Before You Reject Inherited Guilt, Read This!

Quick Thoughts on Doctrine, Individualism, and Chronological Snobbery.

Two things you must cast off to do good theology are individualism and chronological snobbery, which are the bane of many modern theologians. Nowhere is this more acutely felt than in the doctrine of Original Sin. G. K. Chesterton, in his typical fancy language, writes in Orthodoxy:

Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.¹

I certainly think that other aspects of Christian theology can be proved, but the point to draw is that our doctrine of man (second to our doctrine of God) is at the heart and center of our theology. Give the wrong answer to David’s “What is Man?” and your theology unravels very quickly.

Much can be said about the doctrine of original sin itself, but I put a spotlight on its most disputed aspect in modern theology, original guilt, aiming to demonstrate its sensibleness and show that we simply cannot dismiss the entire concept out of hand.

Once you put off your smoky chronological snobbery lens, you will see that not even the most vocal defender, Augustine of Hippo, taught that we are personally blameworthy for Adam’s sin. But that something of a guilt can be said to pass to his progeny was derived by the great theologian from sensible exegesis and not private fancy, or the tired rhetoric of “he used a mistranslation of Romans 5:12.”

The second lens to put off to understand the idea of inherited guilt is individualism. Ancients intuitively understand that God does not deal with us only as individuals, but also as communal persons. Whether the representational or mystical route, theologians have always noted the intrinsic and intricate connections of human persons.

We Are More Connected Than You Imagine

Representational connection, which I am more inclined to, is well illustrated in Leviticus 4:3:

If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, then let him offer to the Lord for his sin which he has sinned a young bull without blemish as a sin offering.

It is interesting that those who make much ado about Michael Heiser’s insistence on the use of the Ancient Near East context in interpreting the Bible (especially Genesis 1-3) cannot see the resonance here. It is not only a priestly representation that transfers guilt to the people, but a kingly representation does the same as well. We see this in David in 1 Chronicles 21.

1 Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.

7 This command was also evil in the sight of God; so he punished Israel.

⁸ Then David said to God, “I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.”

14 So the Lord sent a plague on Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell dead.

It may seem strange to us modern minds that God would punish 70,000 men for the sin of their king, but if we apply our minds well, we will find this in our everyday experience. When your president takes a loan on behalf of the nation, the individual citizens of that nation invariably bear the brunt of its repayment. Now, if the loan brings about economic development and prosperity, guess who enjoys the benefits? I didn’t hear anyone say it was unfair to impute the positive outcome unto them.

Whether you imagine Adam in a priestly or kingly office, he was the best of us (since he had a pristine human nature), chosen by God to represent his posterity. While he bears his personal guilt for his sin, as David did, he also transmits a “penal guilt” as David did to Israel. Adam’s sin not only held personal implications, but since he was a public person, it also held broader anthropological and even ecological implications. The same would have been true if Adam had been confirmed in obedience. We would have been beneficiaries of an act we were not direct participants in.

Low-amplitude echoes of the relationship of representative men to their progeny and environs continue to resonate in the Old Testament, even where personal responsibility for sin is affirmed. God reveals the concept of personal responsibility in Deuteronomy 24:13:

Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers; each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

Yet, collective responsibility can be seen in God’s treatment of Achan’s transgression as the transgression of the community in Joshua 7:1:

But the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things, for Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed things; so the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel.

Ecological implications can be seen for individual sins in Deuteronomy 24:4

then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

So you see, we are more connected than you imagine.

Old Things Are Passed Away?

Some may immediately retort that this connection is abrogated in later prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel when they reject the proverb in Jeremiah 31:29-30 and Ezekiel 18:2:

The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge

While this certainly affirms personal culpability and blameworthiness for sins committed, I can see how, through the lens of individualism, this can take on a radical proportion. But not so for Jeremiah and Ezekiel. After Jeremiah used the rejection of this phrase to introduce the promise of a new covenant in Chapter 31, in the very next chapter (32), he says this:

18 You show steadfast love to thousands, but you repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them, O great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts (ESV)

Guilt here is translated as iniquity or punishment in other translations, carrying a penal sense. That this is not a contradiction, Jeremiah immediately repeats the principle of personal culpability in the next verse

19 great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of the children of man, rewarding each one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds.

Ezekiel also affirms, strangely in Ezekiel 21:3-4, that:

3 and say to the land of Israel, Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against you and will draw my sword from its sheath and will cut off from you both righteous and wicked. 4 Because I will cut off from you both righteous and wicked, therefore my sword shall be drawn from its sheath against all flesh from south to north.

Now, I don’t claim to have all the keys to understand all that is going on in all these scriptures, but I am simply pointing out that an affirmation of personal culpability does not therefore negate collective punishment (or guilt).

All these form a good backdrop for understanding Paul’s description of Adam as a representational figure in Romans 5:12-21. Unlike many who think the thrust of original sin (and guilt) rests in verse 12, I rather believe it rests in vs 18 and 19:

18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men…¹⁹ For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners…

I have already spoken here against the idea of mistranslation of Romans 5:12 as the origin of the concept of original sin and showed here that the original Nigerian pastor who popularized this claim knows nothing of sound language exegesis or translation. I will not bother to repeat myself. My aim is not to make a full scriptural case for original sin or guilt, but to show that there is at least some warrant in the text which we can carefully scrutinize.

Distinctions Save Lives!

Augustine and other theologians after him, recognizing the paradoxical affirmations of Scripture concerning guilt employ very careful distinctions. Unlike the English language, the Latin and Greek languages furnish theologians with several alternative words for very similar concepts to enable them to make distinctions. So while we think only of the term “guilt” in English, the Latin furnishes them with terms such as “culpa”, “poenae”, “reatus”, and “reus”, which enabled them to make careful distinctions².

While I do not pretend to be skilled in Latin or that I have fully grasped the subtleties of these distinctions among theologians, the basic point being upheld is a distinction between personal and ethical culpability on the one hand and a legal, penal, and communal liability for sins of public persons on the other hand. The former is non-transferrable, but the latter is transferrable to progeny.

The Church Fathers Didn’t Hate Babies!

Time and space fail me to elaborate on the implications of this doctrine for infants, difficult as it may sound. But I would only urge you here to consider that the church fathers and theologians who have gone before us were neither stupid nor callous. The theological liberalism of our age should not lure us to think we are more empathetic of the plight of infants than they were, so as to give us the leeway to demolish age-long scriptural exegetical deliverances. Give them some grace, burn those “chron snub” goggles, and read them more carefully. And where they were wrong, you will find that the church has never been at the mercy of the singular conclusions of even the most eminent theologians. There are always good solutions if you dig correctly. We do not need modern innovations.

The point of this essay is hardly original sin or guilt per se. But that perennial modern problem of chronological snobbery. Reject these ancient theologians if you must (I hope you don’t), but never do it out of hand. I shall bring you in remembrance of the wisdom of Chesterton’s fence, which I have once concluded with before:

If you were to find a 1000-year-old fence in the middle of nowhere obstructing your path, do you just decide to knock it down in that instance? Not until you understand why your forbears expended their time and energy to erect the fence are you qualified to make modifications to it or take it down. Short of this, you may be breaking down the supposed useless barricade keeping wolves from gaining access to prey on the community’s sheep.

TL;DR: Do not destroy what you don’t understand.

Even if you do not agree with tradition, and you would like to change it or annul it, it behooves you to thoroughly understand it first before undertaking your venture. Straw-manning and distorting the reasoning behind the tradition would only end up hurting you, who are being supported insensibly by said tradition.

Christianity thrives in its traditions. Our goal must then be to retrieve apostolic tradition everywhere possible. This, we shall do; God’s grace on our side.

1. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p14 (Kindle)

2. You can read more about these Latin distinctions from https://journal.orthodoxwestblogs.com/2018/12/03/inherited-guilt-in-ss-augustine-and-cyril/ and https://www.arcaneknowledge.org/catholic/original6.htm#sec6_4.