19 passages, 5 quoted here · Broad agreement in this library · Against: Gnosticism, Marcionism
Where sin and death came from, and why they are not the work of a second, evil creator.
Where they stood
Each row is one claim. Each name is a writer, placed at the date of the passage. Select a name to read what they said.
5 of the 6 writers here teach: “Death and guilt follow personal disobedience.” They answer a rival view: “Guilt or damning sin is inherited by birth.” The turn comes with Augustine of Hippo, c. 412.
teaches itpartlyrejects itlater writer, summary only
Apostolic FathersApostolicBefore NicaeaBefore NicaeaNicaea to ChalcedonNicaea to 451After ChalcedonAfter 451
Death and guilt follow personal disobedience5 teach
And he himself endured — so that he might abolish death and show the rising from the dead — because he had to be made visible in flesh, so that he might pay the promise to the fathers, and so that, preparing a new people for himself while he was on the earth, he might show that he himself, having made the resurrection…
HermasTeaches: Death and guilt follow personal disobedience
fl. c. 140 AD · Shepherd, Parable 6.1-2
They forget the commandments of the living God and walk in deceits and empty luxuries, and they are ruined by this angel — some unto death, some unto corruption.”
TertullianTeaches: Death and guilt follow personal disobedience
c. 155–c. 220 AD · On Repentance 2
For after so many and such great sins of human recklessness, begun with Adam the first of our race, after man was condemned along with the world's endowment, after he was cast out of paradise and made subject to death, God then hastened back to his own mercy. From that point on he dedicated repentance in himself.