What is sin?

Paul says in reference to sin:

“… All sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Rom 3:23

Sinning (as a verb or activity) is in direct comparison to a deficiency. We “lack the glory of God,” Paul writes, and are not comparable to Him. We have nothing of God’s glory, but fall far short of that glory. God is, but we are different.

Sin is a verb that also receives a direct application as “missing themark” in individual places. So we read in the book of Judges: “Among all this warfare were 700 select men who were left-handed. These all hurled the stone to within an inch of its life and never missed their target.” (Ri 20:16). Where it says “miss,” the word is used for what is otherwise translated as “sin.” A pictorial and concrete situation can give much insight into the meaning of a word. Another passage is found in the Proverbs of Solomon, where it says: “… He who is hasty with his feet missteps” (Prov 19:2). Or in other words: If you run too fast, you will stumble and miss a stable footing with your foot.

How did sin enter the world?

He who sins misses his target. This is a biblically based description and meaning. Now we know from the Bible that sin once entered this world, and according to the biblical story, it was through Adam and Eve. Paul describes it this way:

“Therefore, just as through a man sin entered the world …”
Rom 5:12

The reference here is from the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were placed by God. There they were allowed to eat from all the trees, but they were not allowed to eat from one particular tree:

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it thou shalt not eat: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
Gen 2:16-17

They were not allowed to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If there were such a thing as a juxtaposition of “goal” and “non-goal,” then eating from this tree of knowledge would be “non-goal.” Eating from it would mean “missing the target”. Now, this transgression came with serious consequences, because the warning was: “for in the day that you eat of it you must die! With this translation something cannot be right, because Adam and Eve did not die on the day of the transgression (mankind would have died out immediately). Martin Buber translates at this point with the rhythm of the Hebrew text: “… For on the day that you eat of it, you must die, die”. This shows in a haunting way an ongoing, certain dying. The concordant rendering translates here word-exactly: “…you will be dying to die”. Adam and Eve were here threatened with their mortality. They would be “dying” until the day they die (their death).

In the next chapter we learn how Adam and Eve, seduced by the serpent, nevertheless ate from that tree. God then confronted them with what you had done and said, among other things:

“And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee: Thou shalt not eat of it! – the ground shall be cursed because of you: With travail shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life; and thorns and thistles shall he cause to spring up for thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field! In the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground, for from him you are taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return!”
Gen 3:17-19

The emergency has occurred. Life became limited. Adam and Eve do not die on the day of transgression, but they will have hardships “all the days of your life” and that is “until you return to the ground… For dust you are, and to dust you will return”. This, then, is the moment when Adam and Eve are shown the limitedness of their lives. You will die one day and be dying until then. Both sin – the failure to reach the goal – came into the world and, through it, death.

Paul describes it this way:

“Therefore, just as through the one man sin entered the world, and through sin death …”
Rom 5:12

What happened next?

Having reached this point, one may ask how things have progressed since Adam and Eve. What has happened to this now mortal humanity? We know the story and perhaps recognize ourselves and experience good days and many not so good days. We lack the glory of God and feel this lack. Against the background of this reality, the dogma of original sin now says that it is sin that is passed on from person to person. We “inherit” this sin, so to speak, and therefore carry the whole burden of sin with us from infancy.

The Latin language did not speak of original sin, but of “original sin” or “original sin” (Latin peccatum originale). The word “original sin” came into being only in the Middle Ages and concerned an extension of the Latin statement (lat. peccatum originale originatum – instead of original sin it became something like “original sin produced”), which made it possible to distinguish between the first sin (of Adam and Eve) and the chaos which it created for all mankind. At some point, this led to the German term “Erbsünde” (original sin), which originally meant the sin with which the descendants of Adam and Eve were afflicted. Yet something remains attached to this formulation, namely the understanding that it is sin that is passed on.

Now this idea of original sin cannot be traced in the Bible. There is no such word as “original sin” in the Bible, and nowhere is it said that sin is “passed on” from generation to generation. Therefore, there are also several ideas about how it can be that now all mankind has to struggle with this deficiency phenomenon. Because, one asks not without reason, “the misery must somehow reach us?”. The idea of original sin is not without contradiction in church history. It seems to be mainly a doctrine in the Western Church. Therefore, there are other points of view that give a different perspective on the problem of sin. It does not have to be sin that is passed on. The real problem may lie elsewhere.

The reason for this lies in the verse from Romans 5 already mentioned, which is now quoted in full:

“Therefore,
just as sin entered the world through the one man,
and through sin, death,
and so death penetrated to all people,
whereupon they all sinned …”
Rom 5:12

The structure of the verse shows a reversal of the statement. It is a reverse mirroring of the subjects, which goes as follows:

1. Sin has entered the world, through it death
2. so death has come to all men, leading all to sin.

No original sin, then, but it is death that has come through to all people. This also seems quite logical, because in the Garden of Eden, mortality was threatened to mankind, not sinfulness, much less hell. Mortality did come through sin, but it is not sin that is passed on. It is mortality that we are struggling with as a human race. It would be an “inherited death” rather than an “original sin.”

It would be inherited death rather than original sin that we are dealing with.

Now this death within us is the reason for our missing the target. Mortality works within us. This one got through to us. Paul writes “…and so death came through to all men, whereupon they all sinned”. In Greek here is the word “epho” or etymologically “epi-ho”, literally translated as “upon that” or “upon what”. It is death on account of which all sinned. It is this death in us, this mortality, which is perpetually perceptible to us as lack and missing of the goal.

The Problem of Original Sin

Original sin cannot be found anywhere in the Bible. The doctrine is established on the basis of inference and persists in the Western Church as one of the important dogmas. But it has far-reaching consequences. The teaching shapes the understanding about man himself in a tremendous way. In this, the Western Church is different from the Eastern Church and also quite different from Judaism, for example, from which Jesus also came. The concept of original sin is a dogma that was unknown in Judaism. Neither Moses nor David nor any of the prophets nor Jesus spoke of it. Even the apostles did not speak of it. It is Christian theological thought that came later, long after the New Testament was completed.

The beginnings are recognized in Irenaeus, a bishop of Lyon, at the end of the second century AD. Later, Augustine (354-430 A.D.) coined the term, meaning that it is sexual desire that triggers sin, making humanity a “damned multitude.” His idea was that original sin is transmitted “physically” (note: others see it quite differently). He said that man is fundamentally bad – it is his nature. This is already true for the unborn child.

Augustine coined other dogmas, such as the concept of heaven and hell, purgatory, a mediatorial role of the church, double predestination (predestination to heaven or hell), etc. In Wikipedia, criticism on Augustine is summarized as follows:

“Augustine and his teachings were largely uncontroversial in the church until the Reformation. Only the emerging individualism, subjectivism and biblicism of the Reformation and the subsequent Protestant theology took offense at various statements (doctrine of original sin, doctrine of purgatory, etc.). Subsequently, some historians and theologians, such as Alfred Adam and Wilhelm Windelband, argued that Augustine was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and Neoplatonism in developing his teachings and that many of his ideas were biblically untenable. They cite doctrines such as strong dualism, which is also prevalent in Manichaeism, the doctrine of purgatory, the doctrine of hell, the doctrine of original sin, the doctrine of double predestination, and hostility to the body and sex. Overall, according to these critics, Augustine deformed the beliefs of early Christianity almost beyond recognition.
The theologian David Edwards doubts that Augustine does justice to Jesus Christ’s image of God, since his assessment (increasingly negative in old age) of the vast majority of people as “massa damnata” does not explain how then the Savior, who after all represents a Father-God filled with compassion, can be called “friend of sinners.”

In a polemic, the psychoanalyst Tilmann Moser interprets the youthful memories in the “Confessions” as an expression of a neurotic sense of guilt and a related longing to merge with God, which continue to have a burdensome effect on countless believers today.”

I recognize many issues here that are represented in communities in this way or in a similar way. They are regarded as biblical foundations or influence (negatively!) the attitude towards life of whole generations. According to Augustine’s conception, only very few people are ever saved, and that only under great hardship. The doctrine of original sin cannot be considered in isolation from other ideas. The complete depravity of man, for example, is a prerequisite for his view of a doctrine of heaven and hell. They therefore also appear together on the stage in Augustine, as does the “immortal soul” (inspired by the Greek philosophers). The combination of so many terms gives rise to thought constructs that no longer necessarily have much to do with the Bible itself.

The image of man in a tight spot

Now, where is the difference between Paul’s presentation and the presentation of the dogma of original sin? Original sin sees man as fundamentally sinful, bad, corrupt and lost – from the beginning. This also applies to newborn children. They need salvation, not because they too are mortal, but because they are fundamentally “sinful.” Now this is a pitch black picture of man, which is in direct contrast with the creation statement:

“And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and God spoke to them… And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”
Gen 1:27-28,31

The doctrine of original sin throws overboard the “creation of man in the image of God”. It distances itself from such a positive view of humanity. In the eyes of the dogmatic teaching, man was no longer “very good. Undoubtedly, these statements chronologically predate the intrusion of sin, but there is no reason to brand the situation in the Garden of Eden as “perfect,” whereas the situation after the intrusion of sin is “sinful to the bone.” There is no such 180° turn in Scripture. It is true that man has not become better, and mortality now clings to him, but that is not yet a reason to create such a gloomy picture of man. Man knows real problems that also need real redemption, but original sin distracts from reality more than it explains it.

Where sin is central, man quickly places himself and his experience at the center. Where the grace of God is central, God and His Christ become central.

This doctrine of original sin is especially problematic where our reality establishes clear differences between individuals. For example, a newborn child is not bad. Only dogmatic teaching makes a “sinner” out of a newborn. There are also big differences in adults. Not all people are bad. Paul reports that some people “innately do what the law requires” (Rom 2:14).

In contrast, the statements of Scripture are liberating. In it, there is no original sin, but death is passed on from generation to generation. Man is not fundamentally “corrupt”, but fundamentally “mortal”. His mortality continuously causes him to sin. This view is not only biblically justifiable, but also easy to grasp. How good or how bad a person is will be expressed in the way he lives. These works will be judged once by God, which will apply to all people without distinction. That is just. People are good in different ways. But all are mortal and lack the glory of God. No one is righteous before God, but that does not make all people morally reprehensible beings – from generation, so to speak. Here Augustine clearly deviates from the Bible and everyday perception.

The Bible testifies that human nature is not fundamentally corrupt and incapable of achieving anything. Man was created in God’s image, and that did not disappear entirely when Adam sinned. Let us also consider the original situation: Adam was not warned with the words “In the day you eat from the tree, you will no longer resemble my image”. Nor was Adam threatened with hell if he ate of the fruit. Adam and Eve were told that they would be “dying to die.” They were told mortality and, as a conclusion, death, not hell or anything else.

Perhaps it should be clarified here once again – and with reference to Augustine’s position – that Adam and Eve did not sin “sexually” or that sexuality led to sin, but it was the eating of the forbidden fruit which was a transgression. Ideas such as “man is fundamentally depraved” or “sexuality is sin” have no origin in the Bible, but exemplified in the teachings of Augustine. Such ideas always want to be tested against Scripture and corrected if necessary. It is about the image of man, the image of the world and last but not least the image of God that we carry within us every day.

It is worth reflecting on this because God has long since reconciled Himself to us and to all of human history (2 Cor. 5:18-21).

Deepening

• Fall of Man (bibelwissenschaft.de)
• Original sin is not a topic in the Bible