This is a post I made on Original Sin/Original Guilt that may be helpful - this is strictly a historical look at the doctrine.
Here's how I (and all of historical Christianity up until roughly the time of Augustine) defines original sin:
1. Adam sins.
2. Through that, death comes into the world infecting every person.
3. We are thus born with a nature that is prone to sin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origina...n_Christianity
from the article:
"The Orthodox Church in America makes clear the distinction between "fallen nature" and "fallen man" and this is affirmed in the early teaching of the Church whose role it is to act as the catalyst that leads to true or inner redemption. Every human person born on this earth bears the image of God undistorted within themselves.[63] Furthermore, they explicitly deny that we inherit guilt from anyone, maintaining that instead we inherit our fallen nature. In this they differ from the Augustinian position common in the West that each person is actually inherits Adam's guilt. "The West... understands that humanity is... 'guilty' of the sin of Adam and Eve.... In the Orthodox Christian understanding, while humanity does bear the consequences of the original, or first, sin, humanity does not bear the personal guilt associated with this sin. Adam and Eve are guilty of their willful action; we bear the consequences, chief of which is death."[64] What is here attributed to "the West" may hold for some strands of Protestantism, but is expressly excluded in the teaching of the Catholic Church, which holds that "original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants ... but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man".[7]"
Here's how Augustine defined it (note: Augustines reading of Romans 5:12 is based on a mistranslation of the text as he was reading from the Latin Vulgate) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origina..._Protestantism
1. Adam sins.
2.The guilt of that sin is passed down genetically, in his mind through the sexual act of reproducing (Augustine struggled with sexual temptation all his life, so it's easy to see how he came up with this view).
3. Therefore, we are all as guilty as if we had committed Adams sin. Adam's sin affects us all, but we are not all guilty of Adams specific sin.
So basically, if Adam had a fortune, robbed a bank for more and lost all his money, in Augustines view you also robbed that bank. You literally were guilty as if you committed the same sin.
The problem with that, however, is that this verse:
Ezek. 18:20 "The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him."
Seems to make it pretty clear that we are responsible for our own actions, not those of others. Other challenges include the Hebrew view that humanity isn't totally depraved with a little good left over, but good with a little bad in it:
Ecclesiastes 7:29 "Truly, this only I have found: That God made man upright, But they have sought out many schemes."
The Hebrews also believed that each man was responsible before God for HIS OWN actions:
Matthew 12:36 "But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. 37 For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."(i.e. judged by your sins, not Adams)
Isaiah 59:1 Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear. 2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear.
There are also other verses by Paul which seem to say the opposite; 'no one is righteous, not one.' But Paul's tenancy to exaggerate (sometimes HUGELY) show through, since there were other righteous men (Job, Old Testament patriarchs, etc. Other examples of his hyperbole include his universal salvation language). Obviously men are capable of good, moral acts. We are not all born mass-murderers of maniacs. In comparison to God and relatiing to our own salvation, it is entirely correct that there are none righteous, and compared to God, our good deeds are crap. But this is only measuring things vertically; obviously we do good deeds on Earth. We are nice to each other, etc.
There's also this verse:
(Exodus 34:6-7) - "Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; 7who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."
This one can go either way; but given the Hebrew view that humans are free moral agents (and the fact that they don't believe in Original Sin anyway) this verse seems to support that sinful acts affect everyone, not just the sinner, as opposed to the children being uilty of the fathers sin. See Achen and the city of Ai story for more on that. A reading supporting Original Sin is IMO reading something into the text that is not meant to be there.
Keep in mind that the Augustinian/Calvinist version of original sin was developed to contradict Pelagius, who believed that men are NOT fallen. Given Augustine's zealous personal nature it seems quite logical for him to go the exact opposite way and deny any good at all in men. His theology on this subject is IMO based too much on Greek thought and not enough on Hebrew thought, which is where the faith originated. Augustine's views eventually also led to the 'storehouses of merit' doctrine which was expounded on by Anselm (IE penal substitution as understood by the West, 'De Cur Homos,' etc, etc). and led to the standard Protestant view on justification. Strains of Anselm can still be seen even today in Western Christianity (there are shades of his thought in Wesleyan too).
