Humans (as a collective) could only be held fully responsible for our sins if we were also responsible for our sinful nature (as a collective).
Indeed. And as bad habits, which we fall into because at some point we choose to do them, they are indeed something we are fully responsible for. I am not buying into the evil nature within us stuff. Are children born evil? Really? Some say yes because they are completely selfish. I say that is what they need to be and should be. Growing up is the only responsibility an infant has and the only the responsibility they can handle. Now as they learn and gain powers like the power of speech and the power to walk then with those powers come other responsibilities. Then there is a competition between gaining more power in the world and learning to have some regard for the well being of other people. Evil results when the former outstrips the latter and we pursue our desires without regard for the well being of others.
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I, as a Catholic ‘do’ believe in original sin, unlike most here. I will say that original sin means we have a natural inclination to do evil, not that we can have evil thoughts, the original humans did have evil thoughts, but they were balanced out by good.
I like this article from Christianity Today by Julia Becker, a mother who observes that infants cry because they need care including food and comfort, not because of original sin (an erroneous idea some pastors cite as evidence for O.S.). In contrast, the silent halls of ill equipped orphanages demonstrate the sad truth that if infants learn they don’t get attention from crying, they stop and withdraw.
As we grow, mistakes become a part of life. “There are times, I believe, when my heavenly Father watches me make bad choices. And in those times, I need to repent before him. But other times I am simply needy, for him or for others. In those times, instead of falsely chastising myself for selfishness, Jesus invites me to offer my burden to him and receive his comfort. And then there are times when I simply make a mistake. It might be more sinful for me to think that I ought to have already learned everything there is to learn rather than admitting my weakness, my need, my ignorance, and trusting God to guide me into wisdom as I grow up in faith.”
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I don’t agree. Some people are born especially predisposed to addiction. They aren’t responsible for that. They are responsible for spending their whole paycheck on heroin. Some people are born with bodies that create unusually high levels of testosterone. Not their fault. But if they beat their spouse or go out and sexually assault someone or take a baseball bat to their neighbor’s car, that’s on them. All of us are predisposed toward certain behaviors because of things we had no control over; biology, personality, socialization. We are still responsible for our choices.
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I understand sin to be willfully choosing self-rule over God’s rule, and a “sinful nature” to mean this propensity is innate, not just learned. We have to overcome it by learning, specifically learning who God is and how we are intended to relate to him. I don’t think everyone who says “people are born sinful” means “evil” or even some kind of “total depravity.”
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I think there are individual and corporate aspects to sin, just as there are individual and corporate aspects to salvation.
“Evil is not to be traced back to the individual,” Reinhold Niebuhr said, “but to the collective behavior of humanity.”
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Wow, that’s very deep. However, when comes back to responsibility, I wonder if we even really understand all the evil we commit. I think God looks at the basis of that. Some crowd mentality seems to be based on instinctive need for group safety, and only a few people can think past that.
The Reformed (and Augustinian) view is that God created Adam with the ability to sin and the ability not to sin. Adam chose to sin. An incorrect view of Original Sin is that we are born with Adam’s sin in our debit column. That would make God unjust. It is actually much more dire than being charged with Adam’s sin. Adam’s sin corrupted his very being, and we inherited that corrupt nature.
As a result of the fall man (in his unsaved state) lost the ability not to sin. Everything we do, from the time of conception (Ps 51:5) is done in rebellion to God. All our righteous deeds are like filthy rags–as Isaiah wrote. Or as the apostle wrote, No one is righteous, not no one.
The Reformed (I’m one of them) see a silver lining in Original Sin (or by its other name Total Depravity). In fact it becomes a comforting doctrine. Namely that either Christ does it all, i.e. it is all by grace, or we all are lost, because nobody has anything of merit to contribute to their own salvation. The only thing we contribute to our own salvation is our sin.
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Your mention made me look up one of my favorite essays, Soren Kierkegaard’s “The Crowd is Untruth.” I can’t help but paste a few selections here, since they are so pertinent to our present situation. The only change required is to translate “internet” whenever Kierkegaard says “press”.
"A crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction. … For every individual who flees for refuge into the crowd, and so flees in cowardice from being an individual …, such a man contributes his share of cowardice to "the cowardice," which is: the crowd….
"The crowd is untruth. There is therefore no one who has more contempt for what it is to be a human being than those who make it their profession to lead the crowd. Let someone, some individual human being, certainly, approach such a person, what does he care about him; that is much too small a thing; he proudly sends him away; there must be at least a hundred. And if there are thousands, then he bends before the crowd, he bows and scrapes; what untruth! No, when there is an individual human being, then one should express the truth by respecting what it is to be a human being; and if perhaps, as one cruelly says, it was a poor, needy human being, then especially should one invite him into the best room, and if one has several voices, he should use the kindest and friendliest; that is the truth. When on the other hand it was an assembly of thousands or more, and "the truth" became the object of balloting, then especially one should godfearingly - if one prefers not to repeat in silence the Our Father: deliver us from evil - one should godfearingly express, that a crowd, as the court of last resort, ethically and religiously, is the untruth, whereas it is eternally true, that everyone can be the one. This is the truth.
"The crowd is untruth. Therefore was Christ crucified, because he, even though he addressed himself to all, would not have to do with the crowd, because he would not in any way let a crowd help him, because he in this respect absolutely pushed away, would not found a party, or allow balloting, but would be what he was, the truth, which relates itself to the single individual….
"For to win a crowd is not so great a trick; one only needs some talent, a certain dose of untruth and a little acquaintance with the human passions. But no witness for the truth - alas, and every human being, you and I, should be one - dares have dealings with a crowd. The witness for the truth - who naturally will have nothing to do with politics, and to the utmost of his ability is careful not to be confused with a politician - the godfearing work of the witness to the truth is to have dealings with all, if possible, but always individually, to talk with each privately, on the streets and lanes - to split up the crowd, or to talk to it, not to form a crowd, but so that one or another individual might go home from the assembly and become a single individual. "A crowd," on the other hand, when it is treated as the court of last resort in relation to "the truth," its judgment as the judgment, is detested by the witness to the truth …
"The crowd is untruth. And I could weep, in every case I can learn to long for the eternal, whenever I think about our age’s misery, even compared with the ancient world’s greatest misery, in that the daily press and anonymity make our age even more insane with help from "the public," which is really an abstraction, which makes a claim to be the court of last resort in relation to "the truth"; for assemblies which make this claim surely do not take place. That an anonymous person, with help from the press, day in and day out can speak however he pleases (even with respect to the intellectual, the ethical, the religious), things which he perhaps did not in the least have the courage to say personally in a particular situation; every time he opens up his gullet - one cannot call it a mouth - he can all at once address himself to thousands upon thousands; he can get ten thousand times ten thousand to repeat after him - and no one has to answer for it; in ancient times the relatively unrepentant crowd was the almighty, but now there is the absolutely unrepentant thing: No One, an anonymous person: the Author, an anonymous person: the Public, sometimes even anonymous subscribers, therefore: No One. No One! God in heaven, such states even call themselves Christian states. One cannot say that, again with the help of the press, "the truth" can overcome the lie and the error. O, you who say this, ask yourself: Do you dare to claim that human beings, in a crowd, are just as quick to reach for truth, which is not always palatable, as for untruth, which is always deliciously prepared, when in addition this must be combined with an admission that one has let oneself be deceived! Or do you dare to claim that "the truth" is just as quick to let itself be understood as is untruth, which requires no previous knowledge, no schooling, no discipline, no abstinence, no self-denial, no honest self-concern, no patient labor! No, "the truth," which detests this untruth, the only goal of which is to desire its increase, is not so quick on its feet. Firstly, it cannot work through the fantastical, which is the untruth; its communicator is only a single individual. And its communication relates itself once again to the single individual; for in this view of life the single individual is precisely the truth. The truth can neither be communicated nor be received without being as it were before the eyes of God, nor without God’s help, nor without God being involved as the middle term, since he is the truth. It can therefore only be communicated by and received by "the single individual," which, for that matter, every single human being who lives could be: this is the determination of the truth in contrast to the abstract, the fantastical, impersonal, "the crowd" - "the public," which excludes God as the middle term (for the personal God cannot be the middle term in an impersonal relation), and also thereby the truth, for God is the truth and its middle term.
"And to honor every individual human being, unconditionally every human being, that is the truth and fear of God and love of "the neighbor"; but ethico-religiously viewed, to recognize "the crowd" as the court of last resort in relation to "the truth," that is to deny God and cannot possibly be to love "the neighbor." And "the neighbor" is the absolutely true expression for human equality; if everyone in truth loved the neighbor as himself, then would perfect human equality be unconditionally attained; every one who in truth loves the neighbor, expresses unconditional human equality; every one who is really aware (even if he admits, like I, that his effort is weak and imperfect) that the task is to love the neighbor, he is also aware of what human equality is. But never have I read in the Holy Scriptures this command: You shall love the crowd; even less: You shall, ethico-religiously, recognize in the crowd the court of last resort in relation to "the truth." It is clear that to love the neighbor is self-denial, that to love the crowd or to act as if one loved it, to make it the court of last resort for "the truth," that is the way to truly gain power, the way to all sorts of temporal and worldly advantage - yet it is untruth; for the crowd is untruth….
“A crowd is indeed made up of single individuals; it must therefore be in everyone’s power to become what he is, a single individual; no one is prevented from being a single individual, no one, unless he prevents himself by becoming many. To become a crowd, to gather a crowd around oneself, is on the contrary to distinguish life from life; even the most well-meaning one who talks about that, can easily offend a single individual. But it is the crowd which has power, influence, reputation, and domination - this is the distinction of life from life, which tyrannically overlooks the single individual as the weak and powerless one, in a temporal-worldly way overlooks the eternal truth: the single individual.”
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Thank you. Very penetrating way in which we should affirm individuality as well, as a service to God in serving our neighbor.
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You are very close to being a good Catholic.
But your quote above is currently more closely similar to the term “Ancestral Sin” which Eastern Orthodox communions frequently invoke as their alternative to Original Sin.
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This would have to be as the result of something that God has done. He did create Adam in a different state after all. At the very least He changed the process by which we are all knitted together in our mother’s womb. So this makes God responsible for our sins if we lack the ability to not sin.
As they like to say, that is a false dichotomy. The other option is we are lost when we do not accept the grace that is freely given. The grace is not offered because of anything we have done which is a very good thing indeed.
In this view (with which, of course, many disagree) Adam was punished in that his DNA (perhaps literally) was corrupted and passed to his descendants. Adam is responsible for his sin and the consequences, not God.
I fail to see a false dichotomy. Perhaps you can explain further.
I have great respect for the Reformed–my family are mostly from this viewpoint with regard to original sin, and my grandparents on both sides were at least originally either Dutch CRC or RCA. However, here are things I’ve spoken about with my dad since I could first read the Bible in church–and I don’t expect an easy answer, but it’s a privilege to bring these questions up with someone else who has a great heart for God.
To me, it’s a double sticky wicket if we are condemned to sin; and even the smallest one can throw us in Hell. It’s the same thing, isn’t it, as inheriting sin itself?
Not to say we don’t sin, but when my 5 year old daughter looks me in the eye and says “No,” I don’t throw her into everlasting perdition; but I do correct her lovingly and firmly. The wages of sin is correction, not vindication. George Macdonald thought that Jesus was the way we learned about God’s real character; and this link is very attractive. Experimental Theology: George MacDonald: Justice, Hell and Atonement
As I understand it, the allusion to “No one is righteous” by Paul, he’s alluding to Psalms 14 and 53–Hebraic poetry which in context there is talking about the wicked (the fools). There are many allusions in Psalms and elsewhere to the righteous, and to God saving them.
It seems to me very odd to say that we are condemned to death for following a nature we can’t help; then only some of us get saved from the sin accompanying that nature. It would indeed be cruel to make us try to be perfect if we weren’t able to be perfect in the first place. But that doesn’t seem to really be the problem.
On the other hand, throwing ourselves on God’s mercy, as the prodigal son did, every day, is something that the Reformed do very well at–and can teach us better. Tim Keller, who I don’t agree with completely but exhibits daily grace, is a wonderful example of that. Thank you for your patience. Respectfully, Randy
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The question of original in and punishment is one of the most misunderstood messages in the bible despite it being core to the Christian worldview. Ideas put in peoples minds are not genetically inherited. To suffer death / mortality is a logical consequence of defining your “self” in your material existence as opposed of defining your self as a being under the authority of God and thus part of this eternal existence. Only if you define yourself as an individual you suffer death. Otherwise you pass on your “self” to others of give it back to the creator. So if you can live in the hearts of others - as Jesus showed us - you will not die, only your physical body will cease to exist.
Your ability to passage your soul into this other sphere is dependent on being at peace with your loved ones when the time comes, as any frustrations/ aggressions you deal with on the way out will become a stumbling block that cause you to burn out on reentry as you lack the ability to act out those desires. And a few seconds in mortal time-space can be years in perceived time so 5 minutes in physical time space can easily be an eternity in metaphysical time as I found out when in and out of Koma.
So original sin is humanities puberty to withdraw from God’s authority over the self, symbolised by rejecting his authority in doing what he asked us not to do, to eat from the tree of realisation of good and evil. In becoming your own,one is putting ones self automatically in conflict with every other self.as well as the overreaching self of God.
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Fair enough. I don’t think this is the forum to debate Reformed theology. I just wanted to answer the OP question from that perspective (not that I’m qualified!)
I will say that as much as I am convinced by Reformed theology there are two things I try to keep in mind. One is that, as far as getting the ducks lined up in a row in a self-consistent manner (with scripture), Reformed theology is very good, maybe even very very good, but not perfect. And the other is that in lining up those ducks there are presuppositions–so I have to remember (why is it so hard?) that I could be wrong!
Like many, when I came to Calvinism (from atheism) I went through a prolonged cage-stage. I’ve been released, and turned in my zealot’s creds.
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Dr Heddle, thank you for your kind reply and humorous response to my own, perhaps overzealous message. You are right–I should not have diverted this thread. You did a great job of answering the OP. I am sorry I diverted the topic. There is a big tent of reasoning available in Christianity.
I can empathize with the cage stage–thanks for the smile. One can do worse than send “books, tapes, CD’s, DVD’s, and e-mails to all unsuspecting victims, regardless of whether or not they have ever shown an interest in these things.” I have done that to my family in the past with regard to science.
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And of course with which many agree. So why bring it up?
Seeing how Adam’s DNA has very little chance of actually surviving to this day how is this supposed to work?
Can you explain what changed so Adam could not sin but we have to sin? And was God responsible for this change?
You said it was all grace or we are all lost. There is a third option, which is what makes it a false dichotomy, of it is a combination of grace and belief.
The grace only option is a comforting one if one is sure they are a member of the Elect and therefore in receipt of said grace.
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Seriously?
I hope I never said that Adam could not sin.
I made that point within the confines of Reformed theology. Obviously any theology espouses a subset of all the possibilities. Reformed Theology excludes the combination of grace and (vestigial, self-mustered) faith. (Just to be sure, RT says you are saved by faith alone, but the faith is a gift.)
That’s true. And in the non-Calvinistic view where you choose God before conversion, well that’s only comforting if you have the life experience, education, intelligence, parenting, missionaries, intestinal fortitude, or what ever it takes to enable you to cooperate with prevenient grace and, in your own volition, choose God. If you don’t have what it takes, then it sucks to be you.
You see the only group with a universally comforting soteriology are, well, the Universalists.
Edit typo
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