So let me dig back to 1999 for the first bit of Past Scholarship to post, here.

I will not be posting any links for this paper, and you won’t find it on any of my profiles or on my site (though if you search the Internet Archive you can find a *reference* to it).  I deliberately expurgated this document once I had matured enough to realize just how badly I had wandered into rank heresy in the middle of my explorations and controversies as I finished college.  This paper was originally titled “The Origin of Original Sin,” and was an attack on the Reformed understanding of Total Depravity that, in a terrible fit of overzealous argumentation, attempted to both attack that view as “too Catholic” and to demonstrate that there had been a swerve away from the true teaching that led to Augustine’s view of the subject.

As many of you will know was quite inevitable, I ended up having to start my criticism of what I mistakenly viewed as “corruption” in Church teaching with Justin Martyr, who was just barely too young to have known the last of Jesus’ own Apostles; and I more-or-less implicated almost all of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church that I knew of in the “corruption.”  Somewhere in that process, someone less steeped in an anti-Catholic tradition might have realized that an interpretation of the development of Christian doctrine that supposed the Church was almost wholly overtaken in serious error on chief points of faith well before the canon of Scripture was thoroughly stabilized–before the Trinity and the relationship of Christ’s human and divine natures could be clearly defined–proved far, far too much.

In fact, eventually I came to see that this was too audacious–and, finally, that it was self-refuting. My return to a concern for confessional orthodoxy from this brief but intense period of error and excess took only a couple of years; my ability to move away from the dilemma of choosing one error or another on these matters, however, took longer to develop. My doctoral dissertation, completed in 2009, contains in part an extended meditation on original sin that is the recantation of these errors and the completion of the process of understanding that began with this Spring 1999 Independent Study and the deep dive into the Fathers that it occasioned.

I’ve carefully chosen an excerpt that does show my interaction with Scripture and my discomfort with what I understood of Reformed theology (which at that point was mostly American conservative evangelicalism overtaken by Dordtian Calvinism, the “TULIP” variety). I have quite deliberately avoided passages which contain obvious heresies, because there is simply no point in letting those arguments surface.

Here, then, a brief selection from “The Origin of Original Sin,” a polemical historical theology work of 100+ pages completed for an Independent Study course with Dr. Brian Morley at The Master’s College:

Chapter six of Genesis records the corruption of the antediluvian civilization. As humanity multiplied and those who walked with God (“sons of God”) intermarried with others, “the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh'” (3). God here identifies the fact that sinful humanity is rapidly effacing the influence of His Spirit.[An alternate reading clarifies the action here: “the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not rule in man forever, in his going astray he is flesh” (NAS Gen 3:3 note) (emphasis added).] In keeping with His promise of an ultimate defeat for the serpent and a Redeemer for man, God averted the disaster of an total suppression of truth by destroying all humanity except righteous Noah, who “found favor in the eyes of the LORD” (8). By the time God spoke to Noah, He had allowed sin to run to its extremity: verse five records that “the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Had Noah not been “a righteous man, blameless in his time,” the entirety of creation would have been annihilated (6-9). This passage provides dramatic testimony to the universal sinfulness of mankind, and for the pervasive effects of Adam’s sin. Once again, however, it must be noted that nothing in the passage implies that the sins of the antediluvian world were an inevitable result of Adam’s sin. In fact, Enoch and Noah are identified, without prelude, as persons who “walked with God” (5:22, 6:9). Later Scripture testimony will clarify that even these men did sin, and that it was “by faith” that they were righteous (Heb 11:5-7). For now, it is sufficient to realize that their righteousness and daily walk with God are recorded about them as facts in their own right long before theories of imputation became popular.

In chapter fifteen of Genesis, the Lord (through Moses) records a simple statement which forms the cornerstone of Biblical soteriology. Paul and James center their demonstrations of man’s responsibility in salvation on the declaration that Abraham “believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness” (6). While Paul’s use of this verse in the Epistle to the Romans has made it a primary source of imputation theory, it should be noted that here, in its actual context, it is simply a statement of fact. God accounted Abraham’s faith as righteousness. Paul quotes this in the course of a proof that justification is by faith, apart from works of the Law. James quotes it in the course of a demonstration that faith is not passive but active in man—and that true faith produces a moral change which does eventuate in right action. In light of the teaching that the reckoning here is an artificial process, God recording Christ’s merit in the place of Abraham’s, it should be observed that there is no reason to believe that a just and truthful God keeps a double set of books. If God accounts faith in His promises as righteousness, that accounting must be intrinsically true; any difficulties in interpretation of later teaching must not be allowed to vitiate this premise.

One passage frequently used to bolster the Reformed view of original sin is a statement from the book of Job that “man is born for trouble, as sparks fly upward” (5:7). Indeed, this passage does appear to bear on this view of man and God. Eliphaz claims to have heard in a vision, “Can mankind be just before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?” (4:17) The ensuing revelation portrays God as arbitrary and beyond all moral standards, and man as too lowly to understand God’s purposes. Eliphaz continues in this vein on his own, arguing that suffering is universal and that God reduces man to helplessness before He will help him. Job is given no solution except to hope that God will finish inflicting pain on him and begin to bless him again. That this is all in accord with the Reformed view of man’s total inability and God’s absolute and arbitrary sovereignty must be admitted; that it is truth must be denied, based on the context. This is a recording of a false teaching arrived at on the basis of a vision that is at best a delusion; quite probably, it is in fact a demonic deception. Eliphaz relates the source of his insight as follows:

Now a word was brought to me stealthily, And my ear received a whisper of it. Amid disquieting thoughts from the visions of the night, When deep sleep falls on men, Dread came upon me, and trembling, And made all my bones shake. Then a spirit passed by my face; The hair of my flesh bristled up. It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; A form was before my eyes; There was silence, then I heard a voice (4:12-16) (emphasis added).

Certainly, if one were to read this in a neutral context one would not class this as at all related to divine revelation; while God has used visions, there is no record of God revealing doctrine through nightmares! Some would appeal to the fact that Isaiah was troubled and trembled at the presence of God (Is 6:5). This can be readily dismissed, however; Eliphaz and his two friends are denounced as false teachers in the forty-second chapter of Job, where God says,

My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as my servant Job has . . . and My servant Job will pray for you . . . that I may not do with you [according to your] folly, because you have not spoken of Me what is right (7, 8).

Whatever the source of Eliphaz’s vision, it was not divine. The teaching he expounds so clearly, of the helplessness of man before the arbitrary sovereignty of God, is identified as falsehood by God Himself.