Super Glossary

Original Sin

Entertainment / Literature / Original Sin: A theological doctrine arguing that all humans at the moment of conception inherit collective responsibility and guilt for the sins of Adam and Eve along with an innate tendency towards evil. The idea is largely inspired by Romans 5:12, which reads, 'Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men.' Most modern interpreters consider the 'one man' to be Adam, and thus Adam's actions caused innate sinfulness and the cycle of death-and-life to enter the world. The term 'original sin' (Latin, peccatum origine) does not appear in the Bible, however. Tertullian coined the phrase in the second century, and Saint Augustine popularized it and elaborated upon it in his theological writings. Many modern Christians think of original sin as the consequence of Adam eating the fruit in the Garden of Eden. For Saint Augustine and Tertullian, however, when they first developed the doctrine, the source of original sin in later generations was not that Adam and Eve ate the fruit, but that he and Eve engaged in sex later while in a state of sin. It was this secondary sinful act, argued Augustine, that passed along the taint of original sin to subsequent generations, rendering humanity incapable of achieving salvation without divine grace. Original sin as a theological component of soteriology has had a profound effect on both medieval Catholicism and modern Protestant Christianity. Responses to it include on one extreme from the Calvinist doctrine of 'infant damnation' with its the related Calvinist model of humanity's 'total depravity', this theology embraces the doctrine fully. On the opposite extreme, Pelagian heresies rejected original sin altogether, holding that each human is only accountable for his or her own actions rather than inheriting sin from one's ancestors. The modern doctrine of 'Prevenient Grace' in Methodism is in many ways a watered-down version of medieval Pelagianism.
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