www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Scripture and Patristic Writings Romans 5:19

The text (KJV) For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Any thoughts? Is St. Paul teaching what St. Augustine and the western Reformed tradition as traditionally taught, that in Adam, God judged the entire human race so that we are sinners from the moment of conception? Or did Adam make us sinners in a different sense?

Joe

Let's take it a little further, since I do not believe the idea was novel with St. Paul, the Pslamist says: "In sin did my mother conceive me."
Stephanos I

Joe,

It should be remembered that "sin" does not necessarily carry the legal connotations the Reformers insisted it did. Sin can be seen in terms of sickness as well. Just a thought.

Jason

Joe,

As by the sin of disobedience of the Father of the human race, all men (his "sons") are born with that "stain" against them ("stain" being understood as a metaphor for a real physical [i.e., "natural" = phusis] "defect"); so by the obedience of Christ (His mission of love in the whole kenosis, and especially in His passion and death), the possibility of attaining man's full dignity in the eyes of God through the washing (hence, the metaphor of "stain", "being dirty") of Baptism has been effected.

In short, Baptism into Christ cleanses us from "the stain of original sin".

And, as Stephanos I points out, this is already one of the Jewish traditions, as embodied in David's Psalm 50 (51).

But "original sin" is not personal (individual) because I do not inherit my person from my parents, only my nature.

Best,
Michael

So from what I gather, whether we are actually made sinners by Adam or just inherit some kind of stain or flaw that will necessarily lead us into sin, it is the case that Adam's descendents all all being punished for his sin. After all, it may be true that I only inherit spiritual death (and physical?) and a lack of sanctifying grace from Adam, but still God chose to arrange things such that the whole human race is born in a state of condemnation due to one man's sin.

And there does seem to be support for this in Psalm 50 (51) and Psalm 58:
�The wicked are estranged from the womb: They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: They are like the deaf adder that stops up her ear, who listens not to the voice of charmers, charming ever so wisely. Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: Break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Jehovah.�

But, there are these Old Testament scriptures,

Deut. 24:16, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin."

2 Kings 14:6, But the children of the murderers he slew not: according unto that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin."

Ezek. 18:20 "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him."

Ezek.33:20, "Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. O ye house of Israel, I will judge you every one after his ways."

Jer. 31:29-30 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge."


Ezekiel 18:20 in particular seems to contradict the teaching that God punishes the children for the sins of their fathers.

Of course, there are passages that say that God does visit the sins of the fathers upon their children,

(Exodus 20:5) - "You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,"
(Deuteronomy 5:9) - "You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,"
(Exodus 34:6-7) - "Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; 7who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."

Now in light of all that I have posted, can we say that God does or does not punish children for the sins of their fathers? or both. It occurs to me too that God did kill David's son for David's sins and God slew the first born of Egypt for Pharoah's sins.

Is the answer to this riddle that God is above our concepts of justice and right and that we should not try to question why God does such things? Is Ockham right (and Luther and some Calvinists) that God can decree that which He wills even if it is unjust?

Joe

Joe,

The answer might be that we humans are not allowed to punish the children of wicked parents, but He as God, who is omnipotent, can do whatever He deems just, as he is also omniscient.

Joe,


The clauses I underlined are not either/or, but both/and. (Maybe one can think of it as "the Communion of Sinners" as the negative correlative of "the Communion of Saints", except that sin has no power or tendency to unite.) And Adam (Adamah) is not just an individual, he is the father of the whole race, so that "in Adam all sinned" by representation. We are "guilty" by being sons of Adam, by inheriting from the first man our humanity; just as we are redeemed by becoming sons of God through Christ.

It is not that God is seeking "vengeance"; what we learn in the OT is that he is actually seeking repentance: "my thoughts are of peace, and not affliction", plus many, many more texts from OT & NT. Finalized by Christ's very own teaching about God not desiring the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live.

[Various texts clipped for brevity]

The texts you cite all refer to personal sin; it is my impression that the early Hebrews did think (probably along with others in geological proximity to them) that "sins" or "crimes" on human beings were familial/tribal at least: that's why the law of talion was actually an improvement -- you didn't exterminate the offenders whole tribe to "avenge" a wrong! There was "development of doctrine" throughout the OT period, culminating in the definitive doctrine of the Messiah.


Definitively, God does not punish children for the sins of their parents anymore.

That opinion ("God can decree that which He wills even if it is unjust") is blasphemous, and implies imperfection in God.

Best,
Michael

So God at one time punished children for the sins of their parents but now He does not?

Some medievals wouldn't have thought that a voluntaristic notion of God's will was blasphemous. They would argue that our understanding of justice is flawed and that whatever God decrees is just simply because God decrees it. This view was based on the problems of the Old Testament that I bring up, God slaying children, Abraham being ordered to slay Isaac, etc.

Joe

Joe,

I don't have much to offer this discussion as I am as perplexed by the OT as you. The only thing I might suggest is that God condescended to the level of the people at that time. Look at God's attitude toward murder in Genesis when Cain killed Able. He seems to have actually pitied Cain! He did not strike Cain down dead. And in fact even "marked" Cain so that no one else would kill him either. All the "God Killing" (generally) didn't take place until after the Exodus. So it seems that perhaps this attitude was a concession on God's part to the wickedness of the Israelites.

Jason

Joe,

In the story of David that was mentioned, it seems that God did allow/cause the death of the child -- at least, some such understanding is implied by the nature of the story itself.

God also allowed others to be killed (the firstborn in Egypt, those under the "anathema" or "curse of destruction" when Israel entered the Promised Land, etc.).

There is a certain development of doctrine, however, in the story of Israel and its relations with Yahveh, which one can only see by taking into account the whole OT, rather than each book as a standalone work. That is why the story culminates in the Messiah, and the NT. That, of course, is primarily a Christian perspective on the Bible; even if many Jews at the time of Our Lord, were expecting the coming of the Messiah soon, which appears to be the case.

So, perhaps God did permit the killing of children for the sinfulness of their parents at one point, or perhaps the understanding of the Hebrews progressed from an original to a deeper understanding of the events (as it frequently did down through the years). Still, the message from the prophets (many of whom you cited above) is that the deeper insight is that God wills not the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live.

The "voluntarist" idea of God, is not compatible with a God who is Logos; that was the view of St. Thomas Aquinas and is the view of Benedict XVI. That is the "surviving" Catholic view, however many moderns would prefer to side with the voluntarists, which includes not a few of the existentialists I used to hear about so often during my college years.

I think Protestants of the 16th-17th Centuries sided with voluntarism (in international law, and other disciplines) because it and they were anti-Catholic, anti-authoritarian, and anti-philosophical.

Best,
Michael

For the record, I don't advocate the voluntarist point of view. I was just bringing it out as one way that some theologians have attempted to explain what seem to be horrendous acts committed by God in the Old Testament. The Fathers were bothered by this as well and their solution was to allegorize the Old Testament. Of course, that doesn't answer the question of whether God really commanded certain things to be done, but I think that once they allegorized it, they let that question slide by.

Another view is that the Old Testament is very imperfect as revelation and this might be in accordance with what you are saying Michael. Perhaps, the Hebrews only partially understood God's revelation and so they attributed things to God that were really their own desires. The prophets came later expressing a more clear understanding of God's revelation. But the fullness of revelation came only in Christ. So we have a progressive revelation, a very dim one in the early Old Testament, one that becomes more clear in the later writings, and one that is complete in Christ.

Joe

I think from a Latin perspective, the problem lies in Luther's claim that "concupusicence" (sorry not sure of the spelling)
was actually sinful in itself. This not beeing the case, it is just a weakness or tendancy to sin. Sorru I find it hard to type, will let your add to this.
Stephanos I

There is a tendency to identify man's nature with sin in protestantism. Rather than talking about having a human nature weakened by sin, protestants often talk of a "sin nature." I wonder if Luther is the origin of this.

Joe

I think the tendency to speak about things according to their nature is a Western issue, not just a Protestant one. We say that a thing is what a thing is (nominalism) by nature. Orthodox teaching, imo, recognizes that a thing is more than what it is by nature.

Protestants say we are sinful by nature meaning that sin/guilt are involuntary and essential to what man is post fall. I think Catholic's reject this though the tendency is still to consider things according to their nature rather than in terms of relationships.

Jason

But it is inevitable that all will commit sin. There is no way out of it, it is impossible to live in the world without ever having sinned. This is why the Immacuate Conception was proposed in Western theology, to take care of the problem that we inherit original sin in such a way that there is no one who escapes being a sinner.

Joe