(5) 'Ambrosiaster.' This
writer clearly indicates by his comments on Rom. v. vi. vii. that he accepts
the idea of ' Original Sin'; but he has only one sentence which (apparently)
implies the idea of ' Original Guilt.' The sentence to which we refer is,
nevertheless, of the most crucial importance in the development of the
'twice-born' Fall-theory, because Ambrosiaster thereby provided, perhaps
unwittingly, the doctrine of 'Original Guilt' with what it had hitherto lacked,
namely, a Scriptural proof-text to be its formal basis: the ignorance of Greek
now prevalent in the West, and the consequent inability of many Latin
theologians to read the actual words of the New Testament, effectually screened
the fact that the supposed proof-text rested upon a blunder in translation. Its
relevant portions run as follows:
In whom, that is, in Adam,
all sinned. The Apostle said ' in whom ' in the masculine gender (in quo)
although he is speaking about the woman, for this reason, that his reference is
to the whole race of man, not to the particular sex <which as a matter of
fact sinned first>. So then it is plain that all have sinned in Adam as in a
lump (quasi in massa); for all the children whom Adam begat, having been
himself corrupted by the woman (ipsa) through sin, have been born under sin.
From him therefore all are sinners, because from him are we all; for Adam lost
the gift of God when he transgressed, having become unworthy to eat of the
tree of life, so that he died
The cardinal error in this
sentence lies in the mis- translation of St. Paul's phrase έφ' φ πάντες
ήμαρτον, 'for that all sinned ' (R.V.), as though it were έν ώ πάντες ήμαρτον,
'in whom, sc. the " one man " just mentioned, all sinned.' Ambrosiaster
is, of course, relying on a Latin version which renders έφ' φ as in quo, a
translation which has been perpetuated in the Vulgate. This rendering is
inexact and ambiguous enough in all conscience, but it does not compel us to
assume that quo is masculine; a reader who possessed only the Latin
version, without any knowledge of the original Greek, and read it without any
preconceived ideas as to 'Original Guilt,' would probably understand in quo
as equivalent to quod or quantum, 'in so far as all sinned.' In
any case the words unum hominem are too far distant from the relative
quo to be its grammatical antecedent. Ambrosiaster has therefore bequeathed to
Western Christendom as the supposed Scriptural foundation of its characteristic
doctrine of 'Original Guilt ' a gratuitous misunderstanding of a faulty
rendering of what St. Paul actually wrote.
The fatal legacy was received
only too gladly: Augustine quotes this passage, mistranslation and all, as from
the writings of 'sanctus Hilarius,' who is undoubtedly 'Ambrosiaster.' Nor has
its malign influence even yet come to an end : I have in my possession a Roman
Catholic pamphlet in which the words of Rom. v. 12 are quoted in defence of the
idea of ' Original Guilt,' in the form ' ... in whom all have sinned,' without
the slightest apparent consciousness that St. Paul wrote nothing of the kind.
It is, indeed, doubtful whether
Ambrosiaster himself really intended to place on this clause (in quo omnes
peccaverunt) the sense which Augustine took him to intend, and which has
been adopted without question, on Augustine's authority, by so many later
writers in Western Christendom. For, in commenting on v. 14 of the same fifth
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, he lays down a principle which logically
seems to exclude ' Original Guilt ' altogether. His text of this verse runs 'sed
regnavit mors ab Adam usque ad Moysen, in eos qui peccaverunt in similitudinem
praevaricationis Adam'; which, it will be noticed, like Origen's text, presupposes
a Greek original not containing the word μή before αμαρτήσαντας. This reading,
right or wrong, clearly connects the incidence of death with the commission of
actual sin; and Ambrosiaster expounds it to mean that only actual sin deserves
the 'second death,' or Gehenna.
Moreover, like most Latin writers
after Tertullian, he repudiates 'traducianism.' It is, therefore, possible that
by the assertion that all men 'sinned in Adam, as in a lump ' he may merely
mean that they ' became sinners ' or 'acquired a sinful tendency'; in other
words, he may intend to affirm merely 'Original Sin,' and not 'Original Guilt.'
But the idea of 'Original Guilt ' had by this time become so popular, and the
apparent discovery of a Scriptural basis for it was so welcome, amongst
thinkers who knew no Greek, that critical considerations of this kind do not
seem to have occurred to any of Ambrosiaster's readers; and his mistranslation
of έφ' ώ πάντες ήμαρτον took its place in the armoury of controversial
arguments for the ' twice-born' version of the Fall-doctrine. This momentous
error, and the emergence of the conception of fallen humanity as a sinful massa,
or 'lump,' bring us up to the very threshold of Augustinianism; where it will
be appropriate to pause, and survey the ground which has been covered in this
lecture. (Norman Powell Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin:
A Historical and Critical Study [London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd.,
1927], 307-10)
