In these writings, there is no notion that sin is inherent to an individual or that it is transmitted upon conception. The first writings to discuss the first sin at the hands of Adam and Eve were early Jewish texts in the Second Temple Period. The Fall of Adam and Eve, by Antonio Rizzo, 1476 While Paul in Romans writes that "through one man (i.e., Adam) sin entered into the world," his meaning is not that God punishes later generations for the deeds of Adam, but that Adam's story is representative for all humanity. Genesis 3, the story of the Garden of Eden, makes no association between sex and the disobedience of Adam and Eve, nor is the serpent associated with Satan, nor are the words "sin," "transgression," "rebellion," or "guilt" mentioned the words of Psalm 51:5 read: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me", but while the speaker traces his sinfulness to the moment of his conception, there is little to support the idea that it was meant to be applicable to all humanity.
The authors of the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle of Barnabas, all from the late 1st or early 2nd centuries, assumed that children were born without sin Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, from the same period, took universal sin for granted but did not explain its origin from anywhere and while Clement of Alexandria in the late 2nd century did propose that sin was inherited from Adam, did not say how.
The idea developed incrementally in the writings of the early Church fathers in the centuries after the New Testament was composed. Early Christianity had no specific doctrine of original sin prior to the 4th century. Judaism does not see human nature as irrevocably tainted by some sort of original sin, while for the Apostle Paul Adam's act released a power into the world by which sin and death became the natural lot of mankind. Michelangelo's painting of the sin of Adam and Eve from the Sistine Chapel ceiling
#THE MOVIE ORIGINAL SIN FREE#
Instead, the Catholic Church declares that "Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle", and that "weakened and diminished by Adam's fall, free will is yet not destroyed in the race." The Jansenist movement, which the Roman Catholic Church declared heretical in 1653, also maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will. Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin equated original sin with concupiscence (or "hurtful desire"), affirming that it persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom to do good, proposing that original sin involved a loss of free will except to sin. Influenced by Augustine, the councils of Carthage (411–418 CE) and Orange (529 CE) brought theological speculation about original sin into the official lexicon of the Church. The belief began to emerge in the 3rd century, but only became fully formed with the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), who was the first author to use the phrase "original sin" ( Latin: peccatum originale). The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3 (the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden), in a line in Psalm 51:5 ("I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me"), and in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 5:12-21 ("Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned"). Original sin is the Christian doctrine that holds that humans, through the fact of birth, inherit a tainted nature in need of regeneration and a proclivity to sinful conduct. Depiction of the sin of Adam and Eve ( The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Paul Rubens)