How is original sin passed on?

Answer 1

A:According to Augustine of Hippo (354-430), who developed the concept of original sin, everyone is born with original sin, passed down through the generations from Adam and Eve, and it can only be washed away by baptism. Yet even baptism can not remove original sin so thoroughly that we do not pass it on to the next generation. This doctrine was adopted by the western half of the Christian Church, but never accepted in the Greek-speaking east.

Augustine said that original sin resulted directly from the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Whether original sin is more than an idea developed by man, and therefore passed on from generation to generation, consequently depends very much on whether Adam and Eve were real, historical people and the actual ancestors of all people on earth. On this, Cardinal George Pell recently stated that the story of Adam and Eve is a myth, describing it as a religious story told for religious purposes. Cardinal Pell went on to say that in his view, atheists will "certainly" go to heaven if they have led good lives, which is almost a denial of original sin and the need for baptism.

Answer:

Fortunately, the concept of "original sin" isn't the teaching of God. Nor is the term "orginal sin" in the Bible; but a satanic, guilt-laden philosophy of men.

Jesus tells us: "...suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me: for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matt.19:15)

If children were born with "original sin" as some men claim... instead of "innocent" of the evils in the world, that will later be imposed upon them -- then Jesus could not have made the above statement. Because the philosophical concept of "original sin" [if it were true] automatically condemns even newborn babes to the fires of Dante's Inferno, from the "Divine Comedy," which this world's professing Christianity also adopted into its beliefs as "real and true."

Either Jesus is telling us the Truth... or He's not. We can't have it both ways.

Either children are born innocent [as Jesus tells us]... a glorious state of "child-like trust and belief" to which adults, who lose their innocence to sin in the course of living, can return through faith in Jesus Christ -- or they are automatically bound for "the fires of hell" from birth... and Jesus is mistaken.

The Kingdom of God is made for the "innocent" Children of God... those WITHOUT sin -- be they innocent-born children... or adults, brought back to an innocent state by the Grace, Mercy and Forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ.

God is all about "forgiveness" and "mercy"... and bringing "repentant" men back into True Innocence. Of such is the essence of those worthy of the Kingdom of God.

Satan is the "accuser of our brethren" [Rev.12:10]... the one who loves to lay his sins and guilt on the heads of men and strip man of his potential and knowledge of his glorious future.

"Original sin" is a philosophical concept that spreads hopelessness and fear in the oppressed hearts of men. That's Satan's forte... not God's.

So, since Jesus doesn't believe in "original sin"... and it's therefore not True: then, the only way for "original sin" to be "passed on"... is through the philosophical teachings of men ignorant of the Truth of God.

Roman Catholic AnswerThis is an important question to try to understand, even though you really can't comprehend it completely, but original sin is passed on in much the same way that the justice that Our Blessed Lord earned for us is passed on to us, not the same way exactly, but analogously. Perhaps if you think of genetics, say the original human beings on the earth had the ability to ignore gravity if they so wished. That this ability to fly was in their chromosomes, but they were exposed to some horrible radiation and the chromosome for flying was destroyed through their body. When they had children, they would not have the chromosome to pass on to their children, so their children could not inherit the ability to fly. In much the same way, Adam and Eve, when created by God, were created in original justice. Their urges and impulses were subject to their will. By committed sin, for them a personal sin, they lost original justice and no longer had it to pass on to their children, so their children, grandchildren, etc. are all born missing what they were created with. Like every other evil it is a lack, an emptiness of something that should be there. Evil is never a positive thing, everything that God created was good, evil is more like a shadow: a shadow is the ABSENCE of sunlight. In and of itself it is nothing, just the lack of something. In the same way, original sin is just the lack of original justice. Here is how the Church explains it in the Catechism:

from

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, English translation 1994404

How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam "as one body of one man." (St. Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 4, 1.) By this unity of the human race" all men are implicated in Adam's sin, as all are implicated in Christ's justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.(Cf. Council of Trent: Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum (1965) It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived or original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is sin "contacted" and not "committed" - a state and not an act.