ORIGINAL SIN
168would occur in the apokatastasis when all
of creation is restored to God. A student
of Clement of Alexandria, Origen devel-
oped a highly Platonic form of Christian-
ity in which the soul gradually comes to
be in union with God. He advanced an
allegorical reading of scripture, which
sought to find meaning in the Bible that
lay deeper than its literal significance.
He developed a sustained defense of
Christianity over against a pagan Platonic
thinker, Celsus, in Against Celsus. Accord-
ing to Origen, God in Christ was not a
proud aristocrat, but a profound lover of
the created world who descended into
the material world to draw us up and
into the life of the divine. His key works
include Against Celsus, On First Princi-
ples, On Prayer, and An Exhortation to
Martyrdom.
ORIGINAL SIN. While not affirmed in
the Apostle’s or Nicene Creeds, promi-
nent Christian theologians (especially
Augustine) developed an account of the
implications of the Fall of humanity.
Partly based on the teaching about the
Edenic disobedience and fall, as well
as scripture passages such as Romans
5:12–21 and 1 Corinthians 15:22, theolo-
gians held that the descendants of Adam
and Eve share in their ancestral guilt. One
way to intuitively build a case for original
sin is if we imagine one’s ancestors in
some way committed a moral violation in
the course of procreation. From a moral
point of view, their progeny should not
exist; their mere existing is, in a sense, the
effect (however remote) of something
that should not have occurred.
Theological reflection on the implica-
tions of original sin has been contentious.
A prominent argument against original
sin is that guilt cannot be transferable.
So, even if one’s ancestors committed
some punishable, blame-worthy wrong, it
does not follow that their children should
be punished or blamed for wrong-doing.
Some theologians speculated that origi-
nal sin was transmitted by male semen
(hence Jesus did not inherit original
sin, due to the virgin birth). Kant specu-
lated that all humans in some sense are
united with Adam in the fall through a
kind of timeless, radical evil that we all
freely elect. Jonathan Edwards speculated
that God could treat all of us as united
with Adam and Eve by fiat (viz. by God
regarding all of us as one being, repre-
sented by our ancestors, we actually
become organically united in guilt).
Some theologians depict the nature of
original sin in terms of human depravity,
whereas others see original sin as simply
marking a tendency among humans
toward evil.OSTENSIVE DEFINITION. Definitions
by example, e.g., white is the color of
snow. An example relevant to philosophy
of religion is the proposal that “religion”
should be defined as follows: R is a
religion if it resembles Judaism, Islam,
Christian, Hinduism, or Buddhism.