for Christians: when does the individual 'Fall into sin'?

[© tweed]

for Christians: when does the individual 'Fall into sin'?

[they don't love you like i love you]

Went with option 3, because I reject theology based on "Original Sin"

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Option 5.

"Sin" is an inevitable consequence of the combination of free will and our lack of omniscience.  To me, what the story of Genesis 3 relates is the moment when we realize that at times we will inevitably commit evil for the best of reasons.

[Blue3]

When we make poor decisions, we sin.

Sins are acts, sin is NOT a state of being.

[TJ in Oregon]

If you count Original Sin as "falling into sin" then Option 1. Otherwise whenever a sin is committed (sin meaning something done/said/thought/not done with knowledge and consent). Being in a state of sin implies an unrepented sin having been committed.

[© tweed]

When we make poor decisions, we sin.

Sins are acts, sin is NOT a state of being.

so there's some master list of actions that are sins, wholly distinct from another list of actions that are not?  there are no moral grey areas? and why did Christ bother relativize/fulfill the Law?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Sins are acts, sin is NOT a state of being.

The funniest thing about this particular Christian perspective on sin is that they have it completely wrong.  For instance take the “we hate the act of homosexuality, not the homosexual thoughts God Satan put in your head” line of thinking.  Homosexual acts are relatively meaningless, and can be performed by straight men just as well.  But homosexuality as a state of mind, that is completely different, and that is what poses the fundamental threat to their notion of family values.

FTFY, at least as far as fundamentalist thought would go.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

My position is the same as TJ's, and I would place the point at which sins can be actively committed some time around the shift from the first to the second growth stage in mid-childhood (although I do think that the culpability is at least somewhat diminished until some point in adolescence, insofar as such things are quantifiable).

[Mr. Smith]

Option 3

That's why the LDS Church doesn't baptize babies, for they are still innocent. Why we wait until 8...I guess you could call it an inverted communion.

Until people have a basic grasp of right and wrong, they cannot have gone into acts of sin. Once that is understood however, "Man must be punished for his own sins, not for Adam's trangression".

[Del Tachi]

Sometime after early childhood.

I take the position that sin IS a state of being that someone falls into after they deliberately choose to disobey God, but that such an endeavor cannot be achieved with any degree of "deliberateness" until one is at least 15 or 16 years old, perhaps older. 

[afleitch]

My position is the same as TJ's, and I would place the point at which sins can be actively committed some time around the shift from the first to the second growth stage in mid-childhood (although I do think that the culpability is at least somewhat diminished until some point in adolescence, insofar as such things are quantifiable).

What about 'responsibility' into adulthood? At what point in life is any person completely endowed with the faculties to make morally correct or incorrect choices? Whom is the standard on which you can measure whether other people meet or fail to meet culpability? Is adulthood not a learning curve in itself, or are you expected to know the nuances of what is moral and what is sin as soon as you are an adult, however you choose to define it?

In short, how on earth can anyone with any honesty say that you can quantify the point at which 'sin kicks in' when no other moral or ethical standard is complete and absolute at the onset adulthood and ultimately is affected by experience and social interaction? What is galling is that you have tried to be objective in utilising child psychology yet you've ultimately bastardised it.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Other: when you commit sins

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

My position is the same as TJ's, and I would place the point at which sins can be actively committed some time around the shift from the first to the second growth stage in mid-childhood (although I do think that the culpability is at least somewhat diminished until some point in adolescence, insofar as such things are quantifiable).

What about 'responsibility' into adulthood? At what point in life is any person completely endowed with the faculties to make morally correct or incorrect choices? Whom is the standard on which you can measure whether other people meet or fail to meet culpability? Is adulthood not a learning curve in itself, or are you expected to know the nuances of what is moral and what is sin as soon as you are an adult, however you choose to define it?

In short, how on earth can anyone with any honesty say that you can quantify the point at which 'sin kicks in' when no other moral or ethical standard is complete and absolute at the onset adulthood and ultimately is affected by experience and social interaction? What is galling is that you have tried to be objective in utilising child psychology yet you've ultimately bastardised it.

You know what? You're entirely right about this. You're right and I'm wrong, and I need to reevaluate my position on this.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

At birth (original sin).

[DC Al Fine]

I support the original sin view, but I'm surprised at the late ages some of you are quoting. I've seen my two year old niece break the eighth commandment

[afleitch]

I support the original sin view, but I'm surprised at the late ages some of you are quoting. I've seen my two year old niece break the eighth commandment

Do you think a two year old girl has the cognitive capacity to understand that taking things from someone else is 'usually' a wrong thing to do? Are you aware that to a toddler, possession means ownership. They essentially have a 'right' to anything within grabbing distance and that generally speaking under four, never mind two they difficulty distinguishing between what is 'mine' and what is 'yours' (or not theirs). The concept of 'stealing' as opposed to 'taking' does not apply to them. How on earth are they breaking any rule?

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

At birth (original sin).

I see you've "recovered from"/overcome the Objectivist view on that. I always found the Galt rant about original sin quite appealing.

I never really fully understood original sin, but I guess the Christian view (or at least one of the more proper views) is that there is quite a bit more to original sin than just humanity being able to think as Rand tries to spin it. I don't really study theology, and it was by far my worst class in school, but I would think many religious thinkers put it together with pride (or maybe that's not the proper vice - to put it more straightforward, being the equivalent of the Creator). I'm just not sure how that applies to all of humanity if one does the act. I think the early Bible does a lot of transferring virtuousness/viciousness between parent and child if I remember correctly from some English studies.

I would also think more fundie types would associate it with sexual relations - even those between married couples - considering the other lines that follow about Adam and Eve. To me (along with hopefully most others on this board), that would be a load of nonsense. Despite the Catholic Church's rather silly teachings about not separating either of the goods from the act of sex, it always seems to be considered good when married couples have children. Reproduction is never referred to anything but a good, so to throw original sin into that equation is not compatible. Even Santorum-like Catholics probably don't believe in this sense of original sin, but I don't doubt there are some American Christian groups that do.

So neither of those explanations make much sense to me hence my earlier answer of just quoting Clarko above. I just did a quick search of the Bible for "original sin" since I am hardly familiar with all of it, and nothing came up. I guess it is completely based upon very early Catholic doctrine interpreted from Old Testament stories. If any of my assumptions are wrong, feel free to correct me, and I'll reconsider, but I find it hard to imagine that one has sinned just by being created. In my view, sin is a deliberate disobeyal of a known moral law.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Depends on how you define "original sin."

To me, original sin simply means that we have inherited the same weaknesses that led to Adam and Eve's first sin, and that those weaknesses cause us to sin as well.  However, I believe that total depravity can only be supported by taking Scripture out of context and using a very literal interpretation.  Many who believe this theory will point to Jeremiah 17:9 ("The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked"), but I don't think that people sin because their hearts are wicked; rather, their hearts are wicked because they sin.  When Genesis 8:21 says that "everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood," it is referring to the people that God destroyed in the flood, not necessarily humanity for all time (see Genesis 6:5). And when David says that he was conceived and born in sin, he is using a poetic device.

That being said, the Bible does say that we are all sinners, and it clearly suggests that there is an age of accountability.  The belief in baptizing babies and small children is based on the concepts of original sin and total depravity, but they are not held accountable for any sins they commit in their lives until they are old enough to understand and recognize that they have sinned.  I guess you could say that that is when someone "falls into sin": when they realize that they are sinners and need God's grace for salvation.

Some interesting articles on the subject of original sin and total depravity:
http://www.tillhecomes.org/jeremiah-17_9-total-depravity/
https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/276-original-sin-and-a-misapplied-passage
http://www.tillhecomes.org/genesis-6_5-genesis-8_21-total-depravity/
http://www.tillhecomes.org/only-evil-continually-calvinism-genesis-6_5/

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Thank you, that 2nd link is particularly interesting. Appreciate the input.

[TJ in Oregon]

Depends on how you define "original sin."

To me, original sin simply means that we have inherited the same weaknesses that led to Adam and Eve's first sin, and that those weaknesses cause us to sin as well.  However, I believe that total depravity can only be supported by taking Scripture out of context and using a very literal interpretation.  Many who believe this theory will point to Jeremiah 17:9 ("The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked"), but I don't think that people sin because their hearts are wicked; rather, their hearts are wicked because they sin.  When Genesis 8:21 says that "everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood," it is referring to the people that God destroyed in the flood, not necessarily humanity for all time (see Genesis 6:5). And when David says that he was conceived and born in sin, he is using a poetic device.

That being said, the Bible does say that we are all sinners, and it clearly suggests that there is an age of accountability.  The belief in baptizing babies and small children is based on the concepts of original sin and total depravity, but they are not held accountable for any sins they commit in their lives until they are old enough to understand and recognize that they have sinned.  I guess you could say that that is when someone "falls into sin": when they realize that they are sinners and need God's grace for salvation.

There is quite a large difference between an inherited original sin and total depravity. I  agree with your assessment of original sin as an inheritance of the inclination toward sin rather than the guilt of the sin itself. However, the practice of infant baptism was around for about a millenium before the idea of total depravity was developed during the Reformation. The belief in baptizing babies and small children is clearly not based on the concept of total depravity.

The idea of total depravity is a lack of the ability to do anything right without God, whereas with original sin we still have the free will to make decisions, some of which are probably morally right, if nothing else out of sheer dumb luck. But, we still do need God's help to be saved and cannot merit that by our works alone (hence Pelagianism is heretical). Thus we are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit as an external sign of an internal reality of sanctifying grace.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I support the original sin view, but I'm surprised at the late ages some of you are quoting. I've seen my two year old niece break the eighth commandment

Do you think a two year old girl has the cognitive capacity to understand that taking things from someone else is 'usually' a wrong thing to do? Are you aware that to a toddler, possession means ownership. They essentially have a 'right' to anything within grabbing distance and that generally speaking under four, never mind two they difficulty distinguishing between what is 'mine' and what is 'yours' (or not theirs). The concept of 'stealing' as opposed to 'taking' does not apply to them. How on earth are they breaking any rule?

So sin requires recognition by the doer that they have done wrong?  You seem to be taking the opposite position in another thread, tho not as stridently as some others in that thread.  Altho to be fair, most people in that thread seem to be taking the position that sin occurs not when the doer recognizes they've done something wrong, but when they themselves see the doer doing something they perceive as wrong.  (To be clear, in that particular tragedy I think the parents sinned against the child, and the child sinned against the trucker, tho in neither case did they undertake their action with the intent of sinning.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Sin is when we separate ourselves from God's love.

By that definition, we never sin for only in our pride do we imagine that we are able to make ourselves into something that God could not love.  But it is indeed true that sins are those acts that we feel make us unworthy of love because they are acts we would not want another to do unto us.

[© tweed]

Does it make sense to assign an age or time to this, or even to think of the Fall as something that happens to individuals rather than to humanity collectively?

Christians who are fierce in their belief of the literal existence of both Heaven and Hell end up facing questions like "are stillborn babies saved or are they eternally tortured?"  or "are the mentally retarded who are unable to understand the Gospel doomed to Hell?"

if we remain within that theological picture of the afterlife while arguing what you're arguing, that sin permeates man's world and is not something that 'happens' at exact moments and not at others, I'm afraid that an honest conservative Reformationist would have to believe that the retarded, stillborn, and aborted all go to Hell because they've inherited Adam's sin without accepting Christ's act of redemption.

this does make God into a morally noxious, narcissistic and sadistic monster.

personally I'm opposed to a reading of the Bible as a Handbook to get Saved for Dummies, and find that a disembodied, eternal Heaven/Hell were not part of early Christian sotierology: the unanimous holding was that we would be Bodily Resurrected just as Christ was, once the Kingdom of Heaven is inaugurated on Earth ("your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven").

[Mr. Smith]

Does it make sense to assign an age or time to this, or even to think of the Fall as something that happens to individuals rather than to humanity collectively?

Yes it does, because the understanding of choice and the consequences come at different points for different people. The mentally lame may never come to fully grasp it or grasp it late, the precocious may understand at a very early age, the average probably around 5-7.

Whenever that point is, is when there is the active drive to choose right or choose wrong...and since there is always but one right choice and many wrong ones (a good chunk of course appear to be good ones)...it is inherently so that at that point, someone will Fall to sin.

[Intell]

I am not a christian, so as a non-christian, I say option 2.