Christianity has always agreed that humanity
needs salvation. But Christians have not always
agreed on what humanity needs salvation from.
And that difference changes everything. Imagine,
a patient walks into a doctor's office complaining
about extreme fatigue, rapid weight loss, and
constant thirst. The doctor glances at the symptoms
and concludes the patient is simply stressed
and dehydrated. He prescribes rest, vitamins,
hydration. For a short time, the patient feels
slightly better. But underneath, the real disease
continues spreading. Eventually, the patient
collapses and ends up in the emergency room,
where doctors discover the real problem, untreated
diabetes. The doctor did not fail because he
was malicious. He failed because he misdiagnosed
the problem. And once the diagnosis is wrong,
even sincere treatment cannot heal the disease.
Sometimes the most dangerous mistakes are not
bad treatments. They are treatments built on
the wrong diagnosis. And the same principle applies
in theology. Christianity universally teaches
that humanity needs salvation, but Christians
have not always agreed on what humanity's fundamental
problem actually is. And one of the most important
doctrines shaping that answer is the doctrine
of original sin. For years, I believed the strongest
version of original sin possible. I had become
convinced that Reformed theology gave the clearest
explanation of salvation and the fullest glory
to God. And central to that system was the belief
that humanity inherits not only corruption, but
guilt from Adam, condemnation, moral inability.
Humanity was not merely wounded. Humanity was
spiritually dead from conception. And for years,
that doctrine did not feel optional. It felt
necessary. Without it, the entire structure of
salvation I trusted seemed like it would collapse.
The doctrine of virginal sin draws heavily from
scripture, especially Romans chapter 5, where
Paul contrasts Adam with Christ. Through one
man, sin entered the world, and death through
sin, and death spread to all humanity. But Christians
have interpreted this passage in more than one
way throughout history. Many early Christian
writers emphasize death and corruption as the
primary catastrophe of the fall. St. Irenaeus
of Lyon, writing in the 2nd century, described
humanity as created good but immature, capable
of growing into perfection through communion
with God. St. Athanasius, writing in the 4th
century, described the fall as humanity descending
into corruption and mortality, humanity in danger
of returning to non -being through death. In
these early voices, the emphasis is not primarily
inherited personal guilt. The emphasis is death.
Corruption. Bondage. The Eastern vision was never
optimistic about evil. Humanity was still fallen,
still corrupted, still enslaved to death, still
desperately in need of salvation. But the emphasis
was different. The emphasis was not seriousness.
The difference was diagnosis. Was humanity's
deepest problem inherited guilt before God? Or
was humanity's deepest tragedy bondage? to corruption
and death. That distinction sounds small at first,
but entire spiritual worlds emerge from those
assumptions. Eventually, I realized these doctrines
were not merely abstract systems. They shaped
the emotional atmosphere Christians lived inside.
I remember listening to John Piper answer a question
about predestination. Someone asked him, if God
has predestined all my sins, what should my attitude
toward my sins even be? And I remember realizing
something deeply unsettling. Questions like that
only emerge inside a very particular vision of
humanity. A world where man is born condemned,
morally incapable, dependent entirely upon irresistible
grace. And once those assumptions are in place,
the rest of the system follows with terrifying
consistency. I also remember a conversation with
an older woman from a Calvary Chapel church we
were attending. She looked me directly in the
eyes and asked, What if God elected your child
for hell? And what struck me later was not that
she was unusually cruel. She wasn't. She was
trying to think consistently inside a theological
system. If humanity enters existence already
condemned in Adam, if salvation depends entirely
upon unconditional election, then eventually
questions like that arrive. I remember debates
during Sunday school at our PCA church surrounding
infants, covenant children, baptism. and election.
Questions about whether unbaptized children were
elect, whether they belonged to the covenant,
whether salvation applied to them. And again,
I slowly realized these are not random questions.
They emerge naturally from a worldview where
humanity enters existence already condemned in
Adam. Historically, these anxieties were not
limited to Calvinism. In medieval Western Christianity,
deep fear surrounded infant death and baptism
because inherited guilt was believed to place
even infants in spiritual danger. Emergency baptisms
were performed on dying infants. Midwives were
instructed how to baptize infants in danger of
death. Questions arose about stillborn children
and unbaptized infants because the stakes were
believed to be eternal. These were not random
superstitions. They emerged from a particular
understanding of what humanity inherits from
Adam. And none of this developed in a vacuum.
The doctrine of original sin took a decisive
turn with St. Augustine in the late 4th and early
5th centuries. Augustine was responding to Pelagianism,
the idea that humanity could achieve righteousness
without divine grace. And Augustine was right
to defend the absolute necessity of grace. But
in doing so, he also developed a much stronger
doctrine of inherited guilt and moral corruption.
He described humanity as a condemned mass in
Adam. All sin in Adam. Augustine wrote. Part
of Augustine's understanding was shaped by the
Latin tradition he inherited, especially the
Vulgate translation of Romans 5. The Greek text
is grammatically difficult and has been interpreted
in multiple ways throughout Christian history,
but the Greek wording is often understood to
mean death spread to all humanity because all
sinned. But the Latin rendering Augustine inherited
could be read more directly as all humanity sinning
in Adam himself. Eastern theologians still reading
primarily in Greek, emphasize something different,
that humanity inherits mortality and corruption
from Adam, and then sins within that condition.
Once Augustine's framework became dominant in
Western Christianity, later theologians built
upon it. In the 11th century, Anselm of Canterbury
argued that sin created a debt against God's
honor that required satisfaction. In the 13th
century, Thomas Aquinas refined this framework
further. teaching that original sin deprived
humanity of original righteousness and wounded
human nature itself. Salvation in the West became
increasingly framed in legal and judicial categories.
Then the Protestant reformers intensified Augustine's
emphasis on moral inability. Martin Luther described
humanity as bound in the will. John Calvin argued
that every part of human nature had become corrupted
by sin. This became summarized as total depravity.
The idea that humanity is incapable of turning
toward God apart from divine intervention. And
once humanity is understood as morally incapable
from birth, salvation must be entirely initiated
by God. From there, doctrines like unconditional
election and irresistible grace develop naturally.
This was not random theology. It's a coherent
system built upon a particular diagnosis of the
fall. Later surprised me is how deeply this diagnosis
shaped not just Calvinism, but much of Western
Christianity more broadly. Calvinists and Arminians
fiercely debated predestination and free will.
Particular Baptist and General Baptist divided
over grace and election. Yet many of these traditions
still shared a deeper assumption, that humanity
enters existence fundamentally condemned, alienated,
spiritually dead, and in need of decisive conversion.
Even modern evangelicalism often inherited these
assumptions indirectly. At Billy Graham Crusades,
Christians from dozens of denominations could
unite around a shared gospel presentation centered
on personal conversion and rescue from condemnation.
They would disagree about church government,
communion, spiritual gifts, predestination, but
they often shared a common understanding of humanity's
underlying problem. And because American Christianity
developed heavily inside this Western theological
environment, many people, including me, simply
assumed this was what Christianity had always
taught. But eventually I began asking a question
I could no longer ignore. What if this diagnosis
itself was incomplete? Because when I returned
to scripture, I began noticing something strange.
The New Testament constantly speaks about death.
Death reigning. Death spreading. Humanity enslaved
to the fear of death. Christ destroying death.
Hebrews chapter 2 says Christ became human in
order to defeat death, destroy the devil, free
humanity from lifelong bondage to the fear of
death. And slowly I began wondering, what if
humanity's deepest problem is not guilt? What
if the catastrophe is that humanity became mortal,
corrupted, enslaved to death itself? The Eastern
vision of humanity was never shallow about evil.
Humanity is fallen, corrupted, enslaved, in desperate
need of salvation. But humanity is not described
as a race of infants hated by God from conception.
The tragedy is not that humanity was created
disgusting. The tragedy is that humanity was
created for life and became captive to death.