Speaking of Adam... Romans 5:12 and Original Sin
Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 4:00AM | by Otter I got into an argument with a guy at a coffee shop (he was cleaning windows and started telling me how to think about God), and wanted to record a few reflections that came from that talk. They have to do with a few themes of original sin, redemption, and the meaning of the New Testament that crop up here from time to time.
Like many Western Christians, he began with original sin. In case you're new to Christianity, this is the belief that because of Adam's sin in Genesis 3 all people are born with a taint of sin and guilt.
My windowasher tried to clean my clock by quoting Romans 5:12 to me:
KJV: Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
ESV: Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
Greek: δια τουτο ωσπερ δι ενος ανθρωπου η αμαρτια εις τον κοσμον εισηλθεν και δια της αμαρτιας ο θανατος και ουτως εις παντας ανθρωπους ο θανατος διηλθεν εφ ω παντες ημαρτον
He quoted me the King James Version.
In fact, there are a couple of things going on here.
One is Paul's use of the word anthropos / ανθρωπους to refer to "one man." He's playing a little word-game here. His preferred Bible, the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament), uses the word where the Hebrew uses the word "Adam" [human].
So "Just as sin came into the world through one Adam..."
Second, the phrase εφ ω παντες ημαρτον at the end of the Greek text (pronounce it "eph ha PANtase heMARTon") is translated in his KJV (which is a pretty elegant translation here, if you can do Renaissance English) as "for that all have sinned," meaning roughly (in his theology) that "because all have sinned."
So all have died because all have sinned.
But the ancient Church fathers understood Paul to have meant that "because of death, all have sinned."
Which is rather a good thought.
If you think about the things you do that you ought not to do, a good percentage of them come from the semi-consciousness we all share that we are limited, we are going to die, we are without hope of happiness, we are not eternal.
Now go back and read Romans 5 in that context, and the message of Paul is a little different. It's not that you're so steeped in sin that you need atoning for. It's that you do dumb things because you will die, because you are finite. And that the strength of the resurrection (and its implication, also worked out in Romans, that the cross of Jesus is therefore the "final death") releases one from the compunction to sin. Why would you? You have nothing to fear.
So the Torah that tells you what not to do is necessary because of death and the sin that comes from it.
It isn't that the solution to sin is the cross.
It's that the solution to death is the resurrection.
Consequently, there is no death (or so the Christian believes), and therefore there is no necessity of sin for those of perfect belief.
Reader Comments (4)
I did some time in an exceedingly cross-focused church some years back, and have slowly been sorting through what was wrong with it. Lately I have been trying to pay attention to the role of the crucifixion in the thinking of the earliest believers, wondering how the Church's art reflects its understanding. It seems that images of Christ suffering on the cross don't show up very early on, rather the imagery focuses on the resurrected Christ. That seems significant to me, and consonant with the exegetical point you're making.
Thank you for this post, it's fascinating to consider that interpretation.
I can easily see that this may have been the point Paul was making. But I can't see how the point could be true. If the reason we sin is because we think we're going to die, then why do Christians who are 100% convinced they're going to heaven still sin? Or do Christians sin only in proportion to how uncertain they are that they will live forever?
Jackson, great question: two things immediately leap out at me.
1.) We don't do selfish things because we _think_ we're going to die. We're going to. We know it. We're 100% convinced about it, which is why we spend so much time trying to forget it.
2.) Christians _don't_ believe with 100% certainty that they're going to heaven. Nobody's 100% convinced of that: you're 100% convinced that your couch is green or your sandwich has a slice of tomato in it.
To be without doubt and to be 100% convinced are not the same thing. You can find Christians who say "I have NO doubt that I'm going to heaven," and you might silently register, "You're not sure however, or you might permit yourself the luxury of a rational doubt."
IJR: That's awesome: if you work up an illustrated essay or something on crucifixion in early art, drop me a note and let's make you a Fellow at the Riparian College and get that thing out there.
When I was a teenager, bred and raised in strict fundy literalism, I came to the realization one day that the crucifixion (and our subsequent veneration of the cross) was hugely missing the point--anyone can die, everyone dies, someone could even die sacrificially, and it would ultimately mean nothing--the resurrection, or the belief in the resurrection, which I saw amounted to the same thing, was the point. The crux of Christianity is NOT the cross (hehe) with it's focus on death but rather christianity really hinges on eternity--Life Abundant, Eternal, Infinite, breaking the human bondage to finite, time-locked thinking.
Now, some thirty-plus years later, I still see that as the essential Jesus--we are so much more than finite dying people and THEREFORE we can love one another with the compassion necessary to "love your enemy", be "Good Samaritans".
I ended up leaving Christianity for a long while because I couldn't deal with the fundy literalism anymore and didn't see anyway around that. Now that I've come back, I have been still hung up on the Original Sin thing. To be condemned because of the act of one human, through no fault of my own, is just so antithetical to everything that I have come to understand about the nature of the Divine and Jesus' essential teachings.
In my research, I found that the doctrine as we understand it now didn't appear until Augustine (despite my preacher, seminarian, brother trying to convince me that it was a long-held Judaic doctrine--despite my finding a rabbi who scoffed at that whole interpretation of Genesis saying that the traditional Jewish understanding is waaaay different, more a free will thing to make the world a richer more complicated and interesting place) but I didn't ever find any translation/interpretation of Romans (and other christian scripture) that supported what I had come to be sure of.
Your translation/interpretation fits perfectly.