Dr Paul Allen

“Give What You Command, and Then Command Whatever You Will”:  Augustine, Pelagius, and the Question of Original Sin   By  Brad Green Original sin, in particular the relationship between Adam and the rest of humanity, is one of the most vexing doctrines in the history of Christian thought. Henri Blocher captures it well when he refers to the doctrine as a “riddle.”1  Often, the best way to come to terms with a complex theological issue is to go at it through a close study of a key historical controversy that surrounds the doctrine. The doctrine of original sin would entail an analysis of the pitched theological struggle between Augustine and Pelagius (and the Pelagians). This was a literary battle, as Augustine never met Pelagius, although they both were in Rome simultaneously.  1 Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle, NSBT 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997). Note: the enumeration of these footnotes differs from those used in the full chapter sin...

When Did Sin Begin? : Human Evolution and the Doctrine of Original Sin, Calvin University physics professor Loren Haarsma surveys the current state of this debate, outlining the prevailing schools of thought among evangelicals without taking a particular side. Jay Johnson, a former journalist and frequent writer on topics of science and faith, reviewed the book. “Drawing from a dozen recent books on the subject,” writes Johnson, “Haarsma runs through the four main options: God selected Adam and Eve from an existing population to represent all of humanity. Since they represented everyone, the consequences of their failure immediately affected everyone. God selected Adam and Eve from an existing population to represent humanity, but after being expelled from the Garden, their sinfulness was spread to others by culture or genealogy. Adam and Eve aren’t literal individuals. Rather, Genesis 2–3 is a stylized retelling of many human events compressed into a single archetypal story. Although ...

Augustine taught that babies inherit Adam’s guilt even before they sin—but this was based on a faulty Latin translation of Romans 5:12. So does that mean we aren’t born sinful? The doctrine of original sin was promulgated by Augustine (AD 354–430), who taught that we inherit guilt from Adam via our parents.  He didn’t just say that we were born with a sinful urge (which everyone agrees with), but that we are already sinners when we are born before we have had a chance to sin by ourselves because we inherit the guilt of Adam’s sin . It is easy to confuse the doctrine of original sin with that of original sinfulness—that is, the teaching that all humans are born with the inclination and natural propensity to sin, so that all humans are sinners because of they all sin. Therefore, in order to save confusion, I’m going to refer to Augustine’s doctrine as the doctrine of “original guilt.” ADAM’S SIN Part of Augustine’s reasoning depended on the rather idea that Adam’s...

God desires to be known in a world that he designed to reveal him, Christians believe that revealed truth is real. God made a real world, and God reveals the real truth about himself in and through that world. In short, the truth is part of the real world that God made, a world that includes humans as creatures specially designed to receive truth so as to know God. But the Bible’s teaching involves more than creation and salvation. The Bible also teaches that humans fell into sin and subsequently corrupted their nature and society. So sin prevents humans from receiving the truth. Here postmodernity prudently points out that even if there is the real truth, humans may not be able to know the truth truly. There are two reasons for this limitation. First, humans are finite, even apart from sin; humans can know truth only partially, so their knowledge is subjective, selective, and incomplete. Second, humans are sinful. When we add the problem of sin, humans are no longer able to know tr...

Jesus is the first person to get into heaven by His good works. We also get into heaven by good works—the good works of Jesus. They become “our” good works when we receive Christ by faith. When we put our faith in Christ, God credits the good works of Christ to our account. The covenant of grace fulfills the covenant of works because God graciously applies the merit of Christ to our account. Thus by grace we meet the terms set forth in the covenant of works. It is commonplace to hear the statement, “people are basically good.” Though it is admitted that no one is perfect, human wickedness is minimized. Yet if people are basically good, why is sin so universal? It is often suggested that everybody sins because society has such a negative influence upon us. The problem is seen with our environment, not with our nature.  This explanation for the universality of sin raises the question, how did society become corrupt in the first place? If people are born good or innocent, we woul...

English: From frontpiece of Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines (1924) by David Unaipon at the State Library of New South Wales (http://image.sl.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/ebindshow.pl?doc=a1929/a1191;thumbs=1) Category:Images of Australian people (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The first adult Christian at the Point MacLeay Mission, near the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia , was James Ngunaitponi, a Ngarrindjeri man whose name was Anglicised to ‘Unaipon’ by white people who could not pronounce it. The mission, technically non-denominational, was conservatively evangelical and ruled by the stern George Taplin. James Unaipon , born about 1830, came to Christ in 1862 through the teaching of a far gentler itinerant missionary, James Reid of the Free Church of Scotland , whose name James took at baptism. He chose to accompany Reid, acting as a translator and taking his own first steps towards evangelism. He had an immense knowledge of the Bible, the King James Bible of cou...

Polski: Koronacja Najświętszej Marii Panny (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Mary should never be the object of religious veneration, imputed to having titles or attributes that belong to God alone . It is Jesus , not Mary, who is the fountain of grace. She must never be the central focus of worship or religious affection. Scripture makes no claim that she was untouched by original sin , a perpetual virgin, a co-redeemer with Christ , or the Queen of Heaven . She is not to be the object of prayers—God alone is omnipresent and omniscient and the One to whom we pray. Mary is the equivalent of the Hebrew “Miriam,” and the name means “bitter.” Mary’s young life may well have been filled with bitter hardships. Her hometown was a forlorn community in a poor district of Galilee, so good things probably were pretty scarce. She had a sister (John 19:25) and a close older relative named Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:36), who might have been an aunt or a cousin. At the time th...