ROMANS
5.12 AND ORIGINAL SIN
This text gradually came to
serve Augustine as one of his key Scriptural affirmations of original sin,
particularly in the sense that all men inherit a complex sinfulness that
since Adam has been the presupposition of the absolute need for supernatural
grace in salvation. In both the anti- Donatist and anti-Pelagian periods,
Augustine sought increasingly to locate the source of sin in causes which pre-
cede any active willing or doing on the individual's part, and his theory of
Adamic man became a mainstay of this effort. Thus Romans 5.12 became associated
especially with the argument for the need of infant baptism and the argument
for the damnation of unbaptized infants who die. The effect exegetically of
this increased use of 5.12 taken in such a sense was simply to strengthen the
concept of the massa, developed early by Augustine and in a certain way
from 9.21, in a particular direction: all of humanity becomes for good or ill a
corporate massa in Adam's fall. That is, membership in the massa
is determined at a fixed point in the primitive history of humankind, and this
membership and its effects are transmitted through certain mechanisms and
channels. The situation of man described in Romans 9 is in this way given a
finer twist with the help of a particular exegesis of Romans. 5.12. (Peter
Gorday, Principles of Patristic Exegesis: Romans 9-11 in Origen, John
Chrysostom, and Augustine [Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 4; New
York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1983], 175-76)
To Support this Blog:
Email for Amazon Gift card: ScripturalMormonism@gmail.com
Email for Logos.com Gift Card: IrishLDS87@gmail.com
