original sin doctrine

88:4.7Magic gained such a strong hold upon the sav­age be­cause he could not grasp the con­cept of nat­u­ral death. The later idea of orig­i­nal sin helped much to weaken the grip of magic on the race in that it ac­counted for nat­u­ral death. It was at one time not at all un­com­mon for ten in­no­cent per­sons to be put to death be­cause of sup­posed re­spon­si­bil­ity for one nat­u­ral death. This is one rea­son why an­cient peo­ples did not in­crease faster, and it is still true of some African tribes. The ac­cused in­di­vid­ual usu­ally con­fessed guilt, even when fac­ing death.

136:1.4The Jews had been brought up to be­lieve in the doc­trine of the Shek­inah. But this re­puted sym­bol of the Di­vine Pres­ence was not to be seen in the tem­ple. They be­lieved that the com­ing of the Mes­siah would ef­fect its restora­tion. They held con­fus­ing ideas about racial sin and the sup­posed evil na­ture of man. Some taught that Adam’s sin had cursed the hu­man race, and that the Mes­siah would re­move this curse and re­store man to di­vine fa­vor. Oth­ers taught that God, in cre­at­ing man, had put into his be­ing both good and evil na­tures; that when he ob­served the out­work­ing of this ar­range­ment, he was greatly dis­ap­pointed, and that “He re­pented that he had thus made man.” And those who taught this be­lieved that the Mes­siah was to come in or­der to re­deem man from this in­her­ent evil na­ture.

186:5.7Je­sus is not about to die as a sac­ri­fice for sin. He is not go­ing to atone for the in­born moral guilt of the hu­man race. Man­kind has no such racial guilt be­fore God. Guilt is purely a mat­ter of per­sonal sin and know­ing, de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the will of the Fa­ther and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of his Sons.

145:2.7“Have you not read also where Eze­kiel taught even your fa­thers that re­li­gion must be­come a re­al­ity in your in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ences? No more shall you use the proverb which says, ‘The fa­thers have eaten sour grapes and the chil­dren’s teeth are set on edge.’ ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘be­hold all souls are mine; as the soul of the fa­ther, so also the soul of the son. Only the soul that sins shall die.’ And then Eze­kiel fore­saw even this day when he spoke in be­half of God, say­ing: ‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.’

145:2.8“No more should you fear that God will pun­ish a na­tion for the sin of an in­di­vid­ual; nei­ther will the Fa­ther in heaven pun­ish one of his be­liev­ing chil­dren for the sins of a na­tion, al­beit the in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of any fam­ily must of­ten suf­fer the ma­te­rial con­se­quences of fam­ily mis­takes and group trans­gres­sions. Do you not re­al­ize that the hope of a bet­ter na­tion—or a bet­ter world—is bound up in the prog­ress and en­light­en­ment of the in­di­vid­ual?”

188:4.3Mor­tal man was never the prop­erty of the archde­ceivers. Je­sus did not die to ran­som man from the clutch of the apos­tate rulers and fallen princes of the spheres. The Fa­ther in heaven never con­ceived of such crass in­jus­tice as damn­ing a mor­tal soul be­cause of the evil-do­ing of his an­ces­tors. Nei­ther was the Mas­ter’s death on the cross a sac­ri­fice which con­sisted in an ef­fort to pay God a debt which the race of man­kind had come to owe him.

121:6.5Many, but not all, of Philo’s in­con­sis­ten­cies re­sult­ing from an ef­fort to com­bine Greek mys­ti­cal phi­los­o­phy and Ro­man Stoic doc­trines with the le­gal­is­tic the­ol­ogy of the He­brews, Paul rec­og­nized and wisely elim­i­nated from his pre-Chris­tian ba­sic the­ol­ogy. Philo led the way for Paul more fully to re­store the con­cept of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, which had long been dor­mant in Jew­ish the­ol­ogy. In only one mat­ter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or to tran­scend the teach­ings of this wealthy and ed­u­cated Jew of Alexan­dria, and that was the doc­trine of the atone­ment; Philo taught de­liv­er­ance from the doc­trine of for­give­ness only by the shed­ding of blood. He also pos­si­bly glimpsed the re­al­ity and pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers more clearly than did Paul. But Paul’s the­ory of orig­i­nal sin, the doc­trines of hered­i­tary guilt and in­nate evil and re­demp­tion there­from, was par­tially Mith­raic in ori­gin, hav­ing lit­tle in com­mon with He­brew the­ol­ogy, Philo’s phi­los­o­phy, or Je­sus’ teach­ings. Some phases of Paul’s teach­ings re­gard­ing orig­i­nal sin and the atone­ment were orig­i­nal with him­self.

99:5.5The doc­trine of the to­tal de­prav­ity of man de­stroyed much of the po­ten­tial of re­li­gion for ef­fect­ing so­cial reper­cus­sions of an up­lift­ing na­ture and of in­spi­ra­tional value. Je­sus sought to re­store man’s dig­nity when he de­clared that all men are the chil­dren of God.

148:4.7“You are con­fused, Thomas, by the doc­trines of the Greeks and the er­rors of the Per­sians. You do not un­der­stand the re­la­tion­ships of evil and sin be­cause you view man­kind as be­gin­ning on earth with a per­fect Adam and rapidly de­gen­er­at­ing, through sin, to man’s pres­ent de­plorable es­tate. But why do you refuse to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of the rec­ord which dis­closes how Cain, the son of Adam, went over into the land of Nod and there got him­self a wife? And why do you refuse to in­ter­pret the mean­ing of the rec­ord which por­trays the sons of God find­ing wives for them­selves among the daugh­ters of men?

148:4.8“Men are, in­deed, by na­ture evil, but not nec­es­sar­ily sin­ful. The new birth—the bap­tism of the spirit—is es­sen­tial to de­liv­er­ance from evil and nec­es­sary for en­trance into the king­dom of heaven, but none of this de­tracts from the fact that man is the son of God. Nei­ther does this in­her­ent pres­ence of po­ten­tial evil mean that man is in some mys­te­ri­ous way es­tranged from the Fa­ther in heaven so that, as an alien, for­eigner, or stepchild, he must in some man­ner seek for le­gal adop­tion by the Fa­ther. All such no­tions are born, first, of your mis­un­der­stand­ing of the Fa­ther and, sec­ond, of your ig­no­rance of the ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny of man.

148:4.9“The Greeks and oth­ers have taught you that man is de­scend­ing from godly per­fec­tion steadily down to­ward obliv­ion or de­struc­tion; I have come to show that man, by en­trance into the king­dom, is as­cend­ing cer­tainly and surely up to God and di­vine per­fec­tion. Any be­ing who in any man­ner falls short of the di­vine and spir­i­tual ide­als of the eter­nal Fa­ther’s will is po­ten­tially evil, but such be­ings are in no sense sin­ful, much less in­iq­ui­tous.

148:4.10“Thomas, have you not read about this in the Scrip­tures, where it is writ­ten: ‘You are the chil­dren of the Lord your God.’ ‘I will be his Fa­ther and he shall be my son.’ ‘I have cho­sen him to be my son—I will be his Fa­ther.’ ‘Bring my sons from far and my daugh­ters from the ends of the earth; even ev­ery one who is called by my name, for I have cre­ated them for my glory.’ ‘You are the sons of the liv­ing God.’ ‘They who have the spirit of God are in­deed the sons of God.’ While there is a ma­te­rial part of the hu­man fa­ther in the nat­u­ral child, there is a spir­i­tual part of the heav­enly Fa­ther in ev­ery faith son of the king­dom.”

75:8.1Adam and Eve did fall from their high es­tate of ma­te­rial son­ship down to the lowly sta­tus of mor­tal man. But that was not the fall of man. The hu­man race has been up­lifted de­spite the im­me­di­ate con­se­quences of the Adamic de­fault. Al­though the di­vine plan of giv­ing the vi­o­let race to the Uran­tia peo­ples mis­car­ried, the mor­tal races have prof­ited enor­mously from the lim­ited con­tri­bu­tion which Adam and his de­scen­dants made to the Uran­tia races.

75:8.2There has been no “fall of man.” The his­tory of the hu­man race is one of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion, and the Adamic be­stowal left the world peo­ples greatly im­proved over their pre­vi­ous bi­o­logic con­di­tion. The more su­pe­rior stocks of Uran­tia now con­tain in­her­i­tance fac­tors de­rived from as many as four sep­a­rate sources: An­don­ite, San­gik, Nod­ite, and Adamic.

75:8.3Adam should not be re­garded as the cause of a curse on the hu­man race. While he did fail in car­ry­ing for­ward the di­vine plan, while he did transgress his covenant with De­ity, while he and his mate were most cer­tainly de­graded in crea­ture sta­tus, not­with­stand­ing all this, their con­tri­bu­tion to the hu­man race did much to ad­vance civ­i­liza­tion on Uran­tia.

75:8.4In es­ti­mat­ing the re­sults of the Adamic mis­sion on your world, jus­tice de­mands the rec­og­ni­tion of the con­di­tion of the planet. Adam was con­fronted with a well-nigh hope­less task when, with his beau­ti­ful mate, he was trans­ported from Je­ru­sem to this dark and con­fused planet. But had they been guided by the coun­sel of the Mel­chiz­e­deks and their as­so­ciates, and had they been more pa­tient, they would have even­tu­ally met with suc­cess. But Eve lis­tened to the in­sid­i­ous pro­pa­ganda of per­sonal lib­erty and plan­e­tary free­dom of ac­tion. She was led to ex­per­i­ment with the life plasm of the ma­te­rial or­der of son­ship in that she al­lowed this life trust to be­come pre­ma­turely com­min­gled with that of the then mixed or­der of the orig­i­nal de­sign of the Life Car­ri­ers which had been pre­vi­ously com­bined with that of the re­pro­duc­ing be­ings once at­tached to the staff of the Plan­e­tary Prince.

75:8.5Never, in all your as­cent to Par­a­dise, will you gain any­thing by im­pa­tiently at­tempt­ing to cir­cum­vent the es­tab­lished and di­vine plan by short cuts, per­sonal in­ven­tions, or other de­vices for im­prov­ing on the way of per­fec­tion, to per­fec­tion, and for eter­nal per­fec­tion.

75:8.6All in all, there prob­a­bly never was a more dis­heart­en­ing mis­car­riage of wis­dom on any planet in all Neb­a­don. But it is not sur­pris­ing that these mis­steps oc­cur in the af­fairs of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses. We are a part of a gi­gan­tic cre­ation, and it is not strange that ev­ery­thing does not work in per­fec­tion; our uni­verse was not cre­ated in per­fec­tion. Per­fec­tion is our eter­nal goal, not our ori­gin.

75:8.7If this were a mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse, if the First Great Source and Cen­ter were only a force and not also a per­son­al­ity, if all cre­ation were a vast ag­gre­ga­tion of phys­i­cal mat­ter dom­i­nated by pre­cise laws char­ac­ter­ized by un­vary­ing en­ergy ac­tions, then might per­fec­tion ob­tain, even de­spite the in­com­plete­ness of uni­verse sta­tus. There would be no dis­agree­ment; there would be no fric­tion. But in our evolv­ing uni­verse of rel­a­tive per­fec­tion and im­per­fec­tion we re­joice that dis­agree­ment and mis­un­der­stand­ing are pos­si­ble, for thereby is ev­i­denced the fact and the act of per­son­al­ity in the uni­verse. And if our cre­ation is an ex­is­tence dom­i­nated by per­son­al­ity, then can you be as­sured of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of per­son­al­ity sur­vival, ad­vance­ment, and achieve­ment; we can be con­fi­dent of per­son­al­ity growth, ex­pe­ri­ence, and ad­ven­ture. What a glo­ri­ous uni­verse, in that it is per­sonal and pro­gres­sive, not merely me­chan­i­cal or even pas­sively per­fect!

75:8.8[Pre­sented by Solo­nia, the se­raphic “voice in the Gar­den.”]

86:3.3All hu­man dis­ease and nat­u­ral death was at first be­lieved to be due to spirit in­flu­ence. Even at the pres­ent time some civ­i­lized races re­gard dis­ease as hav­ing been pro­duced by “the en­emy” and de­pend upon re­li­gious cer­e­monies to ef­fect heal­ing. Later and more com­plex sys­tems of the­ol­ogy still as­cribe death to the ac­tion of the spirit world, all of which has led to such doc­trines as orig­i­nal sin and the fall of man.

74:8.13The Chris­tian teach­ers per­pet­u­ated the be­lief in the fiat cre­ation of the hu­man race, and all this led di­rectly to the for­ma­tion of the hy­poth­e­sis of a one­time golden age of utopian bliss and the the­ory of the fall of man or super­man which ac­counted for the nonu­topian con­di­tion of so­ci­ety. These out­looks on life and man’s place in the uni­verse were at best dis­cour­ag­ing since they were pred­i­cated upon a be­lief in ret­ro­gres­sion rather than pro­gres­sion, as well as im­ply­ing a venge­ful De­ity, who had vented wrath upon the hu­man race in ret­ri­bu­tion for the er­rors of cer­tain one­time plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tors.

89:0.1Prim­i­tive man re­garded him­self as be­ing in debt to the spir­its, as stand­ing in need of re­demp­tion. As the sav­ages looked at it, in jus­tice the spir­its might have vis­ited much more bad luck upon them. As time passed, this con­cept de­vel­oped into the doc­trine of sin and sal­va­tion. The soul was looked upon as com­ing into the world un­der for­feit—orig­i­nal sin. The soul must be ran­somed; a scape­goat must be pro­vided. The head-hunter, in ad­di­tion to prac­tic­ing the cult of skull wor­ship, was able to pro­vide a sub­sti­tute for his own life, a scape­man.

89:4.6Sur­rounded by so many sen­si­tive spir­its and grasp­ing gods, prim­i­tive man was face to face with such a host of cred­i­tor de­i­ties that it re­quired all the priests, rit­ual, and sac­ri­fices through­out an en­tire life­time to get him out of spir­i­tual debt. The doc­trine of orig­i­nal sin, or racial guilt, started ev­ery per­son out in se­ri­ous debt to the spirit pow­ers.

194:2.1Je­sus lived on earth and taught a gospel which re­deemed man from the su­per­sti­tion that he was a child of the devil and el­e­vated him to the dig­nity of a faith son of God. Je­sus’ mes­sage, as he preached it and lived it in his day, was an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties in that day of its state­ment. And now that he has per­son­ally left the world, he sends in his place his Spirit of Truth, who is de­signed to live in man and, for each new gen­er­a­tion, to re­state the Je­sus mes­sage so that ev­ery new group of mor­tals to ap­pear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up-to-date ver­sion of the gospel, just such per­sonal en­light­en­ment and group guid­ance as will prove to be an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s ever-new and var­ied spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties.