Doctrine of Original Sin
Most Biblical scholars agree that David uses figurative language throughout his Psalms. If verse 51:7 is interpreted as teaching that men are born sinners, verse 10 should be interpreted as teaching that God breaks a Christian's bones when he sins and that his broken bones rejoice when he is forgiven: "Let me hear the sounds of joy and gladness; the bones you have crushed shall rejoice." By the same token, another of David's Psalms, Psalm 58.3, can be interpreted as teaching that babies go astray even in the womb and exhibit this by lying: "from the womb the wicked are perverted; astray from birth have the liars gone." None of these passages is intended to be understood in a literal sense. Bones don't rejoice, babies don't speak lies or anything else, and an unborn child is not morally depraved.
David was not claiming in Psalm 51:7 that he was born a sinner. He was confessing to God his guilt and sinfulness and used symbolic language to express himself. This is David's penitential Psalm.
2. Psalm 119:73 - "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me."
Are we to understand that God fashions men into sinners in their mother's womb? The doctrine that men are born sinners charges God with creating sinners. It may be objected that God created only Adam and Eve and that the rest of mankind descended from them by natural generation. But this objection does not relieve the Doctrine of its problem: as mentioned, if man has a sinful nature at birth, God is responsible.
3. Job 14:4 - "Can a man be found who is clean of defilement? There is none."
This text can be interpreted to mean that sinful parents will bear sinful children. But the context shows that Job had his eye on the frail and dying state of man and not upon his moral state (Job 14:1-6). The whole sense of what Job was saying was that no one can bring other than frail and dying offspring into the world from frail and dying parents.
If this text teaches that a sinner invariably produces another sinner, it teaches blasphemy. For if the Doctrine of Original Sin is true, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was born a sinner. Following this train of thought, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus also was born a sinner. If so, how can the sacrifice of a sinner save mankind from sin? Some theologians get around this by holding that Original Sin is passed to offspring through the father. Of course, the son of God the Father is then free of Original Sin.
4. Job 15:14 - "What is man that he should be blameless, one born of woman that he should be righteous?"
This verse merely implies the sinful condition of all mankind, without saying anything about how men got that way. But again, this text, like the last, if used to teach the sinfulness of men, would teach that Jesus was born a sinner, because he was a man and was born of a woman.
5. Rom. 5:12-14, 20 - "Therefore, just as through one person sin entered into the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned - for up to the time of the law, sin was in the world, though sin is not accounted when there is no law. But death reigned from Adam to Moses...The law entered in so that transgression might increase but, where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more."
This passage by Paul does not teach the Doctrine of Original Sin. It explains that Adam's sin was not the sin of his descendants.
6. Heb. 7:9-10 - "Levi...himself, who receives tithes, was tithed through Abraham, for he was still in father's loins when Melchizedek met him" means that in Adam all mankind sinned because they were in his loins when he transgressed, which is the teaching of the advocates of original sin. It follows that Jesus, due to his human nature, also sinned in Adam.
If this concept were true, we might suppose that there will be myriads of souls who will never be born but who nevertheless existed as seed (potential souls) in the loins of Adam. These souls will go to hell because they sinned in Adam, even though they never will be born!
It is interesting that, though Augustine wrote in Latin in the 4th century, his writings were not translated into Greek until the 14th century. As a result, Eastern and Orthodox Christianity never held that guilt is inherited, and began repudiating this idea once they learned of it. They teach that we inherit a corrupted human nature in which the tendency to do bad is greater, but that people are only guilty of their own sins. By participating in the life of the church, each person's human nature is healed and it becomes easier to do good; at the same time, the Christian becomes more acutely aware of his or her shortcomings.
Conclusion
The Doctrine of Original Sin is contradictory, corrupt, and has only a tenuous basis in scripture. It came about because of Augustine's distorted views about sin. It also was a convenient vehicle to gain wealth and clerical control over the laity, as it required a sacrament (baptism) to be administered by a priest to rid one of original sin and thereby receive money for the service.
