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To: kosta50; Dr. Eckleburg; blue-duncan; D-fendr; kawaii; MarkBsnr; Kolokotronis; 1000 silverlings
13For Adam was first formed, then Eve. 14And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Nothing like a little "compliment" for a gullable Eve. St. Paul is saying, it's Eve's fault.

Nonsense. Eve was deceived. Adam wasn't. That is why sin came into the world through ONE MAN. Sin did not come into the world through Eve. Like Eve, Christians can also be deceived and Paul warns us about be deceived (Rom 7:11, 1 Cor 6:9, 1 Cor 15:33, 2 Cor 11:3, etc.). However, sin cannot come into the world. It came in through Adam. It certainly wasn't Eve's fault.

7,804 posted on 10/01/2007 4:21:54 AM PDT by HarleyD
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To: HarleyD
“”It came in through Adam. It certainly wasn’t Eve’s fault””

I Agree with you on this. Adam was responsible to protect the garden and everything in it.That included “EVE”

Excerpts from New Advent

I. MEANING
Original sin may be taken to mean: (1) the sin that Adam committed; (2) a consequence of this first sin, the hereditary stain with which we are born on account of our origin or descent from Adam.

From the earliest times the latter sense of the word was more common, as may be seen by St. Augustine’s statement: “the deliberate sin of the first man is the cause of original sin” (De nupt. et concup., II, xxvi, 43). It is the hereditary stain that is dealt with here. As to the sin of Adam we have not to examine the circumstances in which it was committed nor make the exegesis of the third chapter of Genesis.

II. PRINCIPAL ADVERSARIES
Theodorus of Mopsuestia opened this controversy by denying that the sin of Adam was the origin of death. (See the “Excerpta Theodori”, by Marius Mercator; cf. Smith, “A Dictionary of Christian Biography”, IV, 942.) Celestius, a friend of Pelagius, was the first in the West to hold these propositions, borrowed from Theodorus: “Adam was to die in every hypothesis, whether he sinned or did not sin. His sin injured himself only and not the human race” (Mercator, “Liber Subnotationem”, preface). This, the first position held by the Pelagians, was also the first point condemned at Carthage (Denzinger, “Enchiridion”, no 101-old no. 65). Against this fundamental error Catholics cited especially Romans 5:12, where Adam is shown as transmitting death with sin.

After some time the Pelagians admitted the transmission of death — this being more easily understood as we see that parents transmit to their children hereditary diseases — but they still violently attacked the transmission of sin (St. Augustine, “Contra duas epist. Pelag.”, IV, iv, 6). And when St. Paul speaks of the transmission of sin they understood by this the transmission of death. This was their second position, condemned by the Council of Orange [Denz., n. 175 (145)], and again later on with the first by the Council of Trent [Sess. V, can. ii; Denz., n. 789 (671)]. To take the word sin to mean death was an evident falsification of the text, so the Pelagians soon abandoned the interpretation and admitted that Adam caused sin in us. They did not, however, understand by sin the hereditary stain contracted at our birth, but the sin that adults commit in imitation of Adam. This was their third position, to which is opposed the definition of Trent that sin is transmitted to all by generation (propagatione), not by imitation [Denz., n. 790 (672)]. Moreover, in the following canon are cited the words of the Council of Carthage, in which there is question of a sin contracted by generation and effaced by generation [Denz., n. 102 (66)].

The leaders of the Reformation admitted the dogma of original sin, but at present there are many Protestants imbued with Socinian doctrines whose theory is a revival of Pelagianism.

III. ORIGINAL SIN IN SCRIPTURE
The classical text is Romans 5:12 sqq. In the preceding part the apostle treats of justification by Jesus Christ, and to put in evidence the fact of His being the one Saviour, he contrasts with this Divine Head of mankind the human head who caused its ruin. The question of original sin, therefore, comes in only incidentally. St. Paul supposes the idea that the faithful have of it from his oral instructions, and he speaks of it to make them understand the work of Redemption. This explains the brevity of the development and the obscurity of some verses.

We shall now show what, in the text, is opposed to the three Pelagian positions:

(1) The sin of Adam has injured the human race at least in the sense that it has introduced death — “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men”. Here there is question of physical death. First, the literal meaning of the word ought to be presumed unless there be some reason to the contrary. Second, there is an allusion in this verse to a passage in the Book of Wisdom in which, as may be seen from the context, there is question of physical death. Wisdom 2:24: “But by the envy of the devil death came into the world”. Cf. Genesis 2:17; 3:3, 19; and another parallel passage in St. Paul himself, 1 Corinthians 15:21: “For by a man came death and by a man the resurrection of the dead”. Here there can be question only of physical death, since it is opposed to corporal resurrection, which is the subject of the whole chapter.

(2) Adam by his fault transmitted to us not only death but also sin, “for as by the disobedience of one man many [i.e., all men] were made sinners” (Romans 5:19). How then could the Pelagians, and at a later period Zwingli, say that St. Paul speaks only of the transmission of physical death? If according to them we must read death where the Apostle wrote sin, we should also read that the disobedience of Adam has made us mortal where the Apostle writes that it has made us sinners. But the word sinner has never meant mortal, nor has sin ever meant death. Also in verse 12, which corresponds to verse 19, we see that by one man two things have been brought on all men, sin and death, the one being the consequence of the other and therefore not identical with it.

(3) Since Adam transmits death to his children by way of generation when he begets them mortal, it is by generation also that he transmits to them sin, for the Apostle presents these two effects as produced at the same time and by the same causality. The explanation of the Pelagians differs from that of St. Paul. According to them the child who receives mortality at his birth receives sin from Adam only at a later period when he knows the sin of the first man and is inclined to imitate it. The causality of Adam as regards mortality would, therefore, be completely different from his causality as regards sin. Moreover, this supposed influence of the bad example of Adam is almost chimerical; even the faithful when they sin do not sin on account of Adam’s bad example, a fortiori infidels who are completely ignorant of the history of the first man. And yet all men are, by the influence of Adam, sinners and condemned (Romans 5:18, 19). The influence of Adam cannot, therefore, be the influence of his bad example which we imitate (Augustine, “Contra julian.”, VI, xxiv, 75).

On this account, several recent Protestants have thus modified the Pelagian explanation: “Even without being aware of it all men imitate Adam inasmuch as they merit death as the punishment of their own sins just as Adam merited it as the punishment for his sin.” This is going farther and farther from the text of St. Paul. Adam would be no more than the term of a comparison, he would no longer have any influence or causality as regards original sin or death. Moreover, the Apostle did not affirm that all men, in imitation of Adam, are mortal on account of their actual sins; since children who die before coming to the use of reason have never committed such sins; but he expressly affirms the contrary in the fourteenth verse: “But death reigned”, not only over those who imitated Adam, but “even over them also who have not sinned after the similitude of the transgression of Adam.” Adam’s sin, therefore, is the sole cause of death for the entire human race. Moreover, we can discern no natural connexion between any sin and death. In order that a determined sin entail death there is need of a positive law, but before the Law of Moses there was no positive law of God appointing death as a punishment except the law given to Adam (Genesis 2:17). It is, therefore, his disobedience only that could have merited and brought it into the world (Romans 5:13, 14).

These Protestant writers lay much stress on the last words of the twelfth verse. We know that several of the Latin Fathers understood the words “in whom all have sinned”, to mean, all have sinned in Adam. This interpretation would be an extra proof of the thesis of original sin, but it is not necessary. Modern exegesis, as well as the Greek Fathers, prefer to translate “and so death passed upon all men because all have sinned”. We accept this second translation which shows us death as an effect of sin. But of what sin? “The personal sins of each one”, answer our adversaries, “this is the natural sense of the words ‘all have sinned.’” It would be the natural sense if the context was not absolutely opposed to it. The words “all have sinned” of the twelfth verse, which are obscure on account of their brevity, are thus developed in the nineteenth verse: “for as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners.” There is no question here of personal sins, differing in species and number, committed by each one during his life, but of one first sin which was enough to transmit equally to all men a state of sin and the title of sinners. Similarly in the twelfth verse the words “all have sinned” must mean, “all have participated in the sin of Adam”, “all have contracted its stain”. This interpretation too removes the seeming contradiction between the twelfth verse, “all have sinned”, and the fourteenth, “who have not sinned”, for in the former there is question of original sin, in the latter of personal sin. Those who say that in both cases there is question of personal sin are unable to reconcile these two verses.

7,810 posted on 10/01/2007 5:05:19 AM PDT by stfassisi ("Above all gifts that Christ gives his beloved is that of overcoming self"St Francis Assisi)
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