Of Original Sin and Irish Heresy
James Mullin
September 12, 2006
In Matthew 19:17 Jesus says, “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God,” and in John 3:6 he says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again.”
This evidence is far too flimsy to bear the weight of a Christian doctrine that bestows an inherited sin on every child at birth. The best refutation comes from Jesus himself. Whenever he encounters mankind’s children, he expressly and repeatedly says they exemplify spiritual perfection.
In Matthew, (18:1-6) one of the disciples asks Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them. And said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea.” Jesus makes no mention of an inherited sin.
Later in the same chapter, Jesus adds: “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.” (18:10)
In the following chapter, little children are brought to Jesus so that he may put his hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said to his apostles: “Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” (19:13, 14)
Later, after Jesus had performed many miracles, the children in the temple began crying out: “Hosanna to the son of David”. The high priests were sore displeased and said to him, “Hearest thou what they say?” And Jesus said, “Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfect praise.” (Matthew 21:15, 16)
Jesus never refers to any original blemish on the character or soul of the children he encounters. Instead, he praises their innocence, perfection, and humility.
I submit that it is not Jesus, but Paul, who authors the concept of original sin. In Romans (5:12-14) he says: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned…death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.”
Several centuries later, St. Augustine (354-430) read Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and saw “not only a primal sin by Adam, but an inherited sin, a sin in which every human being has from birth, an original sin.” (Christianity, p.293)
In How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill says that Augustine taught that God condemned to hellfire all the unbaptized – “even infants who die without the sacrament.” He also says that Augustine believed that original sin “is passed along in the very fluids of procreation and that sexual intercourse, and because it (intercourse) involves a loss of rational control, is always at least venially sinful…”
Original sin is thus the fruit of Augustine’s views on sexuality. He once wrote: “Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of man downwards as the caresses of a woman.” Cahill calls him a “reformed profligate,” who deemed women’s embraces, “sordid, filthy and horrible.” (Cahill, p.65, 66)
St. Jerome, a contemporary of Augustine’s, wrote this about marriage: “To take my meaning quite clear, let me state that I should definitely like to see every man take a wife – the kind of man, that is, who perhaps is frightened of the dark and just cannot quite manage to lie down in his bed all alone.” (Columcille, p.40)
Some of these same church fathers taught that the apostles, including Peter, “put away” their wives once they received the call from Jesus. Professor Richard P. McBrien, a professor of theology at Notre Dame, says this has no historical basis. “Rather, it arrives from the mistaken and essentially unchristian assumption that celibacy is more virtuous than marriage because sexual intimacy somehow compromises one’s total commitment to God and the things of the spirit.” (Lives of the Popes p. 28)
Proof that Peter was married and remained so even after becoming a disciple of Jesus can be found in the account of Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31) and from Paul’s reference to the fact that Peter and the other apostles took their wives along on their apostolic journeys (1 Corinthians 9:5)
Paul also wrote that, “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife…” (1Timothy 3:2-4) In the same chapter he says: “Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.” (3:12) Obviously, Paul did not believe that church leaders were going to be celibates.
In the early 5th century, during the lifetime of saints Augustine, Jerome, and Patrick, the church was brought into a theological crisis over the nature of original sin. The man who contradicted church teaching and brought on the crisis was a Celtic monk named Pelagius. By all accounts, he was a brilliant scholar who spoke and wrote Latin and Greek. He was also a devout Christian ascetic, who practiced self-denial.
According to Dr. Douglas Hyde, “Pelagius was an Irishman, descended from an Irish colony in Britain.” Jerome describes him as “a great mountain dog through whom the devil barks”, who was “full of Irish porridge.” (The Wandering Irish in Europe, p. 50-51)
When Pelagius visited Rome between 400 and 411 AD, he was shocked by moral laxity he found among so-called Christians in upper class Roman Society. He blamed this moral corruption on the doctrine of divine grace promulgated by Augustine.
Pelagius recoiled in horror at the idea that a divine gift (grace) is necessary to perform what God commands.” (R.C. Sproul) He believed that man has a moral responsibility to obey the law of God, and the moral ability to do it.
Augustine, on the other hand, argued that mankind is a “mess of sin” incapable of raising itself from spiritual death. He said that fallen man has a free will, but has lost his moral liberty. The state of original sin leaves us in the wretched condition of being unable to refrain from sinning. We are able to choose what we desire, but our desires remain chained to our evil impulses.
Pelagius categorically denied the doctrine of original sin, arguing that Adam’s sin affected Adam alone and that infants at birth are in the same state as Adam was before the fall. Pelagius also argued that though grace may facilitate the achieving of righteousness, it is not necessary to that end.
For Pelagius, grace was the forgiveness of sins, which was an unmerited gift of God. The moral admonition and example of Christ were also grace. He also believed that men and women were justified in baptism without works or merits, but once they became Christians they had to make their own way to salvation by their own actions, aided by free will, the Ten Commandments, and the example of Jesus Christ. Pelagius taught that though we are by nature temptable, we sin only by our own choice.
Pope Zosimus declared Pelagius a heretic in 418. In the word’s Greek origins “hairetikos” means “able to choose”. In the end, “Rome rejected Pelagius, opting instead for original sin and the Fall. Humans needed sacramental grace to be saved. With this came the apparatus of the papacy and priesthood, to minister to the weak.” (Columcille, p.41)
But Pelagian ideas continued to be spread, so that Jerome and Augustine and other bishops were compelled to take a resolute stand against them. In 431, Pope Celestine sent Palladius, the first bishop, (St. Patrick was the second) to Ireland. His mission: stamp out Pelagianism.
Augustine’s teachings about grace and original sin became a fundamental part of the Roman version of Christianity, but Celtic Christians continued to incorporate the teachings of Pelagius into their beliefs. During the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., they accepted personal responsibility for improving their own spiritual condition as well as the spiritual condition of others.
Because the Celts believed that the Gospels, along with their own cultural traditions, should dictate the nature of Christian doctrine, they rejected the ideas of Augustine that either supplemented scripture or did not conform to Celtic customs.” (The Wandering Irish in Europe, p. 50-51)