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Essay on Sin - Original and Personal Sin
Sin has been a term most usually used in a religious context, and today describes any lack of conformity to the will of God; especially, any willful disregard for the norms revealed by God is a sin. The most common formal definition is an infraction against religious or moral law. Colloquially, any thought, word, or act considered faulty, shameful, harmful to oneself or to others, or which alienates self from others and especially from God, can be called a sin. Through sin, guilt is incurred; and according to guilt, punishment is deserved.
In Western Christianity, sin is often viewed as a legal infraction or contract violation, and so salvation tends to be viewed in legal terms. In Eastern Christianity, sin is more often viewed in terms of its effects on relationships, both among people and between people and God. Man's present condition, as the term is used here, embraces the period beginning with Adam's fall and extending to the end of the world. As such it refers to man's condition as a being born in original sin and needing redemption to attain his eternal destiny.
Since this deplorable state of affairs is traceable directly to man's disobedience to God, it is appropriate to begin a consideration of this condition with an investigation of original sin, personal sin, and the debt that man has incurred as a consequence.Matter is by nature programmed and deterministic. Spirit is by nature free to accept or refuse the good. Human beings are both body and soul. We believe that sin came into the world through the disobedience of our first parents, and death by sin. We believe that sin is of two kinds: original sin or depravity, and actual or personal sin.We believe that original sin, or depravity, is that corruption of the nature of all the offspring of Adam......
