Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptations of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.

By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.

They being the root of mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by original generation.

From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.(Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 6:1-4)

Introduction

The doctrine of original sin must be perennially reestablished because each generation has rationalists or simple moralists who get too self-satisfied with the moral innovation of their own making.[1] Reinhold Niebuhr said, “The utopian illusions and sentimental aberrations of modern liberal culture are really all derived from the basic error of negating the fact of original sin.” John Milton’s Paradise Lost imagines Paradise before the Fall. But with Adam’s sin, Paradise is lost. This takes us to the core of the gospel, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16). Jesus’ willingness to sacrifice himself was to recreate man and the Paradise for man to dwell.

Thus, we must turn our discerning eye to the doctrine of the Fall and the concept of original sin. Our exploration will commence with an examination of the primary heretical movement in early church history that sought to deny the notion of original sin. Following this, we shall delve into the profound repercussions of the Fall on humanity and the natural world. Lastly, we will ponder how original sin, far from being an entirely morbid doctrine, embodies what James Alison aptly terms "the joy of being wrong," since a comprehensive grasp of the Fall paves the way for an equally profound understanding of redemption.[2] 

Pelagian History

From the misty shores of Britain emerged a figure destined to stir the pot of theological discourse: Pelagius. He arrived in the city of Rome, where he gathered around him a cadre of fervent disciples. It was a heady time, filled with debates and doctrinal duels, but Pelagius, with an uncanny knack for timing, left Rome just before the Visigoths, led by Alaric, sacked the city in 410. Among his followers was Celestius, a lawyer with a sharp mind and eloquent tongue.

As Pelagius ventured to North Africa in 410, he passed through the city of Hippo. Augustine was absent and the two never met. Pelagius continued his journey to Palestine, while Celestius made his way to Carthage, where he was ordained as a presbyter in Ephesus. It was in Palestine that Pelagius found himself embroiled in a dispute, sparked by a letter addressed to a nun that had become public knowledge. Bishop Innocent of Rome caught wind of the controversy, and African synods swiftly moved to condemn Pelagius in 416. Innocent was on the brink of an official condemnation, but he died before he could seal the decree. His successor let the matter lie.

The year 418 saw a resurgence of opposition as 200 African bishops stood firmly against Pelagianism. The Bishop of Rome issued a decree affirming the condemnation of Pelagius. Yet eighteen bishops, including Julian, refused to bend the knee to this decree. Celestius, fueled by his mentor’s teachings, became a vocal advocate of Pelagianism, attracting the ire of the church. He was a lightning rod, drawing condemnation as naturally as a magnet draws iron filings. Another notable figure, Julian, would eventually become the target of Augustine's longest and most relentless polemic against the Pelagian doctrine.[3]

The first maxim of Pelagius’s theology was that God would never command something impossible for humans to obey. Commands are tailored towards ability. If Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48) then that means perfection is within reach. To accommodate this guiding maxim, Pelagius taught that Adam was born mortal and would have died whether he sinned or not. When Adam sinned, he injured only himself. Adam’s sin set a bad example, that’s all. All people are born in the same innocent condition as Adam. Thus, Pelagius rejected the doctrine of original sin which in turn meant he rejected the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. If Adam can’t be the representative of the human race, neither can the second Adam.[4]

The Human Race

The doctrine of original sin is that since the sin of Adam and Eve, all people, in all times, in all places, have an innate desire for sin rather than righteousness (Eph. 2:3). All those descended from Adam inherit Adam’s sinful nature. As Spurgeon said, “A wild goose never lays a tame egg.”[5] This means that people acquiesce to their sinful desires rather than originate them. The result is that “there is no one who does not sin” (1 Kings 8:46). “There is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” (Eccl. 7:20). “No one living is righteous before you” (Ps. 143:2). “None is righteous, no, not one;11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-12). All people are “under sin” (Rom. 3:9), “dead in the trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1).

Why is this the case? Is it just an accident that all people sin? No. All people sin because they are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). It is in their nature to sin. God did not make Adam with a sinful nature. In Genesis 1:31 after God had made his entire creation, including man, he declared everything “very good.” God made man “very good,” and “upright” (Eccles. 7:29). J.C. Ryle says, “Think what an awful change sin has worked on all our natures. Man is no longer what he was when God formed him out of the dust of the ground.”[6]

How did this change occur?[7] It began with the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden. The account of the first sin is told in Genesis 3. It is a familiar story to most. God commanded Adam and Eve to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17). The serpent tempted the woman (Gen. 3:1-5). The woman ate from the tree and gave some to her husband who also ate (Gen. 3:6). Adam fell into sin, not because God put sin in his heart. The Apostle John writes, “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.”

The Genesis 3 account of Eve’s fall into sin (1 Tim. 2:15) is shaped by many details. Adam’s sin is that of the federal head of the human race; that of the appointed priest of the Garden; and that of a husband to Eve with a duty to protect her by upholding God’s law. The universal nature of the Fall begins to manifest in Genesis 4 when Cain receives the judgment of exile. Sin and its effects spread around the world. Primal violence raged (Gen. 4:23-34). The Sethites fell by joining the Cainites rather than converting them (Gen. 5:1 – 6:8). The “sons of God” fell (Gen. 6:1-4). “Every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). Noah planted a new garden (Gen. 9:20) and it fell into sin too (Gen. 9:21-27). Mankind fell at Babel (Gen. 11:1-9).

Adam’s sin leads to the alienation of mankind. Rebellion spread to all cultures and institutions. Throughout the Bible, Fall narratives repeat over and over again. But Adam is just one man. Why does his sin affect the rest of the human race?

Romans 5:12, “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all menbecause all sinned.”

Romans 5:15, “Many died through one man's trespass.”

Romans 5:16, “The judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.”

Romans 5:17, “Because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man.”

Romans 5:18, “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men.”

Romans 5:19, “By the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners.”

God made a covenant with the first man in which Adam serves as the representative head of the human race. The promise of the covenant is the promise of eternal life. When God says to Adam, “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die,” (Gen. 2:17) it means that if Adam doesn’t eat of it, he will not die. He will continue living in the blessed, sinless, eternal life. Augustine explains, “God had threatened him with this punishment of death if he should sin….yet commanding his obedience under pain of death.”[8] The penalty of the covenant is death—physical and spiritual death. Adam, as the representative head of the human race, broke the covenant. Thus, the penalty of the covenant spread to all mankind. Adam’s guilt was imputed to his descendants, who consequently are subject to death as the due penalty for sin. Augustine explains, “After his sin….and by his sin the whole race of which he was the root was corrupted in him….all descended from him, and from the woman who had led him into sin….were tainted with the original sin.”[9]

In his book Original Sin: A Cultural History, Alan Jacobs describes original sin as “sin that’s already inside us, already dwelling in us at our origin, at our very conception.”[10] Mark Jones explains that the language of “Original sin refers not to a voluntary act committed by Adam or us but denotes what we received from him and possessed before we ever did anything.”[11] Adam’s sin carried permanent pollution that would affect not only Adam but all his descendants. Thus, Adam passed “death,” “judgment,” and “condemnation,” to all men. The many were made sinners. All those after Adam are born with the guilt of this original sin. John Calvin says the original sin of Adam is a “hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul.”[12] This is what Jesus is alluding to when he says “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). The Bible does not tell us how Adam’s sin is transmitted to his posterity. The Bible simply says it is so.

The Bible also says that four relationships were disrupted when Adam sinned. First, man’s relationship to himself was corrupted. Genesis 3:7, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Second, man’s relationship with God was corrupted. Genesis 3:8, “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the coolof the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Third, man’s relationship with other people was corrupted. Genesis 3:12-13, “The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Fourth, man’s relationship with nature was corrupted. Genesis 3:16, “To the woman he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing.’ Genesis 3:17, “And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree. . . . cursed is the ground because of you.”

The four broken relationships reflect one devastating result of the Fall, namely, as Chesterton says, man “cannot remember who he is. . . . every man has forgotten who he is. . . . We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are.”[13] Self-knowledge should begin with the fact of the imago Dei, that human beings are made in the image of God. The entire goal of life is to receive God’s purpose, definition, and calling. But the result of original sin is that man has forgotten his duty, function, and role as God’s image bearers.

The Apostle Paul says, “Put off the old self” (Eph. 4:22) and “Put on the new self” (Eph. 4:24). The old self needs to be put off because of the corruption of the Fall.  The new self regains the true righteousness and holiness lost in the Fall. Individual acts of sin proceed from the state of original sin. Westminster Shorter Catechism Q18 says, “actual transgressions proceed” from original sin. The Westminster Confession of Faith 9.3 says, “Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.” More simply, G.K. Chesterton said that original sin “is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”[14]

The Natural World

The Fall doesn’t just mean that all those in Adam inherit Adam’s sin. It also means that the “creation was subjected to futility” (Rom. 8:20). The natural world is cursed (Gen. 3:17-19). “The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants” (Is. 24:5). The land mourns and the grass withers (Jer. 12:4; Hos. 4:3). “The whole land is made desolate” (Jer. 12:11).

Why is the earth defiled? Because there is a relationship between the moral character of man and the natural world. The people “have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth” (Jer. 24:5f). The moral condition of man is connected to the condition of the physical world. That which is spiritual impacts that which is physical. Science teaches that minerals, flora, fauna, and weather are connected constitutionally in a hierarchical pabulum of order. Theology teaches that the moral life of man is part of that order.[15]

The order of nature contributes to man’s survival, providing food and shelter and demonstrating that all of creation—all of it—is connected. The sun, moon, and stars, the plants and the animals, the people groups and the people who inhabit them, the human body and the human soul, all exist in some relation to each other.  Just as all parts of the human body work in harmony—heart, lungs, kidneys, feet—so do all parts of the material creation work in harmony. The prize of the created world was Adam. He was declared “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Nature is not egalitarian. Some parts stand lower than other parts, which means another part stands higher. When Adam sinned the entire world suffered because of it, which means that Adam was the original head not just of the human race, but of the first creation.

Why is it that when Adam fell the entire creation fell? What is the relationship of Adam to the creation? If the entire world is like a body, then Adam is like the brain. When the brain malfunctions, the rest of the body malfunctions. When the brain no longer fulfills its original role, the lower systems, each dependent upon the higher system, languish and wither. If only the hand ceases to move or the nose ceases to smell, the body lives on. But when the brain suffers paralysis, the entire nervous system follows suit, along with the organs, limbs, and senses. The body becomes a corpse. Let the reader understand.

Because all natural orders of existence are in subordination to man it is the case that when Adam severed himself from God, the kingdom of nature was severed too. It’s a rebellion that extends to all the creation. The curse summons man and nature alike. Among mankind labor is toilsome and disease weakens the body. There is pain, shame, and tears. There is complaining, anger, and hatred. There are liars and lies, murderers and murders, adulterers and adultery. In nature, one storm prepares the way for another. There are thorns and wild beasts; earthquakes and tsunamis, spewing hot lava and raging wildfires. The world is a theatre of death played out in one convulsive drama after another. Man groans (Rom. 8:23) and creation groans (Rom. 8:22). Man is against nature. Nature is against man. Body is against soul. Soul is against body.

Theologians make a distinction between moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil requires agency. Thus, the 9/11 hijackers carried out moral evil. Natural evil comes without a moral agent. An earthquake shakes. A tornado destroys. A hurricane ravages. A spider bites. A man is born blind (John 9). Moral and natural evil is a helpful distinction. But moral and natural evil can’t be totally separate from each other. The existence of natural evil is because of the existence of moral evil. So Jesus “rebuked the winds and the sea” (Lk. 8:24) like he rebuked a demon (Luke 9:42). Jesus “rebuked the fever” (Lk. 4:39) like he rebuked James and John (Lk. 9:51-55). To rebuke something is to charge it with wrongdoing. Why did Christ rebuke violent waves and violent sickness? Because the wind and waves did wrong. The material world suffers the consequences of man’s rebellion.

Conclusion

Original sin may stand at the beginning of human history but it is only properly understood from the vantage point of the end—full redemption of the human self, human culture, and a world made for human habitation. Just like the Fall affects the human race and the natural world, so does the work of redemption in Jesus Christ. The power of sin has consequences for man and nature. Christ’s death and resurrection deliver man from all the consequences of sin. Christ’s New Life brings new life, new health, new peace, and new happiness to all creation. Paul says, “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church” (Eph. 1:22).

Isaiah calls this the “good news” (Is. 40:9). God will be the sheep to the shepherd (Is. 40:11), he will return them to Jerusalem (Is. 40:9) with full rewards (Is. 40:10). God will “bring the good news to the poor” (Is. 61:1) which includes the restoration of the city and the new culture of life in God’s redeemed world (Is. 61:4).

Romans 8:19-21, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

When the peace was disrupted, when sin entered the world, the creation fell. Isaiah 24:5 says the earth is defiled. This means the creation needs to be set free from the bondage of corruption just as much as human beings do. Romans 5:15 says that sin came into the world through Adam’s sin. So, the reconciliation of the physical creation is (A) undoing the sin of Adam and its effects on the world; and (B) reversing the entire effects of the Fall, particularly death.

Real conversion is possible. Christ’s atonement causes a change in human nature. The old nature is put off. The new nature is put on (Eph. 4:22-24). Christ’s atonement also causes a change in creation. It makes a New Heaven and Earth. It makes a new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2). The reconciled world:

Is a place where the former corruptions shall not be remembered or come to mind (Is. 65:17).

Is a place of the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21).

Is a place in which righteousness dwells (2 Pt. 3:13).

Is a place where the creation will no longer groan (Rom. 8:22).

Is a place where the ground will be cursed no more (Gen. 3:17-19; Rev. 22:3).

Is a place where those who provoke God are no more (Job. 12:6).

Is a place where the beasts will no longer groan (Joel 1:18) or threaten people (Is. 11:6-9).

The cross made peace, which means the death and resurrection of Christ, accomplishes more than just individual salvation. Christ’s atonement has more than just an anthropological effect. It also has a cosmological effect. It’s not just that man is saved, but the entire created order is saved. There are cosmic dimensions to sin. Therefore there are cosmic dimensions to redemption (Rom. 8:20-22). The ultimate promise of the gospel is a New Heavens and Earth where the redeemed live transformed lives in transformed bodies on a transformed earth. The reconciliation accomplished is as wide and all-inclusive as the creation itself—all things in heaven and earth.

[1] H. Shelton Smith has written, “Prior to 1750 New England Puritans maintained their doctrine of original sin with practical unanimity. Within the next decade, however, dissenting notions began to attract attention; and by the end of the century the original doctrine had been considerably modified by some of the more liberal thinkers.”H. Shelton Smith, Changing Conceptions of Original Sin: A Study in American Theology Since 1750 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955), 1.

[2] James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes (Crossroad, 1998).

[3] Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (University of California Press, 2000), 340-353, 363, 383-399, 418.

[4] Justin Holcomb, Know the Heretics (Zondervan, 2014), 109-120.

[5] Charles Spurgeon, The Complete John Ploughman (Christian Heritage, 2007), 15.

[6] J.C. Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men (Charles Nolan Publishers, 2002), 32.

[7] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Eerdmans, 1966), 211-226.

[8] Augustine, On Faith, Hope, and Love (The Enchiridion). Edited by Philip Shaff, pg 53.

[9] Augustine, On Faith, Hope, and Love (The Enchiridion). Edited by Philip Shaff, pg 54.

[10] Alan Jacobs, Original Sin: A Cultural History (HarperOne, 2009), xiii.

[11] Mark Jones, Knowing Sin: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine Through the Eyes of the Puritans (Moody Publishers, 2022), 29.

[12] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (Westminster John Knox, 1960), 2:1:8.

[13] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (GLH Publications), 50.

[14] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (GLH Publications), 8.

[15] To say that theology teaches the relationship between the material and spiritual world is to admit that natural science can’t reveal the relationship between the Fall of man and the condition of earth. Scientific observation can’t give knowledge about the relation of the earth to mankind. How did the earth become violent and destructive? That is a theological rather than a scientific question.