Are Men Born Sinners? - Library of Theology

We are the offspring of God. Acts 17:29
I am the root and the offspring of David. Rev. 22:16
Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out
many inventions. Eccl. 7:29
This last text not only declares that God has created man, but it also affirms that God
created man upright. If man is created upright, he cannot be born a sinner; and if he is
born a sinner, he cannot be created upright. Either one or the other may be true, but they
cannot both be true for the two are contradictories.
But when God says he "created us in his image, and gave us life and breath and all
things," are we to understand that he created us as sinners? When he says, "We are his
offspring," are we to understand that his offspring are born sinners? When Jesus said, "I
am the root and the offspring of David," are we to understand that David sprang forth
from the root Christ Jesus with a sinful nature? Or, are we to understand that Jesus, as the
offspring of David, was born with a sinful nature? The very fact that Jesus was a man,
descended from Adam, and born with a human nature as we are, shows that men are not
born with a sinful nature. I John 4:3, II John 7, Heb. 2:14, Heb. 2:16-18, Heb. 4:15, Rom.
1:3, Matt. 1:1, Luke 3:38.
The doctrine of original sin is false: it slanders and libels the character of God, it shocks
man's god-given consciousness of justice, and it flies in the face of the plainest teachings
of God's holy Word. The doctrine of original sin is not a Bible doctrine. It is a grotesque
myth that contradicts the Bible on almost every page. But because good Christians can
quote texts from the Bible to "prove" the doctrine of original sin, they are convinced it is
true. But good Christians have rejected truth and clung to error in the name of the Bible
before.
For instance, Galileo and Copernicus brought to the church the truth that the earth was
not the center of the universe, that the sun did not go around the earth but that the earth
went around the sun and that the earth rotated on its axis, giving the illusion that the sun
was going around the earth.
We all know this to be true now, but did all good Christians believe it then? No, both
John Calvin and Martin Luther clung, along with the church, to the error that the earth
was the center of the universe, that the sun went around the earth and that the earth stood
still.
"Martin Luther called Copernicus 'an upstart astrologer' and a 'fool who wishes to reverse
the entire science of astronomy.' Calvin thundered: 'Who will venture to place the
authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit? Do not the Scriptures say that
Joshua commanded the sun and not the earth to stand still? That the sun runs from one
end of the heavens to the other?'"