posted
The Catholic definition of original sin is when Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit; they committed sexual sin.
I've come up with a LDS definition of original sin.
I agree with the Catholics, sin was born when Adam and Eve partook of the fruit, but it wasn’t sexual sin, it was sin of another kind. Let me illustrate.
After Adam and Eve ate the fruit, God went to Adam and said “…Have you eaten of the tree where of I commanded you that you should not eat…
Adam’s looking down, his face is concealed by his hair and his toe is kicking at the ground. Then he looks up sees Eve, points toward her and answers, “That woman thou gave me, and commanded that she should remain with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree and I did eat.
Then God went over to Eve and said, “What is this thing which you have done?”
Eve innocently cups a flower in her hand and smells it’s fragrance, while searching her mind for an answer, spies Lucifer walking among the trees. She looks up at God and says, “The serpent beguiled me and I did eat?
Original Sin= blame shifting or lack of accountability.
What say you?
In addition, why is it as soon as man gets the ability to choose, he denies his culpability?
Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
The Catholics think the sin was sex? Are you sure? I think it was pretty clear that the sin was in disobeying God - the pushing of the blame was just adding fuel to the fire. The painful childbirth WAS said to be a side effect of the punishment, but nowhere is is stated that the crime had anything to do with sexuality.
<--- not Catholic or LDS - proudly protestant.
Posts: 2689 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
I always thought original sin was something thats NEVER been done before...
"Father, forgive me, for I have loved my toaster more than my wife." "Dear God, thats an original sin! Congratulations! We don't get many of those nowadays."
Edit: BTW, I was joking about the whole "original sin" being original.
posted
I quess we will have to query a Catholic, but I was told a long time ago, when I was in my early teens it was sexual sin. Maybe the doctrine has changed. Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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I am a Catholic, and while it has been decades since my religion classes I am pretty sure I am right. However, I am e-mailing my uncle, the priest, who is a Catholic theologian for over 40 years. He will give us the answer. That is if no one googles it first.
posted
Original Sin was the sin committed by Adam in disobeying God's will, thus being brought into a sinful state which all his posterity inherit (also referred to as original sin).
From an LDS perspective there is no such thing as "Original Sin". Certainly, Adam committed a sin in disobeying God, but this does not affect his posterity (or even his ultimate destiny) thanks to Christ.
Also, I used to thing that Adam and Eve's statements when confronted about their sin were a way of trying to deny responsibility, as you suggested. However, in the last few years, I have changed my mind. I think that their statements are merely statements explaining why they did what they did. I no longer see any sense of them trying to "pass the buck", but rather are taking responsibility for the consequences for their actions
But my premise is that they were given a choice, acted on that choice and then failed to hold themselves accountable for that choice.
Aside, as a mother I have learned to never ask, "Who did <whatever>" because I'm not going to get a straight answer. I swear they all have a little tracking device in their heads and quidkly do a mental tally then blame whoever just left the house and can't refute the claim.
Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
First of all, Adam wasn't trying to shift the blame. He was taking the responsibility square on his shoulders. When Eve first presented him with the fruit, he realized that if he didn't partake he would be left alone without her. So he ate the fruit so that he could remain with her, and so that "Man may be."
When God came and asked him about it, he wasn't trying to pass the blame to her. He was simply explaining why he chose to eat the fruit. He knew that she would be cast out, and he knew that God had commanded that she should remain with him. So he took the fruit and ate. Nowhere was he blaming her for eating the fruit herself, or even casting the act in a condemning light.
Eve, in her turn, was also only telling it how it was. She admitted to being beguiled by the serpent and eating the fruit.
God kept his own judgment and called them forth in turn, and dealt with them as he saw fit.
[ August 07, 2003, 03:08 PM: Message edited by: advice for robots ]
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
dkw- not just an interpretation of Genesis 3. We LDS types have 3 separate versions of the creation story just to make things simpler These stories are found in Moses, Genesis and Abraham, and there is also doctrinal commentary on the Garden of Eden story in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I’m guessing that God is a master of the "Do I have stupid written on my forehead?" speech.
(Even if you don’t think it applies here, there are certainly plenty of other examples of humans attempting to pass the blame. Good thread, Ellen. )
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
We talk of Adam and Eve with the utmost respect, both for being our first parents and for their faith, honor, and righteousness. Their transgression and fall was necessary for humans to come to the earth, and while God punished them by casting them out of the Garden of Eden, almost in the same breath he promised them joy and happiness in their posterity, and promised them that he would send a Savior to redeem humanity from the fall. It was part of the plan. Adam, after they left the Garden of Eden, was a great prophet, not despised for his act.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I don't know the origins of this idea of the original sin of Adam and Eve being sexual sin, but in my reading experience, this idea seems to be more the province of novelists, poets and intellectuals -- cause, you know, with them everything is about sex.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
In third grade one of the boys brought a punch bowl for a party. At the end of the day, after it had been washed and given back to him to take home, he stood in the middle of the room clutching the punch bowl. It just slipped out of his hands and he exclaimed, "It wasn't me. I didn't do it." The whole class stared in disbelief. Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I didn't mean you were disrespecting them, EllenM. I was just explaining our stance on Adam and Eve to the general audience.
I know what you mean by passing the blame. I have a two year old who doesn't deny that she did it, but who knows how to pull our strings. My wife says, "I'm frustrated with you," and she immediately folds her arms, scowls, and says, "I fus-trated." How are you supposed to keep a straight face after that? The guilt slides right off of her.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
AFR, They are smart little devils. Just remember they have had the soul sum of their existence to study you and your wife. And time is always on their side. Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
One of the effects of original sin (in Catholic and Protestant teaching) is that it makes us more prone to sin. Now imagine generations of religious education teachers telling teenagers whose hormones are starting to act up that what they are feeling is “the effect of original sin which makes us prone to sin.” It’s pretty easy to see why sex and original sin are linked in popular imagination, even though not in doctrine.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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The churches of Christ don't believe in original sin in the sense of something transmitted through generations; sin is an action, and an action can't pass from one person to another. On the other hand, we see nothing praiseworthy about the sin of Adam and Eve and believe that we (or people, at least) would exist and be able to propagate regardless.
Posts: 1041 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Psst. Mac - the churches of Christ are also autonomous with no central headquarters and no determining authority except the Bible. I thought we couldn't say "church of Christ think . . . churches of Christ believe . . . " ^_^ you're gonna get us disfellowhipped!!
posted
Q: What did Milton say? That was one work I never made it through. (And I call myself an English major.)
Macc: Which notion?
I guess we differ on the necessity and consequences of Adam's fall, but I agree with you about original sin.
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posted
I did read most of it, but that was in 11th grade more than a decade ago. I remember finding lots of stuff in it that struck me as right on. My best grade on a paper that year was about how Lucifer became the Father of Lies after his fall by subjectively switching his status of lowest of the low to king of the damned.
Beyond that, I keep confusing Milton with Dante.
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posted
I think it's interesting to think about the concept that Adam chose Eve over God. There was a time in the Garden, we don't how long, when Eve was fallen and he was not. He chose Eve.
The fall is referred to as "Adam's sin." It's the fall of man. We never hear that sin came into the world through Eve. It's Adam's legacy. Because he failed - he was supposed to be loyal and obedient to God, and he didn't do it.
I fully think Adam was well aware of what he was doing, he was not deceived by the serpent. He made a choice, an informed one. He knew what it would cost him.
posted
I'm pretty sure Paradise Lost is out of our realm of responsibility, Q.
"we...believe that we (or people, at least) would exist and be able to propagate regardless."
The Bible holds a resounding silence on whether or not many people would exist had Adam and Eve not left the garden; it is not touched on, so is an open question. One or the other may seem more logical to you, but there should be no firmly held belief on the issue either way.
It may seem like a nitpicky point, but this casual (not to mention cavalier, as brought up by Q) use of 'we believe' disturbs me, Maccabeus. As Q said, there is no 'we' that you can speak for, since you can only speak for yourself. My problem, however, lies in the world 'believe'. 'I believe' is a strong term, a profound statement declaring what I hold to be truth from my inmost soul. I believe in a loving God. I believe the tomb was empty. I believe the Bible is the word of God. These things I believe; but smaller things, things that are fallible, things that ultimately don't matter, require an 'I think' or an 'I suppose' or perhaps an 'it seems to me' - not an 'I believe'. Those are special.
Posts: 2762 | Registered: Sep 1999
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This makes sense to me since it was what made the need for Jesus our savior, which in my mind can't be seperated from Heavenly Father's ideal plan for our hapiness.
(We believe that God the father and Jesus are seperate persons)
Posts: 554 | Registered: Nov 2000
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quote:I’m guessing that God is a master of the "Do I have stupid written on my forehead?" speech.
A little while ago, I heard of a Jewish midrash that tells about Adam and Eve. The fruit they ate, in that tradition, was a fig. So then they sew aprons of fig leaves, God shows up, and Adam and Eve try to make their excuses. A bit like getting caught with jam on their faces.
Posts: 335 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Belle - doesn't that make part of his choice idolatry?
Leaving aside the idea that he couldn't conceive of eternity without her and thus nobly tossed his relationship with God into the gutter in order to experience life, death, everything WITH her (as long as he could rule over her) . . . the basic principal here is that he listened to her voice over the voice of God. He set her on a pedestal she didn't belong, in the place of God and effectively made HER god(dess) of his life.
I don't think you can say that there was AN original sin. I think, as with most times when we sin, it was a mix. Pride, idolatry, disobedience, etc. Very rarely do we commit ONE sin.
God, on an principles level, had to oppose the fall--but on another level he knew that we needed it.
You'd have to read in 2 Ne. 2 to get the full treatment but here are a few quotes:
quote:2 Ne. 2:11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.
This life is all about giving us both sides--so that we could really be good, like he is, not a sheltered ignorant good like Adam and Eve in the garden.
Or course, some of this is my own interpretation.
Posts: 554 | Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Q - absolutely. There rarely is a commission of sin that is only a commission of ONE sin. If I lie to my mother, I'm guilty of lying and of not honoring my parents, for example.
Whether it was the "right" choice or wrong choice is really a pointless debate, since it was the choice made. I believe, had they not fallen, they would still be in the garden and none of us would be here. If they were unfallen there would be reason for Christ's redemption, because no one would need it.
So, right - wrong, whatever. That's what happened, and we know God knew it would happen, so that was the way things were supposed to play out.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I want to add that Adam was left with a choice between two of God's commands--don't eat the fruit, or stay with Eve and "multiply and replenish the earth."
Therefore, he was not choosing between God and Eve, but rather had to choose which command was more important.
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posted
Belle, I think Adam was obeying God first. He was commanded that she should remain with him. When Eve offered him the fruit, she reminded him of another commandment God had given them: that they should multiply and replenish the earth. He was obeying God not once, but twice.
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posted
as & Lissande> You're right...I overstepped myself and I apologize. On the other hand, there is a general commonality of belief, or we wouldn't be one church, we'd be dozens or more.
As far as I know, most of us agree on every point I made last post except the last one. I freely admit I let personal opinion slip in there.
Posts: 1041 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
AFR> I meant the idea that Adam and Eve's sin brought about greater happiness and was for the greater good was peculiar. But I suppose it's not all that odd; I've heard that Catholics sometimes refer to it as a "fortunate fall".
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These stories are found in Moses, Genesis and Abraham, and there is also doctrinal commentary on the Garden of Eden story in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants.
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