Commenting on Erasmus on Rom 5:12 and its implications for the doctrine of Original Sin, Michael Massing wrote:
In the Vulgate, this passage reads, "Wherefore as by one man sin entered the world and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned." Augustine had maintained that the "one man" in question was Adam, and that it was he "in whom all have sinned." In other words, all men were doomed to sin because of Adam's original sin. Thus interpreted, this passage had become the foundation of the doctrine of original sin. In examining the Greek, however, Erasmus saw that the underlying term for the Latin in quo ("in whom") was εφ ω (eph 'ho) and from the context he concluded that it was being used in the sense of "inasmuch as" or "since" we have all sinned. In other words, Erasmus explained, Paul meant to say not that man is doomed to sin because of Adam's original transgression but rather that death is a companion to sin and, inasmuch as all sin, death comes to all. Through this grammatical adjustment, Erasmus was challenging a central tenet of the faith. (Michael Massing, Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind [New York: Harper, 2018], 250)
