Article Outline
Original Sin, in Christian theology, the universal sinfulness of the human race, traditionally ascribed to the first sin committed by Adam. Sin, in Christian doctrine, is considered a state of alienation or estrangement from God.
The term original sin is not found in the Bible. Theologians who advocate the doctrine of original sin argue, however, that it is strongly implied by Paul (see Romans 7), by John (see 1 John 5:19), and even by Jesus himself (see Luke 11:13). Behind this New Testament teaching lies the world view of late Jewish apocalyptic writings. Some of these writings attribute the corrupt state of the world to a prehistoric fall of Satan, the subsequent temptation of Adam and Eve, and the immersion of human history thereafter in disorder, disobedience, and pain (see 2 Esdras 7). In this apocalyptic framework, Paul and other New Testament writers interpreted the work of Christ as overcoming the tremendous power of inherited sin and evil once and for all, reconciling humanity to God, and thus making peace.
The decline and fall of Rome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries produced a similar apocalyptic atmosphere of crisis and despair. In his controversy with the Romano-British monk Pelagius over the nature of sin and grace, Augustine was able to appeal powerfully and effectively to the Pauline-apocalyptic understanding of the forgiveness of sin (see Pelagianism). In his elaboration of the doctrine, however, Augustine imported an idea foreign to the Bible: the notion that the taint of sin is transmitted from generation to generation by the act of procreation. He took this idea from the 2nd-century theologian Tertullian, who actually coined the phrase original sin.
Medieval theologians retained the idea of original sin, with certain qualifications. It was asserted again in a more recognizably Augustinian form by 16th-century Protestant reformers, primarily Martin Luther and John Calvin. In subsequent Protestant thought, the doctrine was diluted or circumvented. Liberal Protestant theologians developed an optimistic view of human nature that was incompatible with the idea of original sin. The extended crisis of Western civilization that began with World War I, however, has aroused renewed interest in the original, basically apocalyptic, outlook of the New Testament and in the doctrine of original sin. Such neoorthodox or postliberal theologians as Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich, however, were unwilling to attribute the transmission of sin to procreation, instead attributing it to an already corrupt society.
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