Deutero Q

At a Bible study I led the other night, the subject of sin's transmission came up. My understanding is as follows. Although Scripture does not explain precisely--or scientifically--how sin is transmitted* (see below), the biblical witness is clear that sin does not consist merely in a voluntary act (although it is that, to be sure); it springs from a heart that is itself sinful by nature.

While the doctrines of original sin and total depravity may be hard for some people to accept, the Bible teaches that the sin of our first parents had far-reaching consequences. We have all been affected and infected by it. ("In Adam's fall we sinned all," the old Puritan saying goes.) In this regard, the English writer Somerset Maugham once said about himself, "If I wrote down every thought I have ever thought and every deed I have ever done, men would call me a monster of depravity."

As offensive as it may be to our belief in the innate goodness of human beings, the Bible reveals that Maugham's monster is found in every person ... and the monster's name is sin.

*The twelfth-century theologian Peter Lombard believed that semen was stained in the act of concupiscence and that this stain somehow defiled the union of soul and body. The federal theology of later theologians spoke of the imputation of Adam's guilt to those he represented as head of the covenant that God made with Adam and his posterity. The Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it this way: "The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression." In this regard, the authors of the catechism adduced the following Scripture proofs: Genesis 2:16, 17; Acts 17:26; Romans 5:12-20; and 1 Corinthians 15: 21, 22.