Understanding the Biblical Doctrine of the Original Sin
Understanding the Biblical Doctrine of the Original Sin
For Milton Villanueva
It is impossible to understand the nature and nobility of the salvation if we do not understand of what and how. The answers to these questions are: "of the sin” and “by means of Christ”, and they can seem simple to us at first sight. But what this implies or how is it interpreted this is what does the difference, and what has generated endless controversies inside the Church from the first centuries.
All that we rest on the Bible as the God's Word, and accept it like our only rule of faith and conduct, we know that there was a historical man called Adam, who sinned. Nevertheless, it is not to the first sin to what we call original sin but to his scope and consequences. The origin of the controversy goes back to the fourth century. The protagonists are two monks: Agustín and Pelagio.
The context of the controversy
Agustín, accentuating the need for the God's grace in the human life did the following prayer: "Oh God, gives what you order, and it orders what you want.” Pelagio reacted to this with the following reasoning: "If God demands something of the man, it is because the man has the capacity or moral skill to answer to God. Otherwise, it would be unjust that God was suing the man his what He knows that He cannot do.” Departing from this wrong premise, Pelagio prepared the whole doctrine about the original sin. We say mistaken, because God, knowing that the man cannot keep perfectly the moral law, Ten Orders be still understood, it demands a perfect obedience, knowing ours for moral incapability to fulfill them perfectly.
The Original Sin as the Pelagianismo
In short, this was what Pelagio taught:
That the man was created essentially well. That could be modified " incidentally " but not "essentially".
That Adam's sin was slightly "accidental", but after sinning, it remained "essentially" good. That his moral nature remained intact.
That, consequently, none of his "skills" or “personal attributes” were affected in some form by the sin. The sin was, something like that, as that commits a mistake, and then it rectifies, and can do it again or not again. So, essentially, his intellect, feelings and will, they did not incur any loss for the sin.
That Adam's sin affected him and only to him. Therefore, there is no fault, judgment or corruption that have been penetrated to his descent. And that all the human beings we are born with the same moral condition of Adam before the sin.
This way, Pelagio defended that after the sin, the human being kept on being essentially good, with all his intact skills, including his “free will”. In accordance with Pelagio every infante who was born in this world, was doing it in the same Adam's condition before the sin. It is not necessary to be an authority in the Biblical knowledge to realize that Pelagio was sincerely wrong
Agustinianismo
Agustín's educations are summed up this way:
That before the sin, “Adam had the skill to sin and not to sin, but that after “the fall” (his sin be understood), already did not possess the inability to sin or, what is equal, the skill not to sin. In other words, through which after the fall we cannot already live without not sinning.
That essentially the man suffered a moral transformation of his nature. We sin because we are sinful.
That the effects of the sin: the corruption of the human nature, the fault and the condemnation, they have reached all the Adam's progeny for natural generation. From the belly of our mother we are already sinful.
That the volitional determinations of the man are determined by his sinful condition.
Anyway, in what it corresponds to the salvation, this one has to be entirely for grace, becoming necessary the new birth or regeneration so that the man could be moved to the repentance and the faith. This chapter of the controversy culminated with the Pelagio condemnation in the Council of Carthage in the year 418. But his cousins, the semi-pelagianos will reappear in full effervescence of the Protestant Reform of the XVIth Century, and will give to the reformed Church, the contender opportunity ardently against the educations of one “pelagius revividus”.
Semi-Pelagianismo
Recapturing the cause of Pelagio, it arose what was called the "Semi-Pelagianismo", taking up office, what they understood was an intermediate point between the positions of Agustín and Pelagio. It was, something like reduced pelagianismo, that he was accepting partly, the effects, consequences and scope of Adam's sin, so much in him as in his posterity, but that it reserves to the man a dose of good will as to be able to cooperate with the God's grace in the conversion. The Semi-Pelagianismo teaches that the man with his own natural powers is enabled to give the first step towards the conversion, and then, achieves the assistance of the Holy Spirit. A maxim that it characterizes all semipelagianismo is “it is up to me to be ready to believe, and to the God's grace to attend to me”.
The leaders of the Protestant Reform of the XVIth Century pushed back both the Pelagianismo and the Semi-Pelagianismo on the base of which both doctrine systems were opposite to the Biblical educations. Following Agustín, the reformers recaptured the educations about the God's sovereignty, the entire human depravity and the unconditional election. These were the positions supported by Lutero, Zuinglio, Melancthon, Bullinger, Bucer and, of course, by Juan Calvino. Of step, the most important literary work written by Lutero is The Certain Will, an apology against “the free will” defended by Desiderio Erasmo in his Diatribe. And he compares what so vilely it had done, in spite of taking a salver of thin silver to load ordure. The semipelagianismo had come to this repugnance tone opposite to the zeal for the “alone Scriptura” of Lutero and other reformers of the Church.
Martin Luther wrote about the original sin: "In accordance with the apostle and his simple sense of being in Christ Jesus, it is not merely a quality insufficiency in the will, or a mere lighting insufficiency in his intellect, or of force in the memory. On the contrary, it is a finished depravity of the whole honesty and the skill of all power of the body, as of the soul, and of the interior and entire exterior of the man. In addition to this, it is an inclination to the evil, a repugnance to the good thing, an inclination put up towards the light and the knowledge; it is the love to the error and the darkness, a leakage of the good works, and a hatred of them, one to run towards the evil...”
That's why, both Lutero and other reformers stopped road surfaces in which it is “Only for Christ”, “Only for Grace” and “Only for Faith” that the man can be safe. And in turn you are "alone" of the reform, they are not but Pablo's echo: "Because by grace you have been saved by means of the faith; this does not come from you but it is the God's gift.” (Efesios 2:8)
Arminianismo
Jocobo Arminio turns into the next standard-bearer of the Semi-Pelagianismo. It generated the whole controversy against the educations of the Reform, and against the educations of the best of his exponents, Juan Calvino. Arminio summed his arguments up in five points against the Calvinism, which were refuted and condemned in the Synod and Cánones de Dort in the year 1618. Since then one will speak about Five Points of the Calvinism, which in fact, they do not correspond exactly to a system taught by Calvino and Reformed of his epoch, but to an apologetic structure generated by the controversy before the synod.
To understand well the axis of the reformed position it would be good to consider the J.I remarks. Packer:“ For the Reformers, the crucial matter was not, simply, as God justifies the believers without the works of the law. More monopolist talked each other of a matter, how the sinners who are completely impotent in his sin, God, in spite of that, are saved by it for his free, unconditional and invincible grace, not only justifying them for the benefits of Christ's work when they come to the faith, but, how it resuscitates them of the death of the sin for your life Spirit to bring them to the faith. These two theologies conceive the salvation plan in well different terms. One makes the salvation depend on the God's work, other one in the work of the man; one needs the faith as part of the gift of God's salvation, other one like the proper contribution of the man to his salvation; one gives the glory of the salvation to God, other one divides the glory between God and the man, to the power to say: "God constructed the machinery of the salvation, and the man the opera on having believed.”
One might distinguish both educations like that: The difference between they, it is not essentially one of emphasis but of content. One, (the Calvinism) it proclaims a God who saves; other (the arminianismo) to a God who makes the salvation possible and to the man salvable. In the first case, the salvation will be assured by the God who saves it particularly. In the second one, the object of the salvation is the whole humanity but nobody in particular. In the first case, God is who saves by means of his sovereign, free and unconditional election. In the second one, the man is saved when he wants for his free will, and inclusive, can lose the salvation when he decides it himself, or depending on him. For the Calvinist the key is the God's grace, for the arminiano, the key is his free will. In a side (Calvinist), God takes the whole glory in our salvation. In another (arminiano), he her shares with the man to the east to cooperate with Him in her.
Before these contrasts, one has to come to the conclusion that the two cannot be in the true thing. And the terrible thing is that of what it is a question it is of the salvation.
What the Bible teaches
The Bible is the best interpreter of himself, and for whom we believe that it is the God's Word, it constitutes our only rule of faith, conduct and practice. The question that we must rise to ourselves it is: Where does one incline the Biblical scales? This is the task that occupies us. Of course, that we are not going to defend the indefensible thing, but what we believe that it is the faithful education of the God's Word. And in this we subscribe to the words of the Prince of the Preachers, C.H. Spurgeon, who said the following thing: "The ancient truth that San Pablo preached, that San Agustín preached, and that Calvino preached, is true that I also must preach, of not doing it it would stop being faithful to my conscience and to my God.”
The Biblical doctrine of the original sin, does not refer, simply, to the fact itself of the first sin committed by Adam and Eva, but to the consequences of this sin. The original sin is the corruption inherited from our parents, as well as the condemnation for his original disobedience. And, of course, to the grade and scope of these. In the reformed language, we refer to these realities like “entire depravity”. Term that of entry, can be an interpreted evil, and by which some reformed theologians prefer to call it “a radical corruption”. But, since the habit does not do the monk, the important thing the tag but the content is not.
For “entire depravity” or “radical corruption”, it is not meant that every human being is so bad as can become, but all the areas or parts of the human life (his intellectual, emotional and volitional life) have been corrupted in some measurement by the sin.” And that this corruption is it sufficiently extensive, radical (from the roots) and of such a grade, as to incline towards the sin and to disqualify us for any initiative or spiritual one who drives to the salvation. That although, after the fall the man became a slave of the sin, according to the same Christ said it (“Certainly I make sure them that everything the one that sins he is a slave of the sin” (Juan 8:34)) the man is a voluntary slave, who acts according to the reports of his own heart that is dominated by the sin. If we want to call him “freedom“ to this o “free will” or of some another way, it does not matter. It is the same dog with different necklace. What it imports is the reality: "everything the one that sins is a slave of the sin”; and regrettably, no man has escaped to this reality, but only our Mister Jesus Christ.
The man could not have escaped of the judgment and God's condemnation for his sin either: "By means of only one man the sin entered the world, and by means of the sin it brought in the death; it was as well as the death happened to the whole humanity, because they all sinned” (Romans 5:12). And, “, given that they all sinned, and they are dismissed of the God's glory” (Romans 3:23). The man who has not been regenerated, is DEAD IN SIN, and his WILL IS ENSLAVED to his evil nature; and when it has to "choose" between the good and evil, he will always choose for the course of the sin that dominates it.
If you want to have a well clear idea of the condition of the whole humanity from the first sin of our parents, Adam and Eva, here it is: "There is no just only one, not even one; there is nobody who understands, nobody who looks for God. All it has got lost, to one they have been corrupted. There is nobody who does the good thing; there is no the only one! His gullet is an open tomb; with his language they drop tricks. Viper poison there is in his lips! Flood is his mouth of curses and of bitterness. Fast are his feet to go to spill blood; they leave ruin and misery in his ways, and do not know the footpath of the peace. There is no God's fear in front of his eyes” (Romans 3:10-18). And, consequently, apostle Pablo adds:“ so that everybody keeps silent about the mouth and remains guilty in front of God (vers. 19). As if this was not sufficient, and we were still thinking that when God asks us or orders something, it is because we have the kindness or natural skill of doing it, the apostle says to us: "nobody will be justified in the presence of God for doing the works that the law demands; rather, by means of the law we receive conscience of the sin” (vers. 20).
A more finished forensic report
Of course, that we cannot quote here all the Biblical versículos, but let's read, at least some of them, both of the Ancient one and of the New Testament, which they describe the condition of the man before being regenerated by the Holy Spirit and the God's Word.
In Genesis 6:5 it is said to us that it saw “the Gentleman that the nastiness of the human being in the ground was very big, and that all thoughts were always tending to the evil.”
Eclesiastés 9:3 - “the heart of the man muffles up of nastiness.”
Sniveller 17:9 – “Nothing there is so deceitful one as the heart, it has no remedy.”
And listen to this of the mouth of the same Christ: "What goes out of the person is what contaminates it. Because of inside, of the human heart, there go out the bad thoughts, the sexual immorality, the thefts, the murders, the adulteries, the avarice, the nastiness, the trick, the dissoluteness, the envy, the calumny, the arrogance and the idiocy. All this evil comes of inside and contaminates the person.” When the humanists, or those who "sorfean" mounted in the waves of the New Age, or those of the Positive and Tenacious Thought, invite him to find the good inside you, cheat you.
The man, in accordance with the nastiness of his entenebrecido heart, will always choose not to come to the light. “This is the cause of the condemnation: that the light came to the world, but the humanity preferred the darkness to the light, because his facts were perverse” (Juan 3:19). And his facts are bad because they come from a bad heart.
And of the mind: What does God say to us in his Word? “The sinful mentality is a God's enemy, since he neither surrenders to the God's law, it is not even capable of doing it. Those who live according to the sinful nature cannot please God” (Romans 8:23-24).
And a more finished picture of our condition, before the new birth to the new life, Pablo gives it to us in the Epistle to the Efesios 2:1-3: "In another time you were dead in his disobediences and sins, in which they were walking in accordance with the powers of this world. They were behaving according to the one that governs the darkness, according to the spirit that now exercises his power in those who live in the disobedience. In this time also all of us were living like them impelled by our sinful desires, following our own will and our intentions. Like the others we were for nature objects of the God's anger.”
There is great one more it demonstrates in the God's Word, but “for sample it is enough a button”. With this official report forensic scientist inspired by the God's Spirit, I ask him if you can still conceive another form in which a sinner becomes safe, that is not for the God's pure, sovereign and effective grace. Can a dead person listen? No. Can a slave of the devil liberate himself? No. Can a dead person resuscitate himself? Impossible! Does a heart, a thought can, does a will that what he wishes is the sin, which neither can not even want to hold to the God's will, do something of your own initiative to be safe? It would be so illusory as to think about pregnant birdies! Might this man to cooperate with God in his salvation, or God to hope that it should do it? It would be an idea so ruffled as to think that God has lost the head. Would God leave the value and the efficacy of the saving work of his Dear Son, Jesus Christ, to the tact of that we are for nature his enemies, to see if they want to accept it? Would it risk the eternal salvation plan, the Eternal Agreement of Redemption, the Blood of the Eternal Agreement, submitting them to an assumption “free will” of the man, who is not another thing than a voluntary slave of the sin, and a subordinate limited to the disobedience by Satan?
And, finally: does he believe that if in fact God proposed to save it to you, there being He the same dice this forensic report in his Word, he is hoping that you should cooperate with him, or that he should be his associate in achieving his salvation? If the salvation is not from beginning to end for the God's alone grace; if it does not initiate with the regeneration or the new birth; if he is not a God first who gives us life for his Spirit and his Word, then, our salvation it would not be but an impossible mission to manage. But for God there is nothing impossible.