Word: adame
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Everyone knows about the sin of Adam and Eve, and for 1,500 years Christian theology has proclaimed its consequences. As an offense against God by man's first parents, it made every man an automatic sinner, born without sanctifying grace. It took away, too, the gifts that had accompanied grace: the idyllic paradise that was Eden; the freedom from pain, from suffering, and from death. Because of it, all men be came subject more to their passions than to their reason, more prone to evil than to good. It was, in short, "original...
...utterly fallen body, incapable of good unless drawn to it by the grace of Christ. In answer to the British monk Pelagius, who preached that man could save himself by good works without the initial prodding of grace, Augustine hurled his reply: Humanity had inherited the curse of Adam's sin. Without the grace of Christ's redemption, men were damned...
...disobedience to God and the dread results of that sin for his progeny. Paul's Epistle, holding forth the redeeming grace of Christ as an antidote, reinforced his interpretation: in the Latin Vulgate, as Augustine read it, Paul's meaning was clear: it was Adam "in whom all have sinned...
Augustine's doctrine proved durable. For John Calvin, Adam's fall "perverted the whole order of nature in heaven and on earth." To Martin Luther, man was simul justus et peccator-a sinner savable by God's grace received through faith alone. The 16th century Council of Trent re-endorsed Augustine's attack on Pelagianism for the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church. And only last year, Pope Paul rephrased the traditional understanding of original sin as part of his modern creed...
...Sense. Nonetheless, it is the common opinion of theologians that the Augustinian version of original sin makes no sense today. For one thing, evolution suggests that Homo sapiens is descended not from one set of parents but from many, thus making a literal Adam and Eve quite unlikely. For another, Biblical scholars agree that the story of man's fall in Genesis is not history but myth-a story that points to the basic truth of evil in the world but says nothing about the inheritance of sin. Augustine even read St. Paul wrong; the correct translation...