The Greek text reads,
"Through one man [or 'because of one man,'] sin entered the world, and
through sin, death, and thus death came upon all men, in that all
sinned." John Chrysostom, like most Christians, took this to mean that
Adam's sin brought death into the world, and death came upon all because "all sinned."
But Augustine read the passage in Latin, and so either ignored or was unaware
of the connotations of the Greek original; thus he misread the last phrase as
referring to Adam. Augustine insisted that it meant that "death came upon
all men, in whom all sinned" - that the sin of "one
man," Adam, brought upon humanity not only universal death, but also
universal, and inevitable, sin. Augustine uses the passage to deny that human
beings have free moral choice, which Jews and Christians had traditionally
regarded as the birthright of humanity made "in God's image."
Augustine decrees, on the contrary, that the whole human race inherited from
Adam a nature irreversibly damaged by sin...."
Augustine attempts to rest
his case concerning original sin ... upon the evidence of one prepositional
phrase in Romans 5:12, insisting that Paul said that death came upon all
humanity because of Adam, "in whom all sinned. But Augustine
misreads and mistranslates this phrase (which others translate "in that
[i.e., because] all sinned") and then proceeds to defend his errors ad
infinitum.... Augustine's argument has persuaded the majority of western
Catholic and Protestant theologians to agree with him;... But, ... when we
actually compare Augustine's interpretation with those of theologians as
diverse as Origen, John Chrysostom, and Pelagius, we can see that Augustine
found in Romans ... what others had not seen there. (Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, New York: Random House, 1988, pp. 109 and 143 pp.
187-188.)
Less anyone charge that Pagels is a liberal and dismiss her comments above, this is also the position of many other New Testament scholars, such as Joseph Fitzmyer in his commentary on Romans.