Theologians differ over whether sin should be defined as a human privation of good or as purposeful disobedience of God’s holy law, but orthodox theologians are agreed that sin is the human condition that separates humanity from God, who is holy. The reality of sin is one of the basic foundations of biblical Christianity and the doctrine of sin has played an important role in defining each of the major theological traditions of Christianity.
Catholic theologians have made the distinction between mortal and venial sins. Mortal sins are transgressions of divine law in serious matters, made with an awareness of the law and the gravity of the transgression. Venial sins are transgressions that are made with imperfect knowledge of divine law, transgressions of laws of a less binding nature, or transgressions of laws of a serious nature but made with a conscience ignorant of the gravity of the act.
Both Catholics and Protestants have traditionally maintained some form of a doctrine of original sin—the state of sin that has pervaded humanity since the Fall. Catholic theologians have generally followed Augustine in understanding original sin to be a “privation of good” or the loss of sanctifying grace. For Thomas Aquinas, original sin left the human mind and will intact, but deprived men and women of the grace that would enable them to attain their original destiny. The Protestant Reformers, on the other hand, spoke of sin as a perversity encompassing human nature in its entirety, including the mind and will. But Augustine’s views regarding the transmission of original sin have had a profound impact on much of Protestant theology. The history of the doctrine in its Protestant expression is particularly noteworthy.
The discussion of sin among orthodox Protestant theologians has consisted of two foci: the initial act of disobedience by Adam and Eve (resulting in their spiritual separation from God due to a loss of personal righteousness, the inevitability of physical death and the threat of eternal judgment) and the consequences of their sin for their progeny (the entire human race). The issue of the initial disobedience was seldom disputed throughout most of the nineteenth century because most theologians embraced the historicity of the biblical account, but the consequences of Adam’s sin for humanity were vigorously debated. The controversy centered on two issues: (1) the manner in which humans participate in Adam’s disobedience and (2) its effect on the human race. Theologians questioned whether guilt (i.e., culpability for punishment) is alien—something that is reckoned apart from individual participation—or exclusively the result of personal agency? Does guilt result in depravity which is transmitted through the human race and bears fruit in acts of sin, or is guilt a consequence of either an inherited sinful nature or propensity?
Augustinian Views. In American theology, the most notable discussions of sin have taken place in the Reformed tradition. Within both the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, many theologians have built on the Augustinian tradition and adopted a view of the consequences of Adam’s first sin that may be termed immediate or antecedent imputation. The essence of this view is that all people are born already under God’s wrath, that their lack of original righteousness results in inherent sin in which all human capacities are corrupted, and that sinful actions, being a result of those corrupted faculties, are not the ground for condemnation.
During the nineteenth century this view evoked considerable discussion. The focus of controversy was the manner in which Adam’s progeny participated in his first sin. Federalists (known also as nonparticipationalists or representationalists), such as Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary, advocated a view that had emerged simultaneously with Covenant Theology in the seventeenth century. They argued that Adam’s sin, and no one else’s, was the judicial ground of condemnation. Adam’s sin was reckoned to be that of the race, though it actually was not, because Adam’s act as the first person was judged to be the action of all persons.
Seminalists (also called participationalists or realists), such as James H. Thornwell, W. G. T. Shedd and A. H. Strong, argued that the descendants of Adam directly participated in Adam’s sin. Since all were in Adam, all cooperated with Adam in his transgression and therefore justly merited his condemnation. Other theologians, such as Robert L. Dabney (and more recently John Murray), have combined facets of both the federalist and the seminalist perspective, suggesting that neither view exclusively expresses the relationship between Adam and the human race.
Another way of understanding the consequences of Adam’s first sin on the race is known as mediate or consequent imputation. On the assumption that guilt arises out of individual freedom, advocates of this perspective have maintained that guilt is strictly personal and is not reckoned apart from human participation in sin. This view was initially set forth by Josua Placaeus, a seventeenth-century theologian of the Reformed school of Saumur (France), and is also known as dispositionalism or transmissionalism. In essence, it maintains that humans are subject to God’s judgment for their own sinful exercises—whether affections, desires, intentions or volitions—that spring from a nature inherited from Adam. Their corrupt capacities are not a result of God’s judgment. By participating in Adam the race is born with a bent or propensity toward sin, but with no accompanying liability. It is the actual sin that activates negative potentiality.
Though this view is erroneously said to have been advocated by Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century, it was adopted by many of his followers in the nineteenth century and was a component of the New England Theology. Theologians such as Samuel Hopkins, Nathaniel Emmons, Timothy Dwight, Leonard Woods, Moses Stuart and Nathaniel Taylor rejected the ideas of imputed guilt and derived depravity, attempting to escape any implication that God was responsible for sin. Contact with New Divinity Congregationalists brought these ideas into Presbyterian thought and contributed to the 1837 schism between Old and New School Presbyterians. Old School Presbyterians followed the lead of Princeton Seminary and Charles Hodge, while New School Presbyterians, such as Albert Barnes and Henry B. Smith, followed the innovations of the New England divines.
Arminian Views. Theologians within the Arminian tradition took their cue neither from Augustine or Placaeus, but from John Wesley and Isaac Watts (1674–1748). The “prince of Wesleyan theologians,” Richard Watson (1781–1833), provides a paradigm for understanding this perspective. Watson attempted the first synthesis of Methodist theology in his Theological Institutes (1823–1824). This work was widely used in American Wesleyan schools such as Vanderbilt, where Thomas O. Summers, professor of theology, published an edition of his work in 1874.
Watson, who seems to have been more dependent on Watts than either Arminius or Wesley, advocated a view of the consequences of Adam’s first sin known as deprivation or liability. In essence, and unlike Wesley who appears Reformed at this point, Watson perceived the result of Adam’s sin not as imputed guilt and inherent corruption, but simply as a lack of original righteousness. The consequences of being born neither with penal affliction nor in a state of mere potentiality is that this divinely constituted but deprived state inevitably leads to voluntary depravity because preventative assistance was removed in Adam. While no one is born with alien guilt, all are born without the vital influence of God. The result is that humans are incapable of pleasing God. Watson defined this as the state of spiritual death.
The inability to please God is not sin itself, but it invariably leads to human pollution, corruption and depravity which, in turn, produces actual transgressions. The obstacle of not being able to please God is removed by a prevenient or preparatory grace described as a universal application of Christ’s atonement. This makes it possible for individuals to embrace the gospel. Thereafter the will is the only hindrance to procuring redemption. Advocates of this view assert that it preserves the justice of God and the freedom of humanity.
Modern Views. In the twentieth century the concept of sin has been radically reinterpreted. The current theological consensus seems more in harmony with Augustine’s fifth-century opponent Pelagius than with any other source. Pelagius suggested that the relationship between Adam and his progeny was neither organic nor negative; it was environmental, sociological and psychological. The injury of Adam’s sin to the race was merely that it set a bad example or precedent that humans have emulated.
Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, perceived sin as an inevitable result of the tensions between human freedom and human limitation or finitude. It arises out of the personal struggle between what one ought to do and what one personally desires to do and is frequently exhibited in pride and sensuality. Sin is not related to human nature so much as human personality. Paul Tillich psychologized sin by suggesting that it consists in estrangement from the true self—it is a perceived sense of alienation. Both of these recent attempts to define the human dilemma focus on subjective experience. The traditional views were built on a deeper, objective scenario.
Hannah, John D., Th.D., Dallas Seminary; Ph.D., University of Texas, Dallas. Department Chairman, Professor of Historical Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.
Reid, Daniel G. ; Linder, Robert Dean ; Shelley, Bruce L. ; Stout, Harry S.: Dictionary of Christianity in America. Downers Grove, Ill. : InterVarsity Press, 1990
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