For the discussion on “original sin” we are sharing in this thread (I thank again to all contributors @gbrooks9, @Relates, @aleo, @randy, @BoltzmannBrain, @Bill_II, @Swamidass, @Jay313, @Reggie_O_Donoghue) it is worth referring to this recent remarkable Essay by Kathryn Applegate.
Kathryn endorses positions quite similar to those I have proposed in this thread, mainly the following ones:
"God revealed himself to Adam and Eve in an intimate way. A spiritual birth had taken place: for the first time they knew God and they knew God had a will and so did they. They were selves, free to obey or rebel. He gave them rules and consequences for breaking those rules. And they chose, in their freedom, to rebel.
They sensed that God was withholding something from them, and they rejected his right to do so. This was the first sin, the first transgression of the law of God. This first or “original” sin brought death in the form of alienation and eternal separation from God.—all of these we inherit from Adam […]. Adam’s sin became our sin.
Hitting closer to home, Adam and Eve’s sin is my sin. When I read Genesis 3, the story we call the Fall (though the Bible never uses that term), my heart aches. It aches because this is my story: I am guilty for Eve’s sin, but also because I sin like Eve. […] In my heart are pride and fear and lust and greed. […] For all this and much more, I deserve the curse of death. God’s righteousness demands judgment, and it has come, but not on my head. It has come on the beautiful, bloodied head of Jesus.
It must be emphasized, though, that they wouldn’t be sole progenitors: there has never been a time in the past couple hundred thousand years when the human population was as small as two.
So if Adam is a “pattern of the one to come [Christ],” it seems to me that Adam’s sin does not necessarily depend on being passed down in some genetic or genealogical sense."
As a comparison I remind the following points I have supported in different posts:
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The first sinners (“Adam and Eve”) were created in the Image of God with capability to freely loving God.
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In this state of “original righteousness” (original Blessing) the first “Image Bearers” could master evolutionary selfish tendencies (lust, greed), did not experience moral evil (brokenness, guilt, shame, isolation), and were not submitted to the curse of death.
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However they were deluded by pride and freely rejected God transgressing His commandment; in doing so they committed the first sin in the history of humanity.
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Before this first sin Image Bearers were not in need of Redemption.
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After the first sin Image Bearers are generally in need of Redemption (“state of original sin”): The first sin of the first sinners (“Adam’s sin”) “became our sin” (as Kathryn states).
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In particular, the “state of original sin” means (in Kathryn’s wording) that “in my heart are pride and fear and lust and greed”, and “I deserve the curse of death”.
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The “state of original sin” (“Adam’s sin”) is passed down neither in genetic nor genealogical sense.
To this extent it seems that the agreement between Kathryn’s view and my view could not be greater. So is there any relevant difference between the two views?
I think the main difference is Kathryn’s claim that Adam and Eve’s sin becomes transmitted to their descendants because they “were to be the representatives of the whole human race”.
Adam and Eve were certainly “representatives” in the sense that they were “the ones in whom God’s purpose to make the whole world a place of delight and joy and order, eventually colonizing the whole creation, was to be taken forward” (N.T. Wright). However I do not share the idea that their sin becomes transmitted because of their vocation as “representatives”. My reason is the following:
Since the “representatives” Adam and Eve were free NOT to sin (otherwise God would have been the author of the sin), the possibility that they did not sin was a real one in God’s mind. Therefore theology to be serious has to consider also the possible history in which generations may have passed before the arrival of the first sin. And in such a scenario the first sin would not have been the sin of “the representatives of the whole human race”. Should we then conclude that in such a case the “first sin” would not have passed down to the sinner’s descendants? This sounds rather awkward because then there would have been two groups on earth: people in-need-of-Redemption and people not-in-need-of-Redemption.
The solution I have proposed in this thread is as follows:
Even if the first sin is not the sin of the first humans to whom “God revealed himself in an intimate way”, the consequences of this transgression (“the state of original sin”) would pass down to all human persons coming into existence after the first sin, so that all are generally in need of Redemption. As I have repeatedly said, in favor of this view I invoke Romans 11:32.