Are Men Born Sinners? - Library of Theology

art Four: Insurmountable Problems of a False Doctrine
Chapter Eight: The Great Problem of Original Sin
Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Gen. 18:25
He shall judge the world with righteousness. Psalm 96:13
He hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness. Acts
17:31
The one great problem of original sin is that it clashes with man's irresistible convictions
of justice. These innate, God-given convictions affirm to us irresistibly that it is
impossible to hold a man responsible for a deed that he did not commit and that was
committed thousands of years before he was born and came into existence. So the
theologians who defend the theory of original sin have the impossible task of justifying
God for doing what their own conscience affirms he could not be just in doing.
The theologians who work so hard to resolve this problem still find it impossible to
escape their God-given convictions that the doctrine of original sin does, in fact, involve
God in a monstrous injustice. Charles Hodge both recognizes this injustice and evades it
in the same sentence:
It may be difficult to reconcile the doctrine of innate evil dispositions with the justice and
goodness of God, but that is a difficulty which does not pertain to this subject. A
malignant being is an evil being, if endowed with reason, whether he was so made or so
born, and a benevolent rational being is good in the universal judgment of men, whether
he was so created or so born. We admit that it is repugnant to our moral judgments that
God should create an evil being; or that any being should be born in a state of sin, unless
his being so born is the consequence of a just judgment.
This, then how to reconcile the justice and goodness of God with the doctrine of original
sin is the great, omnipresent problem of original sin, a problem that remains to haunt the
advocate of original sin even after he has hurriedly dismissed it. Sheldon also calls
attention to the problem of the injustice of God involved in the doctrine of original sin.
He says:
The same God whose penetrating glance burns away every artifice with which a man may
enwrap himself, and reaches at once to the naked reality, is represented as swathing His
judgment with a gigantic artifice, in that He holds countless millions guilty of a trespass
which He knows was committed before their personal existence, and which they could no
more prevent than they could hinder the fiat of creation. If this is justice, then justice is a
word of unknown meaning.