Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!news.cs.indiana.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hedrick@cs.rutgers.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Original sin of infants Message-ID: Date: 1 Apr 91 11:19:16 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 46 Approved: christian@geneva.rutgers.edu I'm not sure how much help I can be here, as my ideas may not be quite the classical Reformed ones, but let me try. In some sense I agree with your parents, in that I don't quite believe in inherited guilt. However I do believe in total depravity, which may work out to being the same thing. That is, I believe that even outwardly good acts proceed from motivations that are at best mixed, and that's the best case (i.e. there are too many times when what we do isn't even outwardly good). Why God chose to do things this way is a mystery to me. Why would he choose to bring his people out of an imperfect humanity through grace, rather than creating us as angelically perfect beings in the first place? This is the mystery that Paul describes in Rom 11:32: that God has consigned all mem to disobedience, so that he may have mercy on all. I am afraid I see your parents' problem as being based on a somewhat romantic view of children, sort of an "innocent savage" view. Certainly infants don't commit murder, and other things that we think of as major sins. But I believe they are still imperfect, and rely on the grace of God. No doubt their degree of responsibility is different than an adult's, and the way grace operates in them is also different. But the idea that they don't need forgiveness and grace seems to me inconceivable. Where I might agree with your parents is that I find it hard to understand the idea that there is sort of guilt that children inherit that has to be forgiven. I believe children need forgiveness as much as adults do. But it's because that's part of living as imperfect beings in God's grace, not because they have to get out from under the guilt of Adam's sin. The fact that death came into the world through Adam (I Cor 15;21ff, among other references) doesn't mean to me that we inherit the guilt of Adam's sin, but rather that we inherit a human nature damaged by sin, which causes us to sin as well. I have no problem at all with the prayer you quote. It doesn't even seem to me to refer to original sin. It says to forgive the child all sin. I don't see any reference to forgiving inherited guilt. To me baptism is entry into a Christian community where forgiveness is a continuing thing. Baptism represents crucifying our sinful nature with Christ. This is an ongoing process. To think of baptism as one-time forgiveness of just past sins seems a return to the superstition of the early church, where people weren't baptized until the end of their lives, because they were afraid that sins after baptism were harder to forgive. To me baptism represents an initiation into a life that we live in the continuous presence of God's forgiveness, not just a one-time experience of it. Similarily with the liberation of from the powers of darkness.