Original sin ended with Adam

Original sin ended with Adam. ‘Adam received words from his Lord, and He relented towards him’ (Quran 2:37). The God of Mercy and Justice cannot punish children for their father’s sin; He even opens the way to our own individual ‘turning’ at every moment of our lives. There is no ‘door of repentance,’ only an open door-frame. Going through it comes naturally to us.

Augustine proposes the ugliest doctrine in the history of religion: an unbaptised infant is damned in the eternal ‘pain of sense’. But for Muslims, we are not genetically-defective cripples, destined to be beaten for a crime we did not commit.

Infinite sin (and is this not rather hard on Adam, the ‘hungry child’?) requires, for Augustine, an infinite sacrifice. God Himself must suffer. Hence Augustine’s church must deify the Messiah, even though the Messiah taught that the father forgave the prodigal son simply when he repented. In the Parables, a vicarious sacrifice is nowhere in sight.

~ Dr Tim Winter



Categories: Islam

2 replies

  1. The verse right before it – Surah 2:36, indicates that the results of Adam’s sin is that human beings will be enemies of one another. (fights, conflicts, disagreements, violence, murder, wars, etc. – all come from this original sin of enmity / hatred of one another.)

    But Satan caused them to slip out of it and removed them from that [condition] in which they had been. And We said, “Go down, [all of you], as enemies to one another, and you will have upon the earth a place of settlement and provision for a time.”

    So, the Qur’an indirectly affirms original sin.

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