Original Sin: A Better Answer

Ken Hamrick

Why is mankind universally sinful? What is our state and condition at conception? If unborn children do indeed have a spirit (or soul), then what is their "fate" if they die before birth? The various forms of the doctrine of Original Sin try to answer these questions. When Augustine coined, "Original Sin", he did so as a traducianist, and this was a pivotal part of his doctrine. By espousing traducianism, Augustine was saying what Tertullian had said earlier, that the whole nature, both material and immaterial (body and soul) are derived from and generated by the parents. Augustine took it one step further: because we all originated in Adam, making us spiritually "present" in Adam in a germinal way, then we had real participation in Adam's sin. When Adam sinned, the whole human race sinned in him, and thus, we are all born condemned. Augustine wavered back and forth on the doctrine of traducianism, and since the time of Augustine, this doctrine has faded from popularity, in favor of creationism, which is the belief that God specially creates the spirit of each new child at conception. Original Sin is still widely held, but the incorporation of creationism caused the seat of sin to be moved from the spirit to the flesh, since God cannot create a sinful, corrupt spirit. The flesh came to be viewed as evil, corrupt, and the cause of sin. This was a major error, caused by the abandonment of traducianism. Sin is a rebellious heart, not a "contaminated" body. It is a choice, not a substance. Traducianism said that we had real participation in Adam's sin, because we had a real presence in Adam. The whole human race was in union in Adam. Therefore, we cannot claim complete innocence in the matter. When creationism was adopted, the real participation was lost, and God's justice was reduced to an arbitrary, forensic imputation that was based only on His will. In the creationist form of original sin, we are guilty not because we participated in Adam's sin, but we are guilty because God designated Adam as our "federal representative "or "covenant head". While this may be a viable theory, it is certainly not as solid as the traducianist form that Augustine originally taught.

Both the traducianist and creationist forms of Original Sin teach that we are condemned at conception. The problem with this is that it has God sending children-even unborn children-to hell when they die, for someone else's sin. It also has Scriptural problems, which we will look. The traditional opposition to original sin, which I also disagree with, has insisted that children are conceived in a state of innocence on par with that of Adam before the Fall. So then, either God has condemned me unfairly for a sin that someone else committed before I was born, or God has unfairly placed me, an innocent, into a corrupt world and into a corruptible, sinful body, which I did nothing to deserve.

There is a better answer.

1. We were spiritually present in Adam.

Creationism is false. The seat of sin is in the spirit. The spirit of the child does not come straight from God, but it comes from Adam, and was passed down through the generations. We sinned in Adam because we were in Adam. Just as Adam was not a plurality of bodies, but had only one body, he also was not a plurality of spirits, but had only one spirit. He has imparted that one spirit to his offspring, and they have, in turn, imparted that spirit to all of mankind. We are his spiritual descendants, as well as his physical descendants.

Here's a quote from R. L. Dabney (Systematic Theology, Christian Classics Foundation: Simpsonville, 1996), writing about Traducianists:

"But the chief arguments from reason are: if God creates souls, as immediately as He created Adam's or Gabriel, then they must have come from His hand morally pure, for God cannot create wickedness. How, then, can depravity be propagated? The Bible would be contradicted, which so clearly speaks of it as propagated; and reason, which says that the attachment of a holy soul to a body cannot defile it, because a mere body has no moral character. Creationists answer: the federal relation instituted between Adam and the race, justifies God in ordaining it so that the connection of the young, immortal spirit with the body, and thus with a depraved race shall be the occasion for its depravation, in consequence of imputed sin. But the reply is, first, it is impossible to explain the federal relation, if the soul of each child (the soul alone is the true moral agent), had an antecedent holy existence, independent of a human father. Why is not that soul as independent of Adam's fall, thus far, as Gabriel was; and why is not the arrangement, which implicates him in it, just as arbitrary as though Gabriel were tied to Adam's [or Lucifer's] fate? Moreover, if God's act in plunging this pure spirit into an impure body is the immediate occasion of its becoming depraved, it comes very near to making God the author of its fall. Last: a mere body has no moral character, and to suppose it taints the soul is mere Gnosticism. Hence, it must be that the souls of children are the offspring of their parents. The mode of that propagation is inscrutable; but this constitutes no disproof, because a hundred other indisputable operations natural of law are equally inscrutable; and especially in this case of spirits, where the nature of the substance is inscrutable, we should expect the manner of its production to be so."

To maintain that God specially creates the spirit of the child is to attribute the sinful nature of that child (and all children) to God. Traducianism and natural headship (as opposed to federal headship) provide a much better answer, and avoids the Gnostic idea that the seat of sin is the body.

continued in part two