The original sin is doctrines of the Christian Théologie . It is also called first sin, sin of Adam or sin of our first parents.

Origin of the concept

The formalization of the concept is due to a reading of the epistle to the Romans , V: 12 of Paul de Tarse clarified by saint Augustin d' Hippone at the 4th century in its fight against Peeling (*) . Peeling considered that creation was good. Augustin supported the pessimistic opinion of Paul who allowed him to answer a fundamental question for which had been Manichean: Why evil? Why death? The answer of Paul (determining in the conversion of Augustin) is simple:

(Romanian. V: 12): “This is why, as by only one man the sin entered the world, and by the sin death, and than thus death extended on all the men, because all sinned… ”

In the text of Roman , evoked above, speaking about the fault of Adam like for lack of only one , Paul does not dogmatize an original sin as Augustin believes duty to do it later, starting from a reading nuclear physicist of Paul without reading parallel with the text of Bereshit (the Genèse).

If one holds for true the declaration of Paul in connection with his intellectual formation: high with the feet of Gamaliel , Paul is a pharisee. He thus practices the rules of Herméneutique ( middot ) as taught in the medium of the perushim (the Pharisien S). The typological reading is one of these rules. The principle is “ ma' assei avot siman lebanim ” (: the epic of the fathers is a mirror for the wire ). In other words, all was lived by the patriarchs (of which Adam) who will have to occur with their descent.

Paul applies this process to profusion. (see 1 Horn 10 which is a Midrash to sin on Nombres (Bamidbar) 20,8). This process hermeneutics finds a survival in the Adage the history is not repeated; it bégaie .

(*) See Against Peeling where it is seen that Augustin does not quote Old Testament

Augustin, qualified this original sin of . To explain why it is transmitted (according to the erroneous translation of Jerome) to all the men, by production, like a hereditary stain, it compared it to the sin of flesh , following in that the discredit of the sexuality implemented by the Stoïcisme. It should be noted that this “interpretation” is in contradiction with the letter of the text of the Genesis, which speaks well about the “forbidden fruit” like that of the knowledge of the good and the evil , expression which can mean only the conscience , by which the man separates from the remainder of the animal kingdom. This assimilation of the “original sin” to any “sinned of flesh” will be fought besides per many theologists like a popular error , as well as the assimilation of the fruit to an apple (null certainty on this assimilation, but the apple symbolizes the love, and in addition the Latin name of apple is mala while the fruit is pomma …).

The design of Augustin is to be brought closer to the Ananke of the Greeks, or tragic stain , which is transmitted to a whole family as the tragedy shows it. It extended it to all humanity, in accordance with the design of a universal culpability specific to certain currents of the Christianisme.

The baptism would make it possible to erase this stain.

Diffusion

This concept of original sin is typically Western. the Eastern Christianities do not recognize these doctrines, whatever the many councils which they recognize.

the Original sin , one of works of Michel-Angel on the vault of the Vault Sixtine.

Posterity of this concept

The weight of the original sin on the Middle Ages

Pierre Lombard made evolve this concept to that of a weakening of the will.

This interpretation marked the whole of the Middle Ages which will be dominated by concern vis-a-vis sin (confessions, indulgences, etc), the justification by the acts. Much more this concept of original sin gave an moral authority to the Misogynie while making fall down the origin of the state of sinner on the woman.

The Cathare S will dispute the sacrament of the marriage for the principle that this one legitimates in their eyes the union of the flesh of the man and the woman, union at the origin of the sin of the first couple according to their interpretation of the Genesis.

See also:

Polemic of the free will

The great question of the Middle Ages is that of the hello from the point of view where the Eternal Vie is located after death, from a point of view of remuneration. Which are thus the means of the hello ( to gain its Paradis ) if God is very powerful?

Luther enters in conflict with Érasme on this question whose Prédestination and free will are two attempts at answer. In good augustinien, Érasme supports the free will, i.e. the responsibility for the man in front of God concerning his acts. To some extent, the man can refuse the grace of the faith. On the contrary, being based in particular on the original sin, the monk augustinien Luther defends predestination, i.e. the " Serf " referee and the justification by the faith, expensive in Paul. For Luther, it is God which decides. By this Luther quarrel will alienate Érasme with all its authority and its credit.

Neither Luther, nor Érasme will have the idea that all the possible ones can arrive of face , which makes at once disappear the apparent dilemma. The vision of God of the time remained primarily monotâche , as one would say today.

to Voir aussi:

• Desired ÉRASME, Test on the free will , 1524
• Martin LUTHER, servo arbitrio ( Of the serf referee ), 1525

published together in French under the title: Luther, Of the serf referee ,

Jansenists against Jesuits

It is the 17th century that a polemic with the center even of the Catholic church appeared, to opponent on a side the Jansénistes, who claimed to restore the purity of the dogmas of the Efficacious grace and of the Prédestination , and other the Jesuits, who preferred to propose to the free will . Pascal, who supported Port-Royal, attacked in a virulent way with the moral Laxisme of the Jesuits and their accommodating Casuistique in his Provinciales . Whereas the Jesuits tended to attenuate the importance of the original sin and to consider that the principal attribute of God was the Miséricorde, the Jansenists insisted on the corrupted nature of the man, dominated by the Concupiscence, and painted God under the features of the Judge relentless separating the Elected officials from Damnés.

Philosophies of the Lights

Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza is not a philosopher of the lights ; he precedes them by a good century. However, it develops another approach of the Life, another image of the Man, another idea of God.

“This Being eternal and infinite that we call God or Nature acts with the same need that there exists … existing for no end, it thus does not act also for any; and like its existence, its action has neither principle nor end. ” ( Ethical , 1677))

By writing Deus sive (God i.e. nature) will natura, Spinoza identifies the divinity with the whole of the real-world, contrary to the traditional religious anthropomorphism which makes of God a creator, distinct from the world, acting according to an objective. God is impersonal, neither benevolent, nor malevolent, without particular intention for the man. No morals thus proceeds of God.

Spinoza preaches the research of the hello by knowledge, the research of the Sovereign Well, who brings the joy, the Bliss, and safe of the disorder of passions. Morals is made by the men for the men. The Good and the Evil do not exist as such and cannot thus be transmitted by nature . They are only the response of our feelings to events which we receive like “Good” or “Badly” according to our subjectivity or our interests.

“the men appear being free because they are conscious of their actions and volitions, but they are ignoramuses of the causes which make them act and want. Also they are full with hatred and rancour for themselves or, more often, others. Such are the moralists, who can fade the defects rather than to teach the virtues and which tend to anything else only to return the others as miserable as themselves”

The Éthique of Spinoza is not a morals of the all is allowed either that all is worth . The research of the joy (of the self-satisfaction ) must be in conformity with the reason and can be effective only in the relation of the men to the men: it corresponds to an increase in the feeling to exist and capacity to act.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The idea of good creation made nevertheless its way. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sometimes shown Pélagianisme or of Socinianisme, written in the Speech on the origin and the bases of the inequality among the men :

the man is naturally good and it is the company which it déprave.

If one limits oneself to this sentence, the approach of Rousseau is a new idea vis-a-vis the Église S and with philosophical number of . Let us note Pascal with the passage which writes in the Thoughts :

It is necessary that we are born guilty, or God would be unjust.

This philosophical axiom of the original kindness plays a central role in the philosophy of Rousseau and comprises four dimensions:

• political : it enables him to be opposed to the partisans of an absolute, supposed monarchical authority to represent the last rampart vis-a-vis individual violence (theory of Hobbes).
• moral : original kindness cannot be separate rehabilitation of the self-love , fundamentally good, in opposition to the self-esteem , social emulation which generates worst passions. Rousseau is thus opposed to the hateful me of Pascal, but also to the praise of the self-esteem by philosophers materialists like Helvétius.
• theological : orginelle kindness is integral part of the tolerant Déisme evoked in the Profession of faith .
• educational : whereas a traditional pedagogy privileged the raising of a child, who was worth only like future adult, Rousseau examines the child like a be separate, and which one can preserve of the defects of the state of company. the Emile (1762) will be a major source of modern pedagogy (with Maria Montessori, Ovide Decroly, Célestin Freinet), even if certain aspects of the book of Rousseau are voluntarily put on side (a certain roughness of the Governor towards Emile for example). Some see a relationship between the method of Rousseau and the dominating place of socialization on the “naturally aggressive” child, that certain pedagogs currently grant to education. However, Rousseau always refused to allot to the child a “natural aggressiveness” (he speaks about “principle of activity”, which can be well or badly directed, according to education). It is in fact with the antipodes assertions like this one: “the physical aggression would be a kind of innate reflex which disappears at the rate/rhythm where the child is integrated in the company, in particular as it makes the training of the language. ” (R. Tremblay)

The dogma rousseauist of the original kindness is deeply related to the promising concept of perfectibility of the man. If Rousseau refuses to accept the progress of the civilization, whose Philosophes were the cantors, its distinction of the state of nature and the state of company enables him to consider the moral improvement of the man and the development of righter political regimes intended to train better citizens. The idea of perfectibility advanced by Rousseau should not be confused with the design of progress defended by Condorcet or Kant. This last, with its idea of a humanity progressing towards peace, is placed in the line of the abbot of Saint-Pierre, who left to Rousseau skeptic politely. In a more general way, the influence of thinkers as Cassirer had tendency to “kantiser” the thought of Rousseau.

Contemporary analysis

The contemporary thinkers read again Genèse III and wonder how Augustin can speak about sinned by extending the concept of Paul, who him, spoke about the Law like dynamic border between the good and the evil.

On the one hand, their prospect changes. They do not wonder “Why death any more? ” (favor of the Enfer drops, with its corollary, the end of the fear of dead) but “Why Evil? ” There, the Bible is not without resources:

“the parents ate the green grapes and the children had of it the aggravated teeth” (Ézechiel XVIII: 2)

“It is me the Lord, your God, God jealous continuing the fault of the fathers at wire on 3 and 4 generations if they hate me” (Deutéronome V: 9)

The innovation of Augustin consists in par excellence attaching the fault to sexuality whereas the Old Testament retains for fault only the fact of being diverted of the single god. To some extent, “the life is a sexually transmitted disease and constantly mortal” according to the word of the professor Willy Rozenbaum. The fault is the fact of a determinism, like father, like son that the modern ones will have evil to fight even in rationalist period where one will speak about degeneration in alcoholism or the mental disease.

However, the Old Testament also says, perhaps under a Babylonian influence:

“That which sins, it is him which will die: the son will not carry the fault of the father nor the father the fault of the son; the justice of the Juste will be on him and the spite of malicious will be on him” (Ézechiel XVIII: 20)

This is why, neither Islam, nor the Judaism know original sin . The Islam presents the fault of Adam like a simple omission and not as an intentional fault because God had made “an alliance with Adam but he forgot it” (Sourate XX: 115).

One leads to the following paradox: when the passage of Genesis commented on by Paul is called upon like fault, one speaks about the fault of Eve and, when he is forgiven, it is the lapse of memory which is called upon by Adam. Indeed, one can wonder about the ethics which makes a crime of a disobedience and neglects the murder.

Reading of the biblical text

Segond translation, 1902 The contemporaries read again the text which Paul took as a starting point before Augustin. They analyze the account in the following way:

In the Hebraic Bible

Curiously, the Judaism, author of the account do not see any original sin at this place.

In the Hebraic Bible, the word hattat which means fault in Hebrew appears only in Genesis IV: 7, not in the form of an imposed and hereditary fault but in the shape of an ethical choice, founder of the free will.

• “Certainly, if you acted well, you will raise your face, and if you acted badly, the sin lie down with the door, and its desires go towards you: but you, dominates over him. ” (translation Louis SEGOND, 1902)

Nothing says that Adam and Eve in the garden are immortal. The verse Genesis III: 22 would even tend to say the opposite. They thus wonder how death can it be the eternal punishment of the disobedience acknowledged in Genesis III: 13

Lastly, they wonder whether the anger of the god of the account must be taken with the serious one. Indeed, this one is taken of solicitude after anger as indicated in Genesis III: 21, where the Eternal sews skin garments whereas Adam and Eve already covered themselves in Genesis III: 7.

The contemporary exégètes conclude from it that the stake is elsewhere:

To see the “Fall” with Jacques Chopineau

In Pentateuque of the Seventy

The verse is different:

to follow

So the contemporary thinkers tend to revisit the concept of original sin.

Reading of Rene Girard: the original sin like charge

Although R. Girard places his reading within a catholic framework, the belief as a God is not necessary to adhere to its interpretation. For R. Girard, the Original sin is a completely current reality, and not only “original”.

In the social mechanism of foundation that it describes in its mimetic theory, there is a violence which falls down on a victim, if not innocent, at least not guiltier than the other participants. The sin thus represents:

1. outburst of violence, and especially,
2. the charge , negation on behalf of the participants in this violence, charged wrongly to the victim.
3. Incidentally, the installation of the fundamental taboos, with there still the charge with the victim of this order .

The reading of the myth of temptation by R. Girard is thus in conformity with its method and its intuition: any power allotted to an entity in a myth is the sign which this entity was victim of a all the more violent expulsion as it appears more powerful.

1. God is very powerful, it is thus that the human ones expelled it in a particularly wild way. Undoubtedly, since God is everywhere i.e. it is not nowhere any more, the father it was killed and eaten: thus more trace.
2. Adam (resp. Eve) is guilty not only of this expulsion, but also of its negation with charge of Eve (respectively, of the snake)
3. the Snake is nothing in the history but one poor animal, exactly like the ass of the fable the animals patient of the plague . It is only in consequence of this apple history that it particularly becomes a malignant agent (in the two directions, of intelligence and spite).
4. the apple is nothing, that the focal point of a mimetic polarization, a simple pretext with violence while at the same time apples were perhaps abundant (as the children can fight for this toy even in the presence of ten similar). The apple is only one dream as “the gold of the Rhine” of the Germanic myth is only one sun reflection on water.

The sin is well “original”, with the foundation. But there remains current, because reproduces with each time we defer on others, or on nature, or dreams, the responsibility for the results (harmful or positive, moreover) of our own behavior. In particular with regard to God himself.

Accordingly, if it is necessary to reduce the original sin to only one simple concept , it is neither disobedience to the divine order, neither the will for power, neither the lack of will compared to temptation, neither the sexual activity, nor even, with the limit, violence; it is the charge . Satan, it is the indicter , it is the incarnation inside each one of us original sin, and not its external source. That gives to R. Girard the method to face: one should not “fight” an external enemy, but to give up and support what arrives.

note Apple : Genesis 2 to 4 does not comprise in any place the mention of least the apple . One is thus founded to think that Rene Girard is expressed according to the terminology of the common direction .

Reading of Erich Fromm: a kind of presentiment darwinien

Erich Fromm considers the interrogations of the first men. Those necessarily noted:

• That the man puts questions (morals or metaphysics) which do not seem to worry the animals;
• That those have their instinct to guide itself, while the man does not seem to be able to count on him;
• That the man saw in a miserable condition vis-a-vis the elements of nature.

According to him, the three elements will interfere in an interpretation: if the man is punished (would be this only by the absence of fur or plumage of which so many animals are, them, equipped) it is that it had to do something of badly . However the man seems to make only one thing that do not make the animals, it is to wonder about the concepts of good and evil . It is trying to think that it is punished to have used this prerogative which was perhaps the reserved domain of God. The original sin would be thus our rupture with the animal condition and the awakening of the conscience.

The man cannot undoubtedly at that time that it goes down from the monkey , to take again a popular expression, but it already understood that it is irremediably separate. Innocence is not any more for him. It made the irremediable cut with nature.

It will be noted that prediction of the snake: “Knowing the good and the evil, you will be like gods”, in the light of this interpretation of the XXe century, was surprisingly well carried out. As much admittedly of predictions interpreted after blow. Remain that this interpretation is undoubtedly lighting on the thought which governed the installation of the idea of paradise lost in the Genesis.

Reading of Marie Balmary

In Abel or the crossing of the Éden it is with a psychoanalytical reading of the first pages of the Bible that we invites the author. But can one interpret the biblical texts as a dream in psychoanalysis is interpreted? The mythological account is conceived as the collective dream of the company which produces it. It is necessary however to return inlassablement to the text itself, a text examined in its original language and in its least details and to miss of it the any (an omitted word, a strange grammatical agreement, an added letter, etymology of a proper name) reading with several is favorable so that nothing is neglected. Then appear with the reader of the unsuspected significances, the text takes again life. Adam, Eve, Caïn, Abel… make us penetrate in stories of family, where tie themselves, untie themselves, distort the relations of relationship, where the advent of a human subject is played. The relation with God is naturally implied there. “To cross the Eden”, to cross the Garden, it is to face the test, such that of the birth, through which can constitute a humanity worthy of this name. Such a reading obviously calls in question certain generally accepted ideas, certain images of God.

In the chapter the untraceable fault , it reads again the passage of the life of Adam and Eve, since Genèse I: 27 until Genesis IV: 16, i.e. right before the introduction of a new character. Its primary goal was to answer the question often raised by traditional teaching without it giving him the least answer: “Why the god of the Genesis refuse does the offering of Caïn whereas that of Abel is approved? ” To some extent, can the god be arbitrary?

Chemin making, after having cleared each dialog, in particular:

• that of Adam with the god, (Genesis II);
• that of Eve and the snake, (Genesis III);
• that of Caïn and the god (Genesis IV).

It notes that in 2 of these dialogs, the biblical accounts include the traditional diagram of the Mythe S founder where the hero of the account must face a monster of the other sex, to arrive to its achievement. In the case of Eve, it acts of the Snake, included/understood like the power of the god. Indeed, up to now, in the whole of the account, exists of word only that of God and that of sound image Adam. Eve reaches the word in her dialog with the snake (the only announced animal as speaking) described as the most advised animal that God created . Consequently, it reaches humanity. Then, Eve saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasant with the sight, and that it was invaluable to open the intelligence . The anger of the god, in Genesis III: 19 do not seem to him to raise of the curse because of the verse Genèse III: 21: “The Eternal God made in Adam and his wife of the clothes of skin, and it covered them with it. ” And that the word fault appears only in Genesis IV: 7 in the dialog between Caïn and the god. Marie Balmary draws the idea from it that the I of human is born from the dialog, i.e from the constitution of the couple je/tu which does not exist with the Transcendent one with which Adam maintains a fusional relation similar to that the child in the course of gestation.

She is then capable to answer the initial question: “Why the god of the Genesis refuse does the offering of Caïn whereas that of Abel is approved? ” By scanning the passage Genesis IV: 1-7 It notes:

• that the cut in verses (invented by Robert Estienne in 1533) does not return justice to the account;
• that the punctuation introduced into the translations does not give an account of the articulations of the account.

Indeed, two interpretations are possible verse Genèse IV: 5:

• is, indeed, the god does not carry a favorable glance on the offerings;
• is, the account deals with the idea that Caïn is made events, in which case, it expresses the suspicion of Caïn which the god would be arbitrary.

Traditional theologies transmit only this idea that the god would be arbitrary whereas in the Hebrew text, nothing determines this option. Indeed, the verse Genesis IV: 6 watch that Caïn is not abandoned of the god who makes the step be addressed to him and to propose to him an ethical choice with the verse Genèse IV: 7. It is there that the word hattat which means fault appears for the first time in the Bible in the form of a possible threat ( the fault is tapie with your door ) according to whether it is made or not confidence ( you will raise your face ). The passage that our bibles return by if you acted well are not in the text. With verse 8, Caïn kills Abel. One concludes from it that instead of taking into account the question which is asked to him, Caïn preferred to believe in its suspicion in two slopes:

• that the god is arbitrary;
• that the sacrifice of Abel is more effective.

She concludes from it that the original sin is not in only the made man, either that intrinsically related to her Nature but in what the threat.

Feminist theology

The feminist Théologie made a fate with this biblical passage. Here some glanes of the errors contained in the usual translations which carried the religious misogyny. Being of course that the original sin was quickly included/understood like the fault of Eve , one tried to go up in the text to show how much this one was foreseeable and how much subordination women was necessary:

• ezer (Hebrew word meaning assistance): This “help for itself” is not a servant, an assistant, any servant. The word ezer , employed in Hebrew refers to a true partner. The Bible often thus indicates the help come from the god (Exodus XVIII: 4; Dared XIII: 9; Psalm XXXIII: 20; LXX: 6; CXV: 9; CXLVI: 5).
• the coast of Adam : dialog of Adam with the god, where he claims somebody who resembles to him which is to him opposite and side-by-side , that the text indicates by ezer , namely a help, a help. This interpretation of the text rises from the correct translation of Tsêlao which does not mean “coast” but “side” as other texts (the side of a mountain into 2 show it Samuel XVI: 13, the side of the gate vault in Exodus XXVI: 20-35, sides of the furnace bridge in Exodus XXVII: 7 and even “wings” of the Temple in Ézéchiel XLI: 5-26).

This last consideration becomes however specious if one considers the origin sumérienne (discovery since) of this part of the Genesis: if the woman is drawn from a coast of the man, it is in sumérien a word game which comes owing to the fact that the word “coast” also means “life”. The history having been translated then literally into Hebrew, where the word game does not exist any more, to question itself about it has in this case as much direction than to wonder about the English translation of a French pun. Ref.: the history starts in Sumer , Samuel Noah Kramer.

Reading New Age

This reading is not exclusive with the Nouvel Age, historically, the Ophites had already worked out a close reading. Followers of the Nouvel Age tend to make a reading of the genesis which is opposed to the disastrous aspect of the fall. For example, according to Neale Donald Walsch in “Conversation with God”, God would not have to in no case driven out the man of the paradise. When " Nahash " the snake tried Eve, this one would not have lied to him, but quite known as the truth by offering the divine and immortal life to humanity, via the fruit of the knowledge of the good and the evil. Eve considers the fruit good and hastens to offer it to Adam. The snake is not with necessarily regarding malfaisant, but as a benefactor, symbol of wisdom. Temptation and the divine interdict would be summarized then with a Initiation of the human one, by which this last is freed from its condition to reach at the conscious stage (or divine). The test of Free-referee makes human responsible being then, from which the discovery rises from shame (by nudity). The woman will crush the head of the snake (what can be seen like the incarnation of wisdom in the woman), the man will have to provide for her needs by sweat for her face (evocation of the reason, of the responsibility for its own existence). God finishes while prophesying, " That it immediately does not carry the hand to the tree of the life and the mort." (REFERENCE?) The man makes then vis-a-vis the determination of his own existence. (See last word of God to Job, where this one does express in Job its admiration with the man able to ensure his safety by its own reason.) (REFERENCE?)

Quotation

" The original sin can also be regarded as the consequence of a defect of fabrication" (Jules Fox)

See too

• Other Word, catholic site of feminist theology…

• to better say the original sin thanks to sciences of nature, catholic of the theologist of sciences Jean-Michel Maldamé, Dominican teaching.
• the Tree of the medium of the Garden

To see too

• Marie Balmary, Abel or the crossing of the Eden …

• Marie Balmary, the divine origin ,
• Jean Delumeau, the sin and fear, culpabilisation in Occident , Paris 1983.
• Lanza del Vasto, the four plagues , Paris 1959.

Simple: Original sin

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