WEBVTT 00:00:17.480 --> 00:00:20.140 Christianity has always agreed that humanity 00:00:20.140 --> 00:00:23.640 needs salvation. But Christians have not always 00:00:23.640 --> 00:00:26.620 agreed on what humanity needs salvation from. 00:00:26.780 --> 00:00:29.539 And that difference changes everything. Imagine, 00:00:29.660 --> 00:00:32.640 a patient walks into a doctor's office complaining 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:36.119 about extreme fatigue, rapid weight loss, and 00:00:36.119 --> 00:00:39.000 constant thirst. The doctor glances at the symptoms 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:40.920 and concludes the patient is simply stressed 00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:44.820 and dehydrated. He prescribes rest, vitamins, 00:00:45.119 --> 00:00:47.820 hydration. For a short time, the patient feels 00:00:47.820 --> 00:00:50.939 slightly better. But underneath, the real disease 00:00:50.939 --> 00:00:53.479 continues spreading. Eventually, the patient 00:00:53.479 --> 00:00:55.659 collapses and ends up in the emergency room, 00:00:55.759 --> 00:00:58.700 where doctors discover the real problem, untreated 00:00:58.700 --> 00:01:01.539 diabetes. The doctor did not fail because he 00:01:01.539 --> 00:01:04.939 was malicious. He failed because he misdiagnosed 00:01:04.939 --> 00:01:07.540 the problem. And once the diagnosis is wrong, 00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:10.239 even sincere treatment cannot heal the disease. 00:01:10.719 --> 00:01:13.480 Sometimes the most dangerous mistakes are not 00:01:13.480 --> 00:01:16.049 bad treatments. They are treatments built on 00:01:16.049 --> 00:01:19.090 the wrong diagnosis. And the same principle applies 00:01:19.090 --> 00:01:22.189 in theology. Christianity universally teaches 00:01:22.189 --> 00:01:24.709 that humanity needs salvation, but Christians 00:01:24.709 --> 00:01:27.069 have not always agreed on what humanity's fundamental 00:01:27.069 --> 00:01:30.209 problem actually is. And one of the most important 00:01:30.209 --> 00:01:32.930 doctrines shaping that answer is the doctrine 00:01:32.930 --> 00:01:36.930 of original sin. For years, I believed the strongest 00:01:36.930 --> 00:01:40.290 version of original sin possible. I had become 00:01:40.290 --> 00:01:43.500 convinced that Reformed theology gave the clearest 00:01:43.500 --> 00:01:46.640 explanation of salvation and the fullest glory 00:01:46.640 --> 00:01:50.019 to God. And central to that system was the belief 00:01:50.019 --> 00:01:53.459 that humanity inherits not only corruption, but 00:01:53.459 --> 00:01:57.120 guilt from Adam, condemnation, moral inability. 00:01:57.799 --> 00:02:01.120 Humanity was not merely wounded. Humanity was 00:02:01.120 --> 00:02:04.400 spiritually dead from conception. And for years, 00:02:04.420 --> 00:02:06.900 that doctrine did not feel optional. It felt 00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:10.090 necessary. Without it, the entire structure of 00:02:10.090 --> 00:02:12.530 salvation I trusted seemed like it would collapse. 00:02:12.830 --> 00:02:15.050 The doctrine of virginal sin draws heavily from 00:02:15.050 --> 00:02:18.229 scripture, especially Romans chapter 5, where 00:02:18.229 --> 00:02:21.349 Paul contrasts Adam with Christ. Through one 00:02:21.349 --> 00:02:24.849 man, sin entered the world, and death through 00:02:24.849 --> 00:02:29.069 sin, and death spread to all humanity. But Christians 00:02:29.069 --> 00:02:31.169 have interpreted this passage in more than one 00:02:31.169 --> 00:02:33.349 way throughout history. Many early Christian 00:02:33.349 --> 00:02:36.250 writers emphasize death and corruption as the 00:02:36.250 --> 00:02:39.740 primary catastrophe of the fall. St. Irenaeus 00:02:39.740 --> 00:02:41.979 of Lyon, writing in the 2nd century, described 00:02:41.979 --> 00:02:45.259 humanity as created good but immature, capable 00:02:45.259 --> 00:02:48.000 of growing into perfection through communion 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:51.439 with God. St. Athanasius, writing in the 4th 00:02:51.439 --> 00:02:54.680 century, described the fall as humanity descending 00:02:54.680 --> 00:02:58.120 into corruption and mortality, humanity in danger 00:02:58.120 --> 00:03:01.060 of returning to non -being through death. In 00:03:01.060 --> 00:03:03.580 these early voices, the emphasis is not primarily 00:03:03.580 --> 00:03:07.900 inherited personal guilt. The emphasis is death. 00:03:08.430 --> 00:03:11.889 Corruption. Bondage. The Eastern vision was never 00:03:11.889 --> 00:03:15.210 optimistic about evil. Humanity was still fallen, 00:03:15.370 --> 00:03:19.849 still corrupted, still enslaved to death, still 00:03:19.849 --> 00:03:22.789 desperately in need of salvation. But the emphasis 00:03:22.789 --> 00:03:25.569 was different. The emphasis was not seriousness. 00:03:25.870 --> 00:03:30.009 The difference was diagnosis. Was humanity's 00:03:30.009 --> 00:03:33.129 deepest problem inherited guilt before God? Or 00:03:33.129 --> 00:03:37.240 was humanity's deepest tragedy bondage? to corruption 00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:39.860 and death. That distinction sounds small at first, 00:03:40.020 --> 00:03:44.020 but entire spiritual worlds emerge from those 00:03:44.020 --> 00:03:47.000 assumptions. Eventually, I realized these doctrines 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:49.939 were not merely abstract systems. They shaped 00:03:49.939 --> 00:03:53.139 the emotional atmosphere Christians lived inside. 00:03:53.419 --> 00:03:56.080 I remember listening to John Piper answer a question 00:03:56.080 --> 00:03:59.360 about predestination. Someone asked him, if God 00:03:59.360 --> 00:04:02.780 has predestined all my sins, what should my attitude 00:04:02.780 --> 00:04:05.710 toward my sins even be? And I remember realizing 00:04:05.710 --> 00:04:08.569 something deeply unsettling. Questions like that 00:04:08.569 --> 00:04:11.889 only emerge inside a very particular vision of 00:04:11.889 --> 00:04:14.270 humanity. A world where man is born condemned, 00:04:14.530 --> 00:04:19.829 morally incapable, dependent entirely upon irresistible 00:04:19.829 --> 00:04:22.370 grace. And once those assumptions are in place, 00:04:22.490 --> 00:04:25.050 the rest of the system follows with terrifying 00:04:25.050 --> 00:04:27.569 consistency. I also remember a conversation with 00:04:27.569 --> 00:04:30.250 an older woman from a Calvary Chapel church we 00:04:30.250 --> 00:04:32.870 were attending. She looked me directly in the 00:04:32.870 --> 00:04:35.079 eyes and asked, What if God elected your child 00:04:35.079 --> 00:04:38.060 for hell? And what struck me later was not that 00:04:38.060 --> 00:04:40.779 she was unusually cruel. She wasn't. She was 00:04:40.779 --> 00:04:43.579 trying to think consistently inside a theological 00:04:43.579 --> 00:04:47.139 system. If humanity enters existence already 00:04:47.139 --> 00:04:50.379 condemned in Adam, if salvation depends entirely 00:04:50.379 --> 00:04:53.980 upon unconditional election, then eventually 00:04:53.980 --> 00:04:56.379 questions like that arrive. I remember debates 00:04:56.379 --> 00:04:59.860 during Sunday school at our PCA church surrounding 00:04:59.860 --> 00:05:03.879 infants, covenant children, baptism. and election. 00:05:04.139 --> 00:05:06.920 Questions about whether unbaptized children were 00:05:06.920 --> 00:05:09.199 elect, whether they belonged to the covenant, 00:05:09.399 --> 00:05:12.019 whether salvation applied to them. And again, 00:05:12.100 --> 00:05:15.420 I slowly realized these are not random questions. 00:05:15.699 --> 00:05:18.660 They emerge naturally from a worldview where 00:05:18.660 --> 00:05:21.920 humanity enters existence already condemned in 00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:24.779 Adam. Historically, these anxieties were not 00:05:24.779 --> 00:05:28.160 limited to Calvinism. In medieval Western Christianity, 00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:31.319 deep fear surrounded infant death and baptism 00:05:31.319 --> 00:05:34.329 because inherited guilt was believed to place 00:05:34.329 --> 00:05:38.089 even infants in spiritual danger. Emergency baptisms 00:05:38.089 --> 00:05:41.009 were performed on dying infants. Midwives were 00:05:41.009 --> 00:05:43.509 instructed how to baptize infants in danger of 00:05:43.509 --> 00:05:46.329 death. Questions arose about stillborn children 00:05:46.329 --> 00:05:49.750 and unbaptized infants because the stakes were 00:05:49.750 --> 00:05:52.310 believed to be eternal. These were not random 00:05:52.310 --> 00:05:54.709 superstitions. They emerged from a particular 00:05:54.709 --> 00:05:57.410 understanding of what humanity inherits from 00:05:57.410 --> 00:05:59.769 Adam. And none of this developed in a vacuum. 00:06:00.269 --> 00:06:03.089 The doctrine of original sin took a decisive 00:06:03.089 --> 00:06:06.050 turn with St. Augustine in the late 4th and early 00:06:06.050 --> 00:06:09.449 5th centuries. Augustine was responding to Pelagianism, 00:06:09.550 --> 00:06:12.209 the idea that humanity could achieve righteousness 00:06:12.209 --> 00:06:15.129 without divine grace. And Augustine was right 00:06:15.129 --> 00:06:17.889 to defend the absolute necessity of grace. But 00:06:17.889 --> 00:06:20.829 in doing so, he also developed a much stronger 00:06:20.829 --> 00:06:23.850 doctrine of inherited guilt and moral corruption. 00:06:24.069 --> 00:06:27.370 He described humanity as a condemned mass in 00:06:27.370 --> 00:06:30.839 Adam. All sin in Adam. Augustine wrote. Part 00:06:30.839 --> 00:06:32.540 of Augustine's understanding was shaped by the 00:06:32.540 --> 00:06:35.019 Latin tradition he inherited, especially the 00:06:35.019 --> 00:06:37.800 Vulgate translation of Romans 5. The Greek text 00:06:37.800 --> 00:06:40.399 is grammatically difficult and has been interpreted 00:06:40.399 --> 00:06:42.079 in multiple ways throughout Christian history, 00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:44.279 but the Greek wording is often understood to 00:06:44.279 --> 00:06:47.560 mean death spread to all humanity because all 00:06:47.560 --> 00:06:50.560 sinned. But the Latin rendering Augustine inherited 00:06:50.560 --> 00:06:55.139 could be read more directly as all humanity sinning 00:06:55.139 --> 00:06:58.160 in Adam himself. Eastern theologians still reading 00:06:58.519 --> 00:07:01.139 primarily in Greek, emphasize something different, 00:07:01.300 --> 00:07:04.560 that humanity inherits mortality and corruption 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:08.000 from Adam, and then sins within that condition. 00:07:08.339 --> 00:07:11.060 Once Augustine's framework became dominant in 00:07:11.060 --> 00:07:13.240 Western Christianity, later theologians built 00:07:13.240 --> 00:07:16.000 upon it. In the 11th century, Anselm of Canterbury 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:18.500 argued that sin created a debt against God's 00:07:18.500 --> 00:07:21.660 honor that required satisfaction. In the 13th 00:07:21.660 --> 00:07:24.300 century, Thomas Aquinas refined this framework 00:07:24.300 --> 00:07:26.689 further. teaching that original sin deprived 00:07:26.689 --> 00:07:29.790 humanity of original righteousness and wounded 00:07:29.790 --> 00:07:32.509 human nature itself. Salvation in the West became 00:07:32.509 --> 00:07:35.689 increasingly framed in legal and judicial categories. 00:07:36.050 --> 00:07:39.250 Then the Protestant reformers intensified Augustine's 00:07:39.250 --> 00:07:42.449 emphasis on moral inability. Martin Luther described 00:07:42.449 --> 00:07:45.389 humanity as bound in the will. John Calvin argued 00:07:45.389 --> 00:07:48.329 that every part of human nature had become corrupted 00:07:48.329 --> 00:07:51.930 by sin. This became summarized as total depravity. 00:07:52.009 --> 00:07:55.839 The idea that humanity is incapable of turning 00:07:55.839 --> 00:07:59.259 toward God apart from divine intervention. And 00:07:59.259 --> 00:08:01.819 once humanity is understood as morally incapable 00:08:01.819 --> 00:08:06.160 from birth, salvation must be entirely initiated 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:08.779 by God. From there, doctrines like unconditional 00:08:08.779 --> 00:08:12.160 election and irresistible grace develop naturally. 00:08:12.420 --> 00:08:15.579 This was not random theology. It's a coherent 00:08:15.579 --> 00:08:19.899 system built upon a particular diagnosis of the 00:08:19.899 --> 00:08:22.949 fall. Later surprised me is how deeply this diagnosis 00:08:22.949 --> 00:08:26.069 shaped not just Calvinism, but much of Western 00:08:26.069 --> 00:08:29.430 Christianity more broadly. Calvinists and Arminians 00:08:29.430 --> 00:08:32.090 fiercely debated predestination and free will. 00:08:32.350 --> 00:08:35.830 Particular Baptist and General Baptist divided 00:08:35.830 --> 00:08:38.490 over grace and election. Yet many of these traditions 00:08:38.490 --> 00:08:41.110 still shared a deeper assumption, that humanity 00:08:41.110 --> 00:08:45.169 enters existence fundamentally condemned, alienated, 00:08:45.289 --> 00:08:48.830 spiritually dead, and in need of decisive conversion. 00:08:49.419 --> 00:08:52.220 Even modern evangelicalism often inherited these 00:08:52.220 --> 00:08:55.139 assumptions indirectly. At Billy Graham Crusades, 00:08:55.159 --> 00:08:57.500 Christians from dozens of denominations could 00:08:57.500 --> 00:09:00.860 unite around a shared gospel presentation centered 00:09:00.860 --> 00:09:04.360 on personal conversion and rescue from condemnation. 00:09:04.460 --> 00:09:06.299 They would disagree about church government, 00:09:06.600 --> 00:09:10.139 communion, spiritual gifts, predestination, but 00:09:10.139 --> 00:09:13.299 they often shared a common understanding of humanity's 00:09:13.299 --> 00:09:16.230 underlying problem. And because American Christianity 00:09:16.230 --> 00:09:18.769 developed heavily inside this Western theological 00:09:18.769 --> 00:09:22.370 environment, many people, including me, simply 00:09:22.370 --> 00:09:25.149 assumed this was what Christianity had always 00:09:25.149 --> 00:09:27.610 taught. But eventually I began asking a question 00:09:27.610 --> 00:09:30.210 I could no longer ignore. What if this diagnosis 00:09:30.210 --> 00:09:32.870 itself was incomplete? Because when I returned 00:09:32.870 --> 00:09:35.269 to scripture, I began noticing something strange. 00:09:35.529 --> 00:09:39.070 The New Testament constantly speaks about death. 00:09:39.409 --> 00:09:45.360 Death reigning. Death spreading. Humanity enslaved 00:09:45.360 --> 00:09:47.720 to the fear of death. Christ destroying death. 00:09:47.960 --> 00:09:51.399 Hebrews chapter 2 says Christ became human in 00:09:51.399 --> 00:09:55.200 order to defeat death, destroy the devil, free 00:09:55.200 --> 00:09:58.679 humanity from lifelong bondage to the fear of 00:09:58.679 --> 00:10:01.139 death. And slowly I began wondering, what if 00:10:01.139 --> 00:10:04.019 humanity's deepest problem is not guilt? What 00:10:04.019 --> 00:10:08.120 if the catastrophe is that humanity became mortal, 00:10:08.340 --> 00:10:11.909 corrupted, enslaved to death itself? The Eastern 00:10:11.909 --> 00:10:14.409 vision of humanity was never shallow about evil. 00:10:14.750 --> 00:10:18.929 Humanity is fallen, corrupted, enslaved, in desperate 00:10:18.929 --> 00:10:21.870 need of salvation. But humanity is not described 00:10:21.870 --> 00:10:25.470 as a race of infants hated by God from conception. 00:10:25.809 --> 00:10:28.389 The tragedy is not that humanity was created 00:10:28.389 --> 00:10:31.289 disgusting. The tragedy is that humanity was 00:10:31.289 --> 00:10:34.049 created for life and became captive to death.