Teach the Controversy: Question Belief!
Can Humans Aspire to Perfection Despite Original Sin?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
September 2004
The Sin of Adam
Original sin is what we are notionally born with as a consequence of the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.Romans 5:12
Since it is with us from birth, infants are damned unless they get the chance to be Christians, effected through infant baptism, a violation of the free will principle, because no infant is able to make its own decision on such matters. But the doctrine of original sin, that one primeval man’s sin is transmitted to all his descendants, irrespective of their own piety, devotion and good works, is so morally repugnant it cannot be a creation of a good God.
Let the little children come to me, for to such belongs the kingdom of Heaven.
The words of Christ seem to imply the opposite of original sin because he thought children were the only good ones among us! So, here is another example of Christianity believing a mortal man, Paul, rather than the teaching of their own God, Christ. If Christ can say, “Be ye perfect,” the Christian God is saying humankind can aspire to perfection. How can that be so when everyone is automatically a sinner because Adam was? The early heretic, Pelagius, thought human beings could reject evil to seek God, and that His grace was the innate ability to do so.
What then of people’s own wickedness in life, also called sin. The bible says God will eternally punish all sins whether important or not, but it cannot be just that minor deviations from the path of goodness should be treated as gross violations of goodness are. Christ thought it was sensible to pull out a lustful eye rather than to risk a lustful look. It seems pretty minor to merit such a drastic response, implying that even a glance at a shapely ankle will get the hell fires stoked up. So, if all sinners go to the eternal fires of hell, irrespective of the degree of their weakness, then God is not fair and cannot be as Christians claim He is—loving!
Moreover, Christians are certain that only those who have the Christian faith are saved, and so everyone else who has not are damned no matter how innocent they might be. Even among those who have faith, God has to deign to save them out of His divine grace, or they might end up frying forever. This is not fair even to Christians.
Catholics saw the problem and invented degrees of hellish torture, and even purgatory, but there is no scriptural basis for these concepts. They are inventions of the Church to patch up holes in Christian theology. Of course, the big sin is to reject Christianity, meaning, so the Christians tell us, to reject God, something that God considers utterly despicable and unforgiveable despite allowing us, through free will, to do it.
