The doctrine of original sin is a specialty of the Roman Catholic Church. Accordingly, the sins of the forefathers are passed on to their descendants. A purely Catholic teaching that is incompatible with the Gospel.
Inhalt / Content
A pastor explains the doctrine of original sin
Another episode of the so-called catechism podcast by the Catholic magazine “Die Tagespost” aims to explain the “original sin” to believers with little self-knowledge. In this round, the Catholic pastor Guido Rodheudt comes into play. As a preventive measure, he states that this topic was an “intuitively difficult belief” of the Roman Catholic Church. The pastor could even be right about that, because anyone who has his wits about him and also knows the contents of the gospel may have difficulties following this Catholic teaching.
Sins of the predecessors are inherited
According to the Catholic doctrine of original sin, the sin of the father is passed on to the offspring. The accomplished sin of one generation is passed on to the next, and the generation has to atone for the sins of their forefathers. Thus every newborn child is already burdened with original sin.
The pastor compares this to inheriting a gambler’s debt. He not only harms himself, but inherits his debts to his descendants. They had nothing left except the debts passed on to them. Thus, a newborn offspring is also burdened with the debts, although they did not cause this debt themselves.
According to Pastor Rodheudt, original sin was a “received condition, triggered by the fall of Adam”. Man notices this in his daily temptations and burdens. “The good is always more difficult to set in motion than the bad,” says Rodheudt. The everyday difficulties and thus also the condition of man are explained by this original sin.
But with baptism, fortunately, people can be snatched “a little bit” from the fallen state. Baptism destroys original sin and thus opens a “small door” to a good outcome. Christ allowed his grace to break into our world and this gives us the strength to take away the power of original sin and “to find life”, according to the pastor.
Man has indeed fallen
With the sin of Eve and Adam (to stay in order) man did indeed fall. Sinlessness in the image of God was gone. From that point on, man was no longer what he once was. In this state they no longer had any place in the perfect environment of the Garden of Eden. They were thrown out. Since then man has been inclined to sin in his condition and also in his “moral incapacity” urgently needs to keep the laws “carved in stone”.
Actually “intuitively difficult” teaching
But with the inherited sin of the predecessors, the Roman Catholic Church is once again reaching into its bag of tricks of fantasies. The example of the pastor is already lacking in the consideration that the father’s gambling debts only appear in the accounts of the descendants if they do not refuse the inheritance. Since, as Paul also stated, there is not a single sinless person on this earth and this has been the case since the first fall, today’s people should already be incapable of any reasonable action due to their burden of guilt. “Almost killed by the sins of many generations”.
What Does the Bible Say About Original Sin?
This original sin thesis of the Catholic Church is therefore actually “intuitively difficult” because it cannot simply be conveyed to a clearly thinking person. But since the heart of (fallen) people can be extremely deceptive, only a look at the Bible can help in this case.
The topic of (non-existent) original sin in the Bible is treated in almost a whole chapter, namely in Ezekiel 18. In this chapter there is a vivid example over 3 generations. A righteous man, his unjust son and the righteous grandson again. The godly conduct of the father is not inherited by the son any more than the unrighteousness of the son is inherited by his offspring. Every human being is individually accountable for his or her own behavior. Ezekiel 18:20 sums it up:
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
The statements of the Bible are thus opposed to the original sin doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. An original sin according to this church is just as far from the truth as the “mystical liberation” of Mary from any inherited sins (“immaculate”).
The “embarrassing” Second Commandment
The objection based on the statement in Exodus 20:5-6 could now come into play here. At this point it says:
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them [idols]: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
With this statement, God does not leave the misdeeds of the fathers unpunished and “also follows up” into the fourth generation. One could apply this verse to “original sin” as well, but that would limit this sequence to only a few generations. But here the proverb “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” applies more to the sense of acquired misconduct than to the responsibility of children and grandchildren for the actions of their fathers and grandfathers.
It would also be very interesting whether these two verses would be used by the explanatory pastor in his defense. These verses are part of the Second Commandment and this was used by the Roman Catholic Church within its teachings simply deleted. A follow-up on the basis of these verses could therefore lead to questions that resulted in embarrassment.
Every statement must be verified
With the large number of these idiosyncratic teachings of the Catholic (and Protestant) churches, this example also makes it clear that the believer or interested person must check any statement written or spoken by a “cleric” against the Bible. Neither the position nor the sympathy guarantee a truthful statement. No matter how friendly a pastor, bishop, cardinal or pope can be, this is no proof of competence and love of truth.
So anyone who feels the desire to follow Jesus Christ will take the Bible into their own hands and will have to or be allowed to read it independently. The interest of the Roman Catholic Church in the actual salvation of man is traditionally “extreme low”.
It does not help the individual to refer to the statements of any “liberal theologians”. The truth is found only in the Bible and not in the catechisms of such anti-gospel institutions as the Church of Rome portrays. This has long since also applied to the Protestant institutions that have returned to the mother church of Rome.
Bible verses from King James Version
