Original sin

Original sin. In Christian theology the state of sin into which everyone is born as a result of the fall of Adam. The basis of this in the Bible is Paul's teaching that ‘through one man [Adam] sin entered the world’, so that ‘by the trespass of the one the many died’ (Romans 5. 12). It was developed by the early Greek fathers, but became most precise in Latin writers of the 2nd–5th cents., culminating in Augustine's formulation. According to this, Adam's sin has been transmitted from parent to child ever since. The human race has thus become a ‘lump of sin’ (massa damnata). In the Pelagian controversy Augustine's view prevailed, although his extreme views were not adopted in the East. Since the 18th cent. the influence of Old Testament criticism, combined with natural science, has changed the emphasis to one of describing human inability to rescue itself from its condition out of its own strength or resources: genetic endowments, combined with social, cultural and historical circumstances, precede the birth of all individuals and are not chosen by them; yet they form both character and action in ways that are inevitably disordered.