Tam, that’s a very helpful distinction between accountability and consequences, and I like how you use that framework to think about the effects of parental sin.

Doc, that makes sense to me as well to understand curses as being descriptive of the kinds of consequences Tam mentioned, rather than God exacting payback from people’s descendents. (And I like that idea that you could read a curse as a lament!) Maybe where this gets to be a problem is when we look at the situations into which people are born and think we can deduce God’s attitude toward them on that basis.

Mark Pickering, that’s an intriguing suggestion that our sinful tendencies could be evolutionary baggage. I’m thinking of the term “concupiscence,” which has (unfortunately) gotten overly tied to lust in its connotations, but which is often used theologically to simply indicate human desires and appetites–which aren’t evil in themselves, but become a problem in that they regularly get put ahead of God. I’m thinking that might fit neatly into an evolutionary framework.

(By the way, I’d agree that Mormons don’t believe in “original sin” as defined by Augustine, but I probably wouldn’t conflate the Catholic view with Augustine’s. As Brad and I mentioned earlier, the LDS and Catholic approaches might actually not be all that far apart.)

Thanks for all the interesting comments, everyone!

This is one of the areas in which it is quite helpful to realize that the Garden of Eden story is a myth (which doesn’t mean it’s not true in a sense). The inherent evil in all human beings is simply evolutionary baggage–heuristics inherited from our less human ancesteors that aid in survival and reproduction. That this is necessary for our mortal experience is what the story is getting at.

One might say that Mormons don’t believe in “Original Sin” as defined by the Catholics, but we definitely believe that mortal beings possess appetites and desires that require discipline. Humanity as a whole is thus “guilty” by its very design–we are not accountable for our sinfulness, but only for our sins. We all take for granted that we have all sinned because sin is inevitable for creatures such as we.

Consequences are an entirely different matter, however. Speaking in a literal sense of the Garden of Eden scenario, when Adam and Eve fell, they had sinned and were accountable for their actions, i.e., they had a need to repent. But there was also a consequence despite any repentance. They became mortal. And whatever physical changes they experienced that caused their mortality apparently occurred at the genetic level because it became a heritable trait. All of their offspring are mortal. Thus, while their accountability for sin was not passed to their children, the consequences of their sin was passed on.

I think this may not be just a one-time event, but rather, it is a pattern for sin. What we do affects our children — mentally, emotionally, and even physically. The mental and emotional ramifications of an abusive home vs. a stable, loving home are fairly clear. So also are the physical ramifications of pregnant women smoking, drinking or doing drugs. Crack babies are probably one of the most dramatic examples of the sins of the fathers being visited on the heads of the children (er…except in that example it was a mother). It wouldn’t make sense that a crack baby would have to repent of drug abuse, since the child never voluntarily took the drug, but it will unfortunately suffer the consequences of their parent’s actions. It’s a bit sobering to consider that sins can actually affect genetic material and body chemistry.

I think the ideas of accountability vs. consequence are addressed quite nicely in Moses 6:54,55. It’s explained to Adam and Eve that their children won’t have to answer for their sins, but that sin will be inherent in their children’s bodies/flesh (conceived in sin) so that as they grow, their natures will be sinful, i.e., they’ll have to deal with the natural man.

Nice post Lynette — thanks.

“There can be no sin that is not voluntary, the learned and the ignorant admit this evident truth”, writes St. Augustine (De vera relig., xiv, 27).

and apparently chose to ignore it (cf. “Original Sin”, VI. How Voluntary, Catholic Encyclopedia (1912)).

There is no prominent LDS support for either of those aspects, though there is certainly support for a change in the conditions of the world as a whole, if one interprets the Fall as an actual event, as most of the prophets appear to have done, and not as an allegory of our natural self-willed and prideful condition, even prior to the creation of this world (cf. contention and war in heaven, fall of Lucifer and company, etc.)

Interesting questions, Katya (and yes, that’s a fair summary of my argument.) I suppose I am seeing Adam and Eve as a unique case here, since the fall seems to have changed the very conditions of life on earth, and that kind of influence would be out of the reach of other parents. I would say that all children suffer for the sins of their parents in the sense that anyone’s negative choices impact those around them, and this impact can be quite profound in the case of a parent-child relationship. But I wouldn’t put that in the same category as the fall (though I’m realizing that I need to think out more clearly how “original sin” might be related to “personal sin,” particularly when it comes to the ways in which we’re all affected by the sins of each other.)

If so, would you say that all children suffer for the sins of their parents when their parents make decisions that affect them adversely? (And that children are blessed for the righteous actions of their parents?) Or do you consider Adam and Eve to be a special case?

That just doesn’t make sense to me.

Brad, thanks for the comments. I’d agree that, at least from what I know, contemporary Catholic and LDS views on this subject don’t actually seem very far apart.

As far as Augustine–I’ve actually been studying the Augustine-Pelagius controversy in preparation for comprehensive exams, and I would agree that his view of things is often more complex than the way it gets popularly portrayed. It also seems that the dispute with Pelagius sometimes pushed him into taking more extreme positions than he’d held earlier. But I do think think it’s farly clear that he saw original sin as a kind of inherited guilt, and that he ended up with the view that unbaptized babies were in trouble; his treatise On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and Infant Baptism would be one place to find his teachings on the subject.

I should perhaps add that while I certainly don’t agree with him in every particular, I’m actually quite fond of Augustine, and I think he had much of value to say. I see him as holding a rather more complex view of the experience of being human, as well as of freedom, than does Pelagius, and quite frankly I think there are ways in which we Mormons could stand to be a bit more Augustinian.