Well, since I can’t comment on Tim's site from my home
(probably because he got attacked by a spammer with my ip-range or something)
I’ll leave a comment here on the Archive.
Tim proves Original Sin by showing that Adam was
the only freely born creation of the human race with the ability to freely
choose between the good and the wrong. Therefore, as our representative, when
Adam sinned we all personally sinned. He shows that for anyone to think a
person can currently freely choose good or evil, they must be born without Original Sin and must
also be created and must also have the complete free choice to choose. His
conclusion (admittedly for only part 1 of this series) is the following:
“Today, we go astray as soon as we are born, speaking lies.
We are conceived in sin and born under bondage. We are blind, bound and
burdened with the guilt of a sin nature. We are BY NATURE the children of
wrath. We are CONDEMNED ALREADY because we have not believed.”
Break it down a bit:
A) Adam
was a created being…not a born being.
B) Adam
existed in a perfect environment
C) Adam
was able to freely choose
D) Therefore
for us to have the ability to freely choose we must be born in an perfect
environment and be created beings…not a born being.
E) We're born blind, dumb, guilty and are held responsible for not believing from the moment we're born.
I'll mostly ignore E in this post. Honestly, I wonder what some folk would say to this. If I
was Arminian I would say something along the lines that God provides grace to
each man to be able to make an honest decision for the Gospel and thus there is
another option offered instead of this razor edge of impossibility. If I was a
Calvinist I would say that although Adam did sin and plunge our desires into
the wrong we can still freely choose within the sphere of our desires so
although we won’t always choose the utterly depraved we still choose with
selfish motives…therefore a free choice although completely depraved. I guess there’s a long string of theologians
that preach this either/or statement but I can’t see how it holds up against
Scripture.
Brother, you're offering up a false dilemma and also working
contrary to the point of Romans 1 – 3. Each man is held personally accountable
for his own personal sin. Jesus makes as much a point (Lk 12:47) as does Revelation 20 where each man is judged according to his works—not Adam’s works. Indeed
the Old Testament establishes this point of each man being punished for his own
sin (Ez 18:2-4)…and not the sin of his father. True you might point to the
passage which says that God will visit the iniquities of the Father upon the
later generations (Ex 34: 7) and I will counter that saying which one is
true…and if they’re not both true how does it explain the other? In what way is
a person visited upon for his father’s sinful actions and yet not held
personally responsible until the person personally performs the action (Num 14)?
Also in Romans 5 we see that death reigned even for
those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's sin (Rom 5:14). If a
person sinned when Adam sinned and thus called guilty that person's sin is
in the likeness of the originator's sin. If all are Adam (or Man) then there
are no people who sin in the likeness of Adam. Original Sin made a person a
born Sinner by nature...it didn't make the person born committing the Sin of
Adam.
Example? A woman uses drugs while pregnant. She goes and
commits murder and gets thrown in prison and dies there—but not before giving
birth. Her twins are born addicted to drugs, their body is sickly and wracked
with the stuff. They are addicts yet they never injected a needle in their
body. Kill them both for being addicts like the addict mother? Murderers from
the womb? Or let them go and notice how they gravitate towards the drug in
their lives. Constantly sick, always stumbling till the day comes where one
actually commits murder. Now he’s thrown into prison…culpable for his action. Just
an illustration so don’t bother showing how it fails to line up with the
Eternal. All illustrations fail. -r-
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You miss the point, however, of Adam serving as our representative. He was the test case. You and I DID sin, in Adam. We are not held responsible for Adam\\\'s sin but our own for we were In Him.