Original sin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Original sin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Luther, however, also agreed with the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (that Mary was conceived free from original sin) by saying:


[Mary] is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin. God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil. God is with her, meaning that all she did or left undone is divine and the action of God in her. Moreover, God guarded and protected her from all that might be hurtful to her.



The Catholic Church teaches that every human person born on this earth is made in the image of God. Within man "is both the powerful surge toward the good because we are made in the image of God, and the darker impulses toward evil because of the effects of Original Sin." Furthermore, it explicitly denies that we inherit guilt from anyone, maintaining that instead we inherit our fallen nature. In this it differs from the Calvinism/Protestant position that each person actually inherits Adam's guilt, and teaches instead that "original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants ... but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man". "In other words, human beings do not bear any 'original guilt' from Adam and Eve's particular sin."



The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that in "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 ... original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed"—a state and not an act".  This "state of deprivation of the original holiness and justice ... transmitted to the descendants of Adam along with human nature" involves no personal responsibility or personal guilt on their part.  Personal responsibility and guilt were Adam's, who because of his sin, was unable to pass on to his descendants a human nature with the holiness with which it would otherwise have been endowed, in this way implicating them in his sin. The doctrine of original sin thus does not impute the sin of the father to his children, but merely states that they inherit from him a "human nature deprived of original holiness and justice", which is "transmitted by propagation to all mankind".



In the theology of the Catholic Church, original sin is regarded as the general condition of sinfulness, that is (the absence of holiness and perfect charity) into which humans are born, distinct from the actual sins that a person commits. This teaching explicitly states that "original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants".



In other words, human beings do not bear any "original guilt" from Adam's particular sin, which is his alone. The prevailing view, also held in Eastern Orthodoxy, is that human beings bear no guilt for the sin of Adam. The Catholic Church teaches: "By our first parents' sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free."



The Methodist Church, founded by John Wesley, upholds Article VII in the Articles of Religion in the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church:

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the 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 of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.

Here is a direct comment on original sin by Wesley. "“The Scripture does not, that I remember, anywhere say, in express words, that the sin of Adam is imputed to his children; or, that the sins of believers are imputed to Christ; or, that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to believers: but the true meaning of these expressions is sufficiently found in several places of Scripture.” Further, he stated: “Yet since these express words and phrases, of the imputation of Adam’s sin to us, of our sins to Christ, and of Christ’s righteousness to us, are not plainly written in Scripture we should not impose it on every Christian, to use these very expressions. Let every one take his liberty, either of confining himself to strictly Scriptural language, or manifesting his sense of these plain Scriptural doctrines, in words and phrases of his own.”



Wesley also stated that strictly speaking, nothing is sin but a willful transgression of a known commandment of God: "One thing we should all agree on is that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and are in need of a Savior. I personally feel that the only Scriptural definition of sin is; sin is the willful transgression of a known commandment of God."