Determined to Believe by Lennox John C.;

Author:Lennox, John C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2018-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Argument 3: Original sin

Although some writers in this field are convinced that human beings are incapable of believing in God, they hold that it is nevertheless people’s fault that they cannot believe, so God may justly condemn them.

It is claimed that this has to do with their involvement with Adam, who brought sin into the world. What we have already said regarding Argument 2 makes this look very implausible.

However, out of fairness to those who advance it, we should consider some of the issues it raises. The argument is expressed by Phillip Johnson as follows:

… man’s own inability is something he is guilty for, and that inability cannot therefore be seen as something that relieves the sinner of responsibility.125

That guilt, according to Johnson’s argument, is something that all human beings are born with; and it was their own fault that they were born with it. The reason for that is that they were “in Adam” when he sinned. Adam is the federal head of humanity, and so when he sinned they sinned. (Adam’s sin is sometimes said to be “imputed to them”.) They are therefore blameworthy for their inability to respond to God.

This argument is based on Romans 5:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned – for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

(Romans 5:12–14 ESV.)

The argument depends on interpreting the statement because all sinned (ESV and NIV) as “because all sinned in Adam”, therefore all are guilty of Adam’s sin. There are two issues of exegesis here. The first has to do with the Old Latin translation where the phrase is rendered in quo omnes peccaverunt – “in whom all (have) sinned”. Augustine used this translation, so it is understandable that he came to the conclusion that all had sinned in Adam. Augustine’s view has had widespread influence. However, the Latin in quo (“in whom”) is a mistranslation of the original Greek eph ho, which means “because” or “since”. Therefore the overwhelming majority of commentators have subsequently settled for the translation “because” or “since” – “because all (have) sinned”.

Secondly, the tense of the Greek verb translated “sinned” here in Romans 5:12 is aorist. It may or may not be translated as an English past definite. This is because the aorist tense in Greek covers a different range of possible meanings from a past definite in English. This can be seen from the fact that in Romans 3:23 the very same word in Greek is translated as all have sinned (ESV and NIV). In that case, the translators used an English perfect tense (“have sinned”) to translate the Greek aorist. Translating it by a past definite would not convey the right sense.

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