Is Original Sin Biblical? #theology #presup #anthonyrogers

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today

I have two very special guests, returning guests, Anthony Rogers and Jeremiah Nortier.

I am very, very excited that I can now pronounce his name without sounding like I'm speaking in tongues, which again is another theological topic that perhaps we can cover some other time.

And so we're going to be talking about the important doctrine, important theological doctrine of original sin.

So looking forward to diving into this, and of course hopefully taking questions if there are any questions from the comments.

Well before we jump into that, I just want to give folks a heads up. I've been saying this at the beginning of each of my programs.

I have a second YouTube channel. It is called Revealed Apologetics Plus, in which I am covering kind of just short questions of a theological apologetic nature,

Bible questions, and so I want that to be kind of a resource that is more simpler for people who might find my more long -form content a little difficult to grasp.

And so if you have not already, please go over to Revealed Apologetics Plus and subscribe. I would greatly appreciate that.

Also tomorrow I will be having another live stream. I'll be joined by Dr. Jason Lyle and Dr.

James White. All three of us will be doing just a huge Q &A session, so bring all of your questions, and we're super excited about doing that.

To be perfectly honest, I was amazed that this actually happened. I had Dr. Lyle on, and I told him

I was gonna have Dr. White on because I had him on just a few shows back, and he says, you know, why don't you tell

Dr. White I said hi and I miss him. You know, I'm like, yeah, you know, it'd be great if you guys both came on. He goes,

I'd do that. I'm like, okay, I'll set it up. So I kind of jumped on that, and so I was super excited to have them both on to do

Q &A. Also, a side thing, I did a mock debate today with a

YouTuber by the name of Hayden Rodea. I think he does a lot of, like, abortion debates on, like, college campuses and things like that, and so he's a

Christian, but he wanted to do a mock debate to see what presuppositional apologetics kind of looks like in kind of that format, so that was pre -recorded.

Once that drops, I will share the link to that and maybe share some clips to that, and hopefully that will be edifying because I don't really do that many debates.

Anthony is a debate beast. Jeremiah is climbing the ranks of debate as well, and so that's not necessarily my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed it, and so maybe

I'll do something like that in the future. I'm not sure. And then lastly, I want to remind folks that my new course on presuppositional apologetics has dropped.

If you want to support Revealed Apologetics, you can do that by going to revealedapologetics .com. Click on the PresuppU, Presupp University link, and you could

RSVP for my new course, Presupp Applied, and basically it is presuppositional apologetics applied to atheism,

Roman Catholicism, presuppositional Eastern Orthodoxy, and the cults. So it's brand new, great way to support the channel and to learn in a more orderly and systematic way as opposed to kind of just grabbing a bunch of random videos that I happen to do and cover these topics.

So, all right, all of that out of the way, why don't Anthony, we'll go age before beauty, age before beauty.

Anthony looks like an Old Testament prophet, so we're gonna let him go first. Both of them have reformed beards.

I'm Puerto Rican and my beard doesn't grow like that, so we're gonna let Anthony introduce himself, maybe tell folks where they can find his stuff and what he's been up to, and then we'll go to Jeremiah, and then we'll jump right into this discussion.

Yeah, so I am Anthony Rogers. I have a YouTube channel under my name. I do all sorts of things over there.

A lot of times I'm just looking at various biblical doctrines, seeking to go through various books or sections of scripture, exegeting them, showing how those texts underscore different doctrines, but I also do a lot of apologetic stuff.

Mostly I think people would know me from the apologetic stuff I do directed towards Islam, but I've engaged

Unitarians and others. I've tackled other topics. Just recently

I got back from the UK where I was there doing a conference and got to visit world -famous

Speaker's Corner where there's a lot of Muslims, and you can check out on my channel at least one of the debates that was recorded there at the corner.

It's a pretty lively place. It'd be nice if there was something like that here, although actually I take it back.

The reason there's a place like that there is because there's a sizable population of Muslims, but the goal is not for there to be more

Muslims but for there to be less, so I take it back. I just wish that I could be in those places that are hot spots,

I guess I'll say. Yeah, and you did a great job too. I saw some clips there, some really interesting interactions there.

Thank you for that. It's pretty boss, right? I've got a YouTube channel. My name is Anthony Rogers. I've got a YouTube channel.

It's called Anthony Rogers, so if you want to check it out, you know he's a beast when the name of his channel is just his name.

That's awesome. That just shows how I lack the ability to be clever, at least in the moment

I did. One of these days I might come up with a good name. Okay, no, it's fine. It's fine. I love it.

All right, Jeremiah, why don't you say hi to everyone and then we'll jump right into our topic for tonight. Well, Eli, thanks for having me back on to Revealed Apologetics.

So my YouTube channel is called The Apologetic Dog, and in the logo you'll see 1 Timothy 6 .20

where it's an admonition for all Christians to guard the gospel of grace, and we do so by avoiding irreverent babble, pagan philosophy that rivals

God's truth, God's Word, and we also do that by warring against contradictions of what falsely calls themselves knowledge.

So we do that presuppositionally. So you've been a huge help in my ministry, helping me learn and grow to defend the faith.

So apologetics is what I love doing, and I serve as a pastor and elder at 12

Five Church in northeast Arkansas at 12 Five Church. And so my church family has been such a great support.

Also, my wife is a huge support, but she likes to sneak in my studio and leave me little notes. So thank you, babe of all babes.

I love doing debates. I've had a number of opportunities being on Standing for Truth with Donnie and the

Gospel Truth, Marlon's channel. And so I have a debate coming up in February where it's going to be at a conference with Jeffrey Rice, Open Air Theology, and he has tasked me with finding someone who is

Church of Christ to debate, and that is because at the Apologetic Dog, who I evangelize the most and educate the most people on a restorationist movement is the

Church of Christ. And so that'll relate a lot to our episode this evening, as I want to bring up some objections that they bring.

They fundamentally deny original sin, so I'm looking forward to that. And Eli, I wanted to say next

Monday, next week, I will be interviewing Dr. Jason Lyle. We'll be talking about his book,

The Ultimate Proof of Creation, and one of your best friends, David Pallman, wrote an article years ago debunking his book, and so we're going to go through some of that article and let

Dr. Lyle see what he thinks about that. All right, that's excellent, man.

My best friend. All right, very good. Well, let's jump right into the topic. The topic is original sin.

Is it biblical? I don't know about you guys, but I've noticed kind of an increased rejection of original sin or distorting the doctrine.

Why don't we start with definitions? What is the doctrine of original sin? And maybe both of you can share your thoughts as to why it has been coming under attack in recent times, at least as I've been exposed to its rejection.

I don't know if this has been something that's been ongoing, but why don't we start with Anthony first? Yeah, okay, so the term original sin could simply refer to Adam's act, his act of transgressing

God's law, and in that case we would mean the first sin committed by the first man, because even prior to that there was the sin that preceded it in the angelic realm.

But typically when we were using the phrase original sin, we're referring to something more than that, namely the idea that as a result of Adam's fall, we sinned all.

I don't know if you're familiar with that expression, but it actually comes from, at least as far as I know, it's an expression that comes out of the

New England Primer. It was a teaching device used in the early colonies of America to teach children, and so when they learned the letter

A, they learned a little statement along with it, in Adam's fall we sinned all. And encapsulated in that idea is that Adam was not acting only for himself, but as our representative.

When he sinned, he incurred guilt, and that guilt is imputed to the race.

And beyond that, in his first transgression, Adam lacked or law made and became corrupt, and he passed on that pollution of nature to all his descendants.

So we would say that Adam was both our representative and the biological root of mankind.

As our representative, his act of transgression incurred guilt for the race, and as the root of all mankind, the corruption of nature that set in when he sinned was spread to all his descendants.

We're all one lump, we're all from the same man, and so we have what he passed on to us, which is a sinful nature.

Thank you for that. And Jeremiah, I don't know if you've recognized kind of this growing rejection of this doctrine.

If you have, what are your thoughts on that? Why are people kind of attacking this doctrine or redefining it or tweaking it?

What's your understanding about that? Well, one thought I have is, and I think you did an episode with Keith Foskey pretty recent, but there seems to be an uptick with people going to Eastern Orthodoxy, and I think they would kind of reject

Anthony and our understanding of original sin. They see it kind of like an ancestral, like we're just kind of falling in line, but it's not understood the same way.

Do you know if I'm right with that, if Greek Orthodox kind of deny original sin at the core? So Greek Orthodoxy tends to be very unsystematic, and so you can get

Eastern Orthodox people sounding one way and Eastern Orthodox people sounding another way.

However, I would say that it's typically the case among Eastern Orthodox people that they reject an

Augustinian view of original sin. I think that's important. I'm glad you said that. I apologize for cutting in.

It's not that they reject it, but they reject a particular understanding of it. And this, again, for someone who's just listening in, you have to understand that a lot of these theological categories have specific contexts and versions that we need to understand.

So I appreciate you making that distinction, but go ahead. Go ahead.

No, no, you go ahead. I was interjecting from you, so... No, you first. No, you first.

You guys are the nicest guys in the world. After you, after you. So that's an idea of why

I think there is maybe a rejection in it. A lot of the cults, they are redefining a biblical anthropology, and so one of those, not that the

Church of Christ are increasing, but they are maybe making their doctrine a little bit known, that they fundamentally deny that man is corrupt, that they have a sin nature, as John Calvin talked about, and inherited corruption.

And so, like I said, Church of Christ are actually diminishing over time, but with the Internet and things like that, their doctrine is able to kind of spread.

So maybe it's a number of different factors, but I kind of look at the uptick in Eastern Orthodoxy as starting to rock the boat a little bit.

One thing I would throw in here is, you know, when you look and you see some of these people that have made the move toward Rome or towards the

East, I often look at this in a way that others don't as often as I think they should.

In their minds, they're often seeing people taking this big jump from a Protestant perspective to a

Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox perspective, but often when you delve into their theology prior to the shift, it wasn't that far from Rome to begin with.

They were already very much in line with a number of Rome's doctrines without knowing it. They found themselves at least geographically or locationally in a

Protestant context, but their theological convictions were much closer to Rome or the

East, and so what happens is a Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox comes along and begins telling them their views, and it seems very attractive to them.

And part of what is going on here is a loss of the insights of the

Reformation and people becoming increasingly hostile towards Reformation thought.

So for example, I mean, you can't maintain certain doctrines without messing with other doctrines, and so if you want to maintain a certain view of man's involvement in salvation, a doctrine like original sin is not going to be one that you're excited about having to deal with.

Eventually, you're going to say, I need to work on this and work at changing this or getting rid of it, and so I think there's a lot of different factors involved here, but a main thing is just a hostility to Reformation thought, which they don't recognize, just leads them right back to Rome.

It's not surprising. When these guys announce their conversions, I never look at this and say, wow, the power of Rome's message.

I always think, wow, this person found out who they really were. That's a good point.

Now, can we make a distinction, because I know some people confuse this, between original sin, total depravity, and total inability, from at least a

Reformed perspective, because we're all Calvinist here. Is there a unique understanding of those terms within a

Calvinist tradition? If so, what is that, and why is it important to kind of keep these ideas distinct yet related, if that makes sense?

But one thing I would say, interestingly, a lot of even

Armenians in the past, or at least here I'll just limit it to, say, the

Wesleyan Armenian tradition, had a very robust doctrine of original sin and depravity, but of course, he would try and qualify this to death, but the original position, say, of Wesleyan Arminianism, was that man is totally depraved and incapable, apart from the grace of God, of making any movement towards God, pursuant to his own salvation.

It was here that the doctrine of prevenient grace was introduced. Now, the distinction within Reformed thought on this matter is, we agree that grace prevenes.

Here, prevenient means to come before, so what Wesley was saying is that there's a grace of God that comes before our believing in Christ.

He's acknowledging the need for this, but in his case, he would say that this grace that prevenes, or comes before, is universal and non -efficacious, so it's something that's given to everybody, and it doesn't necessarily result in conversion, whereas the

Reformed perspective is that this grace that comes before is particular, it's given to God's elect, and it's efficacious, it results in a person actually coming to faith in Christ.

And so, in the Wesleyan tradition, original sin was viewed as having those radical results that standard

Reformation thought believed, but he then turned around and sort of took away with the left hand what he gave with the right.

He just muted the doctrine, in a sense, or blunted the edge of it in a way that Scripture doesn't warrant.

There's no such doctrine in Scripture in the way that it was cast by Wesley, but there are other versions, as we've said, and so there are people that will talk about Adam's fall and it affecting us, and even of man being depraved, but they don't think that that depravity is of such a nature as to preclude our ability of ourselves to believe in Christ.

And, you know, here I'd say, number one, Wesley's position is a thousand times better.

I wish that some of our contemporary Arminians were closer to Wesley. I've heard some Arminians today, famous on the internet, don't realize just how close their position is to full -blown

Pelagianism, not just semi -Pelagianism, but they've balked at this idea of prevenient grace.

But there's better ways to be an Arminian, I think. I'm not encouraging anybody in that direction,

I'm just saying, hey, don't denigrate the grace of God, at least give it that more robust place that it had in Wesley's thought, rather than the closer to Pelagian view that seems to be, you know, commanding people's ascent today.

Sure, sure. I want to encourage the audience, there are already questions coming in, please, please send your questions, we'll get to them at the tail end, but I want to give a shout out to Marlon Wilson of The Gospel Truth.

Thank you so much, man, for your $20 Super Chat, I appreciate that. Marlon says that the reason they deny it is because they think it impunges, impunges?

Impunes, there we go, I made up a word, impunes God's character to impose guilt to those who are seemingly innocent.

That's what I think is the issue. So thank you for that. Now, Jeremiah, if someone were to come up to you and you were having a conversation about this, and someone said, well, you know,

I think the problem is that the doctrine of original sin, it's just not biblical. Where would you begin trying to demonstrate the biblical foundations of the doctrine of original sin?

And then, Anthony, you can kind of chime in if you want to add to what Jeremiah is sharing with us in just a few moments here.

Yeah, Romans 512 is where I'd like to begin, but it's also with Genesis 3, and one distinction

I wanted to kind of bring out with original sin is it is pointing us back to the very beginning, what happened, the origin of sin, and the consequences that happened from sin in our federal head,

Adam. So original sin is already tethered to federal headship, and total depravity kind of speaks to our personal bearing out as we live and we grow up.

We bear a personal culpability in our depravity from the heart. We go astray from the womb, but I would say original sin kind of points us back to Adam in the very beginning, and so I think the best place to start is

Romans 512, because this kind of sets the pace. Let me pull it up.

So Romans 512 says, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

And so there's kind of dispute of what all sinned. Is this kind of a repeated Romans 323, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God?

It seems a little redundant for that to be the point here, especially when the context is through one man.

All have sinned in Adam, right? It's kind of like Anthony was talking about. Adam was kind of the stump, and the tree fell, so that had ramifications on all.

And something else I want to bring out, maybe we'll get more into this, but 1 Corinthians 15 talks about how all died in Adam, and I would say when it says we bear the image of the man of dust, we don't just merely look like Adam and merely bear his image, no, but we are derived from his essence and his fallen nature.

And so that constituents permeates our entire being. And so you brought up another point earlier,

Eli, inability. And so this is where we're Augustinian Calvinists would understand that we are not able to seek after God.

Oh, well, that's just Romans 3 earlier, that there's none good, none righteous, no one seeks after God. And that's from the very beginning.

But what do you think, Anthony? That's where I would kind of begin with this doctrine in Romans 512. Yeah, well, so I agree.

I think that's the locus classicus. This is where Paul really zeros in on the issue, but I think that what

Paul is doing here is simply following suit with how we should approach the

Old Testament. And so he's not getting this from nowhere, right? So one thing is, you know, there's a statement in Isaiah that I think people only have a faint idea of what it's really talking about.

Isaiah, the Lord through Isaiah, he's challenging the false gods that the people were going a -whoring after, and he says that he declares the end from the beginning.

And he's challenging the false gods to demonstrate this is true in their case. If they're truly gods, then they should have a track record here too, but they don't, and so they should ditch these gods and cling to Yahweh, the only

God that's ever accurately shown his knowledge of the future, and therefore also his control over the future.

But notice the way the statement reads. It says he declares the end from the beginning.

The idea here is not simply that that God declares something before it happens, but that he's been doing it from the beginning.

So when you look back at Genesis, you're supposed to look at that not only as historical narrative telling us how

God created the world, how man arrived on the scene, how man fell and all that, but all this is in some way revealing to us the future.

This is kind of the idea that Vos had when he was saying that eschatology precedes soteriology.

You might also say eschatology precedes protology, the doctrine of first things. Part of the idea is if you look at how things are winding up or how

God will wind them up in the book of Revelation, this shows you the intention from the beginning, and it's not surprising when you look at the book of Revelation, say the ending chapters, how much it relates back to Genesis.

And if you read those chapters carefully, what I'm driving at is this is the sort of thing you could have been able to see if you're reading these narratives accurately.

And so, for example, just when Paul takes the union of Eve with Adam, he mentions how they're one and so forth, he says he's talking about Christ in the church.

He doesn't take that as merely intended to tell us about the marriage of the first man and woman.

It's also typological. It has a greater end in view. Already God is revealing something to us about his ultimate plans with respect to redemptive history, and so the basic point here relevant to this is that what

Paul is doing when he looks at Adam and he relates this to Christ and what Christ has done for us and how this is all going to eventuate, is he's simply treating the writings of Moses the way they were intended to be understood, the way the prophets told us to understand them, the way

Jesus told us to understand them, and the way people often do this is they'll say, okay, every time

Paul mentions a specific thing from the Old Testament, then we can say it relates to Jesus in this way, but that's not the idea.

The idea is it all relates to Jesus, and Paul is just picking out whatever is relevant on the occasion.

So my point is, you can go back to Genesis and you can already see this sort of thing.

When Adam sins, and as a result of it, the curse of God comes to rest upon creation, and for man, one of the chief things that's stated will result from man sinning is death, the whole point of the following chapters is to drive this point home.

You've got in Genesis 4 and Genesis 5, first of all, in Genesis 4, you've got the war of two seeds.

You've got Cain, whom John tells us was of the evil one, so he is ultimately of Satan, he's

Satan's seed, spiritually speaking, which goes right back to Genesis 3 .15, I'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and hers.

So here is Cain, who's of the evil one, persecuting Abel, who is righteous and who is a type of the

Lord Jesus. Remember, his blood cries from the ground, the author of Hebrews says that the blood of Christ cries out a better word than that of Abel's, right?

So already you've got this typology going on, but then look at Genesis 5, there's a recurring refrain here, it mentions that Adam had a son in his own likeness, remember

Jeremiah just mentioned we bear the image of the first man, well that's the point of Genesis 5,

Adam has children that bear his likeness, but notice the constant refrain, it mentions that Adam lived 930 years and he died, that's verse 5.

In verse 8, it says that Seth, his descendant, lived 912 years and he died.

Verse 11, speaking of his son Enosh, says he died. Verse 14, speaking of Kenan, says he died.

Verse 17, speaking of Mahalalel, says he died, and that continues. The whole point is,

Adam sinned, the penalty for this was death, Adam had children in his likeness, what follows in every case, death, death, death, death, death.

This is Paul's doctrine of original sin, as a result of Adam's fall, we sinned all and we all die.

Does all of this presuppose the concept of federal headship?

Yeah. And the concept of federal headship is not just a presupposition, it is grounded in Scripture.

Why don't we unpack, and Jeremiah if you want to lead this off, and then of course Anthony could follow up, why don't we define what federal headship is, and then maybe kind of point to some scriptural foundation for that doctrine, because I know a lot of things we talk about theologically, they're just packed with other theological presuppositions that perhaps people who don't hold to the position we hold to might be challenging, they might be identifying, well wait a minute, that presupposes a fallacious concept of federal headship, to which we would respond, well it's not a fallacious presupposition, it's grounded in Scripture.

How do we define it, and how would we provide a biblical basis for the concept of federal headship?

So my understanding of federal headship is, when we are being represented by a leader of sorts, our union with someone, and this is kind of all throughout

Scripture. Now obviously there's ways for us to relate to that, like you have a king, you have a president who represents a country, it's kind of that mindset, and this is all throughout

Scripture, very much a Jewish understanding. With Romans 5 kind of being one of the key doctrines of original sin, federal headship,

Romans 4 shows how ultimately Abraham represents all of those who are of faith, whether you are of the circumcision or circumcision or uncircumcision, but by faith he is the father of all, and so usually there's no argument about how

Abraham represents, he's the friend of God, he represents those of faith, he's the father of faith, and so when we move into Romans 5, it's just there's a consistency there about you are either represented by Adam, and if you're being represented by Adam, then you have death, you have universal sin that leads to death, and then you can, by faith in Christ, you can now be represented by the second and better Adam and have salvation, justification.

Thank you. Did you want to add anything to that, Anthony? Yeah, so when we look at Scripture, we see that the way

God deals with man and relates to man is by way of covenant. It's striking to me that a theology that has come to dominate, maybe not as much in our day as has been true maybe 20 years ago or so, but I could be wrong on its present popularity or not, but dispensationalism is a contrary perspective, right?

Well, not that they don't hold other things in common, depending on who the dispensationalism is, but in terms of how they think of God relating to man, it's through, there are these different dispensations.

It's not that the word has no application or legitimate use, but what you do find in Scripture, this is why

I find it surprising, is you find this repeated mention of covenant, God dealing with people by way of covenant, and covenants have heads.

There are covenantal heads in these covenants, people with whom God starts the covenant, initiates the covenant, and who, in some sense, become the representatives for those that come after.

It's by virtue of these people and the covenant God entered into with them that we benefit, and ultimately we see this in the case of Christ, right?

He's the head of the covenant of grace, and it's in him that we partake of the blessings of that covenant, the new covenant, as he called it.

Well, that being the case, if God made a covenant with Adam, then it follows naturally that he is the head of that covenant.

He's the federal head, the representative of all who follow after him. Now, many people will object here to the idea that God established a covenant with Adam because it doesn't say that in Genesis 3.

However, when you look at what the elements of a covenant are in Scripture, you see that they're all in place in Genesis 3.

I won't go through all the details of this now, because there's a quicker way to this. In Hosea 6 -7, a literal reading of the text, which people try to fight against, and I'm happy to fight them on it if they want, but a literal reading of the text says, they, referring to the

Israelites, they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant. They dealt treacherously with me there.

The idea is that Israel broke the covenant that God made with them, just like Adam broke the covenant that God made with him.

And so, here you have the basic idea of Adam as a representative.

There was a covenant. Adam was the one with whom God initiated the covenant. Adam sinned.

He broke that covenant, and everyone after him, therefore, suffers the consequences of it.

And this understanding, by the way, just to preempt something, a lot of people will say that, and I'm happy to return to this and deal with it in a more detailed way later, but they'll say that this isn't a

Jewish idea, right? Jewish people will say that it was innovated by Paul.

People that want the authority of the New Testament to be on their side will say that it originated after Paul, and they usually blame it on Augustine, or some even later on the

Reformers, but aside from the clear, I think, grammar of this text, you can find this same interpretation of it in numerous

Jewish sources. So, for example, just to read one, it says in the

Talmud, this is Sanhedrin 38b -11, it says, Rabbi Yehudah says, Adam, the first man, was a heretic, as it is stated, and the

Lord called to the man and said to him, where are you? Meaning, to where has your heart turned? Indicating that Adam turned from the path of truth.

Rabbi Yitzhak says, he was one who drew his foreskin, I'm not going to comment on what all these points mean, but he says, he was one who drew his foreskin forward so as to remove any indication that he was circumcised.

It is written here, and they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant. Notice, it's quoting

Hosea 6 -7, and it is written there, and the uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people, he has broken my covenant.

So, the basic point here is that they're interpreting Hosea 6 -7 as a reference to Adam breaking the covenant.

The same interpretation can be found in Rashi, as well as numerous church fathers.

Jerome took this position, Cyril of Alexandria, and others. So, that coupled with what

Jeremiah says, I think, nails the point that Adam was our federal head, this is a covenantal relationship, and so we all are represented in that original act.

So, original sin, total depravity, total inability, all this is connected to a broader theological foundation of federal headship, which involves principles that are right there in the scriptures.

I think that's important to kind of establish that, lest anyone be accused of slipping in some theological categories that aren't really taught in Scripture, and using that to govern how we interpret other passages, and so forth.

Now, as we all know, especially within the study of systematic theology, that everything we believe with respect to doctrine is connected to other doctrines.

So, often people use the example of a spiderweb, right? You have the spiderweb, and the central features of the

Christian system is right there at the center. If you remove the center, the whole spiderweb comes falling down. However, when you pluck away at the edge of the spiderweb, the spiderweb is not completely destroyed, but there are reverberations, and so we understand,

I think that's a great analogy, we understand that theology is connected. So, with that in mind, when someone denies a biblical conception of original sin, what other doctrines that are vital, and perhaps even touch towards the middle of the web, what other doctrines are affected?

Because a lot of people don't think in those systematic ways. They think, well, you know, original sin, you know, if I kind of tweak it this way and understand it that way, it's not gonna have a big impact on my position.

So, does anybody want to kind of chime in on that? Yeah, Jeremiah, go for it. So, this is where the

Church of Christ deny original sin, and this is a soulless bootstrapped theology.

I mean, when I say that, I'm saying the Church of Christ believe that your free will is preeminent, and there's a potentiality that you could live a sinless life, and they don't want to do the whole church history thing because it's gonna lead them right back to Alexander Campbell, and when you keep going, it's gonna get you to Pelagius, which is heretical.

And so, to answer your question, I think to deny original sin is to have a broken anthropology that will necessarily have devastating effects on who

God is, a theology proper, and what I mean is you don't get an absolutely sovereign

God. If you have such an elevated view of man, well, they're gonna have a distorted view of God where God's just a little bit bigger of a man, you know what

I mean? And when we go back to Romans 512, I want to touch on this a little bit because so many key terms.

There's a universality of sin, which goes back to Adam, the original sin and the consequences that came from that, and there's death.

And so, Eli, I wanted to tell you one of the objections from the Church of Christ, and I'd love for you all to piggyback on this.

When we read, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sin, they keep saying, see the sin, see the sin.

This is talking about spiritual death, and this really gets under my skin because I contend against full preterism, hyper -preterism, pantelism, and it's a similar move going back to Genesis 217 where God tells

Adam, the day that you sin, essentially, you will surely die. And all I want to point out is that's not just merely a spiritual death.

The moment that Adam sinned, he opened a new day, a new day of death.

The Apostle Paul says, the evil day in Ephesians 6. And so that began the moment he sinned, but regardless, there was physical death that happened in that yom, and it should have been

Adam and Eve, but there was a sacrifice. There was a substitute made on their behalf. And then

I also point out, you know, Anthony went to Genesis 5. We see the effects of sin. They died after so many years.

But the curse was, you will return to the dust of the ground.

This is probably the best functional definition of the physicality of death. Thanatos, the termination of physical life, is man returning back to the dust of the ground.

All right. Thank you for that. Anthony, you have any thoughts there? Yeah. So, a denial of original sin will affect the person's doctrine of the atonement, their doctrine of justification, their doctrine of anthropology.

It's going to touch everything. So, just to pick one of those out, if you look at Romans 5, the great contrast there is between our being guilty and condemned in Adam and contrary -wise being justified and given eternal life through Christ.

In the Roman Catholic scheme, original sin doesn't include original guilt. So, it's not something that's imputed to us, and it doesn't involve something judicial in this respect.

And so, the contrast to it, justification, is also not viewed in judicial terms.

They don't think of it as involving imputed righteousness and being a judicial declaration by God.

And so, their denial of original sin aids and abets this. And so, I'll leave it at that, but yeah, it's going to have huge implications all across the board.

Yeah. Thank you for that. J .G. says here, original sin is biblical, but inherited guilt is not. How would we speak to that?

Yeah. Well, Romans 5 says we're condemned. Therefore, as one trespass led, condemnation for all men.

Yeah. That's guilt. In fact, there's other terms there in Romans 5 that speak to this as well.

But in verse 18, it says, so then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men.

Notice the contrast here, condemnation, justification. This shows that justification is legal, forensic, because condemnation, it's not something moral or transformative.

When somebody's condemned by a court, it doesn't do anything to affect their inward condition. It's a judicial sentence, and it's being pronounced on the basis of sin.

Well, in the case of God's courtroom, it's being pronounced on the basis of sin. In a human courtroom, it's because of some crime committed.

But even before this in Romans 5, notice it says in verse 16, the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned, for on the one hand, the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation.

So notice the phrase judgment. You could translate it judicial sentence. The judicial sentence arose from one transgression.

You don't have to like the word guilt, but I'm sorry you got the same idea right there, even without it.

Arose by any other name still smells as sweet as Shakespeare once said. All right. Thank you for that.

Yep. Go ahead, Jeremiah. Something that helped me with that was Ephesians 2, 3 talks about how we were by nature children of wrath.

And so think about God who is holy, holy, holy. And then by nature, you have a creature that is corrupt.

You know what I mean? And so we have a right view of who God is. We understand there's nothing inherent about the creature that sinned in Adam that has a corrupt nature, that will sin willingly.

There's nothing innocent about that. But God is merciful. That's where we talk about, even though we can affirm these categories of, you know, federal headship, being guilty in Adam, told of poverty, inability to seek

God. God is still merciful. And we see that even from the garden. And so those categories kind of help help it go full circle with for me.

Yeah, I think there's a profound point. Marlon says Jeremiah's beard is on point. I got to make an observation, though.

While Anthony's beard looks straight up biblical. OK, all he needs is a staff and maybe kind of one of those like, you know, like camel skin or something.

Jeremiah looks like an Amish person is an Amish. Hey, my beard was was close to Anthony's just a couple months ago.

So I have to tell you, I had a realization. I told you I was in the

UK the past couple of weeks, and I used to tell people how handy this comes in when

I'm engaging Muslims. One time, for example, I was at a Arab festival and these

Arab Jehovah's Witnesses were complaining that I was accosting them at their table. Right. They've got this table there where they're hucking their wares.

And predominantly in the festival, there are Muslims. And so I'm there talking to them.

And one of them gets up and goes, tells the security guard on me to get rid of me. And the security guard was coming over.

And while he's coming up, I said, I didn't do anything wrong. They've got a booth. I'm talking to them and they don't like what they're hearing. And the guy reached out his hand.

He shook my hand and said, I know, brother. Thank you. Thank you. And he walked away. I realized this was a

Muslim security guard. He thought I was a Muslim. So I've often thought this stands me well when

I'm engaging Muslims. However, I also realized that it goes the other way, too.

I'm in some of these scenarios and people mistake me for a Muslim when I don't want them to.

So it's not the most exciting idea to be on an airplane and, you know, be taken for a

Muslim when I might also have in my bags, because I usually carry books with me. And since I'm engaging

Muslims on the occasion, I might pull out a Koran. And I can assure you that doesn't make my co -flyers excited to be on a plane with me when

I'm doing that. And there are other scenarios. Well, Anthony, I'm Puerto Rican and I keep getting mistaken for a Mexican. So it's the same thing.

Like, no, it's not. So in some scenarios, it might work out for you. In some others, it might not. Right. That's right.

That's right. And and and, you know, Jeremiah, when he's witnessing, he might have his bag with him.

He opens it up and there's, you know, maybe a piece of shoo fly pie or whatever the Amish sell in Pennsylvania.

Thank you for that, Eli. I appreciate it. By the way, I'm just kidding. Your beard looks awesome. At least you guys can grow beards.

I have a mild case of alopecia. So if I let my hair grow, I'll have one side of my mustache fully grown and the other one will just look really weird.

So good job, Eli, getting way off topic. I do apologize. I had to break up, break up.

We're so serious. I know you had to break things up here. OK, so my my next question. OK. And we will be getting to audience questions soon.

But what are some common misconceptions of the doctrine of original sin?

So when we when we put forth our particular understanding of original sin, how is it often caricatured?

And how might we respond to those caricatures? Anyone can take that question if they'd like. Don't, you know, don't be shy until you want to go first this time in.

Not necessarily. Nothing comes to mind. I mean, I know the objections to it, but the caricatures,

I'd recognize them when I hear them. But something I hear is the first sin committed is the original sin.

And we say there's actually sin that goes deeper than and then Adam in the garden with the angelic host and so forth.

So that's that's something that's misunderstood. But I do have an objection, like Anthony was saying to original sin.

I don't know if you want to move into that. Sure. Yeah, go. Why don't you share that? And I get this all the time from Church Christ.

OK, if we are sinners by nature, then that means Jesus was a sinner by nature.

And so one thing I point out is, well, to be human doesn't mean you have a corrupt nature, because Adam in the very beginning did not have a corrupt nature.

Now, everyone in light of the fall has that corrupt nature. And so I would actually point to Romans five, maybe verse 14 talks about the one who is to come did not was not born by the federal head,

Adam. And then the virgin birth talks about that. This this Messiah, this offspring of the woman that that is to come to crush the head of the serpent, was born holy by the

Holy Spirit. And I think it's Luke one thirty five. And so Jesus being truly God, truly man was not touched by the stain of original sin.

And so it's a misunderstanding that if we are born sinners, if we're born with a corrupt nature, then therefore that has to be true of Jesus Christ.

All right. That's a good point here. Now, I want to shift emphasis in terms of the ways in which people kind of attack the doctrine of original sin.

As you guys are well aware on the apologetic scene, we often hear the idea that Christianity is false by many skeptics and atheists and things like that.

But in recent times, we're also having compounded on that objection or that assertion that Christianity is not good.

In other words, not only is it false, but if it were true, it's not good because it has certain aspects that are well, they're just not good.

Look at this. You have Jesus, the son of God, God sacrificing his own son. Right.

You have kind of people morally impinging the atonement and things like this. How would we respond to criticisms of the concept of original sin from the non -Christian perspective?

How can a loving God set things up in such a way that we have to inherit this guilt because of a sin that someone committed a long time ago?

We weren't there. It's not fair. How can a loving God do this? So I'm kind of shifting there, not so much to defending it against other theological perspectives, but how, within an apologetic standpoint, an apologetic context, might we interact with an objection like that?

If I have first cracks, Anthony, you can come in and back clean it. So Anthony already kind of set this up that we understand this by way of covenant.

And so one thing that I'd like to point out is there's something transcendental to the human experience, and it's between father, son, and spirit.

And so Jesus talked about, as in Luke 22, as my father assigned or coveted to me a kingdom that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, sit on the thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

A point is there's something that happened before the foundation of the world in Ephesians 1,

Ephesians 3. So this is what is foolishness to the unbeliever. So we're not neutral.

This is the grand story of redemption, the covenant of redemption. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 3 says, the light of the gospel is for everyone.

This is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and to the authority in the heavenly places.

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus, our

Lord. So it doesn't matter how the unbeliever feels towards these objections.

And now we can help them understand how federal headship makes sense in other contexts.

So like I said, you know, I'm born as a United States citizen.

I didn't get to choose the president that makes good or bad decisions, and we have to suffer the consequences of another.

That just intuitively makes sense. We understand this within the family dynamic. But I would just say there is a grand story of redemption.

Anthony appealed to Isaiah chapter 46. There is the one true creator of God who is declaring the end from the beginning, not just reacting to it, but he has a purpose that he is working all things together after the counsel of his will, and it will be accomplished perfectly.

And so original sin, federal headship, this all works into a covenant made between father and son before the foundation of the world.

So we see the beauty in that. If you've seen and tasted that the Lord is gracious, well,

Jesus is a perfect Savior. The Holy Spirit regenerates and seals to the day of redemption. We hear this sweet -smelling aroma, and this is aroma of death because we're not neutral in terms of understanding the truth.

Right. Now I apologize for turning my back while you were answering. I was listening. I wasn't being rude, but I saw…

I started looking at Anthony when I started talking there. Well, it just made me think because this question here, we were talking about the importance of this doctrine and so forth.

The question here says, how does William Lane Craig's position of the denial of the historicity of Adam affect original sin and substitutionary atonement?

No Adam, no sin. It reminded me of a portion of the beginning of Dr. Craig's book in quest of the historical

Adam. He writes here on page 5, he says, We may nonetheless agree that the historicity of Adam is entailed by and therefore a necessary condition of the doctrine of original sin, but this conclusion is indicative of the importance of the historical

Adam only if the doctrine of original sin is itself of vital importance. It is, however, dubious that the doctrine of original sin is essential to the

Christian faith. The doctrine enjoys slim scriptural support. To put it mildly, not to be found in the account of Genesis 3 of the curses following the fall, the doctrine depends entirely on one biblical passage,

Romans 5, 12 through 21. And that passage is vague and opens to multiple interpretations. Paul does not teach clearly that either one,

Adam's sin is imputed to every one of his descendants, or two, Adam's sin resulted in a corruption of human nature or a privation of original righteousness that is transmitted to all of his descendants.

That Christianity can get along without it, one, is evident from the example of the Orthodox Church, whose doctrine of original sin affirms only two.

Even two can hardly be said to be essential. Not only is it not clearly taught in Romans 5, but the mere universality of sin among human beings is sufficient to require

Christ's atoning death for our salvation. Now that's a lot, but does anyone want to speak to Dr.

Craig's words here? Yeah, that's a lot. So a few things that I'll remember as I remember them,

I guess. But number one, when he says it's not needed for Christianity because Eastern Orthodoxy gets along without it, there's a whopper of an assumption there.

In my perspective, they're not getting along without it. They're not authentically a

Christian church. They deny the gospel. They formally deny it. Read the Synod of Jerusalem as one example of this.

They are given to what, from a biblical perspective, has to be called idolatry in terms of their worship.

Scripture abominates this. They not only say that it's appropriate to do these things, but that we're all anathema if we don't likewise engage in them.

So Craig is anathema according to them. In my view, they're not getting along well without this doctrine or others that come along with it.

But number two, part of the reason I went back to Genesis 3 and took some time to talk about the importance of this preparatory to Romans 5 is precisely because people like Craig will pretend that this is a doctrine that rests upon one passage.

It doesn't. It's a very clear teaching of plenty of scriptures.

Romans 5 is just the place where Paul in the New Testament, in his most systematic epistle, deals with this at some length.

And by the way, 1 Corinthians 15 is also relevant here too. He also makes this contrast between the first man and the last

Adam, the Lord Jesus. And so he's just wrong there. And it's not all that difficult.

He claims it's ambiguous and so forth. But if it's only in Romans 5 that we get it, why are

Jews teaching this long before Paul in Romans 5, long before Augustine, long before the

Eastern church decided to deny what earlier church fathers taught? And if people want to ask me where these sources are,

I'm happy to give them. Actually, let me just give one so that people know I'm not just making this up.

There's an interesting example at the end of the Targum on Ruth.

In Ruth 4, you have this genealogy that's given of Ruth down to David, or the idea is that it's giving the genealogy to David.

And what's interesting is that in some Jewish circles, certain individuals were viewed as having lived especially holy lives so that in the course of their lives, they didn't commit any actual sin.

But this gives rise to the question, well, why then did they die? If they never committed any actual sin, why did this person die?

And one of those individuals viewed to have been impeccable in his life was Jesse, David's father.

But Jesse died. And so at the end of Ruth 4, listen to what it says.

So this is the Targumic rendering of the Hebrew text. It says, now,

Obed begot Jesse, who was called Nahash. This comes from 2 Samuel 17 .25.

Because no corruption and perversion for which he might be delivered into the hands of the angel of death, who would take his life from him, were found in him.

Now, let me pause there for just a second and explain that. So the idea is

Jesse is called Nahash in 2 Samuel. So in Ruth, it brings this up.

And the word Nahash means serpent. So they're trying to account for this. Why is he called that?

And I'm not necessarily saying this is the way to interpret that particular text. I'm just saying this is how they understood it.

They're trying to understand this. And they're saying, well, there was no corruption and perversion in him for which reason he could have been delivered into the hands of the angel of death.

But then the Targum goes on. He lived a long time until the serpents counseled to Eve, Adam's wife, to partake of the fruit of the tree, the eating of which resulted in wisdom to distinguish between good and evil, was recalled before God.

So it's saying that Jesse lived until the sin of Adam was recalled before God.

And then it says, because of that counsel, all the inhabitants of the earth are mortal.

And as a result of that blunder, the righteous Jesse died. So here's the

Targum saying that Jesse, who was otherwise sinless, died because of Adam's transgression.

That's the Christian doctrine of original guilt. Apparently Jews were getting along quite well with it prior to the later

Eastern Church when it altered its course. When I'm reading Dr. Craig, I appreciate a lot of the stuff that he did.

I know there are people who hate on him for a bunch of reasons, and there are a lot of theological issues that I have huge problems with him.

He's helped us a lot in his debates. He's got some great points and answers and arguments and things like that.

But when you start reading some of his books, you're kind of just like, yeah, I'm going to give this a shot. You don't even get past the first couple of pages, and you're just kind of like, oh, my goodness.

So I thought that was an interesting quote in light of this question. So yeah.

Thank you for breaking that down, Anthony. I do appreciate that. I think that's going to be helpful for folks. Did you want to finish your line of thinking there?

No. I mean, there's more that could be said. All right. Well, we're at the top of the hour here.

I want to now shift to audience questions. There are a lot of them.

I'm going to try to go through as many as I can, and then we'll see what's what.

Let's try to answer them quickly and succinctly if possible. Of course, feel free to expand if you think it's necessary.

But just for the sake of trying to get to as many as possible, let's try to do that. All right.

So our first question here, David Calvin asked the question, is this a true statement?

The fact that we will all physically die confirms original sin, otherwise we wouldn't physically die.

Jeremiah, you want to tackle that one? Yes, and I want to relate it to the Church of Christ. A lot of times they will say 1

John 3, 4 says, see, in order to sin you have to transgress law, and that's the moment you become a sinner.

And we're saying, well, you do bear personal guilt there, absolutely, but the doctrine of original sin goes back to Adam and the consequences that came about from that.

And then to me, one of the best things to bring out there is we could say, well, do infants transgress law?

A lot of the universal consensus there is they don't bear personal guilt. They don't have knowledge to transgress law, and yet they die.

Why? And so it's everything Anthony was talking about. It's because of Adam. And so, yes, the physical death goes right back to Genesis 3, who was the federal head over all creation, and now all of creation suffers the curse of sin, and now we see death in our world.

The stereotypical answer to every question in church is Jesus, right? Why is such and such

Jesus? When you ask the question, why do we die? Just look at Adam. That's the one question that changed.

Jesus is not, it's Adam's fault. But you're right. I know it sounds cliche. I remember speaking at Texas A &M

University at an apologetics event, and someone asked a question about why certain sins occur, and in the question in parentheses they said, and don't answer with we live in a sinful world.

I'm like, well, thank you for trying to control the answer that I'm going to provide, but it's true.

Evil occurs because we live in a sinful world. We need to come to grips with the fact that we are by nature children of wrath, and that we are naturally inclined to disobey

God. And so as elementary as that concept is and so fundamental to these sorts of discussions, we can't move away from it.

The fact that we provide that answer often doesn't diminish the fact that it's true.

I love that summary that we're not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.

It is a nature thing, not simply an action thing. So I think that's vitally important.

All right. Let's jump to the next question here. Anyone could jump on this. What is the

Eastern Orthodox view of – I don't know if this person is – if pneumology is actually the term or pneumatology, but if anyone can decipher what this person is trying to ask, feel free to jump in.

Jump in there, Anthony. Well, pneumology has to do with the respiratory system, but he probably means pneumatology.

I wasn't sure if I got it off. Yeah. As far as their doctrine of the

Spirit, they would say the Spirit is fully divine, partakes of the essence of Father and Son.

They would deny the double procession of the Spirit from not only the Father but also the

Son, and that does have some implications downstream theologically.

But one thing I would say is, given other things that they teach, such as a denial of original sin and that man is not totally depraved and that sort of thing, they have a very strong synergistic view of salvation, not just subsequent to the new birth, but even in the new birth itself.

So it's a result of a cooperative effort between God and man. And so the

Spirit – I often look at some of these groups and think –

I understand why you find some things you do in these groups, given what I consider a very defective view of the

Spirit's work. But shifting from the Eastern Orthodox for a second, when you look at some of the wild and wacky stuff that happens in some word -faith contexts where they're barking like dogs and holy laughter and rolling and all that kind of stuff,

I'm thinking these people really don't have a robust view of the Spirit and of His work. And so it's almost like they're fishing for something to assign to the

Spirit. What does He do? Well, He makes us laugh and bark and do this other crazy stuff, right?

Well, obviously, Eastern Orthodox people don't do that sort of thing. But given their synergism, they do think of the

Spirit as sort of a co -partner with us. I think that diminishes

Him significantly. And it does so not only at His expense, but also it creates in the person a theology of boasting.

I'm not saying that everybody will fully enact this, but it certainly gives room for that.

It's the context in which that lives and breathes. If you think that you are saving yourself together with the

Spirit, then your piety and your life and everything else, your thanksgiving, your gratitude, all that's going to look different, right?

So they have a different pneumatology, certainly as it applies to theology proper, but also as it applies to soteriology.

Thank you for that. Jeremiah, you wanted to chime in there? Yeah. Now, Eastern Orthodox, they're the OG synergists. They own that term.

It's important for their essence, energy, distinction. And they vehemently deny federal headship theology.

They deny penal substitutionary atonement. It's just a complete overhaul. And perhaps at the bottom, or a part of the foundation, is a denial of original sin like we're talking about.

Thank you for that. A Young Christians Thoughts asks, probably an easy question, but how do we respond to people who use

Romans 7 -9 to debunk original sin? Real quick, Romans 7 -9 says, and I'm reading from the

ESV version, I once was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

Anthony's got that. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I was looking at the text. I didn't know you were looking at me.

So contextually, go back in verse 7. It says, what shall we say then? Is the law sin?

May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law.

So here Paul's talking about the knowledge of sin. It is through the law that the knowledge of sin was communicated to Paul.

And that's already something he expressed back in Romans 5 when he says that sin was in the world before the law was given, but it's not known, it's not imputed apart from the law.

There has to be some detailed giving of what God requires in order for it to be reckoned or imputed.

So Paul's saying basically the same here. In his personal experience, there was a time before which the law wasn't known to him and didn't expose his sin, and then at some point it all came to life.

And I think that's duplicated in all of our experiences, all of us who have come to Saving Faith.

There was a time prior to recognizing ourselves as sinners, and it was the law that did that work.

The law came home to us. When I read the Bible at first, I didn't even understand the gospel.

I read the Bible twice, and the only thing I understood was that I was a guilty sinner needing or deserving wrath.

The gospel wasn't clear to me at all, but the wrath of God justly due to my sin because of my sinfulness was clear.

And that's the work of the law. That's what the law does. Thank you for that. TattedTheologian asks,

What about those who deny the spiritual death of Adam in Genesis 3? How do you go to Romans 5 from there?

Jeremiah, go for it. We kind of touched on this earlier, and I'm glad that TattedTheologian, a .k

.a. Adam Carmichael, he's a deacon at 12th Baptist Church. Who also hooked me up with a Super Chat.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that, brother. Eli, I want to see you in person. You've got to take us out to coffee, man. Hey, I would love to, man.

I do want to point out for those cultic groups that want to appeal to a spiritual death, notice they're losing an apologetic to explain why the physicality of death happens.

When we go back to 1 Corinthians 15, all of that is talking about physical death.

What happened with Adam in the beginning? He sinned, and it resulted in returning to dust of the ground.

Jesus' death was physical, and he bodily rose from the grave. I'm just saying that there's so much context there, but when you appeal to a spiritual death only, you lose that apologetic.

Now, I want to encourage people. There is such thing as spiritual death. There is such thing as physical death, but they can't be separated.

They're two sides of the same coin. Spiritual death is sin that is in our nature.

That's the whole thing that Paul is warring against. We see it kind of towards the end of Romans 5.

But spiritual death is the power of sin that we war against that returns us to the dust of the ground.

Does that make sense? You can't have physical death without spiritual death.

Ephesians 2 kind of begins that we all start dead in our sins and our trespasses from the womb.

We have a corrupt nature. We will sin, and we will die physically if that makes sense.

Thank you for that. Keith Hoover asks, Can you address this definition of original sin? Based on Romans 5, 12 through 19, many definitions of original sin include

Adam's sin and guilt being imputed to us along with depravity. What do you guys think of that?

Jeremiah. When he says you guys, that means you, Jeremiah, then you,

Antoinette. Well, we've touched on this. Anthony, like you were already talking about, the context of Romans 5 is you have condemnation with Adam, and then you have justification with Jesus.

And so I will say that it's a both -and. We get the imputed guilt of Adam, and I tell people,

Don't worry. As you grow, you will sin, and there will be a personal aspect to that.

But that doesn't negate the federal headship. And then I also remind people, if you're mad that Adam represents you, then you don't get the benefits of Jesus Christ representing you by faith.

And I'm glad you emphasized the both -and aspect. A lot of people will take these terms like original sin, total depravity, and look at them in isolation to one another, but they actually are involved with one another.

You can't simply just define one concept as though it exists in a vacuum independent of those other concepts that flow out of that.

So I appreciate you emphasizing that. Marlon asks, Is a rejection of original sin high -tier heresy?

Yes. So, yeah, one thing I would say with respect to the word heresy, in one sense, we can say that anything that just isn't biblical is heresy.

It's a departure from the truth. But not everything is damnable heresy. So damnable heresy would be a heresy that strikes at that which is fundamental to the faith.

And part of the issue with – sometimes it's not so much that a denial of this or that doctrine is by itself damnable, it's by denying this, you're undermining something else.

So it's hard to understand how anybody could hold on to a right theology of the atonement, a right theology of justification, a right theology of X, Y, and Z, all of which are unquestionably essential to the faith.

Paul says the gospel's of first importance. Whereas Paul, writing to the Corinthians, could be upset with them for their immoral behavior and other things that are happening, their sectarianism, he still calls them saints.

But when Paul's writing to the Galatians, who are flirting with a false gospel, he says, I fear for you that you've fallen from grace.

He says, anybody who's preaching this other gospel to you, let him be accursed. He has the strongest of language to use for them.

And so if the doctrine of original sin is denied,

I don't see how one can consistently uphold other doctrines that just on plain apostolic precedent are clearly fundamentals.

You don't have to find a statement saying this doctrine is fundamental, original sin, in order to still conclude that a denial of it may well amount to damnable heresy.

That's the interconnectivity of theological doctrines there. That's why systematic theology is so important.

And happily, people aren't as consistent as they think they are.

I hear people give illustrations for the Trinity, and I know they have a better knowledge of what the doctrine is and don't realize how the illustration is heretical.

And so I don't condemn people when I hear them give a heretical illustration, provided I know that they have an accurate belief about the triune

God. So if they say they believe in one God who is three persons, but then say

God is like an egg, you've got the yolk, the shell, and so forth, but that would be tripartism.

You don't have a fundamental oneness of essence in that case.

That's heresy, Patrick. Yeah. So the illustration can be heretical, but the person's doctrine that they're trying to illustrate could well be accurate.

And sometimes people use, as Francis Turretin, a great scholastic theologian, said in the 1700s, sometimes people use heretical language, not realizing it's heretical, whereas they mean something better by it.

And we have to be charitable and recognize that sort of thing when people just aren't sophisticated enough to articulate it.

If somebody talked to one of my kids when they're youth, they would have had a harder time saying certain things, even though they know

God. They knew Him. They were instructed in the faith. But somebody could have tripped them up,

I'm sure, if they were challenging them. And I wouldn't, for that reason, say, oh, my kids didn't know the

Lord. It's just they didn't yet grow into a more robust way of speaking. Happily, we're not as consistent as we think we are, given our fallibility.

Yeah. I like this next question by Theology Matters Podcast. He asks, what's the distinction and difference between Protestant view of progressive sanctification in contrast to Eastern Orthodox view of theosis?

I remember interviewing Hank Hanegraaff. He's been on the show before, and then

I've had Dr. Tony Costa do, I think, a two - or three -part response to that discussion. I asked

Hank a bunch of questions to kind of highlight some differences, and he pointed out something that I think is important.

Oftentimes, there is a language barrier in terms of how we describe certain doctrines. So there were a lot of things that he said with respect to Eastern Orthodoxy that just sounded like something very similar to what

I believe is a Protestant, but he used different terminology. Is that the case here in this question, thinking in terms of a

Protestant view of progressive sanctification and an Eastern Orthodox view of theosis?

What's the distinction there? So one thing I'd say, I think back when you had

Hank on, his conversion was not that far out. I mean, it had occurred not very long before that, maybe a year or two or so.

And other Eastern Orthodox people have said he shouldn't have been speaking about Eastern Orthodoxy.

And these are people that are well -respected within an Eastern Orthodox context.

And here, for example, Perry Robinson, somebody who doesn't like me very much, but he's well -respected in Eastern Orthodox circles, he wrote a whole thing in Modern Reformation magazine critiquing the idea that Hank Hanegraaff would be speaking about Eastern Orthodoxy.

And I only say that just to say that he's not necessarily, at least at that stage.

And he said as much as well, yeah. Yeah, so he may still have had a good bit of Protestantism coursing through his veins and hadn't rinsed that out of him as he desired or they desire.

And so it may well have sounded more to you like what you believe than it should have.

But another thing to be said, though, is it is the case that in reformed thinking there is room for a doctrine of theosis.

You can read statements in Calvin and others that do teach that there is a fundamental elevation of our nature that takes place by virtue of union with Christ that will culminate in the resurrection.

And there are obviously still differences there, but my point is just you got to get an accurate doctrine of the

Eastern view of what theosis is and an accurate doctrine of what the Reformation view of sanctification is in order to truly compare and contrast the two.

And one thing I would say is that a major difference between the

Protestant view and the Orthodox view has to do with the essence -energies distinction, which is too big of an issue to get into in any detail here.

But they have this doctrine, which is fundamental, at least since Gregory Palamas, and not in the view of all

Eastern people, by the way, but this is how many of them understand it is in terms of Palamism. And that's just not a part of Reformed theology to think in terms of this kind of a distinction.

So basically part of the idea is that in distinction from God's essence there's something called his energies, and theosis involves assimilation to the energies.

So you're somehow... Not the essence. The essence is unknowable and we do not participate in that.

Yeah, at least this much we want to jump up and down and say we readily agree with the

East in saying that we do not by essence become what God is. That's the error of Mormonism.

Now the question is whether the East successfully maintains a distinction there, because there's conceptual issues with their essence -energies distinction.

There are criticisms of it. Does it really successfully do what they think it does? Can they successfully preserve the creator -creature distinction the way they're trying to do and so forth?

I don't know how helpful that is to people, but these are just huge issues, and I don't know how else to touch on some of them.

Yeah, I'm sure people are following. There's this one great comment. Someone gave a super chat toward the bottom here.

It says, Just hear for the fire theology. That was before we were talking about the essence -energies distinction.

Oh, it wasn't? Okay, that's right. Okay, I'm sorry. Let's see. Let's take a few more questions.

We won't be able to get to all of them because we'd be here forever, and I want to respect your time. Let's kind of go here.

Theology, that person asked a question. We covered the William Lane Craig question. Let's see here.

Let's get like two or three more. Let's see. Let me see here.

So Keith Hoover says, If William Lane Craig rejects that we are condemned for Adam's sin, then wouldn't it mean it's not fair that Christ's righteousness is imputed to us?

Does Dr. Craig reject it? I don't know if they're drawing that conclusion from the quote. It doesn't look like he rejected it from the quote, but that he didn't think it was essential.

I'm not sure. I don't want to speak for Dr. Craig. I don't want to misrepresent his view. I'm not sure if you guys are aware of his position.

Also, I don't know that he objected to it on the grounds of it being unfair.

I think in the book it comes up in the context of his discussion of the historical

Adam, the question of his genesis and so forth. I think that if you've read

Craig on the atonement, for example, he defends a penal substitutionary view. I don't think Craig has a fundamental issue with the morality of something like this because atonement theology involves this very idea of imputed sin.

Christ is bearing our guilt, the guilt that we have from Adam as well as our own actual guilt, that which we incurred by our own acts of transgression.

So I don't think that he would reject it as unfair, but I think he's saying it's called into question if you take a different view of the historicity of Adam.

Theology Matters asks, where did the formal term original sin come from? I seem to recall that it is before Augustine, but at least with Augustine the term comes into use.

That doesn't mean the doctrine is not present until then, any more than the

Trinity, which that term comes in with Tertullian, but we believe the Trinity is a biblical doctrine.

Many doctrines get the term that we use for them much later in history. Let's see here.

Let's try to squeeze in. I think I skipped a bunch of them. Is there a question that you see there,

Jeremiah? Someone asked a question here. I'm probably too late to get this answered, but is the apologetic dog speaking of the

Church of Christ or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints? Both are heretical. The Church of Christ, and you'll get into endless arguments.

They're not saying, we're not a denomination. Quit calling me a Church of Christ. I'm a member of the Church of Christ, and you get into the weird jargon.

You can't even get the plane off the ground a lot of times to have the conversation, but it's those people that have the

Church of Christ on their sign. Okay. All right. I can't find any more.

If you guys see anyone, I do apologize if I'm skipping anything. Let me hide the current.

There we go. All right. So the doctrine of original sin, it is biblically grounded. The presupposition of federal headship is also biblically grounded and informs our understanding of original sin.

Original sin also has theological entailments that touch on the issue of total depravity and by extension, total inability.

And of course, from a reform perspective, all of those spill over into the other letters within the acronym of TULIP.

And so I would say that from within a reform perspective, we go out of our way to be very consistent and systematic in our approach and understanding of these things.

I think it's one of the virtues of reform theology and so forth. But gentlemen,

I think you guys did an excellent job defining and defending and kind of expounding on this concept.

Are there any last words you'd like to give to the audience kind of in light of the importance of this doctrine?

What are some words of encouragement or just a warning in terms of people flirting with heretical ideas with respect to this topic?

Anyone want to share that first? Yeah. I was looking forward to having this episode almost a month ago.

I really did a deep dive. My son cut his head open. What? My son cut his head open.

That's why I had to cancel it. Oh, man. Hopefully he's doing better. Yeah, he's doing better. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I just want to encourage people to deny fundamentally original sin.

I say encourage people. I want people to think critically about this to deny original sin has consequences of itself.

Now, I like what Anthony said earlier. People can talk about distinctions within original sin as it's talking about just nature and pewter guilt.

We kind of contend that's a that's a package deal that necessarily involves federal headship.

But to to full full blown deny original sin altogether like the

Church of Christ do, it's going to necessarily redefine your anthropology and have a necessary impact on soteriology, how you are saved, looking to yourself to quote unquote obey, obey, obey by the things you do by your works to a list of commands.

And it's going to necessarily have a negative impact on who God is within all of that.

So original sin is fundamental to anthropology and how we are saved. And like the commenter said earlier, if we're mad at the first Adam representing us, then we don't get the benefit of being represented by faith in the second and better Adam.

And so if you taste and sin, the Lord is good, then rest in that rest in the fact that by his spirit indwelling us, that he is now making us righteous and we can look forward to that glorious day where the second and better Adam will resurrect us to eternal glory to see him face to face.

Bruce says, are all these guys Reformed Baptist or Presbyterian too? Yes. Reformed Baptist maybe.

At least one of us is right. Reformed Baptist, yeah.

Someone asked. I said one. There's only one of us that's not Reformed Baptist. Okay, okay.

Can you guys speak about? Oh, I was going to chime in on what

Jeremiah said. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, go for it. I thought we were making concluding thoughts, but I can.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I was just looking. I saw some other things popping in, but go. Let's do those. I'll give my concluding thought later.

Okay, yeah. So someone's asking about Charles Finney. Charles Finney is 19th century,

I think, right? He's a revivalist preacher. Am I correct? And he definitely had some interesting views.

I do believe he denied inherited guilt. And he believed that each person is only guilty for their own sins and not for Adam's transgression.

So he held two views, obviously, that would differ from what we're saying here. But do you want to add to if you know anything about Charles Finney and some of his perspectives?

Yeah, so Finney was a revivalist, but not certainly of the stripe of Edwards or others at the time, or even

Wesley. But his doctrine was simply

Pelagian. He denied original sin and corruption and believed that what you need to do, therefore, is sort of excite the will.

You need to sort of... It's sort of like a pep talk or an inspirational... In some way, you need to almost coerce the will, like get a person to make the decision you want them to make.

And so you come up with all sorts of gimmicks to that end. And so he created things... Well, the whole thing all kind of came into existence at this point, right?

Yeah, and so before that, he had a thing called the mourner's bench and other things. He'd put people in certain spots.

It almost reminds me of an interrogation, if you've ever watched an interrogation, not that humorous one that you were referring to earlier on my channel, but where they have these techniques.

I highly recommend folks if they haven't seen it yet. I do highly recommend it. But in an interrogation room, they have these techniques.

They usually put a person in the corner. They adjust the temperature. There's usually two cops, and they'll sort of get closer and closer to the person.

The idea is to make them feel like they're enclosed, they can't escape, and they're trying to wear them down.

That's kind of the mentality that Finney had, that if you could just come up with the right techniques, you could get a person to make the right decision.

These are just hugely problematic. It reminds me of, in my own case, when

I was younger, I was getting in a lot of trouble in California where I grew up, and my parents said, okay, we need to move out of this environment and go to Las Vegas.

Now, Las Vegas wasn't necessarily a better place to go to get me out of a context where I can sin and so forth.

But notice, their thought is, it's my environment. It's something other than an internal problem.

If people don't have the right view of human nature, then their view of how you address this is going to be different.

That's what was true in the case of Finney. Finney fundamentally thought that man was basically good, and he just needed somebody to coerce his will in the right direction.

It didn't take a supernatural work of... There's going to be, along with this, a diminishing emphasis on the

Word of God because we not only believe that God grants faith and the Spirit renews the heart, but He uses means, and the primary means that He uses is the preached

Word. For Finney, if all this isn't true, then the Word can be put in second place, third place, and these techniques can be exalted in their place.

I want to cover this question as well. There's a question here. What is the best topic to bring up when in discussions with those who believe in Eastern Orthodoxy?

This is a very important question because I think a lot of people who engage Eastern Orthodoxy kind of start at the wrong place.

Same thing with Roman Catholicism, as I'm sure both of you are familiar with. I think the fundamental...

It's important to recognize the fundamental difference between a Protestant outlook and a

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox outlook. It's very easy to jump into debates and discussions about superficial differences, but I think it's vitally important to point out the foundational distinction, and that is our authority structures.

So it depends who you're speaking with because within apologetics and evangelistic contexts, you're going to have

Eastern Orthodoxy that come from different perspectives. You have, even in recent times, people who utilize a presuppositional

Eastern Orthodox perspective in terms of which they hold to what's called an ecclesiastical epistemology.

And so, for example, they will try to utilize something akin to the transcendental argument, but instead of placing for the

Christian, we're going to say, you know, God and his revelation are the necessary preconditions for intelligibility and knowledge and so forth.

The one who affirms an ecclesiastical epistemology will place in that placeholder of ultimate authority the authority of the

Church. And so that unless you presuppose the authority of the Church, who is the only authority that is in the position to provide us the

Scripture, then you lack the preconditions for intelligibility and knowledge and so forth. And so, because it is the

Church that gives you the Scriptures, and so how would an Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalist kind of zero in on the

Protestant who unfortunately walks into this situation that they're unaware of? They're going to say, well, how do you know what the books of the

Bible are? And every time you appeal to tradition, they're going to be like, wait, wait, you're borrowing from our worldview.

So it's pretty much a form of presuppositionalism that many people use.

But it's, you know, it's the off -brand presupposition. A lot of Eastern Orthodox are kind of claiming presuppositionalism for themselves.

But I would compare Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism to Lucky Marshmallows, which is actually the ghetto version of Lucky Charms.

It's kind of the staple market brand. And so I think it's important to highlight authority structures and challenge the key presupposition of those who hold to what we call an ecclesiastical epistemology.

Okay? So that's where I would go. And maybe perhaps Jeremiah and Anthony can chime in. And this will be the last question, but I think it's a good question.

Oh, I told someone in the side chat I'd try to get you to answer their question because it relates heavily to original sin.

But I've been trying to study a lot of J. Dyer's argumentation. And so I think the fatal flaw is their term of synergy.

They think it's necessary. I think it actually undoes everything from the inside out, like we've been talking about.

And I think Jay should know better because he studied under Bonson and so forth. But they wholesale are welcoming in human autonomy to the whole system.

And so when you keep pressing that, that's going to contradict necessary attributes of God.

Now, like you said, they will try to press us on sola scriptura. And so having a good, robust epistemology of how sola scriptura is the living voice of God is the necessary precondition for our intelligible experience.

That's going to pay the bills, if you will. It's going down that route because when we put the shoe on the other foot, they're going, it's all going to go back to their autonomous reason.

They're not going to be able to have certainty because they infallibly chose

Rome or chose the East. You know what I mean? And so really, you're not going to get certainty with that starting point.

I know they're going to contend for an overall system, but I think their starting point of synergy is actually what's going to undo them.

Anthony, have any thoughts? How would you interact with someone like a Jay Dyer who will kind of appeal to the church and place the church within that epistemic position?

Yeah, well, there's a lot we said here, too. Number one, I find it amazing that any

Eastern Orthodox person would try and press the canon as a way of sort of determining whether one ought to be

Protestant or Eastern Orthodox. Number one, because there is no ecumenical council in the

East defining the canon, so they don't have any official ecclesiastical formal statement on this matter.

And number two, they're all over the map. It's not even like you can assume in one

Eastern Orthodox context or another that you've got the same canon being embraced by that particular faction of the

Eastern Kabul. You know, I could quote Eastern Orthodox people giving the

Protestant canon, the same canon that we accept, Old Testament and New, and I could quote

Eastern Orthodox people giving the same canon as Rome. I can quote Eastern Orthodox people giving more books than are found in Rome's canon.

So they're all over the map here. I hardly think they're the authority then to speak to us with respect to canon.

Besides that, the East for almost a millennium rejected the

Book of Revelation. They don't even include the Book of Revelation in their liturgy. It's not part of their normal readings, and this is reflective of the fact that their liturgy developed during this period when it was being denied.

And if you know anything about their epistemology, their liturgy is a major source of their theology.

It's not just the Bible. It's not just tradition in the sense of what the church fathers say, but what they've done in their liturgy.

So their liturgy is later than they love to pretend, and that liturgy lacks the Book of Revelation.

So where, pray tell, is the support for the Book of Revelation in their system, which many of them would affirm.

I believe Dyer would affirm it. But now another thing is, so you don't get an official pronouncement on the canon from them, no ecumenical decision on it, but what do you find in the church fathers?

Do the church fathers advocate this idea that the canon of Scripture rests on their authority?

I could give you quote after quote showing that the church fathers believe that Scripture was self -attesting. That's truly presuppositional, by the way.

Scripture is self -attesting. It's self -authenticating. And so, for example, I mean,

I don't know if you want me to give examples, but I easily could. I have a whole series, by the way, with Tony Costa where we looked at the self -attesting nature of Scripture, and I gave, oh, he's got a book by Kaiser there,

I believe, where he talks about some of that too. Have you read this one, Anthony? Yeah, that's an excellent book. Which is this one?

Who's the author? Yeah, Philip Kaiser. What's the title? Eli, you're going to love the subscript.

So the full title is The Canon of Scripture, a Presuppositional Study. And so he gives all the early church fathers quotes to show how they believed in solo

Scripture, a self -vindicating revelation of God. And he makes the case, y 'all are going to like this, if y 'all like an earlier date of the revelation, he actually makes the case that there could be no more prophetic word of God after what

Daniel 9 prophesied. There would be the sealing up of vision and prophet at the destruction of the sanctuary.

And he talks about during the intertestamental period where there was silence from God, which their own apocryphal books say they weren't written from prophets, that was actually prophesied that there would be a drought, not in famine or food, but of the word of God from the east coast, a universal

God is not going to speak, that was prophesied, and Rome and the east necessarily need those books in their canon.

So this is a really good recommendation that I would... Thank you for that. And Anthony, do you have any book suggestions?

Maybe kind of as we close things out, maybe just a quick couple of references, if you have, it's okay if you don't... Original sin?

Original sin, canon, some of the things that we've just been talking about. I think that book that Eli just showed is great.

Obviously Kruger's books on the canon are excellent. Beckwith's book on the canon is great.

Gallagher, others, I can't remember all the titles of these, but these are all authors on this topic, and they're excellent.

So I'd recommend those with respect to the canon. As far as original sin, pick up any good systematic theology,

Birkhoff, Turretin, Hodge, any standard systematic theological work will give you a good treatment of the topic.

And there are also standalone books that have been written on this. I think everybody getting a good systematic theology is probably the best way to go because we've talked a lot in this about how doctrines relate.

And so getting it in the context of a systematic theology I think will be really helpful. Well, thank you for that.

And I'd like to thank both of you gentlemen for coming on and talking about this important topic. It's actually because I was watching a bunch of interactions online with the denial of this doctrine, or not just a denial, but a diminishing.

So people would affirm it, but they have a very diminished view. It's kind of, you know, it's not a big deal if you don't hold to it in this particular way, so on and so forth.

And so I thought this was an important topic to cover, and I apologize that we had to push it out from before.

But I really appreciate you guys, and I highly recommend, guys, if you have not yet subscribed to Anthony Rogers' channel, the

Apologetic Dogs channel, please do so. And if you haven't subscribed to Reveal Apologetics, what's wrong with you?

Almost at 10 ,000 subscribers. I'm so excited and appreciative of the support that people have given.

And I love doing this. I just, I love having great guests on and being able to talk about these important topics.

And I learn in the process some of the questions that I've asked prior to some of the audience comments are just questions that I have as well that I'm always learning every time

I have guests on. And so I appreciate you guys, and hopefully this isn't the last time you guys come back on.

Thanks, Eli. I had a blast. Thank you. All right. Well, that's it for this episode, guys.

Thank you so much for listening in. Please don't miss tomorrow. It will be myself,

Dr. James White, and Dr. Jason Lyle doing a live Q &A. So bring your questions.

The whole show will be answering your questions. And if there are no questions, then I'll have already pre -prepared questions that we can talk about.

But I'm really hoping you guys bring some good questions, and it'll be a lot of fun. All right, guys. Take care.