Doctrine of Original Sin
The Falsity of the
Doctrine of Original Sin
1. It contributes to making sin a misfortune rather than a crime.
In fact, if the Doctrine of Original Sin were true, to blame an individual for his sins would be wrong and to punish him for his sins would be an injustice. Born with a sinful nature, he/she would not deserve punishment for his/her sins but would rather deserve compassion for the misfortune of being born into this world with such a nature. Christianity compounds the inequity of this Doctrine by claiming that Original Sin is passed down from generation to generation.
2. It excuses the sinner.
The sinner will excuse himself if he really believes that he sins because of an inborn nature. Thus, the doctrine allows Christians to avoid responsibility for their misdeeds. Moreover, from the vantage point of the believer, it is a stumbling block to repentance. Repentance requires that the sinner blame himself for his sins. But this is impossible as long as the sinner believes a doctrine that causes him to excuse his sins and to possibly regard God as cruel and unjust for making him/her that way.
3. It makes God responsible for sin.
If man is born with a sinful nature, who is to blame? Sin must be ascribed to God as the supposed author of man's nature. After all, God created Adam knowing he (and his children) were going to sin. God could have created man with free will and [underline] a predisposition for doing good rather than bad. As a result, God must take at least partial responsibility for the sin in the world. This, of course, calls into question the extent to whether God truly is loving.
4. It makes God to be tyrannical, cruel, and unjust.
This Doctrine cannot be supported. The assumption that we acted thousands of years before we were born so as to be personally responsible for an act of another is an outlandish assumption. It is not intelligible. We did not then exist. We had no being before our existence in this world; and that we should have acted before we existed is an absolute impossibility.
Men know it is unjust to condemn them for the nature with which they are born. In this vein, the theory does not explain why Adam's descendants are only held responsible for his first sin and not for his later sins, nor for the sins of all the later generations that followed Adam. Moreover, the idea that even innocent little babies are born with a sinful nature and are thus objects of God's wrath conflicts with the following Biblical passage quoting Jesus and implying babies are not born with a sinful nature by birth: "For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these" (Luke 18:16).
The result of the Doctrine of Original Sin is to depict God as cruel and unreasonable.
5. It contradicts other important Bible doctrines.
There are fundamental doctrines of the Bible that are contradicted by the Doctrine of Original Sin: doctrines of mercy, grace, guilt, pardon, and repentance.
God should (but apparently does not) show a person mercy and pardon his/her guilt if it is true he/she has suffered the misfortune of being born into this world a sinner. Otherwise, how could a person ever sincerely repent of his/her sins? What kind of grace, i.e., the free favor of God, would be applied to save a person? Most likely, it would be justice rather than grace that would be most applicable.
This Doctrine impugns the justice of God by implying that God holds men responsible for the violation of a covenant that they had no part in establishing. Not only did man never authorize Adam to make such a covenant, there is no evidence that Adam ever made one. God appears to be an arbitrary deity.
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