A person can refer to different entities, such as humans, God, etc.
I mean a few books of the Old and New Testaments.
Well, God is all-powerful, so He can create a reality in which one cannot sin.
Thatâs right. Paul and Augustine. Original sin is not a Jewish concept. Itâs a peculiar feature of Christianity.
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Augustine is usually credited as the originator of the term âoriginal sinâ. He was influenced by Paul but he goes further. Paul says that all men sin, Augustine that sin is inherited.
I wonât try to disambiguate Paulâs message, but it seems like he acknowledges that some can live by the letter of the Law, and thus avoid sin, but that most are weak and need Christâs help.
Augustineâs contribution was the idea that all humans carry Adamâs guilt. Paul said sin entered into the world through one man: Adam. He would have been familiar with that idea since itâs an aspect of Judaism.
The philosophical question (beyond the distinctions between the theologies of the various religions) is how can we have free will with an all powerful, all knowing God? That is, if God created me and knows what Iâm going to do, such that he could have it all written down right now, how can I say I have freedom when I must do as the book dictates?
Thatâs the abstracted question. When you get into âoriginal sinâ you open up an entire theological system, which is one that requires salvation from that sin, some method of achieving it, a son of God given for that purpose, etc. That is, untying âoriginal sinâ from the underlying story line in which it is used can go in all different directions, which is why the Jewish and Christian traditions treat the story so differently.
Paul tied sin to the body. There may have been some sects that made this connection between sex and sin, but God said to Adam and Eve, âbe fruitful and multiplyâ (1.28)
The first sin was disobedience, not sex.
I am saying that monotheism was a gradual development, from polytheism, to the worship of one god out of many (henotheism) to monotheism and the exclusion of other gods in Second Isaiah.
He could have created human beings without the ability to choose, but they would be very different from us. He could have created a world without temptation, but it would be a world very different from our own.
The first mention of sin occurs at Genesis 4.7.
As I interpret the story it is not simply about disobedience but the consequences of eating of the tree of knowledge and becoming like the gods:
And the Lord God said, âThe man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.â
What is immediately clear is how ill-prepared and ill-suited man was for becoming god-like. They could not even cloth themselves. (3.21) As the story of Genesis continues it becomes even more evident.
Yes true. But it would be silly to call God as person due to possible confusion.
God created the earth first. Maybe he didnât know he was going to create humans too?
But when he did, it was too late to change for him to a different reality one cannot sin, from the one he already created, which one can sin?
I am not talking about creating a human who cannot freely choose. I am talking about the sinful situation that God created. Why persist in keeping the tree of knowledge, knowing that it is possible that humans eventually sin and eat from it?
I am talking about the story that happened in Paradise.
Of course. I was just reminding you how it all began, and got to the point where the original sin had taken place. It was all chain events of cause and effect.
There is no tension between Foreknowledge and free will. There is, however, a problem when a free agent has access to Foreknowledge since the free agent can do the opposite of Foreknowledge.
Well, itâs interesting that âbecoming like unto Godâ (also the goal of Pagan philosophy following Plato in the Theaetetus, 176 or thereabouts) is what is ultimately promised to glorified humanity by the grand arc of the narrative through the New Testement:
E.g., II Peter 1:4 - âthrough which to us the most great and precious promises have been given, that through these ye may become partakers of a divine nature, having escaped from the corruption in the world in desires.â
So, it is primarily the means that is defective here, not the end. As Saint Maximos puts it in the Centuries on Love:
Nothing created by God is evil. It is not food that is evil but gluttony, not the begetting of children but unchastity, not material things but avarice, not glory but vainglory. It is only the misuse of things that is evil, not the things themselves.
Anyhow @MoK, the classical interpretation is the God is âresponsibleâ as first cause for all creation, but allows creatures real freedom through effective secondary causality. Hence, in terms of who sinned, the answer is Adam, Eve, and Satan, although most theologians donât spend as much time on the exact nature of Satanâs sin since it is taken for granted.
So, as Aquinas describes it:
The woman craved both the promised exaltation and the perfection of knowledge. Added to this were the beauty and sweetness of the fruit, which attracted her to eat of it. And so, scorning the fear of death, she violated Godâs command, and ate of the forbidden tree.
Upon analysis, her sin is found to have many aspects. First, there was a sin of pride, whereby she inordinately desired her own excellence. Her second sin was one of curiosity, whereby she coveted knowledge beyond the limits fixed for her. The third sin was that of gluttony, whereby the sweetness of the fruit enticed her to eat. A fourth sin was infidelity, growing out of a false estimate of God, so that she believed the words of the devil who gave the lie to God. Fifthly, there was a sin of disobedience, consisting in a transgression of Godâs command.
Historically, I find this interesting because âdisobedienceâ would later come to dominate as the lone/ultimate sin in legal framings of sin, whereas even this late it is what Thomas decides to mention last.
And for Adam:
The sin came to the man through the womanâs blandishments. He, however, as the Apostle says in 1 Timothy 2:14, â was not seduced,â as the woman was. That is, he did not believe the words the devil spoke against God. The thought could not cross his mind that God would utter a lying threat or that He would forbid the use of a thing for no good purpose. Yet he was drawn by the devilâs promise to an undue desire of excellence and knowledge. As a result, his will fell away from the right pursuit of justice and, consenting to his wifeâs importunities, he followed her in transgressing the divine command, and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree.
Thomas Aquinas: Compendium theologiae: English
But this original (first) sin is then the cause of âOriginal Sin,â which is an ontological wounding of human nature. It is, in Adamâs descendants, only a sin analogically, not actually and culpably (on the Catholic account anyhow).
But the point here is, if God was not human, then it is unreasonable to blame God for original sin or whatever. Because you donât blame nonhuman for some bad luck or accidents or loss.
For example, if your window was broken by a stone thrown by the local yob, you donât blame the stone. You blame the yob.
From my recollection of reading the OT, God was not human. God was spirit. Spirit cannot be blamed for plotting original sin. It is unreasonable to say the spirit was responsible for original sin. Do you agree?
Eating of the tree of knowledge and sin are two different things.
Disobedience appears to come last for Aquinas because heâs considering the elements in order; Eve has already sinned in half a dozen ways before performing the disobedient action of plucking and eating.
The doctrinal understanding of original sin lives on, we might say, in the broad idea of human weakness, our susceptibility to temptation. But we often count it virtue to resist succumbing to temptation, or to resist acting upon a base impulse.
But as Aquinas tells it, Eve has already sinned by desiring the fruit, desiring knowledge and excellence, doubting God, all of this, without having acted upon these thoughts and feelings.
But Eve was not tainted with original sin, so whence comes her weakness, her susceptibility to temptation? Her pride, her gluttony, and the rest?
Is that how God made her?
Did the serpent remake her?
Isnât there something odd about Aquinasâs account?
She was set up to fail.
Inherited sin may be partially understood by looking at our situation as shaped by our ancestors and what they did.
Different languages of theology frame the element in different ways.
But it is not like we are wandering around wondering how the idea came about.