Guilty As Sin Online Free

You chose to be called the friend of sinners.By your saving death and resurrectionfree me from my sins.May your peace take root in my heartand bring forth a harvest of love, holiness, and truth.

Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin equated original sin with concupiscence (or "hurtful desire"), affirming that it persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom to do good, proposing that original sin involved a loss of free will except to sin.[7] The Jansenist movement, which the Roman Catholic Church declared heretical in 1653, also maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will.[8] Instead, the Catholic Church declares that "Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle",[9] and that "weakened and diminished by Adam's fall, free will is yet not destroyed in the race."[10]

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Justin Martyr, a 2nd-century Christian apologist and philosopher, was the first Christian author to discuss the story of Adam's fall after Paul. In Justin's writings, there is no conception of original sin and the fault of sin lies at the hands of the individual who committed it. In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin wrote "The Christ has suffered to be crucified for the race of men who, since Adam, were fallen to the power of death and were in the error of the serpent, each man committing evil by his own fault" (chapter 86) and "Men [...] were created like God, free from pain and death, provided they obeyed His precepts and were deemed worthy by Him to be called His sons, and yet, like Adam and Eve, brought death upon themselves" (chapter 124).[26] Irenaeus was an early father appealed to by Augustine on the doctrine of original sin,[5] although he did not believe that Adam's sin was as severe as later tradition would hold and he was not wholly clear about its consequences.[27] One recurring theme in Irenaeus is his view that Adam, in his transgression, is essentially a child who merely partook of the tree ahead of his time.[28]

Greek Fathers would come to emphasize the cosmic dimension of the Fall, namely that since Adam, human beings are born into a fallen world, but held fast to belief that man, though fallen, is free.[5] They thus did not teach that human beings are deprived of free will and involved in total depravity, which is one understanding of original sin among the leaders of the Reformation.[29][30] During this period the doctrines of human depravity and the inherently sinful nature of human flesh were taught by Gnostics, and orthodox Christian writers took great pains to counter them.[31][32] Christian apologists insisted that God's future judgment of humanity implied humanity must have the ability to live righteously.[33][34]

In addition was Cyril of Jerusalem, who thought humans were born free of sin, but he also believed that, as adults, humanity was naturally biased towards sinning. Ambrose accepted the idea of hereditary sin, also linking it, like Cyprian, to infant baptism, but as a shift from earlier proponents of a transmitted sin, he argued that Adam's sin was solely his own fault, in his attempt to attain equality with God, rather than the fault of the devil. One contemporary of Ambrose was Ambrosiaster, the first to introduce a translation of Romans 5:12 that substituted the language of all being in death "because all sinned" to "in him all sinned".

Adam and Eve, via sexual reproduction, recreated human nature. Their descendants now live in sin, in the form of concupiscence, a term Augustine used in a metaphysical, not a psychological sense.[c] Augustine insisted that concupiscence was not "a being" but a "bad quality", the privation of good or a wound.[d] He admitted that sexual concupiscence (libido) might have been present in the perfect human nature in paradise, and that only later it became disobedient to human will as a result of the first couple's disobedience to God's will in the original sin.[e] In Augustine's view (termed "Realism"), all of humanity was really present in Adam when he sinned, and therefore all have sinned. Original sin, according to Augustine, consists of the guilt of Adam that all humans inherit. Although earlier Christian authors taught the elements of physical death, moral weakness, and a sin propensity within original sin, Augustine was the first to add the concept of inherited guilt (reatus) from Adam whereby an infant was eternally damned at birth. Augustine held the traditional view that free will was weakened but not destroyed by original sin until he converted in 412 AD to the Stoic view that humanity had no free will except to sin as a result of his anti-Pelagian view of infant baptism.[44]

Augustine also identified male semen as the means by which original sin was made heritable, leaving only Jesus Christ, conceived without semen, free of the sin passed down from Adam through the sexual act.[52] This sentiment was echoed as late as 1930 by Pope Pius XI in his Casti connubii: "The natural generation of life has become the path of death by which original sin is communicated to the children."[53]

Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr thought that the doctrine of original sin is not necessarily linked to some act of disobedience by the first human beings; rather, the Fall describes every human person's existential situation.[70] Karl Barth rejected the concepts of original guilt and original corruption for being, as he thought, deterministic and undermining human responsibility; instead, he advanced, as noted by Loke, "an alternative conception of Original Sin (Ursünde) which rests upon the idea that God sees, addresses, and treats humanity as a unity on account of the disobedience that is universal."[71] For Barth, Adam did not pass on sin as corruption. In response to Augustine's problem of the inexplicability of original sin, Loke responds that God is not the first cause of evil, rather created libertarian agents who freely choose evil are the first causes of evil.[72]

In the theology of the Catholic Church, original sin is the absence of original holiness and justice into which humans are born, distinct from the actual sins that a person commits. The absence of sanctifying grace or holiness in the new-born child is an effect of the first sin, for Adam, having received holiness and justice from God, lost it not only for himself but also for humanity.[69] This teaching explicitly states that "original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants".[78] In other words, human beings do not bear any "original guilt" from Adam's particular sin, which is his alone. The prevailing view, also held in Eastern Orthodoxy, is that human beings bear no guilt for the sin of Adam. The Catholic Church teaches: "By our first parents' sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free."[83]

The Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is that Mary was conceived free from original sin: "the most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin".[84] The doctrine sees her as an exception to the general rule that human beings are not immune from the reality of original sin.

The Orthodox Church in America makes clear the distinction between "fallen nature" and "fallen man" and this is affirmed in the early teaching of the church whose role it is to act as the catalyst that leads to true or inner redemption. Every human person born on this earth bears the image of God undistorted within themselves.[105] In the Eastern Christian understanding, it is explicitly denied that humanity inherited guilt or a fallen nature from anyone; rather, humanity inherits sin's consequences and a fallen environment: "while humanity does bear the consequences of the original, or first, sin, humanity does not bear the personal guilt associated with this sin. Adam and Eve are guilty of their willful action; we bear the consequences, chief of which is death."[106]

The view of Eastern Christianity varies on whether Mary is free of all actual sin or concupiscence. Some Patristic sources imply that she was cleansed from sin at the Annunciation, while the liturgical references are unanimous that she is all-holy from the time of her conception.[107][108]

We believe that entire sanctification is that act of God, subsequent to regeneration, by which believers are made free from original sin, or depravity, and brought into a state of entire devotement to God, and the holy obedience of love made perfect. It is wrought by the baptism with or infilling of the Holy Spirit, and comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service. Entire sanctification is provided by the blood of Jesus, is wrought instantaneously by grace through faith, preceded by entire consecration; and to this work and state of grace the Holy Spirit bears witness.[112]

According to the theology of Jehovah's Witnesses, all humans are born sinners, because of inheriting sin, corruption, and death from Adam. They teach that Adam was originally created perfect and sinless, but with free will; that the Devil, who was originally a perfect angel, but later developed feelings of pride and self-importance, seduced Eve and then, through her, persuaded Adam to disobey God, and to obey the Devil instead, rebelling against God's sovereignty, thereby making themselves sinners, and because of that, transmitting a sinful nature to all of their future offspring.[117][118] Instead of destroying the Devil right away, as well as destroying the disobedient couple, God decided to test the loyalty of the rest of humankind, and to prove that they cannot be independent of God successfully, but are lost without God's laws and standards, and can never bring peace to the earth, and that Satan was a deceiver, murderer, and liar.[119] 2ff7e9595c