"Church of Christ" deny ORIGINAL SIN

So this is where the Church of Christ deny original sin. And this is a soulless bootstrappedist theology. 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 going to lead them right back to Alexander Campbell. And when you keep going, it's going to get you to Pelagius, you know, which is heretical.

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'm amazed that this actually happened. I had Dr. Lyle on and I told him I was going to 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, you know, it'd be great if you guys both came on. He goes, I'd do that. I'm like, OK, 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. 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 prerecorded. 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 Presupp U, 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. Anthony looks like an Old Testament prophet, so we're going to let him go first.

Okay.

Both of them have reformed beards. I'm Puerto Rican, and my beard doesn't grow like that. So we're going to 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 U .K. 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. You had some really interesting interactions there.

Thank you for that.

It's pretty boss, right? I've got a YouTube channel. My name's Anthony Rogers. I've got a YouTube channel. It's called Anthony Rogers. 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 Paulman, 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, OK. 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 this growing rejection of this doctrine. If you have, what are your thoughts on that? Why are people 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 Bosky 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. Go ahead.

Go ahead. No, no, you go ahead. I was interjecting from you.

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 can we make a distinction? Because I know some people confuse this between original sin, total depravity and total inability from at least a Reform perspective, because we're all 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 Reform 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 Reform 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 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 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 Church.

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 impugns 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 is 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 5 .12 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 5 .12 because this kind of sets the pace.

Let me pull it up. So Romans 5 .12 says,. It says,. And so there's kind of dispute of what all sin is. Is this kind of a repeated Romans 3 .23, 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 5.

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 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 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 of this is in some way revealing to us the future. This is kind of the idea that Voss 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, OK, 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.

Right.

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.

Right.

You've got in Genesis four and Genesis five. First of all, in Genesis four, 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 315.

I'll put enmity between you and the woman in 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 five. 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 five. Adam has children that bear his likeness.

But notice the constant refrain. It mentions that Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years and he died. That's verse five. In verse eight, it says that Seth, his descendant, lived nine hundred and twelve years and he died.

Verse eleven, speaking of his son, Enosh, says he died. Verse fourteen, speaking of Kenan, says he died. Verse seventeen, speaking of Mahalal 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 can 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 by faith in Christ, you can now be represented by the second and better Adam and have salvation, justification.

Sure.

All right. 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 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.

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 Yehuda said that Rabbi Rav 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 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 going to 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, bootstrappedist 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.

It's like, and they don't want to do the whole church history thing, because it's going to lead them right back to Alexander Campbell. And when you keep going, it's going to get you to Pelagius, you know, 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 going to 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 5 .12, 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 y '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.