinless, immortal beings living in perfect communion with God to sinful, rebellious, mortal beings living in fear of God’s righteousness. THAT is what we have inherited and need to overcome. Obviously we cannot overcome our mortality (in this lifetime, anyway), but Jesus has overcome the rebelliousness and given us the ability to become whole spiritually. So “original sin” as it affects us is that rebellious, sinful nature, along with our mortal bodies doomed to die. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2002, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/19 "2002-03-28T16:49:12Z")
Joe, there’s an old saying, “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance.” While it’s usually used more-or-less sarcastically in an effort to tone down a rant, it fits with my definition of original sin. Once sin entered into human behavior, every human being was born into a sinful world with no innate concept of what God expected, and therefore capable of committing sinful acts as much out of ignorance as out of intention – one’s intention was by definition self-centered rather than in accordance with God’s will. I don’t see a “corruption of one’s nature” as though some change to an inherent characteristic occurred, so much as a corruption _in_ nature – that we no longer were born into a world running in accordance with God’s will, and “learning at mother’s knee what God’s will is” in every situation, but rather were left at a loss, with the obvious exceptions, and therefore foundering in the sea of our own misunderstandings. I see this, not as a disagreement with your point, but as a different perspective on the same idea. **HH** , does this make a bit more sense of the idea? ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2002, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312/20 "2002-03-28T18:22:08Z")
When people start debating whether the bible is infallible; when people debate evolution vs. creatism; when science vs. faith comes up there is always the subject of “original sin” lurking in the background. Fundamentalists cannot give up the story of Adam and Eve because to do so would be to say that “original sin” does not exist. If that should happen then the whole basis of many if not most fundamentalist religions would fall apart. Jesus did not die for our “sins”, if by sins you mean that we are responsible for our own sins. How could someone have died two thousand years ago, for what you did this morning? But if he died to save you from the sins that you committed due to a “cause” that occurred prior to his dying then it works for them. It does not work for me in any manner, but then I don’t believe in the existence of Adam & Eve. This is how they believe and it really does not matter if St. Augustine came up with the idea or if you are talking about apples or some other fruit. They (the fundies) believe that Adam & Eve committed the “original sin” and that it has been passed on to their descendants. Jesus was crucified to pay for all the sins of mankind that were brought on because of “original sin”. If you believe **that** you are going to heaven, if not it doesn’t matter what you do, you are not going to heaven. That is what they believe and if you say Adam & Eve did not exist, you have denied the existence of “original sin”. If you say that man evolved and did not start out sinful, then that is unacceptable, as would be the idea that you can earn your way into heaven. I am not saying this is what all Christians believe, I know it is not what the Catholics believe. It is however what those that use the concept of “original sin” believe and they are going to stick to it. I live in the heart of the bible belt and go to church with these people, who incidentally are for the most part fine loving people. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christians-what-exactly-is-original-sin/100312.md?page=2)