(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of "Original Sin in the Bible as Read Today." Beginning with "Acceptance of Evolution by Pope John Paul II," be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the next primary section, "New Interpretation of Original Sin.")

Saint Augustine on Original Sin

Like the Greek fathers, Augustine has statements about "divinization" of the human through grace. At one point he uses the simile of adoption:

This spiritual birth is also called adoption. For we were something before becoming children of God, and we have received the benefit of becoming what we were not…. By this generation of grace that Son is distinguished from us, who although he was the Son of God, came down that he might become the son of man and bestow on us the gift of becoming children of God. He came down that we might rise up; and remaining in his own nature, he was made a sharer in our nature, so that we, while remaining in our nature, should be made sharers in his nature (78).

But along with this emphasis on the elevating nature of grace, Augustine also focused on its power of healing the wounds caused by original sin. While the term "original sin" is not found in the Bible (Augustine coined it in the Latin peccatum originale) its roots are patristic and biblical. Infants are "reborn" in baptism (Irenaeus), cleansed from the "true stains of sin" in them (Origen), the "contagion of the ancient death" (Cyprian).

In his writings against the Pelagians, Augustine accused them of teaching that humans can work out their own salvation, without the help of grace. The Pelagians said that humans are free to sin or not to sin. If they do sin, they imitate the evil actions of Adam, but there is no deleterious influence on them from without that would urge them to sin or not to sin.

Augustine was appalled by this teaching and fought mightily to contain it. In his works, he cited the Christian practice of the baptism of infants as proof that they were being sacramentally cleansed of "sin" and purified by grace. He quoted Romans 5:12 in its Latin form, which stated that sin came into the world with Adam, "in whom" (Latin: in quo) all have sinned. How did they sin? Adam committed the originating original sin (peccatum originale originans), and all others are under the guilt of that same sin, originated original sin (peccatum originale originatum) through propagation.

The result of original sin is concupiscence. Humans are a "massa damnata" (condemned mass) and deserve to be cast into hell. Were it not for the saving grace of Christ, communicated through faith and baptism, they would be. Under Augustine's influence, the Pelagians were condemned by the Council of Orange in 529 AD.

Concupiscence. While I will return to this concept more fully, Augustine's view of concupiscence is relevant here. According to Duffy (1993), Augustine defined concupiscence as "the abiding inclination to turn from God and to engage in the self-divinizing egoism of total self-satisfaction through the evanescent realities of the world" (92). Augustine associated concupiscence with sexual desire, but did not completely identify the two. Baptism removes original sin, but concupiscence remains, though "it is no longer imputed as sin and will gradually be vanquished by progress in sanctity" (92, citing Against Julian, 6, 49f).

Augustine is known as the Doctor of Grace. He emphasized that we need the grace of God at all levels of our conversion in order to be saved. Grace elevates us, "divinizes" us to become children of God, and heals and frees us by taking away original sin, but concupiscence, as an effect of original sin, remains.

Words highlighted in green appear in the Glossary.