Abstract

Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII


     

Part VII: The Compelling Logic of the Plan of Salvation: The Difference Between SIN and SINS

     THE ENTRANCE OF this disease or sickness which brought with it the penalty of physical mortality as well as an inheritable predisposition to sinful behaviour, is recorded in Genesis 2:8-17 and Genesis 3:1-24. First, we are told that Adam, after being formed of the dust of the ground was placed in a garden paradise in which two trees were singled out for special attention. No prohibition was attached to one tree, the Tree of Life, until after the Fall. The fruit of the other tree was forbidden, it being expressly stated that in the day Adam and Eve ate of it they would die. The penalty is set forth in the Hebrew in a way different from English. In the Authorized Version it is rendered, "Thou shalt surely die"; in the original it is more literally, "Dying, thou shalt die." This arrangement of the wording may be intended to emphasize the penalty of disobedience, but it is also possible that it would be best rendered into English as "Thou shalt begin to die." Whatever may be the precise meaning, the end result is clear. Eating the fruit introduced into man's body some toxic substance which disturbed its operation and ultimately brought him to the grave.
     The Tree of Life, if we are to be guided by a statement in Revelation 22:2, had something about it which could have supplied an antidote to the poison ingested with the forbidden fruit. From Genesis 3:22-24 it is clear that God could not allow fallen man to make use of this antidote under any circumstances. The reason for this is that by the very act of yielding to temptation and disobeying God's express command, Adam had destroyed once for all the purity and perfection of his spirit. He had, in fact, become a fallen creature both physically and spiritually, a creature quite unlike all God's other creatures. Had he been allowed to recover his physical immortality by eating of the Tree of Life, he would have condemned himself either to living on forever (Genesis 3:22) with a corrupted spiritual nature, or ending it by deliberately taking his own life. In this light, physical death was God's merciful

     pg 1 of 10      

---

provision. Thus, sin entered by man, and by sin death entered into human experience. . . .  And so death passed upon all men, for it is clear that all men die. (see Romans 5:12).
     Whatever the nature of this poison was, it must in some way have reached Adam's seed, for he passed it on to his children, who were born mortals, as all men have been since. This circumstance is important from a genetic point of view for it necessarily involves the inheritance of an acquired characteristic, the characteristic being mortality. Nothing was said to Adam about dying until he was commanded not to eat the forbidden fruit, and there is no reason to suppose that he would have died if he had not done so. Adam therefore acquired a characteristic, physical mortality, and passed that condition of mortality on to his descendants.
     This physical corruption, which throughout the subsequent centuries of human history has gradually reduced the life span of man to a few score years at the best, has had an equally disastrous effect upon the human spirit. Though chemical in nature when first introduced into Adam's body, the poison had some disturbing effect which was thereafter inherited by all Adam's descendants. Consequently, as the individual matures, it is his nature to be inescapably predisposed to rebellion against God. It is no longer possible for man to render perfect obedience to the law of God. The innocence of childhood which ought to mature into virtue becomes, alas, guilt instead. On this account the law failed because of the weakness of the flesh (Romans 8:3).
     What began as a fatal poisoning of the human body has become a fatal poisoning of the human spirit. This tragic spiritual sickness which brings to nought all human aspirations after holiness, has been termed "Original Sin."
     It is a curious fact that Christian scholars have paid very little attention to its basic physical or chemical origin. Luther was perceptive enough to discern the significance of the circumstances of the events in Eden and of the special emphasis in the record placed upon the seed of the woman rather than the seed of the man. He said, (2) "Through the fall of Adam sin entered into the world, and all men in Adam have consequently sinned. For the paternal sperm (i.e., seed) conveys the corruption from generation to generation." And again, according to Tertullian, (3) "The soul has its sinful condition as a result of its relation with Adam. Our race is infected . . . with sin which has become so to speak a natural element in mankind." The idea that a poison is

2. Luther: in A History of Christian Thought, J. L. Neve, Muhlenberg Press, Philadelphia, 1946, vol.1, p 230.
3. Tertullian: in Neve. ref.2. p.139.

     pg.2 of 10     

---

responsible was voiced by Franz Volkmar Reinhard (1753-1812) (4) in his System of Christian Morals, who explained the Fall as a kind of poisoning and hereditary sin as the inheritance of a poisoned constitution. Like many others who shared his views, he held that the disposition to sinfulness arose in this way but that it is only on account of "actual sins" in which free self-determination is involved that man allows his sinful disposition to realize itself.
     The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England (Article ix) states:

     Original sin standeth not in the imitation of Adam but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man who naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is . . . of his own nature inclined to evil so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit . . . And this infection of nature doth remain in them that are regenerated.

     I think it is important in showing how compelling the logic of Scripture is in its record of the fall of Adam and the consequences to himself and his descendants, that solely on this basis the Council of Carthage in A.D. 412 condemned as heresy the three following propositions:

(1) Adam was created mortal and would have died whether he had sinned or not.
(2) The sin of Adam hurt only himself, and not all mankind.
(3) Newborn infants die in the same state as Adam was in before the Fall.

     We must assume the Council to have held, therefore, that Adam was not subject to death until he sinned; that the poison affected not only his own body but was passed on by inheritance to all his descendants and that no child of natural generation can ever avoid this physical defect and thus recover Adam's original state of deathlessness.
     Calvin expressed the view that sin is a "contagion": (5)

    We are not corrupted by acquired wickedness but do bring an innate corruptness from the very womb. . .  All of us, therefore, descending from an impure seed come into the world tainted with the contagion of sin.

     Again, he wrote: (6)

    Original sin, then, may be defined as a hereditary corruption . . . which makes us obnoxious in the sight of God, and then produces in us works which in Scripture are termed "the works of the flesh."

4. Reinhard, F. V.: in Religious Encyclopedia, Philip Schaff, Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1883, vol.3, p.2187.
5. Calvin, Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 5.
6. Ibid, Section 8.

     pg.3 of 10     

---

     This corruption is repeatedly designated by Paul by the term sin (Gal. 5:19), while the works which proceed from it . . . he terms the fruits of sin . . . also termed sins.

     We may quote others to the same effect also. Augustine said, (7) "Original sin is not the nature itself, but a defect that happened to it and a damage in the nature." Ulrich Zwingli said, (8) "Original sin is inherited, a sickness (morbus est et conditio: it is both the disease itself and the condition), but not a guilt. . . .  It is the root of all individual sins and it makes self-redemption impossible." E. Harold Browne said, (9) "The body was infected by the Fall, whether from the poison of the forbidden fruit or whatever cause. The infection of the body was indeed fomes peccati, i.e., a fuel which might be kindled into sin." Albertus Pieters said, (10) "There is in us universal and inherent corruption which expresses itself in thought, word, and deed, poisoning all the issues of life, like an incurable and loathsome disease." W. L. Knox and A. R. Vidler said, (11) "The doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin seeks to interpret what Christians regard as a fact of human nature, that we do not start fair, with a neutral disposition which can, by our own efforts and the help of grace, be converted into one of positive holiness, but with a definite bias towards evil contracted quite apart from any sins of our own."
     Man, therefore, unlike any other living thing, is born a diseased creature. From various Scriptures (and from the literature of biological research) we learn that this diseased condition begins very early in embryonic development, if not in fact at the time of conception. That which is in the womb is by nature, therefore, an unholy thing in the sight of God, in pointed contrast with the record of Scripture when referring to the Incarnation, where the Lord Jesus in Luke 1:35, yet unborn, is carefully referred to as "that holy thing."
     It is not without significance that one of the world's best geneticists of our own day, Theodosius Dobzhansky, has noted the significance of the events which occurred in Eden in terms of man's hereditary constitution. In a review of one of his books, Sir Gavin de Beer wrote: (12)

     One wonders if Pauline theologians realize that the doctrine of original sin involves the inheritance of an acquired character, for only genes can be inherited and, by the nature of the case, neither Adam nor

7. Augustine: in Neve, ref.2, p.335.
8. Zwingli: in Neve, ref.2, p.244.
9. Browne, E. Harold, An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles, Parker, London, 1860, p.235.
10. Pieters, Albertus, Divine Lord and Saviour, Revell, New York, 1949, p.64.
11. Knox, W. L. and A. R. Vidler, The Development of Modern Catholicism, 1933: quoted by David Lack, Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief, Methuen, London, 1957, p.106.
12. de Beer, Gavin; in Scientific American, Sept., 1962, p.268.

     pg.4 of 10     

---

Eve when they first appeared on the scene possessed the character they are alleged to have transmitted to their descendants.

     It may be questioned how it is possible that a physical poison could lead to a hereditary defect with such a pronounced and fatal effect upon man's spirit throughout history. But there are poisons which are known to depress man's moral sense. Alcohol, for example, is one such poison. Though it is a toxic agent, nevertheless under certain conditions it may have medicinal value (1 Timothy 5:23). Certainly in itself it is only a chemical substance. Yet it has been established beyond a shadow of doubt that it acts upon the higher centres in man to debase his powers of self-judgment and to encourage in him greater liberty in the expression of his lower nature. It is therefore clear that a poisoned body may well be related to the fact that all men grow up to be sinful in nature.
     Just to make sure that my meaning is understood, since we are really setting the stage for all that follows, I should like to reiterate what is said above in slightly different terms. Not only is physical death now the appointed experience of all men in Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22), but all men are active sinners. Romans 3:23 has it, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." But in writing to the Roman Christians, Paul makes it very clear that though all men inherit Adam's disease, Adam's sin, they do not imitate his particular sins. They have inherited his final mortal state but their transgressions are not a "similitude" of his (Romans 5:14). Nor is Adam's particular form of transgression imputed to his descendants, though his acquired disease is inherited by them to become a root which bears fruit in their lives. As a result they stand equally under the sentence of spiritual death by their own disobedience to the law of God, as they do under the sentence of physical death. The penalty of spiritual death is shared because each man has sinned personally not merely because Adam sinned. Each individual comes under sentence of spiritual death for his own sins.
     The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England take the position that man is to be judged not for having a sinful disposition but for having been content to allow it to express itself throughout his responsible life. So the individual is not now held accountable for his mortal state, since he inherited it without consent. For this reason God has undertaken to deal with it by providing a sin-offering in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. This sin-offering is applied to all men universally without exception. God's provision for sins, however, demands an act of personal faith and is not universal, since all men do not have that truth.

     pg.5 of 10     

     pg.6 of 10     

     Over 150 years ago, Nathaniel Taylor, (13) the eminent Congregationalist teacher at Yale, pointed out that it is inevitable that this human disease will bear fruit from the moment that man is capable of moral action. He said, "The entire moral depravity of man is by nature." Sin is a real and universal thing "to be truly and properly ascribed to nature and not to circumstances." Men commit sin "as soon as they become moral agents, as soon as they can" (emphases his). The propensity or disposition to sin is not in itself sinful, he argued, but it is the cause of actions which are.
     Some years later, J. C. Jones rightly pointed out that the only thing of importance to the rest of humanity in Adam's behaviour was this one single offense; of the rest of his life we know virtually nothing and may suppose that the silence of Scripture is intentional. Jones said: (14)

    St. Paul traces the stream of human evil to its fountainhead in the "one offense" of the "one man." The "one offense," of course, was the partaking of the forbidden fruit. The subsequent offenses of Adam are not referred to at all, either by Moses in his narrative or by Paul in his commentary thereon. Evidently, then, the other offenses were private concerning no one but the individual Adam -- they do not concern us at all, nor had they any influence in determining the course of history.
     But the "one offense" concerns us as much as it concerned him; it brought sin upon us and death, and all our woe. It is the one hinge on which the destiny of the race hung. Without contradiction that "one offense" of that "one man" bears a closer relation to posterity than any of Adam's other sins.

     The point is well taken because it underscores the pivotal nature of Adam's action and shows that it is not in any way by example that Adam passed on to all generations the spirit of self-will and disobedience. Human failure stems from an event in which something was disrupted in the human organism. It is not the effect of Adam's example communicated to his own generation and through them to the next generation so that society and the individual have become what they are by example. Even T. H. Huxley was honest enough to see the cogency of this truth: (15)

   . . . it is the secret of the superiority of the best theological teachers over the majority of their opponents that they substantially recognize these realities. . . .
     The doctrines of . . . original sin, of the innate depravity of man . . . appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the liberal, popular

13. Taylor, Nathaniel: in The American Adam, R. B. W. Lewis, University of Chicago Press, 1959.
14. Jones, J. C, Primeval Revelation, Hodder and Stoughton, London 1897, p.261.
15. Huxley, T. H.: quoted by David Lack, Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief, Methuen, London, 1957, p107.

     pg.7 of 10     

illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example of a corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so; that it is given to everybody to reach the ethic ideal if he will only try . . . and other optimistic figments.

     Interestingly, in his book The Ghost in the Machine, Arthur Koestler (16) admits to a suspicion that there really is something biologically wrong with man that in part helps to account for his moral depravity. He put it this way:

     When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that Homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process.
     The ancient doctrine of original sin . . . could be a reflection of man's awareness of his own inadequacy, of the intuitive hunch that somewhere along the line of his ascent something has gone wrong. . .  There is nothing particularly improbable in the assumption that man's native equipment . . . may contain some serious fault in the circuitry of his most precious and delicate instrument -- the central nervous system.

       One can hardly accept his evolutionary thinking in the light of Genesis 3, but his comment does suggest that the evidence favours a genuine organic disturbance which has affected the whole man -- body, mind, and spirit. We know this from Scripture, of course, but it is interesting to see recognition of it from an entirely secular source.
     Another writer of a former generation, James Gall, (17) was perceptive enough to see that man's fallen nature is very much like a disease, for reasons he sets forth as follows:

    It is its suicidal character that proves it to be a disease. It is because sin injures the interests, mars the enjoyments, and shortens the days of the individual who indulges in it, that demonstrates it is not "natural." It has not a single element of goodness in it nor connected with it, so that a moderate indulgence in it might be salutary. It is essentially and entirely harmful.

     What he really means, as he is at pains to show in his book, is that no animal does by nature things which injure its interests, mars its enjoyment of life, or shortens its days to no purpose. The behaviour of predators, for example, which sometimes looks extremely savage thus reminding us of human savagery, really has none of the characteristics of human savagery. For the animal is without hate, revenge, or desire to hurt merely for the pleasure of hurting. In fact, it probably "hurts" neither its prey, nor itself. When man acts according to his nature, however, he almost always acts self-destructively. This is what James meant by the suicidal character which proves that sin is a disease. Natural human behaviour is diseased behaviour.

16. Koestler, Arthur, The Ghost in the Machine, Hutchinson, London, 1967, p.267.
17. Gall, James, Primeval Man Unveiled, Hamilton, Adams, London, 1871, p.91.

     pg.8 of 10     

     pg.9 of 10     

     Many of our English versions have rendered this as "without sin," as though the truth intended by the words is simply that Jesus never failed in any temptation. This is a truth, but I do not believe it is the truth of this passage. The Greek is very specific: choris means "apart from" and not merely "without." The true significance of this statement is that whereas we are tempted from within because of sin in our members, "in him is no sin" (I John 3:5), and therefore temptation could not arise from within. When Satan comes to us there is within us that which gives him a leverage, but this was not true of the Lord Jesus Christ. When the prince of this world came to Him, he had nothing in Him whereby to secure an entrance into his spiritual life (John 14:30). Had the intent of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews been merely to express sinlessness, he would not have used the Greek preposition choris, but the common word in Greek for sinlessness, namely anamartetos, as it is found in John 8:7, where the Authorized Version has used the same English phrase "without sin."
     How did He, born of woman-kind, come to be free of sin since, as Job says, "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" (Job 14:4). Or to put the problem slightly differently, in another perceptive question asked by Job, "How then can man be justified with God?" OR "How can he be clean that is born of woman?" (Job 25:4). The Lord Jesus Christ, being born of a virgin (Luke 1:27 ) escaped the poison of sin and thus, as a Second Adam, was made "after the power of an endless life" (Hebrews 7:16). Augustine said of the First Adam that "it was not impossible for him to die but possible for him not to die." This was precisely true of the Second Adam, for being made after the power of an endless life, so that He need not have died, it was nevertheless possible for Him to die -- indeed, it was essential, for our sakes. In Adam, as created, there was no poison of sin to bring about his death. Of Jesus Christ as born of a virgin, it is said that in Him was no sin, though He who knew no sin was made to be a sin-offering for us (2 Corinthians 5:21).

     pg.10 of 10