For the large majority of conservative Western Christians, God cursed mankind after the disobedience of Adam and Eva with a sinful nature making sin inevitable, the sheer immorality (and blasphemy) of this teaching notwithstanding.
Ironically I believe it is utterly absent in the text of Genesis..
The man who was the most influential for inroducing the teaching of eternal suffering into the Church, Augustine, justified this by this doctrine.
I myself believe that we all have inherited as sinful nature from Adam and Eve. But this fact does not make sin inevitable. I think Jesus Himself inherited the fallen human nature from his biological mother, Mary. Yet He never sinned. He overcame temptation each and every time. If He hadn’t had a normal human nature in that respect, nothing would have been a temptation to Him.
Virtually anyone can refrain from sin for 5 minutes, can’t he? Yes, because he has free will—the ability to choose. Well then why is it not possible to do so for 10 minutes? For an hour? For a day? For a week? For a month? For a year? For a decade? For a life time?
Sin is not inevitable.
What is your alternative insight? This view (of sinful man) was certainly not unique to Augustine; it was taught from the earliest times. It makes no difference what Augustine based his “eternal suffering” on, and Augustine was not unique with this either. “Eternal suffering” was also taught from the the earliest times. I’m not sure what point you are trying to make…?
Two views of man’s sinful nature
With Augustine’s theory of Original Sin, the guilt we inherit – through being born – is held against us as by God as a criminal offence in which we participate through our sharing/solidarity in the nature of fallen ‘Adam’. We are born as curses – as creatures of God’s wrath. In addition this Original Sin has so corrupted the Image of God in us that God’s grace actually, in a sense, destroys/replaces human nature if it is granted, rather than renews it.
With the Eastern theory of Ancestral Sin, the sin we inherit is ancestral. We are born more as less as blessings into a sinful world where it is easy to fall into actual sin because of the sinful world bequeathed to us by our ancestors in which we participate. We participate in a world dominated by death and fear of death, and it is this rather than guilt that we inherit. This sin is not held against us as by God as a criminal offence in which we participate through our sharing/solidarity in the nature of ‘Adam’ – it is something that God wants to rescue us, liberate us, heal us from so that our solidarity in the Old Adam is redeemed through our solidarity in Christ our Victor over death and all the deadens, the New Adam. In addition the Ancestral Sin theory does not have as its corollary Augustinian ideas that Original Sin has destroyed the Image of God in us – rather God’s grace completes the image of God in us and enables us to grow from being bearers of God’s image into being sons and daughters of God according to his true likeness, truly reflecting his compassion and glory.
The doctrine of ancestral sin focuses on human death as an inheritance from Adam. The notion of inheritance of the guilt of Adam is excluded.
However - the Eastern view which is also the view of many traditions in the West too, doesn’t claim that human beings don’t have a sinful nature.
Here is Kallistos Ware commenting on the doctrine of original sin but actually stating the Eastern ancestral sin view rather than the Augustinian position.
The doctrine of original sin means rather that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; it is easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse their suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being. And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin. The gulf grows wider and wider.
It is here, in the solidarity of the human race, that we find an explanation for the apparent unjustness of the doctrine of original sin. Why, we ask, should the entire race suffer because of Adam’s fall? Why should all be punished because of one man’s sin? The answer is that human beings, made in the image of the Trinitarian God, are interdependent and coinherent. No man is an island. We are “members of one another,” and so any action, performed by any member of the human race, inevitably affects all the other members. Even though we are not, in the strict sense, guilty of the sins of others, yet we are somehow always involved.
-Bishop Kallistos Ware
Timothy Ware has written and edited some very helpful books. That is a good example of his approach.
Paul didn’t have “free will” without Christ
As we can see Paul was in bondage. According to verses 24-25 It was Christ who delivered him from the captivity of sin. Paul couldn’t do it. It’s by the Spirit that we choose. Only by God’s grace.
(Robin)
Read your article, Lotharson … I’d never considered this alternate viewpoint; makes me want ot rethink things. Thank you
Lotharson,
You could reasonably argue the label “sinful nature,” but it was Paul who taught that we are slaves to sin. I would agree with you that this is not a curse from God. It’s rather a result of our choices in deciding to eat from the wrong tree (metaphorically speaking). We want to do things on our own – do them right – and we just can’t. Paul did say he was alive once without the law, but then the law revived and Paul died. As soon as we know what we SHOULD do, we choose to do the opposite.
But even unborn babies (who presumably haven’t sinned, not having been exposed to law, nor capable of comprehending it) can and do die. Death is the result of sin, and not our deaths only. Death came to the whole world. Now I’m not saying that nothing died before Adam sinned, but what I do believe is that the sin of our ancestors in wanting to do things their way, led to the state of the world as it is today. It could have gone uphill fast – instead it is going very, very slowly because Adam still wants to do it on his/her own.
Jesus was, as I see it, the “do-over” man. He is described by Paul as the “last Adam” (in whom all Adam was put to death) and also the “second Adam,” that is, the Adam who, having the same neutral nature as the first Adam, chose faith rather than self-reliance, independence, rugged individualism. 
That’s right – we really CAN’T do it on our own. We were created for community as God is the prototypical Community into which we’ve been invited (and have refused, most of us, the invite). We were not created to be separate, but one – as Jesus prayed, “Make them one as we are One that the world may know that You sent Me.”
We, however, are born kicking and screaming and the older we get the more we feel the natural (fleshly?) need to establish our individuality. Now we are discrete (able to be differentiated from one another – as are the Trinity) persons, but we were never meant to be individuals. Deep inside we know this and we long for coherent, loving community in which everyone is treated lovingly (communism?) but we always botch it. That’s why the genre of dystopian literature is such a great choice for storytellers – as is utopian fiction (and fiction it is, in this world). We are always trying, consciously or subconsciously, to find our way back to the Garden. And we simply cannot do it on our own. We can’t even live together without being forced (many of us) not to kill, rape, rob, abuse one another, let alone live together in loving harmony with a much larger group than a family. For that matter, even a family is a pretty tough and often unsuccessful project.
Whatever you’d like to call it, man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. I think that trouble comes from within – from our bondage to sin. That, and the death that bondage leads to, is what Jesus came to set us free from.
Love, Cindy
Hello Sobornost, I take the orthodox view, thanks for having explained to other people!
In the link above I gave textual evidence that the author of Genesis did not believe we were cursed with a wicked nature.
I think that for him, man is weak but still capable of choosing to do good, Cain murdered his brother and people each other before Noah for the same reason that the first couple ate the wrong fruit: they arer weak and there is no guarantee they will always make the right choice and overcome sin.
Therefore God rued to have made them.
This is a straightforward interpretation of the text.
Yes - weak and immature rather than criminal; that’s certainly part of the Orthodox tradition. I believe it was central to Irenaeus’ theology. The weakness (and of course the orientation towards death) is in some sense inherited but not the guilt. ‘Death’ here simply means death as consequence and not a judicial death penalty.
See -
lifeissues.net/writers/zim/e … sin13.html
Obviously the Eastern doctrine of original sin/inherited sin is far less drastic than the Augustinian one. I think it’s an exaggeration to say that there is no notion of inherited sin in Orthodoxy - but it is accurate to say that is far less drastic than its Western counterpart.
Sin is not inherited, but I still believe a nature is inherited from our first parents, a nature which has a tendency toward wrongdoing. This should not be surprising since it is noted that tendencies seem to be inherited among people groups or even within families. It has been found that often identical twins who have been raised in different environments, nontheless have tendencies toward similar types of behaviour, even to marrying spouses who are similar to each other in many respects. It has been noted that people among particular people groups or races have a greater tendency toward alcoholism. Although this may at first suggest environmental factors rather than genetics, it has been shown that there is a major link to genetics. An internet search will confirm this. For example:
keppel.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV191Heath_UQ_Copy.pdf
However, this does not prove that those whose genetics would indicate a tendency toward alcholism inevitibly become alcololics if they begin drinking. The influence of genetics does not make alcoholism the inevitable result. Our free wills are always operative.
So the universal inheritance of a sinful nature does not make the practice of sin inevitable. In His creation of mankind, God has blessed them with the ability to choose.
hmmm, Me thinks it be a slippery slope…
“If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves…”
1 John 1:8
I believe we do have an ability to choose and that our genetic makeup merely inclines rather than predetermines… However, although I don’t think humans beings are naturally depraved adn I think we can make limited choices in exercise of virtue, I do think we are by nature weak and even the strongest and truest of us are weakened and limited. The New Testament term for sin – hamartia- is about aiming for the target, wanting to hit the target of what we see as the good, but often falling short or mistakenly aiming for the wrong target (as much though ignorance and through weakness as through our own deliberate fault). So I think we have to reckon with a tragic dimension to human existence that only grace can save us from, and only grace can enable us to live with in good hope. Even if we manage to avoid the more obvious personal sins – the sin of pride for having avoided these lurks in the background. And whatever our personal sins are, we are also enmeshed in a network of collective and social sins that we have to deal with by God’s grace (and which we often aren’t; actually aware of). So although I basically agree with the Eastern doctrine –I still think sin is very serious indeed and something we are never fully free of in this life (which I understand is also the view of Eastern Christians).
" However, although I don’t think humans beings are naturally depraved adn I think we can make limited choices in exercise of virtue, I do think we are by nature weak and even the strongest and truest of us are weakened and limited. "
Yep! This is also the mainstream Jewish and Muslim view. As I have argued, I think they are the ones who correctly interpret Genesis whereas Augustine and all his followers get it wrong.
Cheers from Lancashire.
Aha - you are from Lancashire 
I do wonder about the ‘genetic’ factor in ‘inherited’ sin.
What are the implications that sin resides in the material part of a human being? Could it be mapped out by the Genome Project? I’m not being facetious - where else could sin reside, except in the material passed onto us by those x’s and y’s?
If we consider sin a ‘weakness’ - is it the weakness of our senses, of our bodily material (I’m avoiding ‘flesh’ because of all the baggage that word has to carry) and again, if inherited, it must be in a genetic structure.
To be delivered from that inherited sin, by whatever means, would then necessarily mean the miracle of altering genetic material?
Can a ‘nature’ be passed along? Traits, of course - body type, physical or sensual inclinations (not sinful), all the genetic things we know about - but what makes up a ‘nature’, that it can be inherited?
Interesting.
Sobornost: I have a very complex identity: I am a Germanic Frenchman (from Alsace-Lorraine) currently working in Lancaster
Unlike british people, I am a true European 
(Please don’t take offense at that, but I am shocked by the number of English people who do not view themselves as Europeans).
It’s in your genes
Dave -Hmmmm - well I guess we are physical/spiritual beings. Pauls ‘flesh’ (sarx) means dead flesh/carrion flesh as a metaphor for everything in us that is not fully alive because not oriented towards God. We can sarx with our living bodies (soma) our emotions (psyche) and with our intellect and spirit (pneuma).
Nature/nurture, Body/Mind-spirit, Determinism/Freedom - very deep waters my dear Watson 
The only theory I know that has made sense to me about a lot of this stuff is Girard’s theory of desire -which takes in mirror neurons from genetics, learning theory, anthropology and myth, biblical studies etc. But that may well just be a personal liking .
Ah I thought you were Alsatian Iotharson -
Don’t worry I’m not offended. It’s true that a lot of English people, don’t see themselves as European (although the Scots have always had a more European identity and I’m part Scottish and part English). That little stretch of water - the Channel - has a big effect on the English imagination. I think of myself a English, Scottish and European. I guess the UKIP little Englander sentiments are the English version of similar sentiments towards others not of the tribe that have arisen in France and elsewhere in Europe in a time of economic crisis. Most English people I know are cautiously pro-European (but I live in the cosmopolitan Capital City).