The Relationship Between Original Sin and Original Guilt

The relationship between Original Sin and Original Guilt is a self-evident and necessary one. It is also frequently misunderstood. For if someone is able to understand Original Sin aright, then they still may stumble over Original Guilt. Upon examination, the reason for this stumbling is perhaps most frequently found to be, not in the concept itself, but in the English word guilt. For this word is both highly charged and polyvalent, and as a result ends up carrying connotations in the English language that, if left unchecked, create a formidable, yet unnecessary, impasse to understanding this orthodox doctrine. A little investigation will therefore be necessary in order to clarify just how the word guilt is being used in the term Original Guilt.

It is also worth noting, since the English word “guilt” is prone to misunderstanding when translated from a colloquial, legal, or psychological context into a theological one, the danger is that a person can study the theological concept of Original Guilt and yet still smuggle in confused and unwarranted colloquial, legal, or psychological connotations due to the breadth of meaning the English word carries. This ends up creating a distorted picture of Original Guilt as an unacceptable doctrine, though in reality it has not yet been properly differentiated. As a consequence, since the critic has not yet apprehended the meaning of Original Guilt as a specifically theological concept, it ends up becoming a strawman that he rejects on the basis of a misconstrual that controls the interpretation and so guarantees its being misunderstood. 

Moving forward, the word guilt in the context of Original Sin and Original Guilt simply means the moral state of being that is liable to the consequences of an immoral action. Another way to say this is that guilt refers to a kind of debt. One etymological dictionary, though speaking to guilt in a legal context, includes this is in its entry on guilt: "In law, 'That state of a moral agent which results from his commission of a crime or an offense wilfully or by consent' [Century Dictionary], from early 14c.”

In other words, guilt is the resultant state that follows as a consequence upon wrongdoing, i.e. moral “accountability,” therefore we can say that guilt is what is “owed” to the Law. This is where the concept of guilt as conceptually resonant with debt arises. 

One insightful observer of etymology notes: “Looking at instances where Old English has been changed to Latin, we find that gylt is rendered as debitum in The Lord’s Prayer, and gultiȝ turns up as debet in the Gospel of Matthew. So here’s where there’s a case to be made for guilt having the sense of debt – something you owe.”

If we take the foregoing Anglophone concept of guilt as rooted in a longstanding relationship with the Latin biblical notion of debt, as in, “Forgive us or debts (debita), as we forgive our debtors (debitoribus)," then we can see that Original Guilt quite simply refers to the inheritance of Original Debt, which is to say what is “owed” for Original Sin. And what is “owed” because of Original Sin? In a word, it is death. 

It might be noted here that the Latin is a fair translation of the Greek term given in the Lord's Prayer, opheilēma, which also means “that which is owed; that which is justly or legally due, a debt.” Therefore the Biblical relationship between the concept of sin as causing guilt and sin as causing debt is established. 

Looking, then, at Original Sin, in its origin it is the literal first or original sin that Adam performed when he chose self over God when he ate the forbidden fruit. This sin actually defaced human nature such that his progeny, that is you and me, receive this same energy and activity of pride and sensualism as part and parcel of our fallen, wounded human nature. This reception of the energy and activity of the original sin, which is to say concupiscence, in our human constitution is what comes to be called Original Sin. Melanchthon writes in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession:

“Of the same import is the definition which occurs in the writings of Augustine, who is accustomed to define original sin as concupiscence [wicked desire]. For he means that when righteousness had been lost, concupiscence came in its place. For inasmuch as diseased nature cannot fear and love God and believe God, it seeks and loves carnal things. God’s judgment it either contemns, when at ease, or hates, when thoroughly terrified. Thus Augustine includes both the defect and the vicious habit which has come in its place. Nor indeed is concupiscence only a corruption of the qualities of the body, but also, in the higher powers, a vicious turning to carnal things. Nor do those persons see what they say who ascribe to man at the same time concupiscence that is not entirely destroyed by the Holy Ghost, and love to God above all things.” (Article 2, “Of Original Sin,” 24-25)

Where Original Sin thus refers to fallen man's inborn concupiscence (cf. Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article 2, “Of Original Sin,” 26-31), which is to say his self-centered sensual way of being, Original Guilt simply refers to the corresponding state of inherited debt known as mortality, i.e. the fact that we are all born subject to death. And this is what Original Guilt means. It is not a legal or psychological concept, but a theological term that refers to the manner in which sin is always attended by death, for apart from sin there is no death. As the Apostle Paul reveals, “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” (Romans 5:12). In other words, as Original Sin is the theological explanation of the universal presence of sin, so Original Guilt is the theological explanation of the universal presence of mortality that is necessarily consequent to sin. In sum, since all are born mortal, therefore all must have been born indebted to the Law, i.e. “guilty,” as a consequence of the universal human condition of Original Sin. And, since all are born subject to death as a consequence of Original Sin, therefore Original Guilt obtains as a necessary theological corollary of Original Sin. 

In conclusion, Original Guilt refers to the state of spiritual debt owed by all people to the Law, including infants, the payment of which was assigned by God in the Garden as death, which was the divine consequence of the original sin. Since man is born with this Original Sin, or concupiscence, then implicit in this is sin’s primordial debt and consequence, known as Original Guilt, or the inborn liability to death. To say otherwise is to divorce inborn sin from any intrinsic consequence, to say that Original Sin bears with it no relation to the Original Consequence and so carries with it no state of debt. Since man is mortal, however, it is simply the fact that he is born with Fallen Adam's original guilt. The state of debt, i.e. mortality, created by Original Sin is therefore aptly named Original Guilt.