Original Sin: Guilty but not Condemned?

 

Hello and welcome. In this article, we'll analyze and critique a particular conclusion within the original sin perspective of the fall and its consequences. To look at all of our articles about original sin, see here. 

OVERVIEW OF VIEWS WITHIN THE ORIGINAL SIN PERSPECTIVE

 

When it comes to perspectives on the fall and its consequences, the main distinct premise of original sin that is not shared by other perspectives like ancestral sin is that all humans from conception are held personally guilty in God's sight for Adam's sin. As McFarland summarizes:

“Stated summarily, the Western (or Augustinian) doctrines of the fall and original sin affirm (1) that Adam and Eve’s violation of God’s primordial commandment against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16 – 17; 3:6) caused a fundamental deformation in humanity’s relationship to God, each other, and the rest of creation; and (2) that this “fall”includes among its consequences that all human beings thereafter are born into a state of estrangement from God –an “original” sin that condemns all individuals prior to and apart from their committing any “actual ”sins in time and space.” - McFarland, In Adam’s Fall, p. 29-30 

With this in mind, we must ask what conclusions are formed from this premise. 

1. Classical Original Sin View 

- All humans from conception are held personally guilty in God's sight for Adam's sin. Babies must be baptized to remit the inherited guilt from Adam otherwise they’re damned to hell if they die.

The classical view is the most historically prevalent view of original sin, clearly articulated between the late 4th century AD and the Middle Ages. Our article here demonstrates this with historical sources. In the modern day, it is affirmed by some Roman Catholics and any other group or person who is committed to the historical Augustinian view of original sin. 

2. Limbo View 

- All humans from conception are held personally guilty in God's sight for Adam's sin. Unbaptized babies are not damned if they die, but they aren’t necessarily saved either. They go to a 3rd place for eternity that’s in between called limbo. Opinions on precise details vary. 

The limbo view is largely seen as a development in thought from the classical view which gained prominence in the late medieval period. In the modern day, it is mostly affirmed by some Roman Catholics but is not dogma. 

 

3. Covenant Household View 

- All humans from conception are held personally guilty in God's sight for Adam's sin. But the children of believers are spared from being damned to hell if they die. However, the children of unbelievers are damned if they die because they’re guilty of Adam’s sins. 

The covenant household view became prominent during the Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, this view is primarily affirmed among some Reformed groups but is by no means a dominant view.

 

4. Guilty but not Condemned View

- All humans from conception are held personally guilty in God's sight for Adam's sin. But this doesn’t condemn anyone if they die. All infants who die go to heaven. 

The guilty but not condemned view has become prominent and widely articulated within the original sin perspective since the late 19th century. This article will focus on our critique of this view. 

CRITIQUING THE GUILTY BUT NOT CONDEMNED VIEW 

Inconsistency and Tension - 

Historically speaking, original sin has said infants are guilty so they are condemned if they die. Ancestral sin, which is our perspective says infants aren’t guilty so they aren’t condemned if they die. This view attempts to combine the premise of original sin with the conclusion of ancestral sin. One problem with this view of guilty but not condemned is that it establishes clear inconsistencies with God's justice. We will frame the issue with multiple propositions. 

P1: From God's judicial perspective, if a human dies while possessing guilt, they will not be saved. They will be condemned. 

P2: It pleases God to impute Adam's guilt with the wrath and spiritual deadness that come along with it to all humans from conception. In light of P1, God knows full well that due to his justice, those who die while possessing this guilt will not be saved. They will be condemned. 

P3: It also pleases God to not condemn infants. If an infant dies, God remits this guilt from them to prevent them from being condemned and instead saves them. 

The problem with the above propositions is that an affirmation of 1 and 2 is inconsistent with 3. If it pleases God to impute sin to infants knowing that in light of his justice, dying with sin imputed to you is grounds for condemnation, it follows that God is pleased for deceased infants to be condemned. Proposition 3 does not logically follow from this. 

If God sees newly conceived babies as under his wrath and spiritually dead due to possessing Adam's guilt, and it pleases him to impute this guilt, why wouldn’t he follow through with what this logically entails upon their death? Why would the cessation of their embodied existence suddenly trigger a change in God’s attitude toward them to where they’re no longer under his wrath and spiritually condemned? If God knows possessing guilt and his wrath cause damnation upon bodily death, and this is how he views infants, why would God then not follow through with this and not damn any infants? 

Would it not make more sense if infant salvation is insisted upon, to just say that spiritual condemnation, wrath, and guilt are not how God sees infants in the first place? If possessing guilt makes you spiritually condemned and under wrath, and dying in such a state would damn someone; then it logically follows that God would not impute this to infants in the first place if he desires to not damn infants. 

Redefining Guilt? - 

One concern we have from the guilty but not condemned view is a potential redefining of what it means to possess Adamic guilt to conclude with more ease that deceased infants aren't damned. This is not to say that all who hold the view redefine, but it's a concern that needs to be addressed. This would be one way of getting around the tension we mentioned above. 

Reformation confessions and documents that affirm original sin such as the Augsburg Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Formula of Concord, the Synod of Dort, and the Westminster Confession collectively define the punishment and penalty of possessing original sin as including eternal damnation. To see a multitude of sources on this, read our article here. If this is what's meant by being guilty of Adam's sin, we believe the inconsistency and tension remain. However, there are a couple ways this guilt could be redefined. 

1. Possessing Adamic guilt could be redefined to mean that we are all mortal and physically die. In this case, the guilt does not inherently reflect or inform the spiritual condition of infants because it's framed as having physical impacts. With this definition of Adamic guilt, eternal damnation would not be an inherent entailment as part of the penalty. 

2. Another potential redefinition is to say that possessing Adamic guilt just broadly means we are under various consequences of the fall like being removed from the garden, being mortal, living in a fallen world, and inevitably sinning ourselves to the exclusion of a penalty of eternal damnation. With this definition, one could be guilty but not condemned. 

These are the two main redefinitions we know of, but there may be others that are similar. The problems with these definitions of guilt are 1. This is not how the doctrine of original sin has historically or confessionally understood the meaning of possessing Adamic guilt. 2. These new definitions essentially collapse the guilty but not condemned view into the ancestral sin perspective on the fall but with sloppy and imprecise language. How is that? It's because the key denial of ancestral sin is the possession of Adamic guilt (as historically and confessionally understood); and because these redefinitions of guilt remove the historical and confessional understanding of what it means to possess Adamic guilt, they also deny the possession of Adamic guilt (as historically and confessionally understood). As a result, there is no meaningful difference between the view of guilty but not condemned + redefinition and ancestral sin given they both affirm the same uncontested and uncontroversial points about the fall. In this case, we are no longer truly dealing with a view of original sin. 

Detached from History - 

Moving forward, let's grant and assume that the guilty but not condemned is not redefining what it means to possess Adamic guilt. Even so, we must point out to those who care about historical continuity that this view is still at odds with the historical articulations of original sin. We've written extensively about the doctrine of original sin and its historical affirmation of infant damnation both here and here. In the 5th century, affirmers of original sin such as Augustine of Hippo condemned the idea that deceased infants could be saved apart from baptism which they believed was the only way to remit Adam's guilt. Otherwise, the deceased infants were certainly damned. Augustine said any ideas to the contrary are deceitful and condemn the universal church. So the guilty but not condemned view of original sin is actually condemned by the very earliest figures who most strongly promoted the doctrine. 

A Potential Solution - 

The clearest solution to the issues we addressed above seems to be a passively inherited guilt through Traducianism rather than an active imputation from God. 

Traducianism of the soul asserts: that the human soul is transmitted through procreation and natural generation along with the body. Both the material and immaterial aspects of humans are derived from either one or both of the parents. 

Creationism of the soul asserts: that God creates a soul for each body when conceived/generated. 

The benefit of Traducianism is that it removes God as an active agent involved in the creation of each person. If God is passive or not involved rather than active in the creation of souls, one could extrapolate this to also saying that God is passive or not involved in Adam's guilt being accounted to us. It could be argued that this guilt is passively inherited or transmitted through procreation much like genes and other features. As a result, some tension could be relieved between God actively imputing guilt to infants knowing it would damn them but simultaneously not desiring any infants to be damned. The relief would come in the form of this guilt not being so much of an imputed legal verdict to infants, but a substance passively inherited in which God didn't have an active part. God would be more reactionary to the transmission of guilt in this view rather than making an active judgment of imputation. While this doesn't alleviate all tension or solve all problems, it would soften things between the inconsistency of simultaneously affirming P2 and P3 which we covered earlier.

“In his final, incomplete work to Julian of Eclanum, he insists that every soul (and not only every body) was contained in Adam when he sinned: this is the only way Augustine believes that his doctrine of inherited guilt can be sustained.” - A History of Mind and Body in Late Antiquity, p. 223

“Throughout his life Augustine vacillated between these two options and set the terms of the debate for later Catholic and Protestant traditions. Traducianism offers a plausible mechanism for the transmission of original sin but raises worries about materialism (especially Tertullian’s version). Conversely, creationism implies that God is responsible for souls being born sinful or that souls become sinful by coming into contact with the body—either God is responsible for original sin or the body causes original sin.” - Madueme, Original Sin and the Fall: 5 Views, p. 30  

In fact, scholarship has noted that in its historical context, Traducianism was seen by Augustine as the most consistent if not the only way to maintain the doctrine of original sin. In light of this, it's no surprise that Traducianism would be the clearest solution to the problems within the guilty but not condemned view of original sin. 

The problem is that Traducianism has issues of its own. We've dedicated an entire article to unpacking the soul's origin and historical significance of the issue which you can read here. In that article, we cover: 

- Over eighty verses and passages of the Bible to determine what the correct understanding is of the soul's origin. 

- W.G.T. Shedd is cited over twenty times to understand and interact with his arguments for Traducianism. 

- How the origin of the soul is related to Christology and other problems with Traducianism. 

In the end, we concluded that the Biblical data best supports the Soul Creationism view of the soul's origin. If Traducianism solves the issues of the guilty but not condemned view of original sin, it must itself be proven true first. We should avoid affirming entire doctrines as a means to an end of solving other problems in our theology. 

CONCLUSION

In this article, we have offered some pushback and criticism to the guilty but not condemned view of original sin which tries to maintain that all humans from conception are held personally guilty in God's sight for Adam's sin. But this doesn’t condemn anyone if they die and all infants who die go to heaven.  There is certainly more discussion to be had on the issue. In this article, we granted the premises and conclusions and then observed if the view was internally consistent. The bulk of our criticism is 1. Internal inconsistency with God's actions. 2. Potential redefining of guilt. 3. Departure from how original sin has been historically understood. 4. The most obvious solution to the inconsistencies is problematic as well.  

Some of what makes discussing this issue tough is that our view of ancestral sin is comprised of an ancient set of beliefs which are in a historical context an alternative view to the Augustinian original sin view. Because of this historical framing, modern discussions on the issue are often complicated precisely because most affirmers of original sin have departed from the doctrine as historically understood and instead often affirm something close to the guilty but not condemned view. The goalposts of what ancestral sin was framed as an alternative to have shifted and the logical lines of thought and their conclusions have blurred. As a result, this complicates the dialogue when conclusions are shared but premises are disputed. 

In our view, if someone desires to hold on to the salvation of deceased infants and deny that any are damned, the simplest explanation is to just side with ancestral sin and say that God doesn't see infants as guilty and deserving of damnation in the first place. Instead, condemnable guilt is grounded on personal sins. As we noted earlier, there is a potential temptation of the guilty but not condemned view to unknowingly collapse into ancestral sin. Of the original sin views, this view is certainly the closest to ancestral sin. We aren't persuaded that it's scripturally, logically, or historically consistent to cling on to both an inherited Adamic guilt as well as universal deceased infant salvation. One of the two must either go entirely or be modified to where the guilt is no longer guilt in the original sin sense or infant salvation is limited to the baptized, children of believers, or some other criteria. 

Thanks for reading. That concludes this article.